16. The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise
      and Our Response

Pastoral Letter of the United States Bishops, 1983

A Summary


In November 1980 the National Conference of Bishops (as it was then known)
appointed a committee of bishops, chaired by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin,
to draft a pastoral letter on war and peace. The bishops reviewed two drafts
and adopted the third and final draft on May 3,1983.
A substantial part of this pastoral letter focuses on nuclear weapons. The
summary is presented below.

The Second Vatican Council opened its evaluation of modern warfare with
the statement: "The whole human race faces a moment of supreme crisis
in its advance toward maturity." We agree with the council's assessment;
the crisis of the moment is embodied in the threat which nuclear weapons
pose for the world and much that we hold dear in the world. We have seen
and felt the effects of the crisis of the nuclear age in the lives of people we serve.

Nuclear weaponry has drastically changed the nature of warfare, and the arms
race poses a threat to human life and human civilization which is without precedent.

We write this letter from the perspective of Catholic faith. Faith does not insulate
us fromthe daily challenges of life but intensifies our desire to address them
precisely in light of the gospel which has come to us in the person of the risen
Christ.

Through the resources of faith and reason we desire in this letter to provide hope
for people in our day and direction toward a world freed of the nuclear threat. As
Catholic bishops we write this letter as an exercise of our teaching ministry.

The Catholic tradition on war and peace is a long and complex one; it stretches
from the Sermon on the Mount to the statements of Pope John Paul II. We wish
to explore and explain the resources of the moral-religious teaching and to apply
it to specific questions of our day.

In doing this we realize, and we want readers of this letter to recognize, that not
all statements in this letter have the same moral authority. At times we state
universally binding moral principles found in the teachings of the Church;
at other times the pastoral letter makes specific applications, observations
and recommendations which allow for diversity of opinion on the part of those
who assess the factual data of situations differently.

However, we expect Catholics to give our moral judgments serious consideration
when they are forming their own views on specific problems. The experience of
preparing this letter has manifested to us the range of strongly held opinion in
the Catholic community on questions of fact and judgment concerning issues of
war and peace.

We urge mutual respect among individuals and groups in the Church as this letter
is analyzed and discussed. Obviously, as bishops, we believe that such differences
should be expressed within the framework of Catholic moral teaching.

We need in the Church not only conviction and commitment but also civility and charity.

While this letter is addressed principally to the Catholic community, we want it to
make a contribution to the wider public debate in our country on the dangers and
dilemmas of the nuclear age.

Our contribution will not be primarily technical or political, but we are convinced
that there is no satisfactory answer to the human problems of the nuclear age
which fails to consider the moral and religious dimensions of the questions we face.

Although we speak in our own name, as Catholic bishops of the Church in the
United States, we have been conscious in the preparation of this letter of the
consequences our teaching will have not only for the United States but for other
nations as well.

One important expression of this awareness has been the consultation we have
had, by correspondence and in an important meeting at the Vatican
(January 18-19, 1983), with representatives of European bishops' conferences.

This consultation with bishops of other countries, and, of course, with the Holy See,
has been very helpful to us.

Catholic teaching has always understood peace in positive terms. In the words
of Pope John Paul II: "Peace is not just the absence of war. . . .
Like a cathedral, peace must be constructed patiently and with unshakable faith."
(Coventry, England, 1982)

Peace is the fruit of order. Order in human society must be shaped on the
basis of respect for the transcendence of God and the unique dignity of each
person, understood in terms of freedom, justice, truth and love.

To avoid war in our day we must be intent on building peace in an increasingly
interdependent world. In Part III of this letter we set forth a positive vision of
peace and the demands such a vision makes on diplomacy, national policy,
and personal choices. While pursuing peace incessantly, it is also necessary
to limit the use of force in a world comprised of nation states, faced with
common problems but devoid of an adequate international political authority.

Keeping the peace in the nuclear age is a moral and political imperative.
In Parts I and II of this letter we set forth both the principles of Catholic teaching
on war and a series of judgments, based on these principles, about concrete
policies.

In making these judgments we speak as moral teachers, not as technical experts.