Does God Minister Through Government?

No sooner does the pentagram-themed U.S. Department of War start bombing some foreigners than do Catholics begin debating the finer points of just-war theory. The assault on Iran is another installment in the genre. A country negotiating with Washington in good faith was suddenly attacked (twice) by the same for reasons having to do with Israeli expansionism, Washingtonian imperial hubris, a desire to distract public attention from the Epstein Files, the stock prices of missile manufacturers, and a dash of lusting after other people’s oil reserves. But you would not know this by reading certain religious magazines. For the theologically sophisticated, the Iran War has hinged on questions of proportionality, legitimacy, properly constituted sovereignty, and intent — as if it were some kind of chapter-end exercise in a moral-philosophy textbook. Never mind that at least one of the participants in the just-war debate, George Weigel, is a signatory of the late-1990s neoconservative Project for the New American Century, a red-white-and-blue Leninist doctrine for permanent revolution under the banner of freedom and democracy. What matters, the theologians and pundits tell us, is whether the present offensive war is actually a defensive war, and whether the ius ad bellum and the ius in bello are being adhered to jot and tittle.

This kind of highbrow speculation coming from the religious establishment during the latest round of ad hoc highway robbery is nothing new. In Western history, what manner of depravity and genocide has not been pursued in the name of just war? We could list one bellicose silliness after another — the War of the Spanish Succession, the Pastry War, the War of Jenkins’ Ear, World War I — and dissect how and why theologians spilled ink over the relative justice of those wars, while armies spilled blood in the fields. But history is the art of learning nothing. Just-war theorists (who seem, ironically, to prefer air-conditioned offices to louse-infested trenches) rah-rahed the invasion of Iraq on false premises in 2003, just as they rah-rahed the “Christian Zionist” genocide of Palestinians 20 years later. And they can’t get enough of tormenting the Persians for sport. But it isn’t just the theologians and their pundit entourage who are at fault. Just-war theory itself is rotten to the core.

There was an American who thought so once, a Catholic who rejected the notion of justice manifesting amid states at war. In rejecting just-war theory, that Catholic, Dorothy Day (1897-1980), possibly cost herself a canonization. After her conversion from a sinful past, Day became a devoted servant of the poor, a pious and devout woman who lived the Gospel day in and day out for decades. She brought untold numbers into the faith, or at least nearer to it than they would have been as hungry destitutes on the streets of New York City and elsewhere. She was, by all accounts, a saintly soul. But because she didn’t cotton to warmongering, she couldn’t be counted officially among the elect. It is worth asking why.

First, however, I want to make an important distinction between Day’s pacifism and her objection to just-war theory. Pacifism is stupid. We can, should, and must defend what we love. If someone or some group comes into our homeland marauding, then he or they must be repulsed by force. Wyatt Earp brought order to the town of Tombstone by shooting the hooligans running wild there. He did right. No man gets to bring violence into a community, but if some man tries, then the violent ought to bear him away. It is unmanly and unwise to commit in advance to never rising up to protect the innocent and the defenseless.