The US Catholic Bishops and the Nuclear Crisis

In May 1983 the National Conference of Catholic Bishops of the United States issued its comprehensive Pastoral Letter on War and Peace, The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response. The main purpose of this essay is to apply a world order perspective in critically evaluating three sets of key issues. First, which tradition of Christian thinking on war and peace did the bishops follow and how relevant is this tradition as the dominant pa radigm for charting an alternative, effective response to the nuclear crisis? Second, what kind of moral assessment did the bishops make of the nuclear crisis, in particular on the legitimacy of nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence, and the use of nuclear weapons? And third — and by way of conclusion — the paper assesses the impact of the Pastoral on the current nuclear debate, on public policy, and on long-term system transformation.