Prof. Tobias Winright

Tobias Winright is Professor of Moral Theology at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, and he is Associate Member of the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford.

INTRODUCTION: SITUATING IRELAND

After visiting Ireland regularly for over 24 years, my family and I moved to Maynooth from the United States of America two years ago. While there is obviously a closeness between the two countries, which have a lot in common, the contrasts between them have stood out too – beyond the great size and population differences. Ireland has 7,500 personnel in its Defence Forces (Óglaigh na hÉireann) that usually carry out peacekeeping missions under the auspices of the United Nations, a relatively unarmed police (An Garda Síochána), and the status of neutrality as a nation. In contrast, the US is a superpower with more than 1.34 million active-duty personnel and 800 military bases in over 70 countries and territories. ¹ Its police are heavily armed and militarized.² And it has not been neutral since the three “Neutrality Acts” passed by Congress between 1935 and 1937 prior to the Second World War. Yet, when
Ireland allowed US aircraft to use Shannon Airport during the second war in Iraq, I found myself wondering whether the Emerald Isle “had stretched the concept of neutrality to the limit.”³ If Ireland does not belong to any military alliance – with the US, NATO, or anyone else – then permitting the US to use an Irish airport, I speculated, has the appearance not of neutrality but, rather, taking sides and perhaps being an accomplice.

These musings returned to my mind during the past year when Ireland’s neutrality was being reconsidered, especially given Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, the threat posed to undersea cables in Irish coastal waters, and the rising menaces to cybersecurity by foreign states and criminal organizations. “As wars rage in Gaza and Ukraine, neutral states are coming under increasing pressure to pick a side,” ⁴but does this necessarily mean militarily?

During the Consultative Forums on International Security Policy in Cork, Galway, and Dublin (I attended the third meeting on 26 June 2023 at Dublin Castle), Irish citizens raised questions and expressed their concerns about neutrality – whether to maintain, modify, or discontinue it. According to an Irish Times/Ipsos poll, a majority of voters continue to support neutrality, but at the same time they are increasingly open to cooperating with other nations and their militaries to counter threats to Irish security.⁵ Many citizens worry though, that these two commitments – to neutrality and to cooperation with others for defence – are at odds with each other, with the latter eroding and undermining the former. Of course, where one stands on this question depends a lot on what one means by neutrality,
defence, and cooperation.

CONSIDERING IRISH NEUTRALITIES

As a theological ethicist possessing previous experience, beginning in 1984, as a law enforcement officer and some training, while briefly considering a military career, at the US Army’s Fort Benning in Georgia, I have long wrestled with questions about war and peace, the use of force and policing, and
violence and non-violence. I continue to do so, because I am still learning, especially as the ground is continually moving beneath our feet concerning these questions, especially in Ukraine, Sudan, Israel, Gaza and elsewhere (including the US). In what follows, I examine neutrality, defence, and cooperation, with an eye towards what I think may be Ireland’s distinctive approach in international peacekeeping, one that is consonant with its understanding and practice of policing.

In A Force for Good? Reflections on Neutrality and the Future of Irish Defence, published in 2022, a number of contributors, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, not only condemned “the use of Shannon as a US war-port,”⁶ but any “cooperation and collaboration with NATO even without formal NATO membership,”⁷ and the “erosion of our commitment to active neutrality and genuine UN-directed peacekeeping.”⁸ While some of these contributors highlight Ireland’s “soft power” and diplomacy as significant aspects of its neutrality, others rule out any violence or use of force whatsoever, instead calling for disarmament, “a commitment to the exclusively peaceful resolution of international disputes”⁹ and the “practice of non-violent approaches” ¹⁰to peacekeeping. As Maguire puts it, “Violence is always wrong… Violence is never right.”¹¹ In such a view, which traditionally has been called a pacifist one,¹² all armed force, i.e., “violence,” is prohibited for defence and peacekeeping, and by extension
cooperating in any way with other nations or military alliances that are involved in armed conflict is proscribed.

Yet, neutrality is not an univocal concept, and although most Irish citizens think neutrality should be retained, how this stance is understood, along with its implications for defence and peacekeeping, is not uniform. Indeed, not only do Irish citizens hold differing views of neutrality, so too does Ireland’s
understanding and practice of neutrality differ in many ways from that of other neutral nations. For example, Switzerland adheres to an armed neutrality, with compulsory civil and military service and 150,000 military personnel, for the purpose of self-defence but not for deployment beyond its borders. For Switzerland, neutrality is not “a synonym for antimilitarism, pacifism or defencelessness.”¹³ In contrast, Costa Rica has a demilitarized neutrality and a police-based model for security.¹⁴

It seems to me that Ireland’s approach to neutrality, which has developed across the decades and “has always been flexible, shifting in response to international events and domestic concerns,”¹⁵ stands somewhere between these two examples. So, too, do many of the contributors to A Force for Good?, who
support an Irish neutrality that is situated between Costa Rica’s and Switzerland’s, willing to see Irish forces deployed on peacekeeping missions for good causes, as authorised by the UN.

A few, like Maguire, appear to be advancing something akin to Costa Rica’s approach to neutrality, but even its police-based approach to security, while demilitarized, is not completely unarmed or non-violent. In her contribution to A Force for Good?, Karen Devine observes that “Ireland’s colonial and postcolonial experiences, with the derived values of the promotion of self-determination, anti-imperialism, and anti-militarism,” have left their mark on the island nation’s approach to neutrality.¹⁶ But does such a neutrality
necessarily entail non-violence? While Devine suggests – rightly, in my view – that “Ireland’s neutrality-based foreign policy approach is such a valuable resource in the realm of international relations and the promotion of peace,”¹⁷ unlike Maguire, she does not seem to assume that peacekeeping (i.e., “the
promotion of peace”) means only non-violent approaches. After all, she highlights how the vision of Frank Aiken, who was Ireland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs at the UN during the 1950s-60s, includes a “peacekeeping capacity” that “restrict[s] their armaments to police level.”¹⁸ This association between
peacekeeping and policing is a characteristic of Irish neutrality, and it differs from Costa Rica’s neutrality in which the police-based model of security is internally focused instead of outwardly to keep the peace internationally. During the third session that I attended in Dublin last summer, the policing component
of peacekeeping by Ireland’s Defence Forces was emphasised several times.

Almost four decades ago, Jerome Connolly wrote that Ireland should “examine politically and morally its own security, that of its neighbours and of the wider world,” and that if it seeks “to defend neutrality it must be as the means to some other goal, such as defence and security.”¹⁹ Serving at the time as Executive Secretary of the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace and a member of the Pontifical
Commission Justitia et Pax, Connolly understandably observed, “A useful point of entry for Irish Churches into the assessment of neutrality, defence and security is through raising questions of justice, taking justice to be the measure of political action.”²⁰ In his view, justice entails “two fundamental principles”:
(1) nonmaleficence (“do no harm” to other states); and (2) “a right to legitimate self defence, and a duty to protect the innocent and vindicate justice.”²¹ He added a correlative duty “to contribute positively to the common good of the community of nations, including the promotion of international security, increasing trust between peoples, arms control and disarmament, and the development of less violent means of defence and conflict handling.”²²

Anticipating the recommendations of most of the contributors to A Force for Good? by over three decades, Connolly did not expect absolute non-violence as part of Irish neutrality, but he did hope for
further attention to be given “to explore systematically the possibilities of alternative non-violent defence, the so-called ‘Civilian Defence’, as a complement to and eventual replacement for conventional military
defence.”²³ Accordingly, Irish neutrality, for Connolly, might offer a “more significant contribution to long-term international security, including our own, than any conceivable effort we could make in the
direction of conventional military defence.”²⁴ Curiously, though, while he mentions in passing “social defence,”²⁵ Connolly, unlike some others, never refers explicitly to policing in connection with peacekeeping and defence.

IRISH NEUTRALITY AND POLICING

Might policing offer a helpful lens to the discussion about Irish neutrality? In recent decades, the question about a police approach, rather than a military one, has been raised by a number of theological ethicists who espouse pacifism. After the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City and damaged the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on 11 September 2001, many theological ethicists – pacifist or not (myself included) – were critical of the “war on terror” approach upon which the US embarked. Instead, these theological ethicists, along with many peace activists, regarded what
happened on 11 September to be “a criminal act” that required a “law enforcement” approach – on an international level – for dealing with its perpetrators.²⁶

While I agreed with this view, I also was surprised by the pacifists’ call for a police model, especially since policing in the US during the latter decades of the 20th century had become increasingly armed and militarized to “fight” in the so-called “war against crime.” In such a “military” model, the use of force is
the “essential” or “inherent” core of policing.²⁷

In subsequent years this approach was on full display by the police in Ferguson and St. Louis, Missouri, following the killing of 18-year-old African American Michael Brown by a white police officer in 2014, and by police in other cities following the murder of 46-year-old African American George Floyd by a white
police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2020 – giving rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. Not all policing is just policing. There is also unjust policing. After all, who wants to live in a “police state”? So, to appeal simply to policing is insufficient. We must be clear about what kind of policing we have in mind. Even then, the police in most societies, even if they are not as heavily armed as US police, are not entirely non-violent. Just policing, as I and others have proposed, must include, in accordance with justice, strict
constraints on the use of force.²⁸

Admittedly, policing has been a lacuna in theological ethics, even though violence related questions, especially regarding war and military service, have occupied Christians’ attention from the very beginning.²⁹ While there has always been a police function (e.g., a night watch, the hue and cry, etc.) in most, if not all, societies, the institution of policing as we know it really didn’t exist until Sir Robert Peel’s “New Police” of Metropolitan London in 1829. Indeed, criminologists and other scholars have identified several different models of policing in different times and places around the world. These range from
the military or “crimefighter” model, at one end of the spectrum, to a community or “social peacekeeper” model, at the other end. The latter is supported by John Kleinig, a philosopher of criminal justice ethics.³⁰
He believes that this model is truer to the historical roots of policing as envisioned by Peel, who, notes David Ascoli, “was stubborn to the point of obsession that his ‘New Police’ should be seen to be free of all
taint of militarism.”³¹ The police in their blue coats were unarmed; the military in their red coats were armed. According to Kleinig, in the social peacekeeper model of policing, the “instrumental or subservient character is emphasized” concerning the use of force.³² That is, the use of force by social peacekeeping
police is “a last (albeit sometimes necessary) resort rather than their dominant modus operandi.”³³ To me, this approach to policing is consonant with Ireland’s distinctive sort of neutrality and its commitment to
peacekeeping.

After all, especially in contrast to police in the US, the Garda Síochána (“guardians of the peace”) are relatively unarmed (of course, the police in the US originally were unarmed, too, and didn’t begin to carry firearms until the late 19th century). Although the Gardaí, of course, are not perfect (no police or any other human institution is), their approach to social peacekeeping within the villages and cities, on the country roads and the motorways, helps us to imagine what Ireland’s distinctive contribution to international peacekeeping might look like. Space does not permit me to be more than suggestive here, but I believe I have identified a distinctively Irish approach to neutrality as a force for good in the world.
Before closing, a loose end and a possible objection need to be addressed.

First, the issue of cooperation warrants more investigation. It, too, is a word that frequently surfaces in the current discussion. As Neal G. Jesse observes, “Ireland’s singular stance contains the core element of nonparticipation in military alliances while also promoting activity in international peacekeeping operations, particularly under the auspices of the United Nations.”³⁴ But what about Ireland’s growing participation in other arrangements that are not exactly martial but are still part of a military alliance, such
as NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) scheme? As Connolly asked, “would a change in our neutral status involve us in morally questionable defence arrangements?”³⁵

CONCLUSION: CATHOLIC TRADITION AND NON-VIOLENCE

The Catholic moral tradition recognizes that human decisions and actions – whether individual or communal – often are not straightforward and clear cut. Rather, they often interconnect with others, and the intentions of multiple actors might not be the same. For example, when one agent’s action, which is good, intersects with another agent’s action, which is evil, it is important to distinguish between licit and illicit cooperation in evil.³⁶ With this in mind, if we consider NATO’s possession of nuclear weapons and
its use of them as a deterrent as an evil (after all, Pope Francis has declared that “the use
of nuclear weapons, as well as their mere possession, is immoral”³⁷), then should Ireland participate in the PfP?

According to the Catholic moral tradition, formal cooperation in evil occurs when an agent approves, explicitly or implicitly, of another’s evil action. It is explicit when an agent directly intends to cooperate in another’s evil action for the end of the act itself. It is implicit when an agent intends to cooperate in evil, not for the end of the evil act, but rather for the end of some concurrent good. Regardless, both explicit and implicit formal cooperation are illicit because it is morally wrong to intend evil, either as means to an end or as an end in itself.

Material cooperation occurs when an agent is instrumental in another’s evil action without approving of that action. If the material cooperation is immediate, meaning that the agent is causally proximate to the commission of the evil action, then the cooperation is illicit. On the other hand, if the material cooperation is mediate, meaning that the agent is causally remote from the commission of the evil
action, then cooperation may be licit, provided there is a proportionate reason for the agent to cooperate in the commission of the act. If Ireland’s cooperation with NATO or other EU defence arrangements is material and has sufficient reason, then it may be considered morally permissible. Given the defence needs of Ireland at this time (e.g., cybersecurity, airspace, subsea cables), and if Ireland focuses for its part on peacekeeping that is akin to just policing, I think that such cooperation is morally licit as mediate and material.

But what if not only nuclear weapons are considered evil, but, as Maguire asserts, “Violence is always wrong”? Indeed, her view has been echoed in recent statements by Pope Francis and other Catholics. In a message read to the United Nations Security Council on 14 June 2023, Pope Francis said, “The time
has come to say an emphatic ‘no’ to war, to state that wars are not just, but only peace is just.”³⁸ To achieve such a just peace, the pope advocates nonviolence: “Let us make nonviolence a guide for our actions, both in daily life and in international relations.”³⁹ In the view of Isabelle de Gaulmyn, a senior
editor at La Croix International and a former Vatican correspondent, “Catholic doctrine has continued to evolve, moving from a definition of ‘just war,’ i.e., morally acceptable, to a refutation of all war, including armed resistance.”⁴⁰ However, I think her conclusion is incorrect if not premature.

According to Pope Francis, “Peacebuilding through active nonviolence is the natural and necessary complement to the Church’s continuing efforts to limit the use of force by the application of moral norms.”⁴¹ While the traditional framework of just war theory is under scrutiny in the Church, what the
Catechism and other magisterial documents refer to as “legitimate defence” remains in place. While such defence now prioritises non-violent methods, contrary to de Gaulmyn, armed resistance is not absolutely prohibited, as long as it is in accordance with the “strict conditions for legitimate defence by military
force that require rigorous consideration.”⁴²

As one pacifist theologian has noted, the just war tradition, when strictly applied and adhered to, is closer to its origins in the Christian tradition to the function of policing.⁴³ It should be noted that even the
Vatican has a police force as well as the Swiss Guard.⁴⁴ And even the exemplar of active nonviolence, Mohandas Gandhi, acknowledged that “even under a Government based primarily on non-violence a small police force will be necessary.”⁴⁵

One of the main things that attracted my family and me to Ireland is its neutrality. I especially support further honing of its distinctive approach to neutrality with its focus on peacekeeping, conflict resolution,
disarmament, and humanitarian aid efforts in connection with the United Nations. As for the use of armed force, as long as it is aligned with a social peacekeeper approach to policing, I think this, too, is congruent with recent Catholic teaching.

Footnotes:

1. David Vine, “Where in the World Is the U.S. Military?” Politico (July/August 2015), https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/us-military-bases-around-the-world-119321/#:~:text=Despite%20recently%20closing%20hundreds%20of,about%2030%20foreign%20bases%20combined; and https://www.governing.com/now/2021-militaryactive-duty-personnelcivilians-by-state. See Tobias Winright and Nathaniel Hibner, “The Costs of Jus Ante Bellum and Jus Post Bellum,” in The Business of War: Theological and Ethical Reflections on the Military- Industrial Complex, eds. James McCarty, Matthew Tapie, and Justin Bronson Barringer (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020), 200. ↩︎
2. Tobias Winright, “Militarized Policing: The History of the Warrior Cop,” Christian Century 131, no. 19 (September 17, 2014): 10-12. ↩︎
3. Ronan McGreevy, “Iraq war marked a ‘low point of Irish pretences to neutrality,’” The Irish Times, 8 June 2023, https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2023/06/09/iraq-war-marked-low-point-of-irish-pretences-toneutrality/. The quote is from former political director of the Department of Foreign Affairs Rory Montgomery, as shared by Conor Gallagher in his book, Is Ireland Neutral? The Many Myths of Irish Neutrality (Dublin: Gill Books, 2023). ↩︎
4. Connor Echols, “The death of neutrality?” Responsible Statecraft, 17 January 2024, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/qatar-hamas/. ↩︎
5. Pat Leahy, “Overwhelming support for retention of Ireland’s military neutrality,” The Irish Times, 15 April 2022, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/overwhelming-support-for-retention-of-ireland-s-militaryneutrality1.4853176#:~:text=There%20is%20overwhelming%20support%20for%20the%20retention%20of,%2824%20per%20cent%29%20in%20favour%20of%20a%20change. ↩︎
6. Joe Murray, “Foreword: Ireland should be a voice for Demilitarisation, De-escalation and Disarmament in the World,” in A Force for Good? Reflections on Neutrality and the Future of Irish Defence (Dublin: Afri, 2022), 5. ↩︎
7. Iain Atack and Carol Fox, “Irish Neutrality: A Vital Resource in Danger,” in A Force for Good? Reflections on Neutrality and the Future of Irish
   Defence (Dublin: Afri, 2022), 40-41. ↩︎
8. John Maguire, “’Towards a Safer Tomorrow’? An Open Letter to Lt- General Seán Clancy,” in A Force for Good? Reflections on Neutrality and
   the Future of Irish Defence (Dublin: Afri, 2022), 34. ↩︎
9. Atack and Fox, “Irish Neutrality,” 43. ↩︎
10. John Maguire, “The Commission on the Defence Forces Report: An Initial Response,” in A Force for Good? Reflections on Neutrality and the
    Future of Irish Defence (Dublin: Afri, 2022), 52. ↩︎
11. See Mairead Maguire, “The True Cost of Violence and War,” in A Force for Good? Reflections on Neutrality and the Future of Irish Defence (Dublin: Afri, 2022), 22-23. ↩︎
12. Pacifism, too, is not understood and practiced univocally; there are a variety of pacifisms. Nevertheless, most agree that pacifism entails
    nonviolence and proscribes armed force. See David C. Cramer and Myles Werntz, A Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022). ↩︎
13. Derek Scally, “Neutral but fully armed: Switzerland looks to its own defence,” The Irish Times, 21 June 2024, https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/2024/06/21/neutrality-kept-switzerland-out-of-worldwars-but-it-was-not-a-synonym-for-antimilitarism/. ↩︎
14. John A. Booth, “Costa Rica: Demilitarization and Democratization,” Oxford Research Encyclopedias (23 February 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1888. ↩︎
15. Editors, “Irish defence policy: Defining neutrality,” The Irish Times, 17 June 2023, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorials/2023/06/17/theirish-times-view-on-irish-defence-policy-defining-neutrality/. ↩︎
16. Karen Devine, “Neutrality: Frank Aiken’s Legacy and Its Lessons for the Conflict in Ukraine,” in A Force for Good? Reflections on Neutrality and the Future of Irish Defence (Dublin: Afri, 2022), 8. ↩︎
17. Ibid. ↩︎
18. Ibid., 15. The source from which Devine quotes is Aiken’s contribution to the 18th Session, 3 October 1963, paragraphs 18-19, 22. ↩︎
19. Jerome Connolly, “Irish Churches and Irish Neutrality,” The Furrow 38, no. 5 (May 1987): 285-286. ↩︎
20. Ibid., 286. ↩︎
21. bid., 287. ↩︎
22. Ibid. ↩︎
23. Ibid., 290. ↩︎
24. Ibid., 292. ↩︎
25. Ibid., 291. ↩︎
26. Margot Patterson, “Experts Say Bombing Is Risky Strategy,” National Catholic Reporter (2 November 2001): 4. One of my teachers, the
    prominent Christian pacifist Stanley Hauerwas, suggested a police response that he would be more supportive of than war. See Jim Wallis,
    “Hard Questions for Peacemakers: Theologians of Nonviolence Wrestle with How to Resist Terrorism,” Sojourners Magazine 31, no. 1 (2002):
    29-33. Also, see Edward LeRoy Long, Facing Terrorism: Responding as Christians (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004). ↩︎
27. Vance McLaughlin, Police and the Use of Force: The Savannah Study (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), 1. See Tobias Winright, “Community Policing as a Paradigm for International Relations,” in Just War, Not Policing: An Alternative Response to World Violence, ed. Gerald W.
    Schlabach (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007), 130-152. ↩︎
28. The topic of my PhD dissertation was policing and the use of force; see Tobias Winright, “The Challenge of Policing: An Analysis in Christian
    Social Ethics” (University of Notre Dame, 2002). For a collection of some of my essays published between 1995 and 2020, see Tobias Winright, Serve and Protect: Selected Essays on Just Policing (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020). ↩︎
29. The observation that theological ethicists have neglected policing in their work was made, for example, by Ralph B. Potter, War and Moral Discourse (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1973), 60. Another early treatment of the topic was made by Edward A. Malloy, The Ethics of Law Enforcement and Criminal Punishment (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1982). ↩︎
30. John Kleinig, The Ethics of Policing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). ↩︎
31. David Ascoli, The Queen’s Peace: The Origins and Development of the Metropolitan Police, 1829-1979 (London: H. Hamilton, 1979), 89-90. ↩︎
32. Kleinig, The Ethics of Policing, 29. ↩︎
33. 33 Ibid. ↩︎
34. Neal G. Jesse, “Choosing to Go It Alone: Irish Neutrality in Theoretical and Comparative Perspective,” International Political Science Review 27, no. 1 (2006): 8. ↩︎
35. Connolly, “Irish Churches and Irish Neutrality,” 288. ↩︎
36. T. A. Cavanaugh, “Cooperation: Material and Formal,” in Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy, ed. M. Coulter, S. M. Krason, R. S. Myers, and J. A. Varacalli (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2007). ↩︎
37. Quoted in Christopher Wells, “Pope Francis: A world free of nuclear weapons is necessary and possible,” Vatican News, 21 June 2022, https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2022-06/pope-francis-a-world-freeof-nuclear-weapons-is-necessary.html. See Tobias Winright, “What Do Pope Francis’ Statements on Nuclear Weapons Mean for Catholics in the Military?” Sojourners (15 November 2017): https://sojo.net/articles/whatdo-pope-francis-statements-nuclear-weapons-mean-catholics-military. ↩︎
38. Cindy Wooden, “’Wars are not just,’ pope tells U.N. Security Council,” National Catholic Reporter, 14 June 2023, https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/wars-are-not-just-pope-tells-un-security-council. ↩︎
39. Catholic World News, “‘Let us make nonviolence a guide for our actions,’ Pope says in video,” Catholic Culture, 4 April 2023, https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=58258. ↩︎
40. Isabelle de Gaulmyn, “Global shift in Catholicism,” La Croix International, 9 May 2024, https://international.la-croix.com/opinions/global-shift-incatholicism. ↩︎
41. Pope Francis, “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace,” World Day of Peace Message, 1 January 2017, par. 6, https://www.vatican.va/content/
    francesco/en/messages/peace/documents/papa-francesco_20161208_
    messaggio-l-giornata-mondiale-pace-2017.html. ↩︎
42. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2309, https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P81.HTM. ↩︎
43. John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 75. ↩︎
44. Adam Taylor, “Yes, the pope has a police force,” The Washington Post, 3 November 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/03/yes-the-pope-has-a-police-force-heres-how-thevatican-lays-down-the-law/. ↩︎
45. Quoted in Wolfgang Palaver, “Gandhi’s Militant Nonviolence in the Light of Girard’s Mimetic Anthropology,” Religions 12, no. 988 (2021): 14, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12110988. ↩︎

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