Bishop Tomáš Holub preaches about love, but legitimizes "just war"

When Bishop Tomáš Holub of Pilsen, as chairman of the Iustitia et Pax Council, signs the statement "Let us not succumb to misinformation: Ukraine and Ukrainians are victims of Putin's aggression", one cannot avoid an unpleasant question: the successor of the apostles, the herald of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the shepherd of all people without distinction is speaking here, or the former chief chaplain of the Army of the Czech Republic, a man professionally associated with the military for many years, is speaking here environment?

This question is not an attack on Holub's past. It is publicly verifiable. Tomáš Holub joined in 1996 as the first military chaplain of the modern Czech army, worked in foreign missions, became the chief chaplain of the AČR and later adviser to the Ministry of Defense for spiritual service. In 2016, he was also promoted to the rank of colonel as a reserve member. The army itself recalls his words that it is "a matter of the heart" for him. It is also noteworthy that Holub dedicated his doctorate in Christian ethics to the topic of the fight against terrorism precisely in the light of the teachings on the so-called just war.

That is why his statement today is so disturbing. Not because it calls Russia an aggressor, even if it forgets that the war has been going on since 2014. Not because it reminds dead, wounded, deported children or destroyed cities. The Church must not remain silent in the face of suffering. The problem arises when one moves from sympathy for the victims to the moral sanctification of one warring party and to the claim that the defense of Ukraine can be "with moral certainty" described as a just war.

Is it still the word of the gospel?

Christ did not say: Blessed are those who correctly identify the geopolitical enemy. He said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." He did not say: Love your friends and hate your enemies. He said: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44). He did not tell Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane to better distinguish between the righteous and unrighteous use of the sword. He said to him: "Put your sword back to its place" (Mt 26:52). At the same time, the gospel of Christ is not political pacifism or a naive denial of evil. It is a radical challenge not to accept the logic of hatred, retribution and the division of man into one whose life moves us and one whose death we are willing to accept as the price of victory.

The Church is not supposed to be "neutral" in the sense that it is silent on the killing of innocents. He is to stand by every victim. But that is precisely why it cannot be the spiritual appendage of any general staff, government, military alliance or war propaganda. Its task is not to explain to believers which warring party has morally purer weapons. Her task is to remind that behind every uniform is a human being, behind every coffin is a family, and that a Russian, a Ukrainian, a Czech or a person from any other country has the same human dignity before God.

And it is here that we come to an extremely serious contradiction. On May 15, 2026, Pope Leo XIV issued encyclicalMagnifica Humanitas – On the protection of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence. It is not a marginal text about computers. It is a comprehensive social encyclical on human dignity, technology, economics, war, peace, power, armaments and the responsibility of the church in the contemporary world. In it, the Pope warns against the new normalization of war, against the militarization of society, against the arms industry, against the logic of force and against a public space divided into the primitive categories of "us and them", "friend and enemy".

And then comes a sentence that Bishop Holub should know perhaps better than anyone else. Leo XIV while preserving the right to self-defense "in the strictest sense," it expressly states that the "just war" theory, too often used to justify wars, is outdated today. As means of conflict resolution, the Pope opposes weapons to dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness, stating that the use of force, violence and weapons always have disastrous consequences for the civilian population.

So how is it possible that the Church Council led by Col. Tomáš Holub, a few months later, he brings up the term "just war" again and uses it almost as a moral stamp?

This is no longer just a dispute between pacifists and advocates of military defense. In the category used, it is an obvious tension with the current papal magisterium. It is all the more paradoxical that a person who specialized in the theory of just war in his dissertation should understand very well how the fundamental shift by Pope Leo XIV. formulated.

The Pope goes even further. INMagnificent Humanityit asks to "disarm words", to reject the war of words and images and to examine one's own prejudices and aggression. According to him, the church should be a place of memory for the victims, so that their pain is not a prelude to further conflicts, but a call for peace and reconciliation. At the same time, he explicitly says that there are situations where neutrality towards suffering would be unjust. This is precisely the necessary distinction: not being neutral to the victim does not mean becoming part of the war camp.

It is this distinction that Holub's statement dangerously blurs. Anyone who does not share the dominant interpretation of the war is very quickly put in the vicinity of "pro-Russian attitudes", misinformation, lack of critical thinking, fear or even a psychological need to align with the authoritarian. But this kind of argument is too reminiscent of the very logic of dividing the world into the right-thinking and the suspicious, which the Pope warns against.

After all, Christianity did not arise to give spiritual legitimacy to empires. Christ did not send the apostles to build military blocks. He sent them to all nations. It must be possible to preach the Gospel in Kiev as well as in Moscow, in Prague as well as in St. Petersburg. A Russian mother who buries her son is no less a mother before God than a Ukrainian mother. Condemning the war does not mean ceasing to see the person in the citizen of the country on the other side of the camp. It is the ability to reject crime and at the same time not stop loving a person that is one of the most difficult conditions for a truly Christian attitude.

And the contrast is even sharper at a time when Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople is once again emphasizing the rapprochement of the Catholic West and the Orthodox East. In May 2026, he called the path of reconciliation between Rome and Constantinople "irreversible" and recalled Christ's prayer "that all may be one". At a time when, after almost a thousand years of division, Christians are trying to find unity again, every church authority should weigh doubly words that can be seen as adding more logs to the fire of civilizational and religious enmity.

And that is why Tomáš Holub must be asked openly. Where does this statement leave room for the gospel of reconciliation? Where is the prayer for the Russian and Ukrainian dead? Where is the call to Russians and Ukrainians to once again be able to live side by side? Where is Christ's commandment to love the enemy? And where is the loyalty to the Pope, who a few months before this text warned against the culture of war and called the theory of just war obsolete?

Bishop Pigeon, are you a shepherd or a colonel? Do you want a church that will stand between the trenches and shout "enough" or a church that will pick the right trench? Will you ever bless Ukrainian and NATO weapons and explain that their deadly force serves a righteous cause instead of blessing those who have the courage to lay down their weapons? Is Iustitia et Pax – Justice and Peace – to become the moral office of war? And is the result of this logic supposed to be a kind of modern "holy war" against Russia, which will inevitably affect the relationship with the world of Russian Orthodoxy, as is already happening, at the very moment when Patriarch Bartholomew is talking about the irreversible path to the unity of East and West?

The Church does not need more generals. The world has enough generals. He needs bishops who will have the courage to be bishops even when whole multitudes are called to arms. It needs a voice that doesn't relativize war, but at the same time rejects hatred. A voice that will not recalculate whose missiles are more morally acceptable, but will remind that every war is a defeat for humanity. And above all, he needs to hear Christ again - not the roar of works drowned out by pious words.

Resources:

1. CZECH BISHOPS' CONFERENCE (2026).Declaration of the Iustitia et Pax Council: Let us not succumb to misinformation, let us stand on the side of the victims of Russian aggression.Prague: Czech Bishops' Conference, September 4, 2026.

2. LEO XIV. (2026).Magnifica Humanitas: Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Leo XIV on safeguarding the human person in the age of artificial intelligence.Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 15 May 2026.

3. ARMY OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC (2016).The first military chaplain was promoted to the rank of colonel.Prague: Ministry of Defense of the Czech Republic / General Staff of the Czech Army, June 7, 2016.

4. CZECH BISHOPS' CONFERENCE (2026).Ten years since Tomáš Holub was appointed bishop of Pilsen.Prague: ČBK, 2026.

5. ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE (2026).His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: Homily, Holy Mass “Pro Pontifice”, May 9, 2026.Istanbul: Ecumenical Patriarchate, 14 May 2026.