Dorothy Day was a radical in many ways. She was a pacifist, mother, journalist, author, and a Servant of God now on the path to sainthood. For most of her life, Day staunchly fought against war and violence. Although she would never see the just war doctrine suspended in her lifetime, now, 46 years after her passing, Day has scored yet another victory, with the publication of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas.
The just war doctrine is a moral theory of the Catholic Church that illustrates the conditions under which a war can be justified in the eyes of God. According to Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 2309, the conditions for a war to be just under the doctrine are:
- The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
- All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
- There must be serious prospects of success;
- The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
The doctrine was largely developed through the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo, particularly his work “The City of God,” and later expanded upon by other scholars such as St. Thomas Aquinas.
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Day would spend much of her life campaigning against war and the use of nuclear weapons. She cheered when the Second Vatican Council uniformly condemned nuclear warfare, and said, “Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.”
She traveled to Rome along with 20 other women in the Catholic Worker Movement during the Council to lead a 10-day fast in hopes of convincing His Holiness to listen to their pleas to suspend the just war doctrine as part of Vatican II. Day was vehemently against the idea of mutually assured destruction, writing in a 1965 article that “The idea of arms being used as deterrents, to establish a balance of terror, and so keeping the world at peace was long ago condemned by [Pope] Benedict XV, who spoke of ‘the fallacy of an armed peace.’”
Day’s radical Catholic anti-war stance was nothing new to the Church, as pacifism was long a tenet of early Christianity. Many of the early Romans, such as St. John, St. Paul, and St. Martin of Tours, were martyred by the Roman emperors for refusing to serve in the military. It was only during the life of St. Augustine of Hippo that the just war doctrine originated and promulgated throughout the faith. St. Augustine argued that war was compatible with Christianity’s ideals provided certain conditions were met, saying in “The City of God,” “They who have waged war in obedience to the divine command, or in conformity with His laws, have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”
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For 1,600 years, the just war doctrine persisted. It was used to justify the Crusades, both in the Holy Land and elsewhere in Europe. It was used to justify the Reconquista, and used to justify the Spanish and Portuguese invasions of the New World. And along the way, it was used to justify a whole host of unjust wars, such as the many armed conflicts between England and France, the religious wars of the 17th century, and Spain’s brutal response to the Low Countries’ uprisings.
These were not wars fought to protect Europe from outside invaders, as at the Battle of Lepanto. These were wars fought over tiny stretches of land, the North Sea Bishoprics, Normandy’s beaches, parts of Belgium. These were wars fought over doctrinal disputes, like Sola scriptura and Sola fides. For as long as the doctrine has existed, it has been used to justify fruitless conflicts, from the Fourth Crusade to the Vietnam War, in which nations’ fresh crops of young men are fed into meat grinders.
But that has changed now. Pope Leo XIV published his first papal encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, in May, focusing mainly on the dangers of large language models and other technologies. However, in a subparagraph of its fifth chapter, his holiness grants Day her victory:
“Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated. Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness. The use of force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.”
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Pope Leo XIV, the first Augustinian to hold the papacy, has declared the just war doctrine as outdated in the modern world. It was St. Augustine who introduced the doctrine to Christianity; it is a present-day Augustinian who has declared it no longer relevant. Christians cannot claim to wage war without standing against Christ and against his bride, the Church. At last, Dorothy Day’s vision of the doctrine’s suspension may come true.
His holiness has been especially vocal since his ascendancy to the papacy in his condemnation of the ongoing months-long conflict between the United States and Iran, which has already killed thousands (20 of them American citizens) and injured tens of thousands. The Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance, a nominal Catholic, has opposed the head of his religion’s comments on the matter, questioning both the pope’s authority to speak on just war, as well as his expertise. The Vice President has failed to respond adequately to the new encyclical, and has done little to bring about an immediate end to the war. One can only hope that at least the rest of the world’s Catholic and otherwise Christian leaders will take notice themselves.
