We can be grateful for Congressman McNerney reminding us that force serves politics and not the other way around.

The Catholic tradition reminds us that just war thinking is critical to peacemaking.

To reject civility is to reject politics. The alternative to politics is not war, but barbarism.

Pope Francis calls out the language of war. He speaks against “war” as a solution. In this, he echoes many prior popes.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) joined many Americans in expressing strong emotional responses to two Supreme Court decisions, one relating to Title VII protections against discrimination (Bostock v. Clayton County) and the other to the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” or DACA program (Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California).

A theologian’s task in time of plague is to show the light and give people hope. In recent years, many of us trained as theologians have traded our office for that of the pundit and scold. That we have so little worthwhile to say now, in this unprecedented time of fear and uncertainty, is yet one more sign of judgment.

Realism and the just war ethic both pursue war in certain contexts, so they can appear to be close cousins. But the just war ethic shares less with realism than realism shares with pacifism.

If an assessment of and recommitment to human rights protections is the mandate of the Commission on Unalienable Rights, I humbly suggest they study the current status of the most basic rights and lessons to be drawn from the post-9/11 context.

The Ordinaries’ statement is extraordinary, and not primarily for its reorientation away from a two-state solution toward one state.

If we follow scripture as understood by Hazony, perhaps then we face his “either nation or empire” mentality. From other Christian perspectives, an appeal could be made to the varying levels of political organization available to polities over time, ranging from the city to the nation-state, to regional federations, and so on. Hazony’s account, however, allows no such appeal.