Father Patrick Hannon is professor of moral theology at St Patrick's College, Maynooth. He was born on August 1st, 1941, in Youghal, Co Cork, and educated at CBS in Youghal and St Colman's College in Fermoy. Then to Maynooth, where he was ordained in 1965. He completed a doctorate in divinity at Maynooth, taught at St Colman's college, Fermoy, and came back to Maynooth as a lecturer in moral theology in 1971. Since then he has been called to the Bar (he qualified as a barrister at the King's Inns) and he did a PhD in Cambridge. His thesis was on civil and church annulments in Ireland (this was before the introduction of divorce). He is now head of the moral theology faculty in Maynooth, since the retirement of Professor Enda McDonough. His book, Church, State, Morality and the Law was published by Gill and Macmillan in 1992. Knowing Right and Wrong was published by Veritas in 1996. This interview was confined to the issue of morality and warfare.
VB: What are the circumstances in which war is justified?
PH: In the tradition from which I come (the Catholic tradition), you distinguish first of all between justification in going to war, which, in the jargon, used to be called "jus ad bellum", and the justification within war, "jus in bello". Beginning with Cicero, of all people, but then taken into the Christian tradition with Augustine and then Aquinas and formulated by a Dutch 17th century philosopher, Hugo Grotius, there were a list of criteria establishing the rightness of going to war. You had to have a just cause; you had to have a right of intention and it had to be legitimated by a sovereign power.
Then on what could happen within the war, there had to be non-combatant immunity, there had to be a proportion between the means deployed and the end sought. There had also to be a reasonable hope of success. Discrimination and proportionality were the two main ones, that is discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.
VB: On the question of the non-combatants, this involved the notion of double effect - that it is okay to kill civilians if there was not an explicit intention to kill them, if they were killed by a fall-out from otherwise legitimate action. Are you happy with that double-effect argument?
PH: No. I would say first of all that the literature leans against the double-effect argument now.
VB: Aside from the literature, what is your view?
PH: I think that killing anyone that is innocent is wrong, whether the intention is merely to kill what might be considered combatants or not. If it is foreseeable that innocent people will be killed, it is wrong.
VB: Are there any contexts in which the killing of innocent people would be justifiable?
PH: This arises in the case of abortion where an operation intended for one thing results in the foreseeable death of the foetus, I take that more easily than I take the one about intending to bomb a target.
VB: Therefore, if the Americans were now to engage in the kind of bombing that they engaged in in Iraq in 1991, and in Yugoslavia two years ago, where civilians did get killed and it was foreseeable civilians would get killed, do you think that such a campaign in Afghanistan would be immoral?
PH: Yes, I would think that to that extent immoral. There are obviously degrees of wrong. I would regard this as being tainted with immorality.
VB: Immoral or tainted by immorality?
PH: Well, immoral. When I say tainted by immorality, I think of immorality as something which has degrees, But I think that is seriously immoral.
VB: How then would it be possible for America to exercise its right to self-defense against terrorists, presuming that Osama bin Laden and his organisation were involved in the World Trade Centre and Pentagon bombings. How could they exercise the right to self-defense against such an organisation without killing innocent civilians, not deliberately but as what might be described as collateral damage?
PH: That's for them to work out. If you are asking me what I think is strictly moral or not moral in the circumstances, I would say that whatever is done ought to be worked out in such a way that there is not the death of innocent civilians.
VB: And that is an absolute constraint?
PH: In my view it is an absolute constraint.
VB: What if the opportunity had arisen to shoot down the planes that were being driven into the Twin Towers in New York or into the Pentagon, would that have been permissible, even though it clearly would have involved the killing of the innocent people on board?
PH: (long pause) I suppose I would just have to say that in the standard way of looking at it, it would have been just. I think that it would have been okay to shoot down the plane with the intention of stopping it from doing greater damage.
VB: So why would it be wrong to bomb bin Laden's hideout, this is assuming that he and his organisation were responsible? What would be wrong about bombing his hideout knowing that the likelihood was that it was going to kill innocent civilians if the consequence of that bombing was going to stop further atrocities such as occurred on September 11th?
PH: When you talked about shooting down the airplane that was going to fly into the Twin Towers, I am assuming that there was no way of stopping it other than to shoot it down. I would think that there ought to be another way of dealing with his hideout which needn't result in the killing of people.
VB: What conceivably could these other ways be?
PH: I don't know.
VB: To make a moral judgement don't you have to grapple with what other ways there might be - for there might not be other ways realistically - or at least know there are other ways?
PH: I am saying the only permissible ways to deal with situations like this are ones which do not result in the death of innocents.
VB: Do you think Ireland should be giving a blank cheque to America in the sense of offering its airspace and its airport facilities to America without being assured in the first instance that whatever America does in relation to this matter is justifiable?
PH: I would want as a citizen of the country to be sure that they wouldn't give blank cheques, that we would exert all our influence to ensure that whatever is done is justifiable in the sense that innocent civilians will not get killed. I think that the gathering of support to the United States is great, insofar as this kind of collective effort would help to get rid of terrorism in the long run. It is great but I don't think that it should be, as you say, giving a blank cheque. The people who are involved should exert all their influence to ensure that what's done is within plausible ethical boundaries.
VB: Do you have an unease about the massive co-ordinated campaign that has been got together to fight what's called terrorism that has cost the lives of 6,000 people, and there was no such coalition, or indeed anything done, when 800,000 were massacred in Rwanda in 1994 and no such campaign has ever been organised to deal with the problem of world hunger?
PH: Yes, I do. That doesn't take away a bit from, I think, any of our concerns that there be effective action to deal with terrorism. But the solidarity and the campaign that is now being organised is in marked distinction from the solidarity or lack of it that has arisen to deal with world hunger and the Rwanda massacre and other such events in the Third World. I also think it is necessary to try to understand what prompts people such as bin Laden to do these kind of things, and that is not for one second an attempt to justify them or excuse them. But I think that we can't handle the problem of terrorism until we know what makes people act like that.
VB: You don't think that would be in a sense going over to their side?
PH: No, I don't at all. I think that it is a pity that when one says it, it is sometimes taken to mean going over to their side. Just as I think, in inter-personal relations, we have to ask ourselves the question 'Is there anything we are doing to cause the another person to act in what might seem a violent or menacing way?', so also nations should ask themselves what it is they are doing to cause others to act in a violent way. I would think that nations and states and civilisations should ask questions like that when they come across such differences and even when such differences lead to such dreadful evil as occurred in New York.
VB: What constraints do you think there are to the right to self-defense of a country?
PH: I think even in circumstances of self defense, violence has to be absolutely a last resort. No matter how imminent or apparently imminent a threat is, violence must be a last resort.
VB: Should there be negotiations, for instance, with the Taliban?
PH: Yes, absolutely.
VB: And would that be in your view a necessary pre-condition to any military action?
PH: I would think so if it can be done at all, it has to be done as a necessary prelude to any military action. You don't move to the next step until you have exhausted the first one. Cicero said there are two ways of settling conflict. One is by debate and the other is by fighting, and debate is the one that is offered to humans and fighting is offered to animals. You only go from debate to conflict when it is absolutely clear that debate, discussion and negotiation won't avail.
VB: On the question of Holy War, the Catholics should be understanding of the idea of Holy War: they engaged in Holy War pretty brutally themselves, notably during the crusades. Indeed this is still a folk memory in the Islamic world. Do you think enough is being done by the Catholic Church to expiate the wrong done albeit almost 1,000 years ago?
PH: First of all, I agree with you that Catholics had better be careful. I could maybe make some sort of distinction between crusade and Holy War, but I wouldn't want for one second to appear to suggest there was any justification for what was done during the crusades. The distinction I had in mind was that the purported purpose of the crusades was to recover the Holy Land but I don't want to seem to defend what was done. I think they were wrong and I also think there is room for Catholics to seek to make amends.