Pope Francis supports intervention to stop ISIS…..

…….but believes any such intervention should proceed through the UN, which……..Ah pbmit mah ton owff

I would just say the United Nations, as a venue for achieving conflict resolution, has, over its 7 decade history, shown itself to be amazingly ineffective and generally ordered to just accepting whatever the new status quo is after some people gets devastated by another.  They are then happy to sit down with the victors and perhaps admit them to the Security Council within a few years.

I exaggerate, but not much.

So make what you will of that, but in spite of some in the press saying Pope Francis strongly endorsed military intervention, and others saying he “punted,” here is what he actually said:

The first paragraph is good, helpful Catholic just war theory.  It’s wonderful to stop an unjust aggression without using force, but often that is simply not possible. The kinds of groups/nations/whatever that would resort to an unjust aggression are not the kind that tend to listen to verbal reason. They only know one language, force.  The United States could fit into that category in many minds.

Second paragraph, perhaps, but I don’t think there have been too many colonial wars of conquest in the past century or so, at least with first world powers as the aggressors.  I think appealing to the US invasion of Iraq in 20033 as a war of conquest would be a pretty far reach, but I have no clear idea if that is what is being referred to.

Para 3 is a bit muddled and seems more like personal opinion – one could even interpret from the language that the nation or group suffering  unjust attack must wait a judgment from the UN that such attack is indeed unjust before responding!  There is nothing in Catholic just war doctrine that a nation under attack must achieve some kind of balance of world opinion or a majority vote declaring the depredations being committed against it unjust.  In the time it can take to achieve such a consensus many nations have been wiped out, so I find this more than just slightly strange.  But it is very consistent with a progressive world view.  I would agree the arguments seem directed against the US acting alone, but, once again, history has shown that by the time one can get the bloated, almost inevitably corrupt UN to act, it is very often far too late to do anything but evacuate the few survivors and pick up bodies from the rubble.

This is another transcript of a famous airplane interview, so who knows.  I think it important to note this is not a doctrinal document.  I’ll admit to being torn on this matter of US intervention, I am scandalized and sorrowful by the ongoing atrocities in the Mideast against Christians (and others) and want it to end now, and I know there is not really another nation that can do any intervening with the level of effect the US can achieve, even alone, but I am pretty reticent to see another Mideast conflict involving the US, especially with the current leadership.  I do not have much confidence any real long term results can be achieved; at most, I can see perhaps a temporary reduction if not elimination of the suffering.

I do get the sense from the statement above, with the usual caveats for “translation errors” and all that, that Pope Francis is torn himself.  There is reality, and then there is the great ecumenical/interreligious project, and the two don’t always align very nicely.

Nevertheless, I pray these words hearten the suffering Iraqi and Syrian Catholics and encourage them to resist this horrific onslaught with whatever means they can find, and with whatever help is given them.  I pray this ISIS nightmare be utterly crushed and returned to the pit from whence it came.