re: CBS poll found that 58% of weekly Mass-attending Catholics approve of President Trump

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A new CBS poll found that 58% of weekly Mass-attending Catholics approve of President Trump’s job performance overall

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Sadly I don't trust a Catholic publication.

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claimed that war is never justified 

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But beyond that, it has also sparked debate among Catholics, some of whom have asked whether Leo’s rhetoric on war actually has become imprecise: Whether it endorses a kind of total pacifism that seems at odds with the Church’s “just war” tradition, and requires Catholics to renounce any kind of participation in any kind of armed conflict.

On Palm Sunday, some Catholics say, Pope Leo created confusion, again with remarks that gave the appearance of pacifism — namely, that the Lord “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

Some Catholics, including Vance, have asked whether God heard the prayers of the Americans who waged war against the Nazis to liberate Jews in concentration camps, or whether the Almighty rejected the prayers of the Union soldiers who fought to free slaves.

In short, while Vance’s remarks about theological precision seem especially provocative coming from a vice president, Vance is not the only Catholic to ask, in one way or another, whether Pope Leo is advancing a kind of development of doctrine, which would eschew the Church’s conventional just war doctrine, itself worked on by the pope’s own spiritual mentor, St. Augustine of Hippo.

In fact, even among Catholics who believe that America’s Iranian incursion is clearly unjust, there have been questions in many corners about the absolutist way that the pontiff seems to speak about warfare.

The question has been raised so prominently that USCCB doctrinal chair Bishop James Massa issued a statement Wednesday, aiming to clarify that the pope’s recent remarks are meant to evoke and apply just war theory, not ignore it.

But to some Catholics, that seems a bit counterintuitive — when the pope says God doesn’t listen to those waging war, is it ignoring those waging war justly?

Theologian Matthew Shadle has done recently some interesting thinking on this question.

Shadle points out that in recent decades, papal and Vatican rhetoric has made a kind of linguistic distinction — using the term “war” to “describe aggressive or offensive war” and the term “legitimate self defense” to mean just acts of combat, measures of last resort by which nations and their peoples defend themselves against aggressors.

In this schema, “war” is de facto unjustified, and “legitimate self-defense” is always just.

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I say this as a Catholic, I don’t give a crap about the pope or what he wants.

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