BY SEAN WALSH
Why the Pope and the commentators are wrong on Iran
There are good reasons for believing that the relativists are doing the devil’s work, regardless of whether or not they know this. Relativism claims either that (a) what is true is contingent, and changes with culture, geography and calendar date 1; or (b) that truth is irretrievably hidden from us and that our relationship to it will vary with culture, geography etc 2.
For the Christian neither of these quite work -“Jesus answered, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father, except through me” (John 14:6).
There was only one Christ, and what he said was unambiguous. That truth is gathered in Him. Not for nothing is the devil fond of scattering.
Interpretations of scripture and of natural theology, therefore, will go wrong when they give in to the temptation towards relativism.
Which is why the distinction made by St John Henry Newman, between the evolution and the corruption of doctrine, is so well taken. Catholic teachings, from the time of the Church Fathers, are always provisional appreciations of and approximations to a deeper truth. To use the fashionable language of Darwinism, what separates evolution from corruption in the theological context, is the capacity to adapt to change via the assimilation of new insights which serve to preserve underlying principle.
The best example of faithful theological evolution would be the incremental development of the doctrine of the Trinity.
Our current cohort of Catholic commentators tend to speak approvingly of Newman on this, and quite right too. The Holy Spirit is active, revelation happens, cultures change, so doctrine cannot be set in stone.
Not so, it seems, when it comes to just war theory which, we are told, is arrested and preserved in the writings of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas (separated, as they are, by by both geography and about 800 years it may be worth noting). In this particular domain of Christian thought, the Taylor Marshalls seem (and I mean this with all due respect) almost Protestant in their reluctance to move beyond the words on the page, thoughts communicated to us from very different places and times.
That said, let’s play on their course, and assume that these early applications of natural law theory as it applies to politics are faithfully consolidated in the current Catechism.
The point of just war theory3 is to affirm that war can on occasion be an obligation and that Catholicism is not a pacifist religion. War, violence in general, are necessary correctives of final resort. It is therefore spiritually imperative to impose on both its activation and prosecution constraints intended to maximally preserve the dignity of all persons affected by it, including persons who are yet to be created.
Pope Leo has stated the military activity against Iran, by the US and Israel, violates those constraints. If this is a war, then it is therefore an unjust one, he claims.
A couple of provisional thoughts. First: the distinction between a moral and a merely prudential judgement (the “that would be an ecumenical matter” joke updated de nos jours) is never that clear, for reasons that have as much to do with logic as theology. The point is the Wittgensteinian one: no rule (or set of rules) determine(s) its (their) own application.
Thus, Catechism (2309) in discussing states (among other things):
The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy [of war] belongs to the prudential judgement of those who have responsibility for the common good.
Which is to defer to the secular authority (which in the case of the USA is President and Congress) in its right to go to war if other conditions have been met. Have they?
This is where the Pope and his defenders, particularly those with social media platforms, have become a bit, well, twisty.
Their argument is that Trump’s intervention is a war of prevention, and as such is in breach of the necessary condition that for a war to be just it must be as a regrettable act of self-defence.
But this is not credible. Iran has spent five decades in cultivation of effective and lethal proxy aggressions in Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq to name but three examples. It has put on disguises and murdered Americans and Jews all over the world.
And it has been quite clear that it will continue to do so into the future, either in disguise or openly, and with bigger weapons.
When you get a chance to take out that guy, the difference between prevention and self-defence becomes at most Jesuitical.
And since Aquinas is the authority on these things and all others, let’s pause to consider what a practising Thomist ought to say about the concept of prevention at all.
Scholastic metaphysics separates the actual from the potential while insisting that the latter are just as “real” as the former. It is from this elemental claim that Catholic social teaching is able to construct theories of obligation towards people who exist “merely potentially”, specifically future generations and those whose creation is prevented through contraception.
When a theocratic regime with apocalyptic aspirations has the potential to bring an end to all things temporal then there are good philosophical reasons, from Aquinas, to take that threat as very present.
Pope Leo is entitled to his opinion which, because of the structure of infallibility, all good Catholics are likewise entitled to ignore. He has a personal charism, but not a personal magisterium.
Is Leo too plugged in to the machinery of leftist Chicago machinery? I’ve no idea, but some of the stuff he says is concerning. The dust up with Trump was unnecessary however, not least because the Pope is wrong. The President’s social media posts over Easter were arguably a bit de trop. Leo could have made the Augustinian point that when it comes to language both intent and context matter. He could have been a calming influence. He chose otherwise.
Perhaps I’m old fashioned. Within Easter time and certainly within the Octave, all I want to hear from the successor to Peter is “Christ resurrected”.
Let’s call this metaphysical relativism.
Let’s call this epistemological relativism.
Which I’d prefer to call the just war tradition, but as I say we’re playing on Taylor Marshall’s course.