The Theological Turning Point: How the Catholic Church in Germany Abandoned Pacifism

Since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church in Germany was regarded as the moral voice of pacifism. Its position rested on the conviction that violence, if at all conceivable, could only ever be a last resort. The 1983 memorandum Justice Creates Peace made this the ecclesiastical norm¹. Peace was not the result of military strength, but the expression of trust, conscience, and renunciation.

With Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022, that certainty collapsed. The German Bishops’ Conference declared that military defense capability was legitimate from the standpoint of peace ethics². What sounded like pragmatic adaptation was, in fact, a theological shift. Pacifism—long part of the Church’s self-understanding—was redefined as a historical mode of thought, overtaken by an ethic that now treats defensiveness as a new virtue.

This rupture did not come suddenly. After the humanitarian catastrophes of the 1990s—Bosnia, Rwanda—the Church’s doctrine of peace began to reassess pure pacifism. The 2000 text Just Peace introduced the idea of a “responsibility to protect”: states, it said, not only have the right but the duty to prevent injustice—even by military means if necessary³. The war in Ukraine turned that into a moral imperative. The Church now spoke of the right to self-defense, even of a duty to defend. The primacy of nonviolence gave way to an obligation to resist. Peace, according to this new logic, would no longer arise from disarmament, but from deterrence.

What is striking is how closely this language has, in recent years, aligned itself with that of politics. Terms such as turning point, responsibility, and defensiveness now appear in Church statements with remarkable ease⁴. Whereas in the 1980s the Church stood as a moral counterforce to NATO strategy, today it serves as the ethical buttress of a security order. It blesses what it once warned against. Thus the question arises: does this reflect new insight, or adaptation to a zeitgeist that replaces moral conviction with necessity? Where the language of faith merges with the logic of power, thought grows dull.

Substantively, this shift recalls the old doctrine of bellum iustum, the Augustinian concept of the just war. Augustine regarded war as a tragic consequence of human sin in a fallen world—violence was never good, only the lesser evil⁵. Today’s peace ethics have moved that emphasis: defense is no longer seen as a moral conflict but as a duty to maintain order. Conscience, once weighing obedience against guilt, has itself become an instrument of legitimizing rhetoric. Those who fight act responsibly; those who doubt endanger peace.

Behind this shift lies a deep yearning for moral relief. The postwar pacifism of the Church was the moral inheritance of a guilt too heavy to bear. “Never again” was not merely a political program but a confession of another anthropology: man as a fallible being, carrying violence within himself and escaping it only through renunciation. That language was heavy—but it preserved the conscience. The new ethic liberates from the burden of guilt. It replaces humility with the rhetoric of responsibility. Those who defend may feel righteous; those who deliver weapons may call themselves just. Thus the moral dilemma turns into moral comfort. Peace, once born of renunciation, is now derived from the continuation of action.

The term turning point, coined by politics, takes on a deeper meaning. It signifies not only a political rupture, but a displacement of moral coordinates: a doctrine of renunciation becomes a doctrine of necessity; an ethics of guilt becomes an ethics of conscience. The Church has left behind its postwar ethic and joined the world it once sought to admonish. Whether this marks clarity or surrender remains uncertain. Only one thing is clear: this turning point is not political but theological—and it will change what the Church henceforth has to say about guilt, responsibility, and peace.