An interesting result of President Donald Trump’s strange and mostly one-sided feud with the pope is that there is something of a debate, through the lens of Catholic theology, about whether the US and Israel’s war on Iran is a “just war.”
Without restating the minutiae of Trump’s direct attacks on Pope Leo XIV and Leo’s discussion of whether God listens to the prayers of those who make war, suffice to say they are at odds.
Vance invites a conversation
“I like that the pope is an advocate for peace, I think that’s certainly one of his roles,” said Vice President JD Vance during an appearance at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Georgia this week.
Rather than attacking the pope, Vance said that he likes for the pope to talk about “matters of war and peace” because “at the very least, it invites a conversation.”
It is an after-the-fact conversation because rather than make a public case for war and build international support, the US launched attacks on Iran while nuclear talks were ongoing.
Vance, a convert to Catholicism, has a book coming out on his faith journey. He also met last year with Pope Leo and said he likes the man.
But, “How can you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword?” Vance said at the University of Georgia event. “Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis? Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated Holocaust camps… ?”
Vance, in between being heckled by an audience member, added this:
“When the pope says that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword — there is more than a thousand-year tradition of just war theory, OK? Now we can of course have disagreements about whether this or that conflict is just, but I think that it’s important in the same way that it’s important for the vice president of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”
Vance has been criticized for the last part of that quote — presuming to tell a pope to be careful about theology — but the comment needs its full context.
It’s also worth noting here that the concept of just war theory has undergone a lot of changes in the intervening thousand years, but it traces back to St. Augustine. Pope Leo comes from the Augustinian order and likely knows a bit about this.
Other Republicans have echoed what Vance said about just war theory.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, an evangelical Christian, implied the war on Iran is a “just war.”
“It is a very well-settled matter of Christian theology. There’s something called the just war doctrine,” Johnson said. “There’s a time to every purpose under heaven. I think what the president’s comments, what the vice president’s comments, reflect is their understanding, deep in the SCIF and the classified briefings, of the stakes that are so high in the situation that we’re facing,” Johnson said.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops takes a different view of whether the war is just, and it issued a clarification of Pope Leo’s comments Wednesday.
“For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory, and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war,” according to the bishops’ statement.
The bishops added:
The Trump administration has made a point of distancing the US military from the concept of “defense.” It has added “Department of War” as the secondary name of the Pentagon, changing signs and business cards to lean in to the concept of “warfighting.”
Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who goes by the secondary title of secretary of war, said they made the change to hark back to an era when the US won wars.
So there is something definitely offensive — as in the opposite of defensive — about how they have used the US military.
The ‘proportionality’ requirement
CNN’s Vatican Correspondent Christopher Lamb wrote about how Leo, the first American pope, has become increasingly vocal about the perils of war.
He noted that the Vatican has pointed out that a key principle of just war theory is the idea of “proportionality” — that the destruction caused by military action does not outweigh the good that is intended.
Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour it was a bit shocking to hear Vance equate US involvement in World War II with the US and Israel’s war with Iran, which he said is a “war of choice.”
When Amanpour asked whether the war on Iran is a “just war,” Cupich said, “No, it is not just.”
A four-part test
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops linked to excerpts of the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding “Safeguarding Peace” in its statement. The excerpts set out four conditions for “legitimate defense by military force” under “just war doctrine.”
They include:
- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
- there must be serious prospects of success;
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
Just war in an era of weapons of mass destruction
Cupich referenced those conditions when he said modern weapons affect societies and endanger civilians in horrible ways. And he argued the Trump administration has not been clear about its ultimate objective.
“We’ve seen so many comments about this particular war in which the objective is not clearly defined, because it jumps from one topic to the other,” Cupich said.
The most commonly stated reason for the war from the Trump administration is that it was to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Iran claimed its nuclear program was peaceful and for nuclear energy.
Obama’s definition at his peace prize acceptance
For another thoughtful view of what constitutes a “just war,” take a look at the speech then-President Barack Obama gave in Oslo, Norway, upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in the first year of his presidency.
Obama laid out the importance of world order and the laws of war, concepts Trump and Hegseth have generally rejected. Hegseth, for instance, brags about throwing out rules of engagement in order to more effectively fight wars. Trump has complained repeatedly about the United Nations and threatened to pull the US out of NATO.
Obama also said religion should be left out of war, sounding very different from the Bible-quoting Hegseth, who has a symbol tied to the Crusades tattooed on his body.
Obama also noted the oddity of receiving that award as commander in chief of the US military at a time when the US was mired in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The incongruity would only get more awkward as Obama frequently utilized the US military while in office and utilized drones to kill people — without, critics said, due process. At the same time, instead of waging war on Iran, he reached a deal to contain its nuclear program.
