Repetition, it’s said, can be the mother of learning. So, in light of recent Catholic debates about the pursuit of peace in the Middle East and elsewhere, permit me to reprise, with slight adjustments, parts of a column from twenty-four years ago.
The points I made then seem to me as salient today as when I first made them:
In his [2002] World Day of Peace message, John Paul II taught a truth many Catholics have seemingly forgotten: that “peace,” in the classic Catholic sense of the term, is a matter of order, the order that is built through law and politics.
After citing Vatican II’s teaching that peace is “the fruit of the right ordering of things with which the divine founder has invested human society,” John Paul reminded us that the “peace of order” has been the normative Catholic concept of peace for a very long time. As the pope put it, more than fifteen hundred years ago, St. Augustine argued that “the peace that can and must be built in this world is the peace of right order—tranquillitas ordinis, the tranquillity of order.”
From Augustine’s City of God down to the modern papal magisterium, the Second Vatican Council, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, when the Catholic Church says “peace” it means “order”—the order that is built through politics and law on the foundations of justice (informed by charity) and freedom. …
“Peace” has many meanings. There is the “peace” that comes from a right relationship with God: the peace of inner serenity, which is a gift of grace. There is the “peace” of Isaiah’s vision of the “mountain … of the Lord,” where “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:4): this is the peace of the Kingdom of God, a peace of God’s making, not ours.
And then there is the “peace” of order. It is a humbler sort of peace. It coexists with bruised souls and broken hearts. It is a peace in which swords remain, sheathed or used to defend order, but are not yet beaten into plowshares. This is real-world peace, the Catholic Church teaches, and it can be built within and among nations.
We know this by experience, for this is the peace we enjoy within democratic political communities. No one would suggest that all Americans live serenely within a right relationship with God, or that our country is a conflict-free zone. Yet the United States is at peace: the peace of a just political order, which is no small achievement for a society of 350 million human beings of dramatic religious, racial, ethnic, and philosophical diversity.
Why are we at peace? Because we have ways other than mass violence to resolve our conflicts: law and politics, legislatures and courts, the open debate of a civil society.
The same kind of “peace” obtains in those parts of the world that have decided to make diplomacy and law, not weapons, the instruments for resolving the inevitable conflicts that arise between nations. A war between France and Germany today is inconceivable.
Why? Because the French and Germans have become saints? Please. Because there are no conflicts between them? Hardly. No, there is real-world peace in one historic cockpit of European conflict because a thick network of international political, legal, and economic institutions has given the French and the Germans other ways to settle their differences. It’s the peace of order.
The peace of order is the peace that the just-war tradition of moral reasoning has sought to restore or build since Augustine first formulated just-war principles in the early fifth century. It is a serious mistake, therefore, to think that the just-war tradition and the pursuit of peace are somehow in opposition to each other.
The peace of order is the end; the just-war tradition asks: When and how can that peace of order be restored or built by means of the proportionate and discriminate use of armed force? It is the end of peace that justifies the means of military action.
That is why defining the morally defensible goal being sought by use of armed force is a primary component of what the just-war way of thinking asks from statesmen. That definition is what has been missing from the Administration’s Iranian adventure, in which the goal seems to change with dizzying rapidity.
What would the peace of order look like in the Persian Gulf? That is the crucial just-war question that remains to be answered.
(Note: George Weigel’s column ‘The Catholic Difference’ is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver.)
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With due respect the present goal is clear, to wit, that the terrorist regime in Iran never obtain nuclear weapons to threaten world peace and security. Our nation continues extended negotiations to obtain this end and avoid further armed conflict. If these negotiations fail, then resort to force will be justified and necessary to remove this terrorist threat from the world and bring to the Iranian people the freedom and security for which they have yearned for almost half a century.
Right on.
The Rosary….Catholics, please remember what the present dismaying and dismayed hierarchy in the Vatican does not want to remember: that the day of Our Lady of the Rosary, October 7, is celebrated because of a Christian victory in war against an implacable enemy superior in strength—a victory achieved because a courageous Pope, a true leader, Pope Saint Pius V, had asked all the Christian fighters TO PRAY THE ROSARY BEFORE THE BATTLE, ASKING FOR DIVINE HELP TO DEFEAT THE ENEMY. THE CHRISTIANS GOT THE HELP. THEY CRUSHED TE ENEMY.
This was the great naval battle of Lepanto, October 7 1571, in which the combined fleets of the Papacy, Spain, Venice and other Italian cities (The Holy League, organized by Pope Saint Pius V), defeated the huge naval forces of the Muslim Turks and stopped the Muslim advance in the Mediterranean. This advance had already conqured for Islam the entire Anatolian peninsula (now Turkey, but once a Grek Christian land, a site of many of the triumphs of the Apostle Paul), Greece, the Balkans, and was threatening central Europe.
The victory gave Christians a big respite, though the Muslims would continue their advance by land and besiege Vienna in 1683 (they had already besieged it in 1525 and failed thanks to the great Christian warriors of the time). They would fail again, thanks to the great Catholic warrior, King Jan Sobieski of Poland. See these historical accounts of events that so many Catholics do not know about and that the present CC hides:
The Banners of Lepanto
https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/the-banners-of-lepanto
Eastern Europe’s ‘Subconscious Fear’ of Islam: The Siege of Vienna
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/07/15/2019/eastern-europes-subconscious-fear-of-islam-the-siege-of-vienna-1683
I hope & pray the people of Iran get that freedom. They deserve it. So does Cuba.
I agree.
I agree on 2 counts, the first being GW’s implied criticism of Pontiff Leo’s statements on the war against the Islamic Regime of Tehran, and the second his explicit criticism of President Trump’s statements about the same war.
As the essay implies, the Pontiff Leo has not expressed or illuminated the Christian belief in Just War principles, and merely iterates his personal, political (i.e., non-Christian in nature) pacifist thinking.
And also, the POTUS himself has not spoken well.
I support trying to force the Islamic Revolutionary Regime to surrender its nuclear weapons goals and its petro-funding of the Hezbollah terror army in Lebanon, and any-such Islamic violence/warfare suppported financially or otherwise by the Islamic Revolutionary Regime of Tehran.
They should be starved of all petro-dollars until they are replaced by Iranian leaders who prefer to “live peacefully in the world.”
They should be starved of all petro-dollars until they are replaced by Iranian leaders who prefer to “live peacefully in the world.”
We really need to stop using the word “leaders”. The world is ruled, not led. Anybody who thinks the Iranians are suddenly going to start following the former Shah’s son is foolish. We might impose him. Awesome. That worked splendidly last time with his ol’ man.
The only people I see being starved of any kind of dollars are motorists. It’s just about $30 more to fill up my Subie now as opposed to four months ago, and the only good thing about that is I don’t have the neighbor’s F-350-that poor person of unacknowledged paternity drops a C-note at every fillup.
Soon the price of diesel will hit the grocery shelves, and next year increased fertilizer costs will arrive at the dance. Because higher oil causes substitution effects in the broader energy market, buckle up, because the already distorted electricity market (thanks to greening and data centers-we really need the Pope’s new buddies at Anthropic) are going to crush people even more.
Oil is fungible. That’s why this didn’t work in the last cool war we got ourselves into with a rush of propaganda about the penile piano player in olive drab and the falsetto military bearing being the new Churchill. Meanwhile, he’s oppressed churches, sent political opponents to the front, cancelled elections, been revealed involved in and surrounded by fraud. The one thing we can rely on is the slaughter continuing. Meanwhile, Russia used India as an intermediary and developed alternate payment systems-accelerating the coming demise of the petro-dollar that allows our “precious kleptocracy” to continuing foisting our ever growing debt (crossed $4T under Bush, 18T under Obama and now headed to $40T) on to capital markets
Dr. Sowell is fond of saying a lot of bad ideas can be dispatched with a simple question “and then what?”. People are supposed to become better at anticipating higher order effects with age, but given the predilection to act like Pleistocene megafauna attracted to the same tar pits, I see no evidence of it.
Pitchfork:
Wrt my comment, the word “leaders” includes anyone who leads, including “rulers.”
The issue regarding the Islamic Revolutionary Regime in Tehran seems to me to boil down to this:
A. They exist, as they have advertised and acted in the world for 50 years, for 1 and only 1 reason: to make all infidels live in terror.
B. Therefore, the tables should be turned on them, and the Islamic Revolutionary Regime in Tehran should themselves, instead, be forced to live in terror, until they stop pursuing nukes and funding terror armies in other countries like Hezbollah in Lebanon, etc.
I share your respect for Thomas Sowell, and with that in mind, what do you think is the desired “then what?” regarding the Islamic Revolutionary Regime in Tehran?
The best way to starve petro dollars is to stop buying the oil and use renewable energy. Trump doesn’t seem to be a fan though so I guess will just engage in endless war for oil. Sigh.
Suzanne:
No renewables are simply not an answer to energy demand. “Renewables” are simply a fraud. They are not and will never offer the amount of fuel needed for the world.
The only primary (i.e. significant in energy supply) resources for energy are:
Oil, Natural Gas, Coal, Nuclear, and Hydroelectric.
The renewable energy idea is simply a political fraud, a duper high cost, subsidized cottage industry created by hucksters who get rich on government subsidized, fraud-green-deal companies.
Right. Because we all know that solar panels and windmills can meet all our energy needs 🙄
“The best way to starve petro dollars is to stop buying the oil and use renewable energy. ”
Do you ever think before you post? Is your “renewable energy” going to be a component of wax, ink, vitamin capsules, denture adhesives, toilet seats, upholstery, CDs, putty, guitar strings, crayons, pillows, artificial turf, hair coloring, deodorant, lipstick, nylon, heart valves, anesthetics cortisone, aspirin.
The world doesn’t run on vapid childishness.
Ok Boomer 😉
Suzanne: I guess you don’t drive a car, ride in a car, takes buses, use electricity, etc.
I have an EV that is powered by my solar panels. Thanks for asking!
That’s vain in the Southwest, impossible in the Pacific Northwest.
Quoting me? Oh how flattering.
With respect I submit that the Trump Administration is and has been conducting extensive negotiations with Iran in an attempt to avoid further armed conflict and ensure that the terrorist Iranian regime will never possess nuclear weapons to threaten world peace and security. If these good faith efforts fail, the Administration will be justified in taking military action to end this terrorist threat to world peace and security and gain for the Iranian people the peace, security and freedom they have been denied for almost half a century.
Regime change will not happen without invasion and occupation. Are we willing to do that?
I doubt it. Back in March,we were told the war would end in two weeks. So far, that has not happened. A little bit of honesty might be in order, for a change.
I agree overall.
I do think that President Trump hasn’t always helped his cause with some of his statements (especially the one on “destroying Iran’s civilization”), but my sense is he was just verbally flailing when he made that statement.
I don’t have a sense of how this will all turn out, but my hope is that at minimum the US remains unchanged in the intent to cut off all petroleum revenues (and constrict other revenues) from the Islamic Revolutionary Regime in Tehran, until they surrender their war goals of nukes and funding terror armies like Hezbollah, and otherwise funding terror.
In “Magnifica Humanitas” Pope Leo XIV cites the fluidity of Francis when he writes: “Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated.”
Four Comments and something from another pope—the poet “Alexander Pope”!
FRIST, perhaps what Leo really meant to say was that ongoing active conflicts cannot be rationalized into an endlessly ramped up budget item. What, then, is a “war”? But this vertigo is not at all new. Yours truly recalls reading a scholarly article on this very topic—graphs and all—in the “Naval Institute Journal,” while serving on an aircraft carrier in the Tonkin Gulf in 1969. I, too, was dizzied by the prospect of non-discrete episodes of fluid “war.” (Analogous to the physics of light as both a particle and a wave!).
SECOND, without contradicting the expressed revulsion in Magnifica Humanitas toward routinized warfare, the full Magisterium reminds us that such a Fundamental Option toward overly-routinized bundling of self-defense is morally indefensible, so to speak.
THIRD, the real concern, then, is the deeper perspective of the encyclical “Humanae Vitae” (1968) as expounded more broadly in the encyclical “Veritatis Splendor” (1993):
“For mortal sin exists also when a person knowingly and willingly, for whatever reason, chooses something gravely disordered. In fact, such a choice already includes contempt for the divine law, a rejection of God’s love for humanity and the whole of creation: the person turns away from God and loses charity. Consequently, THE FUNDAMENTAL ORIENTATION CAN BE RADICALLY CHANGED BY PARTICULAR ACTS [italics]. [….] One cannot proceed to create a theological category, which is precisely what the ‘fundamental option’ is, understanding it in such a way that it objectively changes or casts doubts upon the traditional concept of mortal sin” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 70, citing the Apostolic Exhortation “Reconciliatio et Paenitentia”, Dec. 2, 1984).
ALEXANDER POPE: “Alps on Alps arise!” Under the Socratic Method, every answer elicits another Question. Here are four questions:
About routinized rationalization and the fantasy of decision “categories” exempt from moral judgments…”Veritatis Splendor,” which is briefly noted in “Magnifica Humanitas,” is applicable to not only the fallacy of Fundamental Option moral exemptions to not only (a) morally ambivalent technology and especially AI, but also to (b) bureaucratically routinized active warfare as flagged by Pope Leo, and to (c) the supposedly morally exempt position, so to speak, of synodal LGBTQ-ism, and even to (d) non-Christian and radical Islam which DEFINES eternal jihad as the pre-emptive and very definition (!) of a “just war”—now even including fluid steps toward yet more nuclear proliferation and Islamic global blackmail.
Inseparable from possibly problematic lines in Pope Leo’s “Magnifica Humanitas,” he also has instituted ongoing Socratic Q & A on the (jihad-like?) AI culture by the new Interdicasteral Commission on Artificial Intelligence. https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-05/pope-leo-interdicasterial-artificial-intelligence-commission.html
George Weigel is in a difficult position. He is in favor of the Iran war, but his historic dislike of President Trump prevents him from giving him credit for taking action, rather than kicking the can down the road like his predecessors. Thus his implied criticism of Trump at the end of the article.
The chattering class often finds itself caught in the thickets of its prior pronouncements. He’s no different in that regard than Trump’s new chickenhawk buddy Mark Levin.
Nentanyahu been saying Iran will have “nuclear weapons in two weeks” for the last 40 years.
The “Very Stable Genius” got bamboozled by Netanyahu. Bibi likely told Trump that the war would be quick and easy. Iran would capitulate and he would be a hero. Trump appears to have believed him. Another war of choice, fought with borrowed money. We never learn.
Right. Trump is just a pawn of some mysterious Jewish cabal that secretly runs the world. How embarrassing, and antisemitic.
Secret Jewish cabal? Not really. Netanyahu, Putin and a few others, know how to handle Trump. They flatter him and he goes along with them.
Anti Semitic? Hardly, given my German Jewish ancestry.