A Just War or an Unjust War?

In modern times the Catholic Church has officially been neutral during wars, even during both World Wars.  But it has not always been this way.

Dr. Steve Weidenkopf, adjunct professor at the Christendom College Graduate School of Theology in Alexandria, Virginia, teaches courses in Church history and the crusades.  His 2014 articles on the Crusades (here and here) make it clear that the Crusades were sanctioned by the Catholic Church.  Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade and Pope Innocent III called for the Fourth Crusade.  The Crusades were called to put an end to Islamic aggression.

1,000 Years later . . .

Of course the world has changed substantially since the time of the Crusades.  And so has ‘war.’  Today one country can fire missiles at another country from thousands of miles away.  And a nuclear warhead on a single missile could wipe an entire city off the face of the earth.

But some aspects of war are still unchanged.  Military forces still do engage in bloody and brutal ground wars.  The Viet Nam War (1955-1975), the War in Croatia (1991–1995), and the Kosovo War (1998–1999), as well as the current war between Russia and the Ukraine, account for many lives lost.

But a new kind of war has emerged in the last 50 or 60 years.  As Dr. James B. Motley wrote in a 1985 article (citing an article by Brian Jenkins), “Terrorism is warfare “without territory, wages without armies as we know them. It is warfare that is not territorially limited . . . It is warfare without neutrals, and with few or no . . . innocent bystanders.”

Sadly, man’s propensity for conflict has not changed all that much through the centuries.  As Genesius noted in a recent CS article, “for some members of the human race the appetite for aggression has not diminished.”

The world would be a far better place if all countries would learn to peacefully coexist.  Many initially hoped the United Nations would maintain peace throughout the world.  But its efforts have only been moderately successful, at best.

The veto power held by permanent Security Council members has often lead to UN inaction during major conflicts, especially when members’ own interests are involved.  Some members have hidden agendas.  And at least one or two of these agendas may include world domination.

Openly Hostile

Some countries like Iran, however, are openly hostile in the feelings they harbor for other countries.  For 47 years Iranian leaders have made it clear that they want only “death to America.”

Yet Catholic prelates consistently call for negotiations and peaceful efforts to resolve conflicts, just as they are doing now.  But how can the U.S. negotiate with a country that only wants its destruction?  And at what point would our Catholic prelates concede that more negotiation is futile?

What’s more, Iran wants the entire world to profess to the Islamic religion.  And they have no problem killing those who refuse to convert to Islam.

Complicating matters even more is Islamic teaching on lying.  Muslims believe it is perfectly okay to lie to non-Muslims (infidels).  How can the U.S. negotiate with Iran when its religious beliefs allow it to lie to a non-Muslim country like the United States?  This would seem to make any negotiations pointless.

A Little Bit of History

The country of Iran, like many other countries, has a troubled past.  Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, in an article at Crisis Magazine does a great job of recapping modern Iranian history.

In the article Hoffman argues that Iran’s hatred of the U.S. dates back to 1953, “when the United States and Britain clandestinely overthrew the country’s fledgling democracy and instituted the brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the country’s latest (and, as it would turn out, last) foreign puppet-ruler.”

Ordinary Iranians suffered under the brutal dictatorship of Pahlavi.  Some 25 years later, “protesters began to hit the streets, encouraged by the Ayatollah Khomeini still in exile, and they were consequently joined by the nation’s Shia clergy and clerical students” (emphasis added).

A year later, in 1979, militant Iranian students stormed and occupied the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 66 people hostage.  So Iranian-U.S. relations have not been good for quite a long time.

Of course, other nations have had problems with the U.S., even when the U.S. was not ‘interfering’ in the internal affairs of those countries.  Japan attacked the U.S. in 1941 while they pretended to be seriously negotiating with the U.S.  Germany and Italy also declared war on the U.S. in 1941.

U.S. retaliation was devastating in all three countries.  Yet today, all three of these countries are on very friendly terms with the U.S.  So sometimes “stability and peace” are achieved through war rather than through dialogue.   As it says in the Bible, God’s word,  Ecclesiastes 3:8, there is “a time of war, and a time of peace.”

War and Peace

The “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” in Section III. Safeguarding Peace, and specifically paragraph 2309, sums up Catholic teaching on what makes war just or unjust.  The “Compendium of  the Social Doctrine of the Church” provides additional details.

Chapter 11, Section III, of the Compendium, “The Failure of Peace: War,” is worth taking the time to read in light of the Iran conflict.  I have to wonder, however, how many Catholic prelates, including Pope Leo, have taken the time to re-read this section before making statements about the Iran war.

In a nutshell, Pope Leo (and other prelates) are saying the U.S. is the aggressor in the war with Iran, and “A war of aggression is intrinsically immoral” (par. 500). They are also saying that that “engaging in a preventive war without clear proof that an attack is imminent cannot fail to raise serious moral and juridical questions” (par. 501).  So the U.S. is guilty of waging an unjust war according to many Catholic prelates.

In paragraphs 513 to 515, however, the Compendium states that, “Terrorism is one of the most brutal forms of violence traumatizing the international community today; it sows hatred, death, and an urge for revenge and reprisal” (513).  Furthermore, “Terrorism is to be condemned in the most absolute terms. It shows complete contempt for human life and can never be justified, since the human person is always an end and never a means” (514).

Since 1979, the “Fondation pour l’innovation politique” (Fondapol), a French think tank, has recorded “66,872 Islamist attacks worldwide. These attacks caused the deaths of at least 249,941 people.”

According to Fondapol, “Islamist attacks around the world are more numerous today than ever before.”  Oddly enough, the majority of the attacks occur in Muslim countries, but 85 attacks took place in France between 1979 and April 2024.   During this same period 60 attacks took place in the U.S. and 86 in Russia.

These attacks were all terrorist attacks, carried out by Islamic terrorists.  And several Western governments, including the U.S., consider Iran to be the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.  In 2015 the Brookings Institute called Iran a “global threat” through its support of Hizballah, Palestine Islamic Jihad, and Hamas.

So for 47 years Iran has been sponsoring terrorist activities throughout the world, and these activities have resulted in the deaths of almost a quarter of a million non-combatants.  Yet, according to Aljazeera, (as of this writing) just 2,143 people have been killed as a direct result of the war on Iran.  And the U.S. in this war has specifically targeted military installations.  This figure pales in comparison to the 249,941 ordinary people killed through terrorist attacks.

And just as a sidebar here, Iran also recently murdered 30,000 of its own people.  These Iranians were protesting against terrible economic conditions and the current regime. And Iran continues to execute Iranian citizens who speak out against the current regime on a daily basis.

I have to wonder if our Catholic prelates are taking Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism and all of these deaths into account when they say the war on Iran is unjust?

Ready to Make Nukes

Brookings also notes that, “An Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a more dangerous force in the region, and preventing this should be a priority for any U.S. administration. A nuclear weapon probably would embolden Iran.”

Just before the U.S. launched the attack on Iran, according to President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, Iranian negotiators said Iran “had enough enriched uranium to make 11 nuclear bombs.”  Yet for many years Iran kept telling the world that it only wanted to enrich uranium to be able to produce energy for the people of Iran.

So Iran is actively sponsoring terrorism throughout the world, and has been for 47 years. And in February of this year, Iran was possibly mere weeks away from developing nuclear weapons.

Iran wants to be a world power and it wants nuclear weapons.  Iran would undoubtedly use such power to advance the Islamic Caliphate.  It would likely continue to sponsor terrorist activities that kill innocent civilians as well.  And negotiating with Iran has pretty much been fruitless.

Pope Leo, Pope Francis, Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Paul VI have all been right in calling for ‘no more wars.’   But the Islamic Iranian regime has not been listening to the Catholic popes.  Iran has been waging war on the U.S., and on other countries as well, for 47 years.  With nuclear weapons there’s no telling what Iran might do.

The U.S. is not the aggressor in the war with Iran.  Iran has been the aggressor for 47 years.  The U.S. is only trying to do what the Crusades did between 1095 and 1291 – stop Islamic aggression.