Jonah Goldberg proposes a return of a Vatican army:

I'm not saying they should use an army for crusades for new lands or for conversion or anything like that. But why shouldn't the Catholic Church have peacekeepers of its own? The use of force isn't forbidden by Catholic law, I know that much. And the Swiss Guards still have weapons even on Vatican property. Why couldn't the Pope dispatch armed soldiers to restore order, open food supplies, secure humaintarian efforts etc?

It couldn't be worse than one under the command of the UN.

[Update at 2:21 PM EDT]

How would one amend the Treaty of Westphalia? Other than Great Britain, are the sovereign entities that signed it even in existence any more? Who (other than perhaps Italy) would object, and have legitimate grounds to, if the Vatican decided to build up, and utilize, the Swiss Guard? Of course, given the paucity of real estate they have, their biggest problem would be finding a place to house the Pope's divisions. Though I hear there are some military bases being freed up in Germany...

I don't generally comment on things like this which are very far out of my realm of knowledge.... but-

This would be the best reason I can think of to get the Monty Python group back together. Stan Freeberg should somehow be involved too! :)

The Vatican couldn't finance an expeditionary force. The operating budget is less than that of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York.

"The income reported by the Holy See in 2004 was about $246.3 million -- at July 11, 2005, exchange rates -- while expenses were about $242.6 million."

Catholic News Service

Tom Clancy proposed using the Vatican Army to serve as peacekeepers between the Israelis and Palestinians in one of his novels.

The Sum of All Fears.

Shortly afterwards, jihadis nuked Denver and almost started WWIII.

Hollywood nutered 'The Sum of All Fears' and replaced the Jihadis with Neonazis.

Considering the views on "violence" that the church seems to have, a Vatican army woulkd have the same power and effectiveness as the UN Peacekeepers.

I shudder...

Wholly on a tangent, when I learned our new Pope was German, I immediately visualized Vatican tanks rolling down the boulevards of Paris...

My take is that maintaining a significant peace keeping force is expensive and irrelevant. Also I don't see the infrastructure in place to support a Church peace keeping force. Where will they be based, trained, provisioned, etc? Also, the Church doesn't strike me as a sufficiently neutral entity especially in the Americas.

OTOH, if you need peacekeepers for a period of centuries (rather than months), the Roman Catholic Church has shown that it can easily survive that long.

Wholly on a tangent, when I learned our new Pope was German, I immediately visualized Vatican tanks rolling down the boulevards of Paris...

Maybe it's just me, but the sight of a German man on a balcony with his arms outstretched over the adoring crowd below, somehow fills me with unease...

How about a Vatican Rapid Reaction Force?

Remember...."No one expects the Spanish Inquisition".

Imagine the new torments at Abu Grahab and Gitmo......"Bring me the comfy chair..."

Funny. But the Vatican simply does not have the resources anymore. Or the will.

Regarding Palestine, Jerusalem in particular, just make a troika with a 1 representative of each of the 3 religions (muslim, christian and jewish) and have the place declared an independent city state. For the rest of Palestine, either carve it in two (jews on one side, arabs on the other) or ensure arabs can join the franchise.

Gojira,

The resources part I give you. But give 'em and army and I'll bet they could get the resources. As for the will part...

Don't let the dresses fool you.

Maybe it's just me, but the sight of a German man on a balcony with his arms outstretched over the adoring crowd below, somehow fills me with unease...

Why? Hitler and the Third Reich have been dead for 60 years.

Been thinking about this some more. The Vatican Swiss Guard is a specialized force composed of Swiss mercenaries (one of the few leftovers from the good old days in Europe when everyone used mercenary forces) and whose focus is defending the Vatican while maintaining the prestige and ceremony of the place. It strikes me as a bad idea to mix these functions with a peace-keeping role.

The popes have created and eliminated military units before. Back in 1970, for example, they eliminated two other guard units, one composed of cavalry and an infantry unit. So it seems reasonable that if the Roman Catholic Church were to do this, that they would create the peace keeping force themselves (maybe even create one for each instance if the obligation is long term).

It should be remembered that Great Britain didn't exist as a legal entity in 1648, either (although James I/VI styled himself "King of Great Britain", liking the sound of it). England and Scotland were theoretically independent nations; although Cromwell pretty much proved that England was the senior partner in that relationship, English politicians were still uneasy enough about it to not only promote the Act of Union in 1707 (which did create Great Britain), but were willing to make concessions to Scotland to induce it to enact it.