[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 5]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 6489-6490]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




THE ENGAGEMENT OF THE U.S. BISHOPS IN MORAL QUESTIONS REGARDING NUCLEAR 
                                WEAPONS

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, May 12, 2015

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I recently hosted a briefing 
entitled Catholic Engagement on Nuclear Disarmament: What are the moral 
questions? and one of the speakers, Dr. Stephen M. Colecchi, presented 
the following statement:

       At the time of Senate ratification of the New START Treaty 
     in 2010, Cardinal Francis George, OMI, then President of the 
     U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose death we recently 
     mourned, declared: ``The horribly destructive capacity of 
     nuclear arms makes them disproportionate and indiscriminate 
     weapons that endanger human life and dignity like no other 
     armaments. Their use as a weapon of war is rejected in Church 
     teaching based on just war norms.''
       The Cardinal was standing on a firm foundation of 
     longstanding teaching when he made that assertion. The 1983 
     pastoral letter, ``The Challenge of Peace,'' established the 
     U.S. Catholic bishops as a moral voice on nuclear 
     disarmament. The bishops argued that ``each proposed addition 
     to our strategic system or change in strategic doctrine must 
     be assessed precisely in light of whether it will render 
     steps toward `progressive disarmament' more or less likely.''
       Ten years later in the ``Harvest of Justice is Sown in 
     Peace,'' the bishops declared: ``The eventual elimination of 
     nuclear weapons is more than a moral ideal; it should be a 
     policy goal.'' This vision continues to shape their public 
     engagement.

[[Page 6490]]

       At the time of the drafting of the 1983 pastoral, I worked 
     as a religious educator and was active in efforts to engage 
     Catholics in discussions of the various drafts of the peace 
     pastoral. The process of producing this document was 
     significant. The bishops actively solicited feedback from 
     both experts and people in the pew on each of three drafts. 
     The bishops remained the teachers, but they acknowledged that 
     prudential judgments were also involved and this required 
     dialogue.
       Consultations were held at the national and local levels, 
     and in many settings, at universities, parishes and think 
     tanks. These dialogues helped shape the final pastoral 
     letter, but perhaps more importantly they also raised 
     awareness of the fundamental issues related to nuclear 
     weapons among many Americans. Today the Conference of Bishops 
     is working with others to revitalize Catholic thinking and 
     engagement on issues involving nuclear weapons today as 
     decades have passed since they first became involved with 
     this issue in a major way.
       Over the years, in light of Church moral teaching, the 
     bishops have also exercised leadership regarding specific 
     elements of U.S. nuclear policy. In the late 80s they raised 
     moral questions regarding missile defense initiatives. The 
     bishops supported the Strategic Arms Reduction treaties 
     (Start I and II) in the early 1990s. And in the late 90s they 
     supported the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, lamenting its 
     defeat in the Senate. The bishops welcomed the 2002 Moscow 
     Treaty as a positive step, but called on the United States, 
     and by implication other nations, to do much more.
       During the past decade, the Conference of Bishops has 
     opposed federal funding for research on the Robust Nuclear 
     Earth Penetrator, the Reliable Replacement Warhead and new 
     nuclear weapons. They weighed in on the Nuclear Posture 
     Review, asking President Obama to narrow the purpose of the 
     nuclear arsenal solely to deterring nuclear attack. They made 
     a major effort to offer vigorous support for Senate 
     ratification of the New START Treaty in 2010, and have 
     supported and welcomed the P5+1 dialogue with Iran over their 
     nuclear program, as has the Holy Father and the Holy See.
       At its Deterrence Symposium in July 2009, the U.S. 
     Strategic Command turned to the Conference of Bishops to 
     offer moral reflections. Cardinal Edwin O'Brien, then an 
     Archbishop and a member of the bishops' International 
     Committee, gave a major address on ``Nuclear Weapons and 
     Moral Questions: The Path to Zero.'' He urged the nuclear 
     powers to ``move beyond'' deterrence. Subsequently, he joined 
     Global Zero and addressed their February 2010 summit in 
     Paris.
       In his speech at the 2009 Deterrence Symposium, Cardinal 
     O'Brien reiterated the longstanding position of the U.S. 
     bishops: ``The moral end is clear: a world free of the threat 
     of nuclear weapons. This goal should guide our efforts. Every 
     nuclear weapons system and every nuclear weapons policy 
     should be judged by the ultimate goal of protecting human 
     life and dignity and the related goal of ridding the world of 
     these weapons in mutually verifiable ways.''
       U.S. Church leaders are not naive about the challenges that 
     lie along the path to a world without nuclear weapons. 
     Cardinal Francis George wrote a letter to President Obama in 
     2010 in which he ``. . . acknowledged that the path to a 
     world free of nuclear weapons will be long and difficult. It 
     will involve many steps:
       Verifiably reducing nuclear arsenals as the new START 
     Treaty continues to do;
       Ratifying and bringing into force the Comprehensive Test 
     Ban Treaty;
       Reducing our nation's reliance on nuclear weapons for 
     security as the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review began to do;
       Securing nuclear materials from terrorists;
       Adopting a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty to prohibit 
     production of weapons-grade material;
       Strengthening the International Atomic Energy Agency to 
     monitor nonproliferation efforts and ensure access to 
     peaceful uses of nuclear power; and
       Other actions that take humanity in the direction of a 
     nuclear-weapons-free world.''

  The Cardinal went on to say, ``We are pastors and teachers, not 
technical experts. We cannot map out the precise route to the goal of 
eliminating nuclear weapons, but we can offer moral direction and 
encouragement. Although we cannot anticipate every step on the path 
humanity must walk, we can point with moral clarity to a destination 
that moves beyond deterrence to a world free of the nuclear threat.''
  Given these longstanding concerns of the U.S. Bishops to reduce 
nuclear weapons and secure nuclear materials, in April 2015, Bishop 
Oscar Cantu, Chairman of the Committee on International Justice and 
Peace, spoke on a panel on ``Nuclear Weapons and the Moral Compass'' 
sponsored by The Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See and The 
Global Security Institute at the UN Headquarters in New York, and in 
November 2014, Bishop Richard Pates, a member of the Committee, spoke 
at a seminar on ``Less Nuclear Stockpiles and More Development'' 
sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome.
  The bishops of the United States are deeply engaged in the moral 
enterprise of working for a world without nuclear weapons. As Bishop 
Cantu said in his April UN talk: ``To achieve this goal, we must, in 
the words of Pope Francis, acknowledge that `now is the time to counter 
the logic of fear with the ethic of responsibility, and so foster a 
climate of trust and sincere dialogue.'''

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