St. Maximos' Hut

The article on Luther and self-defense is most interesting, particularly the distinctions between private right, and the duty to others.

The Catholic Encyclopedia has a nice summary of the views of St. Augustine as amplified by St. Thomas Aquinas on the topic, as well as the issues of defense of personal property and honor. You can find it here. While the views expressed in the entry have been diluted by "contemporary moral theologians", I think that the article more accurately reflects the contents of St. Thomas in the Summa Theologica .

Just to be provocative, let's look at the part of the article on defense of property:

It is lawful to defend one's material goods even at the expense of the agressor's life; for neither justice nor charity require that one should sacrifice possessions, even though they be of less value than human life in order to preserve the life of a man who wantonly exposes it in order to do an injustice. Here, however,we must recall the principle that in extreme necessity every man has a right to appropriate whatever is necessary to preserve his life. The starving man who snatches a meal is not an unjust agressor; consequently it is not lawful to use force against him. Again, the property which may be defended at the expense of the agressor's life must be of considerable value; for charity forbids that in order to protect ourselves from a trivial loss we should deprive a neighbor of his life. Thefts or robberies, however, of small values are to be considered not in their individual, but in their cummulative, aspect. A thief may be slain in the act of carrying away stolen property provided that it cannot be recovered from him by any other means; if, for example, he can be made to abandon his spoil through fright, then it would not be lawful to shoot him. If he has carried the goods away to safety he cannot then be killed in order to recover them; but the owner may endeavor to take them from him, and if the thief resists with violence he may be killed in self-defense.

Obvously, this does not square with the views of "gentle jurists" wno believe in a requirement of retreat in lieu of defense of life and property.