“We will have to study it.” That was the opinion of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, given the proposal to assemble teachers in schools to counteract the authors of mass shootings.
The president made those comments on September 2, almost a week after the lethal shooting in the Catholic Church of the Annunciation in Minneapolis. That attack claimed the lives of two children, left many other injured and raised the question of whether teachers should carry weapons in schools.
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Legislators will probably discuss the matter for a while. In some cases, it has already been decided: a handful of states, including Florida, Idaho and Texas, allow public school teachers to carry weapons in certain circumstances.
That this is adopted or not in a generalized way in Catholic schools is another issue. Although the debate is deeply, sometimes bitterly, controversial, the teaching of the Catholic Church would seem to allow it.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has never pronounced directly on the morality of carrying firearms, much less in a school environment. But The text Yes it stipulates that the “legitimate defense” may include the act of a “deadly blow”, although it must be done in defense of one’s own life and not as an end in itself.
Perhaps the most notable is that the catechism establishes that the “legitimate defense” can be “not only a right, but a serious duty, for which it is responsible for the life of another” (n. 2265).
“(L) who have legitimate authority also have the right to reject, even with the use of weapons, to the aggressors of civil society entrusted to their responsibility,” he says.
This would seem at least to allow the possibility of assembling teachers to counteract the authors of mass shootings. But if this is a good idea or a defense proposal is another issue.
“I am not convinced that we are in a social situation in which to assemble the teachers is justifiable,” said Professor Jacob Kohlhaas to CNA, an Ewtn News English agency.
Kohlhaas is a professor of moral theology at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa (United States). He described himself as “not absolutely pacifist,” but said that the proposal to assemble teachers is “deeply mistaken” and “uses some parts of the Catholic moral tradition while neglecting others.”
“I can actually imagine scenarios where armed teachers could be justifiable, but I can only imagine it in a context of generalized security problems or civil disturbances,” he said.
“In a functional democracy, increasing the lethal response capacity without questioning why such force is needed against our obligations with the common good,” he added.
Kohlhaas said that in his own state the possession of arms became much more accessible, which makes “more difficult to withdraw (weapons) to potentially violent individuals.”
“I find it difficult to imagine how a drastic response is justified when we are actively creating a more conducive environment for the background problem,” he said.
In contrast, Patrick Toner, professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University, has argued that “it is not a bad idea” to put weapons in the hands of the teachers.
After the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, who claimed the lives of 19 students and two teachers, Toner wrote That laws that prohibit carrying weapons legally on school campuses make shooters “assume in general that schools are truly free of arms”, making them “easy goals” for potential murderers.
“Is it disturbing writing about hardening our schools. We don’t want there to be no crazy murderers … seeking to massacre helpless children?” Toner said. “And yet, in our depraved culture, it is not surprising that we find abundance of possible murderers.”
Toner told CNA that his convictions on the matter “lie mainly in the field of prudential judgment rather than in the direct application of some teaching of the Church.”
Even so, he said, the Church clearly states that Catholics “have effectively right to defend ourselves and a deep obligation to protect the helpless.”
If that obligation extends to the fact of carrying weapons in schools, it is, of course, a matter of debate.
The Catechism cites Santo Tomás de Aquino by saying that any self -defense that incorporates “a violence greater than the necessary” is “illegal”, but to repel an attack “mesurada” is appropriate (n. 2264).
However, Aquino also stipulates that in acts of self -defense it is not necessary to moderate the answer only “in order to avoid killing”, since “the obligation to be ensured by one’s life than for another” is greater. “
The saint also adds that those who have “public authority” have more margin to use lethal defense to the extent that they refer to the public good.
Although the Church authorities in the United States have not explicitly spoken about the issue, some have expressed objections to the proposal to assemble the teachers.
After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, the United States Catholic Bishop Conference said in a statement that the “idea of assembling teachers seems to consider more concerns from which it resolves.”
“We must always remember what is at stake when taking measures to safeguard our communities and honor human life,” the bishops said at that time.
As expected, no Pope has spoken directly about it, but the potatoes have spoken regularly against the proliferation of firearms.
Pope Francis was a constant critic of the arms industry, although mostly in the war context; while after the minneapolis shooting, Pope Leo XIV He prayed to God to “stop the pandemic of weapons, large and small, that infects our world.”
Kohlhaas, meanwhile, acknowledged that there are “people in charge of protecting society that must have and use firearms responsibly, but argued that” extending that to teachers without seriously asking why and how we have reached this point is a problem. “
Armed violence, he said, is not inevitable, and human beings have “the obligation to elaborate and adapt human products to the common good.”
“(C) We simply surrender and think that a particular form of violence that occurs in a very particular society is somehow out of our control, we fail deeply to recognize our responsibilities to evaluate and remodel that society,” he concluded.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in CNA.
Daniel Payne
Daniel Payne is a senior editor of Catholic News Agency. He previously worked at College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.