Message view Glorifying God and saving souls by the just war murder, maiming and deception. A Jesuit view.

–From an Anonymous Just Warist

Please read first:

https://www.ncronline.org/node/325431

“You do not need to be a pacifist to question Trump’s war against Iran. It has serious shortcomings when examined through the lens of just war theory.” Thomas Reese, S.J., March 6, 2026, NCR

True, enough, you do not have to be a pacifist to question Trump’s war against Iran; you can do this via just war theory as this long time Jesuit propagandist for the just war theory states. However, as the ex- Jesuit and priest-Biblical scholar, the late Rev. John L. McKenzie wrote, “I know of no war that has met the standards of the Catholic Just War Theory, and would be glad to hear of one.” So would I.

So “questioning” Trump’s war on Iran via just war theory does not require much intellectual heavy lifting. And since no war of any nation has ever been condemned by the hierarchy of that nation while the war was taking place. Justifying Trump’s war on Iran via just war theory is every bit as possible and easy as questioning it. What human philosophies build up, human philosophies can teardown. After all just war theory is simply a humanly contrived philosophical theory of stoicism. It is not the will of God as revealed by Jesus Christ who never comes close to even hinting at a just war theory being a valid substitute to His communication about what God’s will is in the Gospels.

Ah, but there is the infamous Jesuitical twist that all Catholics, Christians and human beings must always be on guard against, lest they be led—as so many have— by an act of intellectual sleight of hand to destruction on earth and perdition in eternity. Rev. Reese, S.J. never refers to Catholic or Christian pacifism just to pacifism, although since he is writing in a self-designated Catholic paper as a Catholic priest, it is likely presumed by the reader that he means Catholic or Christian pacifism.

Pacifism can be merely another human philosophical theory which can “question” the U,S-Israeli war of Iran and find  “shortcomings” with its inception and/or execution. Of course, it takes no more than being a human being to question anything. So pacifists can question the war on Iran and its “shortcomings” and just warist can question the war on Iran and its “shortcoming.” So what difference does it make, pacifist or just warist?

The Catholic or Christian pacifist does not just “question” the killing of the people of Iran and the shortcomings of this war, Catholic and Christian pacifism condemns it, its murdering of human beings by the thousands, its maiming of human beings by the tens of thousands, its lies and its deceptions, because of the revelation of Jesus by word and deed in the Gospels. The war on the people of Iran for the Catholic pacifist is the intrinsically grave evil of murder. And since Jesus is the eternal Word of God made flesh, the Catholic or Christian pacifist condemns this with the authority of God Incarnate behind his or her condemnation of the murder of the Iranian people.

So, I as a Catholic, who because of the Gospels’ presentation of Jesus as Nonviolent and because of the Gospels’ revelation that Jesus taught by His words and deeds a Way of Nonviolent love of all under all circumstances and because of the Gospels’ proclamation that Jesus is the Word of God, God, from all eternity, I condemn as gravely evil the killing of the Iranian people by the U.S and Israel and I ask that my fellow Catholics, starting with the Pope, bishops and priests, do the same before the sun sets on another day and on more Iranians murdered by American and Israeli high tech human butchery.

For the Catholic or Christian pacifist it would be blasphemous, a betrayal of his or her Baptism into Christ, a grotesque false witness to try to put a little pyrite spiritual gilding around this mass murder operation by saying as Rev. Reese, S.J. says,

“This is not to say that Trump’s war [that is, the death, pain, suffering and misery brought down on the children, women and men of Iran] has accomplished nothing. It has assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a ruthless dictator who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iranians, Iraqis, Americans and Israelis through supplying militias and terrorists with arms and money. I shed no tears that he and his top lieutenants are gone.”

Why a Christian of Rev. Resse, S.J. advanced age is using the final moments of his life to say such things and to propagandize just war theory as an authentic substitute to Jesus’ teaching of Nonviolent Love of all always is beyond baffling. When the world knows that just wars are just war, does he or any Catholic Pope, bishop or priest really think that just war violence is redemptive and that this is what he or they should be using their priestly life to proclaim to those souls seeking God and eternal salvation through Jesus Christ, who listen to him or them?

-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy