Justifiable Insurrection

A Roman Catholic doctrine on civil war, similar in its principles to Just War Doctrine, except that the latter pertains to conflict with foreign nations.

Under "the duties of citizens," the 1994 edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2243, states:

“Armed resistance to oppression by political authority is not legitimate, unless all the following conditions are met: (1)There is certain, grave, and prolonged violation of fundamental rights; (2) all other means of redress have been exhausted; (3) such resistance will not provoke worse disorders; (4) there is well-founded hope of success; and (5) it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution.”

Here the Catechism indicates that insurrection is indeed justifiable under certain circumstances, even if insurgents employ armed force as distinguished from Ghandian civil disobedience. On the issue of whether insurrection can be reconciled with Christian morality, Protestant positions run the gamut from Jonathan Mayhew, whose fiery sermons helped ignite the American Revolution; to Tony Campolo who portrays Jesus as a pacifist -- his antithesis in the moral order being Barabbas the insurgent.

The Medieval antecedent to Campolo's view, that armed resistance to the established government is intrinsically immoral, was stated explicitly in opposition to the military exploits of Joan of Arc. The Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon, held an elaborate show trial to justify Joan's execution. Significantly, Cauchon suppressed the right of appeal to the Pope when Joan attempted to exercise it.

Cauchon’s articles of accusation attempted to prove that Joan had exercised her influence with the French dauphin and later king, Charles VII, to oppose peace and to ...

"… dissuade him (the dauphin) with all her power, him and those with him, from consenting to any treaty of peace, any arrangement with his adversaries; inciting them always to murder and effusion of blood; affirming that they could only have peace by sword and lance; and that God willed it so, because otherwise the enemies of the King would not give up that which they held in his kingdom; to fight against them thus, is, she told them, one of the greatest benefits that can happen to all Christendom … even for cases which tend openly to violence and effusion of human blood: a proposition the most foreign to all holiness, horrible and abominable to all pious souls."

Twelve decades after the retrial of 1456 posthumously accused Chacon of heresy, declaring Joan a martyr innocent of the charges against her, “Huguenot pope” and Protestant statesman, Philippe de Mornay, wrote in defense of popular resistance to tyranny. Mornay saw proof in Scripture that the failure to resist governmental wickedness was a sin in itself. In other words resistance was a citizen's moral duty. Echoing Mornay in a secular way, the U.S. justifies insurrection on the grounds that citizens have the "duty" of insurrection against despotic usurpations, viz. ..."it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government..."

See the indicated citation re application of the theory of justifiable insurrection to the United States in the 21st century.

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