“Doing It Right”

A recent editorial in the Sun of Gainesville, Florida, contrasted the so-called Moral Majority with Jehovah’s Witnesses in their approach to morality. “[The Witness] publication, The Watchtower, provides the instructions​—most of them reassertions of long established principles,” noted the Sun. And “the offender who resists ‘loving concern’ is apt to be ‘disfellowshipped,’ which means dismissal from the congregation. . . . The discipline may offend some Americans, but it is entirely proper for Witnesses to enforce their own fellowship rules. It is a voluntary association, and the exit is easy for anybody who wants out.”

The editorial observed that, in contrast, the religious Moral Majority politically “seeks to enforce its doctrine not only upon its members​—but wants to enact its beliefs as national policy.” In the opinion of the Sun, this mixing of religion and politics is unconstitutional, and therefore the Moral Majority is “doing it wrong and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are doing it right.”

Atomic Stockpiling “Legitimate”?

In his annual letter to Catholic military chaplains, New York’s Cardinal Terence Cooke wrote concerning the morality of the American nuclear weapons buildup. As published in the National Catholic Reporter, the cardinal declared: “A strategy of nuclear deterrence can be morally tolerable if a nation is sincerely trying to come up with a rational alternative. . . . The church has traditionally taught and continues to teach that a government has both the right and the duty to protect its people against unjust aggression. This means that it is legitimate to develop and maintain weapons systems to try to prevent war by ‘deterring’ another nation from attacking.”

Cooke also said that nations are obligated to rid themselves of nuclear weapons altogether, “but the church points out that this must be done gradually, with all nations cooperating, and with prudence. . . . Under no circumstances,” the cardinal cautioned, “may a nation start a war.” How does this traditional rationalization affect the Catholic flock in practical terms? The record of history reveals that tens of millions of Roman Catholics and their clerical shepherds gave their all in support of the German military machines that ‘started’ two world wars.