Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, archbishop of Washington, DC, has said that the US-Israel war with Iran “is not morally legitimate,” going further than the pope has done in his more moderate calls to end the war.
In an interview with the Catholic Standard this week, McElroy said: “The just cause criterion is not met because our country was not responding to an existing or imminent and objectively verifiable attack by Iran.”
“As Pope Benedict categorically stated, Catholic teaching does not support preventive war, that is, a war justified by speculation about future events,” he said. “If preventive war were morally accepted, then all limits on the cause for going to war would be in extreme danger.”
McElroy also argued that the conflict does not meet the “right intent criterion,” arguing that, in his view, “one of the most troubling elements of these early days of the war in Iran is that our objectives and intentions are absolutely confusing, ranging from the destruction of Iran’s nuclear and conventional weapons potential to the overthrow of its regime, the establishment of a democratic government, and unconditional surrender,” he said. “You cannot satisfy the right intention criterion of the just war tradition if you do not have a clear intention.”
He added: “Our current war effort does not conform to Catholic teaching on just war because it is far from clear that the benefits of this war outweigh the harm that will be caused.”
His comments this week came as Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago issued a statement Saturday condemning a White House video on social media that mixed war footage with action movie clips.
“A real war with real death and real suffering treated as if it were a video game: it is disgusting,” Cupich wrote.
Pope Leo XIV has made a series of more moderate calls for dialogue and an end to the conflict.
“Let us raise our humble prayer to the Lord so that the roar of the bombs ceases, that the weapons fall silent and that a space for dialogue opens up in which the voices of the people can be heard,” the Pope said Sunday at the Angelus prayer, according to Reuters.
The Holy See traditionally maintains diplomatic neutrality, but last week Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin told Vatican media: “If states were recognized with the right to ‘preventive war,’ according to their own criteria and without a supranational legal framework, the entire world would run the risk of being set on fire.”
“This erosion of international law is truly worrying: justice has given way to force; the force of law has been replaced by the law of force, with the conviction that peace can only emerge after the enemy has been annihilated,” Parolin said.
In his interview this week, McElroy said that since the United States and Israel launched their attack on Iran, he has encountered “a very significant level of anxiety” about the conflict among congregants.
“Almost everyone rightly believes that the Khamenei regime has for decades been a brutal and repressive government that has spread terrorism around the world and must be replaced,” he said, “but there is immense concern that this war will spiral out of control and compromise the United States ever more deeply.”
Some parishioners, he added, have told him they are worried about their sons serving in the military, while others, he said, have recalled the previous U.S. wars in Iraq and “the lack of peace or unity they produced despite heavy American casualties and immense costs.”
At the same time, McElory also noted that some congregants also believe that “despite these realities, now is the time for the United States to end the theocracy in Iran and install a friendlier, more peaceful government.”
McElroy said he believes it was “essential for Catholics in our Archdiocese to pray for peace and an immediate end to this conflict.”
He added that “as citizens and believers, we must inform our political representatives of our positions on this unfolding war, giving our own guidance to this land we love so deeply” and also “we must comfort those in our families, our parishes and our communities who are eager for the comfort of the Holy Spirit to be with them.
“Lastly, and most importantly, we must ensure that this war does not become a protracted conflict, moving from one objective to another and from one strategy to another,” he said. “One of the most important Catholic teachings on war and peace is that nations have a strict obligation to end a war as soon as possible. This is particularly true when the decision to go to war was not morally legitimate.”
