The Constitution of the United States requires Congress to declare war. Without such a legislative declaration—made by the people's elected representatives—the President does not have lawful authority to initiate hostilities.
The Constitution puts strict contraints on the ability of all public servants to use violence against anyone:
- The 5th Amendment holds that "No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..."
- The prohibition is absolute and is not limited to citizens or people on U.S. soil.
- The U.S. government may not take lives outside of lawful armed conflict or the proper adjudication of guilt—by independent judicial proceedings, with guilt decided by juries, and the sentence warranted by the gravity of the crime committed.
- The 8th Amendment prohibits all acts of cruelty by government.
- The 9th Amendment recognizes that all human rights are protected and prioritized by the Constitution, even if they are not written into law.
The Bill of Rights also sets a clear standard, whereby civil society must be allowed to be vibrant, open, free, and inclusive, with all people guaranteed a right against arbitrary violence or combat in their communities. Civil society is the space where sovereignty is rooted—not the gilded spaces of high-ranking office.
Pope Leo XIV has been calling on people of faith to recognize that the teachings of Christ call all people to prioritize life over death and love over hate. His message is fundamentally uncontroversial:
- The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution agree: Life is a right; taking life is prohibited.
- The U.S. has made sure the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Geneva Conventions—all of which are binding Constitutional law under Article VI of the Constitution—extend this common sense standard of prioritizing human rights to all nations around the world.
- Across the ideological spectrum, people of widely varied views and perspectives consistently articulate core values that prohibit violence against innocent people.
When Pope Leo speaks about the nature of a just war, he is citing an area of Catholic moral teaching that was orginated by St. Augustine, more than 1,500 years ago. Pope Leo has been the leader of the Augustinian order and comes to his role from a career of missionary service work. He understands Augustine's teachings and how they apply to our world today.
Just war teaching starts with the hardest of all truths—that even in a just war, it is still a breach in the moral fabric of the soul for a soldier to take life. Even the soldier who honorably carries out the duty to defend the innocent, and in so doing lawfully and appropriately takes the life of enemy combatants, is tasked with understanding the gravity of that moral breach and genuinely seeking spiritual reconciliation.
It is from this profound moral paradox that those who serve honorably in armed combat acquire the sacred place they have in the hearts of free and decent people. They carry this unspeakable burden, and they do it as an act of service. Then, when the shooting stops, they are tasked with making their souls whole and free, which is not possible for those who take life without concern.
For the leaders who make decisions about the course of a war, there is no way to claim that a conflict is just if it is a conflict of choice, an offensive action, or an action that targets civilians and civilian infrastructure. This is partly because of the grave burden they will place on even those who serve honorably, survive, and go on to live full lives. It should also be obvious that it is wrong to take innocent life, and inexcusable to want to do so.
It is worth noting that one of the often overlooked institutions of the founding period of American democracy was the St. Augustine Church in Philadelphia, which sat just a few blocks from Independence Hall. It was established in 1793, and was funded in part by revolutionary leaders including President George Washington and Commodore John Barry.
In his treatise On free choice of the will, Augustine explains through a Socratic dialogue that free will is integral to divine Creation, that it requires an active and ongoing, humble and honest pursuit of knowledge, to allow for the freely taken decision to exercise virtue, with full knowledge of the landscape of possibilities. In this way, the free person becomes an impediment to evil, and makes room for safety and decency in the world.
Given Augustine's emphasis on the pursuit of knowledge as necessary for the moral quest to make informed virtuous decisions, the St. Augustine Church welcomed science, education, freedom of information, and the moral duty of service to others in our communities—all founding principles that informed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Article I calls for the advancement of science, the creation of a universal postal service, and limitations to be placed on the role of the military, by the people's representatives in Congress. Despite systemic and brutal injustices, which continue to threaten rights and freedoms today, the republic was founded on the fundamental idea that all human beings are dignified beings of infinite worth, with unalienable human rights.
It was the violent rejection of that founding ideal—that all people enjoy unalienable human rights—that led the anti-democracy cult called the Know Nothings to burn the St. Augustine Church in the 1840s, as part of a campaign of terror against Catholics and immigrants.
Violence is failure.
Unless a war is premised on this universal moral truth, it will not be a just war, and strategic objectives will be elusive, if not impossible to achieve. After the war, there will need to be a durable peace; that is not possible when the side that prevails militarily has behaved as if human lives have no value.
This is the unspoken reason the United States was successful in the wars of 1775, 1812, 1861, 1914, and 1941. In each of those wars, the cause was just, the action began in response to intolerable murderous aggression, and the goal was to restore moral sanity and justice—precisely as the Preamble to the Constitution demands.
Decency is not weakness. Decency is the fabric and substance of the sovereignty of a self-governing people.