Overview of 1986-89 and The Challenge of Peace
In which Teófilo gives a very brief overview of the years 1986-89 before discussing his first moral challenge he faced while in the military.
“The condition of man . . . is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.”
~Thomas Hobbes
At the risk of becoming trite and repetitive, I must say that the three-and-a-half years between January 1986 and July 1989 were pivotal in our lives together. I mean, when wasn’t such a time?
First and foremost, during this time we became parents and that, by itself, is huge and life-transforming. I also continued my schooling in a part-time basis. I survived a collision with a cow on New Underwood Road while riding as a passenger in a utility van (U-Van) and enjoyed two helicopter evacuations from otherwise inaccessible missile sites. Tragically, I suffered through the loss of three comrades who crashed while flying in one.
Mom and I started speaking each other shortly after the birth of our firstborn baby. I would visit a Schoenstatt Shrine in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota and make my Covenant of Love with Our Lady in Puerto Rico, at the site of the then future Shrine to be built in Juana Díaz. I would witness the episcopal consecration of Archbishop Charles Chaput as Bishop of Rapid City.
I read voraciously across many technical, scientific, and theological subjects as well as reams of Sci-Fi novels. I also first became aware of my conservative philosophical and political leanings. Most importantly, during this period I developed my expertise with personal computers, programming, and social forums which would have immense, unforeseen ramifications later on.
At the end of this time, I re-enlisted, and changed career fields to the one which would pay my salary for the following 33 years: intelligence. Let’s start with the first challenge my moral conscience ever faced.
The Morality of Nuclear Weapons
Of course, this is a huge issue and I’m not going to solve it once and for all in a few paragraphs. Besides, if I’d had initial qualms about working in or around nuclear weapons, I wouldn’t have enlisted. However, the subject came to the fore in my consciousness by three means. First, my friend Harriett confessed to me that she had participated in antinuclear demonstrations in Ellsworth during the 1970’s. She didn’t go into any theoretical explanation for her reasons. I just read her deep opposition in her eyes and I had no questions. I did tell her that I would have to do my duty of stopping anyone, no matter their reasons, from entering a nuclear facility without authorization. Thankfully, it never got to that extreme. She did get me thinking about the issue again, though.
Second, there was my reading of Thomas Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. Harriett has suggested Merton’s book to me during a visit to The Mustard Seed. I knew nothing at all about Merton until I read this book sometime in 1986. I would come to know more about and from him, not all of it good. Yet, in reading his autobiography I found a fellow young man separated by time and space, who questioned everything yet experienced a radical conversion to Christ and into the Catholic Church. Few books have impacted me as much as did The Seven Storey Mountain then, and the ramifications it brought to me after reading it. There, you can appreciate Merton’s consistent pacifism which he held well before becoming known by the public at large. As I was a person of developing conscience, Merton’s thought gave me pause.
The third means was the then recent letter by the US Catholic Bishops, titled, The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response. In this letter, the US bishops taught: No defensive strategy, nuclear or conventional, which exceeds the limits of proportionality is morally permissible. The Bishops repeated in their letter the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, to wit,
All those who enter the military service in loyalty to their country should look upon themselves as the custodians of the security and freedom of their fellow countrymen; and when they carry out their duty properly, they are contributing to the maintenance of peace" (Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, #79).
Yet, they chose to discuss the right of would-be draftees to conscientious objection, but chose not to discuss the positive conscience of members of an all-volunteer force to upkeep, maintain, and protect the nuclear weapons in their midst.
My solution to the moral quandary then led me to develop my Catholic moral view of the military as a profession, and my own personal ethics regarding my participation in nuclear forces. First, I wasn’t responsible for the numerous and polyvalent policy decisions that ended with us working in the South Dakotan boondocks. I thought that nuclear weapons were already a given in my personal situation, and that their loss or mishandling would lead to immense evils. Someone had to stop that from occurring, and I was satisfied that the team I’d joined was up for that protective task.
Back then, I’d become aware of my growing Catholic moral conscience on many issues, but the nuclear weapons issue proved to be the first in how I related the demands from the Gospel with my military duties. I became convinced that, if people of conscience were to reject or abandon their military service, then the military establishment would be dominated by people without a conscience. I found that outcome worse than a blanket prohibition for Catholics or any person of good will, regardless of religious affiliation or of none, because their absence would guarantee the many horrific outcomes the Bishops had outlined on their Pastoral Letter.
In conclusion, I had no conscientious objections at that time, of serving to protect the nuclear weapons under my security control, from external, human threats short of a “counterforce” attack on the installation itself. By “counterforce attack” I mean a nuclear attack from the Soviets aimed at disabling our missiles before they launched. My M-16 was no match for an incoming Soviet warhead. Besides, once we’ve gotten to that point, our mission of “preserving the peace” would’ve failed. We’ve had to go home, if we survived, and if we had one left.
My stated personal conclusion, to the effect of “if people of conscience were to reject or abandon their military service, then the military establishment would be dominated by people without a conscience” became ingrained in my personal, moral “fabric” to this day.
Since then, the US and the Soviet Union, followed by the Russian Federation, agreed to reduce and pair the number of their nuclear warheads and did so through the START treaties. Though at the time of this writing, the Russians had withdrawn from the treaty in the aftermath of their egregious military aggression against Ukraine, I hope and pray that the Russians find it within themselves to rejoin the treaty and continue their reduction – hopefully to none, but I know that’s never going to happen.
It’s never going to happen because war is the natural state of man: war against God, war against each other, and war against himself has been the norm since the dawn of our species. That will not change, ever, this side of the Parousia of the Son of God. Therefore, I cry, Maranatha! Our Lord, come!
Bonus Link
A Crucial Moment for Catholic Moral Theology.
Bonus Videos
An apropos video from 1986, and then some video Mertoniana.