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Catholic moral theologians concerned by claims U.S., Iran struck civilian infrastructure #Catholic Iran and the United States have faced accusations of strikes on civilian infrastructure and have explicitly threatened attacks on civilian infrastructure going forward, prompting concerns from Catholic moral theologians.“I have deep concerns that the war will widen and the greatest impact will be on the civilian populations of Middle East nations,” Joseph Capizzi, director of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life, told EWTN News.Charles Camosy, a moral theologian at The Catholic University of America, told EWTN News that threats to civilian infrastructure are “absolutely not” consistent with moral conduct during war or Catholic just war doctrine.“The dignity of the human person — including a commitment to Christʼs command to love oneʼs enemies — must be paramount,” he said. “Not winning a war. Not gaining political advantage. … Catholics are not consequentialists.”A Pakistan‑mediated ceasefire that began April 8 ended on July 8. Last week, Iranian state media alleged that the U.S. struck a water desalination plant in the Hormozgan Province that supplies water to 30 villages, impacting thousands of people. U.S. officials confirmed military strikes in the province but have not confirmed a strike on the plant.The U.S. has confirmed strikes in southern Iran that destroyed port infrastructure. Pro-regime media in Iran in Iran reported commercial and fishing piers were among the targets, citing the Iranian Red Crescent Society. That report also alleged strikes on a wheat storage facility, roads, and bridges.U.S. Central Command denied strikes on the wheat facility but has not addressed every specific allegation. U.S. military officials have repeatedly said they only target Iran’s military capabilities.When reached for comment about the other specific allegations, a spokesperson for U.S. Central Command told EWTN News "we refer you to our published releases" and "we have nothing further to add."In response to these alleged attacks, Iran has repeatedly struck power plants and water facilities throughout Kuwait and Bahrain. Officials in Kuwait, which relies on water desalination plants for 90% of its drinking water, are urging people to conserve energy and water. Bahrain’s supply of drinking water is 100% reliant on water desalination plants.On July 22, Trump escalated threats to civilian infrastructure, saying he would strike “one bridge or power plant” for every ship Iran strikes. Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said in response that Iran’s doctrine is “an eye for an eye” and “those who contribute” to aggression “will also be considered as legitimate targets.”When a reporter asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio on July 23 whether he would rule out strikes on civilian infrastructure, he did not say. Rather, he pointed to Araghchi’s statement and said: “The president’s policy is a head for an eye — I mean, honestly, that’s what it’s going to be.”Just conduct in warThree Catholic moral theologians who provided comments to EWTN News — Capizzi; Camosy; and Taylor Patrick O’Neill, a theology professor at Thomas Aquinas College — all said it is not moral to intentionally target civilian populations in war.“The prohibition against targeting civilian infrastructure is absolute in moral and international law,” Capizzi said. “States are prohibited from targeting civilian infrastructure.”He urged caution about purported justifications for striking “dual use” infrastructure targets that may be used for both military and civilian purposes. He said “no party is allowed merely to claim targets are ‘dual use.’”“When there is doubt as to the dual or single use of a target, international [law] stipulates the presumption begins with single use, and therefore the target is inadmissible to be targeted, unless proven to the contrary,” Capizzi said.Camosy also said this is a moral absolute and there is no circumstance in which it is moral to target civilians. He said that “even in war, even when the stakes are highest,” Catholics do not adhere to the consequentialist moral philosophy of the ends justifying the means.The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains a person can never engage in intrinsically evil acts — such as targeting innocent people for harm — regardless of the reason because “the end does not justify the means.” Acts also require “good intention,” so while “good intention” is not sufficient and does not justify evil acts, bad intention — such as intending to harm innocent people — always “makes an act evil,” it explains.Camosy said: “Protection against the targeting of civilians is an absolute value in war. Catholics are called to be prepared to lose a war rather than violate exceptionless moral norms or commit intrinsically evil acts in this area.”Sometimes an act, in war or elsewhere, can also have several effects. St. Thomas Aquinas explains in the “Summa Theologica” that it can be proper to engage in an act that is morally neutral in and of itself but has both good and bad consequences, so long as only the good consequence is the one that is intended. This is the principle of “double effect.”The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that proportionality is required in war. The evil inflicted through war cannot be more severe than the evil one is aiming to defeat.“We need to ask if civilian harm is the intention and/or the mechanism of action in the military strike or [if] it is a merely foreseen side effect,” Camosy explained.“If the rationale for hitting the electric grid or desalination plant is that widespread darkness, spoiled food, rampant disease, failed hospitals, and more will generate political pressure on the Iranian regime, then the suffering of peaceful civilians becomes the causal pathway to the advantage sought,” he said. “This then becomes the object of the act itself and not a merely foreseen side effect.”Alternatively, Camosy added: “Attacking a generator dedicated to a command bunker, however, would likely not suffer the same kind of critique, however, even if one foresaw but did not intend that it would also have bad impacts on civilians.”Similarly, O’Neill said the moral analysis of striking a facility that results in civilian harm is about intention and proportionality. It is never moral to intend the suffering of innocents or target them.“You cannot intend or rely upon civilian death or fear to aid in your military effort,” O’Neill said. “In other words, the foreseen evil cannot itself be the means by which you attempt to achieve some good.”A specific bridge that is “dual use,” such as one used by civilians but also used “to transport tanks from factory to battlefield,” he said could possibly be justified under double effect. The moral analysis would have to consider intention and proportionality and “you must also try to minimize the negative.”“Will blowing up the bridge make civilian life uncomfortable or will it result in the loss of life, access to basic necessities, etc.? All of these things have to be taken into account just for double effect,” O’Neill said.“Under double effect, itʼs theoretically possible to strike a dual-use target,” he added. “But any strike on merely civilian infrastructure (or even [a target] with indirect ties to the war effort) would be intrinsically unjust.”“At that point, the attack would have more in common with an act of terrorism,” O’Neill said.‘Blessed are the peacemakers’St. Augustine, in a letter to the Roman general Boniface, emphasized that the intention of war must be to ultimately establish a just peace — not to simply to unleash destruction: “Peace should be the object of your desire; war should be waged only as a necessity, and waged only that God may by it deliver men from the necessity and preserve them in peace.”The fifth-century bishop and theologian cited the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 5:9: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”O’Neill explained that in the context of a just war, “the Christian always seeks war for the sake of peace and that of both his own people and the people of the enemy nation.”“To consider the civilians of an enemy nation as the enemy is already to lose the necessary distinction of combatant from innocent,” he said.Camosy noted that Trump, in his 2024 campaign, promised “to be deeply skeptical of war” and encouraged him to move back in that direction.“Trump himself was aggressively pursuing the Nobel Peace Prize on this basis,” he said. “It would be much better to go back to this way of thinking about war. Think about becoming a peacemaker again.”Trump told Axios on July 23 that he is “considering a massive attack, bigger than ever before” but did not say whether this includes the civilian infrastructure he has threatened. He said that Iranians want to negotiate, but “they havenʼt received enough pain yet.”

unitedyam July 24, 2026July 25, 2026

A battle over the Strait of Hormuz rekindled the war in the Middle East after a ceasefire ended. Intent to harm civilians, including attacks on civilian infrastructure, is immoral, theologians said.

Notre Dame awards religious liberty prize to Becket Fund for Supreme Court wins #Catholic Notre Dame Law School awarded its 2026 Prize for Religious Liberty to the Becket Fund — a nonprofit law firm that has secured 13 Supreme Court victories in the past 15 years defending the First Amendment’s religious liberty protections.“We’re deeply honored to be recognized with the religious liberty prize,” Becket President and CEO Mark Rienzi told EWTN News.“We’re honored to be able to be part of fighting to protect something that is very important for our country and the Church,” said Reinzi, who accepted the award at the July 8 conclusion of Notre Dame’s sixth annual Religious Liberty Summit in Chicago.Becket — established in 1994 to provide cost-free legal counsel to those whose religious liberties were violated — has an undefeated record at the Supreme Court.Its lawyers represented the Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby against contraception mandates, defended the rights of Maryland parents to opt their children out of gender-related coursework that conflicted with their religious beliefs, and backed a Catholic foster care agency that only placed children with opposite-sex married couples.G. Marcus Cole, a dean and professor of law at Notre Dame, said during the award ceremony that when the university started giving out the award, “we always imagined that it would go to one person.”“But when we think about the Becket Fund, it is an entire team of lawyers, led by Mark Rienzi, who have made a difference in our world, who have made our lives better,” he said. “And for that reason, we thought it only appropriate to give the award to the Becket Fund as an entity."Ongoing fights for religious libertyThe most recent victory secured by Becket came in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which ensured parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, had a right to opt their children out of coursework that included material related to gender that conflicted with their religious faith.Rienzi told EWTN News that “parents don’t give up the right to [raise] their children when they drop their kids off at the schoolhouse gates.” He added: “Your children don’t belong to the state just because you use a public school.”Becket represented Catholic, Ethiopian Orthodox, and Muslim parents in the lawsuit. Rienzi said religious parents have a right to “operate equally as a full citizen and full member of the public” by utilizing the public school system while maintaining the right to instill religious values in their children.“[This was] the most important case in at least 50 or 100 years in establishing that principle,” he said.Becket also secured the 2020 victory for the Little Sisters of the Poor in which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of federal regulations that exempted the religious sisters from mandatory contraception coverage in insurance plans.The sisters, however, are back in court after the governments of Pennsylvania and New Jersey challenged those exemptions on separate grounds than those on which the court previously ruled. This case is now in an appellate court, which heard oral arguments on July 7. Becket is representing them again and Rienzi is the lead attorney on the case.“It’s outrageous that governments keep volunteering for the beating they get when they keep [going after] the Little Sisters of the Poor,” Rienzi said.He said “the law is really, really clear” that Pennsylvania cannot remove their exemptions from the mandate.Becket is also representing a coalition of Catholic preschools in Colorado that is suing the state because they were excluded from a “universal” tuition program. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. Notre Dame awarded Becket the prize less than one week after Americans celebrated the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which culminated in the adoption of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which secured religious freedom.“God created everybody equal and equally free and gave them rights,” Rienzi said, adding that religious freedom is “essential to the declaration’s idea of who we are as a country and … [it] is crucial for maintaining it.”“It’s a shame that you still have to fight about it,” Rienzi said. “But on the other hand, it’s worth fighting for.”

Catholic scholar says classical learning can help renew America #Catholic ANN ARBOR, Michigan — Catholics should be proud of their contributions to the United States, especially for the intellectual tradition inherited from philosophers, theologians, and saints who contributed to the ideas leading to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, author and Hillsdale College Professor Matthew Mehan told EWTN News leading up to the 250th anniversary of the nation.Mehan is associate dean and professor of government studies at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C. campus. He holds a doctorate in literature from the University of Dallas and recently authored The American Book of Fables, a book for all ages that reflects Mehan’s desire to contribute to national renewal. The fables are set in the American landscape, framed by the Declaration of Independence, and accompanied by historical documents illustrating the country’s history, complexity, and geographical regions. In interviews with EWTN News, the author and scholar said the book grew out of his broader efforts to promote culture renewal through educational reform.“In a sense, it is an unsurprisingly Catholic endeavour of ‘fides et ratio,’” he said. “I wanted something like in church, where there is a papal flag and an American flag, representing faith, morals, love of country, and love of neighbor.” “I’ve always thought that way. I’ve also thought a lot about a combination of those things, with beautiful images and beautiful moral sentiments, and how those come together. So when the semiquinquicentennial was coming up, I thought it would be a great gift to the country.”. Mehan won the America 250 Innovation Prize from the Heritage Foundation for the work.The educator and father of eight said he shares the concerns of many teachers and parents dismayed by the current culture and how education has failed to cultivate virtue, civic pride and responsibility. He and his wife founded a school cooperative in Reston, Virginia that now has 38 participating families. He has also designed curricula for schools across the country. The role of educators is essential, Mehan said, while noting that doctorates are now the equivalent of 19th-century master’s degrees in terms of academic formation. “Catholic academics don’t know their own traditions very well,” he argued. “They know Greek philosophers, and the moderns who reject the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, and Catholic vision of Western civilization and human nature, and may know the Summa Theologica and St. Augustine. But what they don’t know is the poetical and rhetorical tradition which moves people toward a common vision, which is an indispensable part of good letters and a healthy citizenry.” “And they don’t know the Romans,” he added. Drawing on the classical tradition, Mehan noted that Roman thinkers such as Cicero and Seneca prepared the “good soil,” the intellectual antecedents that inspired America’s founders. “Cicero, for instance, was taught in all seminaries until the 1900s,” while Seneca was praised by St. Jerome, he said. And ideas found in Cicero were the underpinnings of the theory of natural rights that informed later Catholic philosophers. Seneca’s De Clementia, for example, contributed to concepts of constitutional democracy and rights that shaped the American experiment in government. These classical authors, he argues, still have relevance and deserve renewed attention in universities and seminaries. Matthew Mehan is associate dean and professor of government studies at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C. campus. | Photo courtesy of Matthew Megan Asked about the future of Catholic education and how it can play a role in a national renewal, despite the closing of Catholic parishes and schools, Mehan said: “Catholic education is displaying a nascent energy.”“It’s very dynamic and full of people who have reoriented education towards what the Christian humanists of the Catholic tradition understood as their goal, which is to help students have a clean conscience and thus have the most joyful life possible in this life and the next,” he said.For Mehan, moral formation must take precedence over the mere transmission of information. He argues that Catholic education drifted from this mission in the 20th century as it increasingly followed secular models of education.Subjects such as calculus, computer coding, and the sciences are valuable, he said, but they should not be the primary focus of Catholic schools. “If you aim at them, ironically, you won’t get them. If you aim high, you’ll get the high and the low. If you aim for the low, you’ll get nothing. That is why education has collapsed except where the moral life is, ideally, centered around Christ.”Catholics holding doctorates who complain that tenured positions at colleges and universities are scarce should look to K-12 schools to make national renewal a reality, Mehan said.The renewal of Catholic education, and how it can contribute to national renewal, depends on placing Christ at the center and embracing the universal call to holiness emphasized by the Second Vatican Council, he argued. Movements such as Opus Dei and the Neo-catechumenal Way serve as “an enormous engine,” Mehan said, to plant holiness in students and encourage teachers themselves to be saints. It will change “how people teach, how they design curricula, and how they bring forward the richness of the Catholic faith and tradition.” “Actually, I’m very hopeful,” he said.To Catholics who may think of themselves as strangers in the United States, Mehan said, “No, brother, you built this too.” “Your people, your religious tradition, are at home here,” he said. “And you are meant for republican self-government. Augustine’s City of God laid the groundwork, St. Thomas Aquinas built the scaffolding, and St. Thomas More made it shine. American Catholics built this country with sweat, blood, and their arms.” “This is your patrimony too,” he said.