The pope told Chaldean bishops that Christians never side with those who launch bombs. In the United States, Trump and Hegseth insist that God blesses the Iran campaign.
I think this is worth contemplation in the present context:
Jesus of Nazareth lived under Roman occupation in a land where armed revolt, imperial violence, and civil unrest were real possibilities.
Yet the core posture attributed to him in the earliest Christian sources is neither militarism nor political conquest, but a demanding vision of God’s reign expressed through enemy-love, nonretaliation, and a willingness to suffer rather than inflict suffering. An essay on Jesus and war, therefore, has to hold together two things at once: the strong current of peace in his teaching and example, and the later reality that Christians—living in states, armies, and empires—have repeatedly fought wars while appealing to him.
In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus’ most programmatic ethical teaching rejects the spiral of violence. The Sermon on the Mount calls blessing rather than dominance the mark of the “kingdom”: “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.” The point is not simply private kindness; it is a public discipline that breaks cycles of revenge. “Turn the other cheek,” “go the second mile,” and “give to the one who asks” are vivid examples of refusing to answer coercion with coercion.
Read in their first-century context, these sayings do not necessarily imply passivity; they describe a style of resistance that forgoes retaliation and shames brutality by absorbing it. Jesus’ ethic aims at transformation—of the aggressor, the victim, and the community—rather than victory.
Jesus’ own conduct reinforces this orientation. When he enters Jerusalem, he does not organize an armed uprising. His symbolic action in the Temple critiques corruption and exploitation, but it is not a call to take up the sword against Rome. At his arrest, the Gospels portray him stopping his followers from violent defense—“all who take the sword will perish by the sword”—and submitting to an unjust process. His refusal to meet violence with violence is not presented as strategic calculation but as fidelity to his mission: the reign of God advances through reconciliation and truth rather than force.
The cross, in the Christian reading of history, becomes the central sign that God’s power is revealed not in killing enemies but in forgiving them.
At the same time, Jesus’ language is not naïvely serene. He speaks of judgment, of coming upheaval, and even uses sharp metaphors—“I have not come to bring peace, but a sword”—that can sound belligerent when isolated. Yet in context that “sword” most plausibly names division within families and communities as allegiance to him disrupts ordinary loyalties.
His warnings about conflict describe the social cost of discipleship, not an endorsement of holy war. Similarly, his apocalyptic imagery—common in Jewish prophetic tradition—frames divine judgment as God’s work, not a mandate for his followers to wage redemptive violence.
The earliest Christian communities largely interpreted Jesus as calling them away from killing. Many early Christians refused military service, not because they denied the state’s right to exist, but because they believed discipleship forbade bloodshed and the worship practices tied to Roman armies. Their alternative was not indifference to public life but a distinct politics: care for the poor, hospitality to strangers, forgiveness, and a transnational identity that loosened the grip of ethnic and imperial rivalry.
In this tradition, war is a symptom of disordered desire—fear, pride, greed—and the church’s vocation is to be a foretaste of a reconciled humanity.
History, however, complicated the picture. Once Christianity moved from a persecuted minority to a religion entangled with imperial power, new questions arose: Can a ruler who claims Christian faith defend the innocent? Is it ever permissible to use force to stop grave injustice? Out of these pressures emerged the “just war” tradition associated with thinkers like Augustine and later developed by Aquinas. It does not celebrate war; it attempts to restrain it by moral criteria: legitimate authority, just cause (often defense against aggression), right intention, proportionality, last resort, and discrimination between combatants and noncombatants.
The irony is that a tradition born as a set of brakes could also become a set of permissions. Jesus’ teachings were sometimes reinterpreted as counsels for private life rather than commands for public policy, allowing Christians to participate in state violence while claiming personal piety.
Running alongside just war reasoning, a more radical “peace church” tradition persisted—seen in groups such as Anabaptists, Mennonites, Quakers, and others—arguing that Jesus’ commands admit no exception. For these Christians, the Sermon on the Mount is not an unreachable ideal but the constitution of the church. They point to Jesus’ refusal of armed defense, his blessing of peacemakers, and his command to love enemies as incompatible with participation in war. They also argue that the church’s credibility depends on embodying the reconciliation it proclaims; to kill for the sake of peace is, in their view, a contradiction.
Between these poles—just war restraint and nonviolent discipleship—lies a persistent tension: Jesus’ ethic aims at the enemy’s redemption as well as the victim’s protection. War, even when fought for defensible reasons, typically requires dehumanizing the opponent and accepting foreseeable harm to innocents.
That reality puts pressure on any attempt to claim direct continuity between Jesus’ way and the practice of war. Even the New Testament’s occasional use of military imagery (“armor of God”) is metaphorical and directed toward spiritual struggle, not a blueprint for armed conflict.
An essay on Jesus and war should also consider the political shape of his message. Jesus announces “good news” of God’s kingdom—language that rivaled imperial propaganda. Yet his kingdom is not built by coercion. He forms a community that includes the marginalized and calls for economic generosity, truth-telling, and reconciliation.
This is political in the deepest sense—about how humans live together—but it refuses the state’s normal instruments of control. In this light, Jesus is neither simply a pacifist moralist nor a revolutionary general. He is a prophet of a different order, exposing the false promises of violent power and inviting a new kind of society.
What, then, can be responsibly said about Jesus of Nazareth and war? The strongest claim supported by his teaching and passion narratives is that he rejects vengeance and commands active love of enemies, modeling a form of courageous nonviolence. From that center, Christians have reasoned in divergent ways about the tragic dilemmas of history: some conclude that fidelity to Jesus forbids killing outright; others conclude that love of neighbor may require limited force to protect the vulnerable, while insisting that such force is morally dangerous and tightly constrained. But any account that uses Jesus to glorify war, to baptize aggression, or to treat enemies as subhuman runs against the grain of the sources.
Jesus’ legacy presses in the opposite direction: toward peacemaking that is costly, toward truth that risks suffering, and toward a hope that refuses to believe violence is the final word.
I agree with Pope Leo’s statements critical of war, which this maladministration regrettably ignores. What strikes me as rather surprising and appalling is how ignorant the Christian Natïonalists are of the existence of the ancient Christian communities in the Middle East, like the Coptic Orthodox, the Antiochian Orthodox, the Melkite Catholics, Maronite Catholics, Assyrian Christians, and various Christians who were evangelized into various Protestant denominations.
Well, I’m fairly certain you were called out on Katie McGrady’s show this morning. Doesn’t mean I agree with what she reported, I’m more in line with you. In fact, I’m pretty irked at what I heard, but thought you should know.
You don't have to be a Catholic to support and agree with this pope or loathe the current American regime. Blessed are the peacekeepers.
HOOT HOOT 🇨🇦
Amen, Amen, Amen!
Amen 🙏💕💯
I think this is worth contemplation in the present context:
Jesus of Nazareth lived under Roman occupation in a land where armed revolt, imperial violence, and civil unrest were real possibilities.
Yet the core posture attributed to him in the earliest Christian sources is neither militarism nor political conquest, but a demanding vision of God’s reign expressed through enemy-love, nonretaliation, and a willingness to suffer rather than inflict suffering. An essay on Jesus and war, therefore, has to hold together two things at once: the strong current of peace in his teaching and example, and the later reality that Christians—living in states, armies, and empires—have repeatedly fought wars while appealing to him.
In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus’ most programmatic ethical teaching rejects the spiral of violence. The Sermon on the Mount calls blessing rather than dominance the mark of the “kingdom”: “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.” The point is not simply private kindness; it is a public discipline that breaks cycles of revenge. “Turn the other cheek,” “go the second mile,” and “give to the one who asks” are vivid examples of refusing to answer coercion with coercion.
Read in their first-century context, these sayings do not necessarily imply passivity; they describe a style of resistance that forgoes retaliation and shames brutality by absorbing it. Jesus’ ethic aims at transformation—of the aggressor, the victim, and the community—rather than victory.
Jesus’ own conduct reinforces this orientation. When he enters Jerusalem, he does not organize an armed uprising. His symbolic action in the Temple critiques corruption and exploitation, but it is not a call to take up the sword against Rome. At his arrest, the Gospels portray him stopping his followers from violent defense—“all who take the sword will perish by the sword”—and submitting to an unjust process. His refusal to meet violence with violence is not presented as strategic calculation but as fidelity to his mission: the reign of God advances through reconciliation and truth rather than force.
The cross, in the Christian reading of history, becomes the central sign that God’s power is revealed not in killing enemies but in forgiving them.
At the same time, Jesus’ language is not naïvely serene. He speaks of judgment, of coming upheaval, and even uses sharp metaphors—“I have not come to bring peace, but a sword”—that can sound belligerent when isolated. Yet in context that “sword” most plausibly names division within families and communities as allegiance to him disrupts ordinary loyalties.
His warnings about conflict describe the social cost of discipleship, not an endorsement of holy war. Similarly, his apocalyptic imagery—common in Jewish prophetic tradition—frames divine judgment as God’s work, not a mandate for his followers to wage redemptive violence.
The earliest Christian communities largely interpreted Jesus as calling them away from killing. Many early Christians refused military service, not because they denied the state’s right to exist, but because they believed discipleship forbade bloodshed and the worship practices tied to Roman armies. Their alternative was not indifference to public life but a distinct politics: care for the poor, hospitality to strangers, forgiveness, and a transnational identity that loosened the grip of ethnic and imperial rivalry.
In this tradition, war is a symptom of disordered desire—fear, pride, greed—and the church’s vocation is to be a foretaste of a reconciled humanity.
History, however, complicated the picture. Once Christianity moved from a persecuted minority to a religion entangled with imperial power, new questions arose: Can a ruler who claims Christian faith defend the innocent? Is it ever permissible to use force to stop grave injustice? Out of these pressures emerged the “just war” tradition associated with thinkers like Augustine and later developed by Aquinas. It does not celebrate war; it attempts to restrain it by moral criteria: legitimate authority, just cause (often defense against aggression), right intention, proportionality, last resort, and discrimination between combatants and noncombatants.
The irony is that a tradition born as a set of brakes could also become a set of permissions. Jesus’ teachings were sometimes reinterpreted as counsels for private life rather than commands for public policy, allowing Christians to participate in state violence while claiming personal piety.
Running alongside just war reasoning, a more radical “peace church” tradition persisted—seen in groups such as Anabaptists, Mennonites, Quakers, and others—arguing that Jesus’ commands admit no exception. For these Christians, the Sermon on the Mount is not an unreachable ideal but the constitution of the church. They point to Jesus’ refusal of armed defense, his blessing of peacemakers, and his command to love enemies as incompatible with participation in war. They also argue that the church’s credibility depends on embodying the reconciliation it proclaims; to kill for the sake of peace is, in their view, a contradiction.
Between these poles—just war restraint and nonviolent discipleship—lies a persistent tension: Jesus’ ethic aims at the enemy’s redemption as well as the victim’s protection. War, even when fought for defensible reasons, typically requires dehumanizing the opponent and accepting foreseeable harm to innocents.
That reality puts pressure on any attempt to claim direct continuity between Jesus’ way and the practice of war. Even the New Testament’s occasional use of military imagery (“armor of God”) is metaphorical and directed toward spiritual struggle, not a blueprint for armed conflict.
An essay on Jesus and war should also consider the political shape of his message. Jesus announces “good news” of God’s kingdom—language that rivaled imperial propaganda. Yet his kingdom is not built by coercion. He forms a community that includes the marginalized and calls for economic generosity, truth-telling, and reconciliation.
This is political in the deepest sense—about how humans live together—but it refuses the state’s normal instruments of control. In this light, Jesus is neither simply a pacifist moralist nor a revolutionary general. He is a prophet of a different order, exposing the false promises of violent power and inviting a new kind of society.
What, then, can be responsibly said about Jesus of Nazareth and war? The strongest claim supported by his teaching and passion narratives is that he rejects vengeance and commands active love of enemies, modeling a form of courageous nonviolence. From that center, Christians have reasoned in divergent ways about the tragic dilemmas of history: some conclude that fidelity to Jesus forbids killing outright; others conclude that love of neighbor may require limited force to protect the vulnerable, while insisting that such force is morally dangerous and tightly constrained. But any account that uses Jesus to glorify war, to baptize aggression, or to treat enemies as subhuman runs against the grain of the sources.
Jesus’ legacy presses in the opposite direction: toward peacemaking that is costly, toward truth that risks suffering, and toward a hope that refuses to believe violence is the final word.
I agree with Pope Leo’s statements critical of war, which this maladministration regrettably ignores. What strikes me as rather surprising and appalling is how ignorant the Christian Natïonalists are of the existence of the ancient Christian communities in the Middle East, like the Coptic Orthodox, the Antiochian Orthodox, the Melkite Catholics, Maronite Catholics, Assyrian Christians, and various Christians who were evangelized into various Protestant denominations.
“No interest can be worth the lives of the weakest, of children, of families,” Pope Leo said. “No cause can justify the shedding of innocent blood.”
Well, I’m fairly certain you were called out on Katie McGrady’s show this morning. Doesn’t mean I agree with what she reported, I’m more in line with you. In fact, I’m pretty irked at what I heard, but thought you should know.
What did she say?
Cardinal Christophe Pierre is quoted as totally rejecting Christopher Hale’s reporting on the meeting Pierre had at the Pentagon.
God bless you, Christopher, for sharing the Holy Father’s message of peace. Amen 🙏
Thank you, Holy Father and God bless you!!!!! 🙏🏽✨️❤️❤️❤️
I’m appalled and want to gag when Trump mentions God. He has no relationship with God and is parroting what Hegseth says.
Chaldean Catholics are in communion with the Holy See. We’ve been bombing them. Oopsy.
TY
Anyone who thinks there is nothing new under the sun needs to see this-- it is a rejection of every war since Constantine!
“These are the Christians of Iraq, the very people living under the bombs the pope was describing.”