Letter to Archbishop Wester about Nuclear War

Lorin Peters <lorinpeters@yahoo.com>

To:archbishop.office@archdiosf.org,Lorin Peters

Sun, Jan 23 at 9:30 PM

Dear Archbishop Wester,

Thank you for your pastoral letter, Living in the Light of Christ’s Peace: A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament. I especially appreciated your words (p17, ❡5), "Instead, He says, “My body broken for you, my blood shed for you, do this.” Here Jesus offers the new covenant of nonviolence. Those of us who partake of the Eucharist enter into the way of the nonviolent Jesus, which is the preference of suffering and dying, rather than killing." Fortunately, Michael Nagler at UC Berkeley taught me this law of redemptive suffering, as demonstrated in the lives of Gandhi, King, Grande, Romero, and many others as well as Jesus.

My Dad was hired at Berkeley to help separate the isotopes of uranium dropped on Hiroshima.  (I later graduated from Berkeley in the same Physics Dept.)  We are addicted to our nuclear weapons because they enhance the power of our US empire.  As illustrated by Donald Trump's behavior, our elite will not always be wise enough to avoid blundering, unpredictably, into a nuclear war.  Martin Hellman (FAS Senior Fellow for nuclear risk analysis) estimates the half-life of our nuclear civilization at roughly three centuries.  Even if no Americans are killed in the nuclear exchange itself, at least 99% may die in the nuclear winter famine that follows.

Your words resonate far beyond New Mexico and challenge each one of us as Catholics and Americans to redouble our efforts to eliminate these weapons which threaten Earth, our Common Home, and have the capacity to end life on this planet.

Pope Francis reminds us that even the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral. As the world’s first nuclear armed state, we have a responsibility to lead the way toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Thank you for reminding us of this responsibility.

Pace e bene

Lorin Peters