An earlier post criticized Bishop Irenei's statement of the war in Ukraine for its lack of specificity. As I said, while we cannot demand heroic virtue of others, when they do make a public statement about a matter of general concern to the Church, we can and should expect moral clarity in how the question is addressed. The consequentialist nature of the statement's argument, however, mitigates against clarity. As I explain below, because we live in a fallen world unintended harm is to be expected. This means that if we evaluate moral goodness in terms of harm at least in principle, anything we do personally or corporately could be found morally deficient and even wicked.
The Just War Tradition
In the case of war, there can be no doubt it causes great harm. Such harm is certainly a moral evil and should be condemned as such.
But like divorce, culpability for this evil is not necessarily equally apportioned. If we aim for a just peace and not simply the cessation of hostilities (i.e., merely the end of harm without concern of avoiding future military action), we need to understand the relative responsibility of the participants in the conflict.
Historically, moral theologians have drawn a distinction between a "peaceful nation" and an "unjust aggressor." First of all, it is important to emphasize that this distinction is NOT meant to absolve the peaceful nation of all moral failures in events leading up to the conflict or in their prosecution of even a defensive war. Nor does this mean that the unjust aggressor is without morally legitimate concerns. The just war tradition in both its secular and Christian forms is more modest (though still audacious). In determining that one nation is an “unjust aggressor” we are saying that in making war they have chosen an immoral response to conflict with their neighbor.
At the same time, a faulty moral analysis by Christians or people of good will about the moral status of a war, doesn't preclude or minimize a laudable and even heroic response to those in need because of the war. By way of analogy, say you see that your neighbor is thirsty or hungry, it is enough that him give her something to drink or something to eat. Meeting her needs in the moment doesn't require anything more from you than human decency. You might have all sorts of misunderstandings about her situation. But even if done for a morally bad or empirically invalid reason, it is a good thing to feed the hungry and your faulty (or maybe better, mixed) motivation take nothing away from the goodness of your actions.
What intention cannot do, however, is make a wicked action good (see Romans 3:8). And while my good actions might highlight my wicked (or faulty or mixed) intentions, my good actions remain good even if they are not to my credit (see Philippians 1:15-18).