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The American Catholic Bishops' Peace Pastoral: A Critique of its Logic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

William E. Murnion
William E. Murnion*
Affiliation:
Ramapo College of New Jersey
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Abstract

A critique of the distinction in the Peace Pastoral between stating moral principles and addressing concrete questions. The distinction seems to be an example of the invalid dichotomy between analytic and synthetic truths; it is also inapplicable to the bishops' condemnation of nuclear war as a concrete action immoral in principle. Thus the use of the distinction introduced confusion into the bishops' interpretation of the principles of just war and obscurity into their conclusion about the concrete question of nuclear deterrence. A dialectical methodology, critically sounder and implicit in much of the pastoral, would have made their argument more consistent and more cogent.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , Spring 1986 , pp. 67 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1986

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References

1 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1983).Google Scholar References to the pastorals will be by paragraph number within parentheses in the text.

2 Origins, NC Documentary Service 14, 22/23 (November 14, 1984).

3 For an analysis of this methodology, see Murnion, William E., “The Role and Language of the Church in Relation to Public Policy” in Murnion, Philip J., ed., Catholics and Nuclear War (New York: Crossroad, 1983), pp. 57–70.Google Scholar Besides making these distinctions about the substance of their teaching, the bishops also employ in their ethical foundations the traditional formal principles that the end does not justify the means (221, 332) and that the greater good must prevail (81).

4 The basis for this distinction is, at any rate, not very clear, given the bishops' belief in their mandate to proclaim the gospel to everyone and in the corollary obligation of everyone “of good will” to follow their moral prescriptions (328-29). See also Hauerwas, Stanley, “On Keeping Theological Ethics Theological” in Hauerwas, Stanley and MacIntyre, Alasdair, eds., Revisions: Changing Perspectives in Moral Philosophy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 51–67.Google Scholar

5 Quine, Willard V. O., “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” in From a Logical Point of View (2nd rev. ed.; New York: Harper & Row, 1983), pp. 20–46.Google Scholar

6 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, q. 1, a. 1c; Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 17, a. 1c and a. 2c.

7 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae, q. 94, a. 2c.

8 Ibid., a. 2c and a. 4c.

9 Ibid., a. 4c and a. 5c.

10 Aquinas was remarkably casual, however, in whathe admitted as exceptions even to the first principles of natural law. A divine command could exempt acts that would otherwise be fornication or adultery, theft, or even murder from being violations of natural law; likewise, human law could replace communal possession with private property and liberty with slavery without violating natural law. See ibid., 5 ad 2um, ad 3um.

11 Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), pp. 11–18, 36–46, 241–43.Google Scholar See also Conn, Walter E., Conscience: Development and Self-Transcendence (Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1981), pp. 176–85.Google Scholar

12 Lonergan, Bernard, Insight; A Study of Human Understanding (London: Longmans, Green, 1957), pp. 615–21.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., pp. 627-33 and chaps. 19 and 20.

14 Hare, R. M., Moral Thinking; Its Levels, Method, and Point (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 60;CrossRefGoogle Scholar see also pp. 25-64.

15 Schneewind, J. B., “Moral Knowledge and Moral Principles” in Hauerwas, and MacIntyre, , Revisions, p. 119.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., pp. 120-21. For a similar critique of ethical rationalism, see MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (2nd ed.; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), pp. 64–68.Google Scholar

17 MacIntyre, , After Virtue, p. 57;Google Scholar see also pp. 35-59; idem, “Moral Philosophy: What Next?” in Hauerwas and MacIntyre, Revisions, pp. 7-14.

18 See Bainton, Roland H., Christian Attitudes toward War and Peace (New York: Abingdon, 1960).Google Scholar

19 The contradiction inherent in this argument has led Grisez, Germain, in “Moral Implication of a Nuclear Deterrent,” Center Journal 2 (1982–1983), 9–24Google Scholar, to argue that the bishops should logically have condemned deterrence as immoral, while Bundy, McGeorge claimed, on the contrary, in “The Bishops and the Bomb,” The New York Review (June 16, 1983), 3–4Google Scholar, that to all intents and purposes they had condoned it without any significant reservations.

20 This framework was inspired by but is not identical with Lonergan's theory of functional specialties in Method in Theology, pp. 125-45.