The Vatican will be hosting a first of its kind conference this week to reexamine the Catholic Church’s long-held teachings on just war theory, bringing some 80 experts engaged in global nonviolent struggles to Rome with the aim of developing a new moral framework that rejects ethical justifications for war … “After more than 1,500 years and repeated use of the just war criteria to sanction war rather than to prevent war, the Catholic Church, like many other Christian communities, is rereading the text of Jesus’ life and re-appropriating the Christian vocation of pro-active peacemaking.”

http://ncronline.org/news/global/vatican-host-first-ever-conference-reevaluate-just-war-theory-justifications-violence
The just war theory ignores the New Testament. It is an ethical discipline that came to us from the “pagan” Cicero by way of St. Augustine. It approaches the problem of war and violence using natural law thinking and does not measure up to the call to positive peacemaking that we find in the New Testament.

http://ncronline.org/news/global/why-catholic-church-moving-away-just-war-theory