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Just war theory and the Russo-Ukrainian war

Russia’s invasion clearly fails to meet three of the four criteria set forth in Catholic teaching, and NATO military action against Russia would also clearly fail to meet three of the four criteria.

Destroyed military vehicles are seen on a street in Bucha, Ukraine, March 1, 2022, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues. (CNS photo/Serhii Nuzhnenko, Reuters)

One of the striking features of the catastrophe in Ukraine is how unambiguously the principles of just war doctrine seem to apply.  On the one hand, Russia’s invasion cannot be justified given the criteria of just war theory.  On the other hand, NATO military action against Russia cannot be justified either.  Here are the criteria for just military action as set out in section 2309 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

At one and the same time:

– the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

– all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

– there must be serious prospects of success;

– the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.  The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

End quote.  I submit that Russia’s invasion clearly fails to meet the first, second, and fourth criteria, and NATO military action against Russia would clearly fail to meet the second, third, and fourth criteria.

The injustice of the invasion is obvious even given the most generous interpretation of Putin’s motives.  Hence, suppose we conceded for the sake of argument that Russia has a legitimate interest in keeping Ukraine out of NATO.  Suppose that, as some have argued, the United States and her allies have long been needlessly poking the bear, and that Russia would have been far less likely to invade Ukraine had they not done so.  Even given those premises, it simply doesn’t follow that Ukraine is an “aggressor,” that Russia has suffered any “lasting, grave, and certain” damage from Ukraine, or that “all other means” of remedying Russia’s concerns “have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.”  Nor is the extreme harm inflicted on innocent Ukrainians by war proportionate to whatever grievances Russia has.  Hence Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cannot be said to meet the first, second, and fourth criteria for a just war, and therefore is manifestly gravely unjust.

For that reason, military action to repel Russia’s invasion clearly is legitimate, and justice requires favoring the Ukrainian side in the war.  In the abstract, support for Ukraine could include military action against Russia by any nation friendly to Ukraine.  However, the justice of the cause of defending Ukraine fulfills only the first of the four criteria set out by the Catechism.  What about the other three?

Putin has not-so-subtly threatened to use nuclear weapons if the United States or other NATO countries intervene militarily in the conflict.  The realistic prospect of such extreme escalation makes it impossible for such intervention to meet the Catechism’s fourth criterion, which emphasizes that “the power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.”  The use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine, to which Russia might resort if NATO intervenes, would surely “produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.”  Graver still would be a situation where Ukraine, other nearby NATO states, and Russia (as a result of NATO nuclear retaliation) were all attacked with nuclear weapons.  And worst of all would be a scenario where what started out as a local war in Ukraine spiraled into an all-out global nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States.

Even a localized nuclear exchange would also render unlikely the fulfillment of the third condition for just war, viz. the “serious prospects of success.”  If Russia uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine or NATO itself, would NATO countries really retaliate in kind?  If they did not, it seems that Russian victory would be assured.  But if they did retaliate in kind, it is very far from clear that this would not spiral into a conflict that no one could win.  Nor can it be said that all the less extreme alternatives to NATO intervention have been exhausted, as the second criterion for just war requires.

It is therefore irresponsible in the extreme to suggest, as some have, that NATO impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would entail direct military confrontation between NATO and Russia.  The problem is not just that this is foolish and reckless.  The problem is that such escalation cannot be justified by just war criteria, and would therefore itself be gravely unjust.  Any public authorities who take action that risks nuclear war – and thus the deaths of millions of innocent people – would be no less guilty of violating the moral principles governing war than Putin is.

Just war doctrine’s counsel to the United States and her NATO allies thus seems clear: Cheer Ukraine on and provide whatever assistance is possible consistent with avoiding the risk of a nuclear escalation.  Otherwise, stay the hell out of it.  Damon Linker seems to me to have the right idea: Putin’s actions must be unequivocally condemned and Ukraine supported, but Western policy should emphasize diplomacy, and work to create for Putin some feasible “off-ramp” from the path he has taken – rather than ratcheting up the rhetoric and entertaining reckless military scenarios and that can only make a nuclear confrontation more likely.

Now, you don’t need to be a Catholic or a natural law theorist to see all this.  Indeed, I think that probably most people have arrived at more or less the same view of the crisis that I have been arguing for here.  Yet there are some commentators who have rejected this view in favor of one extreme alternative or another – some downplaying the gravity of Putin’s evildoing, others reacting instead with excessive bellicosity and animus against all things Russian.  What accounts for this?

The answer, I would suggest, has largely to do with the extreme partisanship that has in recent years led too many people to drag irrelevant preexisting grievances into every new controversy.  When a crisis occurs, partisans succumb to the temptation to fit it into some general background narrative that explains “what is really going on” in terms of the machinations of evil forces on the opposite political extreme from the one they favor.  The Manichean ideologies that have gained influence on both sides of the political spectrum in recent years exacerbate this “narrative thinking,” as does the strong propensity of social media to foster irrational habits of thought.

Hence, consider the strange new belligerence to be found today in some liberal circles.  When I was a teenager in the 1980s, it was still routine to fling against conservatives the longstanding accusations that they were prone to demonize Russia, were paranoid about Russian influence within American institutions, were eager to get into armed conflict with the “Russkies,” were frighteningly glib about the survivability of limited nuclear war, and were inclined to resort to McCarthyite tactics and charges of treason against anyone who objected to all of this.  These accusations were made despite the fact that Russia had recently invaded Afghanistan – not to mention the earlier invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, or all the proxy wars Russia was engaged in throughout the Cold War.  None of this, in liberal eyes, justified right-wing anti-Russian bellicosity or paranoia.

Yet now it is liberals who are most prone to exhibit exactly these traits they once attributed to conservatives.  What accounts for this bizarre reversal?  I would submit that it has to do, in part, with Putin’s predilection for traditionalist Christian and anti-LGBT rhetoric (as Richard Hanania has pointed out), and in part with persistent left-wing attachment to fantasies about Russian interference with American elections.  These factors had already transformed Putin into a bogeyman in the liberal imagination, so that his immoral invasion of Ukraine has made it seem justifiable to some to risk even nuclear war in order to destroy him.

And it is, I would suggest, overreaction to these liberal excesses that has led some on the opposite extreme end of the political spectrum to refuse to face up to the full gravity of the evil that Putin has done.  They have been tempted by the thought that if liberals hate Putin with such intensity, he can’t be that bad, and that opposition to his invasion must therefore have something essentially to do with the Great Reset, the woke agenda, the Covid healthcare dictatorship, etc. etc.

This is all bonkers.  The key facts to keep firmly before one’s mind are (a) that Putin’s invasion is unjustifiable, has caused the deaths of hundreds of innocent people so far and will almost certainly result in thousands more, and maybe worse, and (b) that NATO military engagement with Russia would entail a serious risk of nuclear war and therefore cannot be justified.  Longstanding political obsessions cannot alter these facts, but only blind us to them.

(Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared on the author’s blog in a slightly different form and is reprinted here with his kind permission.)


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About Dr. Edward Feser 50 Articles
Edward Feser is the author of several books on philosophy and morality, including All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory (Ignatius Press, August 2022), and Five Proofs of the Existence of God and is co-author of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment, both also published by Ignatius Press.

25 Comments

  1. It seems Dr. Feser’s argument would be nearly identical even if Putin’s forces invaded a NATO country. Does the possession of nuclear weapons by opposing belligerents mean that no war between them is just? And what if one side does not adhere to the criteria enumerated in 2309 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church? What then would stop that side from using the threat of nuclear weapons to blackmail the rest of the world and thereby vanquish every potential adversary who follows Catholic teaching?

  2. I think Russian prospects of success are nearly hopeless. They could use nuclear weapons, and the war would be a “success” in the sense that millions of Ukrainians would be dead, sick, or condemned to a much-reduced lifespan. The ill citizens would be far less prepared for a guerilla resistance. Otherwise, if a military conquest was any kind of a success, the Ukrainians would fight a protracted resistance, and the Russians would be forced into some kind of retreat eventually. As they were in Afghanistan. Except their economy would be totally collapsed.

    This is already a world war. It is being fought with economics, trade, and gestures of moral and financial support from around the civilized world.

    The only moral course of action would be for Russian leaders to repent, to don sackcloth, and kneel in front of Ukrainian public buildings in Kyiv with ashes on their heads begging forgiveness. The oligarchs would then finance war reparations. Crimea would then be returned. And a non-military buffer zone be set up a hundred miles into the Russian border.

    Barring this, the violence enacted here is gravely sinful, worthy of excommunication, and dangerously close to placing the country on interdict.

  3. There are some similarities to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the United States engaged in what was substantively an act of war and threatened to go much further when the Soviet Union attempted to establish military bases capable of aggressive operations in Cuba.

    • An act of war? seriously? The Cuban missile crisis was a provocation by Russia, attempting to place their missiles within 90 Miles of the continental US.An aggressive Russia which had already taken over the whole of Eastern Europe. The US stopped them from placing those missiles. Period. NOBODY DIED during the Missile crisis and the US did NOT invade cuba. Period. All we did was tell an always aggressive Russia to get out of our backyard.They had banked on the US blinking then and we did not. Now however senile Joe is in charge and determined to see thousands or millions slaughtered.He is incapable of leading a world power. We are not Switzerland. The main thing to know about bullies is that they ALWAYS strike again if unchallenged.

  4. This is a sterile, cowardly and lame excuse to do nothing yet cheer at the sidelines. We were brought up to be cautious and wary of Russia since forever. The battle is here, as the Ukraine president says. It’s time to take a side. Fight the demon or join the demon, there no middle ground.

    • There are problems, though. Western involvement in the war would turn it into a direct struggle between a universal Western imperialism and a more brutal but weaker and more limited Russian imperialism that in principle is far less threatening to humanity. If you favor Ukrainian national identity and independence, and so a principle of local cultural identity and autonomy, it’s not clear it makes sense to cheer on such a development.

  5. This completely ignores the war by the Ukrainian government against the people of the two separatist provinces. It also ignores the Ukrainian’s government failure to comply with the Minsk Agreement.

  6. The critical issue with Just War Theory is that it ignores historical precedents between belligerents in favor a a current snapshot the does not take into consideration that history. Theologically Just War Theory fails to recognize that the leadership of the belligerents are simple princes of the earth. Theoretically, Just War Theory is an academic/contemplative exercise to bring reason to the table to define the beligerant and the innocent, bad and good in a very messy social, political and economic environments. Finally, let us not forget that Just War Theory is a uniquely Catholic Doctrine though objectively true that is rejected by agnostics and atheists in favor of their subjective truthiness, In the modern scenario, we simply demonize the opposition while glorifying our preference in the struggle between competing empires,.

  7. I agree with other commenters. This isn’t a good analysis.

    Nuclear weapons are largely irrelevant. Imagine a person losing the right to help a gunless person defend himself against an unjust aggressor with a gun – even though you have your own gun.

    In fact, there is a duty for a nation who could assist another nation to get involved militarily.

    “One thing is certain: the precept of peace is of divine right. Its purpose is the protection of the goods of humanity, as goods of the Creator. Some of these goods are so crucial for human coexistence that their defense against unjust aggression is undoubtedly fully legitimate. The solidarity of nations is required in this defense. They have a duty not to leave the attacked people abandoned. The certainty that this duty will be fulfilled will serve to discourage the aggressor and, therefore, to avoid war, or at least, in the worst-case scenario, to shorten the suffering.”

    (Pius XII, “Christmas Radio Message,” Dec. 24, 1948.)

  8. There is a serious flaw in Dr Feser’s application of jusr war principles. In fact there are several.

    The first is that Dr Feser offers for evaluation NATO’s military action, though it is Ukraine which is the state in legitimate defense against the aggressor, and it is from the perspective of Ukraine that analysis must begin.

    The second is that all other means of putting an end to any grievance Russia has against Ukraine have, in fact, been shown to be impractical or ineffective. Russia has been in aggressive occupation of Ukrainian territory since 2014, in Crimea directly, and through proxies in the Donbass region. At no time has Russia invited or accepted the standing of the United Nations to intervene by its arrangements for the pacific settlement of disputes under Chapter VI of the Charter or in appropriate cases through the European Court of Human Rights, which can receive applications from States as well as individuals. Neither has Russia engaged the International Criminal Court, whose jurisdiction Ukraine has acceptef since 2014.

    The third criterion, that of serious prospects of success, has been met and is being met, in that the will of the Ukrainian nation to prosecute the war has a real (as opposed to fanciful) prospect ot outlasting Russia’s. To succeed, it would be sufficient to destroy Russian ground forces in the field, and this could be done (if warranted) by NATO forces in a single night.

    The fourth criterion is that the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.  The correct way to apply this criterion is that Ukraine’s use of arms must not itself violate the principle of jus in bello. It is not necessary for Ukrainian decision makers to apply this criterion to what Russia might do in response. Any use of weapons of mass destruction by Putin would engage his moral and criminal responsibility and his only; the Ukrainian leadership need to take this into account only in respect of its expected effect on Ukraine’s ability to pacify the aggressor.

    So, “the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine, to which Russia might resort if NATO intervenes, would surely “produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated””, but only on Putin’s responsibility, not Ukraine’s and not NATOs. As the leader of an aggressor, Putin is not morally or legally at liberty to respond to provocation, neither could his counterbelligerent(s) be fixed with moral or criminal responsibility for “poking the bear”.

    However, I do agree with Dr Feser’s point that a no-fly zone should not be imposed. Most of the destruction and death that Russian forces are delivering to Ukrainians is being dealt by artillery, not aircraft.

    Finally, I make the point that the use of nuclear weapons against Russia could imaginably be justified, though this justification depends strictly on the following proportionality test and on jus ad bellum: the act that would have the evil effect of killing people must in and of itself have the reasonably anticipated effect of pacifying the aggressor. In that respect, the act that delivers the coup de grace has one and the same end as war itself, which is peace. The act of pacifying the aggressor has jus ad bellum; that which acquires military advantage on the battlefield has jus in bello – these are different kinds of act and are alike subject to the test of proportionality which is different in either case.

    The following proportionality test is commonly found in case law: (1) is there a legitimate objective which justifies derogation from a fundamental human right or the unintended taking of innocent human life; (2) is the means rationally connected to that objective (and capable of delivering it); (3) are the means the least harmful which are compatible with the assured delivery of the objective; and (4) is a fair balance struck between the policy objective and the good to be sacrificed to secure it?

    What must be given greatest weight in the fair balance test is that Russia’s war against Ukraine is a war of territorial conquest and is as such the supreme international crime in the highest degree, aggravated further by the routine commission of war crimes and the threat of use of nuclear weapons against all the world. Against this, the fair balance test might allow for the nations to pay the price in many hundreds of millions of lives before resistance to the aggressor becomes worthy of moral censure and criminal punishment.

    • NATO did not come remotely close to exhausting all diplomatic options. The west (the United States and NATO) said an emphatic NO to a security guarantee to Russia in regard to the Ukraine joining or not joining NATO.

      We have seen this coming for fifteen years. Scholars have debated this scenario since 2005. Russia warned that the Ukraine joining NATO was a red line.

      There is no justification for entering the war: we refused to negotiate.

      Your arguments make no sense whatsoever. The United States is not the Ukraine, we justify war based on our interests, not theirs.

      Finally that you would even mention the use of nuclear weapons is lunacy. No serious student of diplomacy speaks in these terms, and with such flippant reference to nuclear war.

      The American nuclear arsenal is a deterrent. We don’t discuss using it as a first strike option.

      Period.

      Because if we do, then so do Russia, China and a half a dozen other states with nuclear weapons.

    • The first is that Dr Feser offers for evaluation NATO’s military action, though it is Ukraine which is the state in legitimate defense against the aggressor, and it is from the perspective of Ukraine that analysis must begin.

      He did address Ukraine’s own just war analysis, though: “For that reason, military action to repel Russia’s invasion clearly is legitimate.”

      • Is continuation of the war by Ukraine in hopes of NATO intervention legitimate if (1) NATO evidently doesn’t want to intervene, (2) the strategy for overcoming NATO reluctance is basically propaganda, which as carried out involves provoking and publicizing civilian casualties, (3) otherwise Ukraine has no real hope of prevailing, and (4) Russia has offered terms for cessation of conflict that amount to recognition that Crimea and the Donbas breakaway republics are no longer part of Ukraine, which seems very much in line with the preferences of their people, along with constitutional Ukrainian neutrality?

  9. Russia has never used nuclear weapons in its nations history. This war broke out because NATO refused to extend to Russia a security guarantee. Now, incredibly, Germany is saying NATO has no plans to allow the Ukraine to join NATO.

    Had NATO extend it to Russia a security guarantee 30 days ago, there would be no war today. And had Russia invaded the Ukraine after Nader Ow had extended a security guarantee, then we would have A much stronger rationale to justify war.

    NATO did not exhaust its diplomatic options with Russia. We cannot justify war with Russia today.

    • Ukraine was never going to join NATO any time soon, and in any event not within the next five years at least.

      Russia had every opportunity to bring the matter before the UN Security Council through the conflict resolution provisions of Chapter VI of the Charter. It is unlikely that he would have received a sympathetic hearing given that Russia has been in aggressive occupation of Ukrainian territory since 2014 and of Georgian since 2008. There has never been a possibility that Ukraine would have been fixed with responsibility for threatening international peace and security.

      Putin’s true aims can be gleaned from his Crimean Speech of 14 March 2014 and from other sources. His aim is territorial conquest.

      Anatolii Babynskyi, the The Pillar’s Ukraine correspondent, and a researcher at the Ukrainian Catholic University’s Institute for Church History, wrote in The Pillar that the Russky Mir the 21st century, it became a semi-official strategy of both Russian politicians and leaders of the Moscow Patriarchate concerning Russia’s neighbours. The “Russian world” covers almost the whole of Eastern Europe: all the territories that at different times were parts of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

      Babynskyi quotes Elena Volkova, an intellectual and former professor at Moscow State University, said in Ukraine recently that the “Russian world” ideology can be reduced to a brief conclusion:

      “Russia must regain the territory of the empire. Monopoly power over souls must belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. Any talk of state or ecclesiastical independence is seen as the work of an enemy, who is immediately demonized as a Satanist and schismatic, an enemy of the Church.”

      • “Ukraine was never going to join NATO any time soon, and in any event not within the next five years at least.”

        I agree. The concern is that this “hot war” does not have an outcome we can predict. A cold war over the Ukraine would have been preferable to all parties, compared to the humanitarian crisis we have now.

        No one knows how this plays out. War is evil, and we abandon the grace of God by not doing everything to prevent it.

  10. https://www.popesprayer.va/march-prayer-intention-2022-2/ – Holy Father’s prayer intention for March – to defend the dignity of human life with prayer and action , meeting the bioethical challenges of our times- intentions that would be in the very heart of St.Joseph and of the Holy Family .
    In discussions in resolving the conflicts , the need to see The Root – as much as many might already be well aware of the connection between the ‘ hidden ‘ wars against the innocent that are also against families , wars that have been approved , thus going on explicitly for a 100 years in that land , wars that are promoted at massive levels on all sides any more … it would be critical to point to that root , to help bring forth the ‘dialogue ‘ as to what need to be done …as the best preventive , to avoid very many evils of our times in all nations.
    We can dream – for Putin to be blessed with good dreams – to come up with the means to make his country as the one that is free of such evils , to be the holy nation , better than the West / the ‘Old Rome ‘ that he desires it to be , even if for now the motive for same may be more for vainglory ….

    The desire to be the world leader in holiness , by letting his power structure join the good will in the Holy Father , modeling the patient endurance as well as the humility , in letting the light shine in on the wounds – we can hope that same would bring the healing deep into the roots of those wounds – setting free the likes of the Gerasene demoniacs incited by the cry of the innocent that echo in the hardened hearts , to instead be blessed with His Peace –
    The Peace of the gentle whisper in the depth of hearts , of thanking God for own life as well as that of others …

    Shalom !

  11. The thoughtful give-and-take on the issues of whether the Russian invasion of Ukraine is or is not a just war reveals just how useless in preventing war in today’s world the theory is. It assumes all sides and all third parties are rational and reasonable participants at a peace conference called as soon as a conflict, however narrow and limited, emerged anywhere. There was already a civil war going on the past 8 years in Ukraine, and if some kind of creditable peace negotiations had been going on under auspices of the United Nations, would there now be the current devastating war?
    One point that seems not to have emerged in the exchange is this: how seriously did Ukraine leaders consider that it might be their duty, however bitter, to surrender rather than risk the radical disruption of resistance to the invasion? A kind of “We were forced to destroy our country in order to save.”

  12. THE PROBLEMS OF ACCIDENT EVENTS AND DYNAMIC WARFARE ACTS

    September 18 2018 in the recent Syria conflict, Israeli jets maneuvered in the skies in a way which resulted in the downing of a Russian IL-20 supply plane, as Syrian forces on the ground scrambled and fired on the jets but hit the IL-20.

    This occurred precisely as the Sochi talks were in progress. Here the conflict was being scaled down through an effort of crafting a ceasefire and modus vivendi for the embattled Idlib zone.

    Moscow blamed the IDF for what happened but Mr. Putin stated he accepted the situation as an accident.

    All 15 Russian servicemen on board were killed. As it went, Mr. Putin defused it.

    I believe it was a deliberate act by the IDF, in dynamic warfare. It was meant to destabilize and supply consequences, for the area entities and Israel to exploit.

    I believe it is a grave sin of Israel’s and an ugly stain on her soul.

    When the Ukraine conflict will begin to de-escalate, similar risks will arise, especially as:

    1. all kinds of fighters are flocking there now;
    2. hangared jets are being made available to be flown by “pilots in Ukraine”; and
    3. a variety of shelved and other weapons (whether marked or unmarked) are being sent to Ukraine.

    How, in these circumstances, can the risks of “accident” and dynamic warfare acts, be reduced or eliminated – particularly if Ukraine does not scale back the conflict now and if the west keeps inciting aggression?

    These risks exist already -long before de-escalation- and can materialize at any time.

    It therefore has to be part of the diplomatic effort at this time for Russia and impartial parties to engage the issue among themselves and with counterparts; and build a) momentum against it and b) backdrop cushion for the eventuality.

    ‘ The announcement follows a Sunday statement by the country’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, who said that the government’s paramount goal was “to prevent Hungary from entering this war.” ‘

    https://thepressunited.com/updates/nato-member-bans-arms-supplies-to-ukraine/

    https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/hungary-says-wont-allow-ukraine-bound-weapons-to-pass/articleshow/89906924.cms

  13. When I was twenty, a fellow Catholic first told me that the Church had a “Just War Theory”. I was spiritually greatly relieved, because this question had become a great burden for me in my life, from growing up during the draft. I quickly asked the Catholic which wars Jesus Willed me to kill in, for the protection of the innocent? The Catholic responded, “Jesus is a Pacifist! Jesus does not want you to ever kill! ‘Just War Theory’ is a Church teaching, not the Will of Jesus!” (a moment of quiet confusion). I then responded, “Why on earth would the Church have a teaching which they themselves believed was in direct opposition to my Lord, God, and Savior, Jesus Christ? My Catholic friend had no response. I have since had the same routine discussion with two Catholic Priests as well and the discussions always come to the same conclusion.

    In the 1980’s, from behind the protection of Swiss Guard snipers, St. Pope John Paul II stated, ‘Violence is never the answer!’. This, as well, confused me. Then my friend told me the good news. Three days after the assassination attempt on St. Pope John Paul II’s life, the Pope forgave his attacker. Wow! I asked my friend if the Pope had his attacker over to the Vatican for dinner to forgive him? My friend exclaimed, “The Pope forgave the man from his heart! He did not let his attacker out of prison! The Pope went to the prison to forgive his attacker!” Now I finally understood Jesus’ Will of forgiveness and using lethal force to protect oneself. Jesus says, “And the one without a sword must sell his coat and buy one.” (Luke 22:36)

    In the story of The martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons (2 Maccabees 7;1) , the mother carefully guides her sons through their martyrdoms, before she is martyred as well. At any time the mother could have committed a ‘lesser of two evils’ and fed her sons pulled pork sandwiches, which would have saved their lives, but in obedience to God, she did not. The Pope is temporal ruler over the small sovereign nation country of Vatican City State. The Pope, like the martyred mother, can choose to obey Jesus, and go to his glorious martyrdom, by banning Swiss Guards and Italian police from his sovereign country of Vatican City State, at any time; Should we get a pacifist Pope who does not believe that Jesus Wills us to kill to protect the innocent.

    Ahh, I just wanted to get that out. I know, Catholic ‘Just War Theory’ is all about getting Catholic leaders into the secular political arena. Jesus never preached against Caesar. Caesar would have killed Him for doing so. Preaching to Caesar was of no importance to Jesus. Teaching His Catholic followers on how to remain faithful, loving and obedient to God, even when killing on the secular battlefield, or killing to protect a Pope, is what was important to Jesus.

    In the Second Secret of Fatima (1917), God promises peace to the world, if Catholic leaders consecrate Russia to the Immaculate heart of Mary, and get mankind to repent of their massive sinfulness. Catholic Church leaders refused to do so. So God punished the world with WWII, and God’s punishment of today’s Russian menace to the world, is also the result of Catholic leaders not taking God up on His Second Secret of Fatima offer.

    At the fall of Judah (587 B.C.) God relinquished His Kingship over Israel, divorced Israel, removed His Presence from Israel’s Temple, and placed His ‘servant’, ‘morning star’ world dominant secular power, king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, as king and ruler over Israel. Nebuchadnezzar was just as ruthless as Hitler, Stalin and Putin. Daniel was God’s great Prophet at this time. The Prophet Daniel did not sit down to come up with some great ‘Just War Theory’ to lead Israel into battle against Nebuchadnezzar. Instead, Daniel confessed the sins of Israel and acknowledged God’s Just punishment upon Israel. Daniel prayed and begged God to forgive the suffering exiled nation Israel. Daniel prayed to God that God deliver and Restore Israel, from the just punishments God Himself had placed upon them.

    Matthew 6:9 The Lord’s Prayer
    “This is how you are to pray: ‘Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven …//…
    Subject us not to trial but deliver us from the evil one.’

    Acts of the Apostles 26:17
    I shall deliver you from this people and from the Gentiles to whom I send you, to open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God,

    The reason we have God’s ‘morning star’ evil secular world dominant power Russia attacking us today, is because of our unrepentant sinfulness. Discussing a ‘just’ or ‘unjust’ war to counter God’s authorized ‘morning star ‘, evil secular world dominant power Russia, is not going to solve the problem. Getting Christ’s Church (2 billion Christians) to repent of their massive sins, and begging God to send His Son, Jesus Christ, to (Second Coming) Come and ‘deliver us from the evil one’ will rescue us from the evil one. It is God, not man, who grants peace to the world.

    • So war is the fault of catholics??? Thats cute. Thats the most rabidly anti-catholic statement I have seen in a very long time. Most wars are caused by people who have no moral compass at all. Like Hitler. Idi Amin. Or muslim clerics cheering on terrorists. Like the Communists. Wearing a cross and politically using the Russian Orthodox church does not make Putin a Christian of any sort. It just makes him politically savvy.There is a difference between idealism and reality. Any plan for peace can work if all parties cooperate. However, once a leader is taken by his own ambition and greed, war and death follow. It does NOT follow that the rest of us have to willingly put our heads on the chopping block to avoid fighting back. If you do not clearly start a war and kill others, you are within your right to defend yourself and your nation when a bully attacks you..

  14. The sources I trust present a radically different picture of what’s happening, why Putin invaded, who Zelensky really is, and the big picture of all this. The recent 24 page letter by Archbishop Vigano contains a wealth of historical analysis that appears to me to be evidence based, including censored facts which unmask Zelensky as a vicious criminal and scripted puppet. I am not pro-Putin in this at all, by the way. There are really no good guys or good side in this. As usual, the victims of the satanic globalists and their propaganda are the masses of good willed people and the poor defenseless people of these captured and corrupt states and leaders. The same people ultimately behind this great evil were behind the democidal plandemic.

    • Viganò wrote of ‘hundreds of thousands of victims’ of the Donbass War, which is a blatant exxaggeration and a lie

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