The possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral, Pope Francis said

[mythbuster1]

You’re right about nukes putting world leaders on the front lines, but kings used to lead their armies from the front.

 

[GEddie]

That ceased to be an issue long before E = mc2.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Buks]

Nothing in this description really differs from the effects of gunpowder charges and burning pitch used centuries before nuclear power was used.

One thing that differs is that the gunpowder and pitch didn’t burn a lady innocently at work far away.

 

[AdamP88]

Not sure you can say that possession of nuclear weapons is immoral. The use of them definitely can be said to be immoral in most cases as it goes against the criteria for just behaviour in conflict. But you can’t put pandora back in the box. They exist now and if Western countries decommissioned their nukes then you’d still have countries like North Korea trying to obtain them. Therefore they need to keep some nuclear deterrent. In my view the West needs to focus on closer ties with Russia in order to make the world safer. The only way to get rid of Nuclear weapons now would be to also suppress all knowledge of them, an almost impossible task.

 

[Anesti33]

humanity is condemned

On the contrary, mankind is redeemed by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And whether Christ comes again before or after a world war, we have heard the Good News, and seen the saving power of God.

Genesis 18:16-33

 

[Hodos]

The Pope isn’t a nuclear engineer. He doesn’t know what it takes to get rid of nuclear weapons, nor does he appreciate that the money spent on nuclear weapons is far less than the money that would be spent on conventional arms without them. Peace and disarmament starts with an accurate understanding of the problem.

To add to what you stated, the accurate understanding of the problem is related to our anthropology. Namely, mankind is in bondage to sin and cannot free himself. For this reason, God provided the law, and authorities to enforce the law. This includes armies to maintain security against evil leaders who would attack and harm their neighbors on the international level. The Church’s best response to the presence of nuclear arms is not to decry nuclear arms. It is to proclaim God’s law, that we might know what God’s will is for how we should love our neighbor, and the Gospel, that Jesus Christ was crucified for our sins and rose from the dead that we might be raised to new life in him. Unfortunately, not all will accept either, even unto the last day. In the meantime, God has ordained earthly authorities to implement God’s justice on earth through the administration of law, and through the presence of armies that would restrain the ambitions of evil men to the extent that God’s grace allows so that they might not attack neighboring countries.

 

[Genesis315]

Here is a good analysis on the Church’s position on nuclear weapons from Pope Pius XII through Francis (yes, the article is from the SSPX, who are in an irregular canonical situation and working with the Church to resolve, but it is a good, brief explanation nonetheless).

https://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/pope-says-%E2%80%9Cno%E2%80%9D-atomic-weapons-29450

If you don’t want to click the link, basically, Pius XII was first completely for disarmament as nuclear weapons were always disproportional in a just war analysis, and therefore we would have to choose to suffer injustice rather than use them. Through the papacy of St. John Paul II, the Church accepted possessing them for bilateral deterrence as an intermediate step to disarmament–this toleration was mostly due to the need to maintain the political stability between the two superpowers with the world in a state of bi-polarization. With the breakdown of that situation, Benedict XVI and Francis returned to the earlier position of Pius XII.

 

[mythbuster1]

Fair enough. My issue is with how we get there. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States and Russia entered into an agreement to convert surplus Soviet weapons-grade uranium sufficient to build 20,000 nuclear weapons into fuel, which powered half of the American commercial reactor fleet for 20 years. This provided much-needed cash to Russia to keep their nuclear scientists on the payroll so they wouldn’t go work for third-world dictators or terrorists. President Trump cancelled the Savannah River MOX facility because it was years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, such that it would cost ten times more to finish than the fuel from New START disarmament would be worth. That is a lot of fuel out there that can’t readily be consumed, and which is most secure in the various launch facilities. Building a nuclear weapon is actually quite easy once you have the parts, and the hardest part to come by is the weapons-grade core. Now, there are reactors that are designed to consume weapons-grade fuel undiluted, but various laws and regulatory environments interfere with using the weapons cores for such purposes.

 

[AdamP88]

In my opinion, that war is predicted in both OT and NT scripture

As Catholics, we don’t do personal interpretation of scripture. There is no prediction of nuclear war in the scriptures and such a war is far from a certainty. It also wouldn’t get rid of the knowledge of nuclear weapons so there’d always be a possibility that we could make more.

 

[AdamP88]

My opinion is that the material world has as its primary purpose the teaching of the Law, and without having learned obedience to God’s laws, man’s soul is not suited for placement in a higher world.

That’s not what the Church teachers