he longevity of a Christian practice does not validate this practice as an ultimate norm for the Christian life.
The ultimate norm of Christian life has to be Jesus, His words and His deeds—and if He is not the standard against which everything and all must be finally measured by the Christian, who or what is? Plato? Aristotle? Hugh Hefner? Cicero? Thomas Aquinas? Reinhold Niebuhr? The President? Wall Street? NBC? “
– Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, All Things Flee Thee for Thou Fleest Me
“Now, if we pass from the behavior of the Church to Catholic doctrinal positions regarding the problem of war, it becomes clear that theology has sustained the theory of the “just war” for many centuries—a theory which however, never became official, which never was blessed by the magisterium of the Church.”
–La Civiltá Cattolica, 1991