US bishops’ doctrine chair defends church’s just war tradition after Vance comments

Shortly after Vice President JD Vance appeared to warn Pope Leo XIV to “be careful” when speaking about theology and taking issue with his description of the US conflict in Iran as unjust, the US bishops’ point-man on doctrine issued a forceful statement on the church’s teaching about just war theory.

Vance’s comments at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Georgia 14 April come amid fallout after President Donald Trump lashed out at Pope Leo XIV on social media and in verbal remarks the previous day, calling him “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy,” as tensions escalate over the Iran war.

In a statement that did not name Vance, but was issued the day after his comments, Auxiliary Bishop James Massa of Brooklyn, New York, chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, said, “For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war.”

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Vance invoked the church’s just war tradition at the TPUSA event, where he took issue with Pope Leo’s post on X in which the pontiff said God “is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”

Pointing to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and other church documents, Vincent J. Miller, the Gudorf Chair in Catholic Theology and Culture at the University of Dayton, told OSV News, “The vice president’s answer shows he has much to learn about what the church actually teaches about peace and war.”