Section — Koch–Preuss
Section 2: The Right of Self-Defense
- DEFINITION.—By self-defense (defensio naturalis sive necessaria) we mean protecting one's person or property against unjust aggression. It implies the application of physical force to the extent of slaying the aggressor, if necessary, for necessity knows no law.1
1 Regula Iuris in VIto Decr. Gregorii IX, n. 4: “Quod non est licitum in lege, necessitas facit licitum.”—C. 11 de Consecr.: “Necessitas non habet legem.”—Cicero, Pro Milone, c. 4: “Silent leges inter arma.”
- The conditions under which this right may be exercised can easily be deduced from the definition given above.
a) We are allowed to employ physical force in self-defense only when we are actually attacked and have no other means (such as flight, calling for help, etc.) to protect our person or property from serious harm.2 It is not necessary, how- ever, to wait until the damage begins to be inflicted, but one may forestall a threatened attack.
2 Among the Propositions condemned by Alexander VII are these:—No. 17: “It is permissible for a religious or cleric to kill a calumniator who threatens to spread accusations of crimes about himself or his religious order, when no other means of defense is available: as none seems to be available if the calumniator is prepared to cast the aforesaid charges publicly and before very grave men against the religious himself or his religious order, unless he is killed.”—No. 18: “It is permissible to kill a false accuser, false witnesses, and even a judge from whom an unjust sentence certainly threatens, if the innocent person cannot avoid the harm by another way.” (Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 1117 sq.)
b) The attack must be wrongful and unjust, that is to say, the aggressor must not be justified in his conduct by his office or some real obligation. For there is no right of self-defense against a merited punishment.
c) The right of applying physical force in self-defense extends no farther than is necessary to repel an immediate and unjust attack upon oneself or another (moderamen inculpatae tutelae). Accordingly, manslaughter is not justified if inflicting a wound is sufficient to repel the aggressor; nor is wounding justified if disarming will do. In thus qualifying the right of self-defense it is, of course, supposed that one has the time and opportunity to choose the milder in preference to the severer method. Exceeding the moderamen inculpatae tutelae is a grievous sin only when done with full knowledge and of set purpose.
d) The use of physical force is permitted not only in defending one's life against direct attacks, but also in defending or safeguarding one's possessions, e. g., health, integrity of the body, chastity, property. If this were not the case, the right of self-defense would be illusory. Note, however, that killing or wounding another in an attack upon one's honor or good name is not allowed because reparation is possible in other ways, e. g., by court proceedings, etc. Nor is a husband allowed to kill his wife if he catches her in the act of adultery.3
3 Prop. damn. ab Innoc. XI, n. 30: “It is lawful for a man of honor to kill an assailant who attempts to inflict a calumny, if this disgrace cannot otherwise be avoided; the same must also be said if someone strikes him with a slap or beats him with a stick and, after inflicting the slap or blow of the stick, flees.” Ibid., n. 31: “As a rule I may kill a thief to preserve a single gold coin.” Ibid., n. 32: “It is permissible to defend by lethal defense not only those things which we actually possess, but also those to which we have an inchoate right and which we hope to possess.” Ibid., n. 33: “It is permissible both for an heir and for a legatee to defend himself in this way against one who unjustly prevents either an inheritance from being entered upon or legacies from being paid, just as it is for one having a right to a chair or benefice against one who unjustly prevents possession of them.” (Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 1180 sqq.)
e) The use of physical force is permitted not only in defending one's own person or property, but also in defending the person or property of one's neighbors. But we are under no strict obligation to defend others at the risk of life, unless they happen to be very near and dear to us, as parents, children, husband or wife, brother or sister.
f) In exercising the right of self-defense one must be guided by no other intention than that of warding off harm and injustice. It would be wrong, therefore, to harbor a feeling of hatred or revenge against the aggressor.4
4 Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., I, n. 411: “It is not permissible to kill an aggressor after the deed, because that would be vengeance, not defense. An exception is the case in which the aggression effectively, as they say, continues in the flight of the aggressor carrying away the stolen thing. It is not permissible for a girl to kill the assailant of her honor after the violation. She may, however, strike him, provided she does not gravely injure him, because unless she shows her steadfastness and displeasure in this way, the wicked man will not readily leave or may readily be able to return to solicitation.”
The civil law in some countries does not pun- ish excesses in the exercise of the right of self-defense if they are committed under the influence of fear or fright; but from the moral point of view such excesses are not always blameless.
- The right of self-defense is based on social ethics. Man, as a member of society, has a claim to be protected in the exercise of his rights against illegitimate interference by others, and since public authority cannot always be promptly invoked, this right in such cases passes to the individual, who, representing as it were, the whole community in his person, acts in its name. Thus he at the same time safeguards an important social interest, namely, public safety and the protection of life and property against unjust aggression and violence. In this consideration lies the reason why the use of physical force in self-defense may be carried to the extreme of manslaughter, if necessary, even in the protection of goods which are in themselves inferior to human life, because these goods in case of necessity have attached to them the bonum commune, i. e., the great and general boon of public security and the protection of law and order. To forbid the use of force in such cases would endanger the safety of all and encourage criminals to rob and murder their fellowmen. The right of self-defense is confirmed by an instinct, deeply implanted in hu- man nature, which moves every man to resist attacks upon himself and his own.5
5 Cicero, Pro Milone, c. 4: “This law is not written but born with us; we have not learned, received, or read it, but have seized, drawn, and expressed it from nature itself; for it we have not been taught but made, not instructed but imbued: so that if our life should fall into any ambush, into violence, or into the weapons of robbers or enemies, every honorable means of securing safety would be available.”—Cfr. J. E. Ross, C.S.P., Christian Ethics, pp. 267 sq.
Against the doctrine here set forth the opponents of Catholic moral teaching raise many objections. Space permits us to consider only a few of them.
a) The first is based on Matt. V, 38, where our Lord says: “You have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say to you not to resist evil [i. e., evil men who would injure you]; but if one strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other, and if a man will contend with thee in judgment, and take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him.”
But this command does not refer to the right of self-defense, but to retribution inspired by hatred and revenge. The most that can be concluded from our Lord's utterance is that men should refrain from exercising the right of self-defense when the good imperilled is merely an individual and not a social good. Christ Himself, who gave us the most beautiful example of patient suffering, keenly resented injustice on the part of those who were commissioned to dispense justice,6 and St. Paul censured the magistrates who had thrust him into prison.
b) From the standpoint of ethics and jurisprudence it is asserted that homicide committed in self-defense is a grievous wrong for two reasons. First, because none of the things one means to defend ranks as high as the life of the aggressor, and, secondly, because by killing a man we rob him not only of his physical, but likewise of eternal life, because we send him to the tribunal of the heavenly Judge in a state of mortal sin. Hence, it is argued further, it is a duty of justice as well as of charity, at least for him who is in the state of sanctifying grace, to sacrifice his own life rather than to endanger or destroy the life of an unjust aggressor. To this argument we reply: It is true that the things threatened or endangered by an unjust aggressor are of less worth than the life of the aggressor. But higher even than the life of the aggressor stand the social order and public security, and, secondly, if the aggressor loses his life and forfeits eternal salvation, this is not the fault of him who makes use of the right of self-defense when attacked, but the effect of the aggressor's own sin, as he has it entirely in his power to save himself by omitting the attack or desisting from it. Finally, the one who thus defends himself can cite in his behalf the juridical axiom: “Scienti et volenti non fit iniuria.” He who simply makes use of his rights injures nobody. It would not even be advisable to sacrifice one's own life for that of an unjust aggressor, because a man's duty of preserving his life for his own sake and that of his dependents may be more binding than any consideration for the life of a scoundrel, who probably would commit other crimes if he were spared.
Some writers have carried the principles underlying the doctrine just explained so far as to justify the assassination of tyrants. They argue that it is possible for a whole nation to be in a similar predicament towards an unjust usurper (tyrannus tituli s. usurpationis) or towards a le- gitimate ruler who shamefully abuses his power (tyrannus regiminis s. potestatis abusu), as an individual citizen is towards an unjust aggressor and that, as the individual in time of need represents the right of the entire community and is entitled to exercise that right in the name of all, so, too, an individual may be allowed to kill an unjust ruler in order to safeguard the life and property of the whole people. But the assumptions underlying this contention are untenable. In the first place, the right of using physical force in self-defense embraces only those cases in which the personal and private right of the individual is threatened, though that right may, of course, coincide with the interests of society; secondly, no individual citizen is allowed to pose as the delegate or mandatory of the people against the ruler when the latter acts in his official and public capacity. The case would be different if the ruler privately assaulted the life or property of a citizen; then the latter could claim and exercise the right of self-defense. Thus a woman criminally assaulted by a ruler would be allowed to kill him in order to preserve her chastity.
The doctrine of the lawfulness of killing tyrants is often ascribed to the Jesuits, but unjustly. “The Jesuit moralists, even in the 16th century, before the assassination of the French King, Henri III, and the work of Mariana evoked a deluge of pamphlets on the subject, never did teach the doctrine of the lawfulness of tyrannicide, permitting, that is, the assassination by a private individual of a monarch who, though a usurper and a tyrant, was actually in possession of the throne. As Duhr and others have shown by copious citations, Salmeron, Lessius, Gregory de Valentia, Becan, Gretser, Sat, Azor, Escobar, etc., in a word all the great Jesuit casuists of that period, maintained precisely the contrary.”7
7 Herbert Thurston, S.J., in the Catholic Times, London and Liverpool, Sept. 16, 1922, p. 8: “A single exception there was, the Spanish Father Mariana, who in his book, De Rege et Regis Institutione, owing to strong political sympathies which also brought him into conflict with the General of the Society, expressed enthusiastic approval of the murder of Henri III by Jacques Clément. The censor who gave his nihil obstat to the book admitted he had not read it, the General of the Jesuits, when it was brought to his notice, condemned it in the strongest terms, and the non-Catholic historian, von Ranke, fully allows that ‘Mariana’s doctrine cannot be regarded as the teaching of his Order or of the Catholic Church.’” (Werke, xxiv, 236). No Jesuit writer in subsequent times has ever identified himself with the views of Mariana, though in the following century such great names in the world of Protestant thought as Hugo Grotius, John Milton, and Leibnitz went quite as far as he did.
READINGS.—St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 64 (Rickaby, Aquinas Ethicus, II, 39 sqq.).—St. Alphonsus, Theol. Mor., l. III, n. 380–391 (ed. Gaudé, I, 631).—Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., Vol. I, n. 407–411.—F. X. Linsenmann, Lehrbuch der Moraltheologie, pp. 465 sqq.—V. Cathrein, Moralphilosophie, Vol. II, 4th ed., pp. 99 sqq.—O. von Alberti, Das Notwehrrecht, Stuttgart 1901.—M. Lossen, Die Lehre vom Tyrannenmord, Munich 1894.—R. Böhme, Der Tyrannenmord, Munich 1905.—F. Heiner, Die Jesuiten und ihre Gegner, Munich 1906, pp. 79 sqq.—H. G. Schmidt, Die Lehre vom Tyrannenmord, Tübingen 1901.—V. Cathrein, S.J., Moralphilosophie, Vol. II, 5th ed., pp. 694 sqq.—B. Duhr, S.J., Jesuitenfabeln, 4th ed., pp. 694 sqq.—T. Parkinson in The Month, March 1873.