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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JANUARY 20, 1984
Without dealing in specifics, John Paul said world leaders must
avoid "political opportunism" and "dangerous adventures."•.. But
John Paul said he was not advocating passive acceptance of
injustice just for the sake of peace. "The person who deeply
desires peace rejects any kind of pacifism which is cowardice .Q£
the simple preservation oftranguillity," he saidwithout elabo
rating.
It is in the largely Roman Catholic countries of Europe, such as France and
Italy, where the pacifistic peace movements are weakest. A recent report
in the LOS ANGELES TIMES revealed that:
In Europe, fashionable ideas usually spread from France.. How
ever, the pacifist, anti-nuclear mood so popular among European
intellectuals and leftists these days did not come from France.
The mood, in fact, hardly exists here.... "Not only is France not
strongly pacifist," said Michel Tatu, defense analyst for the
respected French newspaper LE MONDE, in a recent interview, "but
it has become strongly anti-pacifist."
The present French mood, so out of step with that of European
intellectuals elsewhere, was reflected recently in an angry book
by a young philosopher condemning pacifism, and in a pastoral
letter from the French Catholic bishops supporting the principle
of nuclear deterrence. In the book [ THE FORCE OF VERTIGO] Andre
Glucksmann heaps scorn upon the American Catholic bishops and the
pacifist strain in their pastoral letter earlier this year on
nuclear war.
Scientists such as Albert Einstein, Glucksmann
recalls, took part in developing an atomic bomb out of fear that
Adolf Hitler would produce one first.
"My good fathers,"
Glucksmann addresses the American bishops, "in confidence, would
you have dared to reply to Einstein:
Rather Hitler than the
nuclear bomb?"•.•
The pastoral letter of the French Roman Catholic bishops was
looked on as far to the right of the American one. The French
bishops issued theirs on November 8, just a few days after
publication of the Glucksmann book. The bishops supperted the
need for defensive nuclear weapons so strongly that, according to
the French press, French military officers were astounded and
pleased.•.• "In a world where man is still� wolf to other men,"
the letter safa,''turning oneself into� lamb may perhaps provoke
� wolf."
Several factors seem to account for the absence of a pacifist
mood in France. The most significant evidently are that France,
unlike West Germany, has a nuclear force of 98 missiles of its
own, and, unlike both West Germany and Britain, refuses to allow
American missiles on its soil.
The difference between France and other European countries on
pacifism may also be rooted in the distant past. In an interview
with a Paris newspaper, Glucksmann traced the issue to the
history of religion and philosophy in Europe. Pointing out that
there is a line across Europe that separates the socialists of
the north- from the socialists of the south on the issue of