P,astoral digest
By Jerry FUteau WASHlNGTON(NC) - The oficial summary or precis of the U.S. bishops' war and peace pastoral highlights the paradox of maintaining a nuclear deter rence when virtually any use of nuclear weapons has beeen ruled out as immoral. It appears in full In this Issue of The Anchor. beginning on page 12. The 2,700-word summary, ap proved by the nation's bishops in a mail ballot, was released June 9. It synthesizes the basic con tents of the pastoral for those wishing a brief summary. By reason of its brevity, it focuses more emphatically on some of the pastoral's most con troversial judgments, especially those on nuclear warfare and nuclear deterrence. While declaring nuclear deter rence morally acceptable "cer tainly not as an end in itself but as a step" toward disarma ment, the summary declares:' "No use of nuclear weapons which would violate the princi ples of discrirnination or pro portionality may be intended in a strategy of deterrence. The moral demands of Catholic teaching require resolute will ingness: ·not to intend or to do moral evil even to save our own lives or the lives of those we love." Regarding actual use of nu clear weapons, the summary: • Directly condemns counter· population use;
• Rejects first use in response to non-nuclear attack; • Severely questions the mor ality of military targeting that would indirectly cause massive civilian casualties; and • Declares the bishops "high ly skeptical" about the possi bility of keeping any actual nu clear exchange within the limits -of morality. The Office of Publishing Ser vices of the Unitl!ld States Cath olic Conference will publish the pastoral and summary in late June at $1.50 per copy with dis counts available for schools, di oceses and some other institu tions. The summary, in addition to stating briefly the 'bishops' judg ments on nuclear war and nu clear deterrence, capsu)izeld other major points of the pastoral. .Among these were: - The letter's judgments should be studied with the under standing that its judgments on specific issues do not carry the same weight of authority or certitude as its declarations on ethical principles and church teaching. - The church's moral teach ing on warfare acknowledges both the right and duty of ana· tion to defend its citizens while establishing clear moral limits on that right or its exercise. - The arms race itself is "one of the greatest curses on .the human race; it is to be ,con· demned as a danger,. an act of Turn to Page Six,
the
anc 0
DIOCESAN NEWSPAPER FOR SOUTHEAST MASS" CAPE & ISLANDS Vol. 27, No. 24
Fall River, Mass., Friday, June 17, 1983
$8 Per Year
'.
/
,',
,
Why they close
The following editorial was written by Father John Dietzen. author of the Question Comer column carried by The Anchor, for his diocesan newspaper. The Cathollc Post of Peoria. m. Nothing can be duller than sta tistics. But sometimes a big story can't be grasped without looking at a few numbers. One of these is the crying and stewing we're doing over school' closings arid teacher firings around the country. The impress ion seems to be that some mys· terlous plot is going on. The answer, at least.a Harge part of it, comes down to simple arithmetic: You cannot kill off one-third of our children before they are born and expect that not to be reflected in our school population 10 years later. And that's precisely what we're doing right now. Let's look at some of those numbers. Since 1980, and per haps before that, at least 1,550, 000 unborn children are being killed each year, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the rese~rch wing of Planned Parenthood. In eight years that li>:lds up to more than 12 million children. Our school enrollment nationally is going down each year, but let's compare that 12
million with the total 1978 grade school enrollment in the United States: 28,490,000. Assuming, as signs indicate, that this rate of abortions con tinues for the next several years, this means that more than 40 percent of the children who would be in our grade schools Tum to Page Three
BEG·INNING THIS WEEK
/::tiIIIII
".~>, ..c .. THE MOMENT OF PRIESTHO()D: Bishop Daniel A. Cronin imposes his hands on the head of Father Paul A. Caron at the climactic moment of ordination ceremonies last Sat urday at S1. Mary's Cathedral. Another pict uJre on page 6.
A boost to Polish m,orale
Aim of papal trip
on page 5
A. COLUMN about CATHOLICISM in the Reel World by Bill Reel
Qy
F~ther
Kenneth J. Doyle NC News Service The aim of Pope John Paul II's trip to Poland, which started yesterday, is the provision of a badly needed moral boost tq the pontiff's fellow Poles. Vatican officials see this as the immediate practical effect the pope's second trip to his native country in his four-and-a-half year pontificate. "I don't think that the pope will change the external political
situation, at least not immeCli· ately," a Polish priest on tIie Vatican staff said. "That situa tion is deeeply rooted in political and social history and any changes will be long term ones. But the pope is going to confirm the faith of the people." In Poland, the coexistence of opposing groups is something very strained and difficult to day. And Jesus said to love your enemies, to forgive and to be reconciled."
Lech Walesa, f.ounder of the now-illegal Solidarity labor union, also observed that the pope is comnng chiefly as a spiritual leader, but added that religion and politics are tightly inter-woven in Poland. Whatever the pope's purpose for the trip, the Polish Commun ist government has its own: to put a different face on Poland, as it is viewejd by the Western world. Tum to Page Six