A classic case of consequentialism

...Or is it, to use that qualification now so popular in discussions of these matters, merely a prudential judgment...

...Evidently, the objections of the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to consequentialism and proportionalism apply particularly to the U.S...

...They excuse themselves by arguing that there is no other practical and efficacious way of avoiding capitulation, and that if the threat is made credible enough there will never be any need to carry through on the threat...

...While condemning consequentialssm in the United States, Cardinal Ratzinger seems to ignore the extent to which the morality of ends informs the judgments of the Holy See when it addresses the moral questions of international political life, in particular those posed by the military confrontation of the two superpowers...

...He had just previously identified the two dangers as the "danger of nuclear conflict" and that of "the imposition of an ideology and of a socialist regime...

...EDWARD DOHERTY (Edward Doherty, a retired diplomat, was adviser on political affairs at the U.S...

...Whatever one thinks of this rationale, it is difficult to deny that it involves an ethic of ends of the kind Ratzinger condemns as consequentialism or proportionalism...

...and particularly to questions of sexual ethics...

...The French bishops, in their pastoral letter, Winning the Peace insist that the immorality of use does not make the threat of the use immoral, even though they acknowledge that the French deterrent weapons are aimed at cities...

...These words seem to be the words of the reporter, Vittorio Messori, but the following are unmistakably Ratzinger's: Well, one has arrived at the so-called "morality of ends" — or, as it is preferred in the United States where it is particularly developed and diffused—of "consequences," "consequentialism": Nothing in itself is good or bad, the goodness of an act depends entirely upon its end and upon its foreseeable and calculated consequences...

...One can readily infer that the Holy See, encouraged by certain NATO governments, did not wish to see any moral aspersion cast upon the NATO "flexible response" strategy which envisages a nuclear response to a conventional Soviet/Warsaw Pact attack...

...Cardinal Casaroli referred to the "common conviction" (in the West but also in the East) that the only (emphasis supplied) practical means at our disposal to avoid the two dangers — and which in substance at least has proven to be effective — is for the time being a sufficient deterrence (i.e., in fact today a nuclear deterrence...

...The magisterium (ordinary, of course) is bound to be schizophrenic when the Holy See tries to be at one and the same time moral teacher and political actor...

...This rationale presents an ethic of probable consequences: the stronger (hence more credible) the resolve to do evil, the greater the probability that evil will be avoided...

...Catholic Conference and assisted in the drafting of The Challenge of Peace...

...fn context the end is not that of "progressive disarmament" which was not then and is not now a realisticprospect, but rather that of deterring the Soviet Union from a rash attempt to conquer Western Europe...

...Consequentialism in political ethics, even the ethics of nuclear war, seems to be acceptable...

...He is currently writing and lecturing on these issues...

...Cardinal Ratzinger opined that the geopolitical context must be taken into account in judging the morality of deterrence...

...After becoming aware of the problematic character of such a system, some •moralists have attempted to tone down "conseqaentialism" to "proportionalism": moral conduct depends upon the evaluation and weighing of the proportion of goods that are involved, Again it is a matter of individual evaluation, this time an evaluation of the "proportion" between good and evil...

...I A classic case of consequentialism n The Ratzinger Report, that strange and unguarded apology for the views of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the church, moral theology, and sex, one revealing passage serves as an explanation for — among other things — the dismissal of Father Charles Curran from the theology faculty of Catholic University, In chapter six, "The Drama of Morality" Ratzinger identifies "Europe and the United States" as the areas of crisis where "the models elaborated in these zones eventually end up in the rest of the world with the help of a well-known (sic) cultural imperialism...

...The Catholic bishops of the United States and of the countries of NATO Europe thus find themselves approving a strategy which involves the readiness to "blow up the world" to fend off the menace of Soviet communism...

...The German letter was also at pains not to reject the NATO first use strategy, focusing instead on measures to maximize war prevention, i.e., nuclear deterrence...

...Deterrence is the lesser evil that avoids capitulation...

...One is tempted to suggest explicitly what the experience of centuries has taught Catholics about the papacy...

...In his 1982 address to the United Nations, the Holy Father, speaking through Cardinal Casaroli, said that (nuclear)' 'deterrence based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a 10: Commonweal step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable...

...In a lengthy but "unofficial" summary of that meeting, which was attended by bishops from the major NATO'countries, some participants "saw the possibility of first use as still necessary at this stage within the context of deterrence...

...16 January 1987: 11...

...This concern is clearly expressed in the reports of the meeting in Rome on January 18 and 19, 1983, at which Cardinal Bernardin and Archbishop Roach were called upon to discuss the second draft of the American bishops' pastoral letter, and to clear up what the Holy See regarded as certain ambiguities...

...Such arguments, in my view, present a classic case of consequentialist reasoning: to legitimate morally questionable means in order to safeguard desirable short-term political ends...

...Is the pope's judgment as to the moral acceptability of nuclear deterrence a magisterial judgment, even though consequentialist...

...a kind of optimization of bad means and good ends which the experts who worked on the German bishops' pastoral letter, Out of Justice, Peace characterized as proportionalism...

...In this context the means of deterrence are to be seen in the capability and conditional intention (threat) of the United States to respond to such an attempt with limited and perhaps all-out nuclear war...

...Needless to say, the French government did not regard this statement as a criticism of French policy...