Writing in the Jesuit journal America, Cardinal Robert McElroy argued that “it is essential to identify and reject three major distortions of Catholic teaching on war and peace that have crept into our national dialogue.”
“The first distortion is the assertion that the just war tradition is the foundational stance toward war in Catholic teaching,” he wrote. “In reality, the fundamental stance of the Church toward war is that it must be avoided.”
“A second claim distorting the dialogue about Catholic teaching and the Iran war is the assertion that just war principles are merely a heuristic—that is, a mental shortcut or rule of thumb—rather than an objective set of stringent criteria for determining whether a war is morally legitimate in extreme circumstances,” Cardinal McElroy continued.
“A third claim about Catholic moral teaching distorting our current national dialogue is the assertion that while posing the central moral questions about a war rightfully belongs to the Church, the application of those norms and the determination of moral legitimacy to go to war belong solely to the leaders of government,” he added. “This assertion first arose concerning the American decision to invade Iraq in 2003.”