Day 302: War (2025)
The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Ascension
4.9 • 11.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
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Summary
The Church urges us to pray and work for peace to avoid the evils and injustices of war. Because we live in a broken world, the Church also offers guidance on approaching war. Fr. Mike breaks down just war theory and the criteria of legitimate defense by military force under principles of moral law. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 2307-2317.
This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB.
For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy
Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, |
| 0:09.1 | where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture, and passed |
| 0:13.0 | down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. |
| 0:15.2 | The Catechism in a year is brought to you by Ascension. |
| 0:17.4 | In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. |
| 0:24.9 | This is day 302. We are reading paragraphs 2307 to 2317. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach. |
| 0:34.0 | But you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com |
| 0:42.5 | slash CIY, and you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily |
| 0:47.1 | notifications today is day 302. We're reading paragraphs 2307 to 2317. We're talking about |
| 0:52.4 | avoiding war. Yesterday, we talked about safeguarding peace, |
| 0:55.7 | talked about peace itself, and talked about anger and hatred as those things that we must not |
| 0:59.5 | cultivate in our hearts, must not act out in anger or act out of a place of deliberate hatred. |
| 1:05.4 | But that's in the human heart. We recognize, though, that what do we do in this broken world where there |
| 1:12.8 | are people who do violence? What do we do in this broken world where there are people who |
| 1:17.3 | actually want to not only destroy you, your family, your way of life, your community, your country? |
| 1:22.9 | What do we do as Catholics? What do we do as followers of Jesus, who is the Prince of Peace? And he |
| 1:28.9 | commanded us. He commanded us to love our enemies and pray for those to persecute us. So what do we |
| 1:34.9 | do then? That's what we're looking at today. Is there such a thing as legitimate defense by |
| 1:39.8 | military force? And if so, what are the obligations for that kind of defense? This is coming from a thing |
| 1:46.6 | that is called the just war theory that was developed, I believe, by a man named St. Augustine |
| 1:51.7 | back in the fifth century, because, you know, when Christians found themselves as a minority, |
| 1:56.3 | yeah, if you're going to kill me, I can choose to be a martyr. But then all of a sudden, |
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