Reading Francis

In light of the war between the United States (and Israel) and Iran, I’ve been hearing a lot of references within Catholic circles to “just war” doctrine, the teaching of the Church that relates to armed conflict between nations. This doctrine dates back to St. Ambrose and St. Augustine in the first few centuries of the Church (and has precedents in ancient cultures, including several of the major Greek philosophers), and thanks to St. Thomas Aquinas, there is a pretty handy “checklist” of conditions under which a war can be considered just in the Catholic context. Most of the references I’ve seen to a Just War argument about the current conflict have failed to list those conditions, so I thought that it could be helpful to pull them together here so that people can make their own determination of how they apply to today’s war.

There are two different streams of conditions:

1. Is it just to start a war? (Jus ad Bellum)
   1. Just Cause – Is the war confronting a real, grave, and certain threat, such a self-defense against an aggressor?
   2. Legitimate Authority – Is the war being declared by a sovereign authority (not just by private individuals)?
   3. Right Intention – Is the goal of the war a just peace, instead of something like revenge or territorial gain?
   4. Last Resort – Have all other peaceful alternatives to war been exhausted?
   5. Reasonable Hope of Success – Can the initiator of the war reasonably hope to win, or is it most likely that the losses of lives will be for naught?
   6. Proportionality – Will the damage caused by the war be no greater than the evil that’s being combatted?

These are the questions that must be answered before declaring whether it is just to enter a war at all, but they aren’t the only conditions of Just War theory.

2. Is the war being conducted with justice? (Jus in Bello)
   1. Discrimination/Non-combatant immunity – Are civilians and non-combatants being targeted by those fighting the war?
   2. Proportionality (again) – Are the levels of destruction caused by war tactics proportional to the military need?
   3. Right Intention – Are the combatants maintaining an approach that avoids unnecessary suffering?

In recent years, there has been discussion that it may be time for this teaching to evolve, which happens as times change. For example, the death penalty has historically been permitted in certain circumstances, but Pope Francis, acknowledging that in modern society, we have ample means to eliminate the threat of a person with bad intentions without taking their life, changed Church teaching to recognize that the death penalty is no longer acceptable. Before his death, Francis seemed to indicate that no war could be justified as just, in part because of the difficulty of a true measure of proportionality, given the ripple effects that emanate from the devastation of war. He did not change official doctrine, though, and others have pointed out that, if he had, then it would be more difficult for Catholics to testify to more and less just ways to engage in war (e.g. the targeting of public infrastructure like schools, hospitals and power plants).

At its heart (and this is just me talking), the high bar that Catholic teaching establishes for Just War is rooted in the recognition of the dignity of every human life and the responsibility to do everything possible to defend it. Secondarily (but still of importance) is the “moral wear and tear” on those whose roles include warmaking; even in circumstances that would justify war, the dissonance between killing someone and attesting to that someone’s essential identity as a fellow child of God is intense and challenging.