US war on Iran not ‘morally legitimate,’ says DC Catholic archbishop

The US campaign against Iran does not meet the standards of a just war, says the Catholic archbishop of Washington, DC.

“The Khamenei regime has been for decades a brutal and repressive government that has spread terrorism throughout the world and should be replaced,” says Cardinal Robert W. McElroy in an interview with the Catholic Standard.

At the same time, argues McElroy, the war does not meet three of the six criteria that the Catholic Church uses to determine the morality of a war.

He claims that the war does not meet the standard of just case “because our country was not responding to an existing or imminent and objectively verifiable attack by Iran,” and it is therefore a preventative war.

McElroy also contends that the war doesn’t meet the criterion of right intention because the aims of the war are unclear: “You cannot satisfy the just war tradition’s criterion of right intention if you do not have a clear intention.”

In addition, the archbishop says that it is not clear that the potential benefits of the war will outweigh the harm being done.

“Already the war has had unintended consequences. Iran’s morally despicable decision to target its neighbors in the region has spread the expanse of destruction,” he says. “Lebanon may fall into civil war. The world’s oil supply is under great strain. The potential disintegration of Iran could well produce new and dangerous realities. And the possibility of immense casualties on all sides is immense.”

“For all of these reasons, Catholic teaching leads to the conclusion that our entry into this war was not morally legitimate,” he says.