Bin Laden and the Vatican

It’s  been two weeks now since the American SEALs invaded the compound of Osama bin Laden and killed him.   The initial picture painted by the White House regarding the raid into Pakistan has changed a bit, but the basics remain.  Acting on plausible but not “slam dunk” intelligence, at the express orders of President Obama, two helicopters of American military violated Pakistani airspace, landed at a large residential compound in Abbottabad, encountered resistance, found bin Laden in a third floor room, and killed him. The SEALs took his body, and an enormous catch of computer files and papers, and safely made their way back to their base in Afghanistan.

Religious leaders from a number of faiths have responded to this news.  (Here’s a national round-up http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Politics/Religious-Leaders-React-to-Osama-bin-Ladens-Death.aspx ;

and an informed local one http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11123/1143705-84-0.stm   .)

Both these news articles mentioned the brief response of the Vatican, from Father Federico Lombardi, S.J.  Here’s the statement in full:

“Osama bin Laden, as we all know, bore the most serious responsibility for spreading divisions and hatred among populations, causing the deaths of innumerable people, and manipulating religions to this end.  In the face of a man’s death, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibilities of each person before God and before men, and hopes and works so that every event may be the occasion for further growth of peace and not hatred.” 

You can be complimentary of the Vatican when it responds to current events, or critical, but what you cannot say is that the people there are stupid.  Vatican diplomacy, with actions or words, is always subtle, smooth and civilized.  This was a very short, almost blunt, statement, and what fascinates me is not what was said, but what was not said.

For example, the statement made no reference, and had no comment, on the manner of bin Laden’s death.  Now I have not seen the word “assassination” used in major media accounts of that raid, but after moving beyond the first breathless account of White House spokespersons, it seems to me that there was little or no expectation in a very well planned operation to capture Osama bin Laden alive.  New accounts seem to agree that bin Laden was found without any weapons on his person, and the most he did to resist was to flee up a stairs into his bedroom.  He was shot “in cold blood” by two SEALs.  This is not a criticism, just an attempt on my part to lay out the facts.  The online dictionary.com defines assassination as “to murder premeditatedly and treacherously.”   Shots to an unarmed man in the gut and forehead sound like premeditated killing to me.  

Yet the Vatican said nothing about how bin Laden died.  Silence is not agreement, but the absence of any comment, less criticism, of the way he died, is significant, at least to me.  I read into this silence that “assassination” is the wrong way to categorize this killing.  In the context of war, and with the background of horrendous terrorist murder of thousands of innocent civilians, it is justified.

Second, the statement made an unassailable presumption.  This was one very very bad man, who has done horrific things—“as we all know.”  When was the last time the Vatican pronounced a judgment in such a without-a-doubt manner on one man’s behavior?  There were no “weasel words” respecting a person’s reputation, civil rights or presumption of innocence. He done it.  What he done was evil.  Period. 

Here too I note the Catholic Church’s teaching on the death penalty, from the second edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.    Available non-lethal means to protect and defend people’s safety dictates that recourse to the death penalty is “very rare, if not practically non-existent.”  Is this not a case where even holding Osama bin Laden in a secure “super-max” prison has the possibility of inciting more violence from his al-Qaeda supporters?  From paragraph 2267:  “Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”   While never brought to trial (where?  how?  by whom?) Osama bin Laden has been decisively convicted in the court of world opinion, and in effect justly received the death penalty on May 2. 

Third, there was no criticism of the U.S. invading the sovereign territory of another nation.  Imagine if the U.S. flew into, say, a suburb of Toronto, banged down the front door of a suspected terrorist’s ranch house, killed him, and returned the body to Buffalo and U.S. soil.  Or for that matter, the U.S. raided Pyongyang from an offshore ship to snatch North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who evidently is starving a large portion of his nation while he lives in luxury.    (Which is what the U.S. did in the 1997 film thriller Air Force One, except that it was a Kazakhstan leader and supporter of terrorism.)  What an outcry would erupt from the nations, including the Vatican.  But on this incursion, nary a negative word.

What the Vatican did do, and which the church usually does well, is teach.  Rejoicing at the death of another is unseemly and always inappropriate.  Each of us can bring about good or ill.  Thinking about God’s judgment on our lives can motivate us to change behavior away from evil and toward the good.  Manipulating religious belief to support terrorism is itself an evil. 

All this from two sentences, well crafted, from the Vatican.