Alessandro Rovati: Hello everyone and welcome to the Conversations in Moral Theology. I'm your host, Alessandro Rovati. Today I'm joined by Matthew Scherl. Thank you for joining us, Matthew.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm excited.
Alessandro Rovati: So ⁓ Just War has been in the news and the national debate has made moral theology relevant to the national conversation. And ⁓ Matthew, you have been thinking about and writing about the Just War tradition and the way the Catholic Church thinks about it. Maybe as a starter, when we say Just War tradition in the context of the Catholic Church. what are we referring to because there are of course different perspectives when it comes to the just world.
Matthew Shadle: Sure, so the way I would describe it is historically. And so, ⁓ you know, in the earliest centuries of Christianity, the records we have are that Christians ⁓ refused to participate in military service in the Roman Empire. ⁓ And some of the writings suggest this was out of ⁓ moral conviction, out of... know, refusal to shed blood, but also other records suggest it was at least partly because military service involved worship of the emperor. ⁓ But things really shipped with the conversion of Constantine and the kind of acceptance of Christianity in the empire. so Christians are now in positions of political responsibility and we see a rethinking of how Christians ⁓ you know, participate in war. And so a pivotal figure is St. Augustine, whose life spans a lot of the fourth century into the fifth century. And so he's really the major figure who develops the Christian just war doctrine or the just war theory, ⁓ thinking about how can we live consistently with the teachings of Jesus about loving our neighbors, loving our enemies, while also fulfilling this political responsibility to defend the people, right, in a position of political responsibility. And so as it develops over the centuries, the just war tradition develops ⁓ more principles for thinking about when is it morally justified to resort to military force, but then also, ⁓ What are the ethical questions about the conduct of warfare? So for example, it's always forbidden to directly or intentionally target non-combatants, right? So those sorts of questions are part of the tradition as well.
Alessandro Rovati: So ⁓ you mentioned Augustine, ⁓ one of his works in which he thinks about these things is the City of God. And in the City of God, he highlights the fact that there is a fundamental difference between the Christian mindset and the mindset of its age when it comes to statecraft. He posits that ⁓ contemporary at his time statecraft was often led by Elibido Dominandi and the contrast between that attitude and the Christian ⁓ calling is for him very important. Would you help us think about that difference and the impact of that difference for how Christians think about war?
Matthew Shadle: Sure, the libido dominandi, that translates as the lust for domination. And in Augustine's time, in the Roman times, that really took the form of like a desire for glory, right? And so glory ⁓ in military or political terms came from, you know, like defeating, subduing the enemies, right? And ⁓ so for Augustine really, one... the Christian contrast to that is humility, right? That glory or this domination of others is not what brings us happiness, but it's instead peace. And ⁓ so he has this... ⁓ important line in the City of God and elsewhere where he talks about how ⁓ when war is fought out of a lust for domination or like an enjoyment of violence, that that's when it becomes evil, right? And he has this really important point that's, you really essential to the just war tradition is that even when it's just, a Christian recognizes that war is tragic, right? That it's lamentable that we have to, that the resort to war is necessary because it brings suffering. ⁓ And so that's very much a contrast with that ⁓ classical Roman view.
Alessandro Rovati: So, as ⁓ the tradition evolved, do you see moments in which important steps were taken to either expand or shift some of the ways in which ⁓ the conversation evolved?
Matthew Shadle: Sure, of course. I would say two historical moments are one, the high middle ages and especially Thomas Aquinas, who really fleshes out the thinking about what are called the juice ad bellum criteria, when it is justified to go to war. ⁓ And then that's further fleshed out. then ⁓ also during this period, ⁓ what we would call the early modern period, the period directly after the Protestant Reformation, where we have ⁓ some major Spanish Catholic theologians like Francisco Vitoria, Francisco Suarez, and some others who they also think very much about that question of just ad bellum because they're, Vitoria, for example, is dealing with the Spanish discovery of the Americas. And so he actually challenges some of the rationales of the conquistadors justifying the conquest of the indigenous peoples using just war principles. then they also, Victoria and Suarez and others ⁓ also really for the first time start thinking about the conduct of war in more detail about situations ⁓ in which warfare causes harm to the civilian population when that can and cannot be justified. And then also ⁓ in the decades after those thinkers, also have ⁓ some Protestant just war thinking. The most important person is Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist who's alive during the 30 years war. So he has this direct experience of the horrors of war. And so he thinks through the ethical principles of that. So I would say those are two pivotal moments and then of course we could get into the 20th century with the horrors of the Second World War and the development of nuclear weapons and of course that's an important development in this tradition as well.
Alessandro Rovati: Since it's important, let's get into it. What's your reading of how that shaped ⁓ more recent Catholic thinking on the issue?
Matthew Shadle: Yeah. Well, so yeah, and that's something that I wrote about recently is that in the aftermath of World War II, we really see the crystallization of this principle that when it comes to what's considered a just cause for war. So that's really the central criterion of the deuce ad bellum aspect of the just war tradition is that there needs to be a just cause and it needs to be proportionate in the sense that there's a sense in which you have, you know, you may be in the right in a certain conflict with another country, but it has to be you there has to be a certain gravity to the situation to justify war. All right. And so, so after World War II, there's this crystallization that the only circumstances in which that condition is met is when it's in a case of self-defense, as if you're already being attacked by an aggressor. And then eventually ⁓ more recently, I think, especially in light of some of the genocide and ethnic cleansing in the 1990s, there's also a realization that might be coming to the defense of others, like a people who... are where there's massive human rights violations like genocide or ethnic cleansing that the international community could come to their defense and that would be a just cause. But really those in contemporary Catholic thinking and this is reflected in magisterial teaching going back to Pope Pius XII, know, the Pope during the Second World War, that those are really the only situations that could be a just cause.
Alessandro Rovati: So as we went through a round of debates following the ⁓ comments of the administration in response to comments of Poplio, ⁓ Catholic commentators have been debating a little bit this issue you were referring to, namely, whether the only justifiable war from a Catholic perspective is a defensive war. And so questions about preventive wars versus defensive wars have emerged in the conversation. ⁓ How do you think about that difference and what are some of the sources in the tradition that can help us think about that distinction?
Matthew Shadle: Sure. And actually, this is not a new conversation in the sense that this was also the conversation around the Iraq war back in 2002 when the debate was happening in 2003 when that war broke out too, because that was justified as a preventive war as well, right? To prevent, there was this fear that Iraq was ⁓ developing weapons of mass destruction. And so this was preventive to prevent them from ever having the opportunity to use such weapons or to pass them along to terrorists. And so, so we're really seeing similar arguments today. ⁓ So, ⁓ something I pointed out in my writings is that this, ⁓ A distinction between preventive war and self-defense has been part of the just war tradition for centuries, going back to that early modern period I was describing before. They don't talk about it in terms of preventive war, which is a more modern concept, but they do talk about it in terms of... given the politics of the day, that certain rulers would have ⁓ seen a rival ⁓ state increasing their power, maybe building up their military. ⁓ Like, Grotius even talks about building fortifications and things that, and so they might perceive that, ⁓ that country could be a threat to us. ⁓ Right. And and and they're they're unanimous. These thinkers are unanimous that that by itself is not sufficient to go to war. cannot go to war to neutralize this potential threat. You know, a country could be a threat down the road that that that by itself is cannot justify a war. And and so we see we see the same thing in ⁓ modern 20th century laws of war, that there is this very clear distinction. in the international laws of war between, ⁓ well, okay, so just use some technical language. There's such a thing as a preemptive war and that's a case where ⁓ another country is on the verge of attack. Like you have solid information that an attack is imminent that you can in a sense strike first, but it's in a defensive way, all right. And so the international laws of war permit that versus a preventive war, which is like a real but future threat that that cannot justify a war, right? Because for one, it may or may not happen, The justification for it may or may not be real. ⁓ But also the danger of that is just a spiral of violence, right? Because one side could say, they're a potential threat to us. The other side could say, Well, you're a potential threat to us. And so like, you know, that there would just be this spiral of violence that it would be hard to, well, like every country would say they're in the right, right? That there wouldn't be any ⁓ way to adjudicate that, I guess you could say.
Alessandro Rovati: Yeah. At the same time though, in what you said earlier, you seem to entail that it is not true to simply say that the church only considers justifiable wars of self-defense. Instead, you hinted at the fact that there are wars in which we come to the defense of the innocent, of the vulnerable, that may be justifiable. Would you maybe expand on that idea?
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, sure, ⁓ so this is ⁓ a concept that develops in the context of the United Nations, but then the Catholic Church also picked this up, so Pope Benedict XVI mentioned this, the concept of the responsibility to protect. Okay, and it's actually connected to the principle of subsidiarity, right? And so the idea is that every state, every nation is responsible for the wellbeing of its people, but in a situation where... that government has turned against its people or a portion of the people, or if it is unable to protect the people. So there's a situation where the state has basically fallen apart and now there's some kind of civil war or conflict. then the international community can step in to provide that security. through, this would be through the form of, for example, United Nations peacekeepers, or it may, if there's an active conflict, it may be, you know, an international coalition of military forces to... ⁓ to establish peace, right? And so, like I said, this idea arises out of the failures of the 1990s, so in Rwanda and Bosnia, where these horrible crimes against different populations took place, and... And so there have been peacekeeping missions in, for example, the Democratic Republic of Congo, ⁓ Lebanon and Syria and so forth, with different degrees of success. But that's the basic idea, is that there is a responsibility on the part of the international community to intervene in these situations. And like I said, usually it's conceived more as peacekeeping. It's been, I think, rare that there's been some like a full scale, you know, military ⁓ incursion, guess, to prevent genocide, right? We haven't really seen that.
Alessandro Rovati: So from what you say, it seems that according to the Catholic Church, the international community plays an important role in adjudicating these questions. ⁓ What's the role that the Catholic Church thinks places like the UN and multilateral agreements play in adjudicating the morality of conflict?
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, that's a great question. And that gives me an opportunity to return to something I wanted to say before. So another problem with preventive war of responding to a future threat is that it closes the door to dialogue, right? It closes the door to peacemaking, right? And so that's one of the principles of the just war tradition is ⁓ that war is always should be a last resort. All right. And so what that's meant to do is that we should try any reasonable means to resolve the conflict before resorting to violence. And so a preventive war, for example, violates that. It shuts off. dialogue and in fact, we recently saw that with ⁓ Iran, like they were in the midst of negotiations when the first strikes took place, right, which is ⁓ terrible. ⁓ But. But going back to your question about the international community, I would say that is one of the principal roles that the Catholic Church of the Vatican has looked to the international community for is to provide venues or forums. where dialogue and peacemaking can take place. So, and that can be institutions like the United Nations, but it can also be thinking about the international community in a more informal sense of sort of informal coalitions of. ⁓ states and institutions that try to bring the parties to a conflict together or to bring different ethnic groups, for example, to resolve issues, either to settle a violent dispute that has already broken out or to prevent a violent conflict from emerging. And then also, of course, another role for international institutions or the international community is more of a justice oriented role. ⁓ whether that is ⁓ prosecuting war crimes, so the crimes that occur during war, violations of the laws of war, the principles of the just war, and also ⁓ establishing peace settlements, right? you know, all of the, what's the word? the, I can't think of the word, like the reparations, reparations for the damages that occur ⁓ during war, those sorts of things that international institutions play a crucial role in working all of that out.
Alessandro Rovati: Don't worry. So it seems that one of the fundamental problems of our age is that as time has passed, institutions such as the UN have shown themselves ⁓ incapable of being the place of adjudication and ongoing deliberation. And in part, it's because of scandals within those organizations. And in part, it's because it seems that we have moved. past that age of multilateral dialogue towards a more might is right mentality.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, yeah, and that's something that the Vatican has recognized over the years is that these international institutions are not fulfilling the... ⁓ the role that they should, both for structural reasons and for just reasons of will, of choice. And so, one of the main structural issues with the United Nations has been that the Security Council, all of the main powers of the world sit on the Security Council and often they are the ones involved in conflict or their allies maybe. And so they can always subvert any efforts to to promote peace that they think go against their interests. So there's kind of that institutional or structural problem with the United Nations. ⁓ But like you said, that there's not a broad commitment. you know, sure, on paper there is this commitment to the principles and the United Nations Charter and the international laws of war, but in reality that commitment is often lacking and so the institutions don't function in that peacemaking way. And so what we do see is, like I said, some of those more informal attempts to broker peace. So like in the current conflict, we see like Pakistan playing an interesting and important role trying to negotiate that. And I think, you know, there's Pretty broad support in the international community for those efforts for them, you know to play that that role today
Alessandro Rovati: Yeah. So ⁓ one area of debate that has emerged recently is whether some of the statements of Poplio ⁓ entail that the church is shifting towards a ⁓ pacifist mentality that considers all forms of ⁓ war ⁓ something that is immoral. I don't think that that's how the Catholic church understands the morality of war, but undoubtedly you can read some of the statements and at least rhetorically ⁓ interpret them in that way. So maybe what's the relationship between what the church teaches and principled objections against the use of force that have been part of the Christian tradition.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, I think that's right. If you didn't have any background in how Catholic teaching on war has developed and you just saw a statement from Pope Leo or Pope Francis made similar statements, yeah, you could definitely think, ⁓ is the Catholic Church turning in a more pacifist direction? And I think, I've been thinking about that. think the problem, one problem here is that we're not. The question here is not this traditional debate between just war and pacifism. Because really what the popes, and like I pointed out in my recent writing, that this sort of rhetoric goes all the way back to Pope John XXIII. So we're talking about more than 50 years here that they've been saying, you know, presenting the same message. That, like I said, it's, you kind of got to think past the just war versus pacifism dichotomy. That what they're saying is, we should be working towards abolishing war, right? ⁓ So it's so much that the just war tradition, they're throwing it out, but that they want it to be increasingly irrelevant, right? Okay, and so what I pointed out in my recent article is that when you're familiar with the recent statements, what you can see is a pattern that they will say that legitimate defense, using military force in legitimate defense is justified, but that war is not. And what they mean by that is basically starting a war, right? And so, ⁓ and to me, this is just a contemporary application of that point from Augustine that I mentioned at the beginning, that war is tragic. And so they've taken the further step, that then we should be working to ensure that it never happens. All right, so that's why you see these seemingly absolute statements against war is that they're saying we should not, this should not be part of the human experience, that we should be doing everything we can to prevent this from happening. But in the meantime, in the tragic circumstances that were not there yet, states do have the right to defend themselves, right? So Pope Francis said that in relation to Ukraine. after it was invaded by Russia. ⁓ The US Catholic bishops said that many years ago after September 11th, that in terms of a military response to that. So ⁓ there is this pattern to these statements that doesn't quite fit into the just war versus pacifism debate. They're really just kind of responding to a different question, but it can be confusing. If you're thinking of it in terms of the just war versus pacifism question, is I think how I would put it.
Alessandro Rovati: Is there space for principled Christian pacifism within the Catholic Church?
Matthew Shadle: Wow, I think so. And I think the US Catholic bishops tackled that many decades ago in their pastoral letter of the challenge of peace that they were trying to make the case that there was room for the just war ethic and committed pacifism or nonviolence in the church. And I think... Well, let me add to what I was saying. And so not just that the church is arguing that we should be working towards the abolition of war, or making war unnecessary, but that really the Christian commitment should be to nonviolently resolving conflicts before war becomes either morally necessary. or becomes the reality, right? So I think this is really how Pope Francis thought about it. So instead of focusing our energies on the question, when could war be justified, right? He's kind of suggesting that almost sort of primes you for looking for the situations in which war would be justified, right? You see what I mean? Versus we should put our energies as Christians into how can we prevent war, how can we resolve conflicts nonviolently? And so I think that's where a committed pacifist, a Christian pacifist could feel at home is that we all should agree that we should be seeking nonviolent ways to resolve conflict, even if we disagree within the church on if. there ever, if there could ever arise a situation in which we've put this effort into nonviolent conflict resolution, it's not working, we have to take up arms, right? So some Christians may say that could never be justified. Others would say, know, prudentially, in this situation, it is justified.
Alessandro Rovati: Yeah, which in a way can lead us to ⁓ think for a moment about Catholics who feel a call to serve in the military. The church understands that form of service as one that can be an expression of Christian discipleship and love of neighbor and the common good. So how does the church think of Catholics who serve in the armed forces?
Matthew Shadle: ⁓ I think in general, it's exactly what you said. So there is this statement in Gaudium et spes, one of the main documents from Vatican. I don't have it in front of me, so I'm not quoting it directly. But it basically says that those who participate in military service can rightly see themselves as defenders of the common good, as promoters of peace. But I think we should caveat that too in the sense that there's been a lot of reflection about the moral obligations of soldiers in situations where they may be called upon to do something that is unjust. And this is a really complicated question. so ⁓ I think the principle we say for sure is that if soldiers are ever called upon to engage in conduct, that is clearly unjust against the laws of war that they should refuse even if there are like professional consequences for that or legal consequences that you should always refuse to, for example, directly target civilians. right, where I think it gets complicated is the question of can a soldier participate ⁓ in a war that in some way was unjust, like maybe Maybe the political leaders rushed to war. Maybe they could have turned to dialogue more and they rushed to war. Can the soldiers fight in that war? I think that's very ambiguous.
Alessandro Rovati: Yeah. I was struck that, of course, there is a history in the Catholic Church of having chaplains, priests, even bishops that serve the men and women who are in the armed forces. It's a special diocese that, for example, in the US is led by Archbishop Brogio. So clearly there is a commitment to the spiritual well-being and an understanding that can conscientiously ⁓ in the military as a Catholic.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, and about 15 years ago, I had the privilege of participating in a conference with a lot of the chaplains in the army, specifically, both Catholic and Protestant. And yeah, that's part of their training is the just war tradition. And so their role is not just spiritual, but they're kind of this voice of conscience within the military. And of course, You know, soldiers get a basic training in the laws of war and ethics, but chaplains are there to provide both spiritual and ethical guidance to ⁓ soldiers. And so I really appreciate that Archbishop Broglio, the archbishop in charge of the military services has been giving clear, you know, moral guidance on some of the issues we're facing in the recent days. ⁓ fulfilling that pastoral and ethical responsibility.
Alessandro Rovati: So we have been talking about these things primarily from the standpoint of the just word tradition articulated within the Catholic Church. We have reflected on some of the statements from the Vatican and the Popes. At the same time though, as it happens often with Catholic social teaching, there are men and women of goodwill who recognize the validity of what the church teaches, which means that something like just war thinking and just war principles have been ⁓ carried forward even beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church and has come to shape in certain ways the very way in which the US military has articulated some of his ⁓ rules of engagement and conduct. Would you maybe ⁓ talk a little bit about the overlap between the US tradition and the Catholic Church?
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, yeah, and I should say that was one thing I was really impressed by when I attended that conference is how integrated the principles of just war are in the military's thinking. ⁓ And of course that goes back a long time to ⁓ in, I mean, even going back to the 19th century, but in the 20th century after World War I and World War II, we have these international treaties, the... ⁓ the Hague conventions and the Geneva conventions that ⁓ incorporate into international law, basically some of the elements of the Just War tradition and then also ⁓ in the United Nations charter. And so you're right that there is this ⁓ important transition that scholars have noted too is the move from Just War thinking being more of a theological ⁓ discussion to becoming a legal discussion, right? And in fact, there was kind of a... ⁓ I don't want to say ignoring, but a neglect of the just war tradition in the Catholic Church, like throughout the 19th century, you don't really see a lot of just war reflection among Catholic theologians in the 19th century. But it is really the wars of the 20th century that kind of revive theological thinking about war. And so in some way that is ⁓ a contribution that the church has made to the global community is that now these principles are recognized in international law. But also you see more recently ⁓ that we need to recover the theological aspect because without a philosophical or theological grounding. international law, the laws of war can lose ⁓ their appeal to the conscience, right? There's this ongoing dilemma of, Jacques Maritain talked about this with the Declaration on Human Rights, right? That we have these rights on paper, but we each need our philosophical or religious justification for why we believe in those rights. So the same thing with the laws of war, right? And so there's some important work by theologians about, okay, let's get back to the root of theologically, why do we believe in these principles about rooting them in the love of neighbor and the love for enemies and so forth.
Alessandro Rovati: It is a well established principle in the Catholic tradition and Catholic moral theology that in deliberating about the morality of an action circumstances play an important role. When it comes to the circumstances of contemporary warfare, in particular the way in which technology plays a role in how we engage in conflict, ⁓ contemporary forms of weapons systems. play a role in how we wage war. How do you see these circumstances, again, contemporary warfare, play a role in the way the church deliberates about these matters and maybe even the way in which the Vatican and the Pope have been deliberating about these matters?
Matthew Shadle: So just speaking about technology and how technology is maybe changing the circumstances or how we think ethically about war, I think we could emphasize at least two things. So one is speed, right? That we're developing weapons that, ⁓ well, that react so quickly that. that poses ethical dilemmas, right? Can you ethically assess the situation when the weapons are ⁓ firing so quickly, right? Or responding, so like. ⁓ Like think about like missile defense systems or, know, this is especially true when it comes to like protection from aerial attacks and things like that. Like can you assess the situation sufficiently to ethically determine what's going on with. that responds to a signal in a fraction of a second. But really the ethical dilemma that has got the most attention is with what are called autonomous weapons. This is the incorporation of artificial intelligence into weapons systems to the point that you don't have a human being in the loop making the decision of when to use the weapon or to fire the weapon. And so here the question is who is ultimately responsible, right? Like do we want to create a situation in which there is no human decision making in the decision of who or what to target, when to fire, and so forth. And I think we've seen the Vatican, for example, take a very firm stance that there always needs to be human decision making in the process, that morality is a human phenomenon and we can't pass on the responsibilities of conscience to technology, right? And so, know, and I'll, I mean, we don't have time to get into that, but I would say there are some legitimate uses of artificial intelligence in warfare, but completely offloading decision-making to artificial intelligence really poses an ethical problem.
Alessandro Rovati: There also seems to be an issue with the way in which ⁓ contemporary weapons ⁓ make it harder to maintain discrimination in war, especially when it comes to ⁓ air campaigns that ⁓ target, military targets, hopefully, but that unavoidably tend to have impacts on the broader civil life of a nation. Does that play a role in the way in the church has taken a more condemnatory tone in the last few decades?
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, yeah, I think so. And I would say it's a mixed bag. I mean, you can imagine a situation with the use of autonomous drones and then autonomous targeting systems. They may actually be very precise in identifying targets, maybe more precise than humans could be. So I wouldn't say 100 % they're going to cause problems with discrimination. But you're right that. that we're, I guess the issue is that we're trusting the machine to make that decision about discrimination. And then like I said, and then if, if. civilians are targeted by mistake, then there's the question of responsibility, right? Of then how do you assign responsibility when it was a mistake on the part of the weapons system? Is it the soldiers responsibility who initiated the targeting? Is it the manufacturer's responsibility, the software engineers? So it's very... It's almost like it's a way to avoid responsibility for those errors in discriminating between military and civilian.
Alessandro Rovati: Yeah. Now, ⁓ one thing that ⁓ created a lot of debates were statements from the administration suggesting that the US military would wipe out an entire civilization. And the reaction to those threats from Catholic leaders was ⁓ very vocal. ⁓ Maybe this is spelling out the obvious, but why does the Catholic Church pose so strongly statements of that nature.
Matthew Shadle: Sure, of course. So that's clearly, if you thought about how such a threat would be put into practice, that clearly involves indiscriminate targeting, right? To wipe out a civilization is not just targeting military targets with, you know. unfortunate civilian casualties, like directly targeting civilian population or civilian institutions. And it's very clear that, you know, throughout the entire Just War tradition, intentionally targeting civilians or just indiscriminately attacking civilian and military alike is, you know, grossly immoral. And so here the question is, is threatening to do that immoral, right, to gain leverage. And I mean in a way that's more complicated but I think you would want to say that for If the intended purpose is to use the threat to gain leverage, there has to be an understanding that the threat is real, right? That you are willing to do this grossly immoral thing if your demands are not met. And so, you know, in Catholic morality, it's always a question of the will. So your will is to do that, right? Your will is to cause that indiscriminate killing. Right? And even if you never actually carry it out, even if your demands were met, that was still your will to do that if your conditions were not met. so threats are immoral just as the action itself is.
Alessandro Rovati: In our conversation so far, we have focused on the way in which the church thinks about the morality of entering into a conflict and the way in which the church thinks about the morality of how we conduct ourselves during the conflict. There's also a part of the just war tradition that has been developing over time about what are the moral and ethical duties after a conflict. What does the church teach? about that.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, so that is certainly something that in terms of official teaching is underdeveloped, right? That that, you know, in, well, the early modern authors that I mentioned do spend some time thinking about that in a kind of legalistic way. And then there's been a revival of that question. think amongst theologians and philosophers really after the Iraq war in the 2000s, because there was really this question of... ⁓ what was the United States' responsibility for rebuilding this country that we came in and overthrew the government, kind of left the country in chaos. So, whatever you thought about the war, I think many people agreed we had some responsibility to then stay and try to help that country rebuild and reconstitute itself. So that's really where this question emerged. Although I have to say that that was... you know, there was thinking about that earlier. And so, for example, I actually wrote something about this that hasn't been published yet, but for example, after the Persian Gulf War in 1991, there was, this was an example of the United Nations fulfilling that role of coordinating reparations is that Iraq had responsibilities to repay Kuwait for the damage that had been done to their oil infrastructure and things like that to pay for cleaning the oil spills that they had caused and things like that. So that's also a kind of post-war justice is repairing damage to infrastructure damage to the environment and you know assigning responsibility for that. ⁓ But ⁓ I think one where there's more clarity even in Catholic official Catholic teaching is on ⁓ responsibility for war crimes for conduct during the war right that ⁓ you know the Vatican has in general supported like the International Criminal Court and other institutions ⁓ for ⁓ know, prosecuting gross violations of human rights during war and crimes against humanity and so forth. So, yeah, so there's different, very different aspects of post-war justice. So there's, you know, prosecution for conduct during war, reparations for the damage caused ⁓ in wars like that in Iraq, responsibilities for rebuilding government and the institutions of society. ⁓ But also, connecting back to earlier part of our conversation, another important part of post-war justice is I guess you could call it like peace building. now that the war is over, let's come to the table and dialogue and make sure that this war doesn't lead to further conflict down the road. Like we've seen so often in modern times, right? That World War II really arose out of the settlement of World War I. We've seen. just these sort of serial civil conflicts in Africa. like a peace settlement. Like one group feels like they were not represented in the peace settlement. So now they start conflict. And so it's just this ongoing process. so an important part of post-war justice is to continue the peacemaking process to prevent further violent conflict.
Alessandro Rovati: I think one of the things that the recent debates have ⁓ disclosed and put an emphasis on is the fact that in our very polarized culture, it's increasingly different for people of faith to think with the mind of the church without being immediately gobbled up by partisan commitments. How do you see the church's task and role amidst these centrifugal forces that really want to pull the faithful away from the way in which the church thinks about this and a whole entire host of issues.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, and I think, you know, I would first want to say that like with many things, the Just War tradition is a capacious tradition. And so there are room for, you know, different interpretations or different, you know, emphases as long as we remain committed to like the basic framework and how that framework has developed over time. And so, you know, your partisan leanings may, you know, lead you to different conclusions on particular questions. But But I think, me kind of reframe the question, but I think what the church should do is related to something we talked about earlier in this conversation, is to think about the just war tradition in terms of Christian discipleship, that this is something we follow because we're Christians, rather than, because I think that... you know, nothing is foolproof. I mean, if the church had some kind of way to cut through polarization, you know, they would have done it by now. But it provides at least a way of thinking that pushes back against using... Pushes back against I think what we're seeing is just using the just war theory as a tool to pursue your partisan interests Right, what you know, whichever side you may be on right that it's not it's not It's not a tool or a weapon. I mean that in a way that's counterproductive is that you're basically using the just war theory as a weapon in this kind of simmering conflict versus what it's intended to be as a way of promoting peace, right? And so if we think about the just war tradition as a way of faithfully living out our commitments as Christians, we can at least mitigate that tendency we see in our culture.
Alessandro Rovati: Maybe to finish up our conversation, it strikes me that we cannot think of the just war tradition and the way the Catholic Church engages it and develops it in isolation from another broad set of commitments that are part of Catholic social teaching. That's worth probably an entire other conversation, but could you maybe help us see some of the connections between the way in which the church engages with the moral question of war?
Matthew Shadle: Mm-hmm.
Alessandro Rovati: and broader anthropological and social commitments that are at the heart.
Matthew Shadle: Sure, let me just add something to the previous one. I also think that's part of why the reaction to Pope Leo has been so strong, is that maybe he is this American Pope. but he's speaking in a way that touches on politics, but it's very hard to dismiss him as a partisan, right? And I mean, some people are trying, Like, ⁓ he's a liberal, know, but like, obviously that's not true, you know? And so he's this voice of the church that you just can't... put in little boxes, ⁓ he's just saying that because he hates Trump or, you know, or, you know, whatever. And so like, just think people, people don't know what to do with that. They don't know how to, you know, we're so quick to just either like click like, or, you know, hate someone because they're on the other team. And so, it's hard to do that with the Pope, you know? But to your question of how does the Just Word tradition fit in with the broader scope of Catholic social teaching, I ⁓ we've already touched on some of that. I think we need to think about the Just Word tradition as related to this concept of the common good, which is so central to... ⁓ Catholic social teaching. And so I mentioned earlier that that we've come to think of the just war tradition as related to the political authorities responsibility for the common good. And, I mentioned, for example, in those situations where the political authorities are not able to ensure the common good of their people and the international community can step in. And that's because, you know, John the 23rd talks about there being a international or global common good, the common good of the human family that we're all responsible for. ⁓ So I think that's one way And then we also saw that in terms of our discussion of post-war justice in the sense that we can't just think about war in isolation, that we have to think about it both prior to the war and how are our commitments to the common good breaking down in ways that are going to potentially lead to violent conflict. And then the aftermath of conflict, how can we... remake the situation so that we're better promoting the common good so that to prevent a future conflict from emerging. So I think that's one main way. You know, and we can talk about other things. So one thing I've written about, for example, is the relationship between war and the environment. So there's, you know, in Catholic social teaching, this commitment to care for creation. And so there's a lot of ways the two intersect, for example, that like Global climate change is a contributing factor to conflicts in different parts of the world through changes in agricultural patterns and causing migration that then leads to tension between groups that can sometimes become violent, but also, like in my example, the Persian Gulf War with the oil, war itself causes environmental damage. So that's an obvious linkage with one aspect of Catholic social teaching as well.
Alessandro Rovati: Matthew, thank you so much for helping us think through these important issues. I'm sure it will be very valuable to our listeners to think along the mind of the Church on these important ethical questions.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, thank you very much. It's been enjoyable.
Alessandro Rovati: Many blessings on everybody. Thank you for tuning in and I'll catch you next time. Goodbye.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm excited.
Alessandro Rovati: So ⁓ Just War has been in the news and the national debate has made moral theology relevant to the national conversation. And ⁓ Matthew, you have been thinking about and writing about the Just War tradition and the way the Catholic Church thinks about it. Maybe as a starter, when we say Just War tradition in the context of the Catholic Church. what are we referring to because there are of course different perspectives when it comes to the just world.
Matthew Shadle: Sure, so the way I would describe it is historically. And so, ⁓ you know, in the earliest centuries of Christianity, the records we have are that Christians ⁓ refused to participate in military service in the Roman Empire. ⁓ And some of the writings suggest this was out of ⁓ moral conviction, out of... know, refusal to shed blood, but also other records suggest it was at least partly because military service involved worship of the emperor. ⁓ But things really shipped with the conversion of Constantine and the kind of acceptance of Christianity in the empire. so Christians are now in positions of political responsibility and we see a rethinking of how Christians ⁓ you know, participate in war. And so a pivotal figure is St. Augustine, whose life spans a lot of the fourth century into the fifth century. And so he's really the major figure who develops the Christian just war doctrine or the just war theory, ⁓ thinking about how can we live consistently with the teachings of Jesus about loving our neighbors, loving our enemies, while also fulfilling this political responsibility to defend the people, right, in a position of political responsibility. And so as it develops over the centuries, the just war tradition develops ⁓ more principles for thinking about when is it morally justified to resort to military force, but then also, ⁓ What are the ethical questions about the conduct of warfare? So for example, it's always forbidden to directly or intentionally target non-combatants, right? So those sorts of questions are part of the tradition as well.
Alessandro Rovati: So ⁓ you mentioned Augustine, ⁓ one of his works in which he thinks about these things is the City of God. And in the City of God, he highlights the fact that there is a fundamental difference between the Christian mindset and the mindset of its age when it comes to statecraft. He posits that ⁓ contemporary at his time statecraft was often led by Elibido Dominandi and the contrast between that attitude and the Christian ⁓ calling is for him very important. Would you help us think about that difference and the impact of that difference for how Christians think about war?
Matthew Shadle: Sure, the libido dominandi, that translates as the lust for domination. And in Augustine's time, in the Roman times, that really took the form of like a desire for glory, right? And so glory ⁓ in military or political terms came from, you know, like defeating, subduing the enemies, right? And ⁓ so for Augustine really, one... the Christian contrast to that is humility, right? That glory or this domination of others is not what brings us happiness, but it's instead peace. And ⁓ so he has this... ⁓ important line in the City of God and elsewhere where he talks about how ⁓ when war is fought out of a lust for domination or like an enjoyment of violence, that that's when it becomes evil, right? And he has this really important point that's, you really essential to the just war tradition is that even when it's just, a Christian recognizes that war is tragic, right? That it's lamentable that we have to, that the resort to war is necessary because it brings suffering. ⁓ And so that's very much a contrast with that ⁓ classical Roman view.
Alessandro Rovati: So, as ⁓ the tradition evolved, do you see moments in which important steps were taken to either expand or shift some of the ways in which ⁓ the conversation evolved?
Matthew Shadle: Sure, of course. I would say two historical moments are one, the high middle ages and especially Thomas Aquinas, who really fleshes out the thinking about what are called the juice ad bellum criteria, when it is justified to go to war. ⁓ And then that's further fleshed out. then ⁓ also during this period, ⁓ what we would call the early modern period, the period directly after the Protestant Reformation, where we have ⁓ some major Spanish Catholic theologians like Francisco Vitoria, Francisco Suarez, and some others who they also think very much about that question of just ad bellum because they're, Vitoria, for example, is dealing with the Spanish discovery of the Americas. And so he actually challenges some of the rationales of the conquistadors justifying the conquest of the indigenous peoples using just war principles. then they also, Victoria and Suarez and others ⁓ also really for the first time start thinking about the conduct of war in more detail about situations ⁓ in which warfare causes harm to the civilian population when that can and cannot be justified. And then also ⁓ in the decades after those thinkers, also have ⁓ some Protestant just war thinking. The most important person is Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist who's alive during the 30 years war. So he has this direct experience of the horrors of war. And so he thinks through the ethical principles of that. So I would say those are two pivotal moments and then of course we could get into the 20th century with the horrors of the Second World War and the development of nuclear weapons and of course that's an important development in this tradition as well.
Alessandro Rovati: Since it's important, let's get into it. What's your reading of how that shaped ⁓ more recent Catholic thinking on the issue?
Matthew Shadle: Yeah. Well, so yeah, and that's something that I wrote about recently is that in the aftermath of World War II, we really see the crystallization of this principle that when it comes to what's considered a just cause for war. So that's really the central criterion of the deuce ad bellum aspect of the just war tradition is that there needs to be a just cause and it needs to be proportionate in the sense that there's a sense in which you have, you know, you may be in the right in a certain conflict with another country, but it has to be you there has to be a certain gravity to the situation to justify war. All right. And so, so after World War II, there's this crystallization that the only circumstances in which that condition is met is when it's in a case of self-defense, as if you're already being attacked by an aggressor. And then eventually ⁓ more recently, I think, especially in light of some of the genocide and ethnic cleansing in the 1990s, there's also a realization that might be coming to the defense of others, like a people who... are where there's massive human rights violations like genocide or ethnic cleansing that the international community could come to their defense and that would be a just cause. But really those in contemporary Catholic thinking and this is reflected in magisterial teaching going back to Pope Pius XII, know, the Pope during the Second World War, that those are really the only situations that could be a just cause.
Alessandro Rovati: So as we went through a round of debates following the ⁓ comments of the administration in response to comments of Poplio, ⁓ Catholic commentators have been debating a little bit this issue you were referring to, namely, whether the only justifiable war from a Catholic perspective is a defensive war. And so questions about preventive wars versus defensive wars have emerged in the conversation. ⁓ How do you think about that difference and what are some of the sources in the tradition that can help us think about that distinction?
Matthew Shadle: Sure. And actually, this is not a new conversation in the sense that this was also the conversation around the Iraq war back in 2002 when the debate was happening in 2003 when that war broke out too, because that was justified as a preventive war as well, right? To prevent, there was this fear that Iraq was ⁓ developing weapons of mass destruction. And so this was preventive to prevent them from ever having the opportunity to use such weapons or to pass them along to terrorists. And so, so we're really seeing similar arguments today. ⁓ So, ⁓ something I pointed out in my writings is that this, ⁓ A distinction between preventive war and self-defense has been part of the just war tradition for centuries, going back to that early modern period I was describing before. They don't talk about it in terms of preventive war, which is a more modern concept, but they do talk about it in terms of... given the politics of the day, that certain rulers would have ⁓ seen a rival ⁓ state increasing their power, maybe building up their military. ⁓ Like, Grotius even talks about building fortifications and things that, and so they might perceive that, ⁓ that country could be a threat to us. ⁓ Right. And and and they're they're unanimous. These thinkers are unanimous that that by itself is not sufficient to go to war. cannot go to war to neutralize this potential threat. You know, a country could be a threat down the road that that that by itself is cannot justify a war. And and so we see we see the same thing in ⁓ modern 20th century laws of war, that there is this very clear distinction. in the international laws of war between, ⁓ well, okay, so just use some technical language. There's such a thing as a preemptive war and that's a case where ⁓ another country is on the verge of attack. Like you have solid information that an attack is imminent that you can in a sense strike first, but it's in a defensive way, all right. And so the international laws of war permit that versus a preventive war, which is like a real but future threat that that cannot justify a war, right? Because for one, it may or may not happen, The justification for it may or may not be real. ⁓ But also the danger of that is just a spiral of violence, right? Because one side could say, they're a potential threat to us. The other side could say, Well, you're a potential threat to us. And so like, you know, that there would just be this spiral of violence that it would be hard to, well, like every country would say they're in the right, right? That there wouldn't be any ⁓ way to adjudicate that, I guess you could say.
Alessandro Rovati: Yeah. At the same time though, in what you said earlier, you seem to entail that it is not true to simply say that the church only considers justifiable wars of self-defense. Instead, you hinted at the fact that there are wars in which we come to the defense of the innocent, of the vulnerable, that may be justifiable. Would you maybe expand on that idea?
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, sure, ⁓ so this is ⁓ a concept that develops in the context of the United Nations, but then the Catholic Church also picked this up, so Pope Benedict XVI mentioned this, the concept of the responsibility to protect. Okay, and it's actually connected to the principle of subsidiarity, right? And so the idea is that every state, every nation is responsible for the wellbeing of its people, but in a situation where... that government has turned against its people or a portion of the people, or if it is unable to protect the people. So there's a situation where the state has basically fallen apart and now there's some kind of civil war or conflict. then the international community can step in to provide that security. through, this would be through the form of, for example, United Nations peacekeepers, or it may, if there's an active conflict, it may be, you know, an international coalition of military forces to... ⁓ to establish peace, right? And so, like I said, this idea arises out of the failures of the 1990s, so in Rwanda and Bosnia, where these horrible crimes against different populations took place, and... And so there have been peacekeeping missions in, for example, the Democratic Republic of Congo, ⁓ Lebanon and Syria and so forth, with different degrees of success. But that's the basic idea, is that there is a responsibility on the part of the international community to intervene in these situations. And like I said, usually it's conceived more as peacekeeping. It's been, I think, rare that there's been some like a full scale, you know, military ⁓ incursion, guess, to prevent genocide, right? We haven't really seen that.
Alessandro Rovati: So from what you say, it seems that according to the Catholic Church, the international community plays an important role in adjudicating these questions. ⁓ What's the role that the Catholic Church thinks places like the UN and multilateral agreements play in adjudicating the morality of conflict?
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, that's a great question. And that gives me an opportunity to return to something I wanted to say before. So another problem with preventive war of responding to a future threat is that it closes the door to dialogue, right? It closes the door to peacemaking, right? And so that's one of the principles of the just war tradition is ⁓ that war is always should be a last resort. All right. And so what that's meant to do is that we should try any reasonable means to resolve the conflict before resorting to violence. And so a preventive war, for example, violates that. It shuts off. dialogue and in fact, we recently saw that with ⁓ Iran, like they were in the midst of negotiations when the first strikes took place, right, which is ⁓ terrible. ⁓ But. But going back to your question about the international community, I would say that is one of the principal roles that the Catholic Church of the Vatican has looked to the international community for is to provide venues or forums. where dialogue and peacemaking can take place. So, and that can be institutions like the United Nations, but it can also be thinking about the international community in a more informal sense of sort of informal coalitions of. ⁓ states and institutions that try to bring the parties to a conflict together or to bring different ethnic groups, for example, to resolve issues, either to settle a violent dispute that has already broken out or to prevent a violent conflict from emerging. And then also, of course, another role for international institutions or the international community is more of a justice oriented role. ⁓ whether that is ⁓ prosecuting war crimes, so the crimes that occur during war, violations of the laws of war, the principles of the just war, and also ⁓ establishing peace settlements, right? you know, all of the, what's the word? the, I can't think of the word, like the reparations, reparations for the damages that occur ⁓ during war, those sorts of things that international institutions play a crucial role in working all of that out.
Alessandro Rovati: Don't worry. So it seems that one of the fundamental problems of our age is that as time has passed, institutions such as the UN have shown themselves ⁓ incapable of being the place of adjudication and ongoing deliberation. And in part, it's because of scandals within those organizations. And in part, it's because it seems that we have moved. past that age of multilateral dialogue towards a more might is right mentality.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, yeah, and that's something that the Vatican has recognized over the years is that these international institutions are not fulfilling the... ⁓ the role that they should, both for structural reasons and for just reasons of will, of choice. And so, one of the main structural issues with the United Nations has been that the Security Council, all of the main powers of the world sit on the Security Council and often they are the ones involved in conflict or their allies maybe. And so they can always subvert any efforts to to promote peace that they think go against their interests. So there's kind of that institutional or structural problem with the United Nations. ⁓ But like you said, that there's not a broad commitment. you know, sure, on paper there is this commitment to the principles and the United Nations Charter and the international laws of war, but in reality that commitment is often lacking and so the institutions don't function in that peacemaking way. And so what we do see is, like I said, some of those more informal attempts to broker peace. So like in the current conflict, we see like Pakistan playing an interesting and important role trying to negotiate that. And I think, you know, there's Pretty broad support in the international community for those efforts for them, you know to play that that role today
Alessandro Rovati: Yeah. So ⁓ one area of debate that has emerged recently is whether some of the statements of Poplio ⁓ entail that the church is shifting towards a ⁓ pacifist mentality that considers all forms of ⁓ war ⁓ something that is immoral. I don't think that that's how the Catholic church understands the morality of war, but undoubtedly you can read some of the statements and at least rhetorically ⁓ interpret them in that way. So maybe what's the relationship between what the church teaches and principled objections against the use of force that have been part of the Christian tradition.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, I think that's right. If you didn't have any background in how Catholic teaching on war has developed and you just saw a statement from Pope Leo or Pope Francis made similar statements, yeah, you could definitely think, ⁓ is the Catholic Church turning in a more pacifist direction? And I think, I've been thinking about that. think the problem, one problem here is that we're not. The question here is not this traditional debate between just war and pacifism. Because really what the popes, and like I pointed out in my recent writing, that this sort of rhetoric goes all the way back to Pope John XXIII. So we're talking about more than 50 years here that they've been saying, you know, presenting the same message. That, like I said, it's, you kind of got to think past the just war versus pacifism dichotomy. That what they're saying is, we should be working towards abolishing war, right? ⁓ So it's so much that the just war tradition, they're throwing it out, but that they want it to be increasingly irrelevant, right? Okay, and so what I pointed out in my recent article is that when you're familiar with the recent statements, what you can see is a pattern that they will say that legitimate defense, using military force in legitimate defense is justified, but that war is not. And what they mean by that is basically starting a war, right? And so, ⁓ and to me, this is just a contemporary application of that point from Augustine that I mentioned at the beginning, that war is tragic. And so they've taken the further step, that then we should be working to ensure that it never happens. All right, so that's why you see these seemingly absolute statements against war is that they're saying we should not, this should not be part of the human experience, that we should be doing everything we can to prevent this from happening. But in the meantime, in the tragic circumstances that were not there yet, states do have the right to defend themselves, right? So Pope Francis said that in relation to Ukraine. after it was invaded by Russia. ⁓ The US Catholic bishops said that many years ago after September 11th, that in terms of a military response to that. So ⁓ there is this pattern to these statements that doesn't quite fit into the just war versus pacifism debate. They're really just kind of responding to a different question, but it can be confusing. If you're thinking of it in terms of the just war versus pacifism question, is I think how I would put it.
Alessandro Rovati: Is there space for principled Christian pacifism within the Catholic Church?
Matthew Shadle: Wow, I think so. And I think the US Catholic bishops tackled that many decades ago in their pastoral letter of the challenge of peace that they were trying to make the case that there was room for the just war ethic and committed pacifism or nonviolence in the church. And I think... Well, let me add to what I was saying. And so not just that the church is arguing that we should be working towards the abolition of war, or making war unnecessary, but that really the Christian commitment should be to nonviolently resolving conflicts before war becomes either morally necessary. or becomes the reality, right? So I think this is really how Pope Francis thought about it. So instead of focusing our energies on the question, when could war be justified, right? He's kind of suggesting that almost sort of primes you for looking for the situations in which war would be justified, right? You see what I mean? Versus we should put our energies as Christians into how can we prevent war, how can we resolve conflicts nonviolently? And so I think that's where a committed pacifist, a Christian pacifist could feel at home is that we all should agree that we should be seeking nonviolent ways to resolve conflict, even if we disagree within the church on if. there ever, if there could ever arise a situation in which we've put this effort into nonviolent conflict resolution, it's not working, we have to take up arms, right? So some Christians may say that could never be justified. Others would say, know, prudentially, in this situation, it is justified.
Alessandro Rovati: Yeah, which in a way can lead us to ⁓ think for a moment about Catholics who feel a call to serve in the military. The church understands that form of service as one that can be an expression of Christian discipleship and love of neighbor and the common good. So how does the church think of Catholics who serve in the armed forces?
Matthew Shadle: ⁓ I think in general, it's exactly what you said. So there is this statement in Gaudium et spes, one of the main documents from Vatican. I don't have it in front of me, so I'm not quoting it directly. But it basically says that those who participate in military service can rightly see themselves as defenders of the common good, as promoters of peace. But I think we should caveat that too in the sense that there's been a lot of reflection about the moral obligations of soldiers in situations where they may be called upon to do something that is unjust. And this is a really complicated question. so ⁓ I think the principle we say for sure is that if soldiers are ever called upon to engage in conduct, that is clearly unjust against the laws of war that they should refuse even if there are like professional consequences for that or legal consequences that you should always refuse to, for example, directly target civilians. right, where I think it gets complicated is the question of can a soldier participate ⁓ in a war that in some way was unjust, like maybe Maybe the political leaders rushed to war. Maybe they could have turned to dialogue more and they rushed to war. Can the soldiers fight in that war? I think that's very ambiguous.
Alessandro Rovati: Yeah. I was struck that, of course, there is a history in the Catholic Church of having chaplains, priests, even bishops that serve the men and women who are in the armed forces. It's a special diocese that, for example, in the US is led by Archbishop Brogio. So clearly there is a commitment to the spiritual well-being and an understanding that can conscientiously ⁓ in the military as a Catholic.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, and about 15 years ago, I had the privilege of participating in a conference with a lot of the chaplains in the army, specifically, both Catholic and Protestant. And yeah, that's part of their training is the just war tradition. And so their role is not just spiritual, but they're kind of this voice of conscience within the military. And of course, You know, soldiers get a basic training in the laws of war and ethics, but chaplains are there to provide both spiritual and ethical guidance to ⁓ soldiers. And so I really appreciate that Archbishop Broglio, the archbishop in charge of the military services has been giving clear, you know, moral guidance on some of the issues we're facing in the recent days. ⁓ fulfilling that pastoral and ethical responsibility.
Alessandro Rovati: So we have been talking about these things primarily from the standpoint of the just word tradition articulated within the Catholic Church. We have reflected on some of the statements from the Vatican and the Popes. At the same time though, as it happens often with Catholic social teaching, there are men and women of goodwill who recognize the validity of what the church teaches, which means that something like just war thinking and just war principles have been ⁓ carried forward even beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church and has come to shape in certain ways the very way in which the US military has articulated some of his ⁓ rules of engagement and conduct. Would you maybe ⁓ talk a little bit about the overlap between the US tradition and the Catholic Church?
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, yeah, and I should say that was one thing I was really impressed by when I attended that conference is how integrated the principles of just war are in the military's thinking. ⁓ And of course that goes back a long time to ⁓ in, I mean, even going back to the 19th century, but in the 20th century after World War I and World War II, we have these international treaties, the... ⁓ the Hague conventions and the Geneva conventions that ⁓ incorporate into international law, basically some of the elements of the Just War tradition and then also ⁓ in the United Nations charter. And so you're right that there is this ⁓ important transition that scholars have noted too is the move from Just War thinking being more of a theological ⁓ discussion to becoming a legal discussion, right? And in fact, there was kind of a... ⁓ I don't want to say ignoring, but a neglect of the just war tradition in the Catholic Church, like throughout the 19th century, you don't really see a lot of just war reflection among Catholic theologians in the 19th century. But it is really the wars of the 20th century that kind of revive theological thinking about war. And so in some way that is ⁓ a contribution that the church has made to the global community is that now these principles are recognized in international law. But also you see more recently ⁓ that we need to recover the theological aspect because without a philosophical or theological grounding. international law, the laws of war can lose ⁓ their appeal to the conscience, right? There's this ongoing dilemma of, Jacques Maritain talked about this with the Declaration on Human Rights, right? That we have these rights on paper, but we each need our philosophical or religious justification for why we believe in those rights. So the same thing with the laws of war, right? And so there's some important work by theologians about, okay, let's get back to the root of theologically, why do we believe in these principles about rooting them in the love of neighbor and the love for enemies and so forth.
Alessandro Rovati: It is a well established principle in the Catholic tradition and Catholic moral theology that in deliberating about the morality of an action circumstances play an important role. When it comes to the circumstances of contemporary warfare, in particular the way in which technology plays a role in how we engage in conflict, ⁓ contemporary forms of weapons systems. play a role in how we wage war. How do you see these circumstances, again, contemporary warfare, play a role in the way the church deliberates about these matters and maybe even the way in which the Vatican and the Pope have been deliberating about these matters?
Matthew Shadle: So just speaking about technology and how technology is maybe changing the circumstances or how we think ethically about war, I think we could emphasize at least two things. So one is speed, right? That we're developing weapons that, ⁓ well, that react so quickly that. that poses ethical dilemmas, right? Can you ethically assess the situation when the weapons are ⁓ firing so quickly, right? Or responding, so like. ⁓ Like think about like missile defense systems or, know, this is especially true when it comes to like protection from aerial attacks and things like that. Like can you assess the situation sufficiently to ethically determine what's going on with. that responds to a signal in a fraction of a second. But really the ethical dilemma that has got the most attention is with what are called autonomous weapons. This is the incorporation of artificial intelligence into weapons systems to the point that you don't have a human being in the loop making the decision of when to use the weapon or to fire the weapon. And so here the question is who is ultimately responsible, right? Like do we want to create a situation in which there is no human decision making in the decision of who or what to target, when to fire, and so forth. And I think we've seen the Vatican, for example, take a very firm stance that there always needs to be human decision making in the process, that morality is a human phenomenon and we can't pass on the responsibilities of conscience to technology, right? And so, know, and I'll, I mean, we don't have time to get into that, but I would say there are some legitimate uses of artificial intelligence in warfare, but completely offloading decision-making to artificial intelligence really poses an ethical problem.
Alessandro Rovati: There also seems to be an issue with the way in which ⁓ contemporary weapons ⁓ make it harder to maintain discrimination in war, especially when it comes to ⁓ air campaigns that ⁓ target, military targets, hopefully, but that unavoidably tend to have impacts on the broader civil life of a nation. Does that play a role in the way in the church has taken a more condemnatory tone in the last few decades?
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, yeah, I think so. And I would say it's a mixed bag. I mean, you can imagine a situation with the use of autonomous drones and then autonomous targeting systems. They may actually be very precise in identifying targets, maybe more precise than humans could be. So I wouldn't say 100 % they're going to cause problems with discrimination. But you're right that. that we're, I guess the issue is that we're trusting the machine to make that decision about discrimination. And then like I said, and then if, if. civilians are targeted by mistake, then there's the question of responsibility, right? Of then how do you assign responsibility when it was a mistake on the part of the weapons system? Is it the soldiers responsibility who initiated the targeting? Is it the manufacturer's responsibility, the software engineers? So it's very... It's almost like it's a way to avoid responsibility for those errors in discriminating between military and civilian.
Alessandro Rovati: Yeah. Now, ⁓ one thing that ⁓ created a lot of debates were statements from the administration suggesting that the US military would wipe out an entire civilization. And the reaction to those threats from Catholic leaders was ⁓ very vocal. ⁓ Maybe this is spelling out the obvious, but why does the Catholic Church pose so strongly statements of that nature.
Matthew Shadle: Sure, of course. So that's clearly, if you thought about how such a threat would be put into practice, that clearly involves indiscriminate targeting, right? To wipe out a civilization is not just targeting military targets with, you know. unfortunate civilian casualties, like directly targeting civilian population or civilian institutions. And it's very clear that, you know, throughout the entire Just War tradition, intentionally targeting civilians or just indiscriminately attacking civilian and military alike is, you know, grossly immoral. And so here the question is, is threatening to do that immoral, right, to gain leverage. And I mean in a way that's more complicated but I think you would want to say that for If the intended purpose is to use the threat to gain leverage, there has to be an understanding that the threat is real, right? That you are willing to do this grossly immoral thing if your demands are not met. And so, you know, in Catholic morality, it's always a question of the will. So your will is to do that, right? Your will is to cause that indiscriminate killing. Right? And even if you never actually carry it out, even if your demands were met, that was still your will to do that if your conditions were not met. so threats are immoral just as the action itself is.
Alessandro Rovati: In our conversation so far, we have focused on the way in which the church thinks about the morality of entering into a conflict and the way in which the church thinks about the morality of how we conduct ourselves during the conflict. There's also a part of the just war tradition that has been developing over time about what are the moral and ethical duties after a conflict. What does the church teach? about that.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, so that is certainly something that in terms of official teaching is underdeveloped, right? That that, you know, in, well, the early modern authors that I mentioned do spend some time thinking about that in a kind of legalistic way. And then there's been a revival of that question. think amongst theologians and philosophers really after the Iraq war in the 2000s, because there was really this question of... ⁓ what was the United States' responsibility for rebuilding this country that we came in and overthrew the government, kind of left the country in chaos. So, whatever you thought about the war, I think many people agreed we had some responsibility to then stay and try to help that country rebuild and reconstitute itself. So that's really where this question emerged. Although I have to say that that was... you know, there was thinking about that earlier. And so, for example, I actually wrote something about this that hasn't been published yet, but for example, after the Persian Gulf War in 1991, there was, this was an example of the United Nations fulfilling that role of coordinating reparations is that Iraq had responsibilities to repay Kuwait for the damage that had been done to their oil infrastructure and things like that to pay for cleaning the oil spills that they had caused and things like that. So that's also a kind of post-war justice is repairing damage to infrastructure damage to the environment and you know assigning responsibility for that. ⁓ But ⁓ I think one where there's more clarity even in Catholic official Catholic teaching is on ⁓ responsibility for war crimes for conduct during the war right that ⁓ you know the Vatican has in general supported like the International Criminal Court and other institutions ⁓ for ⁓ know, prosecuting gross violations of human rights during war and crimes against humanity and so forth. So, yeah, so there's different, very different aspects of post-war justice. So there's, you know, prosecution for conduct during war, reparations for the damage caused ⁓ in wars like that in Iraq, responsibilities for rebuilding government and the institutions of society. ⁓ But also, connecting back to earlier part of our conversation, another important part of post-war justice is I guess you could call it like peace building. now that the war is over, let's come to the table and dialogue and make sure that this war doesn't lead to further conflict down the road. Like we've seen so often in modern times, right? That World War II really arose out of the settlement of World War I. We've seen. just these sort of serial civil conflicts in Africa. like a peace settlement. Like one group feels like they were not represented in the peace settlement. So now they start conflict. And so it's just this ongoing process. so an important part of post-war justice is to continue the peacemaking process to prevent further violent conflict.
Alessandro Rovati: I think one of the things that the recent debates have ⁓ disclosed and put an emphasis on is the fact that in our very polarized culture, it's increasingly different for people of faith to think with the mind of the church without being immediately gobbled up by partisan commitments. How do you see the church's task and role amidst these centrifugal forces that really want to pull the faithful away from the way in which the church thinks about this and a whole entire host of issues.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, and I think, you know, I would first want to say that like with many things, the Just War tradition is a capacious tradition. And so there are room for, you know, different interpretations or different, you know, emphases as long as we remain committed to like the basic framework and how that framework has developed over time. And so, you know, your partisan leanings may, you know, lead you to different conclusions on particular questions. But But I think, me kind of reframe the question, but I think what the church should do is related to something we talked about earlier in this conversation, is to think about the just war tradition in terms of Christian discipleship, that this is something we follow because we're Christians, rather than, because I think that... you know, nothing is foolproof. I mean, if the church had some kind of way to cut through polarization, you know, they would have done it by now. But it provides at least a way of thinking that pushes back against using... Pushes back against I think what we're seeing is just using the just war theory as a tool to pursue your partisan interests Right, what you know, whichever side you may be on right that it's not it's not It's not a tool or a weapon. I mean that in a way that's counterproductive is that you're basically using the just war theory as a weapon in this kind of simmering conflict versus what it's intended to be as a way of promoting peace, right? And so if we think about the just war tradition as a way of faithfully living out our commitments as Christians, we can at least mitigate that tendency we see in our culture.
Alessandro Rovati: Maybe to finish up our conversation, it strikes me that we cannot think of the just war tradition and the way the Catholic Church engages it and develops it in isolation from another broad set of commitments that are part of Catholic social teaching. That's worth probably an entire other conversation, but could you maybe help us see some of the connections between the way in which the church engages with the moral question of war?
Matthew Shadle: Mm-hmm.
Alessandro Rovati: and broader anthropological and social commitments that are at the heart.
Matthew Shadle: Sure, let me just add something to the previous one. I also think that's part of why the reaction to Pope Leo has been so strong, is that maybe he is this American Pope. but he's speaking in a way that touches on politics, but it's very hard to dismiss him as a partisan, right? And I mean, some people are trying, Like, ⁓ he's a liberal, know, but like, obviously that's not true, you know? And so he's this voice of the church that you just can't... put in little boxes, ⁓ he's just saying that because he hates Trump or, you know, or, you know, whatever. And so like, just think people, people don't know what to do with that. They don't know how to, you know, we're so quick to just either like click like, or, you know, hate someone because they're on the other team. And so, it's hard to do that with the Pope, you know? But to your question of how does the Just Word tradition fit in with the broader scope of Catholic social teaching, I ⁓ we've already touched on some of that. I think we need to think about the Just Word tradition as related to this concept of the common good, which is so central to... ⁓ Catholic social teaching. And so I mentioned earlier that that we've come to think of the just war tradition as related to the political authorities responsibility for the common good. And, I mentioned, for example, in those situations where the political authorities are not able to ensure the common good of their people and the international community can step in. And that's because, you know, John the 23rd talks about there being a international or global common good, the common good of the human family that we're all responsible for. ⁓ So I think that's one way And then we also saw that in terms of our discussion of post-war justice in the sense that we can't just think about war in isolation, that we have to think about it both prior to the war and how are our commitments to the common good breaking down in ways that are going to potentially lead to violent conflict. And then the aftermath of conflict, how can we... remake the situation so that we're better promoting the common good so that to prevent a future conflict from emerging. So I think that's one main way. You know, and we can talk about other things. So one thing I've written about, for example, is the relationship between war and the environment. So there's, you know, in Catholic social teaching, this commitment to care for creation. And so there's a lot of ways the two intersect, for example, that like Global climate change is a contributing factor to conflicts in different parts of the world through changes in agricultural patterns and causing migration that then leads to tension between groups that can sometimes become violent, but also, like in my example, the Persian Gulf War with the oil, war itself causes environmental damage. So that's an obvious linkage with one aspect of Catholic social teaching as well.
Alessandro Rovati: Matthew, thank you so much for helping us think through these important issues. I'm sure it will be very valuable to our listeners to think along the mind of the Church on these important ethical questions.
Matthew Shadle: Yeah, thank you very much. It's been enjoyable.
Alessandro Rovati: Many blessings on everybody. Thank you for tuning in and I'll catch you next time. Goodbye.
