Battlefield Headlines | March 15, 2026

Missiles fly, predictions spread, and suddenly “World War III” becomes a casual phrase on the lips of people who will never pay the real cost. In this episode, let's take a sober, Catholic look at the war talk surrounding current military conflict with Iran, and why reckless language can do more than describe reality. Words can pressure leaders, inflame public emotion, and make escalation feel normal. If wars are easier to begin than to end, then the way we speak at the beginning matters more than we admit. 

We walk through history to show how media voices have helped tilt nations toward catastrophe, from the great wars of the twentieth century to the myths and resentments that linger long after the shooting stops. We also explore why we’re drawn to violent headlines, using Walker Percy’s insight that carnage seizes our imagination more easily than care. When the news cycle becomes a steady diet of destruction, it’s easy to lose moral clarity, forget proportionality, and stop asking what any conflict is truly for. 

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Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.

Transcript

War Anxiety And Reckless Talk

SPEAKER_01 0:04

This is living Catholic with Father Donald.

How Media Pressure Shapes Wars

Why Bad News Captures Us

Decisions Made Under Ignorance

American Blind Spots In Foreign Policy

Prayer Responsibility And Public Life

Faith In Verse The Window

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome, Oklahoma, to a living Catholic. I'm Monsignor Don Wolf, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish and rector of the shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother in Oklahoma City. And the concern on everyone's mind these days is the war. With our current military involvement with the armed forces of Iran and their response, we're now engaged in active fighting in the Middle East again. All of us are breathless, awaiting the outcome and the ultimate price to be paid for the actions that have been taken. It's a tense time when the missiles begin flying and the bombs begin dropping. The ending point seems blurry and indefinite, even as the targets and the explosions seem certain and explicit. As Thucydides warned us two and a half millennia ago, wars are easier to begin than to end. We're still waiting to see where the fighting ends and what it will bring about. A good deal of reckless talk has been bandied about concerning these events, as reporters and commentators mentioned the attacks as the beginning of the Third World War. Some have said that these operations now ongoing will bring about the conditions for other nations to become involved, setting the stage for the outbreak of fighting everywhere. Of course, no one knows for sure what the results will be, not to mention what other nations will do. But there's still a measure of foolishness in throwing all the words about. It is appropriate, of course, to warn about implications, warnings that others might not have taken into consideration. But there are those who describe this possibility with a measure of glee in their voices, and others who seem to hope that this will be an inevitability. And both of those things, of course, are unacceptable. The talk is reckless because careless talk about widening war has, as one effect, the hastening of the reality, almost the same as detailed warnings about hysteria can bring about hysteria itself. Nations are not automatons, and they respond to talk and passion and emotion as much as any individual does. Scary admonitions and platitudinous jingoism among talking heads in news departments can move the hearts and minds of decision makers no matter how vacuous and silly the commentator might be. Foolish talk can result in foolish decisions, no matter how sober and judicious the ones in charge might be. One of the unexamined elements in the run-up to the great wars of the 20th century had been the role played by the media, especially newspapers, in promoting the decisions of key leaders. This may seem like weak chemistry compared to the generals who had at their fingertips millions of troops under arms and had available strategies for invasion and victory. And mere newsprint would seem to be nothing compared to the documents and debate wielded by parliaments and congresses and national capitals. But editors and editorial writers were successful in putting their fingers on the scales of value and honor and decision making all through the deliberations of the countries that went to war in 1914 and 1939 and 1941. Even the Tsar in Russia, the monarch most notable in all of Europe for his absolutism and authority, as well as the Kaiser in Germany, the most unconstrained military leader of this time, they felt pressured by editorials and stressed by opinion makers. Restless words can bring about dangers unforeseen. It's important to be aware of the power of words. It's all the more important to remind those who make their living with words to be aware of the power they have. Points of view and collective perspective can be as powerful as battleships and cannon amid the fighting and functions of war. During World War I, the newspapers of all nations considered their countries aggrieved and pitched the proposition that each had been betrayed and then attacked by their enemies for no reason and all unjustly. As the fighting went on, there was more ink spilled analyzing and justifying the losses and the brutality of the war and then celebrating ghostly victories than examining the purposes and the direction of the war itself. Once the fighting began and then intensified, it became almost forbidden to ask in any national forum just what the conflict was for. It was also considered aid to the enemy to ask whether the price exacted in blood and treasure was worth the national goals to be won. The media became complicit in furthering an empty national purpose even when the newspaper was set against particular policies or individual generals. In many cases, having goaded the leaders into a warring response, the media presumed its insuffance and never questioned its point of view as the war spiraled into insanity. This is true even when peace comes. In the aftermath of the Civil War, major media figures in the South prompted the lost cause point of view that gripped the imagination of millions for a hundred years. A war filled with foolish and defeat was cast as a lost opportunity of nobility and purpose, more than the defeat of indefensible principles and impossible goals. Mere print could capture minds more powerfully than armies had captured territory, and was more resolute in not relinquishing it even in defeat. Words matter. In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in 1918, the media helped to prompt the notion of a shameful stab in the back by their ungrateful countrymen. In their view, this brought about the losses in the field by the otherwise successful armies of the Kaiser. Those others, not worthy of being real Germans, they lost the war for Germany. We normally think it was Hitler who was responsible for such calumny, but that was only a weapon that he found handy to pick up and to use. It had been shaped and honed before he found it, and before he found that it fit in his hands easily and well. What might be a thought exercise, a mere Dinkschrift, can become as potent as Zyklon B if negligently created and then carelessly tossed about. Everyone should watch what they say, which is not an admonition to say nothing, but it is the admission that words do not simply disappear into the void. To say is to create, and once created, the condensation of vaporous thoughts into the saying of them is to make what is said infectious and potentially potent. And that's true of all talk, not just comments about the current political and military situation. But it now redoubles in seriousness as the price of carelessness inflates to catastrophic levels. Another admonition is to recall what Walker Percy wrote once in his Meditations on the Human Condition. He envisions someone rolling the radio dial through a series of reports one morning. On one station, the listener hears a report of the rescue of a lost child, and then a report about the growing safety of life in a major city. He hears, then moves on as this news becomes the background noise to the normal buzz of the day. As he moves the dial, the listener happens onto a report of a gigantic explosion that has destroyed dozens of buildings and killed hundreds of people, maybe from a meteorite that struck as if out of nowhere. Hearing this news, his imagination is captured. He stops searching the radio waves to pause and to listen, entranced by the unfolding bad news of destruction and death. Percy's point is as notable as it is normal. We're more engaged by carnage than by care, by awfulness than by awe. Hearing of war and explosions and struggle runs the risk of capturing our imagination in the way in the same way our sight is drawn to bright lights on the horizon. We can become overwhelmed so easily we think there's nothing else to focus on, or listen to, or think about. It's easy to lose perspective. It's my sincere prayer the violence unleashed is contained and goes no farther. I pray that whatever is the ultimate purpose of the violent options undertaken is just and proportional to the good that might result. We do live in a cruel and unjust world filled with those who desire harm and destruction and self-assertion, even at the price of their own safety and security. The challenge of every nation and every government, including ours, is to live in this world and to make its way through the labyrinth of imperfect solutions to intractable but real and violent problems. Every decision to act takes place within the perspective of all other options. That is, when facing the challenges of the day, every possible option is on the table, and each carries its own price, including the option not to act. Choosing to do nothing can be more expensive and more damaging than the choice to act, even in an imperfect or incomplete way. It's tough to act and to do as a nation. Compounding the problem for all of us is that everything we do is mired in the incompleteness of our knowledge. We only know what is available to us at the time. No government and no individual has complete knowledge of any situation, so every decision is taken within a context of uncertainty and presumption. Ignorance always has a place at the table. It's an element of every decision, no matter how grave or certain. When all of the commanders and their lieutenants are together, trying to decide what's best and what they can accomplish with what they have, they can only work with what they have, including the limited knowledge of how things are at the moment. The best they can do is factor in their ignorance, along with all of the other factors in their equations of evaluating and reasoning to the best conclusion. Of course, at worst, they can ignore their ignorance and soldier on as if in possession of all truth. This does not contribute to the best chances for premium outcomes. This ignorance also includes the fact that no one can tell what the future holds. Every action creates a reaction, every initiative spawns a series of accompanying actions whose permutations and combinations are almost infinite. Some small alteration in how things go can be the butterfly effect to set off gigantic changes from what was intended or imagined. The future produced by such an effect might never have been envisioned or predicted. Of course, it could be a future much better than anyone had thought, but the chances of making things better solely by chance is slim. It's much more likely that any action producing unexpected results will produce bad ones. This is true if for no other reason then it's more likely an ordered box of pencils dropped on the floor will scatter and disperse the pencils, making them harder to pick up and more difficult to get to and to use than those setting in the box. Life is a crapshoot, and the one doing the shooting often loses. This is the most terrifying aspect of the news of the day. What will happen is clouded in the unknown. All of the actions taken are predicted on these or predicated on the assumptions that cause and effect with a set of expectations about which causes will produce which effect. But of course, nations are not billiard balls and people are not herds of sheep. Exactly what inputs will produce which outputs is not a known factor. When dealing with others, especially in a situation of violence and stress, predictable outcomes are not to be treated with high confidence. In the 1930s, nations all over the world, for example, presumed terror bombing of cities would result in abject panic and debilitating fear. It would lead to complete surrender in almost no time. This became a principle enshrined in the planning and procedures of both civilian and military strategies. When war was declared and progressed to massive bombings, even beyond the scale anyone could have imagined ten years earlier, the results were exactly the opposite of the predictions. Rather than fearful panic, the bombing brought resolute resistance. It turned out that reasonable presumptions had been replaced by unreasonable responses. We might also note that when the civilian morale didn't break, the military response was to amp up the destruction rather than to admit their presumptions were faulty. After all, if you build a fleet of bombers, the only thing they can do is bomb. So they bombed all the more. The unreasonable response of civilians created an even more unreasonable response of the military. People do all manner of unreasonable things. In matters of nations, politics, and policies, it's seldom a straight line between points A and B. It's more like throwing a snowball at a flying goose. It's not so easy to get the results that you want. And we Americans are especially bad at this. Our culture and expectations are dominant everywhere. Wherever we go, we presume everyone speaks our language and adapts to our needs. Seldom are we inconvenienced by the differences or disagreements alive in other countries. It's in their interests to accommodate us. When it comes to measuring what we do or what we intend by our actions, we're helpless in discerning what another country wants or understands of itself in the face of what we do. We presume everyone wants what we want and reasons as we reason. So we expect them to understand what we intend and to read what our signals mean. But over the last 150 years of our national policies, it seems never to have occurred to us that other countries may want differently than we, or may understand our intentions differently than we have communicated them. While we confidently and without question pursue our policies, our intentions may simply disappear into the void, not understood or terribly misunderstood by those who are the object of them. This is true enough in our domestic governmental policies, in which we have myriad examples of programs created with good intentions, but whose impacts have destroyed or damaged those they were intended to benefit. It's all more the case in international affairs, in which our intentions can be as heavy-handed and maladroit as any other policy or program, created with the same blunt convictions and blind sensibilities, and not just in governmental circles. I always recall the longtime employees of one of the major companies in one of my former parishes when thinking about these kinds of issues. They told me the company would make sweeping decisions based on corporate policies, blind to the fine-grained realities of their employees, as well as to the true needs of their business. All the corporation could measure is money, and so the only thing that got measured was money. Efficiency, loyalty, even effectiveness all took second place to the bottom line. In more than a few cases, the company would fire its long-term employees who had known the business and the flow of work for decades and replace them with the new hires who knew nothing of how things worked or what it took to make the business function. It seemed the distance from corporate headquarters to the factory floor was bridged only by telescope and semaphore rather than by conversation and understanding. In the case of international affairs, the distance from one government to government to another might even be magnitudes greater. Or, to take another example, more familiar to everyone, there's the case of Jesus' birth. An order went out from Rome that the provinces were to be organized for a census. In Judea, this meant the crisis of organization required for this census was met by having every person return to their ancestral capitals to be accounted for. So this had Joseph and Mary returning to Bethlehem, since Joseph was of the tribe of David and David's ancestral headquarters was there in Bethlehem. Now, scholars opine that such a move would have happened after the harvest when the weather was good and there was a natural slack in seasonal work. This would have been probably sometime in May, or maybe a little later, they say. So Jesus' birth probably happened then, they opine. It only makes sense. But some of the oldest records we have is that Jesus was indeed born in the winter season. It doesn't make sense that it should be so. It was cold, the weather was bad, and travel would have been more difficult, and yet it was said to be in December. But is it that hard to propose some faceless bureaucrat in Jerusalem, electrified by a letter from another faceless factotum in Rome, decided all should be done immediately, no matter the weather or the travel. And thus Mary and Joseph are on the road, making their way to a crowded Bethlehem during the worst time of the year. And we all, as we know, so it goes, with decisions such as these. We don't have a hard time imagining such a thing. It's exactly the way the world works. So it's my prayer the violence of the moment can end and the situation can be put right. It's also my prayer that justice be created so the situation throughout all of the nations affected might be rightly ordered, and all of those involved can prosper and enjoy true peace. Those may be lofty goals, I know, but given the violence and fury of the moment, it's not too much to hope such expenditure might bring with it a great return. The history of the region is complicated, and our interventions have not been noticeably successful in the past. Let's hope the possibilities of the present might arise from the rubble of the past. No one knows how the Spirit of God is at work in these moments. God is the God of history, not simply the accompanying presence in each individual life. The sum of history is made through the decisions and actions of each person in it, with no one left out or left behind. But there are currents running through the moments of history, subterranean and subtle, of which we often have little knowledge of at the time. All these factors, personal and impersonal, sum together to become the work of God in history. In many cases, we can only hold on and see what will happen. As in all parts of our lives, we petition God for our true needs and our deepest desires, which are for true peace and for certain justice. At the same time, we know God has plans for the peace of nations far beyond our seeing and out of the reach of our imagining. We pray that we might conform to the will of God in its outworking in our world, and at the same time be prompted to do the will of God in our everyday life. Beyond the headlines, this means that we are as challenged to be aware of the opportunities for peace in our lives and to act on them as we are to be focused on international concerns. We're also to be aware of the possible undercurrents running through our families and neighborhoods, all of which could be the venue of the Spirit of God at work today. We don't much think of the small arena of our lives as the place where our attention should be directed, especially in the face of this spectacular and the captivating images and ideas on our screens. But the work of God is as likely to be present and effective in the prophetic voice of one person as in the pronouncement of governments or the blast of explosives. And the recognition of the energies moving our imagination and our measuring of it, according to the yardstick of God's justice, is where each person intersects with the wide world. Simply pausing to ask why, is enough to engage our lives in the deepest currents flowing through our world. And each of these is the venue where the roaring wind of the Holy Spirit might be blowing. We might even find as the tempests blow that tongues as a fire might come to rest on us. And we shouldn't underestimate the power of prayer and sacrifice, especially in this season. We should pray there not be a wider war. Our prayer should be directed to the hearts and souls of all people on every side, and that they seek true peace and acknowledge their faults and falsehoods, even as they seek to impose their truth on others. Most of all, we should pray for those whose lives are interrupted and who have been killed by the violence of this moment. This is especially important for us who are so insulated by the violence that has happened. It is not that it's not that it cannot touch us. Nothing is guaranteed or for certain. But we who have the freedom to consider the needs of others should petition heaven for those who are not so free. War is all hell, said General Sherman. Standing at the gates of hell is a perfectly appropriate place to remember the gate to remember the graces of heaven. We can also remember what it takes in the international sphere that what it takes, that what Takes place is done in our name. Our President and our Congress act and speak in our name. We can distance ourselves from the actions and decisions of the persons involved, but for weal or woe, what happens happens a part of happens as a part of our participation. Our prayers should spill over into all those who do speak and act in our name. They deserve our prayerful attention. At the end of the day, no matter who they are, they are but men and women who are acting to solve the problems they identify and act in the ways they discern. We should pray they act rightly and know thoroughly and decide truthfully, since their actions are simply us in a large scale. No one knows the providence of God, but in the system we give ourselves to, we have some measure of responsibility for what happens by way of those whom we choose. Our prayers are for the whole of life, especially in the pain and possibilities of this moment. So we pray, may there be war no more, and may there be peace in our time. Back in just a moment. Welcome back to our final segment, Faith in Verse. We have a poem today called The Window. The window looks out on the troubled hood, houses built along the street, among the woods, their windows too, translucent in the sunlight, all sealed and guarded from the weather, tight. Fashions abound, brick, stone, tile and shingles, styles from various times and places mingled. But not pacific, not at all in this gated sanctuary. Neighbors burrow in, timid and wary. The price, it seems, of the choices of place, they live at each other's goals and pace. Privately, closed inside their castles keep, with scarcely a nod or even an acknowledging beep, hardly living at all. In many other climes, where life is out loud and public at all times, what do we produce when we live together alone, and are connected only by screen and phone? Would we be better off if we were tinted and our lives were together extended? I wonder, would the ills today we know so well be remedied by opening ourselves? That's the window. We're here every week. I hope that you can join us in the weeks to come as we explore what it means to be Living Catholic.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okcr.org.