Dialogue is needed
Finn, James
JANES FINN Discrimination is called for; dialogue is needed ONE CAN SAY some, things about the first draft of the bishops' pastoral letter on peace and war that will not need to be modified by...
...This much is excellent...
...The American bishops arrive at a similar conclusion but with additional restrictions...
...His disdain for ethical consideration in these issues is matched by those who say, in effect, that nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence are no longer political issues but are now moral issues...
...If not in this particular pastoral letter, then in another...
...In the public realm on issues of foreign policy we address ourselves not to ultimate issues but, at best, to penultimate issues...
...But I do not regard it as evil as being blown up...
...About weapon systems the bishops point out that the United States was the first to produce and use atomic weapons...
...The bishops are highly sensitive to this demanding task...
...In line with current conventional wisdom the emphasis is on more even distribution of present wealth, not on increasing the production...
...For example, Francis X. Winters, S.J., a theologian who has worked on issues of war and peace for years, inferred from these earlier statements that the bishops had "formulated a position that imposes on Catholic officials of our government the burden of choosing between their consciences as illuminated by church teaching, and their professional careers and commitments...
...Whatever the merit of that conclusion, the moral arguments by which the bishops arrive there are murky...
...This is not impossible to do...
...For example, Dean Acheson, one of our most admirable secretaries of state, declared: "The discussion of ethics or morality in our relations with other states is a prolific cause of confusion...
...3. The bishops acknowledge both directly and implicitly the situation of pluralism within the church...
...The threat is evil, but it is obviously a lesser evil...
...I regard that threat to my life as a material and moral evil...
...BUT WHAT of the document itself...
...it is largely absent in this document...
...my peace I give to you...
...I know that I, like most people who will read this, have been the target of nuclear weapons for some years...
...The bishops - even if they could - have done no such thing...
...Equally...
...JAMES FINN, the editor of Freedom at Issue, published by Freedom House, was formerly on the staff of Commonweal and the editor of Worldview, the journal of the Council on Religion and International Affairs...
...They outline a "marginally justifiable deterrent policy" that is "at odds with elements of current deterrent policy...
...And while they state that deterrence "raises serious moral questions about whether one can ever threaten what one does not intend" they give a mixed response...
...And even within these different traditions, different people with different responsibilities can and do make different political/moral decisions...
...This discrimination is called for...
...In his message to the UN on June 11,1982 John Paul II said: "In current conditions 'deterrence' based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable...
...In order to give due credit to what the bishops have attempted and accomplished here and what they have failed to do, full analysis of this most grave and complex issue would be necessary...
...The result is confusing...
...They do not mention that the United States offered a plan for international control of such weapons before others had them...
...The vocabulary of morals and ethics is inadequate to discuss or test foreign policies of states...
...The Soviet Union is a tyranny and behaves tyrannically...
...Protest, Pacifism & Politics and Conscience and Command (Random House Vintage Books), and recently received a Ford Foundation grant to study the impact of that war on the U.S...
...There is, for example, no consideration of the springs of production behind the great and unprecedented wealth that has been produced in the last several centuries...
...To begin with, the word peace is used with high equivocation throughout the document...
...The specific suggestions that are in the document need to be placed in a larger political framework...
...Both attitudes are highly visible in our national debate over nuclear weapons...
...2. After more than three decades of the nuclear era - during which time there have been intensive debates on questions of modern war and there has accumulated a vast literature almost totally unmarked by contributions from American bishops - the bishops have taken up the responsibility that is theirs as religious leaders in the strongest democratic country in the world, one of the superpowers, the principal shaper of Western strategic policies...
...For brevity's sake, I will overleap the strong points of the bishops' statement to express some reservations that I think others would share...
...In addition, there is little discussion of the major obstacles which lie between our present situation and that ordered political community except in terms' of weapons systems and the disparity between the well-off and the poor - and those two obstacles are considered in a historical manner...
...This assertion may seem so obvious as to be unnecessary...
...Nonetheless in order to ensure peace, it is indispensable not to be satisfied with this minimum which is always susceptible to the real danger of explosion...
...6. The bishops have initiated a very good process for what they describe as an "invitation to moral direction, dialogue, and growth...
...What passes for ethical standards for governmental policies in foreign affairs is a collection of moralisms, maxims, and slogans, which neither help nor guide, but only confuse...
...We can, of course, proclaim our ultimate values but we cannot do a fast shuffle between these and political values simply by using the term peace equivocally...
...And they state that "Soviet nuclear weapons provide fully as great a threat to humanity as do our own...
...dialogue is needed ONE CAN SAY some, things about the first draft of the bishops' pastoral letter on peace and war that will not need to be modified by subsequent drafts...
...Surely not...
...The implication is that one can make confident moral judgments without feeling the need to make political analyses...
...It is not...
...4. By the very act of issuing this statement publicly, hoping that their judgments will be seriously considered by all Americans including government officials, the bishops acknowledge that they are addressing public issues in the public arena and that the terms of reference must be available to all...
...This casts a special light on those, including individual bishops, who say that they have come to reject nuclear weapons or to support unilateral nuclear disarmament or to any particular position because of a conversion, out of an act of faith...
...But this, and other concrete acts the bishops suggest for the "waging of peace" make all the more evident the need of the overarching framework within which these acts can be considered...
...I will select only one of their italicized statements to highlight an element of confusion in their moral argument: "Our objections to the use of nuclear weapons against civilians and to the initiation of nuclear warfare apply equally to the threat of such use...
...Acknowledging that Soviet leaders have been prudently cautious about the dangers of deterrence and its possible failure, one must still admit that they have continued to build massive armaments when we have slowed down, that they have continued to extend their empire by military force, and that they are unconstrained by public opinion including that of their own citizens...
...The present pastoral confirms that this inference is clearly overextended...
...Finally, the document does allow moral legitimacy to nuclear deterrence, but in a way that will, I believe, confuse many readers...
...The relation between morality and our foreign policies is sometimes debated, more frequently dismissed...
...1. The bishops correctly assert the moral dimension of the strategic and political issues to which they address themselves...
...An analysis that fails to make the necessary moral distinctions between the democracies, with all their faults and limitations, and the Soviet bloc cannot accurately set forth the circumstances within which we must make decisions about a governed international community nor can it offer the full moral basis for the NATO deterrent system...
...It is this framework, which would be based on a proper understanding of the limited peace that an international community could provide, that needs to be developed...
...The pastoral letter is, therefore, one of explication and mediation among sometimes sharply different views...
...The response to this letter will, I am confident, demonstrate that the dialogue the bishops have here initiated should continue...
...that community which would most nearly guarantee peace and inhibit war...
...Either this statement is abstracted from the present, concrete historical situation in which we must now make our decisions or it implies that there is not only a technical symmetry between the superpowers but a moral symmetry as well...
...As one of those invited to appear before the committee that is primarily responsible for the draft of the pastoral letter, 1 can testify that the initial hearings were serious, informed, open, probing...
...The witness these people bear is open to acceptance or rejection, scorn or admiration, but by its very nature it is not open to examination: it does not flow into public discourse which requires the application of reason to disputed policy issues...
...For example, although they recognize the paradox of deterrence-the threat of nuclear weapons, is what most strongly inhibits their use - in terms of moral judgment they sometimes, but not always, equate the two...
...Peace 1 leave with you...
...The bishops are surely right, however, to say that even the threat is a great evil, that nuclear deterrence is unreliable - no one can guarantee that it will not fail - and that we must "move toward authentic peace through nuclear arms control, reductions and disarmament...
...But the peace which is the antonym to war - which we have a right to expect in a letter on war and peace - is not the peace which passes all understanding but the peace of an ordered political community...
...He has edited two collections of essays dealing with issues raised by the war in Vietnam...
...The model is Pacem in Terris...
...The final form of the pastoral letter will, one assumes, remain an invitation to further public dialogue in which all Americans can participate...
...Possibly because of this equivocation, the document lacks a developed statement about what a properly ordered international community would be...
...5. The letter helps to clarify the infrequent and sometimes enigmatic statements about modern warfare that have been issued by church officials, individually and collectively over the years...
...On issues of war and peace there is not a Catholic tradition, but Catholic traditions...
...So Jesus promised...
...that community which, established as a goal, would help us discern the paths to get there...
Vol. 109 • August 1982 • No. 14
