Conflict in the Middle East: The Pope and the Principle of Proportionality

On September 29, 2024, on the plane returning from his trip to Luxembourg and Belgium, the Pope was asked by Courtney Walsh about Israel's targeted elimination of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the pro-Iranian organization Hezbollah: his response is reported on the official Vatican website.

“I do not quite understand how things have been evolving. However, defence must always be proportionate to the attack. When there is something disproportionate, it is evident that there is a domineering tendency that goes beyond morality. A country that does these things with its forces – I am talking about any country – in such a ‘superlative’ way commits immoral actions.

“Even in war, morality is to be safe-guarded. War is immoral, but the rules of war indicate some morality. When this is not respected, you can see – as we say in Argentina – the ‘bad blood’ of these things.”

The Doctrine of Just War

What precisely does the Church teach on this thorny question? In the Summa Theologica (II-II, 40, 1), St. Thomas sets out three conditions required for a war to be just:

1) War can only be waged by the public authorities, who alone can decide to wage it.

2) It must be for a just cause. St. Thomas writes: “It is required that we attack the enemy because of some fault.”

3) The intention must be right: war must only be waged with the aim of bringing about the triumph of good or the avoidance of evil.

The so-called “classical” doctrine of just war was developed on this basis, and was formulated by 16th-century Spanish scholastics: in particular the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria and the Jesuit Francisco Suárez. It asserts that war is permissible only to reestablish justice and lays down conditions for going to war, as well as conditions for waging it.

Conditions for Going to War

— A just cause, in other words, in order to face a real and certain danger.
— A legitimate authority that decides to go to war.
— A righteous intention: with the exclusion of private interests that would skew the just cause.
— War must be the last resort after diplomatic solutions have been exhausted.
— There must be a real probability of success: otherwise, there would be deaths for nothing.
— Proportionality: the good obtained by war must exceed the harm caused by war.

Conditions for Waging War

— Distinction between belligerents and non-combatants (civilians, women, children, prisoners).
— Proportionality between the actions undertaken and the desired result: avoid the spirit of vengeance and bear in mind that waging war is also for the good of the adversary who has committed a wrong (Summa Theologica, II-II, 108). This proportionality is all the more important to respect, given modern weapons’ significant capacity for destruction.

As for the possibility of a just war, let us turn to the words of St. Augustine: “If Christian morality judged that war is always sinful, when in the Gospel soldiers ask for advice for their salvation, they should have been told to throw down their arms and abandon the army altogether. Yet they are told (Lk. 3:14): ‘Do violence to no man; [neither calumniate any man;] and be content with your pay.’ Prescribing them to be content with their pay does not forbid them from fighting.”

Today, the tendency would be to say that there is no such thing as a just war. Of course, both belligerents may be unjust, but there are still cases where one of the two is justified—and the other unjust. The reason for this tendency is twofold: the destructive capacity of modern weapons makes any conflict more or less appalling, and the loss of the Christian spirit gives way to vengeance and hatred, the seeds of interminable wars.

But it must be remarked that, as long as injustice continues to spread throughout the world in all its forms—contempt for God and the religion founded by Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace; abortion, a crime against the innocent that cries out to heaven for vengeance; euthanasia, which is spreading everywhere; the rejection of natural law, which extends to everything it covers—we should not be surprised to see wars. Only Christ's justice can stop them, or at least limit them here on earth.