When experts speak, they seldom preface their assertions with the words, \u201cThis is my opinion.\u201d In every sphere of life, experts disagree\u2014scientists, lawyers, theologians, generals, and even Popes. Yet we often treat their statements as if they were final, unquestionable truths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my own life there have been three places where adding the phrase \u201cin my opinion\u201d would have been inappropriate: when my father spoke, when the captain of a ship at sea issued an order, and when a judge in a court of law rendered what we still call \u201can opinion.\u201d In each case, these statements were not discussion starters. They were final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We forget that most public pronouncements do not enjoy that kind of authority. How many times have you heard lawyers and non\u2011lawyers alike declare, \u201cThat\u2019s unconstitutional\u201d? Until a competent court speaks, that is only an opinion. During Covid, we were told many times that we were dealing with \u201csettled science.\u201d That too was an opinion. Science, by its very nature, is never fully settled; it is always refining, correcting, and, at times, overturning prior conclusions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Catholic Church offers a useful contrast here. In all of Church history, the Pope has clearly spoken ex cathedra<\/em>\u2014in a way Catholics understand as infallible\u2014only twice. In 1854, Pope Pius IX, in the bull Ineffabilis Deus<\/em>, solemnly defined as dogma that Mary, from the first moment of her conception, was preserved free from original sin. In 1950, Pope Pius XII, in Munificentissimus Deus<\/em>, defined that Mary, at the end of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. Those two statements, and only those, meet the Church\u2019s own strict criteria for Papal teaching \u201cfrom the chair\u201d of Peter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything else the Popes say\u2014even when deeply respected, widely followed, and the fruit of serious theological reflection\u2014remains fallible teaching and prudential judgment. It is authoritative, but it is not on the same level as those rare ex cathedra<\/em> definitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That distinction matters in our present moment. The recent public exchange between Pope Benedict XVI\u2019s successor and President Trump over the moral status of America\u2019s current military operations against Iran has been striking. Catholic bishops in the United States have taken different positions on whether these actions constitute a \u201cjust war.\u201d Within Catholic moral theology, the debate properly centers on the long\u2011standing doctrine of Just War Theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This doctrine begins with a strong presumption against war and then sets out strict conditions for when armed force can be used and how it must be conducted. It emerges from Scripture\u2019s call to peace and justice, was given classical shape by Augustine and Aquinas, and is codified today in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 2307\u20132317). The Church teaches that war is always a tragic evil and that \u201call citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war.\u201d At the same time, it recognizes that political communities have a duty to defend the common good and protect the innocent, which in extreme circumstances may require armed defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the \u201cgoing to war\u201d side\u2014jus ad bellum<\/em>\u2014the Catechism identifies four strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force. All four must be satisfied:<\/p>\n\n\n\n There must be grave, lasting, and certain<\/strong> damage caused by the aggressor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All other means<\/strong> of putting an end to it\u2014diplomacy, sanctions, negotiations\u2014must have proved impractical or ineffective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There must be serious prospects of success<\/strong>; futile bloodshed is immoral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders greater than the evil to be eliminated<\/strong>; this is the principle of proportionality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Building on Augustine and Aquinas, modern Catholic commentary further articulates just cause, right intention, and comparative justice. The cause must be truly defensive, not punitive or expansionist; the intention must be to secure a just and lasting peace, not revenge or domination; and the justice of one\u2019s own cause must be weighty enough to justify taking life in the face of war\u2019s inherent moral gravity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even if those conditions are met, moral scrutiny does not stop once the shooting begins. Jus in bello<\/em> governs how war must be fought. The Church insists that the moral law remains fully binding in armed conflict. Civilians may never be directly targeted. Force must be proportionate to the objective. Prisoners and the wounded must be treated humanely. Certain tactics and weapons are ruled out because they cannot distinguish between combatants and non\u2011combatants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recently, in a televised news program, three Catholic bishops opined that our current operations against the Iranian theocracy do not meet the criteria of a just war. They offered little explanation. They did not walk their viewers through the Catechism\u2019s criteria, nor did they show where, specifically, those criteria are being violated. The Pope, when asked about the conflict, also offered his view about President Trump\u2019s conduct of the war. But he did not speak ex cathedra<\/em>. He could not, and did not, claim the unique authority of those two Marian dogmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am not a cleric, a theologian or religious, or an ecclesiastical authority. I am not an expert. Neither, in this precise technical sense, were any of the bishops on that program speaking with infallible authority. Nobody, including the current pope, has claimed to address this particular war in a way that binds Catholic consciences as an ex cathedra<\/em> teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In my opinion, when we carefully lay out the Church\u2019s own criteria for a just war and apply them to the facts on the ground, our government and military leaders have, thus far, met those conditions. They have treated war as a last resort, articulated a limited and defensive aim, sought to minimize civilian casualties, and measured the likely harms of action against the certain harms of inaction. By any reasonable application of Catholic just war doctrine, they are engaged in what the tradition would call a just war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That does not make the war good. All war is evil and a grave tragedy. But the Catholic tradition recognizes that there are times when failure to resist aggression allows a greater evil to triumph. In those rare cases, the moral duty is not to avoid all use of force, but to wield it under strict moral constraints in the defense of the innocent and the common good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I were advising President Trump, I would urge him to precisely state plainly that all war is tragic and evil, and that any loss of human life, including that of our adversaries, is cause for grief. Who can disagree with that? And then he should add that, in a fallen world, leaders bear a solemn duty to combat evil in all its forms\u2014including, when every other avenue has been exhausted, with force. That would not be an infallible pronouncement. It would be an opinion\u2014but an opinion rooted in a rich, demanding moral tradition that takes both peace and justice with utmost seriousness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When experts speak, they seldom preface their assertions with the words, \u201cThis is my opinion.\u201d In every sphere of life, experts disagree\u2014scientists, lawyers, theologians, generals, and even Popes. Yet we often treat their statements as if they were final, unquestionable truths. In my own life there have been three places where adding the phrase \u201cin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":19721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1051],"tags":[701,237,652],"class_list":["post-19720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-john-livingston","tag-catholic-church","tag-donald-trump","tag-war","cat-1051-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19722,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19720\/revisions\/19722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}