In Patrick O’Brian’s novel Desolation Island, Captain Jack Aubrey explains to ship’s physician Stephen Maturin why Aubrey has doubts about having a chaplain on board a man-of-war. “On Sunday,” he observes, the chaplain “will tell us to treat one another like brethren [and] we will all say, ‘Amen’.” But, Aubrey continues, this is “precious near to cant, to tell the ship’s com-pany of a man-of-war with loaded guns to love your enemy and turn the other cheek, when you know damned well that the ship and every man jack aboard her is there to blow the enemy out of the water.” He quite reasonably concludes: “Either the hands believe it, and then where is your discipline? Or they don’t, and then it seems to me to come hellfire close to mockery of holy things.”

This is a not uncommon quandary when Christians are faced with the question of when (or whether) war can ever be waged in a way that is consistent with the gospel exhortation to love our enemies and forgive our oppressors. Pope Francis’s recent discussion of this problem in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war is a helpful way of thinking through the perplexity.

The Holy Father raised some hackles when he suggested that: “Wars are always unjust, since it is the people of God who pay.” At first glance – as his always-ready-at-arms detractors complained – it seems as though the Holy Father was dismissing the traditional Catholic understanding of “just war” criteria. Moreover, the criticism continues, he seems to be suggesting that Ukraine (or any other victim of invasion) has no moral authority to defend itself. On the one hand, Pope Francis is certainly correct: All war is an act of injustice. On the other hand, however, this does not necessarily imply (logically or otherwise), that we must abandon traditional “just war” criteria, or that nations may not defend themselves against unjust aggression.

Every war involves at least one nation-state that is making an unjust, violent assertion of power against another. To wage aggressive war is nation-state A’s attempt to take from nation-state B something to which A has no just claim. And even if A has a just claim, a war of aggression is never a just means of asserting it. Therefore, “wars are always unjust”.

Granted, deciding what constitutes an aggressive war is not always a simple matter. The use of force to assert control over what a nation-state has a just claim to may be defensive, even though it appears aggressive by the other party. But the difficulty in determining whether a war is aggressive or defensive is not an argument against the moral principle that aggressive war is always unjust. The requirement of prudent consideration does not negate the rule.

Neither does a claim that all war is an act of injustice imply that it is unjust to resist aggression. Pope Francis did not suggest otherwise in his recent comments. And his past writings support this qualification. For example, in Fratelli Tutti, citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Pope endorses “the possibility of legitimate defence by means of military force”, so long as “rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy have been met.” Thus, a nation-state may (assuming other factors obtain) justly engage in war to defend against the injustice of an aggressor. Pope Francis expands on the point later in Fratelli Tutti: “We are called to love everyone, without exception,” he explains. But “loving an oppressor does not mean allowing him to keep oppressing us, or letting him think what he does is acceptable”, he continued. “On the contrary, true love for an oppressor means seeking ways to make him cease his oppression; it means stripping him of a power that he does not know how to use, and that diminishes his own humanity and that of others”.

When it is possible for some moral object to be ordered toward the good, the question of whether that object actually is properly ordered will be determined by the intention of the moral agent and the circumstance in which the object is chosen. If using measured force to defend against unjust aggression can be ordered toward the good, then we must examine the intention of the nation that declares a defensive war (and the people who execute it) and the circumstances attendant to that declaration.

This brings us back to Captain Jack Aubrey’s discomfort with having a chaplain on board a man-of-war. He was not able to conceive of an act of force that was something other than an aggressive intention to break things or kill people. That is never a proper intention. But if, as the Holy Father suggests, to defend against unjust aggression can be consistent with the mandate to love and forgive one’s enemy – to “make him cease his oppression” – Captain Aubrey’s apparent dilemma has an answer, at least in principle. In the real world, of course, the decision will often be morally ambiguous. But every war is an act of injustice by someone. Forceful defence against the aggressor may not only be consistent with justice, but demanded by charity.

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