Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico continues to call upon faith leaders to step up and call for the abolishment of nuclear weapons. Read more about Bishop Wester’s message and watch the video.
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Faith Leaders Need to Step Up Call to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
As published by CatholicWorker.org February 22, 2024
Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico, addressed the immorality of nuclear weapons and the moral imperative to abolish them in his sermon at the Mass for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, sponsored by the Dorothy Day Guild, at Our Savior Church in New York City. The event was held on November 29, 2023—the anniversary of Day’s death—and Wester cited Day’s early witness against nuclear weapons. Wester called on faith leaders, and Catholics in particular, to step up efforts to abolish nuclear weapons.
How did it go so wrong more than thirty years after the end of the first nuclear arms race? How is it that we are now arguably in an even more dangerous nuclear arms race? The good-ol’-days of the past Cold War look simple now with its Mutually Assured Destruction, which nevertheless like its acronym MAD was actually insane. Things are arguably even more risky today given today’s multiple nuclear actors, new cyber threats, new hypersonic weapons and the advent of artificial intelligence. How do we get out of this unprecedented danger?
Nuclear weapons are deeply immoral because of their indiscriminate killing of women, children, noncombatants, the old, the newborn and the infirm. In peacetime they rob resources from the needy and the poor. I believe that the Catholic Church, however imperfectly we follow our savior Jesus Christ, should take up nuclear disarmament as a critical pro-life issue. To me that is common sense when one nuclear weapon can kill millions and inflict incalculable suffering upon the living. ~ Archbishop John Wester
