An NCR editorial - Published on National Catholic Reporter, Jul. 20, 2011"Viewed from a legal, political, security and most of all -- moral -- perspective, there is no justification today for the continued maintenance of nuclear weapons."
With these words while speaking in Kansas City, Mo., on July 1, Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, the Vatican's ambassador to the United Nations, reaffirmed Catholic teaching on nuclear weapons and deterrence -- teachings seemingly not widely known among Catholics and totally rejected by the nuclear-armed nations, including our own government.
The diplomat's speech was among the clearest enunciations of Catholic teachings on nuclear deterrence, but it was not the first time the Vatican has presented its position.
In 2002, Chullikatt told a U.N. committee working to prepare for the 2005 review conference of the nuclear weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty: "There can be no moral acceptance of military doctrines that embody the permanence of nuclear weapons. ... My delegation wishes to reaffirm its well-known position: Nuclear weapons are incompatible with the peace we seek for the 21st century; they cannot be justified. These weapons are instruments of death and destruction."
If we don't end nuclear weapons, they will end us
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