“‘One of the great privileges of being a Catholic is that it’s a cheat sheet. You inherit—simply by virtue of having some water poured over your head—a vast canon of moral and theological thinking, honed over two millennia, that you can apply to almost anything,’” Christopher Devron, S.J., said, quoting the political commentator Andrew Sullivan.
At Regis High School’s inaugural Deo et Patriae Dialogue, that cheat sheet was put to the test. The event held on March 31 brought together “diverse and even opposing alumni voices” to debate whether the war in Iran meets the criteria for a just war, Father Devron, the school’s president, said in his introduction to the talk.
Catholics in the media have been making their cases on both sides of the debate to the public. The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by William McGurn titled “Homilies Won’t Liberate Iran” that suggested Pope Leo XIV misunderstands the “church’s own teaching on war” in his criticism of the Trump administration’s actions in the Middle East. On the other side, American cardinals Robert McIlroy and Blase Cupich both released comments condemning the conflict on the basis of church teaching. America has published an editorial and multiple opinion articles criticizing the war.
Regis, a tuition-free Jesuit all-boys school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, provided a forum for two of these voices to engage with each other. Alumni Phil Klay and Father Gerald Murray hold opposing positions on what Catholic social teaching tells us about the war. (The author of this article is also a graduate of Regis High School.)
Mr. Klay, the winner of the National Book Award for fiction in 2014 for his work Redeployment and a veteran of the Iraq War, argued against the war, echoing his positions from a recent guest essay for The New York Times. Father Murray, a canon lawyer and commentator on social and political issues who served in the U.S. Navy Chaplain Corps, argued for it. The debate was moderated by Eric DiMichele, the school’s longtime speech and debate coach and former admissions director.
Father Murray began his opening argument by clarifying that he would focus his justification on the American “commencement of hostilities against” Iran rather than “the conduct of the war,” explaining, “my contention is that the war is justified primarily because of the threat that Iran poses through its development of a nuclear weapons program, which is very advanced.” He quoted extensively from a New York Post article published March 3, noting Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s claims that Iran has enough uranium to make 11 nuclear bombs.
The “Iranian government…is a serious, present and immediate danger to the United States and her allies,” Father Murray said. “Therefore, this conflict was entered into justly.”
Mr. Klay’s opening remarks followed Father Murray’s. “Given that just war requires every single element Father Devron explained,” Mr. Klay began, referencing the seven criteria of just war theory that Father Devron laid out in his introduction to the conversation, “it is astonishing that the current conflict manages to fail on most of them.”
He questioned the failure of the Trump administration to make a popular case for the war or consult Congress, pointed to the conflict’s unpopularity among the American people and criticized the administration’s lack of a clear war aim.
“Not only is there not a reasonable chance of success; we may very well be making things worse,” Mr. Klay said. “No air war without ground troops securing a new government has ever resulted in positive regime change in history.” Father Murray later agreed that “you cannot control territory” without troops on the ground.
Mr. Klay called the conflict “a war of choice…that fails on almost every metric.”
The Vatican has condemned the war in very strong terms, as Mr. Klay noted. Pope Leo and Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin have explicitly called for peace and criticized the Trump administration’s aggression, calling for a return to the “peaceful paths of diplomacy and dialogue.”
Following the opening statements, Mr. DiMichele directed the wide-ranging conversation to further engage with questions of legitimate authority and constitutional war powers; the United States’s moral authority in the light of the “complicated history” of American involvement in the Middle East over the last half-century; the tensions between American and Israeli interests in the conflict; and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s framing of the war in evangelical Christian terms.
When pressed on the actual conduct of the war, Father Murray focused on strategic considerations and conceded that “the movement of supplies and troops into the staging area was not properly done in this war,” although he otherwise defended the competency of the U.S. military to conduct combat “operations efficiently.”
In response, Mr. Klay switched focus from tactics and strategy to the ethical concerns raised by threats to bomb desalination plants, loosening restrictions around targeting and the “scrambling” to come up with a coherent war aim by Mr. Hegseth and the administration after the initial bombing campaign did not force immediate capitulation from the Iranians.
Both debaters found common ground on their distaste for the Iranian regime and preference, in a vacuum, for its removal, although Mr. Klay added, “Just because I don’t like brain tumors doesn’t mean that if you show up with a kitchen knife and a rusty spoon, I’ll say, go at it.”
The discussion remained cordial throughout, with audience applause following the speakers’ comments, and students had the opportunity to ask questions of the interlocutors at the end. Two current juniors, William Keller and Aidan Shrekgast, spoke to America after the talk and shared their thoughts on the event, the Iran war and just war theory.
They wrestled with the place of just war theory within Catholic social teaching. “I think it’s hard sometimes to view just war theory as a part of the greater [body of] Catholic social teaching, because it…at the very least provides the basis for justifying war…which leads to killing, the ultimate act of removing someone’s dignity,” Mr. Keller said. “It’s hard to reconcile the two.”
“When…we’re violating the dignity of human beings and committing these atrocities en masse, [relying on] this theory of just war, can sometimes feel almost like you’re hiding behind it,” he said.
Mr. Shrekgast shared Mr. Keller’s concerns about justifying conflict but added that he thinks the theory is “necessary” as “we don’t live in a perfect world,” so “having at least some type of guidance” for conflicts is important.
Both students said that they enjoyed the conversation and emphasized the importance of listening to the other side and creating space for open discourse. While their shared conviction coming into the talk that the war is unjust was unchanged, they still viewed the debate as productive.
“What we heard here today is an excellent example of a civil discussion where [the participants] may have disagreed with each other on a fundamental level, but they respect each other’s views,” Mr. Shrekgast said. “We saw some real discussion, some real advancement of the conversation.”
“I think that it’s really important and really great that we’re seeing these [conversations happen], because right now we have an administration—a lot of people on both sides of the aisle—who are unwilling to sit down in these types of environments and advance conversation in these types of ways,” Mr. Shrekgast said. “So even if we’re starting small, even in high schools, the fact that it is happening at all shines a bit of light for the future.”
“It definitely gives me hope.”
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts