"Fr. Neuhaus played a very important role in urging people to mute their consciences, ignore the Vatican, and march in lockstep with the Bush administration.
"In 2003, Fr. Neuhaus, who lives and moves within the Bush intellectual camp, was asked about Pope John Paul II’s opposition to the Iraq War. He said 'Whether that cause [Just War] can be vindicated without resort to military force, and whether it would be wiser to wait and see what Iraq might do over a period of months or years, are matters of prudential judgment beyond the competence of religious authority.'"
"In other words, what does the Pope know about war and peace?
"But in the same interview, sent out to millions of Catholics the world over, Fr. Neuhaus didn’t apply this standard to himself. He said that war was just and that Catholicism bound us to embrace it."
"'War, if it is just, is not an option chosen but a duty imposed,' he said. 'To wait until the worst happens is to wait too long, and leaders guilty of such negligence would rightly be held morally accountable…. Religious leaders should bring more to the public discussion than their fears. Nervous hand-wringing is not a moral argument…. In sum, military action in order to disarm Iraq can be morally justified in terms of just-war doctrine.'"
What I don't understand is why didn't Fr. Neuhaus join the chaplain corps in the Army or Navy to go out and provide Sacraments to the grunts as he is ordained to do under Holy Orders? I guess he's technically hedged in saying that an Iraq action "can" be morally justified rather than "is."