COVER STORY
Bishops and the Bomb
A theology of peace challenges nuclear strategy
In another age the meeting would have been held in seclusion and secrecy. Last week, however, 276 bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. were debating in the full glare of TV lights and under the gaze of an international press corps. A few years ago precedent would have dictated that division among the prelates be suppressed, lest the faithful be scandalized. But many of the bishops who assembled for the annual meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C., were openly wondering if their ideas were right for the church, or for the nation. And the document that the bishops debated, instead of being couched in the traditional terms of moral certitude, asked Catholics not to read and obey, but to weigh and consider the conclusions, much as had the bishops themselves. Both the candid, probing manner of the debate and the topic of their discussion reflect the enormous changes that are sweeping through the Catholic Church in America.
The document under discussion was the draft of a pastoral letter, addressed to 51 million American Catholics, on the morality of nuclear war. In it, the bishops are seeking to develop a theology of peace that challenges some of the fundamental assumptions and defense strategies of every American Administration, and most of the Western world, since the beginning of the nuclear age. The bishops' key attack is on the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. They acknowledge that the U.S. threat to use nuclear arms in response to a Soviet assault might prevent the outbreak of war, but they nonetheless conclude that the policy is unsatisfactory because it created, and keeps in place, a balance of terror that all too easily could lead to a holocaust. They are also offended by the cost of maintaining deterrence, which they say takes money away from programs for the poor. In addition, the bishops call for a nuclear freeze, which is opposed by the Administration and many experts, who argue that it would preserve Soviet nuclear superiority. The bishops also urge the Administration to work actively for a disarmament agreement with Moscow.
Doubting that any nuclear war can be limited, the bishops oppose the first use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. To deter the Soviets from using their superior conventional forces in an invasion of Western Europe, the U.S. has kept open the option of using nuclear weapons before the Soviets do. The bishops also criticize the deployment of new MX missiles on the ground that they would quicken the arms race. The Administration insists that the U.S. needs the MX to counter new Soviet weaponry. Surveying the broad sweep of the bishops' document, Archbishop Edward A. McCarthy, 64, of Miami said last week, "Cataclysmic threats demand dramatic responses. We need to demonstrate that waging peace has become a high priority of the church of the Prince of Peace in this 20th century crisis."
With the endorsement of Pope John Paul II, a Vatican panel declared in September that prevention of nuclear war "is the greatest moral issue humanity has ever faced and there is no time to lose." But just how should centuries of Christian theological teachings about war be applied to the realities of the current arms race? For two years the U.S. bishops have struggled with that