Editorials
EDITORIALS MORE ON CATHOLICS & NUCLEAR ARMS Ronald reagan may turn out to be one of the most important figures in the history of the American Catholic church. That church has begun an examination...
...The nuclear weapons were in place before Reagan, of course: tens of thousands of warheads, ready to be launched at a moment's notice...
...All this causes the weight of disarmament arguments, even when couched in bilateral terms, to press largely on the U.S...
...In addition, deterrence is not a simple or static reality...
...However far removed from the mood in Washington, these are moderate positions, and ones respectful of political realities...
...Yet without this process of modernization and updating, a minimal deterrent would eventually become either meaningless or risky...
...Carter's Presidential Directive 59, announcing a delicate counter-force policy of nuclear targeting, only formalized a long incipient strategy...
...We think it has compelling moral arguments behind it...
...It has psychological, political, and technological dismensions...
...For it must be said that the bishops' concern, quite rightly, has been less with the danger that we may all be victims of nuclear catastrophe (though any sane person fears that) than with the danger that we may be inflicters of it...
...President Carter had approved the MX in its unmitigated Rube Goldberg form (from which Mr...
...To make sure that these weapons are actually never used out of panic or miscalculated confidence, both sides must constantly make adjustments, foreseeing technological breakthroughs, defining political aims, insuring psychological credibility...
...cut in weaponry...
...There is, in addition, a psychological pressure in the same direction...
...Furthermore the nature of a minimal interim deterrent is highly problematic...
...and, indeed, were such a movement to gather considerable force in one of the two superpowers alone, that it could itself become a destabilizing element in the balance of terror which would still prevail...
...they recognize that Soviet military power is a threat to the peace and freedom of other nations, and they allow for the resort to armed self-defense even while they hope that nonviolent means of struggling against oppression can be fostered...
...Some observers may even question whether the momentum toward unilateral nuclear disarmament that we detect is present in the Catholic debate at all...
...Yet it took the Reagan administration, with its skepticism bordering on dismissal of all arms control negotiations, with its nearly apocalyptic view of American military weakness and a correspondingly vast program of armament, with its cavalier receptivity to talk of "winnable" nuclear wars and nuclear "war-fighting" capacity, that has finally ignited the smoldering concern into widespread revolt...
...This becomes clear as soon as one contemplates the extreme unlikelihood of the two superpowers actually moving toward a meaningful reduction of nuclear arms, and the virtual certainty that they would not go so far as to abolish their nuclear deterrents altogether - a step that no one close to power on either side seems to advocate...
...Many will welcome this fact...
...The rumblings beneath the Catholic surface were there, as seen in Pax Christi's argument that SALT II had been vitiated by concessions made to the military and the legitimacy it lent to further procurement of weapons systems...
...It matters little who is to "blame" for this paralysis...
...That church has begun an examination of conscience on the issue of nuclear armaments that could, in the end, drastically alter the stance of American Catholics toward their society and their state...
...It is easy to see, and to welcome, the current "peace offensive" of many Catholic bishops, organizations, and religious spokespersons as a healthy reaction to the dangerous exaggerations and proposals of the current administration...
...In short, the undercurrent of the Catholic "peace offensive" is toward unilateral nuclear disarmament...
...Still others would arguejhat if the church is going to demand an end to reliance on nuclear weaponry, without becoming pacifist, it will have to direct serious attention toward conventional military means of defense...
...Soviet decision-making is not open to political pressure, barely even to scrutiny...
...The NATO decision to deploy Pershing II and cruise missiles was made in December 1979...
...had made good-willed initiatives toward disarmament, and because the notion of a minimal interim deterrent is further burdened with moral questions, even the arguments of episcopal advocates of bilateralism exert a strong pressure for unilateral nuclear disarmament...
...The principle forbidding direct annihilation of non-combatants is not revoked because it is the Soviets, say, who decline to respond proportionately to an American offer to negotiate or even to a unilateral U.S...
...But the matter goes deeper than that...
...Ths bishops' first responsibility is not to save our skins, or even our civilization, but our souls...
...One cannot protest the current extravagances of the nuclear arms race without being led, inexorably, to the moral abyss at the very heart of deterrence theory...
...We think it's there...
...We think it could have large effects, both good and bad, on the church's place in American society and on the peacemaking process...
...Others will point out that unilateral nuclear disarmament is likely to be rejected by a majority of Americans...
...It is that moral abyss, our nation's readiness to annihilate millions of noncombatants, in contradiction to all traditional teaching on the ethics of self-defense, that will eventually preoccupy Catholic leaders...
...The "interim deterrent" would remain on as questionable a moral basis as ever...
...That process provides ample room for the proliferation of think-tank abstractions and the ulterior quest for advantage rather than stability, and so it is tempting to reject the whole business out of hand...
...Not only do Americans have some political leverage on their government (and as a consequence feel more responsible for its actions), American reformers, in particular, are apt to experience a keener disappointment at what they consider a betrayal of native ideals...
...Between these positions, however, and the arguments that accompany them there is, if not a gap, at least something of a disjunction...
...Reagan has prudently retreated...
...they believe the United States can rely on a much more limited deterrent while striving for a mutual elimination of nuclear weapons...
...So far most of the bishops speaking out on the nuclear issue have endorsed bilateral disarmament, perhaps with unilateral initiatives to begin the process...
...It arises from the assymetry between the societies of the contending nuclear powers...
...To begin with, the minimal deterrent that most people envision consists of a limited number of nuclear weapons openly and directly targeted on cities - in other words, except for the smaller number of warheads, the very epitome of the kind of warfare condemned at Vatican II...
...We think, in sum, that it deserves serious and prayerful discussion...
...Because the moral case against the deterrent would remain independently of whether the U.S...
Vol. 109 • March 1982 • No. 5
