The feud between the pope and the Trump administration over the justice of the Iran war may be the most important theological debate of my lifetime. It reveals the moral bankruptcy of the war, it illuminates the risks to our alliances and it exposes the hollow core of the new right’s Christian nationalism.
When push comes to shove, there’s not much Christianity in Christian nationalism.
As I wrote last Sunday, it’s not unusual for popes to disagree with presidents. John Paul II opposed the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is unusual, however, for presidents to attack popes, especially through lies and personal insults. The president of the United States is treating Pope Leo XIV the way he would a freshman Republican congressman — trying to bully and bluster him into silence.
But Trump’s attacks are having the opposite effect. By putting his disagreement with the pope at the center of the national conversation, Trump’s elevating the pope’s words and demonstrating the profound contrast between the two men. In this contest between a pope and a president, the president looks weak and erratic. He looks small. Between Trump and Pope Leo, there is only one man who is demonstrating strength and moral consistency on the world stage.
But while the manner of a leader matters, the substance matters even more. The debate raises two key questions. First, is Trump’s war on Iran a just war under Catholic just war doctrine? Second, why is Catholic doctrine relevant to anyone other than Catholics? Trump isn’t Catholic, and it’s not clear whether ordinary Americans should care if, say, Catholic officials like JD Vance and Marco Rubio are out of line with Catholic teaching for supporting Trump’s war.
The core requirements of just war doctrine were outlined by Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica, in the 13th century. For a war to be just, it must be waged through the lawful operation of the sovereign, it must be waged for a just cause (such as self-defense), and it must be waged for a just purpose.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church demonstrates, rulers aren’t given broad discretion to decide for themselves what is just. Instead, as the Catechism states, “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.”
That means that each of the following conditions must be satisfied before a nation engages in armed conflict:
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“the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain;
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“all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
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“there must be serious prospects of success;
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“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.”
When you read the Catechism, you can immediately see why it’s relevant to non-Catholics. Right there in the document are the moral foundations of the modern law of armed conflict.
In fact, the Department of Defense Law of War Manual describes the just war doctrine as part of the “philosophical foundation” of the law of war and says, “The just war tradition remains relevant for decisions to employ U.S. military forces and in warfighting.”
The best piece I’ve read that applies those principles to the Iran war is by Edward Feser, a Catholic philosophy professor at Pasadena City College and the author of “Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide.” It appeared in Public Discourse, a journal published by the conservative Witherspoon Institute.
Feser wrote in March, shortly after the outbreak of the war, and he argues that the war fails the test of both just cause and lawful authority.
The just cause analysis is the most interesting. In theory, there are several potential bases for a just war against Iran, including protecting innocent civilians from being massacred by the regime or stopping or blunting a potentially imminent missile attack by Iran. But, as Feser notes, the administration simply hasn’t borne its heavy burden of proof to demonstrate that those conditions apply.
If you’re going to argue that you intend to liberate the Iranian people, you have to show how your intervention — no matter how well intentioned — won’t actually increase their suffering.
If you’re going to argue that the war is necessary for self-defense, or to forestall an imminent attack from Iran, it’s not enough to simply believe that a threat was imminent; you have to show with a high degree of certainty that the threat was very real indeed.
Instead, as Feser notes, the administration has made inconsistent claims about the goals of the war, the status of the nuclear threat, and the circumstances that triggered the American and Israeli attack.
Marco Rubio, for example, first argued that the U.S. had to strike Iran because we knew Iran would strike us if Israel attacked Iran. Then, the very next day he denied that America attacked because Israel was about to strike.
And why does this vagueness matter to the legal analysis? As Feser explained via email, “Unless you know specifically what the aim or aims of a war are, you can hardly know whether it is just.”
“For example,” he continued, “you cannot know whether there is a serious prospect of success in achieving the aim, and you cannot know whether the aims can be achieved in a way that won’t make the overall situation even worse than what you started with — both of which are further conditions on a just war.”
Even if the Trump administration could establish that there is a just cause for the war, it is not waging war under lawful authority. Another way of putting it, is that it’s impossible for a war to be just if it’s illegal, and the Iran war is illegal under American constitutional law.
That doesn’t mean every use of military force has to be endorsed by Congress to be just — under American law there are circumstances where a president can act (for example, in immediate self-defense) without congressional approval, but the kind of conflict we’re waging against Iran is a war under any meaningful definition of the term.
Why does this all matter? The reasons go well beyond the just war doctrine’s connection to international law. Confining conflict to just wars helps bind together a nation. It helps bind together alliances. It enhances the effectiveness of the armed forces.
American history demonstrates that national unity in a conflict is almost directionally proportionate to the justice of the cause. Contrast, for example, the unambiguous virtue of defending ourselves from Imperial Japanese and Nazi aggression with the far hazier justifications for our extended war in Vietnam.
If a just war can bind nations together, then unjust wars tear them apart.
The same is true of alliances. There is a reason NATO rallied immediately to our side after 9/11 and has not supported Trump’s war against Iran. The justice of responding to Al Qaeda’s attack on America was beyond question.
As an inherently defensive alliance, NATO is deeply rooted in just war tradition. Attempting to pull it into America’s offensive military operations contradicts the letter of the North Atlantic Treaty and betrays the entire moral spirit of the enterprise. The armed forces of our longtime allies are not at the disposal of the American president, to be deployed whenever and wherever he demands.
In a democratic society, an alliance is sustainable only so long as it is justifiable, and NATO will be unjustifiable to its members if it abandons its inherently defensive purpose.
Justice is also important to the men and women who put on the uniform. In an address this March, Pope Leo XIV defined the mission of the Christian soldier as “defending the weak, protecting peaceful coexistence, intervening in disasters, operating in international missions to preserve peace and restore order.”
That’s a compelling vision for service, one that can appeal to America’s best and brightest. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again now. The ethics of the military are inseparable from the excellence of the military.
One of the saddest and most disturbing realities of the second Trump administration is the gap between the administration’s Christian rhetoric and its corrupt and lawless actions.
The administration wants all the benefits of religion and none of the burdens. It wants to be seen as godly while acting godlessly.
There are members of the administration who would embrace the term “Christian nationalist.” But when their vision of nationalism conflicts with centuries of church teaching, then Christianity fails, and nationalism prevails. I’m reminded of Jesus’ words in Matthew 15: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
All the administration’s public prayers and religious memes are meaningless when that same administration discards historic Christian teaching and reviles Christian leaders — all in the name of supporting the policies of a brutal, dishonest man, a man who can’t even articulate a legitimate basis for the deadly war he launched on his own command.
Some other things I did
My Sunday column focused on Trump’s blasphemy. Rather than simply highlight and condemn Trump’s decision to post an apparently A.I.-generated image of himself as a Jesus figure, I wanted to explore a different aspect of the controversy: “How much is Christian zeal for Trump damaging America, and the world?”
As a thought experiment, ask yourself how a president would behave if he believed he was clothed with divine purpose. Wouldn’t he try to expand his power beyond all previous limits? After all, he’s on a mission from God. Or maybe he thinks he’s like God? It’s hard to type those words, but that’s exactly the meaning of the image Trump shared.
Wouldn’t he feel free to start wars based on his judgment alone, based on his command alone? What is Article I of the Constitution compared with the will of the Almighty?
And wouldn’t such a man be jealous of his religious rivals in the battle for the hearts and minds of American Christians? I don’t think it’s possible to separate Trump’s public fight with Pope Leo XIV and the Catholic Church from his own sense of divine authority.
My Saturday round table with Michelle Cottle and Michelle Goldberg focused on JD Vance. We covered a lot of ground — from the meaning of Viktor Orban’s defeat in Hungary to the vice president’s political prospects. In Vance’s recent failures I can perhaps — perhaps — see the beginning of the end of MAGA itself:
Look, political eras do end, parties do reform, so when it comes to when will this era end, I feel confident it will at some point. I just don’t know when and how much damage will be done before it does. And that’s very much an open question. And I do think in JD Vance’s failures, we’re beginning to see maybe how this political era ends. Because the question has always been: Who is getting the baton from Donald Trump? Who is the next standard bearer?
And for a long time it’s been JD Vance. JD Vance is sort of the heir apparent, and he has been face-planting time and time and time again.
And one way to think of his phase as a leader of the Republican Party is that he’s got all of the toxicity of Trump and none of the real charisma that Trump has. It’s charisma that I don’t fully understand. It’s never landed with me. Although I will say, early on I did enjoy “The Apprentice.” But it has never really landed with me, this hold, this charisma that he has. But one thing I know is that JD Vance does not have it. He just doesn’t have it.
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The post There Is Much More to Pope vs. President Than Meets the Eye appeared first on New York Times.
