The ‘Ceremonial Law’

Chapter 2 faces the challenge that previous Catholic teachings have implied that Jewish rituals are both dead and deadening. Through a close examination of the Council of Florence and other magisterial teachings, it is established that the conditions under which dead and deadening operated do not actually relate to contemporary Rabbinic Judaism as understood in Catholic teaching. If invincible ignorance of the truth of Christ is presupposed, then Jewish practices can be understood very positively. It is also established that earlier teachings did positively view the practice of Jewish rituals in the early Church and by Jesus and the apostles. This is significant for the concluding chapter.

Defeating Ignorance – Ius ad Bellum Heuristics for Modern Professional Soldiers

Just War Theory debates discussing the principle of the Moral Equality of Combatants (MEC) involve the notion of Invincible Ignorance; the claim that warfi ghters are morally excused for participating in an unjust war because of their epistemic limitations. Conditions of military deployment may indeed lead to genuinely insurmountable epistemic limitations. In other cases, these may be overcome. This paper provides a preliminary sketch of heuristics designed to allow a combatant to judge whether or not his war is just. It delineates the sets of relevant facts uncontroversially accessible and inaccessible to contemporary professional soldiers. Relevant facts outside these two sets should by default be treated as inaccessible until proven otherwise. Even such a rudimentary heuristic created in this way demonstrates that practical recommendations of MEC-renouncing Just War Theory are not too challenging to follow and still signifi cantly impact a compliant combatant’s behavior.