Popes Against Nuclear Weapons
The Vatican comes with its ills, contradictions and blatant hypocrisies in the field of moral theology and human existence, but on the issue of atomic and nuclear weapons, the position has been fairly consistent, if marked by gradual evolution. On February 8, 1948, Pope Pius XII held an audience with members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. “What misfortunes,” he asked, “should humanity expect from a future conflict, if it should prove impossible to arrest or curb the use of ever newer and more surprising scientific inventions?”
The Second Vatican Council through its 1965 document Gaudium et spes deemed the arms race “one of the greatest curses on humanity and the harm it inflicts on the poor is more than can be endured”. Using nuclear weapons exceeded “the limits of legitimate self-defence”, and would constitute a “crime against God and against humanity itself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.” Pope Paul VI would subsequently give his approval to the Nuclear Arms Non-Proliferation Treaty, making nuclear disarmament a matter of highest moral urgency.
But attitudes to nuclear weapons were always chained to the Cold War orbit and the old dilemmas of self-defence. In November 1980, with the election of US President Ronald Reagan, Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit expressed genuine terror at the prospect of a pro-bomb enthusiast in the White House.
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