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Reject nuclear weapons – say Scottish bishops

Scottish bishops urge Britain to reject nuclear weapons, Crux, Simon Caldwell  July 14, 2016 

All eight bishops issued a joint statement calling for nuclear disarmament ahead of a July 18 vote in Parliament on whether to renew the Trident submarine-based nuclear weapons system.

The bishops also suggested the $272 billion cost of replacing the aging arsenal of nuclear weapons could not be morally justified.

“The bishops of Scotland have, for a long time, pointed out the immorality of the use of strategic nuclear weapons due to the indiscriminate destruction of innocent human life that their use would cause,” they said.

“Lives are being lost now because money that could be spent on the needy and the poor is tied up in nuclear arsenals,” the bishops said, adding that they endorsed the words of Pope Francis that “spending on nuclear weapons squanders the wealth of nations.”……..

Theresa May, the incoming prime minister and leader of the ruling Conservative Party, is keen to retain a nuclear capacity, but the Labor Party leadership and the Scottish National Party want to scrap the warheads.

The intervention by the Scottish bishops represents the second time in a decade and the third in 35 years that they have called on Britain to rid itself of nuclear weapons.

The statement comes less than a year after Pope Francis marked the 70th anniversary of the day the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, by inviting humanity to reject war and to “ban nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction.”

It also comes as the Washington Post reported that U.S. President Barack Obama will use his final six months in office to push for a radical reduction of nuclear weapons globally, in the hope that the policy might lead to eventual abolition.MANCHESTER, England – The British government must take “decisive and courageous steps” toward ridding the country of nuclear weapons, the Catholic bishops of Scotland have said.

They said Britain had an obligation under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty “to work toward the disposing and elimination of all nuclear weapons.”

“Britain should take more decisive and courageous steps to revive that aspect of the treaty and not seek to prolong the status quo,” the bishops said in the July 12 statement.

July 15, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics, UK