The Innsbruck Circle of Moral Theologians and Social Ethicists met for the 50th time, January 3-5, and addressed current issues of ethics for peace.
01/11/2024
On its 50th anniversary, the Innsbruck Circle is taking a self-critical look at the ethics of Christian peace and the tradition of the Church. In particular, the Russian war against Ukraine and the war between Hamas and Israel have been discussed by Michael Walzer, Regina Elsner, and Wolfgang Palaver, among others.
Russia's attack on Ukraine in February 2022 shakes the world geopolitical order. The Hamas massacres in October 2023 and Israel's subsequent reaction further aggravate questions of the ethics of peace. At its 50th conference from January 3 to 5, 2024 in the educational center Seehof, the circle of moral theologians and social ethicists from Innsbruck faced these challenges. At the beginning, Wolfgang Palaver traced the development of the Catholic peace ethic since the First World War and showed how it increasingly developed towards the concept of a just peace. On the one hand, this means positive peace, which must also include justice, and, on the other hand, the primary option for non-violence, which does not exclude forms of fair defense in exceptional cases.
Regina Elsner: No, just peace without gender equality
Münster theologian and Eastern Church expert Regina Elsner highlighted the ambivalences and gaps in religious diplomacy in Russia's war against Ukraine. “The war is not a religious war, but it is undeniable that the ideology of this war has a religious charge,” said Elsner. The Russian Orthodox Church actively legitimizes the war as a metaphysical struggle against “liberalism” and “gender ideology”. Women were the main victims of the war. Gender equality is fundamental for a just peace, but it is precisely the struggle for a patriarchal social system and for so-called “traditional family values” that unites the Russian Orthodox Church, the Vatican, but also many members of the World Council of Churches and politicians . -authoritarian regimes. “It is politically and theologically irrelevant how women are (not) represented. Women are missing from religious and diplomatic arenas. They are only perceived as victims, but they are not actively represented,” notes Elsner. For Regina Elsner, feminist foreign policy is an essential key to a just peace: “There is no just peace without gender justice. To do this, theology must also question its own power structures and ideologies.”
Protecting the common good obliges Europe to support Ukraine
In view of the war in Ukraine, Marco Schrage (Alfonsian Academy, Rome) recalled that political action is obliged to serve the common good: “Taking into account the Russian war objectives that have been proposed and pursued, it is not necessary for Ukraine to end your defense. If European governments are serious about protecting basic human rights, then the weight of support for Ukraine needs to increase significantly.” As a backdrop, Schrage outlined a counterfactual scenario – what would happen without this support: Ukraine becomes whether a totalitarian vassal state, Russia, or an occupation regime from which all fleeing Ukrainians must be taken in. Both would be enormous challenges to the common good.
Michael Walzer: In the trap of asymmetric wars
Michael Walzer (Princeton), one of the most important representatives of contemporary political ethics, reflected in Innsbruck on the possibility of a “just war” in the context of the war between Hamas and Israel. How can you fight an enemy that deliberately penetrates deep into the civilian population and fires rockets from civil protection zones? According to Walzer, Israel is trapped in the “asymmetric trap” of a war engineered by Hamas. “It is impossible to fight this war without civilian casualties. But Israel can only be held responsible for victims that can be avoided.” Walzer's lecture testified to the deep concern of a great thinker of our time in the face of a radical crisis in peace ethics. The question is less about how to defeat an asymmetrical enemy like Hamas and more: “Can we morally defeat this enemy?”
Criticism of the “moral equality of combatants”
Stefan Hofmann SJ (Innsbruck) dealt in detail with Walzer's thesis on the moral equality of combatants. Are the soldiers of any belligerent party morally equal, or are the soldiers of the unjust belligerent party on a different moral level? Hofmann, unlike Walzer, called for restricting the equality thesis. “Moral equality is the basis for minimum ethical standards in war. Walzer rightly points out that the soldier of the unjust party also has basic rights. But we must be careful not to separate “ius in bello” from “ius ad bellum”. Combatants do not have the same right to kill or the same right to live. The justified defender, like the Kurdish Peshmerga against IS, does not lose his right to life.”
Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue and political theology must meet
Christian Rutishauser SJ, permanent advisor to the Holy See for relations with Judaism, discussed the complex background and horizons of interpretation of the Gaza War. “October 7th marks a turning point in the conflict in the Middle East and in Jewish-Christian relations. Looting, torture, desecration of corpses and murder of children were jubilantly displayed to the world by Hamas,” said Rutishauser. Hamas clearly wants a universal Islamic social order; Israel/Palestine is just the beginning. For many Jews and Israelis, October 7th is a retraumatization, a pogrom. Anti-Semitism seems to be the ineradicable chameleon of history. Rutishauser warned that the religious dimensions of the conflict should be taken into account and defended, among other things, the experience of Jewish-Christian friendships, the development of a Christian earthly theology and overcoming the exclusion of Judaism in Christian theology. It is crucial for the future to combine political theology and interfaith dialogue. Where political theology is lacking, fundamentalists succeed.
50 years of the Innsbruck Circle: Central European Christian Ethics Summit
The circle was founded in 1974 by young theologians around Hans Rotter SJ and Günter Virt, who wanted to discuss current moral, theological and socio-ethical issues in a smaller circle. Current director Gertraud Ladner (Innsbruck) emphasizes the plural nature of the meeting: “A mix of internal debate and bringing in the experience of colleagues from law, medicine, political science, philosophy, Islamic studies, etc. over the years Debates.” The central concern from the beginning has been the network of Central European moral theology and social ethics. “Colleagues from the entire German-speaking area, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and all of Central and Eastern Europe gather here,” says Innsbruck moral theologian Stefan Hofmann SJ.
An insight into the history of the Innsbruck Circle can be found at: Innsbruck Circle of Moral and Social Ethical Theologians; Review – University of Innsbruck
(Michaela Quast Neulinger)