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wonderful money. Thank you. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. From Gainesville, Florida. Yeah, Hello, I'm Mike Yanan, and this is conversation. In June of last year, the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States released the first draft of a pastoral letter, which it was expected the bishops of this country would issue in the matter of nuclear weapons, their manufacture, their deployment and their use.

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The text of the pastoral letter attracted wide attention and including much criticism from, for example, the White House and from critics who argued that bishops ought not to be engaged in matters of military policy. They should restrict themselves to preaching about moral values from their pulpits.

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But many of the bishops responded that it was quite in keeping with the Catholic tradition that bishops speak out about these and other practical moral questions, as the church had done as early as the fourth century, when Saint Augustine of Hippo declared that it was possible to fight in wars according to a theory that he worked out under what has come to be known as the just war theory.

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Well, in the intervening months, the bishops text attracted so much criticism that it was recast somewhat by an executive committee. And now a new version of the pastoral letter has been sent to the bishops of the United States for their study, and it is expected that on May 3rd, the bishops of the country will vote on this latest revision.

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The revision seems to contain some parts that suggest a compromise or pulling back from the heart positions of the original text. We'll find out in a moment when we talk with one of the clerics, one of the prelates who has been engaged in the drafting of both the 1st and 2nd texts of the pastoral letter.

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And for that conversation, I'll return in a moment. Thank you. Live Live presents conversation from the University of Florida, a discussion of social, political, scientific and religious issues of the day. Your hostess, Dr Michael Vegan, in professor of history and ethics and assistant dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida.

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My guest on this conversation is Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton, auxiliary bishop of Detroit Bishop. Welcome to conversation. Thank you very much. Doctor Gannon. Happy to be here? Well, I'm fascinated by the mechanics of this particular pastoral letter because I cannot recall, first of all, when the bishops have addressed the military question in quite this way and then Secondly, I cannot recall when a pastoral letter was put out on the table, so to speak, for review and criticism by the population at large.

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Can you describe how this started this whole process? Well, it is the first time that we've ever written a pastoral letter, uh, with this kind of a process that has been so open, so public. We've been under public scrutiny ever since we put the first draft out last June.

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But that was something that the committee decided to do right At the very beginning, when we started to meet, we began to, uh, talk about how we were going to put together some sort of a comprehensive document treating the church's teachings on war and peace and trying to analyze the present situation, our own nation.

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We felt that we had to go to experts of every kind, and and so we started a process of dialogue of conversation, and we we carried on interviews and we had people make presentation to us. And then we would discuss with them over a whole day with experts from the arms control agency from the Defense Department.

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Secretary of defense, secretary of state, head of the start talks General Ronnie. So people from our own administration. But we also talked to former secretaries of defense doctor Harold Brown. Dr James Schlesinger. We talked to experts on international law. Like Roger Fisher from Harvard, we talked to people conflict control or conflict, nonviolent conflict resolution.

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We talked to political scientists, doctors, physicians for social responsibility. We talked with them. We tried to talk well. I should mention to, obviously theologians and Scripture scholars, too, because we wanted this letter to flow out of the Catholic tradition. Uh, and so we really started a process of conversation or dialogue.

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And when we had finally, after about 10 months of that, when we finally put together our own first draft, we sent it out to the bishops. We decided at that point that we were not going to try to keep this a confidential text. Usually, when pastor letters were written before a committee would work on them, they would be sent to the bishops, would be confidential.

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The bishops would respond with their suggestions and or proposed amendments, and then it would be discussed at a bishop's meeting. That would be the first time that it would get any public scrutiny. This time we said, Well, first of all, we just recognized you couldn't keep it secret.

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There was so much interest and we said, Well, there's no point in even trying So we just said Let's make it a public document So the very first draft went out and was sent to the bishops, but also was publicly presented to the media and to all the consultants that we had interviewed before and to anyone that wanted to get a copy.

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And we began to be flooded with responses from all over the country. But this was a good thing because really, this is an issue that is so complex and there are so many perspectives and points of view that you should be trying to consider and be aware of that it would be impractical and even just impossible for a committee of five bishops to write a letter touching on all these issues.

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But I think that's been a very healthy thing for us. Uh, it forced us to take a longer time in writing the letter than we had anticipated. We were going to have the final draft ready last November, but because we had so many people are interested in responding to us.

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We had to take a much longer time if we were to be faithful to the process that we started. That is, read and study what people wrote and really trying to take, uh, all of those things into consideration. And so it took a longer process. But it's been good.

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It really I think it's a way for the church to teach That shows that the church also listening bishops are teachers. But before they can teach, they also have to listen. It has to be a process going on, and and so it's a new style, I think.

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But I'm very happy with it. And, uh, I hope that it teaches us some things for the future. Was a pastor a letter on the issue of nuclear arms? The idea of one individual? I know that, uh, Joseph Bernardin, the Cardinal archbishop of Chicago, is the head of the drafting committee.

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But is he or any other bishop responsible for getting this idea. It started at our meeting in November of 1980 it started sort of from the floor rather than from the administrative committee of the Bishops Conference, which is, or from any other committee within the conference, which is where usually such a thing would start.

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But at that meeting, November of 1980 right after the elections of that year, because we always meet the second full week of the month. And so the elections have taken place. Prior to that, there had been the campaign with a lot of rhetoric about war, winnable nuclear wars and getting superiority and nuclear arms and so on.

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There was a great deal of concern throughout our country, and it touched the bishops conference. And there were about a half a dozen or so bishops who, during the course of the meeting, requested that this issue be put on our agenda. It wasn't there, and Archbishop Roach, the president of the conference, agreed.

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In fact, in his opening address at that meeting, he had said that this issue is the most dangerous moral issue in the public order today. So he was sympathetic to that, and so he shifted the agenda to allow about an hour and a half or two hours of discussion of this issue.

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Out of that discussion came the conclusion that we had to provide for Catholic people a more comprehensive treatment of all the moral issues connected with nuclear arms, nuclear war, the arms raised and so on. And so that's what came out of that discussion. Archbishop Roach then appointed the committee, and we began our work, uh, in the late spring of 1981 then where the bishops, sensitive to the criticism of some, that over the course of years the Catholic bishops in the United States have been more reactive than active in matters of military policy and war.

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For example, there was much criticism that the bishops spoke out on the issue of the war in Vietnam. Only after it became the fashion to do so among large segments of the population had not taken a prophetic role in the beginning. Right hedging. But now no one I'm not, but, uh, yeah, we were late.

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I I will admit it. In fact, I was very frustrated at the time because I was in the conference from 1968 and was trying to get among with others who is trying to get the bishops to states and what we did. Finally, in 71 issue a declaration.

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But this time, I guess what a few things happened. I think a number of bishops themselves have begun to get had begun to get caught up in the issues. They were also receiving a lot of, uh, urging from people in the church who were asking questions.

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I know Bishop Matheson was here in uh, yes, he was on this program not too long ago, and he was one, I think is a good example. Someone in his diocese came to him with a problem of conscience. Is what am I going to do here I am helping to build these nuclear weapons and so on that got him thinking, Well, those are the kinds of things that were happening to other bishops to, and I'll put a plug in here for an organization that I happen to be president of called Pax Christi, which is a Catholic peace movement.

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Uh, and, uh, we started a section of Christian United States back in 1970 four, and it's begun to grow By 1980 we had almost 50 bishops who had become members of Pax Christi, and we were feeding them information about the arms race and so on, and I'm sure that had an influence.

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Bishop Matheson is one who said, That's how I began to learn about these issues, and the fact that we had 50 Bishop members gave us kind of a nice base within the conference to do something like this to promote this sort of effort. And, uh, I have found two.

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And maybe this is something you've come to know about to the people that begin to get into the arms race issue, kind of get caught up by it. I've seen that happened, for example, with doctors that physicians for social responsibility it's an issue that seems to take hold of a person.

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It's not one you can kind of dabble, and you either get into it, and before you know it, you're kind of caught up, and that happened to quite a few bishops. And so they were beginning to feel this pressure from within themselves, not just from the community outside and the bishops who have drafted this document and those others who support it.

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Do you reject the argument that they ought not to be involved in the study of nuclear arms and military policy? And yet this does, in their estimation, fall within their purview as bishops. Very definitely I mentioned before expression, Roach has said. This is the most dangerous moral issue in the public order.

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Now it's a moral issue when you're talking about the killing of tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people. Well, obviously you're talking about a moral question. The future of our very planet is at stake in the issue. So it's moral. It's in the public order, which makes it a little different from some other moral issues that are very privatized or personal.

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And so this means that you have to evaluate public policy decisions of your government in order to give a moral perspective on those decisions. But we feel that is our responsibility and and, of course, a right and privilege that we have in this nation to do that, for which we're very grateful, and all of us who are citizens, citizens of this country, I think, are grateful that we have that privilege.

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But it's a responsibility We cannot be silent on an issue of this group. In fact, I'll mention to you if you want. I remember so clearly when one of our sessions when we were meeting with the State Department and we were bringing up some of our concerns and so on and talking about them.

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From a moral point of view. One of the people high level person in our government said, Well, why do you bring that up? We can't discuss moral questions. Well, you know now to me that that's precisely why bishops have to discuss moral questions. If people in the government are saying we can't look at it from a moral point of view, well, somebody better be.

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And that's where the church fits in. What did our system Judge William Clark, the president's foreign policy advisers say to you when he was sent, apparently as an emissary, to ask you to rethink the position established in your first draft? He's a Catholic, is he not?

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Yes, he is. Yeah, And, uh, of course, he's one who sees the president every day to. So when you get something from Mr Clark, you feel well, maybe it's coming from President Reagan, which is fine in the first lengthy letter which he sent to us during the course of our meeting last November.

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That actually was published in the newspaper before we got it. Uh, the main concern that he and the others seem to have was that we were totally underestimating what this administration is doing. They said we're not getting that. Our letter was not giving full credit to their own sincere efforts to, uh, well engaged in disarmament talks, and and they feel that they are trying to follow a moral policy.

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And so they were, well, upset that we were not giving any credit to the administration. And, yeah, uh, I think that probably in our first draft or the second draft, which is the draft that they were reacting to, uh, in november. Oh, there have been now three drafts.

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Is yeah. Oh, yes. We've been at this two years. All right? Okay. Yeah, this is the third we hope. Final draft. But I guess you know, in some ways we were Well, for example, we didn't even mention the fact that start talks are going on. Well, why not mention that they're going on now?

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and we do this in this draft. So we've listened to what they said and we mentioned to start talks. We express a little bit of skepticism about how beneficial those talks are, what kind of hopes we have from them. But at least we say yes, that's happening.

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So we've tried to listen to their concerns and we have moderated the letter, modified it in a couple of ways that, yes, I'd like to ask about that. This third draft does contain a few passages in which it appears you've pulled back from positions established in the first draft.

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I think in the first you asked for a halt to the deployment of nuclear weapons, and now you ask for a curb on them. Let me put that in context right there. There are four main conclusions moral judgments that we make, and this is in the second part of the letter.

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The first part of the letter, we set forth all religious perspectives and principles. Second part of the letter, we tried to apply that teaching to specific policy questions of our government four mean practical conclusions that we reach practical judgments that we make. They are the same for conclusions that we had in the second draft, so we have not backed away.

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The first one is that counter population warfare is completely unacceptable. From a moral point of view, this is aiming nuclear missiles to fall upon, uh, cities innocent, noncombatant, correct population. That's number one, number two. We say that the initiation of nuclear warfare is a morally unacceptable risk, morally unacceptable illustration.

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Well, either side to use weapons first, which is our policy and NATO. We have a first use policy. The Russian side has has a declared that they would not use such weapons first. There have been leaders in our country like George Kennan, McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara, who last year, in a very major article, yes, said we ought to declare no first use.

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We haven't. We have refused to. Our statement says First use policy is morally unacceptable, and we haven't backed away from that. Our third is the discussion of limited nuclear warfare. Uh, that would be a situation where you would respond to a nuclear attack. We say, in theory, you might be able to do that morally.

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If you could maintain your response or limit your response only to military targets. But then we say, Ask yourself real questions. What's going to happen when a nuclear exchange starts to take take place? Can the commanders in the field be sure they'll be able to maintain control?

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In fact, we found out for most people whom we interviewed without exception, I would say that they are profoundly skeptical that any kind of control could be maintained and so limited. Nuclear war is unreal. The use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield in Europe, for example, would lead naturally by a natural progression to a full nuclear exchange.

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Strategically, As Admiral Giner pointed out to us, one of the people 46 years in the surface military service and from the Pentagon, he said, Don't let them fool you when they talk about tactical weapons. Some of those are larger and more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb.

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So if you start using tactics so called tactical weapons, you're into all out warfare on a scale that the world has never seen, and there just won't be controlled. So on that point, our conclusion is that we are profoundly skeptical that those limits could be maintained and within the theology of a just war, which you mentioned that your opening comments, you must be sure that you can maintain or fulfill the conditions, or else you have to go with the presumption against war.

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That's how that theology works. So we're seeing, in effect, you can't have such a thing as a limited nuclear war. That's that's our third thing. Let me finish the fourth one. The fourth one then gets into the strategy of deterrence. And there we say, it might be judged morally acceptable if two conditions are fulfilled.

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One, it's not a long term policy. In other words, we can't have it as our continuing policy, which we do now to it has to be used as a step toward progressive disarmament. We have to be, in fact, moving away from now. In that part of the letter we then set up.

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We mentioned seven specific criteria that would indicate whether or not we would be moving away from a strategy of deterrence. One of those is the part where we talk about the need to have an immediate curb or previously we said halt! Now there are seven and we've changed the one slightly from halt to curb, but at least three or four of those still would not be.

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If you look at the criteria, you would say we're not fulfilling those criteria. Therefore, we're not fulfilling the conditions, and we, in effect, are saying the strategy of deterrence unless we begin to change quickly is not morally acceptable now. It's not morally acceptable in your view, because it threatens annihilation.

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And the very threat itself is morally more than threatens annihilation. It plan contains within it a clear intent clear intent, which is more than a threat. You might somebody breaks into your house or something you might threaten with a weapon, never intending to use it. You just know you couldn't do it.

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But you might try to scare the person off and you would know that. But this has contained within it. Ambassador Gerard Smith, among others when he spoke to us, made this statement so clearly because I always had the idea that, well, maybe we have to say that, but we wouldn't do it, he said.

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There's no such thing as a strategy of deterrence without the clear intent to use the weapons. Now that you know you teach ethics. You know, the intention is where the evil once you formed the intention, you've already moved yourself into an evil situation. So that's the main flaw with the strategy of deterrence, plus the fact that it keeps you involved in this constant escalation in the arms race.

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Yes, but this was a ground on which many criticized you saying that actually, it's this mutually assured destruction policy of the country and of the Soviet Union bilaterally, which really has provided the piece that we've enjoyed among nations among the major powers since the Second World War.

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And that this being a proven methodology for maintaining peace, it would be, uh, immoral. Really? To throw that aside in in favor of your policy, which would seem to be, uh, to the critics, would seem to be to make us extremely vulnerable to attack, thus increasing the likelihood of war.

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How would you answer that? Well, first of all, uh, we we, uh, understand that that that is the position of many people. We have many people express that to us. In fact, Ambassador Smith made it so clear what the policy is. He also said, don't don't ever say that we can't have it because that would be a terrible situation.

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So we we've heard people say that now. First of all, though, as we say in our letter, no one can prove that we're not really sure that that's the reason we haven't had a nuclear war. And there are many people who suggest other reasons why we haven't.

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But then what's even more of a concern? Uh, the way the arms race is developing and the policy of deterrence keeps us going, uh, in a constantly escalating, uh, upward movement in the arms race. Uh, it's becoming more and more dangerous and almost getting to the point where inevitably, we will lose control.

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As an ambassador, George Kennan makes this point so strongly there's there's a momentum within the arms race that he says is already out of control and what's happening. You see, you're moving not just into more weapons. It isn't just the numbers, but it's the qualitative changes, and the next couple of years are going to be among the most.

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Uh, if we make the changes that are being planned, it's going to cause the greatest danger we've ever faced. When we have purging two missiles deployed in Europe, which are really what are technically known as first strike weapons. That is, they can knock out weapons of the other side before they can be used.

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They have not been deployed yet. The person, but they plan is this year the end of 1983. And what makes this so dangerous is that those weapons are such that they can hit a target within 40 metres, which is very close, and they also have a destructive capability that will enable them to destroy any of the hardened silos that the Soviets have.

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So the Soviet land based missiles are going to be within 4 to 6 minutes of total destruction. That's 75% of their nuclear capability. Now that obviously is a terrible threat to them. When they don't want to see those weapons deployed, what will they do? Well, they said, one thing they're going to do is then begin to rim the United States with weapons that would be able to strike Our weapons is rapidly, which means they'll probably try to start to put some cruise missiles into Cuba or some other kind of missiles back into Cuba.

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and remember how we panicked in 1962 when that happened, or they'll bring their submarines a lot closer to our shores, where so that they could, from their submarines launch an attack against us that's going to cause a very tense being escalation to a new dimension of clear threat.

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And also they could well decide they have to go into a launch on warning strategy with their own weapons, which means that they won't wait for an attack to actually happen. They will have the their weapons computerized so that once they are get signals are under attack, their weapons will be fired automatically.

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And everybody knows what can happen accidentally there, let alone, you know, that means in 4 to 6 minutes we could have Central Europe simply obliterated and that just it seems insane for us to move into that kind of a situation. But that's where the strategy of deterrence is taking us.

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So even if you were to grant that okay, 38 years we've had no nuclear war because of the constant change in the quality of the weapons, more than in the numbers, we are getting into an ever more dangerous situation where we won't be able to pull back.

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And also, as people have pointed out, like Admiral Larocque or Admiral Eugene Carroll and Ambassador Kenan and others again, as we start deploying cruise missiles, we're gonna lose any possibility of verifiability in an arms treaty because those missiles cannot be detected. And so we're going to have unlimited numbers deployed that neither side will know how many of the other side has.

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And so it's going to cause constant mistrust and fear, and one donations act rationally when they're under threat. They don't mean any more than people do. And so we're going to put ourselves into a situation where well, they talk about a hair, trigger a situation, or it's going to be so tense and critical that the first crisis, uh, the meters on either side are going to act out of panic almost and do something that the world will not survive from, and that that's what frightens us.

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And so I hope it's clear that we haven't said in our pastoral letter, unilateral immediate disarmament. We don't say that, but we are saying no, we've got to begin progressive disarmament and do it quickly and and begin to enter into negotiations where there's give and take.

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Instead of this hard rhetoric on both sides, we've got to begin to talk with each other and, uh, and and make sure that that we offer possibilities that are acceptable to the Soviet Union and vice versa. But we've had arms agreements before. Saw to it was the United States that wouldn't ratify though the Soviet Union once that agreement and have lived up to it up to this point.

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And we have, uh, we're very close to a comprehensive test band treaty, which would be one of the most important treaties we could ever sign because it would stop these new developments that take us into a qualitatively new steps in the arms race. 1980. United States pulled out of those negotiations, and that's a tragedy.

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We need to get in there and negotiate again. Perhaps the pastoral letter which you have helped draft will take the United States in a different direction, perhaps have a worldwide effect. I know that there have been some criticisms of the U. S. Catholic position on the part of bishops in Europe.

00:27:55.150 - 00:28:12.690

It will be very interesting to see what happens. But first of all, we have to see what is the vote among your fellow bishops in meeting at Chicago. The vote is to be taken. I understand. On May 3. Yes. I'm very grateful to you, Bishop. Gambler, for coming down to I'm talking about the chance to do this.

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And I know that all of those who are listening to you today will be very interested to see what the vote is. Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton, auxiliary bishop of Detroit. Thank you for being with me on conversation. Okay, Mike. Thank you. Yeah. Mm. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah, yeah.

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Mhm, Yeah.