Pacifism, understood as the absolute refusal to react to violence and murder except through conversation and democratic rules, constitutes a fundamental error of the modern West and a coherent fruit of the long revolutionary process that has been corroding it for centuries. This conception stems from the illusion that every form of evil can be neutralized by discursive processes, forgetting that human order is founded, as Saint Augustine recalled, on the need to repress injustice. Such an error is not an isolated deviation, but a manifestation of the revolutionary mentality which, by denying original sin and promising an earthly paradise built by science and technology, renders the existence of evil and, consequently, of just war, an anomaly to be abolished by progress (Oliveira, 1998, p. 26).
🕊️ Christian Peace versus Revolutionary PeaceIn De Civitate Dei, Augustine defines peace as tranquilitas ordinis (XIX, 12), that is, the tranquility of order (Augustine, 2006). This peace is not to be confused with the mere absence of war, but with the just ordering of things according to God. This is the peace of Christian Civilization, hierarchical and sacral, in which temporal society mirrors the celestial order. When order is broken by objective evil—such as murder, violence, or unjust aggression—a just reaction is not a mere option, but a moral duty. The bishop of Hippo recognizes that, although war is always a consequence of sin, it can be a legitimate instrument for the restoration of order. He states that "the injustice of their adversaries forces the wise to wage just wars" (De Civitate Dei, XIX, 7). Absolute pacifism, therefore, contradicts the very Augustinian doctrine of the just war, which was never the abolition of force, but the legitimization of its use in defense of justice. The Revolution, in contrast, preaches a universal peace that is secular, egalitarian, and unarmed, which can only come from the suppression of all sovereignties, inequalities, and, ultimately, all objective morality.
💔 False Mercy and the Softness of the Passions
The modern confusion between mercy and pacifism arises from a sentimental and decontextualized reading of the Gospel. For Augustine, mercy is an eminently personal virtue, linked to fraternal correction and the forgiveness of private offenses (Sermones, 83, 4). But, in the realm of government and society, the same Augustine insists that authority must punish serious crimes to safeguard the community (Epistula 138, ad Marcellinum). Thus, mercy cannot nullify justice when the life of the community is at stake.
This sentimental distortion is, in itself, a product of the Revolution in the tendencies. Sensuality, one of the driving passions of the revolutionary process, generates a softness of soul, a horror of pain, risk, and sacrifice (Oliveira, 1998, p. 5). The figure of the warrior, the martyr, the man who risks his life for a higher good, becomes incomprehensible and hateful to this mentality. Pacifism then serves as an ideological justification for cowardice and the pursuit of a life free from struggle, masking them under the veil of a supposed evangelical virtue.
⚖️ Just Order and the Hierarchy of the Common Good
This line of thought was deepened by Saint Thomas Aquinas, who systematized the doctrine of the just war in the Summa Theologiae (II-II, q.40). Three conditions are necessary: legitimate authority (auctoritas principis), a just cause, and a right intention. A just war is not born of hatred, but of zeal for order and the common good. Thomas also carefully distinguishes between the field of personal morality and that of political life: in the private sphere, mercy and forgiveness may prevail; but in the public sphere, justice demands that evil be contained to protect the innocent (Thomas Aquinas, 2002).
The Thomistic conditions themselves presuppose a social order that the Revolution aims to destroy. "Legitimate authority" emanates from God, a principle that revolutionary popular sovereignty denies. A "just cause" is based on an objective morality, which liberal relativism dissolves. A "right intention" requires a love for hierarchical order, which revolutionary egalitarianism abhors. The Revolution's anti-militarism is, therefore, the logical consequence of its hatred for all superiority and all structures of authority (Oliveira, 1998, p. 27).
🛡️ The Christian Tradition: Realism against Utopia
The Fathers and Doctors, therefore, are not spokesmen for absolute pacifism, but moral realists who recognize evil and prescribe a proportional response. As Saint Ambrose observes, "he who does not defend his neighbor from the unjust is as guilty as the one who attacks him" (De Officiis, I, 27, 129). This patristic and scholastic tradition disavows passivity in the face of violence: omission becomes complicity. This realism is in direct opposition to the utopian optimism of the Revolution, which denies the depth of human malice and believes it possible to build a perfect society without grace, merely by restructuring laws and the economy.
In short, mercy is appropriate and necessary for personal sins, where there is room for conversion. But when evil rises against life, the family, the Fatherland, and the Church Herself, the duty is not the passivity of pacifism, but the firmness of justice, which may require the legitimate use of force. Pacifism, as the motto of the non-peaceful and a psychological weapon to disarm the good, is a modern distortion that disarms the just and strengthens the unjust, in direct rupture with the patristic and scholastic tradition of Christianity and in full accord with the final objectives of the revolutionary process.
📚 References
Agostinho. 2006. A Cidade de Deus [The City of God]. Trans. Oscar Paes Leme. São Paulo: Editora Vozes.
Ambrósio. 1997. De Officiis. Trans. Ivor J. Davidson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Oliveira, Plinio Corrêa de. 1998. Revolução e Contra-Revolução [Revolution and Counter-Revolution]. 4th ed. São Paulo: Artpress.
Tomás de Aquino. 2002. Suma Teológica [Summa Theologiae]. Trans. Alexandre Correia. São Paulo: Loyola.