The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response is a 1983 pastoral letter of the American Catholic bishops addressing the issue of war and peace in a nuclear age. It reviewed the Catholic Church's teachings about peace and war, reaffirmed the “just war” theory as the main principles for evaluating the use of military force, acknowledged the legitimacy of nonviolence as an alternative moral framework for individuals, evaluated the current issues in US defense policy, and proposed a series of actions that individuals could undertake.
Background
The bishops decided to take a fresh look at the problems of war and peace at their November 1980 meeting. This decision was motivated by their concern over a number of developments in US-Soviet relations and US nuclear weapons policy in recent years.
The US-USSR détente was under increasing strain from the mid-1970s and ceased altogether after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Large increases in the Soviet missile force led conservative critics of the policies of the Nixon, Ford and Carter Administrations to charge that strategic stability based on nuclear parity and the strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction had failed and needed to be replaced by a major increase in American nuclear forces such that the US would have the capacity to fight an extended nuclear war. Carter's Secretary of Defense Harold Brown announced a shift in US strategy to denial of the Soviet Union of having any capacity to initiate a nuclear war and win. New weapon systems were advanced to achieve such nuclear war fighting capability, in particular, the Trident submarine launched ballistic missile, the MX ICBM and the ground-launched cruise missile. The SALT II arms control treaty was signed in 1979 but the US Senate failed to ratify it. During the 1980 presidential election campaign, Ronald Reagan promised that his administration would undertake an acceleration of the build-up of US nuclear forces. Upon taking office, his administration followed through on that promise. Upper-level defense officials spoke of attaining the capability to prevail in a nuclear war and advocated an increase in civil defense capabilities to protect much of the public in case of such a war.
The acceleration of the strategic arms race, the hardening of US-Soviet conflict and the rhetoric of nuclear war fighting produced a substantial public reaction. Huge demonstrations in Europe and the US opposed the increase in nuclear weapons expenditures and deployments. A movement for a “freeze” in the nuclear arms race quickly gained support in the Western nations. Several studies carefully and exhaustively detailed the catastrophic consequences of any large scale use of nuclear weapons in order to refute the idea that nuclear war could be survived, much less won.
In response, at their 1980 annual meeting National Conference of Catholic Bishops decided to undertake a review of Catholic teaching on war and peace as it would pertain to contemporary issues of nuclear deterrence, nuclear strategy and the deployment of various weapons systems.
Archbishop John Roach, President of the NCCB, appointed an ad hoc committee to undertake such a study. The five members were Joseph Bernardin, who chaired the committee, John O’Connor, Thomas Gumbleton, Daniel Reilly and George Fulcher. O’Connor was Auxiliary Bishop of the Military Ordinate (that is, the chaplains serving the armed forces) and would be sympathetic to arguments supportive of the military. Gumbleton was a prominent member of Pax Christi USA, a Catholic peace organization; he would bring to the committee a perspective critical of military programs. Reilly and Fulcher were chosen because they had not previously committed themselves to positions on the issues before the committee. In addition, two leaders of ordained religious orders were appointed to participate in the work and discussions of the committee, but without a vote. They were Father Richard Warner and Sister Juliana Casey.