PopeWatch often has a bleak amusement regarding Vatican pronunciations on nuclear weapons:
Nuclear arms offer a false sense of security and the uneasy peace promised by nuclear deterrence is a tragic illusion.” Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the apostolic nuncio heading the Holy See’s permanent observer mission to the United Nations, said Oct. 17.
“Nuclear weapons cannot create a stable and secure world. Peace and international stability cannot be established on mutually assured destruction or on the threat of total annihilation. Lasting peace cannot be guaranteed by the maintenance of a balance of terror,” he added.
Instead, peace must be based on justice, socio-economic development, freedom, human rights, and building trust between peoples, the archbishop told a session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City.
“The indefinite possession of nuclear weapons is morally wrong,” he added, deeming this an affront to the “entire framework of the United Nations” and a contradiction to its vocation of service to humanity and the global common good.
He cited Pope Francis’ September 2015 address to the U.N. The Roman Pontiff stressed the “urgent need to work for a world free of nuclear weapons” and backed the non-proliferation treaty as a step towards “a complete prohibition of these weapons.”
Archbishop Auza lamented resistance to the Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which requires nuclear states to divest themselves of their nuclear arsenals. He said this resistance undermines the credibility of boycotts, threats, and other forms of persuasion against countries suspected of developing nuclear weapons.
He called on the committee to redouble its efforts to help the U.N. General Assembly secure a legally binding prohibition on nuclear weapons.
Go here to read the rest. PopeWatch was struck by the phrase “a legally binding prohibition on nuclear weapons.” PopeWatch knows a bit about the law and has the following questions:
- Who would enforce such a prohibition?
- How would such a prohibition be enforced?
- What would be the remedy if a nation cheated, kept nuclear weapons, and confronted a world otherwise devoid of nuclear weapons?
The only way to enforce a prohibition on a nation from possessing nuclear weapons is for the greater nation enacting the prohibition to have nuclear weapons and be willing to use them for such enforcement.
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As I said before and will say again, the best nuclear weapon is one whose uranium and plutonium have been down-blended for use in commercial nuclear reactors to generate the electricity. Does Jorge Bergoglio and the Vatican support that? I think not.
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Failing that, as long as Russia, China, DPRK, and now soon Iran have nuclear weapons, then we need to maintain our nuclear deterrent. Or would Rome prefer to follow Sodom and Gomorrah as an Iranian bomb explodes overhead?
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BTW, did any of these clerics serve aboard a nuclear-armed, nuclear propelled submarine? Or in a Minuteman III missile silo? Or aboard a nuclear armed B-52? No? Then they need to either shut the frack up or replace their anti-war rhetoric with what the Gospel says, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”
Listening to the current Vatican bureaucracy yap about nuclear weapons is like listening to the Hildebeast support the Second Amendment.
A lot of Vatican pronouncements involve either demanding the impossible or demanding the possible while forbidding any practical means of achieving it.
Pope Francis would have done better at the UN if he had called for prayers for peace, especially the Rosary. OH, the UN is atheistic. Oh, the UN subsumes all men into its atheism. I can imagine Mother Teresa speaking at the UN invoking prayer and supplication to God for world peace, like holy water on the devil, especially holy water from Lourdes.
Seems to me that a belief in Hell and “mutually assured destruction” are similar in affect.
A profound belief in Hell, and it’s effects, having caused a change in attitude and actions of individuals have prevented those same persons from going to and suffering in Hell.
Similarly, a belief in the “mutually assured destruction” of nuclear weapons, having caused a change in attitude and actions (in nations) have prevented many people from suffering a Hell-like inferno on this Earth.
Well, lasting peace isn’t compatible with nuclear weapons.
That doesn’t mean that you don’t need weapons that can do serious damage in order to stop the bad guys long enough to get the foundation for some form of world peace.
Of course, the level of perfection for actual world peace would require the second coming…..
Instead, peace must be based on justice, socio-economic development, freedom, human rights, and building trust between peoples, the archbishop told a session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City.
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More mush from the wimps. Peace is irrelevant to these goods. You’ve had peace on the Korean peninsula for 63 years, even though the northern half thereof is as grisly a locus as you can find in this world. You have peace when you have an equilbrium no actor feels compelled to attempt to change. If there is justice incorporated into everyday life, that’s gravy.
That’s not peace. That’s a cessation of hostilities. Often that’s the best we can manage in this fallen world. But the way I figure it, when we have “justice, socio-economic development, freedom, human rights and trust between peoples” of a more or lss universal nature, then —and only then— we can rid the worl of nuclear arms; and not the other way around.
The worst weapon is that possessed by the Vatican itself. It is called the tolerance of evil which encourages bad behavior. Pope Francis himself is causing untold damage in the world by his countenancing the evil of Islam, Communist dictators, homosexuality in the clergy, and laxity in sexual morality, etc.
And will we soon hear Iran’s possession of nukes defended by those who have assumed some earthly power over Jesus’s Church based on just war theory, self defense principles with quotes from non-Jesuit Thomas Aquinas, and social justice theory a la Alinsky? All commenters above- muchas gracias–I cannot remember when I agreed with all, such an august sage wise group-many thanks-we can all rejoice in that like St Dismas we can go to our death’s proclaiming, in the face of the pagans and the lions and the democrats and the totalitarians [yes-some overlapping redundancy],, “Jesus is Lord” and as Foxifer says, when that second coming comes along, there will be peace; but it will NOT be a UN peace. Guy McClung, San Antonio TX