Anzac Day this year falls shortly after a Vatican Conference on Non-Violence and Just Peace. The coincidence is intriguing. At their best both Anzac Day and conferences of this kind are about people and the cost war makes them pay.
Anzac Day invites us to remember the soldiers who have died in war, those who have survived with scars to their body and spirit, and those who have grieved the loss.
Conferences on war focus properly on the people and cultures that war damages. Both kinds of event at their best say, 'Never again'.
The contribution of the conference was to question the legitimacy of just war thinking as a Christian approach to war and peace, and to stress the priority of peaceful over violent ways of making peace.
Its reservations about the value of just war theory are well grounded. The classical arguments originated at a time when casualties were suffered mostly by soldiers.
In modern warfare, including in Syria and Iraq, civilians overwhelmingly suffer, largely at the hands of powers that are not defending their own people. It is increasingly difficult to justify any war by the principles of self-defence and proportionality, to name just two.
Just war theory, too, is largely used as spin to give specious justification to military campaigns in whose devising ethical considerations played no part. Wars that governments wage are always declared to be just; those waged by their enemies are declared to be unjust.
By joining seriously in such meretricious debate churches would seem to be co-opted into playing an intellectual game designed to make legitimate killing and destruction.
"Modern war leaves no excuse for endorsing wars as divinely sanctioned or as a battle of good against evil. That line can safely be left for government spinners to cast."
When used among Christians, too, just war language diminishes the radical edge of the Gospel. The Gospel emphasises non-violence in relationships, the priority of the poor and vulnerable over those who wield power, and the value in God's eyes of each human being, especially of strangers.
When we enter into conversation about just wars we join the powerful in talking about what they can do to the weak. This draws the Gospel's teeth.
In the Catholic Church, which gives authority to its history, it is argued, the focus on the justice of wars conceals and dishonours an essential element of that tradition: the witness of those who suffered because they refused to violently engage in war. These conscientious objectors should be honoured together with martyrs and other witnesses to faith.
The conference commended the force of these arguments in its criticism of the use and validity of just war theory. Because it was held at the Vatican, and so seen as representing official Catholic thinking, it also attracted strong criticism from those who view war from the perspective of those who wage it and see it as a regrettable or laudable necessity. From this standpoint churches that refuse to endorse wars in which their nations are involved risk weakening national solidarity.
I agree with the conference's demand that in their internal conversation churches and their leaders should insist on the radical commitment of the Gospel to non-violence. In public conversation they should draw attention to the faces and lives of those made to suffer by war, including those whose suffering is inflicted by one's own nation.
Modern war leaves no excuse for endorsing wars as divinely sanctioned or as a battle of good against evil. That line can safely be left for government spinners to cast.
But I would argue that, although churches should insist that peace may properly be made only through non-violent means, the questions asked in just war theory have their place. They were first asked in a world where wars were regarded as an inevitable necessity. In that context, just war theory was really unjust war theory — it was a weapon for declaring particular wars to be unjustifiable.
The critical function of just war theory continues to have its place. It confronts supporters of war with compelling reasons why no war, including the one in which they have an interest, can be just. It gives Christians a public language in which to enter from their own radical perspective a secular conversation.
It also remains important to ask what actions are legitimate and illegitimate in the conduct of war (ius in bello). If we believe war is now unjustifiable, that cannot be the end of the discussion. For the harm war causes can be lessened if those who conduct it adopt rules of engagement stipulating, for example, that civilian casualties are avoided, prisoners neither killed nor tortured, and punitive sanctions outlawed.
The conduct of missions in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated the importance of these rules to minimise harm. Australian rules of engagement occasionally led their troops to withdraw from some missions initiated by the United States forces whose rules were not as strict. In Syria more indiscriminate Russian and government bombing caused massive civilian casualties.
Even if behaviour like sharing drugs, engaging in casual sex, holding up banks and making war are declared to be immoral, we still need to ask how they can be done in a way that least violates human dignity.
The conference and Anzac Day are both about paying due respect to people. That respect forbids a romantic view of war and those who wage it. It also forbids simply condemning it and then turning our face away.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.
Anzac Day photo: Chris Phutully, Flickr CC