THE BISHOPS STAY THE COURSE
Cort, John C.
The Catholic bishops have a nice sense of timing. Last November, just before the election, they released the second draft of a pastoral letter that called for a "halt" to the "testing, production...
...286 Any comfort that Ronald Reagan may have derived from the first edition of the committee's third draft was clearly destroyed by the final action of the bishops in Chicago...
...House of Representatives followed their advice and voted 278 to 149 for the freeze (halt...
...ON MAY 2 the American bishops met, and with almost no opposition they voted to back the committee on its return to an inflexible "halt...
...The next day the U.S...
...bishops' conference, and a representative group of European bishops...
...THE BISHOPS' STATEMENT was significant not only in the context of American politics and policy but also as a victory for the slowly emerging movement for a more democratic, decentralized way of doing things in the Catholic church...
...The bishops, despite buffeting from contrary winds, had stayed the course...
...It was on this question of "first priority"—freeze or reduction—that Reagan lost so decisively, almost 2 to 1, in the House vote...
...A bishops' conference does not have a mandate to teach," he said...
...The second draft had shaken not only the Reagan administration but also some of the Catholic bishops of Western Europe...
...A few days before they were to submit the third draft to the full meeting of bishops in Chicago they voted to switch back to "halt...
...already has more than enough nuclear weapons for what they conceded, with intellectual humility, are the morally ambiguous purposes of deterrence...
...Who won what in the House was nevertheless made plain by the record of who voted against the 285 final resolution (the Reagan-policy backers) and by Reagan's public announcement the next day that it "is not an answer to arms control that I can responsibly support...
...And so the call for a freeze became merely a call for a thaw, and about half the wallop went out of the entire 155-page letter...
...Not likely...
...A State Department spokesman, Alan Romberg, making what was billed as the Administration's formal response to the bishops, took refuge in the formal lie: "A call for a halt on production and development at current high and unstable levels, as a priority, would have the practical effect of diminishing the prospects for achieving the deep reductions" sought by the Administration...
...This was on an amendment submitted by Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco that replaced committee language calling the initiation of nuclear war abhorrent and "an unjustifiable moral risk" with this unequivocal condemnation: "We do not perceive any situation in which the deliberate initiation of nuclear warfare, on however restricted a scale, can be morally justified...
...Bishop O'Connor and Archbishop Philip Hannan of New Orleans, another hawkish prelate, meanwhile made repeated efforts to soften or reverse the antinuclear language of the letter...
...The presiding prelate was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Munich, who heads the important Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith...
...How and why the word "halt" got changed to "curb" and then back again to "halt" is an interesting story...
...Peter's remorse after denying his friendship with Christ would be an exaggeration in dubious taste, but some kind of remorse must have seized the majority of the committee...
...Other changes and additions were mostly by way of clarification...
...A few days later, the executive council of the National Council of Churches, representing the major Protestant and Orthodox faiths, voted to endorse the bishops' statement...
...In other words, the best prospect for reducing the gigantic stockpile of nuclear weapons is to go on producing nuclear weapons while we argue with the Soviets about who should reduce what and when...
...The religious community of America, it seems, was overwhelmingly in agreement...
...To make comparisons with St...
...He took some consolation from the Levitas amendment (passed 225 to 191), which did not alter the insistence of the House that freeze must come first—but merely added that if no reductions are forthcoming within "a reasonable, specified period of time" (determined by the negotiators), the U.S...
...and Canada, called for a freeze, noting that they had been inspired by the bishops...
...can withdraw from the freeze...
...On May 3, the bishops, under pressure from the Reagan administration and from other principalities and powers both in and outside the church, resisted all efforts to replace the word "halt" with the weaker word "curb" and voted 238 to 9 for the final draft and condemnation of the arms race as "a danger, an act of aggression against the poor, and a folly that does not provide the security it promises...
...The Reagan forces were delighted and everyone began asking, "What happened...
...The third and final draft, more than twice as long as the first, contains many changes and additions to both the first and second drafts, but none was so portentous as the near-miss of a switch from "halt" to "curb...
...Support for the "just war theory" was strengthened, but without repudiating the second draft's concession that the pacifist stance was a legitimate Christian option and conscientious objection a position that should be respected by the government...
...Military Ordinariate, the other four members of the committee panicked slightly and voted to change the word "halt" to "curb" in the key passage relating to their call for a nuclear freeze...
...Then, on April 28, the bishops of West Germany, though conceding that "nuclear deterrence is not a reliable instrument for preventing war in the long run," nevertheless pointedly declined to support a stand for "no first use" and instead backed the Reagan policy of "flexible response," which holds that nuclear weapons might be needed to stop a conventional attack...
...bishops' conference...
...Faced with this and internal opposition from its one hawkish member, Bishop John O'Connor of the U.S...
...He continued with a Reagan echo, "While we share the bishops' goals of reducing the risks of war and of achieving the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons, we believe the most promising step in that direction is to negotiate for deep reductions as a first priority...
...Meanwhile, on April 25, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, representing Reform rabbis of 760 synagogues in the U.S...
...Eight of nine states that had a chance to vote on a nuclear freeze followed their advice and voted for a halt...
...Why an individual bishop has a mandate to teach but not a conference of bishops is the kind of mystification that could only come out of Rome...
...At least 13 amendments proposed by one or both were either defeated with hardly a supporting voice or withdrawn in the face of overwhelming opposition...
...it highlights the obstacle course that democratization of the church has had to face...
...Afterward Archbishop Hannan remarked somewhat plaintively, "I didn't expect to be so alone...
...Observers noted, however, that the real turning point of the meeting was the vote for a significant hardening of other language that had been softened by the committee in response to Administration and Vatican pressures...
...The Vatican called a meeting in Rome of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, chairman of the drafting committee, Archbishop John Roach, president of the U.S...
...A summary of the meeting, prepared by a Vatican official, urged the U.S...
...bishops to "avoid questions of a technical, political, or any other nature that ultimately escape the competence of the ecclesiastical magisterium...
...Last November, just before the election, they released the second draft of a pastoral letter that called for a "halt" to the "testing, production and deployment of new strategic weapons" (Dissent, Spring 1983...
...He opened by challenging the authority of the U.S...
...Its emphatic insistence on "no first use" had upset those who felt that a nuclear response might be necessary to repel an overwhelming attack by conventional forces from the East...
...This belongs only to individual bishops or to the college of bishops, together with the pope...
...The sense of the American bishops' letter is that they would favor a vote against this amendment, on the ground that the U.S...
...Reagan took refuge in the amiable lie —"I think their purpose is the same as ours," he said of the bishops' letter...
Vol. 30 • July 1983 • No. 3
