Bob Schwartz

Tag: Michael Walzer

June 27, 2026

Just war and the Catholic Church

“Pope Leo, his papal predecessors and his contemporary brethren are calling for returning to Christian roots, with one simple concept: War is fundamentally antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

More than two years ago, I posted a Gaza War reading list , which began with Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, Fifth Edition, the classic contemporary work on the subject.

I am adding a short opinion piece in the New York Times, It’s Time to Put This Catholic Teaching to Rest, by James Grimaldi, former executive editor of The National Catholic Reporter. The teaching referred to is just war theory. Excerpt follows:

It isn’t every day that a pope calls for an overhaul of a more than 1,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church, but that’s exactly what Pope Leo XIV did last month. In his inaugural encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” which was mainly an exploration of how to protect human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence, Leo devoted a brief but critical passage to just war theory.

In a break with a foundational principle of Catholic thought on conflict, Leo called the theory “outdated” and made it clear that the teaching has been twisted to justify wars for decades, most recently the war in Iran. It is about time for the change.

Just war theory holds that wars must meet strict conditions: They should be in self-defense, and only if alternatives have been exhausted; the use of force should be proportional; there should be a likelihood of success and the threat should be imminent. Since World War II at least, several popes have criticized world leaders for using the theory as a fig leaf.

While Leo did not cite any specific war in the encyclical, he clearly had President Trump’s war on Iran in mind. On June 6, in remarks en route to Madrid for a visit, he was asked if a “just war” was being waged in Iran. The pontiff replied: “I believe this has already been made very clear: In Iran, the criteria for a just war are not present.” Leo wasn’t done. “The theory of the just war dates back to centuries when it was impossible to imagine the weapons and the destructive capacity available to humanity today,” he added….

In casting doubt on the usefulness of just war teaching in the modern era, Leo’s encyclical preserved “the right to self-defense in the strictest sense.” Instead of suggesting a new framework for justifying war, Leo all but rules out war’s legitimacy. “Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness,” Leo wrote. “The use of force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.”

Overhauling just war teaching will be among the top issues to be discussed on Friday and Saturday at a consistory, or meeting of the pope’s cardinals, at the Vatican, according to Vatican News, the Holy See’s official outlet. The cardinals should not pull their punches. The moment urgently calls for new guidance, not just discussion. In reformulating the church’s view of war, the stakes for Catholicism, the United States and the world are high, and the Vatican needs to get this right. The universal church, with millenniums of moral reasoning and clergy on the ground in virtually every conflict zone, is uniquely situated to articulate a new intellectual framework on just war theory — especially as A.I. increasingly automates decisions on the battlefield.

The answer is deceptively simple. Leo, his papal predecessors and his contemporary brethren are calling for returning to Christian roots, with one simple concept: War is fundamentally antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

James Grimaldi, It’s Time to Put This Catholic Teaching to Rest, New York Times, June 26, 2026

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February 14, 2024

Gaza War reading list

There has been an abundant supply of information, analysis, belief and emotion surrounding the current Israeli war in Gaza. I have increasingly kept the analysis, belief and emotion to myself, or at least in a very small circle. In Yiddish terms, who needs the tzuris (trouble, aggravation)?

As for information, I have continued to seek trustworthy work from scholars and historians who have studied the issues. Some of this work is not always in the mainstream of discussion. Here are a few books I have found:

Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (Fifth Edition) by Michael Walzer

“Just and Unjust Wars has forever changed how we think about the ethics of conflict. In this modern classic, political philosopher Michael Walzer examines the moral issues that arise before, during, and after the wars we fight. Reaching from the Athenian attack on Melos, to the Mai Lai massacre, to the war in Afghanistan and beyond, Walzer mines historical and contemporary accounts and the testimony of participants, decision makers, and victims to explain when war is justified and what ethical limitations apply to those who wage it.”

Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others by David Livingstone Smith

“A revelatory look at why we dehumanize each other, with stunning examples from world history as well as today’s headlines.

“Brute.” “Cockroach.” “Lice.” “Vermin.” “Dog.” “Beast.” These and other monikers are constantly in use to refer to other humans—for political, religious, ethnic, or sexist reasons. Human beings have a tendency to regard members of their own kind as less than human. This tendency has made atrocities like the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda, and the slave trade possible, and yet we still find it in phenomena such as xenophobia, homophobia, military propaganda, and racism. Less Than Human draws on a rich mix of history, psychology, biology, anthropology and philosophy to document the pervasiveness of dehumanization, describe its forms, and explain why we so often resort to it.

David Livingstone Smith posits that this behavior is rooted in human nature, but gives us hope in also stating that biological traits are malleable, showing us that change is possible. Less Than Human is a chilling indictment of our nature, and is as timely as it is relevant.”

Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978 by Geoffrey Levin

“A new history of the American Jewish relationship with Israel focused on its most urgent and sensitive issue: the question of Palestinian rights.

American Jews began debating Palestinian rights issues even before Israel’s founding in 1948. Geoffrey Levin recovers the voices of American Jews who, in the early decades of Israel’s existence, called for an honest reckoning with the moral and political plight of Palestinians. These now‑forgotten voices, which include an aid‑worker‑turned‑academic with Palestinian Sephardic roots, a former Yiddish journalist, anti‑Zionist Reform rabbis, and young left‑wing Zionist activists, felt drawn to support Palestinian rights by their understanding of Jewish history, identity, and ethics. They sometimes worked with mainstream American Jewish leaders who feared that ignoring Palestinian rights could foster antisemitism, leading them to press Israeli officials for reform. But Israeli diplomats viewed any American Jewish interest in Palestinian affairs with deep suspicion, provoking a series of quiet confrontations that ultimately kept Palestinian rights off the American Jewish agenda up to the present era.”

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