The U.S. assault on Venezuela exposes a perilous truth: when law bends to power, justice and peace—the hallmarks of Christian order collapse.
Newsroom (04/01/2026 Gaudium Press ) At 3:22 a.m. Saturday, the world awoke bewildered. U.S. aircraft had struck Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. Hours later, the White House confirmed that Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, had been seized by American special forces and flown to New York for trial.
The president offered multiple off ramps, but was very clear throughout this process: the drug trafficking must stop, and the stolen oil must be returned to the United States. Maduro is the newest person to find out that President Trump means what he says.
Kudos to our brave… pic.twitter.com/b1fqkdbB4x
— JD Vance (@JDVance) January 3, 2026
No congressional approval preceded the strikes, nor was Congress even notified in advance—a direct breach of the War Powers Resolution of 1973. The attack, an unambiguous act of war, was waged in the name of “law enforcement,” without legal foundation or democratic consent.
The U.S. Constitution is clear: the power to declare war rests with Congress, not the executive. If Senator Marco Rubio’s defense is to be taken seriously—that Maduro’s 2020 grand jury indictments justified this unilateral strike—then something vital has died in the Republic. A secret domestic proceeding has replaced the deliberation of elected representatives. Prosecutors now declare wars; presidents execute them.
I hope people now understand. The President of the United States is not a game player. When he tells you he’s going to do something and address a problem, he means it. pic.twitter.com/bVhtqcoPWP
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) January 3, 2026
That inversion of justice—the substitution of legality for legitimacy—is the seed of tyranny.
Justice Becoming Vengeance
From a Catholic standpoint, the evil here is not only political but moral. The central axiom of moral theology is simple: the end never justifies the means. Murder cannot bring peace; deceit cannot yield truth; lawlessness cannot restore order.
The bombing of Venezuela underguise of “arresting” its ruler is neither justice nor mercy. It violates Article 1 and Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, to which the United States is a signatory, binds member states to the principles of sovereignty and the non-use of force except in self-defense or under Security Council authorization. A superpower that had no congressional authorization, no United Nations mandate, and no imminent threat to justify invasion under Article 51 of the UN Charter claimed to act in the name of “justice.”
Whatever Maduro’s crimes—and they are real and grave—they do not give Washington license to trample the restraints of international law, its own national law and divine law. In its zeal to punish the wicked, it now risks becoming the very thing it condemns.
The Erosion of Restraint
American presidents have long strained the leash of lawful authority. Truman called Korea a “police action” to avoid seeking permission from Congress. Lyndon Johnson relied on a mischaracterized naval encounter—the Gulf of Tonkin incident—to launch a war that killed 50,000 Americans. Later, incursions into Grenada, Panama, Libya, and Syria all proceeded without congressional sanction.
Each violation eroded restraint. Now comes perhaps the final stage: an unannounced act of war justified by a court document. The Constitution’s division of power is no longer an obstacle but an afterthought.
Even the 1989 Panama invasion that seized Manuel Noriega, Congress had at least exerted partial oversight, and the invasion though condemned by the UN, did not rewrite the laws of war altogether.
Venezuela’s Affliction—and the False Medicine of Force
No one denies the ruin visited upon Venezuela. Years of socialism have starved the nation, corrupted its elites, and driven its people into exile. The Church has mourned with the hungry, buried the victims, and pleaded with a regime deaf to conscience.
Communism, wherever it reigns, crushes dignity by substituting ideology for the Gospel. Yet even this evil cannot justify a greater transgression—the deliberate tearing down of international law. The U.S. hand in Venezuelan affairs is not new. Declassified reports from the Cold War reveal CIA funding of figures like Carlos Andrés Pérez, a former Venezuelan president who reportedly received covert financial aid to preserve American influence in the regio. Now the pretenses have fallen away.
We must face the truth: this latest assault dispenses with even the pretense of legality. Executive war-making has mutated from prerogative to presumption.
The Rebirth of Empire
When asked how the United States could possibly “run” a country of 30 million people, President Trump answered without hesitation: “We’re not afraid of boots on the ground.” He then announced that America would seize Venezuela’s oil “to pay for the occupation.”
What is this but the old colonial instinct clothed in populist bravado? Oil for liberty, war for peace—barter made at the cost of moral coherence. The Christian conscience should recoil at this inversion of order. Here stands Caesar enthroned again, armed with missiles and waving the banner of justice, yet deaf to the Gospel’s call for humility and peace. Power, when decoupled from law, no longer serves humanity; it consumes it.
The Pope’s Witness for Law and Peace
In his Sunday Angelus, Pope Leo XIV appealed to conscience and to the world’s better angels. “The good of the beloved Venezuelan people must prevail,” he said, urging respect for sovereignty, constitutionality, and human dignity. He called for paths of “justice and peace,” warning against violence masquerading as order.
From the earliest papal encyclicals to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the message is the same: nations, like persons, are bound by moral law. “Peace,” Pope Francis has written, “is the fruit of justice, not of arms.”
St. Paul warned that we must never “do evil that good may come.” Legalizing preemptive war in the name of justice destroys both justice and law together.
These teachings are not abstractions. They are the framework of civilization. When nations forget the difference between self-defense and conquest, between justice and vengeance, they step into a realm where violence becomes its own justification.
Trial by Empire
Now Maduro faces trial in New York, accused of crimes that include narcotrafficking and arms trafficking. Whether he is guilty or not, the process by which he was seized makes genuine justice impossible. The presumption of innocence, the cornerstone of Western jurisprudence, has been replaced with a presumption of efficacy—he is guilty because his capture worked. Trial by jury risks becoming theater by empire.
It is right that despots face justice—but only within the limits of law. When law yields to expedience, even righteousness becomes tyranny. The U.S. may win the trial but lose the moral argument.
The Long Shadow to the North
President Trump has appointed Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry as “special envoy to Greenland,” both Denmark and Greenland voice alarm. The specter of acquisition—first Venezuela, now perhaps the Arctic—reveals an unsettling continuity: the empire of necessity replacing the republic of law. History teaches that the appetite of power knows no natural limit. Only law—human and divine—can restrain it.
President Donald Trump reasserted on Monday that the United States needs Greenland for its national security and said a special envoy he appointed to the Arctic island would “lead the charge.”
Trump named Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry on Sunday as his special envoy to Greenland,… pic.twitter.com/oql8cUqmKj— Victoria 🇺🇸⏳🗽🚔 (@Loveof1776) December 24, 2025
A Warning Across the Centuries
Catholic teaching has always recognized lawful authority as a moral act. When that law dissolves, even noble causes morph into tyranny. The defense of order, detached from the rule of law, becomes the pretext for domination.
Trump’s rhetoric—“We’re going to run the country… we’ll seize the oil”—echoes not moral leadership but imperial nostalgia. The faith knows well this temptation: to take the sword in the name of peace, to claim righteousness as conquest. Yet all such wars end alike—with the victor haunted and the vanquished broken.
The Catholic imagination calls us instead to the narrow road: the peace of justice, not the peace of fear.
Saint Thomas More: A Warning
As nations grope once again toward the lawless, the wisdom of one man shines like a prophetic fire across centuries. St. Thomas More—lawyer, statesman, martyr—refused to cut down the law even to reach the Devil himself. His words, dramatized in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, speak directly to our perilous time:
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
*. *. *
This is no mere caution—it is a creed. The law, though human and imperfect, shelters both saint and sinner. Cut it down for convenience, and the winds will come for us all.
When America cuts down her laws to chase her enemies, what then will be left to protect her soul?
Let us pray that she remembers this before the last law falls.
- Raju Hasmukh with data sourced from
CBC News – “Trump says U.S. will ‘run’ Venezuela after it ousts Maduro…”
Avalon Project (Yale Law School) – Text of the War Powers Resolution
Vatican News – “Pope appeals for rule of law to be upheld in Venezuela”
Youtube – Video/news coverage of Maduro’s capture and charges in New York
U.S. Congress – H.J.Res.542 (93rd Congress): War Powers Resolution legislative record
CNA – Catholic/Church news coverage of Pope Leo XIV’s Angelus and Venezuelan bishops’ statements
PBS – Major U.S. broadcast/NewsHour‑style report on U.S. strikes and Maduro’s capture
U.S. Code, Title 50, Chapter 33 – War Powers Resolution codified
The UnPopulist – “Trump’s Bogus Rationale for Invading Venezuela”
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