How Pope Leo is pushing back on divine justification of war | Hacker News Reader

How Pope Leo is pushing back on divine justification of war

cnn.com

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Religious war surrounds us. The US military commander is a hard core evangelical who claims he's doing God's will. One of many terrifying aspects of this is that he's in the group that thinks Armageddon is going to happen in his lifetime and, what do you know? He can make that happen if he really feels like it.

And this, my friends, is one of the many reasons why I spend too much of my time tracking the bat shit crazy stuff these religious nut cases go on about -- because they're waging a holy war today against non-believers.

It must be emphasized: these people would be fine with exterminating non-believers. I would like to be wrong about this, but I've seen enough to know that a sizeable amount would relish the chance.

> One of many terrifying aspects of this is that he's in the group that thinks Armageddon is going to happen in his lifetime and, what do you know? He can make that happen if he really feels like it.

This is pretty crazy especially when you consider that "No one knows the day or hour when these things will happen". Jesus is saying that not even the angels know when the world is going to end, and now a bunch of people not only say they know when this will happen, but even go so far as to say that you can cause such an event by bombing countries and somehow advancing that plan? It's not just a matter of just vs injust war, it feels more like an attempt from a group of people, who claim to believe in God, to try to force God's hand and speed up the process.

This is pretty <strikethrough>crazy</strikethrough> blasphemous. Not even Jesus Himself is said to know, and I can't think of a more arrogant, literally blasphemous thing than putting oneself in God's shoes, trying to "make Armageddon happen," like Hegseth and Company are doing.

Exactly. I was trying to put it in general terms so even atheists or people from other religions could get the point, but I totally agree.

Agreed. And yet one hears not a peep from "mainstream" Christians about this.

It's my contention that everyday Christians don't push back because they're ok with the general principles of make-believe involved in their faith. Because they're conditioned to here fire and brimstone sermons, they don't question the big picture of "are these people crazy and does their faith significantly factor in to that?"

Apparently 7/10 Americans believe that angels are real. FFS, they should believe Spiderman is real because we've seen so much proof of his existence, just like with angels.

It'll make you more paranoid to hear that the Pentagon prepared an Easter Sunday service exclusively for non-Catholic Christians. Nothing was arranged for Catholics

Why is organising a religious service the business of government?

Without speaking to the topic of GP, military chaplaincy is highly common. (I want to say universal, but I can't say with 100% confidence.)

It's common in theocratic governments:

  Afghanistan
  Iran
  Mauritania
  Saudi Arabia
  Vatican City
  Yemen

and there are a number of current USofA admin supporters and personal who are Dominionists, onboard with a Christian theocracy, particularly now the war / not war / excursion is officially (by declaration of the former TV host / national guardsman in charge) a holy war supported by Jesus, Prince of Peace.

Because those in power believe that the government should run for the purpose of white evangelicals -- there's a real struggle for power here. I know that I sound hyperbolic here but I'm not: they've made it quite clear what their goals are.

Project 2025 is their playbook and that has been followed extensively so far and if they get their way the will "purge" the US of all that don't belong, i.e., anybody who's not a white evangelical.

They are literally hacking democracy, and they are black hats.

> hard core evangelical

One might have assumed that being an immoral degenerate and a hardcore Christian of any type at the same time might have been incompatible, but alas.

At least in studies that are about a decade old now, atheists are the most disliked religious minority group in the U.S. We’re regularly linked to major historical genocidal regimes, and consistently blamed for a host of social ills. So yes, given long enough, I would worry about being explicitly targeted by the current administration. But I hope their excesses do them in long before that happens.

More recently that doesn’t seem to be the case. Atheists are still largely disliked, but the most uniformly disliked are Mormons. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/03/15/americans-fe...

From seeing enough fiction, I know that the Armageddon cults are never the good guys.

Given that the religion usually attributed to influencing the GOP inner circle is evangelical protestant, I don't think the pope will hold much sway. It certainly does make sense that he would want to let the world know that Christianity in general is being highly weaponized in this war. It's just not going to faze the powers that are stoking this on.

I get your point, but 1) trying is better than not, especially as a Pope 2) you can still follow his reasoning as a "generic" Christian, because what he's saying is backed in the Bible (especially, but not exclusively, the New Testament). In other words, you don't need to be a Catholic to get that message.

Also, Mrs Trump is Catholic and in the past they made a big deal out of being photographed with Pope Francis to appeal to Catholic voters.

There's also the mini Trump in waiting, J D Vance, baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church in 2019.

Vance has a book coming out all about his conversion to Catholicism. (It has a photo of a Methodist church on the cover.)

To be faaaair, authors usually don't have any control over the cover design; that's the publishers decision.

Vance is Catholic and Thiel is kind of leaning that direction in weird ways, though.

And Catholics are still a very significant voting block for Republicans (of course quite a few are likely single issue but they specifically might take the pope’s views a bit more seriously as well than more liberal Catholics)

Catholics in Trumps cabinet are not just JD Vance, but Marco Rubio, Sean Duffy, John Ratcliffe, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I think this is one of the most Catholic-heavy administrations in US history. It includes not just the VP, Secretary of State, intelligence chief, but also major domestic roles.

Surely, but you've named people who most definitely are in the party of people stoking this on.

Many Catholics were Democrats, although their recent insanity in the last 10 years made many realize the Democrats have nothing resembling them.

Many Catholics currently feel politically lost, as weird as that is. You have so many "Catholics" running around DC, but few of them can or will regurgitate any of the teachings of the Church, Biden being the most recent prominent example.

Many are hopeful that JD Vance might finally fill that gap, but atheists and Evangelicals will probably keep their alliance growing rather than permit traditional Catholicism to have a revival politically.

So Biden being nominally Catholic wasn’t good enough, JD Vance ‘practicing’ a semi-perverse form of Catholicism is going to be the savior, though?

Please elaborate what semi-perverde form of Catholicism JD Vance follows.

Biden promoted direct theology against church teaching. The most obvious was his public and private stance on abortion, and beyond that, the actual work he did to bring about more evil through that dark ritual.

Well there aren’t that many catholics who were personally criticized by two popes due to their publicly expressed religious views.

> The most obvious was his public and private stance on abortion

Yes but besides abortion you are entirely free to pick and chose right?

This is still very mild opposition, the equivalent of a "strongly worded letter". What we should expect from a serious pope is excommunicating [1] those who start wars.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication_in_the_Catholi...

Israel has more influence in White House then the Pope. His words are just in vain.

Israel is actively destabilizing the region. They are even caught helping funding HAMAS.

They were not "caught", it was never a secret that Israel helped facilitate Qatari aid for basic civil services in Gaza.

I remember Gadi Shamni (former general) explicitly talk about aiding Hamas to contrast Fatah so that they fight each other. Explicitly.

So you are technically perhaps "not lying", but actually you do. They did not do it to "provide basic services".

That's just someone talking about their interpretation of Netanyahu's strategy. Individuals can have private thoughts, which others can speculate about. The actual aid deal involved at least three countries (Qatar, Israel and Gaza) and none of them tried to cover it up.

Do you think Israel should block aid funds for basic infrastructure and civil servants' salaries? If you think blocking such aid is bad, but allowing such aid is also somehow nefarious, then what do you expect Israel to do exactly?

Well again, a lot identifying as Catholic do not believe "Leo" is Catholic or a pope, because this statement is contrary to Catholic teaching:

> "Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war" [Leo] said on Palm Sunday at the start of Holy Week.

Maybe it's out of context or a misquote but Catholics believe war can be justified (for example like the Crusades) and have developed a "just war theory" that details criteria on when war can be justified. Such wars follow from the right to individual self-defense, applied to the collective level of a government / State.

The other quote seems to say as much:

> McElroy, the author of a doctoral thesis on moral norms in US foreign policy, does not believe the war in Iran complies with Catholic teaching on a “just war,” which sets out criteria for a morally justified conflict.

It may be the case that certain wars or military conflicts do not fit just war criteria. We would expect a Catholic pope to say that then instead of "Leo's" confusing quote above.

(To be sure, Jesus does encourage peacemaking; war is thought to be a last resort for resolving conflict after peaceful means have been exhausted)

It reads like people are almost purposefully misinterpreting what he said to give themselves a basis to disagree.

This is what drives people on Twitter to write incredibly defensive posts that attempt to address every possible misinterpretation and criticism.

That type of writing is useless, because motivated people will still search for a new angle of disagreement, and the impact of the message is diluted by the time spent addressing the criticisms. Can you imagine how bland this would have been if he started it with an explanation of Catholic just war theory and a list of reasons why this war doesn’t qualify

Good luck on that one. God often requires us to go to war in the bible. Once he even asked for the total destruction of a whole culture. Man, woman and child. Divine justification is perfectly fine. Much like some wars we consider just (WWI, WWII, and hundred others). War is bad the weak always say. Yet anyone that studies it knows it is often needed, is often leveraged to achieve other goals unachievable without it, and sometimes it is justified, and sometimes it is divine. We will see other wars soon spurned and and supported by God. The Pope can not stop God. Maybe not even interpret him.

The best argument against Abrahamic religions having their face shoved down in their asses unable to comprehend that until Columbus/Spain no one knew about your God from Canada to the Patagonia might be... China.

China has never been Catholic/Christian/Evangelic and yet it survived tons of 'apocalypses', and not just Mao. When the commies didn't even exist in China they already suffered a badass famine in the 19th century and yet they survived until today and being a powerhouse.

They already had a huge Philosophical system/beliefs since Confucious on par of the Greeks and they already were aware of mathematical terms for Pi and completing the square, if not the basics of integration (to be fair, the Greeks too with Archimedes defining a proto-Calculus with exhaustion).

So, if any, the Middle East religions set the whole scientific minddet back, not further. Yes, they improved the Humanism a little because of that, but the School of Salamanca in Renacentist Spain (and Alphonse X with my beloved the Book of Games) were basically bringing the Greek mindset back with Christian excuses.

I mean, the whole Hispanic culture can be humanist enough because of itself being already social/helpful without bringing myths to the populace.

If you have been in Spain, you'll understand. Is not the myths, it's about to actually practice what the religions actually meant (contrary to the properity Gospel) without making a showing off as Americans do going to the Church on daily basis. I've seen more 'Christians' in Spain by how to they behave with their peers than in any megachurch seen in these Youtube videos with fancy shows and whatnot looking both ridiculous and even slightly blasphemous if you actually believed on that Jesus thought to the rest.

Back to History. Onnce the Brits got the Calculus bases right and kickstared the industrial revolution, that among Francis Bacon and Lavousier was a Game Over for your Abrahamic religions where the Bible wasn't a valid source for anything at all. Stack Paleonthology on top and the legacy of Abraham just crumbles into dust.

So, as an Agnostic, the best you can do is to follow the golden rule. Help to be helped. That's it. The rest it's artsy folklore.

If there's a God it would be happier to see that people just tried to put their hate/fears aside to create a less stressing and dangerous world instead of focusing on the dogma and Theology.

It's amazing what a local tribal religion can do when it gets to piggyback on an empire.

This is very admirable of him to try, but it will always be very difficult, unless one breaks away from Deuteronomy, Book of Joshua and other such parts of the Bible.

Koran gets a bad rap, but some parts of the bible are just horrific.

Had it been a modern day manuscript it would have been seen as a post-hoc rationalization of genocidal domination of one tribe over others.

Of course then come the game of 'dont take it literally and its all a metaphor something something'

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%202...

"When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you.

If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you."

The choice that is offered is between slavery and genocide. This is going to be downvoted (already has) but I am just quoting the Bible.

Considering Christians should be putting the New Testament on a higher order than the Old, it should be trivial to not be stuck in the Old.

You probably can thank Christian Zionism and sola scriptura for people forgetting about Jesus while talking about the OT endlessly.

Both of those heresies truly derive from a sense of individual automony and authority, placing the individual nearly equal with God

In order to be nearly 'equal' to God you would need to:

- learn in a hard way, your DNA it's there to learn from your surroundings, you are not a rock.

- apply what you learn for the pure pleasure of knowledge, not to brag about it like a smartass.

- share you learnt with your peers with no profit mindset at all, just for the collective good, isolated knowledge it's useless.

- repeat.

Yep, a bit like Read, Eval, Print, Loop from Lisp.

I largely agree with you. Yes there is ordering but there is no breaking away or denouncing. If you don't, you are always vulnerable to an upstarts who holds you accountable on those parts.

But that said, it's really commendable that the pope is trying.

Denouncing is an odd word to use or expect. A a Christian isn't going to "denounce" the Bible, even if it's the Old Testament.

I think the proper way to put it is seeing the Old Testament through the vision of Jesus Christ as the Messiah and fulfillment of the Old Testament, which itself is complicated and confusing. It really confused St. Paul when he realized through his vision the Truth, and it took time for him to reconcile his knowledge of Scripture with the reality of Christ.

Regardless, too many Protestants find that hard, because that admits that Christ fulfilled the Jewish faith, and that is "antisemitic"...see Ted Cruz as an example of that opinion. He thinks fulfillment theology is some sort of error, but it's exactly what the apostles came to believe and practice.

Anyway, I hope more Christians come to listen to the current Pope. I could understand ignoring Pope Francis, as he was relatively inconsistent and incoherent, especially for English speakers, but Pope Leo has not shown the same negatives yet.

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