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ABC News gleefully reported last weekend that Pope Leo XIV dedicated his Palm Sunday homily to the rejection of the notion that God justifies war. “Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” Leo told tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
Presumably included among those whose prayers God rejects is the United States, currently in a conflict with the Iranian regime of Shi’ite fanatics who have been waging war against the U.S. since 1979. As Pope, Leo naturally prays for peace and dialogue, as should we all. But he has fiercely condemned the conflict in Iran as “atrocious” and “a spiral of violence.” “The wars that stain the present moment with blood,” he tweeted over the weekend, “are the fruit of the idolatry of power and money.”
Really? At least where Iran is concerned, the war is the fruit of nearly 50 years of Islamic terrorism directed at the United States, which the evil mullahs denounce almost daily as “the Great Satan.” How much longer were we supposed to tolerate Americans being murdered and maimed? Striving for peace, Leo continued, “is the work of purified hearts, of those who see others as brothers and sisters to be protected, not enemies to be defeated.”
The ones who need to hear that message are not the United States military but the mullahs, who hate us with the heat of a thousand suns for theological reasons, not because of some petty dispute over territory or money. Their single-minded obsession is to hasten the eschatological return of the 12th and final imam whose reappearance will signal the end-times eradication of infidels from the earth. They very much view America and Israel as enemies to be defeated, not brothers and sisters.
In the real world, not all people are rational actors who seek peace and harmony, and who are amenable to compromise and dialogue. Some men just want to watch the world burn, as Batman’s butler Alfred tells him in The Dark Knight. Sometimes people just want to kill you. As Christians, we are called to pray for our enemies’ hearts to turn and to come to God; when they insult us for our faith, we are called to turn the other cheek – but our faith was never meant to be a suicide pact.
After citing Pope Leo’s condemnation of those who life up prayers for God’s support in wartime, ABC News went on to smear “U.S. officials, especially Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, for invoking their Christian faith to cast the war as a Christian nation trying to vanquish its foes with military might.” Hegseth’s open Christian belief infuriates the Godless who insist on an impenetrable wall between Christianity and government, which was never the intent of our Founding Fathers, by the way (these same hypocrites are fine with Muslims like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani openly injecting their faith into government). He strikes fear and loathing in the fifth columnists of the Left-wing media like ABC News and other Left-wing propaganda outlets, who have coordinated to spread the fear-mongering narrative that his Christian worldview is “terrifying” veterans and current members of our own military.
The only time the secular Left cites Christianity favorably is when they believe they can weaponize it against Christians themselves (“Make your opponents live up to their own standards,” as radical strategist Saul Alinsky urged in his Rules for Radicals, a book literally dedicated to Lucifer). The Left loves the idea of a pacifist Christianity whose adherents won’t defend themselves against the unholy alliance of the Left and Islam. They hate a “muscular Christianity” that insures peace by preparing for war, that is capable of wielding a sword against the violent unrighteous.
“There is absolutely no biblical basis for this whatsoever,” Toxic Empathy author Allie Beth Stucky posted on X in response to Leo’s proclamation:
Christians should strive for peace, yes. We don’t revel in death and destruction. And a Christian could make a sound argument against the particulars of many wars throughout history, including the war with Iran today. A Christian could also agree that God shouldn’t be used to justify unjust wars.
But to say that God is against war per se is flat out false.
Stuckey goes on to note, correctly, “All throughout the Old Testament God calls for war in defense of His people. Exodus 15:3 declares, “The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is His name”:
David constantly prayed to the Lord while battling his enemies. He says his cries to the Lord “reached His ears” and God answered him. God didn’t just answer David by hiding him away but by giving him lethal strength: “He trains my hands for war” (Psalm 18:6, 34).
But that’s just the wrathful, Old Testament God, you counter; Jesus is all about peace. But Jesus and God are one and the same, and as Stuckey also pointed out, “Jesus Himself promises to come back as a warrior to wage war against evildoers.” Not all wars are righteous, she added, and not all who pray for victory do so for righteous reasons. But our military campaign against the Iranian regime is a long-overdue defensive one to end their murderous evil and to prevent them, once and for all, from acquiring an apocalyptic level of weaponry.
Charles Martel and his Christian Frankish force waged war in 732 AD against a Saracen army bearing down on Paris, driving them back to Spain and literally preventing all of Christendom from becoming Muslim; he was dubbed “the Hammer of God” for it by the Pope at the time.
The devout George Washington prayed for victory against the British on innumerable occasions, paving the way for the establishment of our great nation. Stuckey quotes the pacifist Quaker who reportedly overheard Washington praying in the woods at Valley Forge: “He was at Prayer to the God of the Armies, beseeching to interpose with his Divine aid, as it was His crisis, and the cause of the country, of humanity, and of the world.”
General George Patton famously sought the assistance of his head chaplain in December 1944 for a prayer for good weather that would enable the Allied forces to forge on to Berlin. The chaplain drafted one, which Patton approved, signed, and had printed on 250,000 cards distributed to every soldier in the Third Army. It read, in part:
Pray when fighting. Pray alone. Pray with others. Pray by night and pray by day. Pray for the cessation of immoderate rains, for good weather for Battle. Pray for the defeat of our wicked enemy whose banner is injustice and whose good is oppression. Pray for victory. Pray for our Army, and pray for Peace.
As the chaplain himself, Fr. James Hugh O’Neill, later told it,
On December 20, to the consternation of the Germans and the delight of the American forecasters who were equally surprised at the turn-about-the rains and the fogs ceased. For the better part of a week came bright clear skies and perfect flying weather. Our planes came over by tens, hundreds, and thousands. They knocked out hundreds of tanks, killed thousands of enemy troops in the Bastogne salient, and harried the enemy as he valiantly tried to bring up reinforcements. The 101st Airborne, with the 4th, 9th, and 10th Armored Divisions, which saved Bastogne, and other divisions which assisted so valiantly in driving the Germans home, will testify to the great support rendered by our air forces. General Patton prayed for fair weather for Battle. He got it.
These are just a few of the innumerable examples of Christian warriors throughout history waging war for righteous causes – and of Jesus hearing their prayers and granting them victory. And Pope Leo is apparently ignoring that the Catholic Church has a “just war” tradition reaching back over 1600 years to St. Augustine, one of the most important Church Fathers (and before him, his mentor St. Ambrose), who established that war may be undertaken justly in defense of the community, for the protection of allies, or for redress for wrongful acts, and must not be motivated by revenge, wrath, or greed.
I am Catholic, and often our critics believe we find the Pope and his every utterance to be infallible. Papal infallibility is actually a specific doctrine that applies only under strict conditions. It does not mean the Pope is morally perfect or always correct in his opinions on everyday matters, science, history, or even most theological statements. For a papal statement to be considered “infallible,” all of these elements must be present simultaneously:
- The Pope must be acting ex cathedra – in his official capacity as the supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church;
- He must explicitly intend to make a binding, definitive doctrinal pronouncement;
- The doctrine must concern faith or morals, not politics, economics, science, etc.;
- He must declare it binding on the whole Church (something all the faithful must hold as true).
Infallibility is very rarely invoked – there are only two commonly cited examples of clear ex cathedra definitions in the last two centuries. When it comes to proclaiming that God turns a deaf ear to righteous warriors, Leo is very fallible indeed.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.
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