The Catholic conscience & nuclear war
Mahony, Roger
'BECOMING A CHURCH OF PEACE ADVOCACY' The Catholic conscience & nuclear war By last November, when the Catholic bishops met in Washington, the American public had begun to grow aware of an...
...and thirdly, that the ultimate goal of what remains, at best, an interim deterrence policy is the eventual elimination of nuclear arms and of the threat of mutual assured destruction...
...The Roman Catholic church, as is well known, has never held a position of absolute pacifism...
...Meanwhile, more and more people experience the pain and frustration of poverty...
...Their ability to do this successfully would represent the best test of their sincerity in moving toward deterrence as an interim strategy...
...We are caught up in a maddening and grotesque contest of spending and posturing that eats up our wealth and our talent...
...The arms race...
...We will need to make new efforts to continue to educate ourselves about all the relevant factors...
...Humanity must make a moral about-face...
...Bishop McManus avoided' 'hard-and-fast moral rules" but insisted on the real and immediate threat of nuclear war, the need to limit armaments, and the necessity of reaching a moral decision on deterrence...
...nuclear arms policy...
...I would deplore any attempt to discuss the arms race merely as a "technical" issue-for example, of comparative nuclear engineering-devoid of ethical considerations or religious significance...
...Such behavior is a contradiction of the Gospel...
...Clearly we have a right to genuine security...
...It is not morally permissible to use nuclear weapons to deter mere conventional warfare...
...William Jennings Bryan tendered his resignation, he explained, not because he was an absolute pacifist - he was not - but because involvement in preparation for war was in conflict with his personal vocation to be a "peace advocate...
...The very use of the term, "deterrence," in moral argument has become very dangerous because of its ambiguities...
...In this memorial they strongly protested the arms race and they urged a deeper realization that "wars do not settle disputes between nations on principles of right and justice but upon the barbaric principle of the triumph of the strongest.'' It is this spirit we need to rekindle in American Catholicism so that we may become a church of peace advocacy...
...This Catholic version of nuclear pacifism follows directly from just-war premises...
...As John Kenneth Gal-braith has noted: "There is a certain reluctance in this polite and cautious age to speak of the financial interest in the arms race...
...The Soviet Union does represent a real threat to our national interests and security...
...Moreover, they have argued that condemning the possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrent without suggesting practical political and military alternatives is, at best, politically inadequate and, at worst, dangerously naive...
...For that reason we are pleased to publish here the text, with a few minor omissions, of a recent pastoral letter by the Most Rev...
...In fact, our nation has either threatened to use or actually planned to use nuclear weapons against conventional forces on at least nine occasions...
...The arms race also cripples the Soviet economy and places severe strains on Soviet institutions...
...Nor is this nuclear pacifism - this conviction that any use of nuclear weapons or, by implication, intention to actually use them is morally indefensible - a uniquely Catholic position...
...We must judge the common good, the meaning of justice, and the conditions for the possibility of peace, by criteria wider than "national supremacy...
...His words do not deny the complexity of the issues of war and peace, but they testify in a powerful way to the new urgency that the church devote itself to peace-making as its major public responsibility and first priority: "There are activities which, in view of their possible consequences, are so dangerous and absurd as to be morally intolerable...
...This is not deterrence, nor is it aimed at a genuine reduction of existing arms...
...On a number of occasions, since the end of World War II, the American public has been systematically misled into believing in a fictitious strategic bomber "gap" (1948), a strategic "gap" (1956), and missile "gap" (1960...
...The bishops were not inventing a new position in this regard, but following the consistent and repeated teaching of the church since the beginning of the "Atomic Age...
...We Catholics must bear witness to the conviction voiced by Pope John Paul II in his stirring appeal at the memorial to the dead in Hiroshima last year: "Our future on this planet, exposed as it is to nuclear annihilation, depends on one single factor...
...and the USSR...
...The majority of American Catholic journals, too, in dissent from the wider American public but decidedly in continuity with Catholic moral thinking, condemned the use of atomic weapons in Japan...
...A reduction of current armaments by one half on both sides would still guarantee a mutual capability of totally destroying the other country several times over...
...We are spending money to prepare for wars which morally could never be fought, at the rate of one million dollars every minute...
...Neither did it prevent other qualitative "improvements" such as the development of the cruise missile and the neutron bomb...
...But, first of all, we must pray for a conversion of heart to become the kind of peacemakers spoken of in the Gospel...
...The survival with dignity of the whole human race is at stake, and the terrible urgency of threatened starvation for millions of people...
...On the basis of the just-war theory, during World War II, leading Catholic moral theologians in our own country condemned the use of atomic weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the obliteration bombings of Dresden and Tokyo...
...Swords must be turned into ploughshares...
...It must be viewed as an interrelated single entity...
...The Catholic view of human rights, so strongly urged by recent popes, includes the right of the hungry to eat...
...A more cautious estimate assumes that 400 "warheads would constitute a more than adequate deterrence capability...
...AM PROPOSING that we search together for the ways to become a peace-advocate church...
...It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation...
...The prominent Catholic layman, Thomas E. Murray, a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, pronounced three practices of the Allies during World War II immoral and barbaric by the standards of Catholic moral teaching: obliteration bombing, the demand for unconditional surrender, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
...secondly, that the possession of nuclear weapons is always an evil which could, at best, be tolerated, but only if the deterrence strategy is used in order to make progress on arms limitation and reductions...
...Having spent over one trillion dollars on defense in the past ten years, we now plan to spend a trillion dollars more in the coming four years and another trillion dollars in the three years after that...
...Though deterrence does not require it, we continue to improve the complex computerized accuracy of our weapons, with the concomitant risks of a computer error triggering a nuclear assault, or of decisions to "launch under attack'' being made by people far removed from the president and Joint Chiefs of Staff...
...We believe that the relationship of religious faith to political debate and social action should be mediated by carefully reasoned moral considerations based on shared philosophical and cultural values...
...It continues to divert our wealth and our resources away from aid, agricultural improvements, the means within our reach to end world hunger...
...Since I believe the American arms policy has exceeded the moral limits of deterrence and has eroded our real security, and since there has been up until now no serious connection between American arms policy and a serious attempt to reduce arms world-wide, it is my conviction that Catholics no longer have a secure moral basis to support actively or cooperate passively in the current U.S...
...The goal must be disarmament, arms reduction, not merely a ceiling on new, even more monstrous, weapons...
...In 1971 we advocated that American law recognize the right to selective conscientious objection as the legitimate extension of our First Amendment rights to free exercise of religious conscience...
...In the meantime the arms race continued to escalate...
...We American Catholics will need to become aware of all the true facts and issues concerning the arms race...
...It would, furthermore, entail a significant program of industrial/technological conversion to peace-time uses...
...Ambiguity, hesitation, or compromise are no longer permissible...
...The World Council of Churches at its New Delhi Assembly in 1961 uttered words similar to- those of the Second Vatican Council: "Christians must also maintain that the use of nuclear weapons, or other forms of major violence, against centers of population is in no circumstances reconcilable with the demands of the Christian gospel...
...We need to look, then, at the facts of the arms race to see whether: (1) ours is truly an interim deterrence policy aimed at reducing the risks of any use of nuclear weapons...
...Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara estimated that a force of 100 nuclear weapons, with explosive yields of no more than fifty kilotons each would suffice as a "deterrent," because it would be capable of destroying twenty-five percent of the Soviet population, some sixty-five million people, as well as fifty percent of all Soviet industrial capacity...
...He concludes that "the arms race has a deeply damaging effect on the free-enterprise economy," and also asserts that "the arms race as it now proceeds does not strengthen free institutions or free enterprise.'' Another policy analyst asserts that'' the war economy has brought us inflation, technological backwardness, maldistribution of wealth, a sinking dollar, and unemployment...
...As Catholics, we remain committed to a belief in the role of reason in helping us determine, with other men and women of good will, what constitutes the common good and what fulfills the requirements of justice...
...Can anyone really believe these are not profoundly religious concerns...
...It escalates rather than reduces the arms race...
...industrial companies, thirty-two make or export arms...
...Indeed, the closest thing to an anathema in all of the Second Vatican Council documents are the plain words of The Church in the Modern World which enjoin a form of nuclear pacifism on the Catholic conscience: "Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself...
...It is an act of aggression which amounts to a crime, for even when they are not used, by their cost alone, armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve...
...It is on this basis, and in reference to these principles, that the present arms policy of the United States can no longer be accepted by us, but must be effectively challenged and changed...
...No Catholic can ever support or cooperate with the planning or executing of policies to use, or which by implication intend to use nuclear weapons, even in a defensive posture, let alone in a "first strike" against another nation...
...Nor is it only the poor in our own country who suffer...
...Just as the right to legitimate defense is not a justification for unleashing any and every form of destruction, so moral arguments for the possession of nuclear weapons for deterrence do not constitute support for every national arms policy that is advanced in the name of deterrence...
...Any level of loss is apparently acceptable so long as ou side "wins...
...FOR SOME TIME many Christian moralists have held that the possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrent - but never their use or the intention to actually use them - is morally permissible...
...Even the Salt I agreement, in 1972, which placed some limits on the quantity of American and Soviet ICBMs and sea-launched ballistic missiles, in no way placed limits on new improvements in the precision, reliability, or explosive yield of those weapons already permitted...
...Because of a perverse desire for superiority and invulnerability, we seem willing to risk the destruction of the planet itself, and to ignore the desperate need and hunger of millions of people in other nations of the world...
...Each day we permit it to continue without protest it perpetuates itself by becoming embedded in our everyday habits and attitudes...
...Bargaining chips" is the language used by the defense establishment, which also speaks of "a menu of flexible nuclear options...
...The only possible Catholic support for a national nuclear deterrence policy depends on three related moral judgments: first, that the primary moral imperative is to prevent any use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances...
...In the face of such arrogance, such aridity of feeling and moral bankruptcy, we must not remain silent...
...but this proportionality was calculated without adequate attention to the complex and long-term effect of arms expenditures on the developing nations...
...As Catholics we belong to a worldwide church and a community of humankind beyond our national boundaries...
...The moral justification for an interim deterrence policy flows from the right of a nation and its people to security...
...We American bishops extended the range of this principle by supporting the right to "conscientious objection" of Catholics who conclude in conscience, following the reasoning of the just-war theory, that some particular war of their nation is unjust, even if they are not opposed to all wars in principle...
...The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist...
...The legitimacy of a defensive use of force depends on certain conditions...
...With the present escalation in the arms race, there has also been an escalation in the rhetoric of threats and expectations and conceivable risks...
...It is not in the interest of all the millions of ordinary men, women and children, in this country and in the Soviet Union, at whose homes and cities these insane weapons are now aimed...
...Four hours of such spending could eradicate malaria from the earth...
...arms limitation should attempt to guarantee security on both sides, include clear economic benefits for both sides, and be as comprehensive as possible...
...It can no longer be tolerated...
...This is not the kind of deterrence which can be morally permitted...
...NOT ONLY DOES our present arms policy force us to neglect our own poor, and the desperate poverty and hunger of other nations, but there is good reason to believe that it will destroy our own economy...
...Now we are making an unprecedented leap in arms expenditure a pre-condition for any arms-limitation talks with the Soviets...
...Still another economic historian refers to "the baroque arsenal" which helps erode our national economy by erecting a perverse hierarchy of values...
...we cannot fail to praise those who renounce the use of violence in the vindication of their rights and who resort to methods of defense which are otherwise available to weaker parties too, provided that this can be done without injury to the rights and duties of others or of the community itself...
...Richard Ellis, of the U.S...
...At best it envisions a higher plateau of "deputed'' security from which alone we might enter guarded and highly limited arms negotiations...
...It accepts the premise that one can legitimately resist evil by force in justified self-defense...
...Like Jesus we have set our hearts on a message which is "good news for the poor," news of a God who fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich empty away...
...On the occasion of a national congress of lay Catholics, called by the American bishops and held in Chicago in 1893, the delegates passed a peace memorial, which they sent in twenty-five languages to the rulers of nations...
...As Richard Barnet has recently asserted: "Once the nuclear force is regarded as a 'flexible' instrument for achieving purposes beyond the crude one of deterring a nuclear attack with the threat of an all-out counterattack on Soviet society, the arms race becomes a never-ending, infinitely escalating contest...
...We American Catholics must refuse to judge our national policies by mere nationalistic norms and slogans...
...military policy...
...This has never been and is not now a position that Catholics can, in any way, endorse or even merely tolerate or leave unchallenged...
...WITH THE ONE exception of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which outlawed all above-ground nuclear detonations, there has not really been any reduction in the arms race...
...In 1976, we American bishops confirmed it once again in our collective Pastoral Letter, "To Live in Christ Jesus...
...I end with the words of the saintly American monk, Thomas Merton...
...Such a reduction would require the leaders of both nations to confront powerful interests that have a bureaucratic and ideological commitment to the arms race...
...CLEARLY, WE HAVE moved beyond true deterrence to the production and use of nuclear weapons as an assertion of our national superiority...
...It looks to a show of superior power and the will to use it, the aim of which is not genuine security, but extended space for diplomatic and political adventures in the world...
...As an American bishop, I deeply respect our nation's tradition of the separation of church and state...
...Instead of 400 warheads, we presently have a total of 11, 893 and we plan to build another 18,500 by 1990...
...and the USSR on all research, construction, or testing of new nuclear weapons systems...
...to examine war-peace issues was deeply immersed in its work...
...Few have had the chance to read the statements of the bishops in full...
...We are being urged to use our nuclear arsenal as "bargaining chips" for diplomatic and political adventures far beyond questions of deterrence...
...Nations must stop preparing for war...
...The arms race continues to divert our moral and intellectual resources, and our practical economies, into the waste and peril of the business of war...
...Now we must find the way to allow these passionate concerns to become effective action...
...This has impelled me to add my voice to the growing number of American bishops who are calling for a fundamental about-face in the arms race...
...Those who minimize this danger and believe that the escalation of violence can be controlled in warfare are the ones who have lost touch with reality...
...Today I add my voice to the growing chorus of Catholic protests against the arms race because I believe the current arms policy of our nation, as well as the Soviet Union, has long since exceeded the bounds of justice and moral legitimacy...
...All attention is riveted on questions such as how to put a ceiling on the further growth in numbers of weapons, for example, by limiting the number of warheads to no more than ten per ICBM or fourteen per sea-launched ballistic missile...
...We have all become so numbed, so used to the nuclear umbrella, that we forget that less than a decade ago no responsible statesman, on either side, ever spoke of actually using nuclear weapons...
...Can anyone be so cynical as to claim that a desire to feed the hungry, in these circumstances, is "mixing politics and religion...
...The Gospel urges us, furthermore, to take a special care for the poor and the suffering, both in our own midst and in the whole world...
...Once we are able to see these ramifications of the continued arms race in relation to world hunger and global justice, a new factor enters into our moral arguments, which must now incline the Catholic conscience toward more determined public peace-advocacy...
...Long ago, it would seem, we have ceased looking at deterrence as an interim policy aimed at genuine arms reduction...
...Nevertheless, in recent years, more and more Catholics - our popes, bishops in this country and elsewhere, theologians and other scholars, and conscientious priests, religious and lay Catholics throughout the world - have increasingly asked: how can we become, truly, advocates of peace...
...I have used the language of Catholic moral tradition, of the classic just-war theory, and the nuanced but tenuous Catholic argument for a limited and interim nuclear deterrence policy...
...We should take nothing for granted...
...The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole...
...Can anyone doubt where the Gospel must lead us here...
...The bishops of the world at the Second Vatican Council asserted their strong support for those individual Catholics who adopt a position of absolute pacifism...
...Short of an actual reduction, many are now urging a three-year bilateral freeze by the U.S.A...
...Cardinal Cooke reaffirmed traditional just-war teachings in a letter to military chaplains last December, and argued that the church found the "strategy of nuclear deterROGER MAHONY rence morally tolerable...
...In whose interest could our present "war economy" possibly be...
...But no nation or people has any right to total supremacy, or superiority in "bargaining chips," or any of the other goals of the new "flexible" nuclear policy...
...Although the language of deterrence is still used, it is curious how each new "gap" allows the introduction of weapons that were, in any case, designed and executed for production before anyone had noticed the "gap...
...It is no longer reasonable or right to leave decisions to a largely anonymous power elite that is driving us all, in our passivity, towards ruin...
...In fact, one major defect in the normal presentations of the classic just-war theory has been its tendency to view reality in bi-polar terms, and to base deterrence on "balances of power" instead of on achieving new institutions that could further delimit the possibilities of war...
...But unilateral disarmament is something quite different from serious, persistent, even unilateral, initiatives toward bi-lateral disarmament...
...In my judgment, nothing short of these two proposals-of reduction in half or a freeze-will be adequate strategies for the present situation...
...Subsequent evidence showed that no such "gaps" ever existed...
...If we cooperate in these activities we share in the guilt they incur before God...
...It is more realistic, in my judgment, to devote ourselves to creating the conditions of possibility for peace and disarmament...
...Less than ten hours of such spending would solve the entire world's hunger problem...
...I have said that the Roman Catholic church is not a pacifist church, but this needs some qualification...
...It is even more important to recall that the moral reasoning involved in classic just-war theory led the bishops at the Second Vatican Council to declare that a form of nuclear pacifism is a weighty and unexceptional obligation of Christians...
...We hope that pte-sentation of Bishop Mahony's views will advance consideration of an issue that is obviously of crucial importance...
...Successful collective bargaining initiatives always respect parity...
...Many of those who are now urging American arms increases are looking to an American "military superiority" beyond mere deterrence capability - one which will give us a psychological advantage and somehow impress the Soviet leadership with our willingness to risk catastrophe...
...Roger Mahony, Bishop of Stockton, California, whose arguments probably represent a middle ground among those saying "no" to the current direction of U.S...
...and the commission established by the N.C.C.B...
...in fact, continued to escalate after Salt I. As is well known, the U.S...
...It is my judgment that the present United States and Soviet arms policy does not meet the demands of any of these three premises...
...I have used this language because of our Catholic commitment to give compelling and accessible reasons for our positions in policy debates with our fellow, citizens...
...Now, thirty-two years and fifty thousand nuclear weapons later, the question of whether the use of nuclear weapons can be justified on any ethical grounds is rarely heard in our national debates and almost never in formal arms negotiations...
...Since the first use of an atomic bomb in 1945, the risk of actually using nuclear weapons has escalated in a staggering way...
...But the financial analysts and like scholars are not so inhibited: they are currently and eagerly telling their customers and clients of the corporate prospects from the coming increase in the arms budget.'' Many of the technical experts on arms, in fact, constitute the very group whose interest is served by arms-escalation...
...This means that any use of nuclear weapons, and by implication, any intention to use them, is always morally - and gravely - a serious evil...
...Moreover, the arms race makes it impossible effectively to end the urgent crisis of world hunger...
...This pastoral letter is reprinted with his permission...
...Now we are about to embark on the largest single arms build-up in our national history...
...Strategic Air Command, testified recently that "deterrence can no longer be neatly divided into subgroups such as nuclear and conventional...
...Christians have a grave responsibility to protest clearly and forcibly against trends that lead inevitably to crimes which the church condemns and deplores...
...Furthermore, the deterrence envisioned by the tenuous Catholic moral toleration of possession of nuclear weapons as a permissible evil is aimed at deterring the use of other nuclear weapons against us...
...The Vatican made explicit the connection between the arms race and world hunger: "The obvious contradiction between the waste involved in the over-production of military devices and the extent of unsatisfied vital needs is in itself an act of aggression against those who are its victims (both in developing countries and in the marginal and poor elements in rich societies...
...It must be possible for us to take the words of Isaiah to heart...
...Just-war thinking tended to neglect the global implications of war...
...The neutron bomb, for example, is designed mainly to deter Soviet tanks, not other nuclear bombs...
...Our deadly "bargaining chips" leave the hungry of the world without hope or means to bargain for survival...
...We must all decide what constitutes the true relationship between religious faith and social justice, and I would deplore any attempt by politicians and government officials to claim for themselves some special competence to define this relationship...
...arms policy and escalating arms race...
...Duluth Bishop Paul Anderson urged Catholics in his diocese to sign an adaptation of the New Abolitionist Covenant pledging that they will advocate "a nuclear weapons freeze" and press "our government and others to eliminate nuclear weapons...
...According to this tradition of moral reasoning, aggressive or "first strike" wars are always immoral...
...One such condition is that there be specific, limited objectives in going to war...
...War must be abolished...
...We must not evade the real danger posed by Soviet policy, but we must refuse to "demonize" them and caricature their views and aspirations...
...It was affirmed again by the 1974 World Synod of Bishops...
...As Christians, however, we understand our deepest identity in another kind of language, in terms of faith and discipleship - as followers of that Jesus who taught us to love our enemies, to hunger and thirst for justice, to be willing to suffer for the cause of peace, to embody the compassion of God in human history...
...Real parity must be the goal in step-by-step reduction of arms...
...In 1976 the Holy See's delegation to the United Nations' Conference on Disarmament stated: "The arms race is to be condemned unreservedly...
...theory...
...BECOMING A CHURCH OF PEACE ADVOCACY' The Catholic conscience & nuclear war By last November, when the Catholic bishops met in Washington, the American public had begun to grow aware of an unprecedented discussion among Catholics of the morality of U.S...
...Recently we have heard public officials speak foolishly and imprudently of "limited" and "winnable" nuclear wars, as if to prepare us to accept and accustom ourselves to such a moral monstrosity...
...We are all aware, of course, that the United States is not a single actor in this nuclear terror...
...2) to see whether the framework of deterrence is actually used to reduce arms...
...In Seattle, Archbishop Raymond Hunt-hausen announced he will refuse to pay half his federal income tax as a protest against the rise in nuclear arms...
...Despite the potentially great significance of this movement for both church and state, most American Catholics are familiar with the arguments only as they are quoted in news stories or editorial columns...
...We have to make ourselves heard...
...We must use every political resource, including support for peace lobbies and pressure on our congressional representatives, to ensure that the United States returns to a minimal deterrence policy and initiates serious, comprehensive proposals for arms limitation and reduction based on parity...
...The same Vatican Council document also states: "It seems right that laws make humane provisions for the case of those who for reasons of conscience refuse to bear arms, provided however, that they accept some other form of service to the human community...
...Their words bear repeating here...
...We now need to distinguish between legitimate deterrence strategies and the rhetoric of a spurious "deterrence" within which hawks on each side of the East/West divide compete to increase arms and provocations, envision fictitious gaps and windows of vulnerability, enter unending inconclusive negotiations which do not really stop the arms race and accelerate our drift toward nuclear collision...
...Now we are constructing weapons such as the cruise missile which Would elude any verification...
...As peace advocates, Catholics will collaborate with the various existing groups and movements already active in the cause of peace...
...With each new American acquisition, the Soviets rushed to catch.up, and vice versa...
...This can be a source of blessing for us, an opportunity to represent, in many different, concrete, and practical ways, the profound interdependence of peoples and nations in today's world...
...Others include: the immunity of non-combatants from direct attack, and the proportionality of specific tactics and weapons to the purpose of the war...
...This Catholic position on nuclear pacifism has been repeated over and over by Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II...
...Since nuclear weapons involve indiscriminate and massive violence committed against civilian populations, their employment or contemplated use can never be morally permitted...
...These people, of course, call themselves "realists...
...Merely two of our thirty-one Poseidon submarines would, on this basis, be sufficient to guarantee this capability - if deterrence were our real goal...
...By seeking for something other than a legitimate right to security through limited deterrence capability, we have actually been escalating the risks of nuclear war and undermining the real security of our own nation and the rest of the world...
...By virtue of the nature of modern weapons and the situation prevailing on our planet, even when motivated by a concern for legitimate defense, the armaments race is, in fact, a danger, an injustice, a mistake, a sin and a folly...
...Luke 1:53) Because as a nation we have learned that we cannot afford both "guns and butter," we are presently cutting back, swiftly and drastically, on social programs for the poor, the needy, and the handicapped, in order to finance more "bargaining chips," superfluous weapons that we morally dare not ever use...
...Indeed, the great physicists, Enrico Fermi and I.I...
...Half of the nation's engineers and scientists work directly or indirectly for the Pentagon...
...It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light...
...Bishop William McManus of Fort Wayne and South Bend, Indiana, issued a New Year's message on "Thinking Morally about Nuclear Weaponry...
...The world is presently spending $550 billion dollars a year on arms, an amount equal to the annual income of those millions of people who make up the poorer half of the world's population...
...THE EDITORS THE SECRETARY OF state in Woodrow Wilson's Cabinet resigned his office in 1915 in order to avoid a conflict of conscience connected with taking steps that might lead to war...
...Of the fifty largest U.S...
...It taught that the evil of war could be justified only by a comparable good it alone could achieve...
...The Soviets, including their leaders, like us have children and grandchildren, cities and landscapes which they love, desires and hopes for a better future...
...At that time, over forty American Catholic bishops - including the last and the present president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops - had, in one form or another, protested that policy...
...Since President Carter's Presidential Directive 59 announced in August of 1980, we have also shifted away from a policy of deterrence to a "counter-force" first-strike strategy which does not and cannot make us or anyone else more secure...
...I would deplore, however, any attempt to turn this legitimate separation into a separation of church from society or into a privatization of religion that would divorce our faith and hope from public concerns and crucial moral questions that face us all as citizens...
...The attitude that it is possible to "win" a nuclear war assumes that there is no longer any such thing as an unacceptable level of population loss...
...Today we can explode the equivalent of one and a half million Hiroshima bombs...
...I am not, therefore, advocating unilateral disarmament or an unqualified pacifism...
...In sheer tonnage, there is more explosive material on earth today than there is food...
...It is in their interest, as well as ours, to withdraw resources from these sterile contests of arms production to other and urgent social issues...
...We are designing weapons, unneeded for deterrence, which will make it more difficult to achieve genuine bilateral reductions in arms...
...What is needed, instead, is a radical change of our hearts and our attitudes - a new awareness of our calling to be a people dedicated to peace...
...It is the absence of this moral dimension in our public policy discussions and a growing moral callousness which permits some government officials to speak publicly and rashly of "limited" and "winnable" nuclear wars...
...Since then, the discussion has continued unabated...
...Rabi, wrote in the addendum to the report by the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1949: "It is clear that the use of such a weapon cannot be justified on any ethical ground which gives a human being a certain individuality and dignity, even if he happens to be a resident of an enemy country...
...In the past three years alone, we have increased the destructive power of our nuclear arsenal by fifty percent...
...As Christians called to love even our enemies, we must at least concede their essential humanity and search tirelessly, and with all our energy, for grounds of mutual understanding and accord with them...
...It has espoused a complex moral reasoning about the right to declare and engage in warfare known as "the just-war MOST REVEREND ROGER MAHONY is Bishop of Stockton, California...
...We must be supicious of the "expertise" of those who sell and manufacture weapons...
...The evidence for this "unwarranted influence" of an industrial/military complex is even more obvious today than it was twenty years ago when he made that statement...
...did not ratify the Salt II agreement...
...As all the recent popes have reminded us, the question of social justice is now a global question...
...These new weapons, in principle, impede any possible arms-limitation agreements between the U.S...
...and (3) to see whether our goal is really a world free of nuclear threats and terror...
...not satisfactory, but tolerable...
...An industrial/ military complex similar to our own exists also in the U.S.S.R...
...Yet the United States possesses 22,000 tactical nuclear weapons designed for the purpose of use in conventional wars...
...In a recent contribution to The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, one noted economist argues that our military expenditures have directly contributed to our industrial decline...
...Can anything so dangerous, so catastrophic, be motivated by financial interest or personal gain...
...We should not forget the warning of President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he urged us Americans to be wary of "the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex...
...If we are to become, more and more, a church of peace advocacy, we must correct these defects...
...Because self-serving interests so often lie behind the claims of this military/industrial complex, we must not allow the larger questions of public policy, especially the inescapable moral questions, to be decided by these so-called experts...
...They have reasoned that the threat of nuclear retaliation may in fact be preventing the use of nuclear weapons...
...They speak of a "flexible" nuclear policy and "limited" nuclear wars, but in doing so, they both ignore the dangers of escalation - with its' terrible risk of the actual use of nuclear weapons - and contribute significantly to this very danger...
Vol. 109 • March 1982 • No. 5
