Biden’s decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine clashes with Catholic teaching

Vatican has been strong supporter of 2010 treaty that U.S. hasn’t signed

An unexploded bomblet from a cluster bomb dropped in Kuwait in 1991. Photo by Johnny Saunderson; CCASI 4.0 International license.

It may well be that Joe Biden is the most religiously devout U.S. presidents since Jimmy Carter. He often mentions or alludes to his Catholic faith and frequently attends Mass.

But that hasn’t stopped him from getting criticism from his co-religionists for his political actions that run contrary to Catholic doctrine, particularly his support for same-sex marriage and legal access to abortion. It will be interesting to see if he gets the same kind of flak for his latest split with Catholic teaching: Last week, Biden approved the sending of cluster bombs to Ukraine to aid in its war with Russia.

The just war doctrine — which, among other things, declares that a war should be fought only as a last resort for just reasons and in a way that the harm caused isn’t disproportionate to just aims — has been a part of the Catholic tradition for centuries and is similar to that recognized by most Christian organizations other than those that have adopted a pacifist position. But far more than with most denominations, Catholic scholars and theologians have intensely studied and sometimes codified issues surrounding the morality of war. It is in that spirit that the Catholic Church has opposed cluster weapons since at least the aughts. Catholic views on what makes a “just war” have influenced other Christian denominations and even secular international law.

A cluster bomb is a type of bomb launched into the air or dropped from a plane that ejects numerous much smaller bombs over a large area. They have been controversial in part because the bomblets don’t always explode and thus pose risks similar to those of land mines, which can kill noncombatants long after the armed conflict has ended. International efforts to outlaw cluster bombs culminated with the 2010 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which has been signed by more than 120 countries — but not the United States, Russia or Ukraine. Many NATO allies of the United States are among those that have signed the convention.

According to the Catholic News Agency, the Vatican was among the enthusiastic backers of the convention. “The Holy See considers the convention on cluster munitions an important step in the protection of civilians during and after conflicts, from the indiscriminate effects of this inhumane type of weapon,” the Vatican said in 2008.

More recently, Archbishop Ivan Jurkovič, who was the Vatican’s official United Nations observer, in 2017 repeated the call for a universal ban on cluster weapons. “Now, even more than when the [convention] was adopted, it is imperative to uphold our moral responsibility to defend the dignity of the victims and to restate the prohibitions under the Convention through a humanitarian lens,” he said.

Pope Francis has also repeated a call for a ban on the weapons, although there have been no statements from the Vatican specifically on Biden’s plans.

Few other Christian denominations have taken a formal position on cluster weapons. One of them that has is the United Methodist Church, which includes in its list of resolutions formally adopted one that supports “treaty efforts to ban the development, trade, and use of weapons that are inhumane, are excessively injurious, and have [indiscriminate] effects” including land mines, dirty bombs and cluster bombs.

Biden has received general support from much of Congress, including Republican members, for his decision, with opposition coming mainly from liberal Democrats who said they oppose this type of munitions aid on moral grounds even while many of them have supported other types of aid to Ukraine. No congressional action is needed on Biden’s decision.