Pope Leo, Bishop Robert Barron and the Iran War
When Americans need to hear the Holy Father’s rebukes of the war, a prominent Catholic leader says the pope isn’t really talking about Iran.
I was 28 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. As an antiwar, two-time Pat Buchanan voter, I opposed the war, and unfortunately, for my country and that region, time would prove me right.
As a non-religious South Carolinian, I noticed that many of the evangelical churches I grew up around and their leaders were the most enthusiastic about the war. I thought that seemed not only wrong, but the opposite of my understanding of Jesus Christ. It was also clear at the time that neoconservative politicians and pundits, who defined the Bush-Cheney era, were more than willing to stoke this pro-war religious fervor for their own political purposes.
But Catholics and their leader, Pope John Paul II, were very different. “NO TO WAR!” John Paul said two months before the invasion. “War is not always inevitable,” he said. “It is always a defeat for humanity.” The Holy Father was a prominent voice against the war until his death in 2005. This sounded closer to my understanding of Jesus Christ.
This past Easter, at 51 years old, I was finally confirmed in the Catholic Church for reasons far deeper than my antiwar stance. Still, the Church’s clarity on matters of war and peace was always the original springboard of my journey.
When the first American pope, Pope Leo XIV, recently spoke out against the U.S. war with Iran, I was not the least bit surprised but glad nonetheless.
When President Donald Trump’s Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently invoked God and vowed the U.S. military would bring “death and destruction from above” to Iran, he was echoing fellow pro-war evangelicals like U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham. It felt like 2003 all over again.
On Palm Sunday, Pope Leo cited Isiah 1:15: “Jesus does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, he rejects them, saying: Even though you make many prayers I will not listen, your hands are full of blood.”
“Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” the pope said. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
This was a direct rebuke to the Trump administration and it seemed Hegseth in particular. It was the opposite of the neoconservatives and evangelical Zionists who were allowed to shape narratives during the Iraq war and are attempting to do now with Iran.
Ben Shapiro is Jewish and a staunch advocate of the Iran War (as he was of the Iraq War) and thus an ally of neoconservative and evangelical Zionists. On his Daily Wire show, Shapiro said that he didn’t necessarily know whether Pope Leo was criticizing the Iran war.
Shapiro asked his guest, Bishop Robert Barron how should people interpret the pope’s recent comments on the evil of war. Bishop Barron replied (emphasis added), “I furthermore agree with you that… [Pope Leo] is not referring specifically or precisely to the Iran War.” He then explained the Church’s teachings on just war theory.
When I watched this, my heart sank. There was no intellectually honest way that Barron thought the Pope was not talking about Iran. As CNN reported Saturday about later remarks by the pope, “It’s rare for popes to cite world leaders by name, and this is one of the first times Leo has cited Trump publicly. His answer pointed to how the war is weighing heavily on him, and he spoke in a language that would be heard and understood in the White House.”
Clearly Pope Leo is sending messages to this White House.
Shapiro wanted to assure his largely neoconservative audience that the most powerful leader in the Catholic Church was not talking about Iran or condemning the war, which the Holy Father most surely was.
Barron gave aid and comfort to the neoconservative position, while dismissing the Catholic one. Why?
Many Catholics were disappointed with Barron, some aggressively so. Other Catholic leaders are instead reiterating the Pope’s message in slightly different language.
Bishop Barron responded Monday, “I feel obligated to respond to this grossly unfair attack on my character.”
If anyone attacked Barron’s actual character, I don’t agree with that, and am certainly not doing that here.
“I never discussed the morality of the Iran War with Ben Shapiro,” the Bishop wrote. “He asked me to comment on the pope’s remarks to the effect that all those who wage war have ‘blood on their hands.”
Shapiro also asked Barron whether he thought the pope was talking about Iran, and the bishop replied no, which is untrue.
Bishop Barron added, “I simply made the distinction, completely consistent with Catholic social teaching, between just and unjust wars and suggested that the pope meant that those who wage unjust wars are to be condemned morally.”
Again, he never addressed that he told Shapiro that he didn’t think Pope Leo was talking about Iran. That was the falsehood Shapiro needed his audience to hear from a Catholic leader and Bishop Barron gave it to him.
With Iran, Pope Leo appears to be following Pope John Paul II, who confronted U.S. leaders on Iraq. Sohrab Ahmari told CNN “The last time a pope inveighed so urgently against a war, it was Saint John Paul II in the lead-up to Iraq. Once more, Peter’s warnings are being ignored, while Trump’s Catholic apologists obfuscate Pope Leo’s teaching or oppose him outright.”
I write this as an admirer, still, of Bishop Barron. A big part of my Catholic journey has included social media influencers like Matt Fradd of Pints with Aquinas (now also part of the Daily Wire), Father Mike Schmitz, the apologist Scott Hahn of the St. Paul Center, the apologist Joe Heschmyer and the team at Catholic Answers Live, but probably longer than any of them, it has been Bishop Barron. I’ve watched more of his YouTube videos than I can count, and thoroughly enjoyed and felt enriched by his “Catholicism” series from almost 20 years ago. I learned a lot. I still look forward to meeting him one day.
But at precisely a time in which there is an intra-Christian debate happening regarding American foreign policy and what Christianity should have to say about, Barron seemed to diminish or even mislead about what the pope was truly saying.
Ben Shapiro needed to be told that Pope Leo was talking about Iran—or even just probably talking about Iran—instead of comforting pro–Iran War neoconservatives and evangelical leaders of the type who Pope Leo appears to be condemning.
If I were a 28-year-old, non-religious antiwar conservative today and heard how Bishop Barron misrepresented Pope Leo’s Iran position to Ben Shapiro, I might have scoffed, shook my head, and gone in a different direction than the Catholic Church. Maybe a Pat Buchanan or another Catholic could have steered me back, but it shouldn’t be this much work.
At a minimum, I have always expected prominent Catholics, whether in Rome and my own country, to generally get war and peace right. That has long been my experience, and it was my earliest experience with the Church, one I have come to rely on, without much concern, until now.
In the future, I hope I can have that assurance again. I know what John Paul II said about war and those who wage it in his time. Today, he is a saint. I know what Pope Leo XIV is saying about war and know precisely who “those who wage war” are.
Bishop Robert Barron knows too.
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