New Polity Is the Iran War a Just War? | A Discussion of Catholic Social Teaching
Mar 19, 2026
Dr. Jared Goff, a professor who links Catholic social teaching to geopolitics; Dr. Alex Plato, an ethics and political philosophy scholar; and Dr. Andrew Willard Jones, an expert on Aquinas and classical just war theory. They probe legitimacy, promulgation, and modern warfare's moral limits. They debate proportionality, ambiguous objectives, secrecy versus public justification, and whether opaque motives mean withholding support.
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War Justification Must Be Promulgated To The People
- Promulgation requires public, intelligible justification: a regime must explain the war's justice to its people, not hide it as tactical secrecy.
- Andrew says law's legitimacy rests on being known; war justification should be similarly communicated.
Recycled Pretexts Destroy Credibility
- Lack of transparent motives breeds doubt: recycled pretexts (WMDs, terrorism, regime change) make it hard to trust official war claims.
- Andrew expresses he lacks enough information to judge justice because the stated aims echo past misleading rationales.
Globalized Common Good Blurs Who Wars Defend
- Globalization complicates the common good: national interests now intersect transnational goods, blurring who the polity is and whose good is protected.
- Andrew suggests modern power may be exercised by networks beyond classic nation-states, challenging attribution of motives.