“Those who are called upon to fight a war have access, even in modern times, only to the arguments of their own nation-state. Thus they are fed on the depredations and dreadful wrongs committed by their opponents. When the United States embarked on an armed incursion into Panama, the entire enterprise was formally labeled ‘Just Cause.’ The official designation was questioned only by a few dissidents. Very few individual citizens have the courage or effrontery to question the justice of a war declared by their own state. In this way, the just war, adopted by the churchmen and developed by the theologians, has turned out to be a lethal gift of the Church and its people to the state, in particular to its war-making power. Christians, their role in war always presented to them by the state as the enterprise of justice through violence, have little choice but to join with their nation-state in judging and punishing. Does this not replace the teaching brought by their Savior, that of loving and forgiving?”

– Eileen Egan, co-founder of Pax Christi USA, in Peace Be With You (Orbis Books, 1999), 102-3.