Recognition and restraint: Relocating a just peace in Christian ethics

John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor continues to proffer a dynamic and relevant contribution to the ethical discourse surrounding just peacemaking. Concerning the human phenomena of organized violent conflict, this article explores the textual and philosophical resources advocating restraint and recognition within Veritatis Splendor. It investigates how these two concepts might be understood within an integrative moral framework of freedom and truth, and how they locate intrinsic meaning within a variety of cultural contexts. Moreover, this article demonstrate how these two faith-informed concepts, espoused within the main conceptual tenets of the encyclical, might be harnessed in a more deliberate way in the field of moral philosophy to help facilitate more inclusive and germane strategies for normative judgments in the praxis of just peacemaking.