Like Brian Wicker (The Tablet, 7 March), I was puzzled if not surprised by the absence of any mention of Trident (or militarism more generally) in the election advice of the English and Welsh Bishops. We mandate to our government the constraints of retributive justice, which include the use of force within designated limits. Gaudium et Spes was plain in stating what was, I believe, the sole condemnation of the whole Second Vatican Council: "Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and humankind itself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation" (80). This is of course a condemnation of the means, be they nuclear or any other weapons. But at root it is a condemnation of the mindset that can contemplate and plan for such acts of destruction by whatever means.
Thus, for those who try to wriggle out of this condemnation by using the casuistry of deterrence and the dangers of unilateralism, as long ago as 1982 the Scottish Bishops noted that "if it is immoral to use these weapons, it is also immoral to threaten their use". The Scottish Bishops reaffirmed this view in 2006, with a further implication: "In repeating our previous statement... we urge the Government of the United Kingdom not to invest in a replacement for the Trident system and to begin the process of decommissioning these weapons". This is perhaps doubly appropriate, since the British independent nuclear deterrent (which is really neither British, independent nor a deterrent) has its base at Faslane on the Clyde, 25 miles from Glasgow.
While the three main UK parties may be pro-Trident, the SNP is opposed; and a recent survey shows that 75 per cent of Labour's prospective parliamentary candidates are against renewing Trident (New Statesman, 3 March 2015). Whatever the vagaries of party politics, it is unfortunate that the advice from the English and Welsh Bishops leaves unquestioned a policy of national defence which contradicts the principles of Catholic Social Teaching emphasised elsewhere in the same advice: life, human dignity, solidarity and the common good.
Tim Duffy, Justice and Peace Scotland, Glasgow
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