Author credits Catholic activism for opposition to nuclear weapons

For more than 40 years, the Catholic Church has been heavily involved in speaking out against the development, possession and use of nuclear weaponry, according to a University at Albany history professor.

"It has been the citizen movement -- popular pressure -- that has forced the nuclear powers back from waging nuclear war and into the realm of arms control," said Dr. Lawrence Wittner, author of "Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement."

And Catholics have been a key part of that movement, he said.

Evolving ideas

During the Cold War, Dr. Wittner said, a "hawkish" Catholic Church in America found itself wedged between the opposition to the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe and burgeoning moral questions surrounding the massively destructive power of nuclear armaments.

The Catholic Church's earliest statement on nuclear weapons had been what he calls an "ambiguous" comment made in 1945, at the time of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

"The real breakthrough came with Pope John XXIII and his 1963 encyclical, 'Pacem in Terris,'" explained Dr. Wittner, adding that the document summoned a world still jittery from the Cuban missile crisis to solidarity and a framework for international peace.

That encyclical was followed by "Gaudium et Spes," a document of the Second Vatican Council in which the Church condemned total war and called the nuclear arms race an "utterly treacherous trap."

Peace activism

Those Catholic documents gave new leverage to peace activists, Dr. Wittner noted.

The activists rallied around Pax Christi, an international peace group officially sanctioned by the Church. The organization attracted both pacifist radicals and more conservative Catholics who were worried about the impact of the arms race on society.

"Pax Christi became a lobbying group for a more peaceful position within the ranks of the Catholic Church," said Dr. Wittner. "And it was Pax Christi that continued to take the lead in terms of sharper pronouncements in denunciation of specific actions. They gradually began to win a larger following. The actions of the Berrigans [brothers Rev. Daniel Berrigan, SJ, and then-Rev. Philip Berrigan], and the priests and nuns during the Vietnam War -- and their willingness to go to jail for their beliefs -- stirred something in the consciousness of the Catholic faithful."

Reagan's era

When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, he talked about a significant nuclear buildup and opposition to disarmament treaties.

"People started to go bananas," Dr. Wittner said, "not just [in] secular movements like the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, but [also in] groups like Pax Christi and, increasingly, the Catholic bishops, who began to say that the nuclear arms race must be condemned."

The result was the 1983 U.S. bishops' pastoral letter on peace, which Dr. Wittner called "a sharp condemnation of waging nuclear war. It went on to condemn the arms race, back the freeze campaign and say that nuclear deterrence was only acceptable on the way to nuclear abolition."

Church's influence

That same year, the House of Representatives passed a nuclear freeze resolution. Dr. Wittner, who interviewed reformers behind the resolution, said that "they all told me that the position of the Catholic Church -- the bishops's statement -- was vital in the campaign towards the success in the freeze campaign, giving it credibility and making it the official 1984 Democratic platform."

The author believes that a continuing push by worldwide forces, including statements by Catholic bishops outside the U.S., caused a shift in President Reagan's attitude towards the feasibility of nuclear war. In 1984, he announced that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."

The following years, Dr. Wittner said, held triumphs for activists searching for nuclear disarmament:

* the passage of treaties during the first Bush administration, which detailed methods to disarm intermediate missiles in Europe and strategic long-range nuclear weapons; and

* the passage by Congress in 1992 of a unilateral ban on U.S. nuclear testing.

Current stands

Following that came a proposed comprehensive test-ban treaty for all countries with nuclear arms, in which they agreed to be inspected and to stop nuclear testing, a document that "would stop the arms race cold," according to Dr. Wittner.

But "the [current] Bush administration's position is to oppose Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and to revamp the Star Wars program," the author said. "Furthermore, the Bush administration has plans to build new nuclear weapons and begin nuclear testing again."

Specifically, he said, the administration is looking to develop smaller, lower-grade nuclear armaments, and has mentioned a willingness to use those weapons in combat.

Activism de-activated

Even more alarming, he believes, is that citizen activism seems to be on the decline.

"The situation in which nuclear weapons would be used would be one in which the public would support that action," he said. "That's the danger now. It seems to me that there is no massive popular pressure as there should be against the Bush administration's nuclear recklessness. One condition for the Bush administration launching a first strike is that the public is complacent, indifferent or supportive. At this point, it's very complacent."

He includes the Catholic Church in that slowdown, opining that the sexual abuse scandal is a possible reason the Church "may be less willing to challenge the government in the way it did during the Reagan years.

"I don't see a major mobilization. The Church is on record for halting the nuclear arms race, but I haven't seen parishioners really get out there in front and sharply condemn the Bush administration's nuclear policy."

("Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement" by Dr. Lawrence Wittner is published by Stamford University Press. Call 800-621-2738 for information.)

(9/18/03) [[In-content Ad]]