One of the U.S. Church’s most prominent public figures contends that it’s not the role of the Church’s leaders to make a final determination about whether a particular war is just or not.
While various leading U.S. prelates have taken the position that the U.S. war with Iran fails to meet the Churchʼs classic just-war criteria, opinion on the matter is not unanimous.
In recent days, one of the countryʼs most prominent bishops in the public arena, Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, contended that itʼs not even the role of the Churchʼs leaders to make a final determination about whether a particular war is just or not.
“The role of the Church,” Bishop Barron wrote in an X post on April 20, “is to call for peace and to urge that any conflict be strictly circumscribed by the moral constraints of the just-war criteria,” which is outlined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2309).
However, he continued, “it is not the role of the Church to evaluate whether a particular war is just or unjust.” To buttress his argument, Bishop Barron cited the catechism’s explicit “just-war” doctrine teaching (2309) that “the evaluation of these conditions for moral
