Archbishop John Wester gave the homily, excerpted here, at a Mass in Santa Fe, NM, on July 13, part of the observance of the 80th anniversary of the first test of a nuclear weapon—the Trinity Test on July 16, 1945. Developed in collaboration with Jay Coghlan (director of Nuclear Watch, New Mexico), the homily builds from the Gospel question “Who is my neighbor?” and calls for nuclear disarmament. Ann Suellentrop, vice chair of PeaceWorks KC, attended the service in Santa Fe and obtained the homily. In Wester’s email to Ann, he closed by signing off as “your brother in the Light of Christ’s Peace.”
Welcome to this house of God, the Basilica Cathedral of Saint Francis of Assisi, named for that venerable saint known for his devotion to peace and brotherly love.
Pope Francis, of happy memory, used today’s parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) as the centerpiece of his encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti,” on fraternity and social friendship. In the Good Samaritan parable, Jesus lays out his remarkable understanding of who my neighbor is. The word Jesus uses, in Greek, is given as “neighbor” in today’s Gospel. However, a better translation for the Greek word “plesion” is the one who is “near” or “close by.” So my neighbor is not the person with whom I agree … or who looks, speaks, and acts as I do. No, my neighbor is whoever happens to be near me or close by. It could be my bitter enemy: no matter. The one nearby is my neighbor. That is the person I am called to love, to go out of my way for, to risk everything for: my money, my time, my reputation, my purpose in life. This is Christianity at its finest and at its most challenging!
The Samaritans are mentioned in another part of the Gospel as well, the part when the disciples ask Jesus about calling down fire from heaven on the Samaritans, since they refused to welcome Jesus. As you know, Jesus rebukes the disciples for this suggestion.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus goes even further as he instructs his disciples to love their neighbor as themselves. Given that we will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the successful detonation of the atomic bomb at 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, I cannot help but see a connection between the “fire from heaven” that was born 80 years ago, and a fire that could rain down on modern-day Samaritans, whether they live in Russia, China, or anywhere in the world, including the United States. In other words, I see a connection between the world’s nuclear arsenal and the implications it has for how we treat our neighbors and how they treat us. Granted, we do not usually think of atomic weapons in this light, but I think we can all agree that at the very least, these bombs are not neighborly! … I believe it is impossible to live out the Gospel today and at the same time remain complacent about humankind’s possession of nuclear weapons. And given this Wednesday’s commemoration (on the 16th), we in New Mexico have a special role to play in encouraging a dynamic conversation that will hopefully lead to eventual nuclear disarmament.
Fewer than two hundred yards away from this Basilica is 109 East Palace Avenue, the secret gateway during the Manhattan Project to unimaginably destructive weapons. The bitter fruit of that massive effort was the Trinity Test, whose 80th anniversary is now just a few days away.
This Land of Enchantment is the birthplace of nuclear weapons—the Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs, and Kirtland Air Force Base with the country’s largest repository of warheads, are all within the Santa Fe Archdiocese. Therefore, I pray that this historic Cathedral can become a gateway to global nuclear disarmament. I am convinced that Saint Francis himself would want that.
Our dear late Pope Francis declared in Hiroshima on the 70th anniversary of its atomic bombing that “the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral.” The possession of nuclear weapons by anyone is a threat to everyone. The only way to permanently eliminate this immoral threat is to permanently eliminate nuclear weapons. Eighty years is already far too long. …
Four months ago, I was at the United Nations for the Third Meeting of the State Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. I celebrated a Mass in lower Manhattan at Maryhouse, founded by Dorothy Day. … In 1965, at the height of the Cold War, Dorothy Day denounced the “idea of arms being used as deterrents, to establish a balance of terror.” She supported the Second Vatican Council when it taught that nuclear warfare was incompatible with the then-prevailing theory of just war. The Second Vatican Council declared, “Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.”
Pope Francis moved us even beyond that. He led us in a dramatic shift away from conditional support of so-called deterrence to calling for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons. He declared, “We must never grow weary of working to support the principal international legal instruments of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, including the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”
The Vatican was the first nation-state to sign that Treaty. I believe it is the duty of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, the birthplace of nuclear weapons, to support the ban treaty and its goal of universal, verifiable nuclear disarmament. …
The official policy of nearly all world governments is nuclear disarmament, as pledged to in the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty. However, none of the nuclear weapons powers have honored the Treaty’s mandate to enter into serious negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament. To the contrary, they are now engaged in massive nuclear weapons “modernization” programs. The threats are arguably even more risky today given multiple nuclear actors, new cyber threats, new hypersonic weapons, and the advent of artificial intelligence. …
How are we to eradicate the nuclear danger, the one existential threat that could end civilization overnight?
First, we must puncture the very notion of “deterrence,” the one-word rationale that has always been used to justify our nuclear weapons stockpiles. So-called deterrence is now being used to rationalize our $2 trillion program to “modernize” our nuclear weapons, which is really a program to keep them forever.
In truth, the Pentagon has always rejected minimal deterrence, instead maintaining a hybrid of deterrence and nuclear-war-fighting capabilities that can end civilization overnight. That is why we have thousands of nuclear weapons instead of just a few hundred. That is why we are rebuilding our existing warheads with new military capabilities. That is why we are designing new nuclear weapons for the first time since the end of the Cold War. That is why we are building new facilities for long-term production and procuring new missiles, submarines, and new bombers to deliver nuclear weapons. And that is why the Los Alamos Lab is manufacturing new plutonium pit bomb cores, none of which is to maintain the existing stockpile. Instead, it is all for new nuclear weapons that could prompt the U.S. to resume testing.
All of this comes at an immense cost. At the same time, we are facing massive tax cuts for the already rich and nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, which 40 percent of New Mexicans rely upon. This is antithetical to the Church’s teachings of aiding the poor and taking care of the sick. In the coming fiscal year, the Department of Energy will spend $10.8 billion in New Mexico, 83 percent for nuclear weapons programs. That $10.8 billion is equal to the operating budget for the entire New Mexico state government. What good does all that DOE (Department of Energy) money do for the average New Mexican when we remain dead last in the quality of life for our children and their public education?
I return to the saintly example of Dorothy Day. She advocated for the Catholic economic theory of distributism, which asserts that the world’s wealth should be broadly owned instead of concentrated in just the hands of the few. That theory of spreading the wealth is itself rooted in Catholic social teaching on human dignity going back centuries to Saint Thomas Aquinas. Dorothy Day believed that the broad and equitable distribution of wealth was a third way between unfettered capitalism and state socialism. …
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons offers a third way between the haves and have-nots of nuclear weapons by focusing on the human security of a future world free of nuclear weapons. It also promotes environmental restoration and advocates for justice for the victims of nuclear testing and the nuclear weapons industries.
This ban treaty wants to build a true peace, not as the nuclear weapons powers would have it through collective terror, but through a peace built upon the complete abolition of nuclear weapons. It is a third way between the false narrative of so-called deterrence and the acquiescence by the non-weapons states to the nuclear apartheid imposed by the current Non-Proliferation Treaty regime. Common sense says this should be the international norm, given that chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction have long been banned.
How do we move forward? I suggest that faith leaders should begin to take a stronger and more active stance for universal and verifiable nuclear disarmament. We should appeal to a higher morality in order to eliminate this scourge of humanity.
Within faith communities, we must build enduring relationships that work on nuclear disarmament. As an example, I point to the formal partnership that the dioceses of Santa Fe, Seattle, Hiroshima and Nagasaki have established that we call the Partnership for a World without Nuclear Weapons.
We must take up the cause of global nuclear disarmament with the urgency that befits the seriousness of this cause and the dangerous threat that looms over all of humanity. I call upon all of us to take up the challenge of nuclear disarmament by engaging in this vital discussion and building of relationships that must lead to concrete action toward this noble goal. Eighty years of nuclear terror is far too long. With this Trinity Test anniversary, it is way past time to get rid of nuclear weapons. May God’s loving-kindness and our own efforts help us in that.
Your brother in the Light of Christ’s Peace,
Most Reverend John C. Wester, Archbishop of Santa Fe