US bishops’ doctrine chair defends Church’s just war tradition after Vance comments

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — Shortly after Vice President JD Vance appeared to warn Pope Leo XIV to “be careful” when speaking about theology and taking issue with his description of the U.S. conflict in Iran as unjust, the U.S. bishops’ point-man on doctrine issued a forceful statement on the Church’s teaching about just war theory.

Vance’s comments April 14 at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, come amid ongoing fallout from President Donald Trump lashing out at Pope Leo on social media and in verbal remarks over the pontiff’s opposition to the Iran war starting April 12.

“For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war,” Auxiliary Bishop James Massa of Brooklyn, New York, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, said in a statement released April 15.

Bishop Massa did not name Vance, but the auxiliary bishop issued the USCCB’s “clarification on just war theory” swiftly following upon the vice president’s remarks regarding the Church’s teaching at the TPUSA event.

“A constant tenet of that thousand-year tradition is a nation can only legitimately take up the sword ‘in self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2308),” Bishop Massa said. “That is, to be a just war it must be a defense against another who actively wages war, which is what the Holy Father actually said: ‘He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.'”

“When Pope Leo speaks as supreme pastor of the universal Church,” Bishop Massa continued, “he is not merely offering opinions on theology, he is preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ.”

“The consistent teaching of the Church is insistent that all people of good will must pray and work toward lasting peace while avoiding the evils and injustices that accompany all wars,” Bishop Massa said.

The previous day, Vance, who came into the Church in 2019 after receiving instruction from Dominican friars, and is the second Catholic to hold the vice presidency, invoked “the more than 1,000-year tradition of Just War theory” in justifying his opposition to the pope’s teaching, in post on X, in which Pope Leo said God “is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”

In the same post, Pope Leo continued, “Military action will not create space for freedom or times of #Peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.”

Vance said, “Now we can, of course, have disagreements about whether this or that conflict is just; but I think in the way that it’s important for the vice president of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

He argued that if the pontiff is “going to opine on matters of theology, you’ve got to be careful.”

“You’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth, and that’s one of the things that I try to do, and it’s certainly something I would expect from the clergy, whether they’re Catholic or Protestant,” he said.

Vance said he likes that the pope “is an advocate for peace,” but he asked, “Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis? Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated Holocaust camps?”

But Vincent J. Miller, the Gudorf Chair in Catholic Theology and Culture at the University of Dayton in Ohio, said that the Catholic Church actually does not take an unqualified view of the warfare that took place in World War II.

“The Church condemned the conduct of total war in World War II such as obliteration bombing of cities,” he pointed out.

“The vice president’s answer shows he has much to learn about what the Church actually teaches about peace and war,” Miller said.

“He might meditate on the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus calls for his disciples to ‘love their enemies,’ and read the Catechism’s treatment of war as “Safeguarding Peace,” Pope John XXIII’s “Pacem in Terris,” and the U.S. bishops’ “The Challenge of Peace,” Miller said. “Or, he could simply listen more attentively to Pope Leo — who is not only the current head of the teaching office of the Catholic Church, but a man who has devoted his life to following in the footsteps of St. Augustine, who first articulated the principles of just war theory.”

Many of the nation’s Catholic bishops have condemned the Iran war and pushed back on Trump’s comments about Pope Leo while articulating the Church’s teaching. According to “Lumen Gentium,” the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on the church, when bishops are “teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff,” they are “to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent.”

Vance’s comments regarding the pope have drawn pushback from his own party. When asked about Vance’s comments that the pope should be careful about doing theology, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said, “Isn’t that his job?”

Thune said, “I’d stay focused on the administration, on the economic issues, the pocketbook issues that most Americans care about. And let the Church be the Church.”

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