Washington cardinal says US war on Iran ‘not morally legitimate’

Cardinal Robert W McElroy, the archbishop of Washington DC, has said that the US-Israeli war with Iran is “not morally legitimate”, going further than the pope has done in his more moderate appeals for an end to the war.

In an interview with the Catholic Standard this week, McElroy said: “The criterion of just cause is not met because our country was not responding to an existing or imminent and objectively verifiable attack by Iran.”

“As Pope Benedict declared categorically, Catholic teaching does not support preventative war, ie a war justified by speculation about events in the future,” he said. “If preventative war were to be accepted morally, then all limits to the cause for going to war would be put in extreme jeopardy.”

McElroy also argued that the conflict fails the “criterion of right intention” arguing that in his opinion, “one of the most worrying elements of these first days of the war in Iran is that our goals and intentions are absolutely unclear, ranging from the destruction of Iran’s conventional and nuclear weapons potential to the overthrow of its regime to the establishment of a democratic government to unconditional surrender,” he said. “You cannot satisfy the just war tradition’s criterion of right intention if you do not have a clear intention.”

He added: “Our current war effort does not meet Catholic just war teaching because it is far from clear that the benefits of this war will outweigh the harm which will be done.”

His remarks this week came as Cardinal Blase J Cupich of Chicago issued a statement on Saturday condemning a White House social media video that mixed footage of the war with clips from action movies.

“A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game – it’s sickening,” Cupich wrote.

Pope Leo XIV has issued a series of more moderate appeals for dialogue and ending the conflict.

“Let us raise our humble prayer to the Lord that the roar ​of bombs may ​cease, that ⁠weapons may fall silent, and that space may be opened for ​dialogue in which the voices of peoples ​can ⁠be heard,” the pope said on Sunday at the Angelus prayer, according to Reuters.

The Holy See traditionally maintains diplomatic neutrality, but last week the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, told Vatican Media: “If states were to be recognized as having a right to ‘preventive war,’ according to their own criteria and without a supranational legal framework, the whole world would risk being set ablaze.”

“This erosion of international law is truly worrying: justice has given way to force; the force of law has been replaced by the law of force, with the conviction that peace can arise only after the enemy has been annihilated,” Parolin said.

In his interview this week, McElroy said that since the United States and Israel launched their attack on Iran,he has encountered “a very significant level of anxiety” about the conflict among parishioners.

“Almost everyone rightly believes that the Khamenei regime has been for decades a brutal and repressive government that has spread terrorism throughout the world and should be replaced,” he said, “but there is immense concern that this war will spiral out of control and embroil the United States in ever greater depth.”

Some parishioners, he added, have told him they are worried about their children who are serving in the military while others, he said, have recalled the previous US wars in Iraq and “the lack of peace or unity that they produced despite major American casualties and immense costs”.

At the same time, McElory also noted that some parishioners also believe that “in spite of these realities, now is the time for the United States to end the theocracy in Iran and install a more friendly and more peaceful government.”

McElroy said that he believes it was “essential for Catholics in our Archdiocese to pray for peace and an immediate end to this conflict”.

He added that “as citizens and believers, we should inform our political representatives of our positions on this unfolding war, giving our own guidance to this land we love so deeply” and also “should comfort those in our families, our parishes and our communities who are anxious, that the consolation of the Holy Spirit will be with them.

“Finally, and most importantly we must insure that this war does not turn into a prolonged conflict, lurching from goal to goal and from strategy to strategy,” he said. “One of the most important Catholic teachings on war and peace is that nations have the strict obligation to end a war as soon as possible. This is particularly true when the decision to go to war was not morally legitimate.”