A Blast from the Bishops

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America's Roman Catholic leadership denounces nuclear weapons

The detailed document marshals moral principles and strategic arguments in a counterstrike at the heart of U.S. military doctrine. Noting that NATO strategy threatens a first use of tactical nuclear weapons if the Soviet Union invades Central Europe, it proclaims, "We do not perceive any situation in which the deliberate initiation of nuclear warfare, on however restricted a scale, can be morally justified." Speaking to those who work in nuclear arms factories, it instructs, "We have judged immoral even the threat to use such weapons." Ethical questions are raised about the new MX missile system. And using the language of nuclear freeze proposals, which the Reagan Administration strongly opposes, the document calls for "immediate, bilateral verifiable agreements to halt the testing, production and deployment of new strategic systems."

The statement released last week, at the climax of the 1982 election campaign, is not the work of activists campaigning for the nuclear freeze resolutions that are on the ballot in nine states, nor of Democrats who have been trying to make the Reagan Administration's arms control policies an issue. "The Challenge of Peace" is a draft of a proposed pastoral letter to the nation's 51 million Roman Catholics, prepared by a committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (N.C.C.B.). By addressing not only the moral and theological dimensions of nuclear arms, but also the political and strategic complexities, the bishops have invited heated dissent from church members and Government leaders. "This puts us right out there saying that our religious convictions may well lead us into opposition to our Government," says Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, one of the five drafters of the document.

Pastoral letters are intended to advise Roman Catholics on moral courses of action, but are not binding rules. The bishops began working on the nuclear weapons letter in July 1981, at the request of Minnesota Archbishop John Roach, president of the N.C.C.B. "We see this as the major moral imperative of our time," Roach said last week.

The first draft was submitted last June to the 285 active American bishops. Among those objecting to the letter then was Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. While praising the document's recognition of the right to legitimate self-defense, Weinberger insisted that "safety requires an armory of arms." Defending the first-use doctrine, he wrote: "Were NATO to forgo the possibility of a nuclear response to armed aggression, the Warsaw Pact might conclude that the risks of conventional attack against Western Europe were acceptable." National Security Adviser William Clark also wrote a detailed response to the first draft. Said he: "To deter effectively, we must make it clear to the Soviet leadership that we have the capability to, and will, respond to aggression."