The Challenge of Peace Document Needs Revision

In 1983 the Catholic Bishops published their historic pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response. Twenty years later, a forum at Woodstock offered reflections on this letter. Both church officials and the mainstream press seem to have missed a major shift in world affairs. Warfare and military spending have declined worldwide. The decline is large: 40 percent overall and 80 percent in major conflicts.

Outside the Beltway has a comprehensive posting on the decline of warfare over the past 20 years. For the moment, I'll quote James' Joyner's comment and add one of my own. Joyner summarizes the discussion:

Mack and Bay are onto something with their focus on the mass media's coverage of war as a key variable. Even though modern wars are fought with greater precision and far fewer casualties than their predecessors of even a quarter century ago, the Western public is increasingly hostile to war and its consequences. Seeing them unfold live and in color in their living rooms is surely a major contributing factor to that.

There are three themes to be explored:

• The reasons for the decline of warfare
• The reasons for the mainstream media's near total failure to report the story
• The religious dimensions of the story

The nature of warfare is changing. Church leaders, insofar as I can see, are unaware of this. Given all this data, one would hope that the Bishops could revise their in light of the changing nature of warfare, successes in the international community in lowering the level of violence and the changing nature of violence facing the international community.

For my previous discussions of this decline start here. For what this might mean from a theological perspective go here