Bishop Robert Barron is at it again. Three months after his ill-judged intervention on the Trump administration’s so-called immigration enforcement policies, Barron has come to the defense of the same administration’s war against Iran, a war that Pope Leo XIV has strongly implied Catholics are to view as unjust and immoral.
As people are wont to do when defending the indefensible, Barron made his point on the website formerly known as Twitter. (You can read his post in full by clicking the next hyperlink if you don’t want to give him, or the site, traffic by clicking this one.) Here is the central part of his argument:
The role of the Church, therefore, is to call for peace and to urge that any conflict be strictly circumscribed by the moral constraints of the just war criteria. But it is not the role of the Church to evaluate whether a particular war is just or unjust. That appraisal belongs to the civil authorities, who, one presumes, have requisite knowledge of conditions on the ground. So, is the war in question truly the last resort? Is there really a balance between the good to be attained and the destruction caused by the war? Are combatants and non-combatants being properly distinguished in the waging of the conflict? Do the belligerents have right intention? Is there a reasonable hope of success? The posing of those questions—indeed the insistence upon their moral relevance—belongs rightly to the Church, but the answering of them belongs to the civil authorities.
Deacon Steven Greydanus points out some of the implications of this:
It seems that Bishop Barron believes, based on his interpretation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that the pope should stick to a) teaching general moral principles and b) raising questions about their application to particular situations—but answering those questions in particular situations is solely the president’s job, not the pope’s.
In effect, Bishop Barron appears to propose that the Catechism advocates a theory of Church and State as functioning in a way like what some theorists of science and religion have called “non-overlapping magisteria.” Church and State, in Barron’s words, have “qualitatively different roles to play in the determination of moral action in regard to war,” thereby neatly avoiding any possibility of “absurd and deeply divisive” conflict.
Non-overlapping magisteria is a legitimate perspective in the philosophy of science and has some currency in moral theology as well; off the top of my head, many Lutheran theologians have traditionally advocated something similar. But the position being credible does not meant that it is correct, orthodox, or even morally acceptable itself. As Greydanus points out:
Bishop Barron seems to assume the good will as well as the competence of “civil authorities,” whom he says “one presumes” have “requisite knowledge of conditions on the ground” to be entrusted with decisions regarding going to war or not. But the Catechism itself, in the same passage quoted by Bishop Barron, warns that powerful men may be motivated to seek war for manifestly unjust, unworthy, imprudent reasons….Not incidentally, Pope Leo himself has likewise challenged the idea that the knowledge and motives of leaders who make war can be trusted.
It would certainly be nice if we did live in a world in which what used to be called “the secular arm” always has all the information Barron thinks it does, in addition to the wisdom and virtue to act properly on that information. Yet the idea that that is actually the case strains credibility to the breaking point. I have a hard time believing Barron believes it himself, and if he does, it is he who doesn’t have the requisite knowledge to be intervening on these topics.
Greydanus elucidates well the reasons why we cannot simply trust that the Trump administration, and its closely allied Netanyahu government in Israel, know what they are doing when it comes to Iran. This has all been pointed out by countless other people as well, including many who would likely be fine with bombing the living daylights out of Iran in a different situation, with a different strategy, which is to say any strategy, animating the campaign. Think of Bill Kristol, or Thomas Friedman. Critics of the Iran War are not just peaceniks or reflexive opponents of everything Trump does. They come from all walks of life and political perspectives, up to and including people who were previously MAGA stalwarts. Why on earth would the Church not join this worldwide chorus of opprobrium? Why would it not lead it?
But Kristol is “woke” now, and arguably Friedman always was. Why not get it straight from the horse’s mouth? Trump on both Venezuela: “We’re going to be taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.” Trump on Iran: “We may hit it a few more times just for fun.” The second quote might be a joke. The first quote clearly isn’t. We’re supposed to believe that this constitutes any form of moral reasoning at all?
At least as concerning as what Barron thinks people know is what he seems to think they don’t know. Implicit in Barron’s argument is the view that military decisions made by a modern state cannot be gainsaid in any way by anyone outside the governing apparatus. If one is to assume that the Church lacks the necessary information to make a moral determination about a war, one must also assume that so do the general public and the press, unless one thinks that the Church is uniquely ignorant or clueless. Not only is this breathtakingly cavalier, it is directly refuted in another section of the Catechism (§2246, quoted by Greydanus), as well as going against Barron’s own earlier views. In 2020, Barron wrote powerfully of the “moral catastrophe” of World War I. Earlier, in a 2014 blog post called “Extreme demand coupled with extreme mercy,” then-Father Barron pointed out that:
If these criteria are strictly applied, it is difficult indeed to find any war that is morally justifiable. Many would hold that the Second World War met most if not all of the criteria for entering into a war, but even its most ardent moral defenders would have a difficult time justifying, in every detail, the waging of that war….In the wake of the atomic bombings in 1945, the English moral philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe made the Catholic case vociferously in a number of public debates. In answer to Anscombe’s criticisms, many Americans–Catholics included–used frankly consequentialist forms of moral reasoning, arguing that the atomic bombings undoubtedly saved untold numbers of lives, both American and Japanese, and effectively brought a terrible war to an end. But does anyone really think that the church ought to lower its standards in regard to just war?
(Emphasis mine. I would like to make it clear that I personally do very strongly believe that entering into World War II was justified.)
Evidently yes, someone does. Or perhaps Barron believes that the Church need not necessarily lower its standards, but should at least do the secular arm the courtesy of shutting up about them. Well, it won’t. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide whether she thinks that this is, itself, a morally acceptable stance.
Image: Tokyo after an air raid in 1945, the wages of even a justly-entered war.
Nathan Turowsky—a native New Englander, an alumnus of Boston University School of Theology, and one of the relatively few Catholic alumni of that primarily Wesleyan institution—works in the nonprofit sector and writes at Silicate Siesta.
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