Hard work still to be done
Nagle, William J.
WILLIAM J. NAGLE Hard work & scholarship still need to be done Confronted DURING the Eisenhower years with the , development of the hydrogen bomb and a defense policy that placed almost complete...
...It is possible1 that the description of the process at the end of the pastoral does not do it justice...
...Father Murray stressed the need for a vigorous cultivation of what he termed politico-moral science...
...Calling government officials of present and past administrations as witnesses to elicit their views was probably an efficient means of obtaining needed information...
...The Murrays would doubtless also be glad never to have to lead one of the recommended parish-level discussions on the letter's handling of the specific topic of deterrence...
...Some of them (William V. O'Brien, James Finn, and Gordon Zahn, for example) have devoted their scholarly lives to these subjects...
...Catholics reacted with the same deaf-mute apathy as their fellow citizens...
...In this group and among all writing on the subject (except the most convinced of the pacifists) there was agreement on the need for such-large-scale studies that would form the basis of the work of the moral theologians...
...In the fifties, not a single U.S...
...They would know that a drafting committee including both Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton and Bishop John J. O'Connor would have to accommodate differing viewpoints and emphasis in ways the reader can divine only when the usually clear prose becomes ponderous and tortured...
...The vague admonition in the draft for Catholic educational institutions "to take a lead in investigating war & peace studies generally" does not reflect any firm conviction to give effective intellectual leadership...
...But they will probably be the first to admit that the bishops them-, selves should have realized that at this time on this topic they had the opportunity to tap the best minds in the country...
...At the time the Murrays were writing and speaking on the moral problems of modern warfare, neither was asking for such a letter from the pope or the bishops...
...It was that conviction that led him to meet regularly with a small group of scholars from Catholic University and Georgetown who struggled through 1958 to define the scope of such a full-scale interdisciplinary study...
...Professor Bruce Martin Russett of Yale is cited as "principal author" and Father J. Bryan Hehir and Edward Doherty of the U.S...
...In the fascinating and very discreet collaboration between this high government official and the most brilliant theologian in the American Catholic church, it would be difficult to assess which one more strongly influenced the other...
...In the fifties, when the two Murrays began writing and speaking on this subject, the NCWC News Service still routinely carried stories on any Catholic awarded the Medal of Honor...
...No coherent theological viewpoint had been previously established...
...Against their position this writer argued that in this arena, the Fathers were without perili, that is without experts comparable to the scripture scholars, the liturgical scholars, and theologians who had so strongly informed and influenced them in the three earlier sessions...
...They were not related...
...As the Council entered its fourth session in 1965, Americans James Douglass, Justus George Lawler, and Gordon Zahn urged that the Council Fathers speak strongly to the world on the moral problems of modern warfare...
...Were they still alive, how would these pioneers-frustrated as they were in their attempts to influence either church or state on the horrendous moral problems of nuclear war-react to the draft of the American bishops' pastoral letter on peace and war...
...many are at Catholic universities...
...Recognizing that American bishops had a particularly heavy responsibility to give moral leadership on the subject of nuclear armaments, I urged that they come home and begin the arduous task of encouraging the studies, training the theologians, and informing their own consciences on these extremely difficult and complicated matters...
...If papers were commissioned on certain subject areas, the document does not say so...
...They can do it still if they make a few drafting changes which announce clearly that they know this pastoral letter is but a start and that they dedicate themselves to encouraging, even financing the scholarly work that must still be done...
...Catholic Conference Office of International Justice and Peace are listed as staff to the committee...
...No one tried harder to jolt the people out of their apathy than Thomas E. Murray, an Atomic Energy Commissioner from 1950 to 1957 who was frequently described as the "conscience of the Commission...
...Because such a pastoral letter would have seemed inconceivable to them in 1956 or 1960, they would probably be amazed that the American bishops have achieved the degree of consensus that they apparently have in 1982...
...Impressed as they were by the staggering complexity of the issues, they were asking that extensive interdisciplinary studies be done to lay the factual groundwork for the moral discourse that was needed...
...It may not have been a very effective means to gain the best thinking of more than twenty ethicists, theologicans, international relations specialists, and other scholars who appeared, not to mention many others who did not appear...
...Father Murray, muzzled by his church from expressing himself more fully on questions of religious liberty and church and state, would doubtless be impressed that the present generation of U.S...
...The bishops began work a year ago on their pastoral letter with presumably little understanding that such hard work still needed to be done...
...The same section lists thirty-five "witnesses" who appeared before the drafting committee in fourteen sessions...
...He argued that the moralist can give "no answer at all to the quaestio juris until the quaestio facti has been answered...
...bishop spoke out on this issue...
...bishops are secure enough in their identity as both churchmen and Americans that they can question defense policy without fear of sounding unpatriotic...
...Nothing came of these efforts and the scholars went .their separate ways...
...Would you run through that one again, Father...
...Most of those listed are Catholics...
...By the time of the Vatican Council, most of those same U.S...
...Consciousness-raising on these issues can wait no longer...
...WILLIAM J. NAGLE, former assistant to Atomic Energy Commissioner Thomas E. Murray and editor of Morality and Modern Warfare, (Helicon) is presently an international development consultant...
...scholars would have agreed with Philip Scharper's contention in Commonweal of 1962 that the church did not have an adequate theology of international responsibility...
...Recognizing it for the consensus document that it is, they would not be surprised at the number of qualifications, the occasional fuzziness...
...A close friend, adviser, and sometime speech writer was the Jesuit, John Courtney Murray...
...The small staff that served the committee obviously did a prodigious amount of work and a quite respectable job...
...But the bishops must go much further and dig much deeper if they are to have the long range moral influence on the American public and, indeed, on world opinion that they desire...
...What we do know is that their collaboration produced some of the most cogent moral statements of that era...
...In the fifties and for sometime after, the bishops' fear of sounding unpatriotic was coupled with an awareness of the evils of Communism so acute that the bishops were apparently reluctant to judge the morality of the means used to oppose the Soviet Union, or North Vietnam for that matter...
...But the Murrays would be surprised and perhaps a bit concerned by the process used by the bishops to produce the document...
...Most of them, one suspects, would have been delighted to contribute weeks in substantive seminars set up for the benefit of the drafting committee...
...One can guess that such witnesses must have been frustrated in their attempts to synthesize the relevant parts of their life's work in a few minutes of oral testimony...
...The two Murrays would probably be pleased with the pastoral letter...
...WILLIAM J. NAGLE Hard work & scholarship still need to be done Confronted DURING the Eisenhower years with the , development of the hydrogen bomb and a defense policy that placed almost complete reliance on "massive retaliation," most U.S...
Vol. 109 • August 1982 • No. 14
