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Dear Bishops,
One of my most hopeful moments of church came when the bishops of the United States were willing
to wrestle with the questions of nuclear morality in a nuclear world. One of my most disappointing
moments, on the other hand, came when you failed to say that deterrence that is aimed at the
destruction of the globe is morally unacceptable, that a defense system that has already begun to
erode the social fiber of our country with its lustful, gluttonous, profligate use of resources could
possible be a sinless activity.

How can we possibly say that what is immoral to use is moral to design and develop and deploy? How
can we possibly say that to abort a fetus is morally wrong but that the weapons intended only to abort
the whole human race is not? How can we possibly make ourselves and our generation more worthy of
the ultimate act of retaliation than at any other possible moment in history?

Isn’t the arrogance of those postures alone a sin against the Holy Spirit?

How is it that we can ask people to be prepared to die in nuclear warfare in the name of a “defense”
that is destructive but refuse to ask them to be prepared to die in passive resistance in the name of
the gospel? All that would happen to us if we faced a nuclear attack without weapons is that we would
die, but isn’t that the very posture that we clearly espouse even now in the name of “defense”? And
isn’t that precisely the kind of deterrence that we expect from the non-nuclear world even now?

The point is that we say nuclear weapons alone can be a deterrence to nuclear war. But surely there
is a rational and Christian deterrence as well that would be equally effective.

It was a Christian state that designed the Holocaust, and Christian countries that waged the Inquisition,
and Christian states that burned witches and napalmed Vietnamese villages and used the atomic bomb,
not once but twice, for experimental purposes. Now, with all the planet and universal human morality
and civilization itself at stake, in an age when errors cannot be forgiven, we are begging you, lead this
Christian state to more than that.

The Rule of Benedict requires humility as the cornerstone of spirituality built in the patriarchal culture
of imperial Rome. We need that same humility now from the church. Call the country to negotiations,
to human respect, to faith and to humility in our dealing with both the little and the great ones of the
world.

There is an ancient proverb that teaches, “Wherever there is excess in anything, something is lacking.”
Finish the fine work you have begun and give the nation what it lacks, to its peril, in its excessive
militarism—the challenge of peace.

–letter by Joan Chittister from Dear Bishops: Open Letters on the Morality of Nuclear Deterrence
Addressed to the US Catholic Bishops, Pax Christi USA, 1989, 5th anniversary of US Roman Catholics
pastoral, “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response.”