If you want thoughtful, reasonable Christian thoughts and opinions, Pope Francis isn’t the one to turn to. Despite his position, he’s routinely putting his foot and his mouth and saying things without a Biblical basis and sometimes even saying things that run counter to God’s word.
Well, now he’s back at it with the woke nonsense, this time by claiming that there’s no such thing as a just war. Yes, really.
Speaking at the Vatican during an international conference, Pope Francis began on a soft but at least theologically supportable note, calling out the horrors of war and saying:
We are used to hearing news of wars, but far away. Syria, Yemen… the usual. Now the war has come closer, it is on our doorstep, practically. And this makes us think about the “savagery” of human nature, how far we are capable of going. Murderers of our brothers. Thank you, Msgr. Guy-Réal Thivierge, for this letter that you brought, which is a wake-up call, it draws attention to what is happening. We talk about education, and when one thinks of education one thinks of children, young people…
We think of so many soldiers who are sent to the front, very young, Russian soldiers, poor things. Think of the many young Ukrainian soldiers; think of the inhabitants, the young people, the young girls, boys, girls…
This is happening close to us. The Gospel only asks us not to look the other way, which is precisely the most pagan attitude of Christians: the Christian, when he gets used to looking the other way, slowly becomes a pagan disguised as a Christian. This is why I wanted to begin with this, with this reflection.
It’s not quite the same tradition as Pope Urban II preaching the crusade or the chaplains in the American military urging the troops to fight the godless fascists and communists in the Second World War, Korea, and Vietnam, but he’s right to remind people of the horrors brought by war.
It was then that Francis got to the not so true part, which is that there’s no such thing as a just war. Speaking about that, he said:
The war is not far away: it is at our doorstep. What am I doing? Here in Rome, at the “Bambino Gesù” Hospital, there are children wounded by the bombings. At home, they take them home. Do I pray? Do I fast? Do I do penance? Or do I live carefree, as we normally live through distant wars? A war is always – always! – the defeat of humanity, always. We, the educated, who work in education, are defeated by this war, because on another side we are responsible. There is no such thing as a just war: they do not exist!
Really? So America’s fight for independence wasn’t just? The brave stand of the Knights of St. John on Malta against the Ottoman aggressors wasn’t just? World War II, the fight against the fascists that raped Nanking and murdered millions of Poles and Jews in gas chambers, wasn’t just?
According to Francis, the answer is that they weren’t as just wars don’t exist. That’s far from being Catholic doctrine. As Breitbart reports:
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, a compendium of Catholic belief, lays out a series of conditions necessary to justify the use of military force, summing up the teachings articulated by Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Thomas Aquinas.
It states that “the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; there must be serious prospects of success; the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.”
“These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the ‘just war’ doctrine,” the Catechism declares.
So, perhaps Francis should catch up on his Catechism, as he’s at odds with centuries of Catholic doctrine.
By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.
This story syndicated with permission from Will, Author at Trending Politics
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