The books reminded him that some people claimed to be both Rothbardian anarchists and conservative Catholics. How dare they! Feser supports the war; here were writers who, by claiming that this view was obviously mistaken, challenged his own grasp of Catholic tradition. It was imperative, from his standpoint, that he strike back. Those he condemned as defenders of an un-Catholic social philosophy must not be allowed the upper hand. ~David Gordon, LewRockwell.com

I guess there are Rothbardians who have no problem with the label of anarchist, which really does surprise me. I must not be as familiar with what their libertarianism entails as I thought I was. I have scarcely ever encountered a libertarian who did not react with offense the moment the a-word was thrown in his face. In any event, Mr. Gordon gives Mr. Feser a bit of a dressing down on libertarian grounds, which don’t interest me very much, but the more important part of the response (and, in fact, a better answer than my own critique of Feser) is here:

Cardinal Journet, e.g., states in The Church of the Word Incarnate, Volume I, pp.306–307: “After reading this specification [by St. Thomas] for a just war we might well ask how many wars have been wholly just. Probably they could be counted on the fingers of one hand.” Cardinal Journet was a well-known conservative, and the reformers of Vatican II viewed his great treatise on the Church as defending an overly hierarchical view. Cardinal Ottaviani, the principal opponent at Vatican II of the liberals, went so far as to say “that modern wars can never fulfill those conditions which. . . govern – theoretically – a just and lawful war. Moreover, no conceivable cause could ever be a sufficient justification for the evils, the slaughter, the destruction, the moral and religious upheavals which war today entails.”

This echoes in stronger terms the quote from then-Cardinal Ratzinger I posted yesterday.

Via Daniel McCarthy