Simple slogans or moral reasoning?
Hehir, J. Bryan
Church/world watch Simple slogans or moral reasoning? J. Bryan Hehir THE AMERICAN BISHOPS have caught the attention of at least one member of the Reagan administration. Secretary of the Navy...
...In response to Bishop Drury's quite specific objection, Mr...
...it has the literary quality of a petulant attack rather than a reasoned argument...
...J. BRYAN HEHIR...
...But as long as our nation is sincerely trying to work with other nations to find a better way, the church considers the strategy of nuclear deterrence morally tolerable...
...It can be terribly dangerous...
...Toleration in Catholic moral theology never means approval...
...But they are part of a sustained discussion the bishops are conducting among themselves and into which they have invited all Catholics and all Americans...
...Annoyance is the tone of the speech...
...in his speech he reduces the substantial moral questions before the American public on nuclear arms to an appeal that we all agree that the phrase "for God and country" has religious meaning...
...It is not clear whether Mr...
...those pursuing the analysis will not be dissuaded by epithets from the Secretary of the Navy...
...In the cardinal's words: "Nuclear war surpasses the limits of legitimate self-defense...
...Failing to confront the hard questions, the secretary shifts the debate to whether the American bishops believe the military profession is a worthy vocation...
...The Mahony pastoral letter is marked by the qualities (Continued on page 255) Church/world watch (Continued from page 234) of nuance and distinction so lacking in the Lehman speech...
...Lehman intended to include Cardinal Krol and Cardinal Cooke in his misled vocal minority...
...Lehman used the occasion to make a case for patriotism and against "the kind of pacifist ideology that has - most unfortunately - now captured a small but vocal minority within the religious community...
...it describes the Soviet threat in vivid terms, befitting one who has known Eastern Europe, and Poland in particular, for decades...
...Lehman vigorously invokes the tradition but studiously avoids the moral questions which all serious commentators agree must be addressed today...
...His first pronouncement on the topic was a response to Bishop Drury of Corpus Christi who protested (along with the other members of the national bishops' conference) the use of the sacred name for a nuclear submarine...
...nuclear policy is under serious scrutiny...
...The bishop of Stockton's conclusion is sure to increase the secretary's level of annoyance: "Since I believe the American arms policy has exceeded the 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 worldwide, it is my conviction that Catholics no longer have a secure moral basis to support actively or cooperate passively in the current U.S...
...In neither of these statements does one find the easy resolution - indeed the simpliste solution - of the nuclear dilemma which pervades the Lehman speech...
...In his letter to Bishop Drury the secretary manifested a talent for diversionary tactics, failing to answer the evident moral issues and choosing instead to pose and answer his own questions...
...If the secretary's first response was deficient, his second effort borders on a travesty...
...not satisfactory but tolerable...
...Government leaders and peoples of all nations have a grave moral obligation to come up with alternatives...
...Lehman did not specify who the idealistic but misled minority are, but it was clear from the speech that Catholic voices annoy him most...
...The Krol address negates the Lehman thesis on every point...
...Lehman's aggressive style will impress few and his scattershot attack will convince fewer...
...He can hardly find their positions congruent with his speech...
...Lehman's retreat to "God and country" is an attempt to solve a serious moral issue with a slogan...
...it affirms the right of legitimate defense, but, unlike the Lehman speech, it places moral limits on the right - even in the face of the Soviet threat...
...The marginal justification accorded the policy of deterrence is the same position which Cardinal Cooke affirmed last year: "It is not a desirable strategy...
...arms policy and escalating arms race...
...Lehman depicts the "vocal minority" he opposes as visionary pacifists who fail to understand the Communist threat...
...The tradition has few if any opponents among the bishops, but even its most committed advocates know that the very idea of a "just war'' faces a qualitatively new challenge in the nuclear age...
...No better proof of the persistence of the moral analysis is required than the address given in Philadelphia by Cardinal John Krol three weeks after Mr...
...In his letter he mishandled a valid theological tradition...
...it is the most limited form of legitimation - a form of passive acceptance of a situation, always looking for a change to something which can be approved...
...Lehman's speech...
...The Lehman speech did not meet them...
...Even more difficult to square with the "God and country" response to the arms race is the position taken by Bishop Roger Mahony in Commonweal last month...
...Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, a Catholic, knows what is being said about nuclear weapons and he doesn't like it...
...These three episcopal positions differ on specific points...
...In short, the Catholic debate today has standards for entrance...
...In taking this position, as he did in his 1979 testimony in support of SALT II, Cardinal Krol hardly stands in a vocal minority among the bishops...
...The morality of U.S...
...But the presumption must be that we face a severe moral problem - one that will not yield to sloganeering...
...Save for a passing swipe at "the Catholic bishop (sic) of Seattle," Mr...
...Secretary Lehman, as a Catholic, a citizen, and a government official would surely be a welcome participant...
...Lehman invoked the entire just-war tradition...
...again, "the possession of nuclear weapons in a policy of deterrence cannot be justified in principle but can be tolerated only if the deterrent framework is used to make progress on arms limitation, reduction, and eventual elimination...
...Lehman's letter ends as a soliloquy...
...The tactic won't work...
...A second intervention came in remarks by the secretary at the Chapel of the Four Chaplains in Philadelphia on March 7. Mr...
...The phrase has its legitimate purpose, but it is surely not to adjudicate the public morality of the deterrence debate...
...Once this threat is recognized, the Lehman speech contends, it will then be evident that nuclear weapons are justified for they "alone stand between freedom and slavery for our nation and its allies...
...Since this theme had not entered the bishops' protest, Mr...
Vol. 109 • April 1982 • No. 8
