Between prophetism & nationalism

...Let them say a clear no to nuclear war and the possession and manufacture of nuclear weapons as well...

...We can use them, but we can't use them first...

...That when life is in the hands of a woman, then to destroy it is always morally wrong, never to be condoned, always a grave and universal evil...

...The document recognizes the theological validity of pacifism and the specious nature of a "deterrent" that itself escalates world tension, squanders resources that could otherwise be used to enhance the quality of life, and threatens the very existence of the planet and peoples it sets out to defend...

...The fact of the matter is that if the church of our country does nothing in the face of planned planetary destruction, then that sin of silence may well be the basis for the second, and more likely last, holocaust of the century...

...At the same time, it justifies the nuclear industry...

...The document draws a strong image of Jesus as the son of God whose mission and life was reconciliation and peace...

...it "tolerates" the present national nuclear policy on the grounds that there may be a worse evil than the destruction of the human race or civilized life as we know it...

...On the other hand, the document lays a heavy burden on the backs of eighteen-year-old Christians and seems to expect of them what the bishops are apparently not willing to do themselves: to call nuclear war unequivocally immoral and so too the manufacture, stockpiling, and operation of nuclear weapons...

...It is troublesome to note that the bishops show no such hesitation or ambivalence about abortion...

...There is in this first writing of a pastoral on peace and war a sense of hoping that something terrible will go away if we simply go on as we are...

...But when life is in the hands of men, millions of lives at one time, all life at one time, then destruction can be neologized and some people's needs and lives can be made more important than other people's heeds and lives...

...calls for a sense of universal social justice that will make war unnecessary...

...The purpose of this response is to record faithfully what the present document generated in me as a reader who is just as sincerely attempting to reconcile the life of Jesus with the present state of both the world and the church...

...It reminds us that Jesus did not threaten or retaliate against his enemies, that he did not permit his followers to take up arms in his behalf, that his non-violent approach to enemies was not without cost and that the ministry of Jesus is the ministry of the church...

...In that case from a given principle they draw universal and absolute implications with ease...

...What is a woman to think...

...Theological Development...

...We can use them but not on civilians though military installations abound in the midst of the great cities of the world...

...a toleration for the intolerable that is so deep in the bloodstream that we can no longer recognize our own moral inconsistencies or the nationalization of our theology...

...Nevertheless, the arguments for abortion are the same: the promotion of a greater good and the deterrence of evil for the parents or a handicapped child itself, for instance...

...Catholic nurses may not assist at them...

...and that the policy of national conscription puts soldiers themselves in the category of the innocent...

...She is president of the Conference of American Benedictine Prioresses, past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and is currently serv-ing as Chairperson of the LCWR's National Task-force on Peacemaking...

...Then she set about weaving all day and tearing out stitches all night in order to buy more time for Odysseus's return and so to avoid a confrontation with those men who planned the obliteration of life as she knew and loved it...

...World Interests...

...The Sign of Jesus...

...The document does a great service by reaffirming the validity of conscientious objection in the Roman Catholic tradition...

...It gives direction on the one hand, and clouds it on the other...

...No matter how you read it, the double messages are clear...

...It reminds us that there is such a thing as national sin and that the United States itself has need to remember its own "moral outrages" and the "sinful reality of the arms race...

...The officer looked back at the scorched and gutted community and explained: "We had to destroy it in order to save it...

...that discrimination between combatants and non-combatants in both the short- and long-term effects of the bomb is impossible at the-outset...

...O.S.B., is the prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pa...

...The document asserts the need for world government or controls but then itself reasserts nationalism in an age in which, for all practical purposes, nationalism has been defunct for decades...

...The Sign of the Early Church...

...Let them not weave a theology of life with one hand and unravel it with the other...

...Most of all, the document undermines the credibility of other episcopal statements...

...My hope is that in the final draft of this much needed pastoral, the bishops will complete the prophetic work they have begun...

...The document talks about "a political and moral dilemma" but sounds a great deal more like an American military apologia than it does a great Christian declaration on human life...

...John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, fifty-five percent of all the Christians polled and thirty-two percent of the Catholics in the study say that church teaching about war is unclear...

...JOAN CHITTESTER Stepping tentatively between prophetism & nationalism AS I READ this first and, I hope, truly preliminary draft of the American bishops' pastoral letter on peace and war, I found myself dealing repeatedly with two apparently disassociated but perhaps complementary images...

...it fails to relate the manufacture of nuclear weapons to the inevitability of nuclear war...

...It is a theological imperative that we confront this dichotomy...

...Nevertheless, the very fact that the body of bishops is addressing the issue at all is potent sign of the relevance and authenticity of the Gospel, reason for great hope...

...In that case the church, not the Gospel, will have failed...

...Let them not be like the prophets of the court in times past who said what the government wanted to hear them say but in the saying of it led whole nations to death...

...It even introduces the concept of selective conscientious objection, the right of a Christian to refuse to serve in a single war or perform a single military duty on the basis that that particular war or task is unjust or immoral...

...It fails, however, to recognize that the willingness to obliterate a people or planet for the sake of national interest or political structures is itself a new idolatry and a breach of the concept of a universal church...

...Catholic doctors may not perform them...

...The document now says in separate places: We can tolerate nukes, but not for long...

...The document is so convincing that peace is a Christian mandate and Gospel risk that one expects this same document to model that...

...Catholic hospitals may not permit abortions...

...It is often in tension with itself...

...Let them call Christians to their actual moral responsibility to bring die world back from the brink of its own holocaust...

...We can use them as a deterrent, but they themselves may well be the cause of war...

...Catholic monies may not be used to sponsor abortion clinics...

...The document calls us "to think of war in an entirely new way" and then does not do that...

...We can use them if we control them, but they can't be controlled...

...At the same time, the document reaffirms the "just-war theory" despite the fact that the suicidal effect of nuclear confrontation is clearly out of all proportion to any political good that can be done...

...In its better parts, the document questions the entire deterrence argument...

...AS A RESULT, the pastoral, whose intention, I am sure, is to sound the warning and call the halt to the greatest moral danger of the ages, is itself morally schizophrenic...

...The bishops claim that nuclear destruction and policy are repugnant to them but say it is impossible to be morally absolute in their repudiation of the manufacture or use of nuclear weapons because there is enough need for deterrence and enough doubt about their effects to command their toleration...

...We can have them, but not use them...

...My fear is that this document, as it now stands, will do little to dispel the confusion...

...In an ecumenical, interdisciplinary study of contemporary Christianity about to be published by the Ecumenical and Cultural Research Institute of St...

...It asks for a spiritual regime of abstinence and prayer to recall us to the danger and evil of a nuclear mindset...

...Instead, it is often a defense of war...

...SISTER JOAN CHITTISTER...

...Sense of Responsibility...

...The first is the image from Greek mythology of Penelope, the wife and presumed widow of the hero Odysseus, who attempts to delay the disaster of an arranged remarriage by agreeing to go through with the ceremony once the shroud on which she labored was completed...

...I remembered, too, a televised interview with an army officer at the rim of an incinerated village in Vietnam...

...No nation is any longer so isolated, so superior, or so self-sufficient that the arbitrary interests of one do not somehow spell destruction for itself as well as for the others whose interests it disregards...

...Here are concepts in the letter which I think need to be clarified and convictions that need to be considered...

...Let them do something effective to deter us from destroying ourselves for our own good...

...Conscientious Objection...

...No one comes to positions on the great questions of our time easily, nor it seems do bishops...

...It requires a strong educational program in the theology of peace and reminds every Catholic of their personal responsibility, wherever they are, to turn the country away from nuclear sin and remember the created unity of all peoples...

...and declares that even the threat to use nuclear weapons is wrong...

...The document reminds us that for three centuries the early church forbade Christians to be part of the Roman army on the grounds that violence was non-Christian and military service to defend the emperor, a kind of idolatry...

...It steps tentatively between prophetism and nationalism...

...We can't use them first, but we can't use them to retaliate either...

...outlaws the use of nuclear weaponry in first-strike operations, in obliteration bombing, and even as a retaliatory action "which would take many wholly innocent lives...

...At the same time, I sensed a deep and sincere struggle...

...The document calls for a cessation of further nuclear weapons development and the reduction of existing weapons...