As a ceasefire between the United States and Iran tentatively remains in place, President Donald Trump's rhetoric has sparked concerns from Catholic moral theologians about the safety of civilian populations if fighting resumes.
Trump announced a ceasefire agreement on April 7, hours after threatening the annihilation of the "whole civilization" of Iran if the country did not agree to U.S. terms.
Plans to destroy Iran's infrastructure by striking power plants and bridges were paused for two weeks. Yet disputes about the ceasefire's terms and the starting point of negotiations quickly raised tensions again.
William Newton, chair of the theology department at Franciscan University of Steubenville, told EWTN News: "It always seems best to sort out disputes by talking rather than fighting when this is possible."
He urged prayers "that a real peace can be established that makes the world safer and the people of Iran better off."
Joseph Capizzi, dean and ordinary professor of moral theology and ethics at The Catholic University of America, told EWTN News he is "glad" the ceasefire is in place and believes pushback against the war prompted it.
Taylor Patrick O'Neill, a theology professor at Thomas Aquinas College, told EWTN News the ceasefire is "a cause for hope" but "still far from lasting peace."
He urged both sides to negotiate "in the spirit of using force as an absolutely last resort."
Peaceful intention
On April 8, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, a Catholic, told reporters that Trump's threat to destroy the Iranian civilization "was not an empty threat by any means." The Pentagon, she said, had a list of targets if a deal was not reached.
When asked about the morality of the threats, Leavitt said it was "insulting" to suggest Iran had a moral high ground. She accused Iran of "atrocities" against Americans and the military.
Catholic doctrine recognizes war can be justified under some circumstances. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, war is justified only to confront grave evil, and even then its harm must not exceed the evil it seeks to end and there must be a real chance of success, with all alternatives to war exhausted.
St. Augustine — the architect of just war doctrine — wrote to the Roman general Boniface: "Peace should be the object of your desire; war should be waged only as a necessity, and waged only that God may by it deliver men from the necessity and preserve them in peace."
Augustine, writing in A.D. 418, told the general that "even in waging war, cherish the spirit of a peacemaker." The theologian cited Christ's teaching in Matthew 5:9: "Blessed are the peacemakers."
Capizzi said Trump's rhetoric "is utterly alien to a peaceful intention" and, even if war is justified, "the intention of war must always be peace."
"We Catholics do not pray to be merciless," he said. "We do not invoke God in vengeance against our enemies. When we pray to God for victory, Catholics do so with humility and a desire for peace, a peace that ought to include our enemies whom Our Lord taught us to love."
Capizzi said the notion that power plants are "dual use" because it "fuels both civilian homes and military arms production factors" does not make it a legitimate military target.
"There's significant gray area in this, but the idea is to limit the conduct of war to legitimate military targets and reduce the expansion of war in ways that increase civilian suffering," he said.
O'Neill said it is not intrinsically evil to destroy a power plant or bridge, but the question must be: "Why are we striking it?"
Military officials, he said, must also ask: "How do the proportion of innocent deaths caused (directly and indirectly, with a bridge out of service in the coming weeks) by the strike compare to the good sought?"
He said Trump's rhetoric shows "the intention and the means employed to achieve the fruition of those intentions." He argued Trump's intentions "explicitly and directly threaten mass casualty strikes that make no determination between combatant and noncombatant."
Trump's remarks "border on the genocidal," he argued.
"What the Church provides is a clear moral reasoning for making difficult judgments about how to defend yourself and your nation justly," O'Neill said. "These comments are more or less a rejection of any kind of moral reasoning beyond 'win at all costs.' Under no circumstances is it just to attempt to wipe a nation off of the face of the earth."
According to Newton, distinguishing between military and civilian targets can be complex, but he offered his opinion that "a proper military target is one which is proximately ordered towards a military goal. By this I mean that the facility exists — or exists in the mode it currently does — because of military needs."
To determine morality, Newton said, it "is not merely what you do but why you do it" and "something can be evil on account of either or both these elements."
He said the president's threats to destroy Iran "imply targeting elements of the country which go way beyond military targets and would be immoral," but he added the caveat that "not knowing the intention means we cannot really interpret these [words] accurately."
Principle of double effect
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that a moral act requires "a good intention," but a good intention does not justify an intrinsically evil act. A bad intention always "makes an act evil," it states.
St. Thomas Aquinas explains in the "Summa Theologica" that some acts can have several effects — some good and some bad. If the act itself is morally neutral, the act can be justified only if the good result is intended, and the bad consequence is unintended.
Capizzi said the principle of double effect often applies to war because hitting a legitimate target can result in hitting something that is not legitimate. When necessary, it may be moral to accept "collateral damage" as a secondary, unintended effect, he said.
"The proportionality of military actions is always important," he said. "The bad secondary effects should not outweigh the good associated with the act. Again, the general idea is that war should be borne by combatants to the war and not be civilians."
Yet because bad intentions and intrinsically immoral acts cannot be justified, Capizzi said "the intentional targeting of the innocent is never permissible, no matter how much good might come of it."
O'Neill said this applies in the context of civilian infrastructure, noting the justification cannot just be "Does this harm the Iranian military?" and "Will this help us win the war?"
He said Trump must consider proportionality and cannot actively will the harm to civilians.
"If part of your decision to blow up a power plant is to cause suffering to the civilian population that depends upon it so that they are more likely to organize a coup, you are seeking a good effect through the evil means of civilian suffering," he said.
Newton also noted the importance of proportionality: "One does need to make a prudential judgment concerning whether the good that one is seeking is really sufficiently good to tolerate the unintended but foreseen negative outcomes."
He noted any intention to harm civilians "does not square with the principle of double effect" and expressed concern that Trump's comments "are at least in danger of giving the impression that the approach taken to seeking the military defeat of the enemy is the demoralization of the population as a whole."
"I'm not saying that this is the only way to interpret those statements but they are statements which definitely open up the possibility of an interpretation which is not compatible with the principle of double effect," Newton said.
Iranian and American officials, including Vice President JD Vance, are scheduled to meet in Pakistan this weekend to negotiate long-term peace. Lebanese and Israeli officials have both expressed interest in peace talks as well.
