At the Wall Street Journal Avi Shafran responds to Pope Leo XIV’s condemnation of the U. S.-Israeli war against Iran. Here’s a snippet from his op-ed:
Celebrating Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Palm Sunday amid the Iran war, Pope Leo XIV declared that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” He also recalled the prophet Isaiah’s words: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.”
Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s official day of remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism, came a few weeks later, on April 20. Warren Goldstein, chief rabbi of the Union of Orthodox Synagogues of South Africa, used the occasion to deliver a stern reply to Pope Leo.
On Yom HaZikaron, he said, we note how “our soldiers who fell in battle” are “holy and pure.” He declared that “the wars that Israel has fought since its inception are just wars,” something that must be said in this “world of moral confusion.”
But the pope, Rabbi Goldstein said, “had the audacity and the brazenness and the cruelty to say that all of those who wage war will be turned away by God.”
concluding:
Pope Leo’s sermon and Rabbi Goldstein’s response may be simply a blip in the relations of Catholics and Jews that have improved so much over the past 60 years. I hope they do not mark a more lasting and more dangerous turn toward enmity.
I think a number of things are being bundled up in the column which deserve to be separated including:
- Interest
- casus belli
- Morality
I am an American and I am a Catholic. The remarks are at least as applicable to the United States as to Israel, and may plausibly be read as aimed at U.S. interventionism. I will refrain from commenting on Israel’s interests, whether Iran’s actions were an imminent threat to Israel, and the morality of Israel’s actions, restricting my comments to America’s interests, its casus belli for war with Iran, the legality of the U. S.’s going to war with Iran, and the morality of our going to war with Iran.
Robert Prevost (Pope Leo) is an American and a Catholic, too. He must be at least as aware as I am that Catholics are not pacifists. Furthermore, even if the pope would like to be a pacifist, his advisors have surely warned him that taking such a position would destroy the Church by undermining its teaching authority, a major distinction between Catholicism and other Christian denominations. The pope is constrained by a millennium-old teachings that allow just wars. Consequently, I believe that interpreting the pope’s remarks as directed towards Israel is mistaken: he was talking about the United States.
I see the war as yet another instance of what I call the “Batman theory” of America’s role in the world—i.e. that America has not just a right but a responsibility to right global wrongs as we see fit without reference to law or authority.
Among the many problems is that the United States is a signatory to the UN Charter and going to war other than in immediate self-defense, i.e. imminent threat, without Security Council authorization or Congressional authority is illegal. A reasonable retort to that is that the U. S. has done so many times over the last 40 years including in Yugoslavia, in Libya, in Iraq, and elsewhere. One might point out that in the instance of Libya there as a Security Council resolution. However, both Russia and China complained that U. S. action in Libya greatly exceeded the UNSC resolution which was limited to protecting civilians, not attacking or overthrowing the Qaddafi government.
In addition engaging in war other than as a last resort is immoral. Had diplomatic channels been exhausted? Was our response proportional? is there a reasonable chance of success? I believe the answer to all of those questions is “no”.
U. S. interests are not synonymous with Israeli interests and we should not pursue Israeli interests as our own. The United States is not Israel, and its obligations whether legal, strategic, and moral are its own. Treating Israeli interests as interchangeable with American interests obscures the very questions that must be answered before any resort to force: what threat we face, under what authority we act, and whether war is truly the last resort.
Those questions cannot be answered by invocation or by alliance. They require argument. And when they are not answered, appeals to justice ring hollow, however sincerely made.
If Pope Leo’s words have any proper application here, it is not as a blanket condemnation of war, but as a challenge to the presumption that American power, once engaged, is thereby justified. That presumption deserves more scrutiny than it has received.
