Robert Sibley, an award-winning journalist and author, holds a PhD in political science.A day after Trump vented his frustration at the Iranian refusal to open the Strait of Hormuz by threatening to bomb the country into rubble — “a whole civilization will die, never to be brought back again," as he put it on April 7 — Pope Leo XIV denounced the President’s rhetorical excess as “truly unacceptable.”He repeated his Easter appeal for peace and the rejection of war — “especially a war which many people have said is an unjust war.”Trump shot back. The Pontiff, he said, failed to understand the need to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. “You cannot have a nuclear Iran. Pope Leo would not be happy with the end result …”The Pope was right to say Trump’s rhetoric was unacceptable. His language undermines the dignity and moral credibility of the president’s office.But is the war unjust? Think what you like about Trump, but intellectual integrity requires setting aside knee-jerk Trump Derangement Syndrome responses to consider the Pope-versus-President exchange on such moral questions.Catholic prelates, of course, rushed to support Pope Leo, invoking a Catholic doctrine of just war that dates back 1,500 years. “The US decision to go to war against Iran fails to meet the just war threshold for a morally legitimate war,” says Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Archbishop of Washington..Bishop James Massa, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, declared a just war “must be a defence against another who actively wages war.” “Under the just war theory, (the justification for the Iran war) is not there,” said Timothy Broglio, Archbishop for the Military Service of the United States.St. Augustine formulated the Church’s just war doctrine when he laid the foundations of Western Christianity in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. War, he argued, can be morally justified if it aims to restore peace, protect the innocent, and punish evil.St. Thomas Aquinas expanded on just war doctrine in the thirteenth century. In his Summa Theologica, he stipulated three key conditions for just war. It must be declared by a legitimate authority. It must have a just cause (the aggressor must pose a grave threat). And it must be waged for the greater good, and not for personal gain or vengeance.Pope Leo is certainly better versed in just war doctrine than I am. After all, he entered the Order of St. Augustine in 1977 and served as Prior General of the Augustinian Order from 2001 to 2013. Perhaps, though, a few observations on my part won’t be impertinent.When St. Augustine articulated the principles of just war, sword-wielding armies clashed on fields of battle. You generally had a good idea where and when the enemy would strike. With God watching, as it were, Augustine's injunctions against cruelty possessed moral authority when the fighting was between individuals..Traditional just war doctrines don’t accept notions about “speculative dangers” as justification for going to war. “A preventive war, to forestall an uncertain future aggression, lacks just cause,” says Aquinas.But are such moral strictures warranted when the enemy can strike without warning from hundreds of miles away, and there’s little time, if any, to defend yourself?And just who is the real aggressor in this latest war? Iran’s theocratic rulers have been warring against the West in one way or another for nearly half a century. They have sought nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.By most accounts, the Iranians were within months, if not weeks, of placing nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles, more than enough to turn Israel into a radioactive dead zone and blackmail European countries.Iran has also armed terrorist proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah for decades. We saw the result on October 7, 2023, when Israel endured the worst massacre of Jews since the Second World War..In a world of nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, attack drones, and the asymmetrical warfare of terrorism, we need to rethink what is meant by “actively engaging” as well as the injunction against pre-emptive war based on “speculative dangers.”Those denouncing the Trump administration’s conduct of the war should also bear in mind that the American and Israeli militaries, unlike the Iranian military and Hamas and Hezbollah, have not deliberately targeted civilians. Nor have they embedded military infrastructure in neighbourhoods where schools, hospitals, and homes are vulnerable.Indeed, Trump’s “ceasefires” and his recent turn to economic warfare also suggest a greater awareness of what constitutes just war than the pope (and most of the mainstream media) is willing to acknowledge. Trump, it appears, is aiming to restore peace, protect the innocent, and punish evil, as St. Augustine requires.If Pope Leo’s sentiments prevailed in determining American military conduct, Iran would have its nuclear arsenal. Israel would be forced to use its nuclear weaponry to avoid another Holocaust. The pope wouldn’t be happy with those results.Robert Sibley, an award-winning journalist and author, holds a PhD in political science.
