Deterrence priced by just-war doctrine: a documented migration inside one tradition — from conditional tolerance in 1982 to condemnation of possession in 2017 — with the scientists’ own manifestos making the same journey in parallel.
Tagged: Warfare Catholic Jewish
The bomb made one technology a subject of moral theology in public: just-war doctrine had to price deterrence. The Catholic trajectory across the century is the register’s best-documented movement of a stance: from the conditional acceptance of deterrence (Gaudium et spes, 1965; John Paul II’s 1982 ‘strictly conditioned’ formula) to Pope Francis’s 2017 judgment that the threat of use, and possession itself, are to be firmly condemned — a movement of the tradition’s center of gravity that its own just-war theorists argue about still.
The Stance Register
Each stance is recorded with its rationale in the tradition's own terms and its sources. Where a tradition argues with itself, the register says so.
Catholic Condemned
The tradition moved: indiscriminate destruction was condemned absolutely at Vatican II, deterrence was tolerated in 1982 only as a step toward disarmament, and in 2017 Francis condemned possession itself. The Church ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as the Holy See (2017) — among the first states to do so.
- Pope Francis, Address to the Symposium on Nuclear Disarmament (2017)
Jewish Contested within the tradition
Jewish rulings divide on deterrence as they do on other weapons: weapons that cannot be used without massacring innocents strain the tradition’s limits on war, while possession for deterrence has defenders under the law of self-defense (rodef). No consensus ruling exists.
- J. David Bleich, Contemporary Halakhic Problems, discussions of warfare
Mainline Protestant Condemned
Mainline bodies (the US Catholic bishops’ 1983 pastoral is Catholic; the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran statements are parallel) largely condemned first use and pressed abolition through the Cold War, and the mainline peace churches remain abolitionist.
- National Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace (1983)
Secular and naturalist Condemned
The scientists’ own secular movements (the Russell–Einstein Manifesto of 1955, Pugwash) made abolition a professional-ethical position inside science itself; state practice has ignored both manifestos and magisteria with equal consistency, which the register records without editorializing.
- Russell–Einstein Manifesto (1955)
See this register as a side-by-side comparison
References
- Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes (1965), §80–82
- Pope Francis, Address on Nuclear Disarmament (2017)
Related Across the Site
- Artificial intelligence and human dignity Flashpoint — Learning systems that counsel, accompany, and target: the live question is not machine consciousness but what may never be delegated — and every tradition on this site answers that accountability stays with persons.
- Gene editing and the germline Flashpoint — Easy technique, unconsenting subject, speculative benefit: the 2018 edited babies drew one condemnation in many vocabularies, and the line between somatic therapy and germline design is now the field’s governing border.
- emet Glossary Term — Firmness; faithfulness; truth.
- hesed Glossary Term — Steadfast love; covenant loyalty; mercy.
- mashiach Glossary Term — Anointed one.
- ruach Glossary Term — Breath; wind; spirit.
- Biblical Hebrew Language — The original language of the Hebrew Bible, preserved in the square script with Tiberian vocalization, and still the language of Jewish prayer.
- Twentieth Century Science Era — Relativity, quantum theory, and a priest’s Big Bang; war made science a state enterprise and the scientist’s conscience a public problem; creation-evolution litigation defined the American quarrel while genetics under Lysenko showed the cost of policing conclusions.