Editorials
EDITORIALS IT'S STILL NX FOR THE NX THE BEST ARGUMENT for Ronald Reagan's proposed plan to deploy the MX missile is that it isn't Jimmy Carter's proposed plan to deploy the MX. Mr. Carter had...
...The reply to that objection was that our limited number of MXs did not, in fact, pose such a threat to Russia...
...itself need a counterforce weapon like the MX-except to use first...
...More preposterous or laughable yet is the underlying reason for the study which some supposedly in-the-know allege: that it's those demon women in the seminary that must be driven out - women who are (horror of horrors) spiritual directors, faculty members, and (worse case) students for the ministry...
...strained to include departments of theology in all Catholic institutions like Notre Dame as well...
...There is a good argument that the bomber leg to America's strategic triad is outmoded in the missile era...
...Although the limited number of proposed MXs still provides a little reassurance, these questions are no doubt being asked in Moscow...
...As in the case of Sapientia Christiana, which has in fact led to fruitful dialogue and new understanding between theologians and the bishops - and will likely lead to a new level of collaboration between them - the current study of seminaries could actually lead not only to sensible consolidation and better use of talent, but a clearer, more profound recognition of the kind and quality of ministerial education that the people and the world urgently require of their priests, preachers, and future bishops...
...one can be grateful to Archbishop John R. Roach, president of the bishops' conference, for taking charge of the investigation and insisting, against Vatican resistance, that it follow procedures "similar to those used by secular and religious accrediting agencies...
...At the same time, the administration has not renounced or modified the theory itself...
...missiles to survive a Soviet first strike...
...There is a good argument that B-1 s would have a life span of only a few years before being rendered obsolete by the famous "Stealth" aircraft...
...In no area more than that of theological education has recent Vatican legislation exhibited less transcultural under-standing and a more parochial, Roman provenance...
...seminaries - and the bureaucrats who conceived the idea might well heed here our little parable of laughter...
...To B-1 or not to B-1, that has been the question for all too long...
...For generations now in this country, we have had to suffer the consequences of our own indifference to the near-destruction of quality theological education for the clergy that followed the paranoid purge of seminaries conducted for some thirty years after the turn-of-century modernist crisis...
...But steak is better than hamburger, and $20 billion is a bit steep for another one of those "messages...
...The theory was that the new payload and accuracy of Soviet missiles made the Russians capable of knocking out America's land-based ICBMs while keeping some of their missiles in reserve...
...With reason...
...There is a good argument that the existing B-52s, despite their shortcomings, can fill in satisfactorily, especially if equipped with cruise missiles...
...This would have been one of the largest construction efforts known to humanity, a military multiple of the pyramids in which 100 billion gallons of water and two million tons of cement would be consumed in burying missiles rather than pharoahs...
...We would only add this: laypeople have an enormous stake in the quality of seminary education...
...The problem, of course, was that the MX could itself become a first-strike weapon against the Soviet Union, presenting them with the very same threat to which the whole MX-MPS was the American response...
...can't do much for the present about saving our land-based missiles in any case...
...If the Soviet "counterforce' capacity was all that great, thirty-six MXs in extra hardened silos aren't much of a response...
...Similar investigations are now afoot in Brazil and the Philippines...
...Now comes the announcement that the Vatican wants an investigation of U.S...
...Since our air- and submarine-based missiles could not "take out" those remaining Soviet missiles but decimate Soviet cities instead, the only response an American president would have to a "limited" Soviet first strike would be to unleash the kind of exchange that would totally destroy both societies...
...Improvements in the control, command, and communications system that allows Washington to direct nuclear forces even in case of war should reduce the temptation of a "decapitating" surprise attack on the centers of civilian and military leadership and should limit the chances of runaway or accidental escalation in nuclear war...
...The inquiry has many seminary officials worried...
...Though it made sense in totalitarian countries, as a hedge against state interference, Sapientia Christiana carried other disabilities for the American context...
...It may only be another reflexive surrender to the technological dynamic of the arms race-let's have it, "just in case"-and another refusal to say a clean "no" to the military lobbyists and planners...
...This particular legislation was of a piece with the canon in the proposed new Code of Canon Law (canon 64 or 767, depending which revised schema one refers to) which says, "Those who teach any theological courses or courses connected with theology in institutions of higher learning require a canonical mission...
...What we still have is a questionable theory in search of a new weapon system...
...And there is the argument that the B-1 is a much better plane than the B-52, which is probably true...
...the option of aiming at hardened Soviet silos instead of cities...
...We also still have a questionable weapon in search of new theory...
...And if it is stable deterrence that the U. S. really wants, it won't be found'in "big-bird" planes to launch the MX, or in ABMs to shelter it, or in laser beams to defend it...
...If the minds behind such a document in Rome have the task of finally evaluating the American bishops' investigation, there is cause for alarm...
...If the first is true, then why does the U.S...
...deploy only one hundred of the MXs, placing the first three dozen in superhardened silos now used by aging Titan missiles but taking a few more years to figure out where to put the rest...
...The American Catholic Theological Society committee, headed by Father David Burrell of Notre Dame, which studied the document criticized it for a failure in subsidiarity, excessive particularity, its culturally conditioned cast, ecclesiastical elitism, and weakness in due process...
...At least one element in the adminstrations's strategic armaments package was welcome...
...But also included in the president's package was a resurrected B-l bomber, or rather one hundred of them, at the going rate of $200 million apiece...
...There were always two parts to the MX proposal as it emerged from Carter's Defense Department...
...If the second is true, then why put the MX into a vulnerable, even if reinforced, silo-unless we are considering using it first...
...This time round, we hope Bishop John A. Marshall of Burlington, Vermont, who will head the investigation, will make it an examplar of collegiality and co-responsibility with the laity - whose children will be taught, fathered and mothered in the faith, by ministers of true intelligence, wit, and wisdom.nce, wit, and wisdom...
...Unfortunately, the president's MX decision came wrapped with a number of other proposals that waste money and push the arms race forward, while the MX decision itself leaves the country with a lot of unanswered questions about the assumptions behind the scrapped proposal and the real purposes of the current one...
...The new proposal of the administration implicitly admits that this theory is, at least to some degree, no longer compelling...
...Well, breathe a sigh of relief...
...The new administration proposal implies that either (a) the notion of a successful Soviet counterforce attack has been discounted, or (b) the military is admitting the U.S...
...Knowing that an American government might balk at obvious suicide, Moscow might be tempted into just such a first strike, or somehow exploit the threat of one...
...The more this theory has been openly discussed, the more holes appeared in its underlying assumptions-assumptions about the likely effectiveness of Soviet weapons in actual use rather than test situations, about the likelihood of Soviet leaders gambling on that effectiveness or on the possibility that the U.S...
...Whatever the role of such technologies, the real route to stability still passes by way of the negotiating table...
...On the other hand - think positive...
...On the other hand, there is the argument that because the B-l is already off the drawing boards, it is a quick way to send the Kremlin a message about American resolve...
...Like many things institutionally Catholic that start off on the wrong foot, this one too, if properly and intelligently handled, could turn the tables on its conceivers - many of whom, given the likely length of the study, will no doubt be, by the time it is finished, resting in the bosom of Father Abraham...
...Carter had backed a "shell game," in which 200 MXs would be shuttled around a system, alternatively described as a "race track" or "drag strip," of 4,600 silos...
...The B-1 is like Muhammed Ali...
...wouldn't simply launch its own missiles "on attack" before they were destroyed on the ground or, alternatively, go ahead) with a total or limited use of our air and submarine forces...
...The Carter proposal was made on the basis of a theory...
...The laity paid a steep price for the result: for decades seminary education was intellectually comatose - and it's only now barely come out of that state, still blinking.'We hope the lesson's been learned, that history won't repeat...
...Perhaps Congress could just award it an "A" for effort and ask it go to away...
...The other was the MX missile itself, bigger, more accurate, carrying ten warheads, which would have (supposedly) given the U.S...
...One was the "shell game," the multiple protective shelter (MPS) basing scheme which would have allowed U.S...
...Translated, this means any theology teacher in a nominally Catholic college would be, as it were, speaking in the bishop's name - and few American bishops desire to have their authority so engaged...
...Of course, the newest plan for the MX may have the simplest of all explanations...
...But what now...
...Jimmy Carter said " no" in 1977, but like much of what Jimmy Carter said, it didn't stick...
...We would like to be grateful...
...Item: last year's promulgation of the apostolic constitution, Sapientia Christiana, which though mainly directed at pontifical institutions (such as the Jesuit theological schools, as well as St...
...What sense there was in the Carter proposal disappeared with SALT II...
...Half a Maginot Line is better than one...
...SEMINARIES When the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria saw her consort, Francis I, robed, sceptered and miraculously gloved "as the ghost of Charlemagne" prior to his installation in 1764 as Holy Roman Emperor, she reportedly broke into "endless laughter...
...Preposterous indeed - except the woman-issue does seem to obsess certain Vatican minds, viz., in the latest, revised questionnaire to prospective bishops, the first question asks their opinion about women's ordination...
...The Reagan proposal is that the U.S...
...this time it ought to stay retired...
...Thus far, even to its holders, had sacred authority fallen...
...Mary's in Mundelein and Baltimore, etc...
...Not so...
...Behind this whole prolonged MX-up has been one great illusion: that the valid goal of nuclear stability, not subject to the temptation of first strikes, can be achieved through technology rather than politics...
...What won't go away are those questions about the MX...
...One might well imagine that in deciding on episcopal qualification, other matters would take precedence...
Vol. 108 • October 1981 • No. 19
