The recent controversial pastoral letter of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops repudiates wholesale the policy of nuclear deterrence which has provided the world with thirty-seven years of nuclear peace. As a member of the pacifist Pax Christi, which includes 29 Catholic bishops, Northwest Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen has risen to the vanguard of the Catholic peace. movement. Vilifying the Trident base at Bangor as “the Auschwitz of Puget Sound,” Hunthausen advocates that Americans follow his example and withhold fifty percent of their income in order to prevent America from arming itself with nuclear weapons. He has forthrightly anointed a policy of unilateral disarmament.
His pacifism sweepingly extends to both conventional and nuclear weapons, fostering a policy of strategic, if not moral, surrender. Besides, without a nuclear deterrent to balance the Soviet’s capability, conventional weapons would be comparable historically to the Polish cavalry confronting Nazi Panzer divisions. Hunthausen considers the mere possession of nuclear weapons to be immoral and calls upon the United States to disarm regardless of whether the Soviet Union reciprocates. Rather than the power of armed force, he embraces the Gandhian strategy of nonviolent resistance through truth and love. Despite the questionable historical success of Gandhi’s approach, passive resistance functions with some effectiveness only if one can nurture guilt in the enemy. Gandhi attempted to paralyze the British by the contradiction between democratic, civilized values and colonial rule. As evidenced by their current use of chemical warfare in Afghanistan, the Kremlin’s ruthless ideology has immunized it from such Christian ethical appeals. Hunthausen actually concedes that the Soviets would temporarily exploit the weakness of the West, with the accompanying loss of life and personal freedom in a Sovietized world. In spite of the grim plight of Christians in the Soviet Union, he insists, in the end, that “love- force” will prevail.
While Hunthausen can be complimented for raising the issue of the morality of the hostage population strategic-doctrine, he has done little to sponsor a sober and sophisticated search for the truth. In a speech at the Target Seattle conference (September 29, 1982), he proclaimed that “it is not reasonable and just to expend $500 billion a year for weapons and only $35 billion a year to alleviate human misery — to provide food, shelter, medicine, and education.” These figures are so wildly inaccurate as to undermine completely his credibility. Our entire defense budget in 1982 was $192 billion while appropriations for social services were closer to $400 billion. At a Target Seattle meeting, Hunthausen perpetuated his tacit blackout of information about the Soviet Union by refusing to participate in a panel debate with an ex-Soviet political science professor. In addition, he accused his opponents, those who support the deterrence policy of every post-war Administration, of being insanely possessed by satanic idolatry, of “worshipping a nuclear god.” Such frenzied rhetoric does nothing to promote reasoned discussion.
Hunthausen’s fundamental premise is rooted in his conviction that the United States is planning a first- strike “nuclear war of aggression” against the Soviet Union by deploying the Trident submarine, MX, and cruise missiles. He makes no mention of the incontrovertible fact that America’s policy has been reshaped in response to the massive twenty-year Soviet build-up which has rendered our land-based ICBM’s vulnerable. The Trident submarines have been specifically constructed to help insure our retaliatory capacity. Only if one accepts Hunthausen’s amazing assertion that the United States is plotting a first-strike, does the logic of his other statements become comprehensible.
Hunthausen condemns American military, economic, and humanitarian aid to the government of El Salvador. By not similarly rebuking the flow of arms from the Soviet-Cuban axis, he condones with a wink the violent tactics of the Marxist revolutionaries. No public appeal for a Gandhian strategy by the rebels has emerged. Nicaragua’s Soviet-supplied 70,000 man army has burgeoned into the premier military power in the region. Embarrassing their apologists among the American Catholic left, the Sandinistas have initiated a repression of local clergy and any internal criticism. Hunthausen’s formula of selective pacifism appears to reduce itself to disarming unilaterally the Western democracies while acquiescing in the continued military adventurism of the Soviet Union and its proxies.
By adopting the mantle of a divinely inspired peace prophet, Hunthausen’s moral absolutism jeopardizes the time-honored democratic process of a politics grounded in the scrupulous examination of empirical consequences. Political issues demand a seasoned capacity to discriminate between greater and lesser evils. He trivializes any moral difference between democracy and totalitarianism. There are no utopian one-step solutions. Hunthausen’s moral authority has been diluted by Pope John Paul II’s declaration that deterrence is “morally acceptable.” The Pope calls for a bilateral reduction of nuclear weapons to be undertaken simultaneously by all parties through specific agreements, including on-site inspections. Perhaps, the repression of his native Poland and the attempted assassination which traces ominously to the door of the Andropov-led K.G.B. has jaundiced the Pope about faith in Soviet good-will.
When the first Trident sub, U.S. Ohio, was scheduled to arrive at the Bangor naval base, Hunthausen again gained the media spotlight as he inspired his flock of peace protesters. The demonstrators planned a human blockade of small boats in order to prevent the sub’s entry into the base. However, this peace armada was quickly dispersed by Coast Guard water hoses. The militants predictably complained about “police brutality.” They offered no detectible evidence that they would fare any better against the much less discrete Soviets. Meanwhile, a Soviet spy ship lurked off the coast of Washington. The tragi-comic gulf between the pacifists’ moral innocence and the strategic realities of world politics was never more glaringly evident. One wonders how morally innocent Archbishop Hunthausen actually is. Is pacifism’s good intentions and purity of heart an affordable moral luxury, when its practical results would lead to more war, less freedom and ultimately Soviet-style justice coupled with a gulag peace?