Catholic moral theology, including just war theory, always included the concept of self-defense. A victim of aggression has the right to repel that aggression, whether it be a thief breaking into your home or a king marching with his 20,000 troops against your kingdom with 10,000. Nobody questioned that right. Until our times.

In practice, we see a tendency to undermine robust self-defense (see here). A Marine who headlocks a crazy man voicing lethal threats at random on the New York subway gets prosecuted; I guess we should not take such threats that seriously until the knife is through somebody’s actual throat, as a deceased young Ukrainian emigre discovered on the Charlotte, North Carolina, railway. And, in Canada, homeowners who resisted home invaders found themselves in the dock and in prison. In this topsy-turvy world, victims are now criminals and criminals victims.

Yes, Catholic moral theology did provide caveats about self-defense, i.e., one should only use the degree of force necessary to stop the aggression. The key theme here is proportionality: Was the force of self-defense proportionate (i.e., not excessive) to stop the aggression? Someone engaged in self-defense is stopping aggression, not acting as judge, jury, and executioner. But healthy pastoral practice has also recognized that, given the extremity of the moment and the initial injustice of the aggression, the benefit of the doubt normally belongs to the person protecting himself and his family. “Legitimate self-defense” can be not just a “right” but, indeed, a “duty” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2265).

In many ways, that’s been practically eroded by a modern mindset. In the case of nations, it’s the lesson of guerilla warfare: keep the aggression aflame just enough to achieve your goals but not enough for people to call it out as naked aggression. Drag it out long enough that peoples’ attention is distracted and they begin to believe that, in your trying to defend yourself within at least some ethical norms, you are actually the problem by “prolonging the conflict.” In the case of individuals, bleat about “due process for everybody” (i.e., criminals) and paint self-defense as “vigilantism.” Couple it with the modern pacifist mentality — in interstate and interpersonal relations — and deem it another example of “toxic masculinity” trying to resolve things badly by “force” rather than “dialogue” and “wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’.”

Canadian Conservative Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre has sought to address this imbalance by calling on the Government to introduce legislation to change the Criminal Code. §34 theoretically protects the right to self-defense, but then adds nine criteria a judge should consider as to whether the self-defense was justified. These include things like imminence of the force threat and alternatives (an Ontario police chief suggests you just hand over your stuff); the “size, age, gender, and physical” capabilities of both sides; how explicit was the aggressor’s threat of using force; whether the two sides had previous interactions; and whether the whole event was “proportionate.”

As Poilievre observed, in the split second reality of many such confrontations, the average person’s fear, his “fight-or-flight” instincts, and the imminence of the aggression does not lend itself to a nine-point checklist (“is it fair that 6’0″ me take on this 5’5″ perp?”). He insists that, as written, the law is unrealistic and merely opens the door to second-guess victims in the calm, dispassionate atmosphere of judicial chambers. He’s called on the Government to enact his “Stand on Guard” bill that would explicitly say: Faced with a concrete home invader, the law presumes the home-dweller’s self-defense was legitimate and not to be questioned. It shifts the burden of proof away from the person asserting the self-defense claim. I assume any assertion of disproportionality would have to be conclusively proven, not just put forward for a judge to balance claims.

My guess is that the Liberal Carney Government will show no interest in this legislation. It will likely then become an opposition bill (which means it has no chance of progressing in the current Parliament) that would be part of a future campaign platform.

Poilievre’s name for the bill, the “Stand on Guard” act, is a clever allusion to the same phrase in the Canadian National Anthem. Home and homeland should be guarded by those who belong there, not breakers and enterers.  It’s why Poilievre also wants to cut immigration to Canada.  A country is like a home: you have to decide which outsiders can come in and which can’t.

Self-defense has always been recognized, by natural law and Catholic social thought, to be a right. I fear that today’s pacifist, passive, “symbolic-but-no-real-action” mindset has in fact rendered the concept of self-defense nugatory, imagining it a relic of our “toxic masculine” past that our “dialogical” world can do without. Against such unrealism, the Poilievre proposal is welcome news.