Father Frank's Rant

Rant Number 209 21 March 2006

BehemothFrom the killing fields of Iraq, a troubled British soldier asks the priest:“…what should we do? Quitting? We just had our Defence Minister here…said itwould be a crime to cut and run…leave the Iraqis in the lurch…wrong of us…wediscuss this every day…but no longer believe in it…what do you advise,Padre?”Tough one, Clive. (Not his real name.) A bit of a bugger. Best to have achat with your Army chaplain. But damned right you are to be perplexed. Itisn’t that there aren’t arguments pro and con. That’s normal. But what ifthe moral situation is so diabolical that the West, or what passes for it,whatever it does, it does wrong? We stay in – mayhem goes on, terrorismthrives, Shia and Sunnis slaughter each other, all Iraqis hate us. We getout – Iraq explodes into all-out civil war, the country breaks up, Zarqawitriumphs, etcetera.For a person of a faith, this dilemma seems horrific. Demonic. Tantamount tosaying that a thoughtful believer, a man with a conscience, would have noalternative, no choice, whatever he does, but to sin. Indeed, he’d be forcedto. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. OK for Realpolitikers, perhaps,but certainly not for a Christian. Because it would mean he is trapped in amalevolent cosmos in which not God but Behemoth is in charge.Don’t groan. I shall clarify. It goes back to Pope St Gregory the Great. Hiscomment on an obscure verse in that delightfully proto-absurdist text, theBook of Job. Of formidable, hippopotamus-like Behemoth, held to symboliseSatan, Job informs us “the sinews of his thighs are knit together”. (40:17)Enlightening, eh? Mercifully St Gregory, a sharp moral theologian, rides tothe rescue. Here is his ingenious exegesis: “The sinews of Satan’s testiclesare wrapped closely together. Meaning the suggestions that he whispers tomen are bound together by crafty tricks. Designed to make us sin. In thisway: though we try to escape sinning one sin, we find we can avoid that onlyby committing another one.”A load of old cobblers, as a sceptical Cockney might quip? Not quite. Satanis of course a spirit. Hence any physical description can only bemetaphorical. St Gregory brings that out. From the devil’s nature – he is aliar and the father of lies – issue his innumerable ruses and twists, aimedat making men stumble. A murderer from the beginning, little wonder he isintent in fomenting strife and wars of all kinds. And his devices can bepretty lethal. Like the four hoodlums convicted in Reading yesterday fortorturing and murdering a girl. As the brutes were at it, one of themconfessed at the trial, “I felt as if somebody else was present in the room:the devil”. It chilled my blood to hear that.Satan’s power, however, is limited. Because he is only a creature.Infinitely inferior to the Creator. (Behemoth, huge and menacing as he is,is still part of God’s design, submitted to Him.) Although the fiend cantempt us, he cannot make us sin. Nor should we fall back on the Evil One toexculpate ourselves from the moral consequences of our free actions. Indeed,it’s best to be wary of exaggerating his influence. “Fr Frank, do youbelieve in the power of evil?” A lady obsessed with exorcisms and possessiononce asked me. “Madam, indeed I do” I replied, “but much more I believe inthe power of good!” Sigh.. I suspect she went on believing the devil is akind of god.Behemoth’s balls apart, do these dilemmas have an acceptable solution? Well,kind of. You see, St Thomas Aquinas holds there is a type of moralperplexity that necessarily entails bad outcomes for an agent but does notthereby threaten our sense of being in a moral universe. In such cases,indeed, whatever a man does, inevitably he sins, given an initial fault forwhich he is responsible. Imagine I have promised my friend Brian to take hischildren to Regent’s Park zoo, while at the same time promising Teresa,another friend, that I would take her children out, on the same day and atthe same time. Whatever he does, thoughtless Fr Frank will sin, i.e. break apromise and cause disappointment and sorrow to some child. No way out. Butwhy? Plainly, because of prior wrongdoing on his part. So, alas, I can onlyescape from the dilemma by doing wrong to someone. But, there is nothingintrinsically diabolical here. No contradiction, no denial of divineProvidence. Only my moral wilfulness, weakness, stupidity or what you will.Logically, by ensnaring myself in such a tangle, by doing something I shouldnot have done in the first place, I have brought it about that I cannot butdo wrong, whatever I do. Bad, yes. Demonic? Hardly.Only a nagging doubt. In moral casuistry, a lot hinges on the examples.Failing to take children to the zoo is one thing. Guess someone who has soldhis soul to the devil, like Faust, would feel a little more about worked upabout his plight. (Remember: Faust had given his word. Of course, he was aGerman. A Latin might have had fewer qualms – I say – fiendishly?) WishAquinas had discussed a case like that…Finally, Iraq. In Just War theory terms, it appears almost impossible not toregard the 2003 invasion as a peccatum – a sin. Because it was an aggressiveact of war, unjustified, unnecessary and illegal. Given that initial, fatalstep, with all the destruction, bloodshed and crimes that ensued,necessarily the West, whatever it does or will do, it will be morally wrong.Some grave injustice will follow. And, please, don’t come up with the old,convenient ‘lesser evil’ line. A lesser evil is still an evil. Especiallywhen there was nothing inevitable about it in the first place.So, Clive. As a volunteer, professional soldier in a non-conscript Army,taking the Queen’s money, his scope for conscientious objection, I wouldhave thought, is rather limited. His scruples, however, do him credit. GoodBritish lad. Buon sangue non mente!Revd Frank Julian Gelli