Refocus attention on growing threat of nuclear weapons

First published in the Honolulu Star Advertiser Oct 23, 2025. Re-published here with permission.

Being pro-life has to mean doing much more to advance complete nuclear disarmament. 

Archbishop of Santa Fe, John Charles Wester, challenged those who attended this year’s Marianist Lecture at Chaminade University with this question: does anybody care that we have moved even closer to the annihilation of people and the planet?   His question grew out of the warning from the Science and Security Board (SASB) of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that the hands of the Doomsday clock are now just 89 seconds away from midnight. The SASB is a group of globally recognized leaders who track approaching catastrophe using the imagery of the Doomsday Clock. This year they warned that we are moving closer to self-annihilation because we have not done enough to reduce the threat from climate change, emerging technologies, and the build-up of nuclear weapons.

The Federal government’s announcement that 1400 employees of the agency that oversees the US nuclear stockpile will be furloughed only heightens the threat.

Archbishop Wester argued against the rationale that nuclear weapons are needed for deterrence, the logic of which is inherently self-defeating.

Hawaii was lucky that the missile alert of 2018 turned out to be simply human error. But “luck,” he said, is not a strategy that could protect us from the irrationality of leaders who engage in saber-rattling. And when the “sabers” are Trident submarines armed with nuclear-powered ballistic missiles capable of destroying everything, the threat of self-destruction looms large. 

The horror of potential nuclear conflict perhaps makes us subsume it beneath the press of daily challenges.  And yet, what the Doomsday Clock is telling us is that this threat is growing.

Being pro-life has to mean doing much more to advance complete disarmament. 

Progress is possible. Archbishop Wester pointed out that the number of nuclear weapons in the world has decreased from over 63,000 in 1985 to 12,200 in 2025.  Institutional leadership and grassroots activism have helped. We need more of both. The Vatican was the first to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted in July 2017 by 122 non-nuclear-armed states. 

Martin Luther King Jr. warned against the “triple evils of militarism, racism, and materialism.” In 2018 a small group of Catholic activists marked the 50^th anniversary of his assassination by breaking into the Kings Bay Naval Base in Georgia, the largest submarine base in the world. The Kings Bay Plowshare activists splashed the weapons with vials of their own blood and hung banners proclaiming “The ultimate logic of Trident is omnicide” and “Nuclear weapons: illegal/immoral.”  These brave senior citizens received prison sentences for their efforts to raise the alarm about the peril of the nuclear arms race. 

Wally Inglis (left), Rev. Bob Miyake-Stoner, and others outside the Hawaii State Capitol every first working day of the month when the sirens wail in a test of the public warning system.

In Hawaii, ever since the false alert about an incoming missile, peace activist, Wally Inglis, and friends have gathered in front of the statue of Fr. Damien at the State Capitol at 11.30 a.m. on the first working day of each month when the state tests its warning sirens. Their half hour vigil is to say that public safety would be better assured if the world gave up the false security of nuclear weapons as deterrence. Anyone can join the vigil.

Churches have long preached that the candidates Christians vote for must be “pro-life,” understood as simply opposing abortions.  It’s time for churches to communicate just as forcefully that advocating for nuclear disarmament is also pro-life. As Pope Francis said, the money spent on deadly nuclear arms is money not applied to “real priorities facing our human family, such as the fight against poverty, the promotion of peace, the undertaking of educational, ecological and healthcare projects, and the development of human rights.”

 Archbishop Wester’s talk was a reminder that we must refocus our attention on the threat of mutual assured destruction (MAD). It starts with exercising our vote and electing leaders who will respond to the “fierce urgency of now.”