Catholicism and Modern Memory: Some Sociological Reflections on the Symbolic Foundations of the Rhetorical Force of the Pastoral Letter, “The Challenge of Peace”
The American Bishops' pastoral letter, “The Challenge of Peace” has received a surprising amount of attention, and the reasons for this lie on several different levels. Historic Catholic anti-communism is well-known, so the Bishops' criticism of American nuclear policy is especially tellin...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
[publisher not identified]
1984
|
| In: |
Sociological analysis
Year: 1984, Volume: 45, Issue: 2, Pages: 131-144 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The American Bishops' pastoral letter, “The Challenge of Peace” has received a surprising amount of attention, and the reasons for this lie on several different levels. Historic Catholic anti-communism is well-known, so the Bishops' criticism of American nuclear policy is especially telling since it cannot be dismissed as stemming from any “softness” toward communism. The moral conservatism of Catholicism is equally well-known, so its criticisms of American defense policies cannot be attributed to a moral relativism or an unprincipled “better red than dead” moral nihilism. Since much of the debate about national defense involves details of parity and nuclear technology which defy citizen comprehension, it must be waged in terms of symbols appealing to a kind of civic fideism. In this context the counter-symbolics of Roman Catholicism become particularly potent.There are more subtle levels of symbolism which help explain the attention given to the pastoral letter. Among Christian traditions Catholicism had continued to urge on its laity the teaching that there was a category of acts which were “intrinsically evil,” and thus were impermissable in any situation even to achieve good ends. When applied to questions of national security this moral traditionalism inexorably leads to conclusions which by conventional political standards are radical and enormously difficult for governments to assimilate. On a more analytical level, there seems to have resulted from the Reformation an unplanned division of labor within Christianity following social-psychological lines which affects the ethics of the churches so that mainstream Protestantism has come to symbolize individual conscience and cultural flexibility, while in opposition Catholicism has come to define itself as the prime locus of moral memory. Some of the fascinated attention paid to “The Challenge of Peace” derives from the lingering hope that in the collective memory of the West there remains one last taboo preventing the self-destruction of the human species. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2325-7873 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Sociological analysis
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/3710745 |