America's Catholic bishops urged President George W. Bush and other world leaders to "step back from the brink of war" with Iraq, saying it is not clear such a conflict would be justified.
"Based on the facts that are known to us, we continue to find it difficult to justify the resort to war against Iraq, lacking clear and adequate evidence of an imminent attack of a grave nature," the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a statement released last night.
The statement, approved at the group's national meeting in Washington, said Baghdad must "cease its internal repression, end its threats to its neighbors, stop any support for terrorism, abandon its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction and destroy all such existing weapons."
But the bishops questioned whether the aim of bringing Iraq into compliance with United Nations resolutions on weapons inspections and other matters justified a war.
"We fear that a resort to war, under present circumstances ... would not meet the strict conditions in Catholic teaching for overriding the strong presumption against the use of military force," the bishops said.
They said church catechism limited just cause for war to cases where "the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations (is) lasting, grave and certain."
The bishops said they were "deeply concerned" by proposals to expand traditional limits on just cause to include "preventive uses of military force to overthrow threatening regimes or to deal with weapons of mass destruction."
It is one thing to try to change unacceptable behavior of a government, the bishops said, and quite another to try "to end that government's existence."