Thanks in good measure to our bishops, the world of the Catholic laymen and laywomen in the United States is astir. Argument seems to be alive on every side. It is a good moment to take stock, even to dream. Of the fifty million American Catholics (there are, of course, an estimated twenty million others … Read more
A LETTER FROM CATHOLIC CLERGY AND LAITY In Jenuary, 1982, at the first meeting of the American Catholic Committee (now the American Catholic Conference), a small group of laity, clergy and religious concerned about Catholic morality in a nuclear age decided that, all things considered, it would be better to construct a positive document than … Read more
PEACE IN THE WORLD TODAY:Â CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVES 13. The Catholic tradition on war and peace is long and complex: it reaches from the Old Testament and from the beginning of the New, from the slaughter of the innocents at the birth of Christ to the baptism of the Roman centurion, from the practice of the early … Read more
WAR AND PEACE TODAY 31. Because of the unparalleled power of nuclear weapons, it is easy to be deflected from reasoned discourse. When one has listened to eminent scientists and physicians detail the horrors of the worst imaginable case of nuclear destruction, one is driven to recall the lessons of Christian faith about the precariousness … Read more
FACING THE FUTURE 70. We do not consider the present situation of nuclear deterrence ideal; we consider it a moral choice involving the lesser evil. When we look to the future, we see both creative possibilities and even greater dangers. The greatest danger is spiritual. Democratic peoples find protracted danger and sacrifice more onerous by … Read more
THE EFFORT BY the National Conference of Catholic Bishops to go into stragtegic specifics on questions of nuclear war may have consequences are different from those the bishops intend. It is not always those who cry “Peace, peace!” who actually bring peace. The opposite has frequently been the case. The second draft of the statement prepared by the bishops (October 1982) … Read more