The Bishop Speaks

Even violent anti-Catholics concede that, at least for its first thousand years, the Roman Catholic Church was the world's greatest force for universal peace. Meeting last week in Washington, the potent U.S. Catholic hierarchy (118 archbishops and bishops) threw its sizable weight behind a new international peace organization. The news came in a six-page statement signed by the National Catholic Welfare Conference's administrative board.*

The bishops had three main points to stress: 1) the Atlantic Charter is a noble statement of principles and should, therefore, be put into effect "without reservations or equivocations"; 2) the Dumbarton Oaks agreement needs a great deal of thinking about; 3) Soviet Russia will bear watching. Highlights of the statement:

P: Peace cannot be kept by power politics or "spheres of influence in a system of puppet governments."

P: A Security Council with limited membership is "reasonable," but the Council "must not be an instrument of imperialistic domination by a few powerful nations." And it must not (as the Soviet insists it must) "allow any nation to sit in judgment in its own case." Arbitration of international disputes should be obligatory.

P: "A nation which refuses to accord its own people the full enjoyment of innate human rights (civil and religious) cannot be relied upon to cooperate in the international community."

P: National sovereignty must be maintained, but that does not excuse a nation from its "obligations in the international community."

Realistic appraisers of human affairs, the bishops were not too sanguine. They could foresee a possible World War III, but hoped that it would be only a "war of punishment for outlaw nations."

* Archbishops Edward Mooney of Detroit, Samuel A. Stritch of Chicago, Francis J. Spellman of New York, John T. McNicholas of Cincinnati, John Gregory Murray of St. Paul, John J. Mitty of San Francisco, Joseph F. Rummel of New Orleans; Bishops John F. Noll of Fort Wayne, Karl J. Alter of Toledo, James H. Ryan of Omaha.

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