Pope Leo XIV, the world’s conscience: A Jewish perspective

The last thing a Jewish academic like myself with no grounding in Christian theology should want to do at this particular time is to weigh in on the attacks against Pope Leo XIV by President Trump, Vice President Vance, Speaker Johnson and others.

However, while this did not seem like a Jewish fight or a Jewish issue at first, it became one in a manner of speaking when a UK-born Israeli rabbi took Pope Leo to task in a recent open letter for purportedly creating “a moral equivalence between those who initiate slaughter and those who are religiously compelled to defend the sanctity of life.”

Except, of course, that the pope did no such thing.

What Pope Leo did do was to reiterate his heartfelt opposition to war and his equally fervent desire for peace. This is in the hallowed tradition of not just popes but countless non-zealous leaders of different faiths. In 1944, while World War II was still raging, the great 20th century Jewish theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel wrote: “Tanks and planes cannot redeem humanity. The killing of snakes will save us for the moment but not forever. The war will outlast the victory of arms if we fail to conquer the infamy of the soul: the indifference to crime, when committed against others. For evil is indivisible.”

In a similar vein, the Dalai Lama believes that “War is like a fire in the human community, one whose fuel is living beings” and that it “also strongly resembles a fire in the way it spreads. If one area gets weak, the commanding officer sends in reinforcements.”

Addressing the Vatican diplomatic corps on Jan. 13, 2003, on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Pope John Paul II, hardly a liberal or a left-winger, declared, “No to war. War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity. International law, honest dialogue, solidarity between States, the noble exercise of diplomacy: these are methods worthy of individuals and nations in resolving their differences.”

The ad hominem attacks on Pope Leo were not just unseemly and inordinately offensive. They backfired spectacularly from a political perspective. Almost overnight, they turned the Chicago-born prelate into the most influential counterweight to the president when it comes to global humanitarian issues. After Trump threatened the perpetration of what amounts to genocide against Iran by declaring ominously that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” the entire world and, more importantly, the entire American electorate heard or read Pope Leo calling the president’s words “truly unacceptable.”

Pope Leo does not consider the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran to be a “just war” and calls for its end. Others have the absolute right to disagree. But disparaging him for asserting his convictions ignores the complexities of faith-based attitudes toward war.

Peace is a central value and core aspiration of both Christianity and Judaism. This much should be obvious and should not need to be reiterated. At the same time, there is a consensus that some wars are just. World War II, the war to defeat the scourge of Nazism, certainly was. But even just wars must be waged justly.

In a sermon in which he discussed “the ethics of conduct within war” shortly after Israel had gone to war against Hamas in response to Hamas’ murderous terrorist attack against civilian women, men, children and infants on Oct. 7, 2023, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove pointed out that “Enemy lives are not worth more or less than Jewish lives — we are all created equally in the image of God. As Jews, we dare not let the inhumane actions inflicted on us prompt us to lose our own humanity … The question is not whether Israel has the right to defend itself, but whether Israel will be smart and moral in this war of obligation.”

Rabbi Cosgrove, who is both my rabbi and a dear friend, went on to prophetically lay out the moral and legal challenges that lay ahead in what would be a more than two-year Gaza war: “The brutality of Hamas is being overlooked while Israel is being held to a different standard than any other nation, whether because of ignorance or something more nefarious. It is a difference that betrays antisemitism … The decisions of the coming days, weeks and maybe months will be tortured. Sometimes Israel will get it right, and sometimes Israel will get it wrong. The fact that Israel, unlike the other side, is asking questions of just war is what makes Israel worth defending.”

I quote from this sermon to emphasize the quandary Pope Leo faces and to take note of an aspect of the Iran war that he has failed to mention. He is right in deploring the horrific loss of innocent civilian Iranian lives in the war. I respectfully suggest, however, that he is mistaken in not simultaneously condemning the brutality, viciousness and bellicosity of the Iranian regime whose goal has been and remains the destruction of the State of Israel and the killing of its Jewish inhabitants. In this respect, going to war against Iran, or against Hamas, for that matter, is morally defensible. But even a war against an evil enemy requires proportionality and the minimization of civilian casualties.

But differences of opinion over whether one war or other may or may not be just does not take away from Pope Leo’s clarion call on behalf of the innocent victims of all wars, including the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and Hamas’ savagery on Oct. 7, 2023.

One additional consideration: Pope Leo has unequivocally condemned antisemitism on numerous occasions. This past October, on the 60th anniversary of the Nostra Aetate declaration that repudiated the “decide” charge holding Jews responsible for killing Jesus, he said, “I, too, confirm that the church does not tolerate antisemitism and fights against it, on the basis of the Gospel itself,” and added that “we must not allow political circumstances and the injustices of some to divert us from friendship, especially since we have achieved so much so far.”

It is critically important for all of us to remember that Pope Leo is a friend to the Jewish community and to humankind as a whole. While there certainly can be disagreements among friends, we must not allow such differences of opinion, in his words, “to divert us” from that friendship or from our respect and admiration for the man who has become in large measure the world’s conscience.

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