CNA Staff, Jan 23, 2024 / 11:17 am (CNA).
An international group of bishops is calling for “universal, verifiable nuclear disarmament” on the third anniversary of a key global nuclear disarmament treaty.
The prelates of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Seattle as well as those of the Japanese Archdiocese of Nagasaki and the Diocese of Hiroshima issued the letter on Monday on the third anniversary of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons going into effect.
That treaty, adopted by the United Nations (U.N.) in 2017 and entered into force in January 2021, includes “a comprehensive set of prohibitions on participating in any nuclear weapon activities,” including directives “not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use, or threaten to use nuclear weapons.”
Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester, Seattle Archbishop Paul Etienne, Nagasaki Archbishop Peter Michiaki Nakamura, Hiroshima Bishop Alexis Mitsuru Shirahama, and Nagasaki Archbishop Emeritus Joseph Mitsuaki Takami noted that the treaty “has been signed by 93 countries and ratified by 70,” although “no nuclear weapons powers or their allies” have signed onto it.
“The nuclear-armed states have a moral obligation to hear the voices of the majority of the world and to listen to those who are threatened by annihilation at the decision of any one of the nine leaders of the nuclear weapons states,” the prelates wrote.
Those nine states are the United States, Russia, China, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Israel, and the United Kingdom.
“The international legal force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is limited to those states that have formally ratified the treaty,” the prelates wrote. “But its moral power does not recognize boundaries between nations nor lines on a map — the moral power of this treaty is global and universal.”
“It is another historic step on the journey toward hope, toward the light, toward a world free of nuclear weapons,” they said.
The bishops in their letter noted that their respective dioceses have been key witnesses to nuclear history: the “birthplace of nuclear weapons” in Santa Fe, the “most deployed nuclear weapons in the United States” in Seattle, and those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “the only two cities that to date have suffered horrendous atomic attacks.”
“It is the duty of our dioceses to support this treaty while working toward universal, verifiable nuclear disarmament,” the bishops said. “We lend our voices in strong support of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”
The nuclear prohibition treaty has received broad support from Catholic leaders since its proposal and implementation.
Bishops in the U.K. as well as U.N. Permanent Observer Archbishop Gabriele Caccia have hailed the treaty and called for reductions in nuclear armaments throughout the world.
In January 2021, meanwhile, Bishop Shirahama and then-Archbishop Takami welcomed the U.N. treaty while expressing disappointment that Japan was not a signatory to it.
“The Japanese government argues that ‘it is necessary to maintain the deterrence of the United States with nuclear weapons under the Japan-U.S. alliance,’” they wrote at the time.
“But as the only country to ever be attacked with atomic weapons, Japan should take the lead in signing and ratifying and play a role in promoting dialogue toward nuclear disarmament between nuclear-weapon states and nonnuclear-weapon states,” they argued.
Vatican Secretary for Relations with States Archbishop Paul Gallagher also argued in 2021 against “the exorbitant spending by a few states in the production and deployment of nuclear arsenals” and called for the global adoption of the treaty.
“The Holy See is grateful to those states that have signed and ratified the treaty, and it encourages reluctant states to join this important agreement,” Gallagher said that year.
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In 1965, the Second Vatican Council stated the Church’s “admiration” for those who individually forego violence—without harm to others, but also asserted the right and duty for defense, and accepted “deterrence” if this was a step toward nuclear disarmament, and therefore in the end stopped short of demanding a “freeze” in ownership of weapon arsenals (Gaudium et Spes, nn. 78-82).
In 1982, Pope John Paul II addressed the Second Special Session of the United Nations dedicated to disarmament (“Negotiation: The Only Realistic Solution to the Continuing Threat of War,” Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1982): “In current conditions ‘deterrence’ based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable” (p. 10). But, after almost half a century, the nuclear arsenal has been reduced from some 70,000 warheads to a lesser 10,000–which still is infinite destructive capacity.
A rare anomaly under special conditions, in 1989, “…the non-violent commitment of people [in Poland] who while always refusing to yield to the force of power, succeeded time after time in finding effective ways of bearing witness to the truth. This disarmed the adversary, since violence always needs to justify itself through deceit, and to appear, however falsely, to be defending a right or responding to a threat posed by others” (John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, n.23).
About global reach, unlimited destructive power, moral absolutes, and the realm of prudential judgement, what does it really mean to be “innocent as a dove and sly as a fox,” always both?
What to do about alternative worldviews from within post-modern and totalitarian China, Russia and North Korea, and possible proliferation to pre-modern/Muslim Iran, like Pakistan? What to do under a mutated species of “war” that was never considered when St. Augustine first framed the “just war theory”? No longer strife over a local crown, or territory, or trade routes–but an existential and trigger-wired threat? Today, we’re painted compactly into a box canyon, and even our language of “diplomacy” fails our need. Is it true that ultimately all human conflict is theological? …
So, YES, to both “universal and verifiable.”
A thought. Blessed Virgin Mary hurriedly crossing hill and valley in dark of night to attend to Elizabeth. A young girl alone, or with protective entourage? If not the image of Michael soaring above broadsword in hand prepared to dash to pieces any villain.
Deadly violence has existed since Cain murdered his brother. Valor in battle for a just cause is a virtue. Measuredly protecting oneself, or family recognized a good. We live in the unfortunate reality of a world dominated by men afflicted with evil, evil with its various shades not always perceptible though knowingly there. Locked into threat of annihilation, nuclear powers retain the only rationally conceived deterrent, as evidenced in nuclear victim Japan’s accepted reliance on US nuclear protection.
Nuclear power and its delivery capability if it were managed to be furtively retained by one nation among the nine [or some other unknown] would putatively rule the world. What’s required is a universal conversion to Christ, or the triumph of right reason, both unlikely. Great ingenious ideas are lacking. What can the Church do in response except to appeal as it’s doing now. Our Lady has appealed to her children to pray the rosary, do penance. As advised by many here and elsewhere our best weapon for deterrence may well be the rosary.