Concerns raised over Leo XIV's designation of Just War Doctrine as ‘outdated’
“What does this mean in the moral realm? The truth of a moral proposition doesn’t depend on the day of the calendar year that it came up,” commented canonist Father Gerald Murray.
VATICAN CITY (PerMariam) — One of the most striking, even controversial, passages in Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas is his declaration that the Church’s teaching on just war is no longer suitable for the modern world.
Leo has made his regular appeals for peace in the world one of the most regular and recurring elements of his pontificate, starting from his first moments emerging onto the Vatican loggia in front of the world.
This was re-iterated in Magnifica Humanitas as Leo decried the “normalization of war” and the manner in which war is becoming a normal part of common parlance and international policy.
{For a full roster of different analyses on the encyclical by this correspondent, interested readers may find them on Pelican+, The Catholic Herald, Ad Vaticanum, The European Conservative.}
“We are witnessing a real paradigm shift in public discourse and in decisions regarding rearmament, with a troubling revival of war as an instrument of international politics, while the very ethical principles that had previously limited its use are being eroded,” he wrote.
But as part of this, Leo took aim at the Church’s teaching regarding a just war:
It is in this context that humanity is slipping into a violent culture of power, where peace no longer appears as a responsibility to be taken on, but as a fragile interval between conflicts.
Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated. (182) Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness. The use of force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.
Footnote 182 adds further information and a quotation from the catechism regarding just war:
“The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of the possibility of legitimate defense by means of military force, which involves demonstrating that certain ‘rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy’ have been met. Yet it is easy to fall into an overly broad interpretation of this potential right. In this way, some would also wrongly justify even ‘preventive’ attacks or acts of war that can hardly avoid entailing ‘evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.’”
This footnote appears to clearly be aimed more directly at President Trump’s administration and his joint preventative strikes with Israel against Iran. Leo passionately decried the instigation of fresh hostilities at the time, something which drew the repeated ire of Trump who accused the Pope of defending Iran.
So great was the public tension from the White House that the US bishops weighed in. Indeed it was only just over a month ago that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a number of clarifications over the Just War teaching under the headline “Just War Doctrine.” Bishop James Masa, chairman of the USCCB doctrine committee, noted in mid-Aril that “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.”
The Catholic teaching on the just war is often referred to as a “theory” but the Church’s own texts note it as a “doctrine.”
“As long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed,” reads the catechism, before proceeding to outline the precise element which must be met in order to constitute a just war:
The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. the gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
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.
These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the ‘just war’ doctrine.
The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good. (CCC 2309)
The Church’s Just War Doctrine has, as the USCCB noted, been in force for centuries and owes a great part of its makeup to Saints Ambrose, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (ST II-II, Q40).
Leo’s comments regarding the Just War are by no means a novel development in the Vatican. In doing so he was not breaking fresh ground by any means. Pope Francis argued similarly, as did Cardinal Ratzinger before he became pope.
Indeed, issuing his Christmas message of 1944, Pope Pius XII welcomed moves to develop an international body focussed on guarding peace, stating: “No one could hail this development with greater joy than he who has long upheld the principle that the idea of war as an apt and proportionate means of solving international conflicts is now out of date.”
In 2003, Cardinal Ratzinger commented, when asked about the Iraq War: “To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a ‘just war.’”
Certainly, Leo did not argue that the teaching on just war is immoral, simply that it is “outdated.” But for some veteran Vatican analysts the two words are closely linked, with “immoral” being the next step after “outdated.”
“What does this mean in the moral realm? Outdated? The truth of a moral proposition doesn’t depend on the day of the calendar year that it came up,” commented canonist Father Gerald Murray. “It’s a principle derived from the natural law from Revelation. This is not an abstract theory. This is how people live. To say that it’s outdated, unfortunately, is a circumlocution to say it’s bad.”
For the New York priest, Leo’s argument in Magnifica Humanitas is flawed. “When you introduce this notion that outdated, moral category is outdated, you’re basically saying there are a lot of people today who don’t like this, and therefore we’re not gonna use it anymore,” added Murray.
“I’ll say this with complete respect for the Holy Father. If there is no just war theory, you must dismiss the Swiss Guard because they are a military unit who are assigned to your territory to protect it from invaders and other malefactors.”
His concerns were shared by another veteran Vatican analyst Phil Lawler, who has taught seminars on Just War Doctrine at third level Catholic institutions.
“One might add the need for a deeper discussion of pre-emptive war, in an age when hesitation could mean national destruction,” he wrote on Tuesday. “And the increasingly prominent role played by non-state actors—such as terrorist groups, often acting with barely-concealed support from governments—merits more moral discernment as well. How can a nation, acting justly, respond to these new dangers? The challenge for Christian moralists today is to update, not jettison, the just-war tradition.”
For Robert Royal, editor of The Catholic Thing and another long-time Vatican watcher, Leo’s comments are out of touch.
“This is utterly unrealistic. History did not come to an end; there are still evil people out there,” he told Raymond Arroyo. “This is the utter abandonment of one of the most important moral systems that the church brings to the world for the sake of what, for dialogue? For the UN General Assembly? For the EU? It makes no sense whatever.”
In a current international climate very much defined by the interdependence of nations and the consequent disruption to the entire world when military strikes are even hinted at, Leo sees himself very much as an envoy for peace. But his comments regarding the status of the Just War Doctrine have not been uniformly received in a positive manner, and some see them as a surrender to the pacifist movement.
Whether he issues another text outlining what he believes is “outdated” in the teaching remains to be seen.
{For a full roster of different analyses on the encyclical by this correspondent, interested readers may find them on Pelican+, The Catholic Herald, Ad Vaticanum, The European Conservative.}