Adolf Eichmann, Hitler's 'final solution' architect, was executed in an Israeli prison late one night in May 1962. He died unrepentant and without regret for his crimes against humanity. Mark Gado's story of his capture in Buenos Aires by the Mossad, 'The Hunt for Adolf Eichmann,' is one of the best page-turners I have ever read. Who will write 'The Hunt for Osama bin Laden'? Did he, too, die unrepentant and without regret? People have been questioning the legality and morality of bin Laden's end. I have nothing to say about its legality, but thought I might say something about its morality.
Many old-world Catholics assume that morality has to do only with sexual behavior. It has to do with every kind of human behavior, sexual or otherwise. Every human decision has a moral component; it's morally good, morally bad, or morally neutral. In the popular mind, God's law is the basis of morality; if you break the law of God (or any of its civil or ecclesiastical derivatives) you have been immoral, your action is morally evil. This appears to me to be too simplistic.
The basis of Christian morality is not some law but the human person - or, if you like, the 'law' that's written in our hearts and tells us what to do in order to become more fully human: our conscience. A morally good decision is a choice to behave in accordance with who we are: created in God's image and likeness, and called to a personal relationship with God through baptismal community and Eucharist. This amounts to what the bible tells us when it says we are called to 'love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole strength, with your whole mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.' When we live in this manner we become who we were created to be, free from internal fear and external constraint. We are ready for Augustine's famous 'love and do what you will' piece of spiritual direction.
We avoid stealing, for example, not because we might be found out, or because we will deprive someone of their property. These are good reasons not to steal. But they are not the final or ultimate reasons why we don't steal. We choose not to steal because of who we are. That's what makes our choice to be the morally best one. From Augustine in the 4th century, through Bernard in the 12th and Aquinas in the 13th to Newman in the 19th century, a healthy self-knowledge of who we are has been the basis of Christian moral and spiritual growth.
We were told that U.S. Navy commandos killed an unarmed Osama bin Laden rather than take him alive. Adolf Eichmann was hunted down, taken alive, brought before an Israel court of law, tried and sentenced to death by hanging. Hundreds of Nazi, Russian and Japanese war criminals were caught and given their day in post-war courts around the world before sentencing. Saddam Hussein received it. They could have been shot on sight. They were not. Should they have been killed on the spot without being offered the dignity of a court hearing? Which would have been the better moral choice?
The reasons I've heard for killing bin Laden rather than capturing him and bringing him to justice center around the difficulties and risks involved, which may not have been present in the years following World War II. Nothing comparable to present-day Al Qaeda survived Hitler and the end of Nazism. By comparison to the violent pockets of jihadist Islam throughout the world today, there was little to fear in the late nineteen forties by bringing big war criminals to justice. It's easy to Monday morning quarterback the strike which was carried out amid the darkness and confusion of bin Laden's hideaway, where any door or panel might have been wired to blow the place and everyone in it to bits in a split second.
The news of Osama bin Laden's death came as a monumental relief to all decent people. When Pope Benedict asked Catholics last week not to rejoice over the death of anybody, he was merely echoing the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: 'Love your neighbor...love your enemies...do good to those who maltreat you...' He didn't say, 'Love your enemies, but only if they leave you alone and don't hurt you!' The command to love our neighbor or enemy follows from the deepest truth about us as humans, namely, that we are all connected as a community of sisters and brothers. Love is a decision. We need not have good feelings toward bin Laden, but we are asked to at least pray for him. I, for one, was proud that our sailors on the carrier in the Gulf offered bin Laden a burial service and prayed for him. How comfortable were you with it? Would you have felt better if, instead, they offered him a holding cell until he had his day in a U.S. court?
PASTOR EMERITUS
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