THE BISHOPS AND THE BOMB

...Of course, 82 percent of the Catholic laity could be just as ignorant of what constitutes heresy as they are of what Athanasius or Arius thought about the nature of Christ...

...Neither the press nor the politicians are very interested in all of this...

...6) Proportionality: "the damage to be inflicted and the costs incurred by war must be proportionate to the good expected...

...With Bernardin's protege Father J. Bryan Hehir again doing the writing for the bishops' staff, that letter could begin to herald the kind of dawn in the religious community of America, if not in the country itself, that shines through the words of Isaiah quoted toward the end of this historic letter on The Challenge of Peace: Is not this the sort of fast that pleases me, to break unjust fetters, and undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke, to share your bread with the hungry, and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the person you see to be naked and not turn from your own kin...

...The same awareness of both the terrible reality of nuclear war and the genuine complexities of preventing it is reflected in the tone of the document...

...in the lead, then the bishops are guilty of one more failure of moral nerve...

...morally obliged to abandon the deterrent...

...If you see us slipping slowly toward the binrk, with the only chance of rescue lying in calm, multilateral action, then the bishops' position seems intuitively sound if not logically neat...

...A table vote on the first day of the November 15-18 meeting showed that 195 out of 278 bishops in attendance were "in basic agreement," 71 had "major reservations," and 12 were "in basic disagreement...

...One aspect that has been neglected in most of the comments is the bishops' reaction to the obscenity of diverting vast sums to the arms race that should be devoted to the poor...

...The bishops conclude:] These judgments are meant to exemplify how a lack of unequivocal condemnation of deterrence is meant only to be an attempt to acknowledge the role attributed to deterrence, but not to support its extension beyond the prevention of use of nuclear weapons...

...4) removal by all parties of nuclear weapons from border areas and the strengthening of command and control over tactical nuclear weapons to prevent inadvertent and unauthorized use...

...For the better part of a year, the committee met regularly, listening to and questioning, among others, Harold Brown, James Schlesinger, Gerard Smith, Helmut Sonnenfeld, Roger Molander, Herbert Scoville, as well as Caspar W. Weinberger, Eugene Rostow, and General Edward Rowny...

...It is said that the bishops have failed to put the problem of nuclear weapons into the context of the struggle with Soviet power and totalitarianism...

...In 1971, somewhat late, the bishops decided that this condition ruled out further support of the Vietnam War...

...2) Just cause: "war may be employed only to confront a 'real and certain injury" or threat to innocent life, basic human rights, etc...

...They want the dramatic juxtapositions: bishops versus White House, bishops of today versus those of yesteryear...

...Nevertheless, the bishops finally opt for a more conservative, or at least middle-ground position, which does go beyond the mere statement of moral judgments to some specific proposals: In support of the concept of "sufficiency" as an adequate deterrent, and in the light of the present size and composition of both the U.S...

...Public debate, even at its best, almost inevitably requires that the bishops' message be reduced to a handful of propositions that are apt to be framed according to whatever most astonishes, pleases, or outrages the framer...

...Catholics back their bishops on a bilateral freeze, with 13 percent opposed and 5 undecided...

...In that area the American bishops have not said anything really memorable since 1919, when John A. Ryan wrote for them a program that was later made into law by Roosevelt and the New Deal almost lock, stock, and Wagner Act...

...Over 20 percent of the bishops (57 by the last count) belong to Pax Christi, an international peace movement committed to the idea that "Christian non-violence must become a central concern of both the churches and the international community...

...The bishops have refused to give nuclear deterrence either the unequivocal condemnation demanded by pacifists or the ringing affirmation sought by policy-makers...

...The draft does remain, at this point, a draft...

...One wonders whether the current secretary of state has consulted as widely, to say nothing of the current president...

...When Bernardin makes waves, they're always smooth waves," a friend has said of him...

...There is, of course, the fear that the bishops' statement, whether they so intend it or not, is part of a religiously led or religiously legitimated movement toward unilateral nuclear disarmament, a movement that could be at once disastrous for the West and for international stability...

...Yet the likelihood that American and European Christians might be swept away on a tide of unilateralism is far less than the likelihood that discussion of these fateful questions will deteriorate amid slogans and propaganda...

...3) support for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty...

...The bishops will not follow that line of thought—as Archbishop Bernardin has made clear in a reply to 24 Catholic congressmen who challenged the draft statement...

...The notion that the Catholic laity is pitted against the hierarchy on this issue is only one of the more fanciful fictions of Evans and Novak...

...Under this heading the bishops add a note of interest to Christian socialists and liberation theologians of Latin America: "Historically, the just war tradition has been open to a 'just revolution' position, recognizing that an oppressive government may lose its claim to legitimacy...

...It is already a complicated document...

...They highlight the historical evidence that deterrence has not, in fact, set in motion the process of disarmament...

...Attitudes toward the bishops' betwixt-andbetween conclusions about deterrence depend, as they will so often, on views about the context in which they speak...

...We have judged immoral even the threat to use nuclear weapons...

...Hunthausen, meanwhile, cannot be accused of failure to put his money, or not put his money, where his mouth is...

...Left-wing Catholics also have criticized the pastoral on the ground that the bishops did not express...

...I n the final paragraphs of their extended discussion of deterrence the bishops acknowledge that "there are many strong voices within our own episcopal ranks and within the wider Catholic community in the U.S...

...3) Right intention requires some genuine interest in pursuit of peace and reconciliation, avoiding demands for unconditional surrender...

...173 (2) support for negotiated bilateral deep cuts in the arsenals of both superpowers, particularly of those weapons systems which have destabilizing characteristics...

...The question of deterrence—the possession of nuclear bombs as a threat against the use of nuclear bombs—was faced more candidly, but the second draft stops short of "unequivocal condemnation...

...THE CONDEMNATION therefore is retroactive, back before Nagasaki and Hiroshima to Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Tokyo...

...What at least some of their critics want, however, is for the urgency of resisting the Soviets simply to engulf or dissolve all moral questions about the means we employ for that resistance...

...If the morality of deterrence is conditioned on its serving as "a step toward progressive disarmament," deterrence would become clearly immoral once progress toward disarmament is definitively foreclosed...

...War never again...

...The bishops do, however, recognize that "at times defense of key values, even against great odds, may be a 'proportionate' witness...

...Also, Christ himself used a whip to drive the money changers from the Temple, thereby repelling an invasion of God's territory...

...This is almost a more explosive position than the antinuclear statements...

...What if both superpowers are equally entangled in a knot of recalcitrance—is the one in which moral pressures are most likely to be exerted obliged to dismantle its deterrent...

...In their moral reflections, the bishops confront the "unique challenge" of nuclear warfare, the decades-old paradox of deterrence, the theories of limited nuclear war, and the latest doctrines of nuclear war-fighting...

...A just war framework for conflicts of this nature is sorely needed...

...Even the butchery and destruction of the Nazis cannot justify these...

...He clearly did not agree with John Paul II as he called for an amendment that would state that "nuclear deterrence is idolatry, and that, far from deterring the evil of nuclear war, living out the rationale of deterrence is actually engaging in that evil...

...Some ambiguity here...

...5) Probability of success: Jesus himself defined this, "What king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand...

...Few criticisms of the bishops are more misplaced than the charge that they are poorly informed...

...But how can you threaten, or approve threatening, to do something that you have just condemned as morally unacceptable...

...The fateful passage into the nuclear age as a military reality began with the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, events described by Paul VI as 'a butchery of untold magnitude.' " The bishops also quote Vatican II: "Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their populations is a crime against God and man himself...

...Insufficient analytical attention has been given to the moral issues of revolutionary or unconventional warfare...

...The bishops admit their own perplexity at certain points, invite dialogue, and distinguish between their firm insistence on basic moral principles and their necessarily more subjective judgments about the concrete circumstances in which these principles are to be applied...

...The need to rethink the deterrence policy of our nation, to make the revisions necessary to reduce the possibility of nuclear war and to move toward a more stable system of national and international security will demand a substantial intellectual, political and moral effort...

...Now, for perhaps the first time, large numbers of Catholics, both lay and cleric, find themselves in sympathy with if not active support for revolutionary movements...

...The elderly, farmers, the average industrial worker producing objects not directly related to military purposes, cannot rationally be considered combatants even by the broadest definition...

...If they display the same courage and intelligence on the subject of capitalism that they have displayed on the subject of nuclear destruction, we could all be in for an interesting bviously, not many people—not even many Catholics, not even many readers of Dissent—are going to read the American Catholic bishops' letter on war and nuclear weaponry in its entirety...

...There should be a clear public resistance to 170 the rhetoric of 'winnable' nuclear wars, 'surviving' nuclear exchanges, and strategies of 'protracted nuclear war.' " • "We do not perceive any situation in which the deliberate initiation of nuclear warfare, on however restrained a scale, can be morally justified...

...Bernardin, a former president of the Bishops' Conference, continues to distinguish himself as one of the most promising personalities on the American scene...

...So far he is the only one to go that far, but a number of lower clergy and laity have followed suit...

...He has refused to pay half his income taxes on the ground that it would go toward the immoral purpose of preparing for nuclear war...

...Recognizing the problem of this distinction in modern war, the bishops nevertheless insist, "There is always a difference between soldiers and innocent children or hospital patients...

...They listened to 35 "expert" witnesses from an even wider spectrum and studied several hundred pages of comments from fellow bishops and over a hundred consultants...

...Justice demands that those who do not make war not have war made upon them...

...to come to some agreement with the Russians...

...Such criticism, it seems to this observer, is an effort to force the bishops to justify Michael Novak's unjustified charge that the bishops "are suffering from hubris, taking on vocations that aren't theirs...

...Moreover, in parts of Europe there is strong church support for unilateralism, prompting the London Economist to declare it "high time that some churchmen's recent statements about nuclear weapons should be challenged by a vigorous Christian counterattack...

...Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, addressing the bishops, answered the first question, "You can't" and the second, in effect, "You must if you are really Christian...

...By appointing to the drafting committee an outspoken pacifist (Bishop Thomas Gumbleton from Detroit) as well as the churchman in charge of Catholic military chaplains (Bishop John J. O'Connor from New York), the national conference of bishops assured a thorough and open investigation...

...Despite the occasional bloodthirstiness of Old Testament history and some indifference to the fate of noncombatants, the bishops prefer to emphasize the Hebrew prophets' recurring cry for a time when "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Isaiah 2:4...

...They care about the specifics: the bishops' position on the nuclear freeze or the MX missile or—and this is already a quantum jump in sophistication—on no-first-use in Europe...

...If you see the world rushing headlong toward holocaust, with the U.S...

...Thomas Aquinas added self-defense as a legitimate excuse for the use of lethal force...

...It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation...

...This position has, according to rumor, alarmed both lay and clerical leaders in Western Europe, some of whom want the threat of a first strike as a shield against attack from the East by more conventional weaponry...

...The nuclear bomb now multiplies this tendency of modern warfare to the point where it "threatens the obliteration of human life on a scale previously not imaginable...

...It was this realization, evident to all but those who occupy the seats of power in Washington and Moscow, that led Paul VI to cry out before the United Nations Assembly in 1965, "No more war...

...There are also bishops who are satisfied with formulas like "War never solves any real problems...

...Christ's recommendation to "turn the other cheek" clearly did not extend to turning one's neighbor's cheek if the neighbor did not want to turn it...

...In 1965 Vatican Council II raised it for the first time to the level of an acceptable Catholic option...

...The few quotes given above should indicate that we have here a pretty radical statement from what is generally considered a pretty conservative body...

...If, to take a not entirely hypothetical example, an American administration treated disarmament with contempt, would we be morally obliged to abandon our deterrent despite the possibility that an administration favorably inclined toward disarmament might assume power in four or eight years...

...Although more obscure theologians of antiquity, such as Tertullian and Origen, criticized military service on the ground that it involved killing, such larger figures as Augustine and Ambrose laid the groundwork for what has come to be known as "the just war theory," which has been the dominant position of the Catholic Church ever since...

...This statement, together with the lack of "unequivocal condemnation" of deterrence, was the basis for Bernardin's modesty about the argumentation and for most of the criticism that has since come from the religious left...

...The bishops have one escape hatch from the dilemma, namely, is or is not deterrence being used by Reagan as "a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament...

...Bernardin may not play as crucial a role in the development of that one, but the odds are that his expanding influence will make itself felt...

...Small wonder then that Reagan's attempt to make an end run around the bishops by dispatching General Vernon Walters to intercede with John Paul II has had no visible effect and has, from all reports, only stiffened the bishops' resolve...

...It would be wrong to deny all grounds for this fear...

...They have offered good reasons for not taking either of those positions, but the moral reasoning undergirding their own position of conditional, temporary acceptance of nuclear deterrence is far from satisfactory—as the drafting committee itself has acknowledged...

...In defining it the bishops cite seven criteria: (1) Competent authority must declare war, not private individuals or groups...

...this skepticism more positively or did not conclude that in the absence of positive efforts the policy of deterrence was clearly immoral...

...The bishops of the Catholic Church in 174 America have for too long dwelled in the shadows—shadows in good part of their own making, in good part made for them by the time in which we live...

...Is it, as Evans and Novak so clumsily suggested, inconsistent with Catholic, or Judeo-Christian, tradition...

...that challenge the strategy of deterrence as an adequate response to the arms race today...

...DIFFICULTIES REMAIN...

...The American bishops have admirably resisted any such deterioration...

...Pax Christi, however, includes members whose concern for peace is entirely consistent with the just war 171 theory, which certainly remains the favored stance of the majority of the bishops...

...The bishops carefully consider their different responsibilities—as teachers and pastors for fellow Catholics, but also as citizens and participants in the public debates of a pluralistic society...

...The Church realizes that it must respond...

...There were, however, more than enough unequivocal condemnations to satisfy most antinuclear partisans and to infuriate most champions of current Administration policy...

...To this all parties should be able, if not eager, to say, "Amen...

...In all this, the bishops have shown more restraint and modesty than many of their critics...

...Those eminent theologians, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, found a parallel in the "fourth-century dispute between the Athanasians and the Arians over the nature of Christ" and concluded that "this struggle pits a heretical hierarchy against the traditionalist laity...

...I think the bishops can perhaps be faulted for not devoting enough space to it, but they do emphasize the point repeatedly...

...And indeed, the conservative Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia was the one who suggested that "in treating the diversion of our resources from the poor, it would help to mention that the military budget of the world is approximately $600 billion a year, which is about half of what the poorest half of the world earns...

...But by and large this is not a morally pleasing declaration that floats above the knotty details, nor is it a self-righteous judgment by men who believe they possess some divine instruction man175 ual for resolving all political problems...

...The point is that he does make waves, and the waves are so well made that they produce results...

...In 172 his message to the United Nations in June 1982 he said, "In current conditions 'deterrence' based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable...

...If the Soviet Union should prove so intractable as to rule out all "progressive disarmament," is the U.S...

...It challenges military discipline directly...

...Both defenders and critics of deterrence and the recent arms buildup were included among the moral theologians and ethicists the bishops consulted...

...On the simplest level, two wrongs don't make a right...

...The word is that the bishops' next pastoral will be on the subject of capitalism...

...Deterrence means nothing if not a threat to use the bomb if an enemy uses it first...

...The statement is a significant reflection of the fact that throughout most of its history the Church has been more concerned with discouraging revolution than defining the conditions of its justification...

...Most of the umbrage expressed in William Clark's counterpastoral to the bishops centered on the fact that the draft contained a deafening silence on the alleged efforts of the Administration to promote "progressive disarmament...

...Nobody knows the answer, but the probability that it was a factor is one reason why friends of Ronald Reagan have been belching fire and brimstone at the bishops ever since...

...One of the bishops suggested the words "morally tolerable," but whether it be "tolerable" or "acceptable," the dilemma remains...

...For example, is there a "competent authority" to declare revolution...

...They search for principles that might define a just world order, and they suggest specific steps to reduce the chances of war...

...From the beginning, the bishops recognized the seriousness and difficulty of their undertaking...

...Archbishop Joseph Bernardin (he has since been named a cardinal), chairman of the committee, acknowledged that "we are not totally satisfied with the theoretical argument" in a display of modesty, evident elsewhere in the pastoral, that is a refreshing contrast to previous statements by Catholic prelates...

...John Paul's opinions on nuclear war duplicate the bishops', but in one respect he has been useful to the advocates of deterrence...

...This is a question of fact, not of morality...

...In short, no first strike, no limited theater for the use of nuclear weapons...

...Elsewhere in the same message, however, he called this balance "a balance of terror" and warned of the danger of its setting off "the arms race in an even more dangerous way...

...On the contrary, under its impulse, there has been almost unlimited acceleration in building arms...

...There was overwhelming support for its general drift, but a final vote will not be taken until a meeting in Chicago on May 2-3...

...An intriguing question remains among those raised by the last election, namely, how much did the Catholic bishops' support for a nuclear freeze, released in draft form just a few days before the voting, influence the outcome in those eight states (out of nine) that voted for the freeze...

...Arguments were clarified and some conclusions sharpened...

...That is not entirely true, but I think they could strengthen the document by saying more on this subject...

...In the final version they probably will...

...The pacifist strain in the New Testament is stronger but ambiguous...

...And on the other hand, how can you ask America, in the absence of an enforceable agreement, to destroy its nuclear bombs or to declare its intention never to use them, relying on old-style bombs or on Russia not to use its bombs or on Russia not to believe our declaration not to use ours...

...4) Last resort: "all other reasonable means of redress have been pursued...

...But when would that be...

...Pitted laity did predictably include such conservatives as William Buckley ("political opportunism") and the other Novak, Michael ("a soft and romantic reading of Christian theology . . . an outrage"), plus Catholic members of the Reagan administration such as William Clark, national security adviser ("fundamental misreadings of American policies...

...The letter treats of biblical teachings on war and peace, of the revelation of Jesus, of the witness of the early church, of the emergence and development of just-war doctrine, of the consensus at Vatican II...

...The argument did not appear to convince most of the bishops, who were humble enough to admit the moral dilemma and their inability to suggest a satisfactory solution...

...Although they acknowledge disagreement among moralists on the question, the bishops oppose "a policy of attacking [military] targets which lie so close to concentrations of population that destruction of the target would devastate the nearby population centers...

...No Christian can rightfully carry out orders or policies deliberately aimed at killing noncombatants...

...Among the American bishops as a whole, there are a number of principled nuclear pacifists whose rejection of deterrence is absolute and quite beyond further calculations of international consequences...

...If all pilots and bombardiers accepted it, there could be no bombing of urban populations, even by old-fashioned TNT...

...An examination of the bishops' reasoning and, almost as significant, the manner of their reasoning might therefore be useful...

...This is how the bishops word the nub of that theory: "Faced with the fact of attack on the innocent, the presumption that we [should] do no harm, even to our enemy, yielded to the command of love understood as the need to restrain an enemy who would injure the innocent...

...The bishops' draft repeats that approval...

...Yet a full and accurate picture of what the bishops have said cannot be conveyed apart from some sense of how they have said it, some sense of the process that led to this document and of its tone...

...Their careful, measured, and open-minded document will legitimate unilateralism only if the American government and foreign-policy elites stubbornly fail to respond to the points the bishops have made...

...If you see the West desperately at bay in the contest with totalitarianism, then they are foolishly adding to American demoralization...

...Gallup has revealed that 82 percent of U.S...

...in its final form, it may be more complicated still...

...Besides, any child can evaluate those efforts without their help...

...Quakers, Mennonites, and a few other sects have maintained the extreme pacifist position, and in modern times many Catholics (Dorothy Day is the best-known example) have embraced it...

...If you do away with the yoke, the clenched fist, the wicked word, if you give your bread to the hungry and relief to the oppressed, then shall your light arise in the darkness, and your shadows become like noon...

...It has its instances of rhetorical excess and convenient cloudiness...

...The process started in July 1981 and included a first draft drawn up by a committee of five bishops representing every major shade of opinion...

...They called the bishops' stand "the nuclear heresy," but stopped short of excommunication...

...Their competence is in stating moral principles and making moral judgments based on those principles, not in evaluating the alleged efforts of Reagan & Co...

...176...

...The bishops are obviously skeptical about the sincerity, or even reality, of any such efforts...

...Then will your light shine like the dawn and your wound be quickly healed over...

...A tough one...

...It is a key factor in evaluating the morality of nuclear war and closely related to the final and even more key condition— (7) Just means "prohibits all actions directly intending to take the lives of civilians or non-combatants...

...The letter is long, maybe too long, but those who can stay the course will find a thorough and on the whole successful effort to tie the positions taken to both scripture and tradition...

...THE JUST WAR THEORY, after all, provides solid ground for the condemnation of nuclear warfare...

...On this score it is reassuring to know that Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago, the chairman of the draft committee, is the author of an article that appeared in Commonweal last September 24 entitled Poverty: America's Social Sin...

...For example: • "We are sure of one moral imperative we should declare: a rejection of nuclear war...

...and Soviet strategic arsenals, we recommend: (1) support for immediate, bilateral, verifiable agreements to halt the testing, production and deployment of new strategic weapons...