Preventing unjust war: A Catholic argument for selective conscientious objection. By Roger Bergman [Reviewed Work]

book review - Preventing Unjust War: A Catholic Argument for Selective Conscientious Objection. By Roger Bergman. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020. 176pp. Over seven very readable chapters, Roger Bergman, Professor Emeritus of Cultural and Social Studies at Creighton University, develops his thesis about the role of selective conscientious objection and the just war tradition in Catholic Social Thought. He provides the example of the Catholic martyr Franz Jägerstätter, who died in Nazi Germany and becomes for Bergman a paradigm for selective conscientious objection against unjust war. Bergman traces the development of conscientious objection from Augustine in the fifth century to more recent twentieth-century thought. However, he argues that the just war theory developed over centuries and that gradually made room for conscientious objection is inadequate to address modern warfare. Bergman is not arguing that the Catholic Church take the path of pacifism and abandon the just war tradition, but rather that the Church focus intently on the process used to diagnose unjust wars. He is making an important intervention on the role of conscience in identifying an unjust war and the criteria for discernment.