The Doctrinal Status of Just War in the Contemporary Teaching of the Catholic Magisterium 1

Introduction

Since the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis has made no secret of his special affinity with the saint whose name he chose upon his elevation to the chair of St. Peter. The profound sense of communion that Francis of Assisi expressed for his fellow human beings and indeed the whole of creation, provides the inspiration for his encyclical Fratelli tutti, On Fraternity and Social Friendship. ² While the encyclical draws chiefly on contemporary sources, reference is also made to Medieval (and Patristic) saints. This is true not only of Francis of Assisi, but also Thomas Aquinas. Pope Francis draws on St. Thomas for the idea, central to Fratelli tutti, that caritas is the highest possible manifestation of friendship—a union of the affections and a shared life with those whom we love. For Pope Francis, ‘fraternity’ is another word for what St. Thomas termed the ‘love of friendship’, namely, ‘a movement outwards towards another, whereby we consider “the beloved as somehow united to ourselves”’. ³

The Thomistic inspiration for Fratelli tutti runs much deeper than the handful of passages that are cited therein. Indeed, I endeavor to show in the first section how the encyclical's overall structure bears a close resemblance to the approach taken by St. Thomas in Sum. theol. II-II, q. 29 (‘On Peace’). Just as the learned saint elucidates how the form of caritas should inform all our societal relations, including within the international sphere, similarly, in Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis urges us to observe fraternity in all areas of our life, interpersonal and social; even nations should adhere to this pattern in their relations with each other. Both St. Thomas and Francis recognize, however, that we can, and often do, fail in this regard. War is the most egregious manifestation of this failure. It is, however, in their respective treatments of war that St. Thomas and Pope Francis seem to part ways; the first affirms the possibility of just war, while the second denies it. Whether this divergence is real or only apparent is taken up in the second section.

I

Founded upon communion in the shared good of divine beatitude, caritas is inseparable from a characteristic form of community, the ecclesia—namely a society of those who orient their lives toward Christ. ⁴ A fruit of charity, pax similarly has a social dimension: it is a concord that exists between members of a community when they act together to promote its shared good (bonum commune). Recognizing that communities are of different kinds—some are of supernatural origin as is the Church, while others are based on natural forms of friendship—the concord specific to each of these communities will vary accordingly. Among the natural forms of friendship, St. Thomas accords pride of place to what he terms the respublica or civitas, namely a temporal polity—today we would speak of a ‘nation’ or a ‘state’—and this leads him to comment on Aristotle's affirmation that ‘polities … are held together by friendship’: ⁵

Aristotle shows how concord is related to friendship among citizens. He notes how political friendship either between citizens of the same polity, or between different polities, seems to be identical with concord. And people usually speak in this way: that polities or citizens in concord with one another enjoy mutual friendship. ⁶

On this basis St. Thomas is able similarly to assert, in a parallel passage of the Sum. theol. that

peace is the work of justice indirectly, insofar as justice removes obstacles to peace: it is the work of charity directly, for love is a unifying force. ⁷

Combining these thoughts, St. Thomas concludes that friendship is essential to flourishing life in community, ipso facto it is required for the peace that is concord. This holds true both for individual nations, and for the interrelation of nations and their respective peoples, what St. Thomas termed ‘the community of the whole world’. ⁸ But when this friendship between citizens and nations is absent, or worse, when it is violated by acts contrary to its spirit, the respective communities become divided, leading them ultimately to split apart in spasms of violence. St. Thomas's positive account of peace ⁹ leads him accordingly to elucidate the negative pathways by which societal peace is undone. Hence in II-II, qq. 37–42, he enumerates the various sins against peace (insofar as it involves the concord of individuals and groups): schisma disrupts the unity of the Church, rixa the good of private association, seditio the unity of a single political community, while bellum severs the bond whereby one political community enjoys amity with the others.

Within the Secunda-secundae questions on peace, bellum first appears as the name of a sin, ¹⁰ a grave sin at that, because the community that it vitiates—the fellowship of peoples—is among the highest of natural goods achievable by humanity. ¹¹ Supernatural in character, only the ecclesia is higher. Unlike it and related terms (rixa and seditio), which designate sin only, bellum has this peculiarity that for St. Thomas it can also name a good act, as attested by the phrase bellum iustum that in his day was already in current usage among jurists and theologians. ¹² While he had started out thinking of war as sin, the received nomenclature ¹³ gave St. Thomas reason to pause, leading him to ask (q. 40, a. 1) ‘whether any war may be licit’ (utrum aliquod bellum sit licitum). After summing up several arguments (obj. 1–3) in favor of ‘no’, and one reason (the sed contra) in favor of ‘yes’, St. Thomas finally leans on the affirmative side: ‘For a war to be just, three things are required, namely the authority of a prince … a just cause … and an upright intention.’ The wording of this reply is significant and was to have far-reaching implications for subsequent Catholic moral teaching. St. Thomas does not simply say that waging war can narrowly be allowed (sit licitum) on moral grounds; he goes a step further, and affirms that this course of action could hypothetically be obligatory ¹⁴ and even virtuous, provided however the requisite conditions of legitimate authority, just cause, and right intention are met. Other conditions, such as proportionality and distinction (between combatants and non-combatants), were added to the list by later thinkers; these criteria were often gleaned from comments made by St. Thomas elsewhere in his corpus of writings.

Had it not been for the linguistic precedent set by his predecessors, St. Thomas would likely have used a term other than ‘just war’ in describing armed action to protect society from external attack. In the measure that bellum names a sin, ¹⁵ it cannot be qualified as ‘just’, no more than there can be a ‘just sedition’ or ‘just brawling’ (rixa). By the same token, however, St. Thomas does acknowledge that situations can arise when forcible resistance to injustice may be warranted, say to overthrow tyranny, and he allows for self-defensive action against attack. To this end, he coined no special words, contenting himself with describing the said acts, rather than naming them. ¹⁶ With respect to protective action against aggression, a term, bellum iustum, albeit imperfect, was already in wide circulation, thus it would have seemed contrived to bypass this received usage. St. Thomas was aware that bellum iustum has the ring of an oxymoron (because to his mind bellum primarily names a sin), but he assumed educated readers would grasp the correct meaning regardless. Like Augustine, he recognized that there is no special nobility in war, that war should never be sought for its own sake, that it is a regrettable expedient, that wise men will rightly sorrow at the harm caused, and that as an aspect of our post-Lapsarian condition war always involves sin. St. Thomas understood that war should never be entered into lightly and that opposing injustice by spiritual arms is far better than waging it physically. ¹⁷

For St. Thomas, recognition that war is bound up with our sinful condition (in this sense it represents a malum poenae) was not equivalent to saying that any party who engages in war necessarily sins thereby (malum culpae). In every war at least one of the parties must be in the wrong. But this negative judgment on war qua condition he deemed compatible with asserting that some wars are just, in the sense that one party to the conflict may be justified in using force against the other. When St. Thomas speaks of ‘just war’, the term bellum serves as an equivalent for bellare (the infinitive ‘to wage war’), namely one side's active engagement in the conflict. But if Thomas were to use bellum as the name for the overall condition of two (or more) sides fighting each other, namely war as a condition, he would never say it is ‘just’. For moderns, as contrasted to medievals, the term war usually designates a condition; ¹⁸ thus, it is unsurprising that the recent popes will often condemn ‘war’, the intent being to point out the sinfulness of this condition, not necessarily to rule out all engagement in it, i.e., ‘just war’. However, on at least one occasion we can find Pope Francis mixing these two senses—the unilateral prosecution of a just cause (‘just war’) and the wrongful condition of two armies clashing (‘war’). After bemoaning the terrible depredations in Ukraine, the soldiers and civilians killed on both sides, he exclaims that ‘There is no such thing as a just war; they do not exist!’ ¹⁹ That this is meant to be a condemnation of the condition of war, and not an implicit rebuke of the Ukrainian armed defense, becomes clear from a statement Francis made two days earlier when he spoke approvingly of his Ukrainian brothers and sisters, ‘who are defending their land’. ²⁰ St. Thomas himself would surely have agreed that the baleful condition ‘war’ should never be joined to the adjective ‘just’.

We should not treat ‘just war’ as though the term itself is sacred, nor should we forget that a scientific definition is often framed apart from the natural connotation of the words it employs, hence words will be constructed in ways that are not always obvious to laymen. A time can come when a word should be abandoned because of some misunderstanding to which it pervasively gives rise among the uninitiated. Should ‘just war’ be jettisoned as has already happened for ‘inflammable’? Perhaps, but our need for an underlying concept will not thereby disappear, no more than the shift to ‘flammable’ has changed the nature of combustible gases. ²¹

St. Thomas presents just war as an abstract possibility; the point was not so much to discourse on its achievability, ²² as to signal what moral questions should be raised by whoever might contemplate such an initiative. In so doing, he remarks that peace and war are not diametrically opposed, as though any engagement in the latter would necessarily impede the former. On the contrary, waging war can sometimes be in the interests of peace. For when men establish an ‘evil peace’ it can be wrong to cooperate with them; using force to overturn a peace ‘in appearance only’ may be necessary if a true peace is to be established in its place, thus Jesus said (Matt. 10:34) ‘I come not to send peace but the sword’. ²³

Returning now to Pope Francis, if we substitute ‘fraternity’ for ‘friendship’ we can readily see that Fratelli tutti follows very much the same progression that I have just outlined apropos of St. Thomas. Pope Francis elucidates why fraternity is essential for social cohesion at its different levels (including national and international) and how we must take care not to let sin tear asunder what charity joins together. Referring to ‘social friendship’ as a ‘love transcending borders’ (§99), he emphasizes how this ‘fraternity is born not only of a climate of respect for individual liberties’ (the justice that consists in rendering ‘each his due’ as St. Thomas would say), but more profoundly it requires ‘dialogue’, ‘reciprocity’, ‘mutual enrichment’ (§103), and ‘gratuitousness’ (§139–141), traits that St. Thomas had earlier equated with ‘amor amicitiae’. And should one think that these traits obtain solely within families, elective friendships, or ethnic, national, and other such groups, Francis emphasizes how these traits also have a central role to play within ‘global society’. ‘Our greater human family’ represents more than ‘the sum total of different countries’, but consists, rather, ‘in the communion that exists among them’ (§149).

Finally, Pope Francis explains how injustice, greed, and violence bring division into communities (both national and international) and why such an outcome must energetically be avoided. Thus, against this background of international peace—conceptualized as a natural community that extends across national boundaries—Francis undertakes, much like St. Thomas centuries before, to assess the moral permissibility of war.

II

It is apropos the moral assessment of war that the parallel I sketched above appears to break down. The section of the encyclical that assesses the morality of armed conflict is tellingly entitled ‘the injustice of war’ (§§256–262). While ‘legitimate defense by means of military force’ is re-affirmed (by reference to the Catechism of the Catholic Church) as a ‘possibility’, i.e., a morally acceptable option for states, nowhere in the document is this option placed under the traditional heading of ‘just war’. In fact, on the sole occasion when the term does appear (§258), Francis places it in scare quotes to signify how the term pertains to a past era and must be deemed obsolete now: ‘[T]oday it is very difficult to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a “just war”.’ ²⁴

The disparagement of ‘just war’ is amplified in the corresponding endnote (no. 242), where, to introduce a quote from St. Augustine (Epistle 229 to Darius on ‘blessed are the peacemakers’), Pope Francis explains how, despite the eminent Church father's encouragement of robust action on behalf of peace, he nonetheless ‘forged a concept of “just war” that we no longer uphold today’. ²⁵

In the passage cited by Francis, St. Augustine contrasts two different contributions to peace, ²⁶ (i) in one way peace is achieved through the exercise of battlefield virtue, as when soldiers preserve the unity of the commonwealth by using physical force to subdue its adversaries; (ii) in another way peace is achieved through judicious speech, as when statesmen or spiritual leaders persuade adversaries to resolve their conflicts by informed discussion and compromise.

Augustine does not deny that just war can be a pathway to peace—in this respect it is good—but first and foremost, he wants to affirm that the path of non-violent persuasion is morally superior. Achieving peace by peaceful means is far better than reaching this goal by resorting to arms. Pope Francis finds in Augustine eloquent confirmation for the idea that peace is most effectively pursued when non-violent initiatives are undertaken to calm dissention and in so doing prevent the outbreak of war or, if war is already underway, to foster its cessation. But in citing this passage, which rides on a comparison between ‘slaying men with a sword’ and ‘killing wars with words’, Francis sees the need to distance himself from Augustine's positive characterization of martial conduct (and the attendant virtues of courage and fidelity) as an authentic, albeit inferior, pathway to peace. Should we accordingly infer that Francis, when he penned the two phrases cited above, expressly intended to remove the approbation that Church teaching has conferred on the doctrine of just war for well over a millennium?

In response, we must first consider how Francis's immediate predecessors expressed themselves on the issue of just war. This will provide a foundation for assessing whether he has sought to narrow Church teaching in such a way that the traditional doctrine can no longer be accepted as a legitimate option for Catholics today, much as in Fratelli tutti Francis declared capital punishment ‘inadmissible’ and advocated its abolition worldwide (§263).

It must first be recognized that the term ‘just war’ has rarely, if ever, appeared in papal writings for at least a century. ²⁷ The last occurrence I have been able to find is a 1953 address by Pius XII, wherein he remarked how ‘even in a just and necessary war’ limits must be observed. ²⁸ Only much earlier do we find him openly endorsing the possibility of ‘a truly just war’, wherein ‘a citizen struggles for the defense, honor and salvation of his country [and] fights with full fortitude against an adversary armed to overcome him’. ²⁹ As concerns the wider Roman magisterium, ‘just war’ does figure in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, where the term is placed in quote marks to describe how the older tradition had framed the conditions of legitimate defense (‘the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the “just war” doctrine’—§2309), with the supposition that this nomenclature is no longer embraced by the Roman Magisterium as its own. What accounts for this deliberate avoidance of a term that for many centuries had been standard currency in Church discourse? ³⁰

Several factors seem to have induced the popes to omit reference to ‘just war’ in their writings on armed conflict. First and foremost was the experience of World War I when under this label several national episcopacies endorsed bellicose claims and showed little appetite for critical reflection on the war efforts of their respective countries. ³¹ Pope Benedict XV's official stance of neutrality, and his famous comment (in August 1917) that the war represented ‘a senseless slaughter’ ³² were often met with consternation by laity and clerics in the warring countries. By so doing, Benedict seemed to devalue the sacrifices that were then being made by the faithful on opposing sides, each in the name of ‘just war’. ³³ Thus, in Benedict's eyes, the national episcopacies on both sides unduly used the language of just war—if not by instigating the war, at least by fanning its flames once underway. ³⁴

Apropos World War II, an unease is still associated with the German episcopacy's verbal support for Hitler's militaristic initiatives (in contrast to the very clear condemnation of his euthanasia policies). ³⁵ A similar dark cloud still hangs over the Spanish episcopacy's apologetic role vis-à-vis the Nationalist prosecution of the civil war ³⁶ as well as the role of Catholic ideologues in Argentina's Dirty War. ³⁷ Mindful of the uncritical uses to which this concept might readily be put, including invocations of holy war, recent popes have increasingly refrained from employing it themselves. In similar fashion, Pope Francis has expressed a concern that speech about ‘just war’ is readily open to abuse:

War can easily be chosen by invoking all sorts of allegedly humanitarian, defensive, or precautionary excuses, and even resorting to the manipulation of information. In recent decades, every single war has been ostensibly ‘justified’. ³⁸

Moreover, in matters relating to international affairs, the papacy, beginning with Pius IX, has emphasized its peacemaking role among nations (a trend reinforced by the loss of its territories in 1870, when it divested itself of a standing army and attendant justifications for military defense). ³⁹ In recognition of this distinctive ministry on behalf of peace, the popes, particularly from Benedict XV forward, have correspondingly refrained from statements that might encourage resort to arms—however just this might otherwise be for the particular states involved. More recently, the papacy's recognition of its peacemaking role has been informed, inter alia, by the witness of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Solidarity movement in Poland, which are examples of how non-violence can be adopted, not only as an evangelical counsel for the ‘perfect’ but also as a political means to effect beneficial social change. Allied with this promotion of a ‘culture of peace’ was the idea that outbreaks of violence (riots, insurgencies, etc.) should be addressed not only by standard police or military means (what in earlier times had also come under the heading of ‘just war’), but also by measures that would remedy the underlying ‘root causes’; hence the emergence of a papal discourse on ‘Development the New Name for Peace’. ⁴⁰ These new conceptualizations of peace have emerged alongside (but not in opposition to) the older discourse on just war; but given the papacy's embrace of its spiritual mission on behalf of peace, it has naturally tended to emphasize the former over the latter.

Finally, beginning in the 1930s, and especially after World War II, the popes have sought to replicate the vocabulary of public international law in their pronouncements about armed conflict. This trend accelerated under the pontificates of Pius XII and John XXIII; both had contributed years of service in the Holy See's diplomatic corps before ascending to the throne of St. Peter. As it has evolved, the international law of armed conflict has progressively detached itself from an association with the teachings of Vitoria, Grotius, and other thinkers of its formative period. While these thinkers unabashedly formulated theories of just war, over the last one hundred years legal instruments such as the Kellogg–Briand Pact and the UN Charter have been drafted in continuity with a different terminology. For a reason that will be explained below, these and related documents replicate ideas that had earlier been expressed in terms of ‘just war’ but place them under different labels. Thus, the UN Charter allows, inter alia, for ‘enforcement action’, ‘the exercise of individual or collective self-defense’, ‘suppression of aggression’—forms of military activity that the scholastics would have placed under the heading of jus ad bellum. ⁴¹ The Magisterium similarly refers to ‘legitimate defense’, the ‘strong arm of force’, ⁴² the ‘responsibility to protect’, ⁴³ and ‘concrete measures to disarm the aggressor’, ⁴⁴ all of which are considered permissible when applied within proper bounds by designated personnel of recognized states. By these phrases, the substance of what the scholastics had earlier taught under the label of ‘just war’ was re-expressed with a new terminology, more in keeping with the times.

The UN Charter nowhere speaks approvingly of war; in fact, the term is used only once (namely in the Preamble), where the signatories roundly condemn it as a ‘scourge’. ⁴⁵ Years before, the Kellogg–Briand Pact had similarly condemned ‘resort to war’ and urged, as a matter of treaty law, the ‘renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy’. ⁴⁶ Given these legal developments, repetition of the older term ‘just war’ cannot but seem inopportune. This is reflected in parallel documents of the Magisterium. The doctrine of ‘just war’ was not however the target of condemnation within the treaties in question. What these treaties sought to exclude was the opposing doctrine of raison d’etat. On this doctrine (also termed the ‘contractual’ conception of war ⁴⁷ ), if states were unable to resolve their disputes amicably, war could be waged to decide the issue in contention. During the nineteenth century, ‘war’ in the formal sense of the term (namely, a publicly declared condition of armed hostility between independent states) came to assume the status of a recognized institution, codified in international law, to which states could have recourse to adjudicate their disagreements. This procedure, in which two states mutually agreed to settle their quarrel by ‘rolling the dice of Mars’, was fundamentally incompatible with the traditional doctrine of just war. According to the latter, war was understood to be a mechanism by which preexisting rights might be enforced, while on the former, war was a mutually agreed-upon decision procedure by which a new right could be established. ⁴⁸

This contractualist sense of ‘war’ has been assumed in numerous papal texts. To cite from perhaps the most famous instance, in 1965 Pope Paul VI declared at the United Nations ‘Never again war, war never again!’ (a phrase repeated in Fratelli tutti, §258). As was made clear later in the same speech, Paul did not mean to say that a time would come when violent strife would entirely cease on the face of the earth: ‘So long as man remains the weak, changeable, and even wicked being that he often shows himself to be, defensive arms’, Paul acknowledged, ‘will, alas! be necessary’. ⁴⁹ Nor did the Pope mean to say that all resort to force should henceforth be excluded on moral grounds, for in his 1968 World Day of Peace message he affirmed that ‘peace is not pacifism’. ⁵⁰ The sense of Pope Paul's 1965 UN declaration was accordingly to rule out war as a method for resolving inter-state disputes. ⁵¹ To cite from the 1944 Christmas message of his predecessor Pius XII, ‘the idea of war as an apt and proportionate means of solving international conflicts is now out of date’. ⁵² Implied therein was a rejection of the notion that war can legitimately function as a consensual decision-procedure by which a new legal status quo (one assured by military victory) can be established. This was emphatically not the just war idea, which stood opposed to the contractualist idea that war can legitimately serve as a method to resolve inter-state disputes when all other means fail. Unfortunately, however, several influential Catholic thinkers of the inter-war period conflated the two ideas, with the result that ‘just war’ came to be blamed for failings that were not its own. ⁵³

Thus far I have endeavored to explain why the term ‘just war’ has rarely appeared in contemporary documents of the Magisterium; this omission does not of itself signal a rejection of the doctrine that for centuries was placed under this label. Recently, however, some voices within the Church have been clamoring for an explicit renunciation, not only of the term, but of the underlying doctrine as well. To this end, at a conference on ‘Non-violence and Just Peace’ (held at the Vatican in April 2016) the attendees urged Pope Francis to issue an encyclical on non-violence ⁵⁴ and thereby ‘to end the just war theory’. ⁵⁵ In Fratelli tutti (the section on ‘the injustice of war’), did Francis aim to signal that henceforth the Church will ‘no longer use or teach “just war theory”’, as the conference attendees had requested? ⁵⁶

Clearly, Fratelli tutti was written to re-affirm the primacy of peace in Catholic social teaching. This itself does not indicate an inconsistency with the traditional doctrine of just war. As was noted above, Thomas Aquinas conceptualized just war against the normative background of peace. Peace is an imperative that flows from charity; just war becomes relevant only when peace has been gravely disrupted and steps must be taken to reestablish just order in society. Nothing in Thomas's teaching would suggest that resort to armed force is the default position whenever serious political disagreements emerge within or between states. On the contrary, rational persuasion, not violent threats, or the imposition of force, was to his mind the most effective and desirable way to settle disputes. ⁵⁷ Indeed, in a seminal essay ⁵⁸ that appeared in 1933, and drawing on Aquinas's principles, Jacques Maritain sought to show how the methods of non-violence and just war, far from being opposed, should ideally be combined, with the former taking precedence whenever possible. Significantly, he included in his account related factors that are conducive to peace, for instance, the establishment of sound institutions and heathy economic relations, which Pope Paul VI later placed under the heading of ‘development’. Maritain's main point was that these factors should be carefully coordinated, not simply juxtaposed—as too often happens when military force is conceptually detached from other societal functions that are requisite for good governance and the maintenance of peace. Because peace ultimately flows from bonds of friendship, is constituted by these bonds, it can never result from war, however necessary (‘just’) the war may be. Armed force may, if judiciously applied, remove obstacles to peace; but of itself such force cannot establish or build peace.

It is incontestable that Fratelli tutti places very tight restrictions on any possible use of force, including acts of legitimate defense. This too is in continuity with papal teaching since Pius XII. Of special concern is the harm that inevitably falls on non-combatants whenever armed conflict breaks out. The presence of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in the arsenals of contemporary armies renders the prospect of such harm especially acute today. ⁵⁹ The risk that limited military initiatives will escalate has led the contemporary popes, from Benedict XV onwards, to caution against resorting to force, even when this might otherwise be justified in terms of justa causa. That ad bellum proportionality considerations should limit application of ‘just cause’ was already affirmed by the scholastics, Vitoria and Suarez, for instance. ⁶⁰ But given the destructiveness of modern weaponry it is fitting that the ‘proportionality budget’ as it is now called (the ratio of harm resulting from an envisioned use of military force should not outweigh the original harm this application of force has for its aim to rectify), ⁶¹ should be highlighted in contemporary papal teaching more so than in times past. In Fratelli tutti, Francis emphasizes proportionality to a greater degree than even his predecessors (the risks of war, he writes, ‘will probably always be greater than its supposed benefits’—§258). Unlike Benedict XVI, ⁶² Francis does not here speak of a ‘responsibility to protect’, namely a military intervention to protect civilian populations from genocide and other grave harms. ⁶³ But, despite this reticence, ⁶⁴ Francis does not affirm that invocation of just war principles is henceforth impossible. Rather, he limits himself to the more modest statement that ‘today’ such invocation is ‘very difficult’ (§258). In other words, he does not rule out the substance of what has traditionally gone by the name ‘just war’.

Indeed, Pope Francis takes care to assert that the Charter of the United Nations remains ‘a fundamental judicial norm’ (§257). The Charter, it can be recalled, expressly includes provisions for the use of armed force by states in the interests of national and collective defense, as well more proactive military measures that can be undertaken by the international community (under the aegis of the Security Council) for the maintenance and (when necessary) the restoration of peace. Already, in his message to the 2016 conference on non-violence and just peace, Pope Francis, after reminding the attendees that ‘the only explicit condemnation issued by the Second Vatican Council was against war’, ⁶⁵ he also took care to recall the Council's statement that ‘governments cannot be denied the right to legitimate defense once every means of peaceful settlement has been exhausted’. ⁶⁶ Two years earlier, speaking of armed action against ISIS, Francis said clearly that ‘where there is an unjust aggression, I can only say that it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor…’. ⁶⁷ In a recent text, Francis affirms that conventional weapons can legitimately be used ‘for defensive purposes’, provided they are ‘not directed to civilian targets’. ⁶⁸

Likewise, in affirming the ‘positive contribution’ of ‘active non-violence’, Francis has echoed the teaching of Gaudium et spes that however noble non-violence may be, it cannot necessarily be counted on to provide adequate protection against all forms of aggression:

we cannot fail to praise those who renounce the use of violence in the vindication of their rights and who resort to methods of defense which are otherwise available to weaker parties too, provided this can be done without injury to the rights and duties of others or of the community itself. ⁶⁹

The Council thereby concluded, in a statement that comes immediately after the one cited by Francis above (on the right to legitimate self-defense), that

[t]hose … who devote themselves to the military service of their country should regard themselves as the agents of security and freedom of peoples. As long as they fulfill this role properly, they are making a genuine contribution to the establishment of peace. ⁷⁰

Even today, we have to think in terms of the concept of ‘just war’. We have learned in political philosophy that, in order to defend yourself, you can make war and consider it just. But can one speak of a ‘just war’? Or rather of a ‘defensive war’? Because the only thing just is peace.

Upon Wolton's query ‘You mean you can’t use the term “just war”, is that it?’ Francis responds:

I don’t like using it. You hear people saying, ‘I make war because I have no other possible way of defending myself’. But no war is just. Only peace is just. ⁷¹

Pope Francis's initial comments on Russia's invasion of Ukraine (24 February 2022) created some doubt as to whether he was still prepared to affirm the standard Catholic teaching on legitimate defense. Even after several months, he refrained from condemning Russia by name, nor did he openly assert Ukraine's right to mount an armed self-defense. Over time it became clear, however, that his silence was motivated by several factors. For one thing, as official head of the Holy See, the Pope must adhere to longstanding diplomatic protocol. For instance, by virtue of article 24 of the 1929 Lateran Treaty establishing Vatican City State, the Holy See agrees to abstain from taking part in conflicts between states, namely, to maintain a strict impartiality. ⁷³ Moreover, Francis seems to have been acutely aware that his responsibility as vicar of Christ requires him to be a spokesman for peace and peace alone. Indeed, in a 40-minute video call with Patriarch Kirill (16 March 2022), Francis reportedly said that

Brother, we are not state clerics, we shouldn’t speak the language of politics but rather the language of Jesus. We are shepherds of the same holy flock of God. For this reason, we must look for a path to peace, we must stop the fighting. ⁷⁴

This is a political decision, which can be moral—morally acceptable—if it is done according to the conditions of morality, which are manifold, and then we can talk about it. But it can be immoral if it is done with the intention of provoking more war or selling weapons or discarding those weapons that are no longer needed. The motivation is what largely qualifies the morality of this act. To defend oneself is not only lawful but also an expression of love of country. Those who do not defend themselves, those who do not defend something, do not love it; instead, those who defend, love.

Conclusion

In light of the above, how are we to interpret Pope Francis's comment that St. Augustine ‘forged a concept of “just war” that we no longer uphold today’? Does this constitute what advocates of ‘just peace’ have impatiently desired, namely a decisive papal rejection of the scholastic tradition of just war that emerged from St. Augustine? Is argumentation in favor of just war now set outside the bounds of legitimate doctrine, in much the same way that the Catechism of the Catholic Church has now been modified to reflect the ‘inadmissibility’ of traditional arguments in favor of capital punishment?

Setting aside the hermeneutical question of whether an official change in Church doctrine has ever been introduced solely in the endnote of a papal encyclical, I believe it is important to read Francis's comment in direct relation to the specific quote he aimed to discuss. The epistle in question was written to Darius, a Roman official who had secured a truce with the Vandals, thereby averting further military operations and attendant bloodshed. Praising Darius for his honorable peacemaking with these implacable adversaries of the Roman Empire, Augustine likened it to the honor Roman soldiers had earlier demonstrated in their warfare against these same Vandals. In so doing, Augustine adopted a phraseology that would resonate with this Roman official, for whom a war to subdue recalcitrant provinces would constitute an unquestionable good. Augustine's point is that it is better to subdue such adversaries by words than by war. But to establish this comparison he alludes to the distinctively Roman conception of just war, which glorified demonstrations of courage and fidelity on the battlefield, as directed toward sustaining an empire. Pope Francis is entirely correct that few of us would subscribe to such a casus belli today, or the accompanying concept of battlefield ‘glory’. However, it can be doubted whether St. Augustine himself ever subscribed to such a conception. Nor does this conception reflect how Thomas Aquinas, Vitoria, Suarez, and related thinkers in the Catholic tradition framed the nature and scope of just war.

Truth be told, there is no single doctrine that can plausibly be placed under the heading of ‘just war’. Among its various exponents (including the figures mentioned above) there are notable differences on matters as central as the construal of ‘just cause’. The one common denominator that unites the different doctrines under one roof ⁸⁵ is the search for a middle way between the opposing extremes of pacifism, on the one hand, and political realism, on the other. Gratian, Thomas Aquinas, and other medieval thinkers took an evangelically inspired pacifism as their main foil in elaborating theories of just war. For this reason, they emphasized how those responsible for the common good have a positive obligation to employ armed force against those who would undermine justice and order, within and between societies. For them, the doctrine functioned chiefly to empower or enable military action. By contrast, early modern theorists of just war (e.g., Grotius) took political realism as their main foil, hence they focused more readily on just war as a doctrine of restraint in matters of war. However, neither of the two versions, medieval or early-modern, were constructed wholly around principles of enablement or restraint, but a combination of the two. ⁸⁶ This combination is essential to the just war idea. Without it just war dissolves into pacifism or realism. Contemporary critics fault ‘just war’ for enabling war; they claim that the tradition insufficiently advances principles of restraint. ⁸⁷ But these critics fail to see that a doctrine composed exclusively of restrictive principles will be indissociable from pacifism, and the fundamental question that just war theorists aim to resolve will remain unaddressed: can pacific means alone suppress all threats to justice and security?

Few, if any, of the thinkers in the standard just war canon made claims about specific wars—excepting some standard examples that were drawn from the Old Testament—thus it is difficult if not impossible to know whether they thought any concrete instance of a just war might be found. They certainly did not think that any instantiation of just war, if ever realized, would represent thoroughgoing justice. They were aware that agents objectively possessed of a just cause often act from ulterior motives, that deviations from right conduct will inevitably occur even among those who have sound reason to be in the fight. In this sense, ‘just war’ is indeed an oxymoron. However, the reason for elaborating theories of just war was not to make incontrovertible judgments about matters of fact, but rather to establish criteria on which such judgments might be made. With the changing circumstances of warfare over the course of history—including new weaponry, the enhanced density of populations, the increased vulnerability of the natural environment—the applicability of the criteria will shift accordingly. Rationales for just cause that might appear compelling in one epoque—war to defend religious interests, for instance ⁸⁸ —will appear inadmissible in a very different civilizational context. Throughout these historical changes the just war criteria nonetheless retain their value by enabling us to ask fundamental questions about crises that prima facie cannot be adequately addressed by non-violent measures alone.

If my argumentation above is correct, we may safely assume that just war—perhaps not the label but certainly the underlying concept—has a permanent place in Catholic teaching. There can be little doubt that Pope Francis affirms as much. By the same token, however, Francis does not believe this is the message we are most in need of hearing from him. Marshalling armed defense against invasion is a role we expect of our political leaders. But serving as earthly representative of the Prince of Peace, Francis believes his role requires of him something different: namely to bear witness, especially amid the disillusionments of this world, to the vitality and supremacy of peace.