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[Expositions 12.1 (2018) 142–161]  Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 
 

Why I Shall Continue to Use and Teach Just War Theory 

 

TOBIAS WINRIGHT 

Saint Louis University 

 

 

In their “Appeal to the Catholic Church to Re-Commit to the Centrality of Gospel Nonviolence,” 

issued in April 2016, some eighty activists and scholars, whose gathering at the Vatican was co-

sponsored by Pax Christi International and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, bluntly 

called into question the future of just war theory in Catholic social teaching.1 Their statement 

implored Catholics to revive and reestablish “Gospel nonviolence” as the Church’s approach for 

dealing with conflict, and it urged Pope Francis to write an encyclical on nonviolence and 

peacemaking in order to show official, magisterial support for their proposal. As for the future of 

just war theory, specifically, the declaration exhorted the Catholic Church “no longer [to] use or 

teach ‘just war theory.’” Why? The participants asserted, “We believe that there is no ‘just war,’” 

because just war theory has been “used to endorse rather than prevent or limit war,” and because 

it “undermines the moral imperative to develop tools and capacities for nonviolent transformation 

of conflict.” In this essay, I, as a Catholic “just war” theological ethicist, offer a critical response 

to the Appeal.2 

While I acknowledge that just war theory, of course, has been misused historically, I disagree 

with the Appeal’s call for the Catholic Church to jettison this important framework for the ethics 

of war and peace. For, as Kenneth R. Himes, O.F.M., has rightly put it, “Announcements of the 

irrelevancy, demise or uselessness of the just war tradition are commonly made,” but “the number 

of books published in recent years that take just war thinking seriously and offer thoughtful 

exposition, commentary and revision of the tradition suggests there remains a large audience of 

readers who find the wisdom of that politico-moral tradition still worth considering.”3 

Accordingly, in what follows, I mostly examine some antecedent calls by Catholics to reconsider 

just war theory in order to show what’s not so new, as well as what’s new, about the Appeal’s 

imploration, before I identify a number of problems with the Appeal’s critique of just war theory. 

I then conclude with an autobiographical account of why I will continue to teach just war theory, 

and I propose “integral peace” as an ethical framework that encompasses not only “active 



143  Winright 
 

 

nonviolence on the road to just peace” (to use the language of the Appeal) but also the moral 

reasoning traditionally referred to as just war theory.4 

 

Not the First to Do So: Antecedent Calls to Reconsider Just War 

This is not the first time that just war theory has been called into question by Catholics, including 

over the last century or so, particularly in connection with modern, total warfare. Indeed, in 1932, 

during the period between World Wars I and II, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber observed: 

 

We live in a period of transition; and just as in other questions, so, too, in the 

question of war and peace, a change of heart will be effected […]. Even the teaching 

of moral theology in regard to war will speak a new language. It will remain true to 

its old principles, but in regard to the question of the permissibility of war, it will 

take account of the new facts!5  

 

These words from the Archbishop of Munich, Germany, were quoted several years later by the 

American Benedictine monk, Virgil Michel, O.S.B., as a springboard for his own treatment of the 

ethics of war in his book, The Christian in the World, published in 1939, a year after his untimely 

death at the age of 49. 

Michel was especially appalled by the devastation of modern, total warfare. “Never before,” he 

wrote, thinking of the First World War, “was there such destruction by war of lives and families, 

cities and towns, whole countrysides with all that was in them.”6 And in the wake of that 

devastating war, Michel keenly observed the festering suspicions and accompanying arms races 

that moved him to warn of “the coming of another world war in our century […] [that] will be 

much worse in every way than the last one.”7 Michel emphatically condemned deliberate attacks 

against non-combatants by “airbombs, poisonous gases and death-dealing germs.”8 Such atrocities 

led him to ask “a most important question: that of the justice of war today.”9 Accordingly, after 

enumerating the traditional just war criteria, Michel scrutinized each one in view of the changed 

conditions of warfare in modern times. Because of “the powerful weapons of destruction that 

modern science and technic” have produced, he observed that it has become too difficult to avoid 

killing non-combatants.10 Moreover, determining whether or not an act of aggression is unjust no 

longer was “so clear-cut” since most conflicts actually have “roots and causes going back into 



Why I Shall Continue to Use and Teach Just War Theory 144 
 

history.”11 These concerns caused Michel to question the moral legitimacy of any war whatsoever 

in the modern era. 

Still, Michel neither attacked just war theory nor jettisoned it. Indeed, it was just war reasoning 

and principles that led him to make these critical judgments about modern war. Still, Michel wrote 

that “even a legitimate war of self-defense must be considered a great evil (even if not a moral 

evil, or a sin), for it, too, will be fraught with all the horrible consequences that modern warfare 

entails.”12 To be sure, such a just war, in his view, was much less likely in the early decades of the 

twentieth century. Moreover, Michel was ahead of his time when he called upon nations to respect 

and legally recognize absolute pacifists who adhere to Christ’s “counsels of perfection” and 

thereby oppose all wars.13 At the same time, Michel recommended that individual citizens be ever 

vigilant, carefully investigating via just war principles the moral rightness of a conflict, and 

consulting with their spiritual advisors for prudent counsel. If there’s any doubt about the moral 

justification of a particular war, according to Michel, the citizen should be able to refuse to take 

up arms—what is now referred to as selective conscientious objection, although it does not yet 

have the same legal recognition as does so-called general conscientious objection.14 In the end, 

Michel offered what Faulhaber called for: a heartfelt, honest, and stringent application of the just 

war tradition’s “old principles” in light of the “new facts” of modern, total war. In doing so, though, 

Michel did not discard just war theory. 

In many respects—not only on war and peace but also on liturgical renewal—Michel 

anticipated significant developments at the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).15 Its final 

document, Gaudium et spes, called upon the entire Church to “undertake an evaluation of war with 

an entirely new attitude” (§80).16 Not only does this line echo Faulhaber’s words from decades 

earlier, but, as we shall see, it is also evidence of what the 2016 Appeal calls a “different path [that] 

is unfolding in recent Catholic social teaching.” As part of this reevaluation, the Council broke 

new ground and emphasized that all Christians should work toward the establishment of peace, 

which “is not merely the absence of war” (§78). Drawing on Isaiah 32:7, the Council bishops said 

that peace is “an enterprise of justice,” which is “never attained once and for all, but must be built 

up ceaselessly.”17 Thus, in an unexpected departure from previous official Catholic teaching, the 

Council praised those, including laity, “who renounce the use of violence in the vindication of 

their rights and who resort to methods of defense which are otherwise available to weaker parties 

too, provided this can be done without injury to the rights and duties of others or of the community 



145  Winright 
 

 

itself” (§78). Moreover, the Council did another first by adding that governments should legally 

recognize conscientious objection. Even with these significant steps, however, Vatican II neither 

abandoned just war thinking nor made nonviolence the norm for all Catholics. 

Indeed, the Council did not revoke the traditional right of national self-defense: “As long as the 

danger of war remains and there is no competent and sufficiently powerful authority at the 

international level, governments cannot be denied the right to legitimate defense once every means 

of peaceful settlement has been exhausted” (§79). Although the Council did not explicitly mention 

“just war,” it invoked the traditional jus ad bellum criteria of legitimate authority, just cause (i.e., 

legitimate defense), and last resort. Aggressive wars that seek to subjugate other nations were 

forbidden, which would be a violation of the criterion of just cause for war. Similarly, the Council 

expressed strong concerns about the development of “scientific weapons” during the Cold War 

arms race that “can inflict massive and indiscriminate destruction far exceeding the bounds of 

legitimate defense” (§80). Modern total warfare, which by its very nature encompasses and 

indiscriminately harms civilian population centers, was condemned unequivocally by the bishops 

as a crime against God and humanity. In addition, the Council presciently warned about terrorism 

as a new method of waging such indiscriminate warfare, and it also prohibited soldiers’ blind 

obedience to unlawful commands. In these latter concerns, and again even though it did not use 

the names, the Council employed the traditional jus in bello criteria of discrimination (i.e., 

noncombatant immunity) and proportionality. The Council’s use of such principles is evidence 

that the “evaluation of war with an entirely new attitude” does not mean a total rejection of the just 

war tradition but rather a more serious application of it. As such, the Council’s teaching is much 

like Michel’s, as well as in sync with the words he uses from Faulhaber, though they are not cited. 

At the same time, it is noteworthy that the section of Gaudium et spes in question is subtitled 

“The Fostering of Peace and the Promotion of a Community of Nations,” indicating the Council’s 

emphasis on a just peace, even if it did not use that term either. Earlier in 1965, Pope Paul VI 

pleaded to the United Nations General Assembly: “No more war, war never again.”18 Accordingly, 

the Council called for the abolition of war through international institutions and law, declaring: “It 

is our clear duty, then, to strain every muscle as we work for the time when all war can be 

completely outlawed by international consent” (§82). It went on to call for “the establishment of 

some universal public authority acknowledged as such by all, and endowed with effective power 

to safeguard, on the behalf of all, security, regard for justice, and respect for rights” (§82). In other 



Why I Shall Continue to Use and Teach Just War Theory 146 
 

words, the Council recognized the need for an international institution—akin to an international 

police force19—to enforce the law outlawing war in order to protect against unjust threats to human 

security and human rights. The Council left open, however, whether or not this “effective power” 

was to be unarmed and nonviolent. 

These developments from Vatican II inspired subsequent Catholic teaching, including the U.S. 

Catholic bishops’ 1983 pastoral letter The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response. 

There the bishops wrote, “Peacemaking is not an optional commitment. It is a requirement of our 

faith. We are called to be peacemakers, not by some movement of the moment, but by our Lord 

Jesus.”20 Peacemaking, however, does not entail only absolute pacifism or nonviolence, for the 

bishops added that it is “the how of defending peace which offers moral options.”21 Indeed, on the 

one hand, the bishops applauded those Christians who renounce the use of violent force and instead 

employ methods of active nonviolent resistance to defend the innocent from aggression. In the 

words of the bishops, “We believe work to develop nonviolent means of fending off aggression 

and resolving conflict best reflect the call of Jesus both to love and to justice.”22 On the other hand, 

the bishops, acknowledged that “the fact of aggression, oppression and injustice in our world also 

serves to legitimate the resort to weapons and armed force” in defense of the innocent.23 Ten years 

later, in the wake of the nonviolent velvet revolution in Eastern Europe, the U.S. bishops, in The 

Harvest of Justice Is Sown in Peace, extended their affirmation of nonviolence from individuals 

to movements, even as they also expanded the scope of armed defense from national self-defense 

to humanitarian interventions in cases like Rwanda.24 In short, the bishops continued to hold 

together both nonviolence and just war as ethical approaches for the legitimate defense of the 

innocent. 

Reflecting on these developments, Drew Christiansen, S.J., summarizes Catholic teaching as 

having become “more stringent in its application of just war thinking and more accepting of 

nonviolent alternatives even by the state.”25 And, yet, not all Catholics were satisfied by this two-

fold approach that holds onto the possibility, limited as it has become, of just war. Indeed, a half 

century after Michel and just over a quarter century after Vatican II, in 1991, an unsigned editorial, 

“Modern War and Christian Conscience,” appearing in the Jesuit periodical La Civiltà Cattolica, 

went further by calling for the abandonment of just war theory because “the theoretical categories 

and moral judgments that applied to past wars no longer seem applicable to modern warfare.”26 

According to the editorial, because modern war has become total, it cannot be conducted according 



147  Winright 
 

 

to the criteria of the just war tradition, such as distinguishing between combatants and 

noncombatants. Especially with the development of nuclear arms, entire populations have become 

targets. Such weapons, “perfected by scientific inventions,” cannot be subject to restraint; they 

necessarily lead to escalation and indiscriminate devastation, planting the seeds, moreover, of 

future wars. For these reasons, the editorial called for the abandonment of the just war tradition.27 

At the same time, the editorial’s objections to the atrocities of modern warfare, much like 

Michel’s, were actually made using just war criteria. After all, to say that today’s weapons are 

“indiscriminate” is to use the jus in bello criterion of discrimination. In addition, the editorial 

acknowledged later that a justifiable war would be “a war of pure defense against an aggression 

actually taking place,”28 which is an application of the jus ad bellum criterion of just cause. Hence, 

for the editorial, the possibility of just war is much narrower and limited—but nonetheless still a 

possibility, even as the editorial asserts that there has been “a development of the Christian 

conscience regarding the absolute immorality of war.”29  

Seemingly similar to the editorial, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict 

XVI, when asked in 2003 about whether the U.S.-led war against Iraq fits “within the canons of 

the ‘just war,’” responded: “[W]e must begin asking ourselves whether as things stand, with new 

weapons that cause destruction that goes well beyond the groups involved in the fight, it is still 

licit to allow that a ‘just war’ might exist.”30 Yet, when he, as Pope Benedict, in 2007 in his second 

World Day of Peace message,31 devoted attention to “certain recent situations of war” (§14), he 

continued to affirm, on the one hand, that “[i]n Christ we can find the ultimate reason for becoming 

staunch champions of human dignity and courageous builders of peace” (§16) while, on the other 

hand, he called on “the international community [to] reaffirm international humanitarian law, and 

apply it to all present-day situations of armed conflict, including those not currently provided for 

by international law […]” (§16). Indeed, he called upon nations to establish “clearer rules” and 

“norms of conduct” for defending the innocent and limiting “the damage as far as possible,” while 

concurrently he repeated the refrain that “war always represents a failure for the international 

community and a grave loss for humanity” (§16). With regard to the “clearer rules” or “norms of 

conduct” for which he urged, though, what might they look like? Here Benedict footnoted the 

section of the Catechism (§§2307–2317) that lists “the traditional elements enumerated in what is 

called the ‘just war’ doctrine” (§2309), which he regarded as offering “strict and precise criteria” 

(§16, endnote 7). Again, we have here what Drew Christiansen, S.J., describes as a “hybrid 



Why I Shall Continue to Use and Teach Just War Theory 148 
 

approach” or “as a composite of nonviolent and just-war elements” in Catholic teaching on war 

and peace today.32 

With Pope Francis, I think this trajectory is being honed even further.33 The April 2016 

gathering at the Vatican and its Appeal are evidence of this. Nevertheless, the Appeal’s explicit 

call for the Church to no longer use or teach just war theory, I think, goes too far.34 

 

The Appeal and Just War Theory 

With this background and context, it is worth noting, first of all, that the two-page Appeal’s 

criticism of just war theory actually presupposes just war principles in order to critique how most, 

if not all, wars have been initiated and conducted. To be sure, the Appeal explicitly mentions “just 

war” and “just war theory” only four times, with scare quotes bracketing each reference—probably 

because, as the statement’s signatories confess, “We believe that there is no ‘just war.’” Why? 

Because just war theory has “[t]oo often […] been used to endorse rather than prevent or limit 

war.” In other words, the jus ad bellum criteria for evaluating when going to war is morally 

justified have not succeeded in saying “no” or preventing war, and the jus in bello criteria for the 

morally just conduct of war have failed to limit it. But to make these claims, the Appeal uses just 

war reasoning and principles. If these are no longer to be taught or used, how will moral criticisms 

be made about going to and fighting war? 

Plus, it simply isn’t true that just war theory has been used only to endorse war, failing to 

prevent or limit it. Even if governments might use it as a “smoke screen” to rationalize unjust war, 

in the months before the invasion of Iraq, most Christian ethicists and theologians scrupulously 

criticized, on just war grounds, the U.S.’s plans for preemptive war.35 Similar critical analysis 

continued during the fighting of those wars, as well as after the shooting supposedly stopped.36 

Likewise, the U.S. Catholic bishops issued public statements and letters to government officials, 

including President Bush, that drew on just war criteria in order to raise “moral concerns and 

questions” about the war in Iraq.37 At the time, Pope John Paul II and other Vatican officials, 

including Italian Cardinal Pio Laghi who was sent by the pope to meet with President Bush on 

March 5, 2003, also expressed serious reservations about whether U.S. military action against Iraq 

would be a just war.38 Moreover, when the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican invited American 

Catholic Michael Novak to give a lecture there on why the Iraq war would be just, most attendees 



149  Winright 
 

 

were not persuaded on just war grounds.39 Thus, there have indeed been Catholic theologians, 

ethicists, clergy, and even popes who employ just war reasoning seeking to prevent or limit war.40 

The Appeal also problematically assumes that there is—in theory and in practice—only one 

“just war” theory. Instead, I would use scare quotes for a different reason, namely, that historically 

and at present there are multiple “just war theories.” Even among Christians, including Catholics, 

there are more “hawkish” and more “dovish” versions of just war theory.41 As the previous section 

demonstrates, Catholic magisterial teaching—like most Catholic theological ethicists today, I 

would add—is in the “dovish” camp. Even if debate has continued about whether nonviolence and 

just war share a presumption against war and for peace, most just war theorists now understand 

just war as directed by and aimed at a just peace. For example, during the 1990s and subsequently, 

many just war theorists have collaborated with pacifists and advocates of nonviolence to contribute 

to a project on “just peacemaking” practices that can effectively minimize the likelihood of war.42 

This development, along with recent just war theorizing about jus post bellum—justice in the wake 

of war—is counterevidence to the Appeal’s assertion that just war “undermines the moral 

imperative to develop tools and capacities for nonviolent transformation of conflict.”43 Therefore, 

I agree with the Appeal’s call for “the Catholic Church [to] develop and consider shifting to a Just 

Peace approach,” but it is important to recognize both that this shift has already been underway 

and that just war theorists, too, have been contributing to it. 

Further, I wish that the Appeal had explored the meaning of shift. When the Appeal calls for 

the Church no longer to use or teach just war theory, shift seems to mean switch from.44 Instead, I 

would understand shift as meaning pivoting, analogous to a pivot foot in basketball. The pivot foot 

could be nonviolence, but the other foot still allows for the possibility of armed force in accordance 

with just war reasoning and principles, with both feet being used towards the goal of just peace. 

Admittedly, the problem we have is practice—in other words, moral formation, not only with 

nonviolence but also with just war. As Patrick T. McCormick has noted, the actual “default 

position” of the “vast majority of American Catholics and Christians” is that they evidently 

“approach the moral analysis of every call to arms with a strong presumption in favor of war.”45 

Even just war theorists recognize this to be a serious problem. Regrettably, the Appeal makes just 

war adherents their opponents rather than teammates. 

This is odd, moreover, given that active nonviolent methods must likewise be governed by 

moral reasoning and criteria. After all, in Gaudium et spes, the Council qualifies its support of 



Why I Shall Continue to Use and Teach Just War Theory 150 
 

nonviolence: “provided this can be done without injury to the rights and duties of others or of the 

community itself” (§78). The Council’s support is conditional—implying that nonviolent methods 

sometimes can be harmful and thus morally problematic, even unjustified. 

As Lloyd Steffen has observed, “just war thinking is itself an expression of a more basic 

approach to ethics,” one that includes elements of deontology, consequentialism, and virtue 

ethics.46 Put differently, there is an “ethic that lies behind just war” that can be “applicable to all 

kinds of ethical issues,” as well as for uses of force other than war.47 Indeed, Steffen isn’t alone in 

making such an observation. The influential bioethicist James Childress, who has also written 

groundbreaking analyses of both nonviolent civil disobedience and just war theory, has noted: 

 

The “just war doctrine” offers a set of considerations for determining when war is 

justified, and analogous criteria must be employed in determining when civil 

disobedience is justified, although perhaps it is more accurate to suggest that civil 

disobedience is subject to the same general demands of morality as any other action 

rather than that it is illuminated by just war criteria. However that may be, certainly 

the appropriate criteria for evaluating civil disobedience coincide to a great extent 

with traditional just war criteria such as just cause, good motives and intentions, 

exhaustion of normal procedures for resolving disputes, reasonable prospect for 

success, due proportion between probable good and bad consequences, and right 

means.48 

 

This makes sense if we take into consideration Reinhold Niebuhr’s classic point that it is a mistake 

to assume “that violence is […] intrinsically evil and nonviolence intrinsically good.”49 Both are 

coercive, and even nonviolent methods can harm others. Niebuhr highlights some examples and 

concludes, “It is impossible to coerce a group without damaging both life and property and without 

imperiling the interests of the innocent with those of the guilty.”50 The Appeal, however, 

dichotomizes between “creative and active nonviolence” and “all forms of violence,” and between 

“nonviolent resistance strategies” and “violent ones.” It assumes just war is violent, and it conflates 

as synonymous “violence, injustice, or war.” At the same time, it recognizes that a “Just Peace 

approach” requires “specific criteria, virtues, and practices to guide our actions.” But, won’t these 

be the same criteria, virtues, and practices that Daniel M. Bell, Jr., has argued ought to frame and 



151  Winright 
 

 

inform just war?51 For his part, Steffen writes, “The ethic that underwrites just war thinking may 

appear to be focused on the coercive force of violence, but the normative guide against using force 

applies not only to uses of force that are destructive and violent but to any use of force.”52 He 

shows how Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., both recognized this, and how they used just war 

reasoning, even if not explicitly or by name, when arguing that nonviolent resistance, which is a 

form of coercion, must be morally justified in response to an injustice (just cause), resorted to after 

non-coercive means have failed (i.e., persuasion), and the like. This attention to the deeper ethic 

behind just war or armed force, and as well active nonviolence or unarmed force, may serve as a 

helpful springboard for the future of not only just war theory but also active nonviolence. 

 

An Autobiographical Conclusion and a Call for “Integral Peace” as “Just Peace” 

Why do I care about this so much? A lot of it has to do with my own experience. The Appeal 

shares that the April 2016 gathering was comprised of “lay people, theologians, members of 

religious congregations, priests, and bishops” from “Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, the 

Middle East, and Oceana,” with many of them practicing “justice and peace” while living “in 

communities experiencing violence and oppression.” Perhaps, then, another reason why the 

Appeal refers to just war as “theory” rather than as an ethic or a tradition is that it assumes just war 

theorists have been too theoretical, maybe too abstract, and thus not applicable in the real world. 

This may be the case for some, but not for me. 

I grew up in a blue collar, working family—farmers and factory workers—and then my mother 

became a police officer. As a child, I dreamed of becoming a number of careers: priest, politician, 

lawyer, soldier. Raised Catholic, I admired saints like Francis of Assisi and fervently sang “Let 

there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.” But I also played “army” with my toy soldiers 

and with my neighbors and our toy guns. I remember, too, how my grandmother, Grandma Hug, 

once told me, “War is bad.” As an undergraduate student, and as a first generation college student 

in my family, I worked full-time for the local metropolitan sheriff’s department where my mother 

worked. I was also in Army R.O.T.C. and even trained a bit at Fort Benning in Georgia. At the 

same time, though, I wrestled with the ethics of the use of force. I saw first-hand, as the Appeal 

puts it, “communities experiencing violence and oppression.” Not only did I witness unjust use of 

force (i.e., “violence and oppression”) by some of my fellow officers and by the criminal justice 

system; I also saw the unjust use of force that people commit against each other. One of my 



Why I Shall Continue to Use and Teach Just War Theory 152 
 

professors had introduced me to Catholic just war teaching, which I found helpful for framing 

when and how the use of force is morally justified with regard to both the military and law 

enforcement.  

At the same time, I stumbled across and read some books by the Protestant pacifist theologian 

Stanley Hauerwas, which I found provocative and appealing.53 Thus, when I graduated with my 

B.A., I resigned from the sheriff’s department and went to Duke Divinity School to be challenged 

and become more informed on this question in Christian ethics. After that, I went to the University 

of Notre Dame, where I studied with, and was graduate assistant for, the Mennonite pacifist 

theologian John Howard Yoder, who had influenced Hauerwas to become a Christian pacifist. 

Like Hauerwas, Yoder challenged me to be, as the subtitle of one of his many books puts it, more 

honest about just war theory.54 Just as Yoder took Christian just war theory seriously, I took—and 

continue to take—pacifism and nonviolence seriously. Indeed, as a professor for the past two 

decades now, whenever I teach about pacifism and nonviolence in the classroom and at parishes, 

students and church members often express their surprise to find out that I am not an absolute 

pacifist. In addition, I have taken students to Northern Ireland and to Nicaragua to meet and learn 

from people who have lost loved ones and who have been scarred either by violence inflicted upon 

them, or by violence that they have inflicted upon others, what we now refer to as “moral injury.”55 

At the same time, for a couple of years after I first became I professor, I was also a reserve police 

officer, teaching ethics for a metropolitan police department while also patrolling part-time for it. 

I have endured violence, and I have used force. I am not pro-war. I am not pro-violence. I am not 

pro-militarism. But I am not a pacifist. Nor am I a Catholic who puts all of his eggs in the 

nonviolence basket. 

This side of the coming of God’s kingdom in which justice and peace perfectly embrace, I am 

a “both/and” Catholic who continues to hold that, even as we rightly place more emphasis on 

nonviolence and “just peace,” we must be able to keep a space—narrow and limited, yes—for 

armed force. Whether we continue to call it “just war theory” or “legitimate defense” or “the 

responsibility to protect” (R2P) or “just policing,” there needs to be a mode of moral reasoning 

accompanied by criteria, virtues, and practices for the ethical use of force, armed or not. As Ralph 

Potter once put it, when “any use of force” is subjected to moral analysis and evaluation, “some 

analogue to the just war doctrine emerges.”56 



153  Winright 
 

 

In short, Catholics should avoid the extremes of, on the one hand, “laxism” that might slide into 

some form of permissive hawkish “realism” and, on the other hand, restrictive dovish “rigorism” 

that is too absolute. There is traditionally a place for “gradualism” allowing for the laity to 

“gradually adhere to it.”57 In the meantime, we all ought to work toward a “just peace.” A Catholic 

approach, in other words, might seek to “integrate” these efforts—much as Pope Francis has called 

for with an “integral ecology,”58 or Pope Paul VI did with “integral human development.”59 A “just 

peace” will be an “integral peace” by integrating just peacemaking and peacebuilding practices, 

active nonviolence, and just use of unarmed and armed force.60 

 

 

Notes 

 

1. All quotes within this essay’s introductory paragraph come from the two-page “Appeal to 

the Catholic Church to Re-Commit to the Centrality of Gospel Nonviolence,” available at 

Pax Christi International’s website, 

http://www.paxchristi.net/sites/default/files/documents/appeal-to-catholic-church-to-

recommit-to-nonviolence.pdf. 

2. Elsewhere I have already written two such responses that raise concerns other than the ones 

I examine in this present essay. See Mark J. Allman and Tobias Winright, “Protect Thy 

Neighbor: Why the Just-War Tradition Is Still Indispensable,” Commonweal, June 17, 

2016, 7–9; and Tobias Winright, “Just War and Imagination Are Not Mutually Exclusive,” 

with Drew Christiansen, S.J., Laurie Johnston, and Mark J. Allman, in “Theological 

Roundtable: Must Just Peace and Just War Be Mutually Exclusive?” Horizons, June 2018, 

forthcoming. 

3. Kenneth R. Himes, “Traditional Wisdom,” review of War’s Ends: Human Rights, 

International Order, and the Ethics of Peace, by James G. Murphy, S.J., America, February 

9, 2015, https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/culture/traditional-wisdom. 

4. It should be noted that just war is not a theory that is statically set in stone; instead, it is a 

living tradition that is composed of many theories (secular, Christian, philosophical, non-



Why I Shall Continue to Use and Teach Just War Theory 154 
 

Western, etc.) and that has developed and continues to do so in light of new circumstances, 

technologies, and insights. 

5. Quoted in Virgil Michel, O.S.B., The Christian in the World (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical 

Press, 1939), 184. 

6. Ibid., 181. I first wrote about Michel’s treatment of war in my article, “Virgil Michel on 

Worship and War,” Worship, September 1997, 451–462. 

7. Michel, The Christian in the World, 181. 

8. Ibid. 

9. Ibid. 

10. Ibid., 183. 

11. Ibid. 

12. Ibid. The parenthetical clarification is his. 

13. Ibid., 185. 

14. For a recent defense of selective conscientious objection, see Bernard G. Prusak, “A Right 

Not to Fight: Making the Case for Selective Conscientious Objection,” Commonweal, 

December 1, 2017, 13–15, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/right-not-fight. 

15. Indeed, Michel is often described as being ahead of his time, with many emphases of his 

liturgical reforms in the earlier decades of this century being implemented twenty-five 

years after his death in the promulgation of Sacrosanctum Concilium at Vatican II. On 

Michel’s liturgical legacy, see R. W. Franklin and Robert L. Spaeth, Virgil Michel: 

American Catholic (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1988), 105–120; John R. Roach, 

“The Prophetic Vision of Virgil Michel,” in The Future of the Catholic Church in America: 

Major Papers of the Virgil Michel Symposium (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 

5–6,17; Godfrey L. Diekmann, “Is There a Distinct American Contribution to the Liturgical 

Renewal?” Worship, December 1971, 578–587; and Kenneth R. Himes, O.F.M., 



155  Winright 
 

 

“Eucharist and Justice: Assessing the Legacy of Virgil Michel,” Worship, May 1988, 201–

224. 

16. Gaudium et spes, in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, S.J. (Piscataway, 

NJ: New Century Publishers, 1966). References to this document will be included 

parenthetically in the text and cite paragraph rather than page numbers. 

17. Pope Paul VI later rephrased this claim as the title of his 1972 World Day of Peace 

Message, “If You Want Peace, Work for Justice,” January 1, 1972, 

http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/messages/peace/documents/hf_p-

vi_mes_19711208_v-world-day-for-peace.html. 

18. Quoted in Eileen Egan, Peace Be With You: Justified Warfare or the Way of Nonviolence 

(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 166. 

19. For more on international policing, see Tobias Winright, “Community Policing as a 

Paradigm for International Order,” in Just Policing, Not War: An Alternative Approach to 

World Violence, ed. Gerald W. Schlabach (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2007), 

130–152. 

20. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and 

Our Response (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1983), §333, 

http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/war-and-peace/nuclear-

weapons/upload/statement-the-challenge-of-peace-1983-05-03.pdf. 

21. Ibid., §73. 

22. Ibid., §78. 

23. Ibid. 

24. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Harvest of Justice Is Sown in Peace 

(Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1993), 

http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-

teaching/the-harvest-of-justice-is-sown-in-peace.cfm. 



Why I Shall Continue to Use and Teach Just War Theory 156 
 

25. Drew Christiansen, S.J., “After Sept. 11: Catholic Teaching on Peace and War,” Origins 

32.3 (May 30, 2002): 33–40, at 36. 

26. Editorial, “Coscienza cristiana e guerra moderna,” La Civiltà Cattolica 142 (1991) 3–16. 

This is an anonymously written piece that attracted wide attention; an English translation 

by William Shannon, “Modern War and Christian Conscience,” appears in Origins 21 

(December 19, 1991): 450–455, with the above quote appearing at 451. While possessing 

no official magisterial authority, such editorials in this Jesuit periodical published in Rome 

rarely contradict the pope’s position. See Tim McCarthy, “Was Magazine’s Opinion on 

Just War Just That?” National Catholic Reporter, August 16, 1991, 14. 

27. “Modern War and Christian Conscience,” 453. 

28. Ibid., 453–454. 

29. Ibid., 454. 

30. Ginni Cardinale, “Interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: The Catechism in a Post-

Christian World,” 30 Days in the Church and the World, April 2013, 

http://www.30giorni.it/articoli_id_775_l3.htm?id=775. 

31. Pope Benedict XVI, “The Human Person, the Heart of Peace,” World Day of Peace 

Message, January 1, 2007; 

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-

xvi_mes_20061208_xl-world-day-peace_en.html. Subsequent references to this document 

will be made parenthetically within the text. 

32. Drew Christiansen, S.J., “Whither the ‘Just War’?” America, March 24, 2003, 

https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/427/article/whither-just-war. 

33. See Tobias Winright, “The Vatican on Military Intervention in Defense of the Innocent,” 

Catholic Moral Theology, August 13, 2014, https://catholicmoraltheology.com/the-

vatican-on-military-intervention-in-defense-of-the-innocent/. 

34. My historical survey here admittedly has omitted attention to other prominent figures in 

U.S. Catholicism, including John A. Ryan and John Courtney Murray, S.J. For a helpful 



157  Winright 
 

 

account, see Todd D. Whitmore, “The Reception of Catholic Approaches to Peace and War 

in the United States,” in Modern Catholic Social Teaching: Commentaries and 

Interpretations, ed. Kenneth R. Himes, O.F.M. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University 

Press, 2005), 493–521. 

35. Scott McLemee, “100 Christian Ethicists Challenge Claim that Preemptive War on Iraq 

Would Be Morally Justified,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 23, 2002, 

http://m.chronicle.com/article/100-Christian-Ethicists/115370; Peter Steinfels, “Churches 

and Ethicists Loudly Oppose the Proposed War on Iraq, but Deaf Ears are Many,” The New 

York Times, September 28, 2002, 

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E5D61638F93BA1575AC0A9649C

8B63. 

36. Tobias Winright, “Just Cause and Preemptive Strikes in the War on Terrorism: Insights 

from a Just-Policing Perspective,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 26/2 

(Fall/Winter 2006): 157–181; Mark J. Allman and Tobias L. Winright, After the Smoke 

Clears: The Just War Tradition and Post War Justice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010); 

David E. DeCosse, “Authority, Democracy, and the Iraq War,” Heythrop Journal 45 

(2004): 227–246; Brian V. Johnstone, C.SS.R, “Pope John Paul II and the War in Iraq,” 

Studia Moralia 41/2 (December 2003): 309–330. 

37. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Statement on Iraq,” November 13, 2002, 

http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/global-issues/middle-

east/iraq/statement-on-iraq-2002-11-13.cfm. Subsequent statements reiterated the same 

questions and concerns. See “Statement on Iraq” by Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, President 

of the USCCB, February 26, 2003, http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-

and-dignity/global-issues/middle-east/iraq/statement-by-bishop-gregory-on-iraq-2003-02-

26.cfm; “Toward a Responsible Transition in Iraq” by Bishop Thomas G. Wenski, Chair 

of the USCCB Committee on International Policy, January 12, 2006, 

http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/global-issues/middle-

east/iraq/statement-by-bishop-wenski-toward-a-responsible-transition-in-iraq-2006-01-

12.cfm. 



Why I Shall Continue to Use and Teach Just War Theory 158 
 

38. Frank Bruni, “Pope Voices Opposition, His Strongest, to Iraq War,” New York Times, 

January 14, 2003, 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/international/europe/14POPE.html; Gerard 

O’Connell, “When Bush Put John Paul II’s Letter on the Side Table without Opening It,” 

Vatican Insider, September 17, 2011, 

http://www.lastampa.it/2011/09/17/vaticaninsider/eng/world-news/when-bush-put-john-

paul-iis-letter-on-the-side-table-without-opening-it-

HV7tYBqmgNTokCOj7OUr9H/pagina.html. 

39. David Willey, “Catholic Theologian Says Iraq ‘Just War,’” BBC News, February 10, 2003, 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2747199.stm. 

40. A classic example is by John C. Ford who was critical of indiscriminate obliteration 

bombing towards the end of World War II; see his “The Morality of Obliteration 

Bombing,” Theological Studies 5/3 (September 1944): 261–309. Indeed, Eric Marcelo O. 

Genilo notes that Ford’s article is considered “the most influential article in the journal’s 

history.” See Eric Marcelo O. Genilo, John Cuthbert Ford, S.J.: Moral Theologian at the 

end of the Manualist Era (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2007), 1–2. I 

have used Ford’s analysis as a basis to address cluster munitions; see Tobias Winright, 

“Predictably Horrific: The Afterlife of Cluster Bombs,” Commonweal, March 25, 2011, 

11–12. For recent applications of just war analysis in connection with Syria and Iran, see 

Tobias Winright, “A Just War ‘No’ on Attacking Syria,” The Tablet, August 31, 2013, 4–

5; and Tobias Winright and Patrick J. Lynch, S.J., “Iran: The Challenge to Peace,” The 

Tablet, November 3, 2012, 4–5. 

41. Tobias Winright, “Hawks and Doves: Rival Versions of Just War Theory,” Christian 

Century, December 12, 2006, 32–35; https://www.christiancentury.org/reviews/2006-

12/hawks-and-doves; and Tobias Winright, “Two Rival Versions of Just War Theory and 

the Presumption against Harm in Policing,” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 

18 (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998), 221–239. I would consider 

Michael Novak and George Weigel as belonging in the “hawkish” camp of just war theory, 

as demonstrated in their efforts during the lead-up to the 2003 war in Iraq. 



159  Winright 
 

 

42. Glen Stassen, ed., Just Peacemaking: The New Paradigm for the Ethics of Peace and War, 

rev. ed. (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2008). For my review of an earlier edition of this 

book, see Christian Century, February 26, 2008, 46–50, 

https://www.christiancentury.org/reviews/2008-02/blessed-are-pacifiststhe-horrors-we-

blessjust-peacemaking. 

43. On jus post bellum, see Mark J. Allman and Tobias L. Winright, After the Smoke Clears: 

The Just War Tradition and Post War Justice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010); Mark 

J. Allman and Tobias Winright, “When the Shooting Stops: Criteria for a Just Peace,” 

Christian Century, October 5, 2010, 26–29, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2010-

09/when-shooting-stops. 

44. Admittedly, the Appeal is a consensus document, not a carefully-argued academic article. 

Plus, some participants subsequently have nuanced their respective views regarding the 

Appeal’s remarks about just war. See, for example, Gerald W. Schlabach, “Just War? 

Enough Already,” Commonweal, June 16, 2017, 11–14, 

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/just-war-0; and Lisa Sowle Cahill, “A Church for 

Peace? Why Just War Theory Isn’t Enough,” Commonweal, September 9, 2016, 9–11, 

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/church-peace. 

45. Patrick T. McCormick, “Violence: Religion, Terror, War,” Theological Studies 67/1 

(March 2006): 159. 

46. Lloyd Steffen, Ethics and Experience: Moral Theory from Just War to Abortion (Lanham, 

MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 33. 

47. Ibid., 15. 

48. James F. Childress, Civil Disobedience and Political Obligation: A Study in Christian 

Social Ethics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971), 204. Childress’s most well-

known essay on just war is “Just-War Theories: The Bases, Interrelations, Priorities, and 

Functions of Their Criteria,” Theological Studies, 39/3 (1978): 427–445. 

49. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New 

York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932), 172. 



Why I Shall Continue to Use and Teach Just War Theory 160 
 

50. Ibid. 

51. Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Just War as Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 

2009). 

52. Steffen, Ethics and Experience, 52. 

53. Stanley Hauerwas, Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society 

(Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985), and Should War Be Eliminated? Philosophical and 

Theological Reflections (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1984). 

54. John Howard Yoder, When War Is Unjust: Being Honest in Just-War Thinking (Maryknoll, 

NY: Orbis Books, 1996). 

55. Tobias Winright and E. Ann Jeschke, “Combat and Confession: Just War and Moral 

Injury,” in Can War Be Just in the 21st Century? Ethicists Engage the Tradition, eds. 

Tobias Winright and Laurie Johnston (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), 169–187. 

56. Ralph Potter, War and Moral Discourse (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1969), 49–50. 

For a more detailed treatment of the ways in which the modes of ethical reasoning for 

justifying and constraining the use of force in just policing and in just war are similar or 

analogous, see Tobias Winright, “The Challenge of Policing: An Analysis in Christian 

Social Ethics” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2002), 212–336. My earliest effort 

to wrestle with this question in print may be found in the first paper I wrote for a class with 

Yoder: Tobias Winright, “The Perpetrator as Person: Theological Reflections on the Just 

War Tradition and the Use of Force by Police,” Criminal Justice Ethics 14 (Summer/Fall 

1995): 37–56. 

57. James F. Keenan, S.J., A History of Catholic Moral Theology in the Twentieth Century: 

From Confessing Sins to Liberating Consciences (London and New York: Continuum, 

2010), 147. 

58. Pope Francis, Laudato si’, June 18, 2015, §225, 

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-

francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. 



161  Winright 
 

 

59. Pope Paul VI, Populorum progressio, March 26, 1967, §14, 

http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-

vi_enc_26031967_populorum.html. 

60. I first suggested this in Tobias Winright, “Your ‘Just Peace’ Reading List,” National 

Catholic Reporter, December 21, 2016, https://www.ncronline.org/books/2017/08/your-

just-peace-reading-list, and I reiterated it in Tobias Winright, “Peace on Earth, Peace with 

Earth: Laudato si’ and Integral Peacebuilding,” in All Creation is Connected: Voices in 

Response to Pope Francis’s Encyclical on Ecology, ed. Daniel R. DiLeo (Winona, MN: 

Anselm Academic, 2017), 195–211. Gerard Powers, too, has encouraged an “Integral 

Catholic Peacebuilding” in his “Toward an Integral Catholic Peacebuilding,” The Journal 

of Social Encounters 1/1 (2017): 1–13, 

http://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/social_encounters/vol1/iss1/2. I am grateful to Powers 

for bringing to my attention via a private email message Pope Pius XII’s use of the term 

“integral peace” n his Christmas Message of 1942, “The Internal Order of States and 

People,” http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12ch42.htm. While Pius did not 

understand “integral peace” in the way I am calling for, he did apply it to both a country’s 

internal national and external international peace. 

 


