American Catholics supportive of the Trump administration are, at the moment, in a spot. The back-and-forth between the American president and the American pontiff has raised questions, some easy, some hard. An easy one is whether a Catholic ought to object to the way our president has spoken about our pope. We should. This is true even if you agree with my argument that Pope Leo made his own rhetorical missteps. Catholics, in the end, need to side with their pope when he is so treated by any politician. 

A harder question is whether this spat compels American Catholics of the First Things variety to choose between the faith and their politics. Sohrab Ahmari has made a vigorous case that it does.

Ahmari is a keen observer of the American scene, but I view his pronouncement of the death of what he calls the “old compromise” to be premature. Much of his argument rests on whether he is right to describe George Weigel’s support of the 2003 Iraq War or Michael Novak’s favoring of democratic capitalism as little more than “highbrow Catholic justifications for Republican foreign and domestic policy.” Patrick T. Brown has made a good case that Ahmari has caricatured their actual arguments. Both men were capable of standing against certain trends on the political right on the basis of their Catholic convictions. That said, Ahmari is surely onto something. The Leo/Trump dispute provides an occasion for serious reflection on the part of Catholics who lean right. Here, I can aspire to little more than removing some of the debris cluttering the path forward.

Let me begin with the current president. The problem with saying anything about Trump, apart from total devotion or total disgust, is that he never stands still long enough for sustained analysis. To take the present case, one day he is blasting Leo XIV in a crude Social Truth Post and sending images of himself as a Jesus-like healer. A few days later he is saying that he does not mind the pope criticizing him, but wishes he would understand the dangers a nuclear-armed Iran would present to the safety and stability of the world. The same thing goes for Trump’s war-talk. His threat to end “a great civilization” was roundly and justly condemned, including in First Things. It is also true, however, that the same man who uttered such words is obviously relieved to report that his aims might be achieved without further violence. Thus we have the oddity that the critics who depict him as a blood-thirsty tyrant also mock him for “always chickening out.” That particular circle cannot be squared. Ross Douthat describes this aspect of Trump’s personality as follows:

In other words, while conservative Catholics should join liberals in condemning Trump when he deserves it, they also know that he often softens or changes his position just as the condemnations begin to fly. National Review’s Dan McLaughlin has noticed the same thing. 

I also need to make clear what I mean by “supportive” with respect to Trump. According to numerous polls, Trump won the Catholic vote by a significant margin. Even now, while fighting both an unpopular war and a new pope, Trump retains a favorable rating among 58 percent of Catholics who attend mass weekly. Other polls show a recent decline among Catholics, but these do not separate out regular mass-goers. Whatever the precise numbers, it would not surprise me that many active Catholics feel about Trump as I do. They favor some of his policies while disliking others. They find his unpresidential behavior maddening. In the end, however, they judge Trump in light of the available alternative. Our representative democracy is a two-party system, and its politics are about making a choice between whomever the major parties put up for election. 

Preference, of course, is different from slavish devotion. Catholics, whether conservative or progressive, must be willing to depart from their favored politician or party when needed. The teachings of the Church relevant to politics are simply too complex to be identical with any party’s platform. Moreover, the vagaries of democracy often necessitate compromises to which Catholics must object. In my own journeys amongst Republican-leaning Catholics, I encountered few who put partisan loyalty above the convictions of faith. 

When considering the point at issue between Pope Leo XIV and President Trump—the Iran War—the best a Catholic can do is try to come to an honest assessment independent of partisan considerations. That is no simple task. Anyone familiar with Catholic just war thinking knows that it is difficult to apply. Of course, there are clear-cut cases when a stronger country invades a weaker country for no other stated reason than territorial expansion or seizure of valuable assets. Most conflicts, however, allow for varying interpretations of the criteria of 1) legitimate authority, 2) just cause, 3) right intention, 4) likelihood of success, 5) proportionality of ends, and 6) whether war is a last resort. Everyone might agree that a just war must fulfill each of these, but that is only a small part of the work in assessing any particular conflict. With respect to the decision to attack Iran, smart and well-intentioned Catholics can disagree, even if otherwise politically aligned. 

A politically conservative Catholic critic of the Iran War is the philosopher Edward Feser. In an essay for Public Discourse, Feser presents multiple reasons why the Iranian war cannot be considered just. As one might expect from such a serious and careful thinker, Feser marshals a good deal of evidence for his verdict. For example, he points to Trump’s failure to attain congressional approval and lack of a consistent public rationale for the war. Accordingly, the war cannot be considered just because it lacks legitimate authority. While he acknowledges that presidents can legitimately act upon an imminent threat, he holds that none exists. Without an urgent threat to the homeland, the Iran war cannot be considered defensive. Finally, the lack of a clear plan means that a good outcome is unlikely. 

For those confident that things will work out for the best anyway, Feser points to the many thousands of Iraqi civilians who died as a result of Bush’s decision to oust Saddam Hussein. 

Feser is a very smart fellow, and his argument cannot be dismissed. It is, however, just that—an argument. He relies upon debatable inferences from debatable claims of fact. His expertise is philosophy, not military science or modern Iran. For example, his contention that the president needed congressional approval for his bombing campaign depends on his argument that Iran poses no imminent threat to the United States or its allies. That means he must pick between competing estimates of how close Iran is to enriching its uranium to the point of making a nuclear bomb. He might be right that they are not close, but he has no independent way of knowing. Feser is on more solid ground, in my mind, when he holds that wars of this nature tend to turn out badly.

For “The Catholic Case for War with Iran,” we can read Fr. Gerald Murray’s essay for The Free Press. Murray, a canon lawyer who served in the U.S. Naval Reserve Chaplain Corps from 1994 to 2005, puts great weight on the threat of a nuclear Iran. “There is no doubt,” he argues, “that Iran has been and presently is a grave threat.” Unlike Feser, he accepts the testimony of Steve Witkoff that the Iranian negotiators boasted that “they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.” For Murray, this, combined with fifty years of Iranian mischief against the United States and its neighbors, renders plausible the administration’s case that this is a defensive war. He states:

Fr. Murray is here emphasizing that part of the Just War Tradition in which a decision to go to war can be, in certain circumstances, an extension of the duty to love one’s neighbor. Although he believes Iran poses such a threat, he is also buoyed by the efforts of the U.S. government at negotiation both before the outbreak of hostilities and after. As I write these words, there is a shaky ceasefire and the possibility of a negotiated settlement. It could, of course, all go wrong.

I offer these two distinct perspectives not to decide between them, but merely to demonstrate that two highly educated, well-intentioned, and, I might add, conservative Catholics can and have come to contrasting judgments on the justice of this war. Speaking for myself, I simply do not know. Although once rather hawkish, I have grown more skeptical of the wisdom of war. Every argument I hear in support of a war elicits in my mind arguments against. Thus I cringe when I hear the confidence of Pete Hegseth or J.D. Vance. I find myself drawn to a sentiment expressed in Tom Nichols’s essay in The Atlantic directed against the presumptions of the Vice President.

Nichols is expressing what I believe is behind the pope’s seeming pacifism. It is not a rejection of the possibility of a just war, but rather a deep, and one can say “Augustinian,” skepticism about humanity’s inclination to violence and domination. At the same time, I am also haunted by what it would mean should Iran procure a nuclear weapon, I and believe that Trump is motivated by the same fear. It is possible that despite all of his bluster and irresponsible rhetoric, he truly believes he has a duty to prevent a greater disaster. At this point, I simply pray for a good outcome. All Catholics, liberal or conservative, ought to do the same.