>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made at around four in the morning three days ago.

President Trump had been up all night based on the steady stream of posts he had made on his platform, Truth Social.

He began at 9 p.m.

The night before, and in the course of around a dozen posts every half hour or so, he had attacked Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, Barack Obama.

And then in the middle of the night, Pope Leo President Trump was furious that Pope Leo had become an outspoken critic of both Ice and the war in Iran.

So the president lashed out in a long post, calling the Pope soft on crime, saying that the pope wants Iran to have nuclear weapons.

He said that the Pope's brother was the better brother because, after all, Pope Leo's brother is a registered Republican and a Trump supporter.

So what was it that made Trump so angry?

Well, Pope Leo has said that the way of the sword is not the way of the righteous, and that dropping bombs does not lead to peace.

For that, Vice President JD Vance later jumped in, saying that he thinks the pope needs to think more carefully about theology and just war theory.

That's a theory that dates back at least a thousand years, if not several thousand years.

And Vance believes that the Iran war fits within that framework.

Vance also said that the pope would be wise to stay out of American affairs.

None of this has swayed the pope, an American pope who says he is not afraid of the Trump administration and he will not stop speaking about peace and the responsibility of the powerful.

Roughly 20% of the United States is Catholic.

That's more than 53 million people.

What has it been like for them watching their president and their pope at odds?

Trump has been quite popular with American Catholics.

He pulled 56% of Catholics in the 2024 election.

White Catholics in particular, really like President Trump, so perhaps he feels comfortable attacking the head of the Catholic Church this hour.

A conversation with some local Catholic leaders, including a discussion of just war theory.

My guests include Jamie Fazio, who is the director and university chaplain in the center for spirituality at Nazareth University.

Welcome.

Thank you for being with us.

>> Thank you for having me.

>> And Patricia Schulz is with us.

Dr.

Scholz is a moral theologian and director of mission integration for the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Rochester, and someone who has taught on just war theory.

Welcome to the program.

>> Thank you.

Glad to be here.

>> How does one get to be a moral theologian?

>> One goes to school for a long, long time.

It involves reading a lot of books and sitting a long time.

>> And just war theory is not just, um, it's not just a phrase.

It has a long history that we're going to be talking about.

So we're glad to have Pat with us here.

Um, and I want to say a couple of things.

We're going to listen to some sound from what the president's been saying, what the Pope's been saying.

You ought to hear that if you haven't.

Let me also say that, um, you know, as I mentioned in the data, the Catholic Church is not a monolith.

The Catholic people are not a monolith.

Catholic Americans are not a monolith.

President Trump has done well with Catholics.

He, as far as I can tell, continues to do pretty well with Catholics.

I don't know if that polling will change based on the last week and the back and forth with the Pope.

We'll see.

But it would be to me a little bit more, um, enriching to have a conversation in which we also had a conservative Catholic leader with us, someone who might have strong views against this pope or in favor of what the Trump Trump administration is saying.

We have reached out to a number of people within the church locally, and they've all declined.

So, listeners, it's kind of I'm kind of putting the bat signal out.

If you are a Catholic in a congregation with a more conservative leaning, I would like to hear from you or your leadership, and you're welcome on this program.

I don't want people to feel that their voices are drowned out.

I also want to say that the fact that it's hard to get people in the room together who disagree is not a surprise.

I think that is somewhat the result of a very fragmented media landscape in which people are just not used to either listening to podcasts or consuming media with that will challenge them.

They're not used to being challenged.

And it's also maybe a personal failing of mine.

If I can't convince people who disagree to get together, that's part of my job and I'm going to try to keep doing better with that.

So I just want to put that out there.

Um, I'm glad to have the guests that we do have here today.

We'll welcome your feedback as we always do.

You don't have to be a Catholic to correspond with the show today.

I'd really love to hear from Catholics how you're feeling about the last week.

And I want to start by listening to what has been said.

So first, let's listen to Pope Leo talking about the subject of tyranny and talking about how he sees some of the recent developments.

>> The masters of war pretended not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy it.

Often a lifetime is often not enough to rebuild.

They turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation.

Yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found.

Jesus told us, blessed are the peacemakers, but woe to those who manipulate religion in the very name of God for their own military, economic or political gain.

Dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.

The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters.

>> So that's Pope Leo.

Let's listen to some of what President Trump said in response.

>> Why did you attack Pope Leo on Truth Social?

>> Uh, I don't think he's doing a very good job.

He likes crime.

I guess he, uh, he hit us.

Think of it.

He's worried about fear.

What about the fear when the ministers and the priests and the all of those great people that were arrested during Covid.

And in many cases, they're outside ten feet apart.

And they were arrested.

So we don't like it.

We don't like a pope that's going to say that it's okay to have a nuclear weapon.

We don't want a pope that says crime is okay in our cities.

I don't like it.

I'm not a big fan of Pope Leo.

He's a very liberal person, and he's a man that doesn't believe in stopping crime.

He's a man that doesn't think that we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world.

I'm not I'm not a fan of Pope Leo.

>> Whatever you think of the president and the pope, it's extraordinary.

I've not heard an exchange like that in my lifetime.

Now, the vice President, JD Vance, has a forthcoming book about his conversion to Catholicism, and he had some thoughts during a turning Point USA event, a public event this week about his pope.

Let's listen.

>> When when the Pope says that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword, there is a thousand year, more than a thousand year tradition of just war theory.

Okay, now we can, of course, have disagreements about whether this or that conflict is just.

But I think that it's important in the same 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.

And I think that one of these issues here is that there has been is, again, hey, random dude screaming.

I told you I'd respond to your point.

I just want to respond to this question first, but I think one of the issues here is that if you're 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.

>> And we're going to hear from the Pope.

The last clip we'll have is, is the Pope responding?

I'll just say about Vice President JD Vance.

It has been reported in the last week in The New York Times, and it's not a surprise that he's been the member of the Trump administration who tried to avert the war in Iran.

Privately, he's been supporting it publicly.

He apparently has told the administration privately this is a bad idea, that we don't need to do it.

And now he says, if the pope criticizes it, the pope doesn't understand just war theory.

Let's listen to the pope's response to all that.

>> I have no fear.

Neither the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the gospel.

And.

And that's what I believe.

I am called to know what the church is called to do.

We're not politicians.

We're not looking to make foreign policy, as he calls it, with the same perspective that he might understand it.

But I do believe that the message of the gospel blessed are the peacemakers, is the message that the world needs to hear today.

>> Again, not great audio on the plane there, but the Pope saying he has no fear of the Trump administration and he's going to continue to speak about why he believes blessed are the peacemakers and the message of the gospel.

So pretty.

Again, pretty extraordinary.

There.

Jamie Fazio, you know, from the perspective of someone who may be very interested in the Pope's kind of calm demeanor and response to this, I've never seen a pope attacked by an American president like this.

What do you make of the back and forth you've heard?

What do you make of the last week?

>> Well, it's definitely been an interesting week.

I think, from Pope Leo.

You know, he's an Augustinian priest and he's grounded in that charism and that charism has a charism is a gift.

Uh, an individual or a group to the world or to the church.

And part of that charism is a deep, contemplative interior, interior spirituality.

And that grounds him.

And you see someone who isn't reacting, but someone responding.

And I think some of the reactions we've heard have been interesting because what he's saying isn't something new for a pope to say, you know, the role of the pope isn't to be political.

He's not being political.

He's inviting the world and he's inviting individuals and leaders to pause and reflect on the moral consequences of our choices, individually and collectively.

And, um, popes have been doing this, for, for centuries and even more recently with American presidents for decades.

>> Yeah.

I actually think that's a really important point that you're making, Jamie, because I think it would be easy to get caught up in just the recency bias of the last week to say, well, nothing like no pope has ever said anything like this.

No.

No presidents ever said anything like this.

The latter may be true, but Pope Benedict was a critic of American war aims in.

>> Benedict was, I think Francis was 2013.

Francis didn't want to see a war in Syria.

Pope Benedict was critical of President Obama and some of his interventions in places like Libya.

So popes have been critical of war.

And in a moment, we'll talk to Pat more about why that is.

Because the Vatican is not just being introduced to just war theory.

They think about this a lot.

And this is not the first pope who's thought a lot.

>> About it goes back.

I'd even go back even farther.

Um, it was Paul the Sixth, now Saint Paul the sixth, who was the first pope to speak to the United Nations.

Uh, and he was also very active with President Johnson at the time, speaking against the Vietnam War.

Um, John Paul II, now Saint John Paul the second, you know, we know his relationship with President Reagan to end the Cold War, but also what is not as much known is, you know, he sent a delegation to really persuade President Bush not to invade Iraq with the fear that it would cause decades of, um, chaos.

>> And in 1991.

>> In 1991.

And so popes have always had communication with American presidents, again, not leaning in as politicians, but leaning in as someone who invites us to reflect on those deep moral questions.

And that that war is one of those questions that affects not not just Catholics.

Obviously, everyone in the world.

>> So, Pat, when it comes to just war theory, we could take your classes and spend many hours on this.

Sure.

But the short question that I think is important to start with is if it is not just an idea, when people hear it, they'll probably go, oh, well, that's just asking yourself if this war is justified, because could it be worse if you don't start this war?

It has some specific ideas.

What do you want people to understand about just war theory?

>> Uh, first, just war theory, as we've been saying, is very ancient.

I mean, it goes back.

It's not just religious either.

It certainly was espoused by the Catholic Church back to Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, but the Greeks and the Romans and civilization in general has struggled with war is terrible.

It's terrible for those who win.

Those who lose.

It's just a reality that is very hard on humanity.

So we've struggled with when should we go to war?

When is it right to undertake this terrible human endeavor?

And then even when we're in the war and the bombs and the bullets are flying, is there an ethical way to do this, to engage in this, uh, activity, this horrible, our aggression, our probably our aggressive side needs to be limited, needs to be contained, but also the question arises, when is there a genuine need to engage in civil violence?

When can nations cross their borders and actually use violence against one another?

People?

So just war theory emerged almost from human beings recognizing this is a terrible human reality.

But do we sometimes have to go to war?

So the intention of just war theory, and I'm not sure if Vice President Vance's comments somehow questioned this, but the intention is to limit the evil that war causes.

And I think that's the question that I mean, at first for Christians after Jesus, Christians didn't even work for the state.

They didn't participate in armies.

They were a pacifist little sect off to the side.

But in the fourth century, somehow Constantine, the Roman emperor, became a Christian.

And he announced, oh, Christianity will be the official religion.

All of a sudden.

Then Christians would be running countries, would be, uh, generals in the army.

So the church, then Augustine in particular, tried to espouse look at the moral teachings.

How can we do this in a righteous way?

How can we limit the obvious evil, uh, reality that war is?

And I think that's how just war theory was espoused by religions.

But it's also embraced by military chaplains.

We've seen them.

The Catholic chaplain himself talked to his military Catholic troops, saying maybe there are some exercises involved in war that we will not be able to participate in.

>> Now when it comes to the the list of reasons that might justify war in some sense, um, where, what's the, what's the current thinking on where just war theory has evolved to?

>> Well, just war theory, basically, if you look at either the secular and it's just war tradition's not tradition, there are many, uh, you know, articulations of it, but basically cause is one, you've got to have a just cause.

When should we go to war?

What's a legitimate reason?

And in the past, the recent past self-defense.

If you're if a nation is attacked.

So Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt was before Congress the next day, we, the United States, had to go to war to defend itself.

Uh, President Bush was convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

So we had to protect our innocent people.

Uh, sometimes a nation might have real evidence that another nation is about to attack them.

And that might be they call that the preemptive strike.

Then it would be just you'd have a reason to attack another nation that had not, in fact, attacked you.

But you have to strike them.

And sometimes there's a what they call preventive preventive measures.

We think they might attack us.

Now, this is much looser and much harder to prove, but just cause you've got to have a cause to go to war.

And it's got to be a righteous cause.

Second intention, you go to war to achieve something good.

So we thought at the time, deposing Saddam Hussein, he had even eliminated one of his own villages of 5000 people.

So deposing Hussein as a brutal despot would be seen as a good intention.

The world would be better for that.

We go to protect ourselves, to defend human rights.

There have even been wars fought for humanitarian causes.

I think part of World War Two, and if it was a righteous war and it seemed had to do with the annihilation of the Jewish population of Europe.

So just in tension, you don't go to war for your own glory or somehow your own ego needs for our nation to prevail somehow.

A third one is just authority.

Only nations can wage war, and so we can't have Vermont declaring war on Canada over a border dispute.

We can't have individuals declaring war.

It's got to be the authority of the nation.

And for the US, of course, we've held constitutionally, it's the Congress that can declare war.

Now we've gone to war.

Vietnam.

That was a big piece in there because Congress did not declare war in that war.

So just authority is important.

It can't ever be one man's war.

It's got to be a national war.

Fourthly, reasonable chance of success.

The underdog.

I mean, this is very hard, but underdogs should not declare war on some massively powerful nation because they will understandably come out at a loss.

They'll lose property, they'll lose lives, and they will not be successful.

War is enormously costly, humanly costly, and economically costly.

So there has to be a reasonable chance of success for war to be waged.

Proportionality again, the evil that you're going to cause in this war has to be proportional to the good you're hoping to attain.

So if you're having some sort of a trade dispute with some nation, it's not time to launch a nuclear missile.

There has to be proportionality, little offenses don't warrant wild, vicious wars.

We can't destroy a people and an infrastructure, uh, for the sake of some knit, some small offense.

Um, and we have to also say, will our going to war here make things better than if we just leave the evil every government, I mean, there are lots of governments that need to be replaced on this planet probably right now, but we're going to war and causing all that evil be proportionate at the end to the good.

You may be able to attain.

Or is it better to simply tolerate what may be a very evil situation?

And the last portion of the going to war kind of rules or propositions is simply last resort.

Have you tried diplomacy?

Have you tried boycotts?

Have you looked for economic sanctions or even tariffs, some nonviolent means to bring about the betterment of this?

What may be a very horrible situation?

So that sort of just war theory on when you decide to go to war.

>> Okay.

And then interestingly, the just war theory also has ideas about the conduct of war itself.

>> That's right.

>> And so when you bring up World War Two.

>> Yes, yes.

>> It strikes me again, I'm just a student in your class.

Yeah.

I think you could make the argument maybe people already have.

And maybe I'm just piling on to something obvious that our joining in that war could have been righteous, given what was at stake, given the attempt to annihilate the Jewish population.

Mhm.

And the use of nuclear weapons on civilian populations is outside the bounds of just war.

Is that correct?

>> Absolutely right.

See those six propositions that I named?

Those are for reasons to go to war.

But there are also some we maintain standards while you're in the war and fighting it.

And there has to be a distinction.

The major one here, distinction between targeting civilians and targeting military installations.

It is never according to just war theory.

From the beginning.

And in most acceptance of one of these traditions right now, it is never moral to directly target civilians.

And that was done in, uh, World War Two.

Certainly Japan.

>> But but certainly Dr.

Schultz, certainly the last week we've seen with the president saying that he was going to annihilate an entire civilization.

Yes.

That he would bomb the infrastructure that the people of Iran need, their energy, their power grid, that that would cause undeniable suffering among the people, not the regime that he hates.

>> That is an absolute violation of what we have come to accept, not just Catholics, but the world in general, have come to accept as make, you know, drawing a war to be considered an immoral war.

>> Okay.

And this is where and I actually have a couple of emails from conservative Catholics that I'm going to get to in a second here on the subject of whether Iran could fall under the just war theory category, but this is what confuses me about what the vice president says.

When the vice president says the pope should step back and be more careful about his theology with just war theory, and the vice president himself has privately argued against the war, and the vice president understands that the president was threatening to annihilate the entire Iranian people, to blow up their power grid, to cause enormous suffering in the population, the mass population, not the regime.

Is it plausible that the vice President doesn't understand just war theory, or thinks that it's okay to threaten an entire civilization, as long as you don't kill them all?

As long as you don't follow through or it's okay to take out a power grid and make people suffer.

If you can use that to end the war itself, I don't I don't know what he would say.

He's not in the room, but I wonder how that hit, how that struck you.

>> But I don't think is that his charge against Pope Leo is just or is right or right on?

Pope Leo is exactly right.

You cannot just the statement.

Now, maybe I get worried about rhetoric and how people talk, but it is not theologically moral.

Theologically, uh, appropriate or right or accurate to say that that statement made by our current administration or is correct.

It's not just war theory has always said you, you do not you conduct war, but you do not directly, uh, target civilian people or install.

Now, accidents, of course, happen.

Inadvertent indirect attacks.

Yes.

A school gets it does it's going to in war.

That's part of the evil of it a hospital.

But to say you're going to annihilate a civilian population and a culture and a heritage absolutely violates just war theory.

The Pope is not wrong there.

And the and the vice president, I can't say if he's wrong.

I don't know enough.

He made pithy statements.

He didn't explain it.

But in my opinion and in that of moral theologians.

And you saw other churchmen, other theologians say, that's not wrong.

That's right.

>> Jamie, do you think that the Catholic Church is going to be split in some way with this, this dispute, or do you think the church church will emerge?

Okay, out of all of this?

>> Well, I think the church will emerge, okay, out of this because this comes from central church teaching.

If we look at the catechism and John Paul II advocated for this, you know, the catechism states, because of the evils and injustice that all war brings with it, we must do everything reasonably possible to avoid it.

>> But when the Pope says, though, when the Pope, his words were that he.

He talked about people who would manipulate religion for military, economic or personal gain.

Now, in that specific set of remarks, he did not mention the American administration.

He was talking more generally.

But the implication to most people who heard it was that he was talking about the American administration that would manipulate religion.

And the reason I ask is if you're concerned about the health of the Catholic Church right now, is that it is pretty evenly split.

It's actually not even all that evenly split.

I mean, the president continued to get a majority of Catholic votes in his elections.

And now the head of the church is warning that this may be someone who's manipulating religion for sort of ill gotten gains.

I mean, that is not a small charge.

And you're saying, okay, but the church can handle that.

The people, the Catholic population can handle that and not be sort of figured.

>> Well, it's an invitation for us.

It's an invitation individually and collectively to think about who are we and how are we called to live.

And I found it interesting that both the vice President referenced that, uh, the pope needed to be careful, and the speaker of the House was taken aback and said that, um, some of the comments were political.

And when the Pope steps into the political realm, he should expect a political response.

The opposite of that is where I think, um, Leo was coming from.

When you step into a moral realm, you should expect a moral response.

Um, if we're not really reflecting on the values and if you're claiming to be acting from a place of Christianity, then you should be acting from a place of the integrity of that tradition.

And right from blessed are the peacemakers came right out of Jesus's mouth.

And it was pretty consistent.

And so are we reflecting, are we using tradition to forward an action that we want, or is the tradition inviting us to respond in a way that we're really called to do?

And, um, uh, you know, I think about, uh, the secretary of war's reference of, uh, the scripture passage that was, uh, came out of, uh, Pulp fiction, pulp fiction.

>> So yes, Samuel Jackson's.

>> Character, um, that is an example of proof texting, trying to find something that justifies my position.

And the pope isn't doing that.

The pope is inviting us to look at the tradition and asking ourselves, is our choices and our actions aligning with who we're called to be in the world.

And that's a, that's a that's a significant difference.

>> So let's invite some feedback from the audience.

We'll take emails and phone calls after this break.

It's 844295 Talk toll free 8442958255263.

WXXI if you call from Rochester 2639994.

The email address, as always, Connections at wxxi.org.

You can join the chat on our YouTube channel if you're watching on YouTube, Jamie Fazio is the director and university chaplain in the center for spirituality at Nazareth University.

And doctor Pat Scholz is here.

A moral theologian and director of mission integration for the Sisters of Saint Joseph, Saint Joseph of Rochester.

This short break your feedback next.

Coming up in our second hour, it's our weekly news roundup, a plan to pay volunteer firefighters to attract more people to the firefighting ranks.

We'll tell you about that.

A new plan to expand dental health coverage to people who need it in our region.

And we'll conclude the week with news of the newest class of the Rochester Music Hall of Fame.

That's next.

Our.

>> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Bob Johnson Auto Group.

Believing an informed public makes for a stronger community.

Proud supporter of Connections with Evan Dawson focused on the news, issues and trends that shape the lives of listeners in the Rochester and Finger Lakes regions.

Bobjohnsonautogroup.com.

>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson David in San Francisco, California.

First on the phone.

Hi, David.

Go ahead.

>> Oh, thanks, Evan.

And your guest?

Uh, yeah, I'm glad your guest just mentioned the, uh, fake biblical phrase, uh, from Pulp Fiction.

Uh, was it Tarantino's extremely violent, murderous movie?

And Hegseth is does a one for one quote from it, pretending that that's from the Bible.

And, uh, if you've paid attention in the last couple of days, the, uh, I think it was the Treasury Secretary, uh, gave testimony in Congress about how they, uh, Trump wants to basically double the military budget to $1.5 trillion.

He has no idea how much Trump has spent already in Iran.

And, uh, they're the basic, uh, estimate is a half $1 trillion in the course of a month and a half.

And they want to add a trillion and a half.

And then, of course, cut social spending.

So that very much fits with the, the pope's, uh, quote that you played earlier, that, uh, you know, cutting apart the needs of the people in order to justify a war and then justifying a war with outright lies.

So, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's, uh, if it wasn't so preposterous, it would be, uh, what do you suppose it's a mortal sin?

>> Oh, boy.

I'm going to ask the moral theologian to respond to that.

Thank you.

David, what do you think, Pat?

>> The military spending, is that what the question is or is it.

>> I. David, do you want to clarify exactly what you want the moral theologian to comment on?

>> Go ahead.

Moral sin would be what?

>> Well, the, uh, the fake quote from the Bible, which is a quote from from Pulp Fiction.

And, uh, Pulp Fiction, was just before a guy murders another, a hitman kills another guy.

Uh, he goes into a religious tirade, and that's exactly the quote that, uh, that, uh, Hegseth did in the Pentagon the other day.

He starts it off as if he's going to talk military affairs.

And he, he starts it off with a prayer, which is this abominable, uh, phrasing from a violent movie.

And so he pretends that it's from the Bible, uh, as, as such.

And, uh, but then of course, Hegseth is well aware that they're about to double the military budget and cut social spending.

>> By the way, Pat, is anything that from that Pulp Fiction quote.

Is that from the Old Testament?

Anyway?

I don't know.

I don't know if any.

>> They say it is.

I can't find it directly in there, but I we can't attribute sin to another person.

We don't know their conscience or what's happening.

But certainly as a moral flaw, there was a deliberate, misleading there, I believe, on the part of the Secretary of War or his title, but I we can't impute sin in another person.

That's part of moral theology, too.

>> And that's not the first time, by the way, that Hegseth has talked in that way.

He talked about a month ago of praying to God to break the teeth of the enemy.

>> And that's that's direct quote from.

>> Now.

>> That is.

>> That is.

>> From Jamie might want to comment.

>> Well, I would just say the caller's questions raises.

Um, you know, how how do we want to spend our tax dollars?

How do we want to build community up?

I was reading that the spending is about $1 billion a day on the war in Iraq right now.

You know, for Christians, for Catholics, how would Jesus spend $1 billion a day?

You know, for us as Americans, as we celebrate our 250th anniversary, how do we want to spend $1 billion a day?

You know, what are the values we were founded on?

What are the values that we profess individually and collectively as citizens, as baptized Christians or those from other traditions, or where you find grounding?

How did our traditions, how does our Constitution invite us to spend $1 billion a day?

I don't think it's on bombs.

Um, there's a lot of other needs we can create locally, nationally, and globally that could be solved with $1 billion a day that would prevent often a lot of these regimes from coming forward.

>> And part of just war theory just on that, just war theory assumes that war can be used for good.

It's going to create a war with more justice, or avoid some injustice, but it's going to create a world that is somehow better and more just and more peaceful.

At the end.

Whereas in terms of the spending, the president himself has said, I think it was this week, perhaps earlier, though, where he said the federal government can no longer afford daycare, Medicare or Medicaid, because we have to spend those dollars on war.

And there were three cardinals on 60 minutes this week, and one of them criticized the administration in terms of them preparing for perpetual war and assuming that relations among nations will always be adversarial, whereas just war theory, ironically wants to say, actually war, we don't want war.

We want peace.

War can only be used when it will result in peace.

So creating a world where we only prepare for war, changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War is certainly seeming to create an environment where war is the is the expected state of humanity really?

The Catholic Church has always been based in natural law and the common good, and the fact that we can be one.

Humanity on one planet, living for a community of nations.

That's not what the administration.

And I think that's very much a part of Vance's critique of the Pope.

>> Okay, let's get, uh, a different David.

That was David in San Francisco, David in Irondequoit next on the phone.

Hi, David.

Go ahead.

>> Hi.

Um, I would like to know how, um, these people square Jesus admonition to turn the other cheek.

How is that squared with just war theory in regarding not hurting and killing, killing civilians?

I'd like to hear the guests talk about the bombing of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki.

Thank you.

>> Okay.

Thank you.

David.

Uh, Dr.

Schultz, you want to hit that one, too?

>> I can just say those were direct targeting of civilians.

The bombings that he mentioned, Dresden was the really.

It was the ruination of a city, though.

Those, uh, those particular, uh, activities, those actions violated just war theory.

Just war theory avoids two other extremes.

One being pacifism, just war theory is not pacifist.

Jesus spoke like a pacifist, you know, he who lives by the sword or she will also die by this.

Love your enemies.

That's a pacifist ethic being advanced by Jesus.

Just war theory was not even needed until Christians started to be part of the administration and the running of secular society.

When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, then it was deemed that Christians would have to entertain.

At times the use of force.

Just.

War theory tries to say at times force.

Military force has to be used in the relay.

But it was always for a good purpose.

>> Ostensibly so.

>> Ostensibly so.

Now many people I. I studied with a guy named John Yoder, a Mennonite, and he claimed just.

War theory has never been tried or used.

And if we did, we would never go to war.

But because we misuse it and misunderstand it as somehow.

But no action by a government and military use of military can be just.

>> On that subject.

Mike writes in to say thank you for this program.

Very important conversation.

I might just point out that picking up on Sister Pat's point, there is a good deal of controversy historically on whether war can ever be just.

And that this was a belief held for hundreds of years based on the Gospels and related to what Jamie said, the Pope's words, in my opinion, were political as opposed to being partisan, and that the Pope and people of good conscience do have an obligation to speak politically.

That's from Mike.

First of all, the latter point.

>>, I would agree, and I would I would say, you know, we have a when we hear the word political, we have an American understanding of political.

Um, the Pope is speaking about, uh, subjects that are political, but through the lens of how are we acting morally and ethically?

Um, which it's not about a particular party's position, but what it means to be human and how we're called to be human in community.

>> That's right.

Okay.

And Pat, Mike is just kind of amplifying the point that he thinks there's a legitimate debate about whether if you truly went down the list of what just war theory says, whether you could ever justify a war.

>> That's absolutely part of the debate, part of the conversation, and has been that if just war theory were actually legitimately and appropriately applied, there would be no war.

>> Uh, Gary on YouTube, watching on YouTube says, uh, please remind your guests that Pete Hegseth is the secretary of defense.

That remains his official title.

Okay, fair.

Thank you.

He says as and Gary says, as an atheist and devout skeptic, this is the one time I have to cheer on the Pope.

That's from Gary.

Uh, but here's from Dallas, uh, conservative Catholic who says the only time the left cares about the church is when they can attack the right with it.

Why does the Vatican have walls?

Because Muslims kept attacking.

Why doesn't the Vatican take in any immigrants?

What has the pope said about Iran killing protesters?

I'm a Catholic, but I look at the Vatican leadership and this pope, as corrupt as they have ever been during the Dark Ages or any other time that's from Dallas.

Um, I don't think our guests agree with that assessment of the Vatican.

This pope currently, but he's he's raising some questions.

First of all, he says, why does the Vatican have walls?

It's hypocritical.

Uh, Jamie, anything you want to say to that?

>> Yeah, I, I, um, trying to sit with this for a couple of seconds here.

Uh, if we look at where Pope Leo is right now, uh, Pope Leo is traveling through Africa, uh, visiting, um, various dioceses, particularly ones connected with his Augustinian foundation.

You know, Agustin is a doctor of the church.

You can't call Augustine a liberal or a conservative.

I mean, Augustine is, is, is one of the central figures of who we are.

And this pope is grounded in that spirituality.

Um, you know, when we think about, uh, the church's call to care for refugees and immigrants, when you go to Saint Peter's there, Pope Francis installed, uh, a beautiful piece of art.

Um, that represents people, displaced peoples from all over the world, from all different times throughout history.

And when we bring students there, I invite them to walk around that monument and look at the faces.

And the invitation is that we see these people as individuals, and we understand that they have hopes and desires to live.

That's not a liberal or conservative thing.

You know, our call to care for one another has to transcend that binary that we fall into.

And if you look at Leo, you know, Leo is is a pretty centrist individual.

Um, from his, his, his, uh, his work.

Um, not only as, as a bishop, but in his work, uh, in ministry in Peru, um, as a, as a theologian, you know, Leo is looking to bring, um, not a debate about, uh, extremes, but really it ground us in a central identity of who we are.

And, um, he's doing that right now in his apostolic journey.

And one of the stops he made in Cameroon was to the mosque there.

And, uh, spent time with the Muslim community there and invited Catholics into a deeper understanding of, um, Muslim faith that there are brothers and sisters, uh, in, in spirit.

And I think that's, that's what the call is.

The call isn't about division.

The call is how do we discover our original unity?

>> Pat, anything you want to say to Dallas there?

>> Well, just to say that Catholics, I mean, I don't know, the organization of the Vatican or whether they could accept immigrants.

I think it's a very small space.

The factor of walled cities.

Yeah.

They could remove their walls.

I lived for a while in Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany.

It's a walled city.

There's some cultural meaning and some war, uh, origin to the fact of walled cities.

But I do want to remind us that Leo the 13th, the kind of predecessor to Leo the 14th, was a pope who initiated something called Catholic social teaching.

And this is a body of teachings that, uh, urge us, encourage us, almost certainly to just to live a life that is just to the neighbor and the whole heritage of Jewish Christianity in our origins are in the Jewish tradition.

And there are teachings in Christianity and teachings, certainly in Judaism, about welcoming the stranger part of the Statue of Liberty is kind of the Americanization of this early Jewish notion, when there were Bedouin tribes all around the deserts in the Middle East, ages and ages ago, a unique tenet of Jewish teaching was our tribe will welcome the stranger.

The ordinary ethic was.

If you encountered a stranger in the desert that was an enemy, you never welcomed him.

You might even slay that that person or the.

But the Bedouins, who were the Israel became the Israelites welcomed the stranger that's been with our religion from the very outset, so.

And I know that under Biden, uh, you know, there were a lot of.

And we haven't had an ethic of immigration.

We haven't had a, uh, immigration policy in our country.

It needs to be fixed.

It needed to be fixed.

But some of the language and some of the policies of Ice and so forth certainly go against what's the origin of our nation and our, our religious, uh, bodies.

>> And briefly, Dallas follows up to ask if Iran had gotten a nuclear weapon and used it.

Would a previous war have then been justified?

Would perhaps this war be justified.

>> If they had used a nuclear weapon, I believe I mean, I think we have to protect the innocent.

We have to.

>> Yeah.

>> I.

>> I the way I read Dallas's question is he sees what we are doing as expressly as the president's talked about to prevent Iran from getting and using a nuclear weapon to protect civilian populations from nuclear war.

Yes.

And because Dallas feels and the president feels that Iran was on that path, that this war is justified.

Again, I'm being your I'm going to be your student and say, I think those are important questions about what Iran's intentions are, what its.

And I'm talking about its leadership, not the not the civilian population.

But I would also say, again, go down the list in just war theory.

Did you exhaust every option?

Did you use diplomacy?

Did you use negotiation?

Are you certain that those were exhausted and were not bearing any fruit?

Is this the only thing that you could have done to knowingly prevent that outcome?

And was that outcome imminent?

That's what comes to mind for me.

>> Yes, it does to me too.

I would say there have we I mean, just war theorists would come back at us.

Have we exhausted every other means of negotiating with Iran, of trying peaceful means of resolution?

Would, uh, do a reasonable chance of success?

Is our world becoming I my concern is even before World War One, the world had become a tinderbox, almost ready to, blow itself up because we weren't trying diplomacy.

And is there now a reasonable chance of success in this war that we will actually achieve?

If that's one of the goals, even the goals of this war are not entirely clear to me, but the reasonable chance of success without igniting a global conflict, that becomes a question to me.

Last resort intention.

You know, it's never been the it.

It cannot be in just war theory.

Your intention for self-glorification or national glorification.

I'm still not sure the intention of the US and even the fact that the allies are not backing us in here is our intention.

Actually peace and a more just, peaceful world.

I just think those questions have to be brought forth.

>> Dallas.

I think fair question, and I appreciate the email.

>> I do too.

>> Uh, in Monroe County, I think this is rainy.

Uh, who is on the line?

Is that right?

Do we have is it Laney?

Rainy.

>> Rainy, rainy, rainy.

>> Okay.

Go ahead.

>> Okay.

Um, I did not think that the pope was out of line in what he said.

He is a moral leader.

And whenever you are doing these things, you need to pay attention to the moral leadership.

I do not think the response was a good one from our president.

Um, I do think the issues of a just war imply that everyone believes in a just war.

And I do not think the, uh, Middle East and many places in this world have that same kind of moral compass.

And the last thing I wanted to say was, I am concerned about how often our religion is being used in our politics.

That bothers me terribly.

So there are several things there.

I think the issue of, um, this war and what we as Catholics or Christians do, it's our choice on how to spend our money and to work for those who are impoverished.

And I kind of think it's the government's chore to keep us safe.

I don't know how we split that carefully, but that's an awful lot to unpack in the last few minutes.

>> Well, Renee, I do appreciate that very much here.

Um, and you know, Renee is concerned about, um, you know, said that, uh, she's concerned about theocracy too, and there's a lot there.

Anything you want to jump in briefly there?

Jamie.

>> No, I would agree.

And I would say, um, would we think about being safe?

What are the costs?

Uh, who benefits?

And when we think about going back to $1 billion a day, you know, what industries and what, what, um, corporations are, are benefiting because of war, because of war spending.

>> I think.

Rania just saying, even if we didn't spend on the war, she thinks that it's the human society's job to support each other and the government's job to engage in defense.

And I don't know if she agreed with the framework of how do you spend $1 billion a day?

But, um, again, that's sort of an agree to disagree point.

That's great.

And I appreciate that, Randy.

And briefly, oh my gosh, you got to do this in 30s ready for this.

John wants to know what do you think about the Iranian regime slaughtering its its people in the street for protesting?

Is that a basis for just war to protect the people who've been slaughtered?

>> It has been.

And it could be proportionally.

We have to.

Yes, it.

Humanitarian causes can be just causes.

There are six criteria that have to be met.

It's not only one in just war theory, you got to meet all six.

>> So it could be.

>> Possibly it could be, it could be the.

Yes.

>> Okay.

And and John, it's a great question, but you'd have to also ask if we're going to war to save the Iranian people who've been slaughtered.

Why are we talking about wiping out the entire civilization of the Iranian people?

Why are we talking about bombing their grid and their infrastructure and making them suffer?

That's what comes to mind for me as a student of Pat's here, I'd like to be a student of yours.

Will you come back and keep teaching?

>> Absolutely.

>> I am really grateful that you've been here.

Dan.

>> You doctor.

>> Pat Charles, moral theologian, director of mission integration for the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Rochester, do come back anytime, Pat.

And the same to Jamie Fazio director and university chaplain in the center for spirituality at Nazareth University.

Thank you for being here.

>> It's great being here.

>> Thank you.

More Connections coming up in a moment.

>> This program is a production of WXXI Public Radio.

The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of this station.

Its staff, management or underwriters.

The broadcast is meant for the private use of our audience.

Any rebroadcast or use in another medium without expressed written consent of WXXI is strictly prohibited.

Connections with Evan Dawson is available as a podcast.

Just click on the Connections link at wxxinews.org.