Managing dissent in the Catholic Church: A reinterpretation of the pastoral letter on war and peace

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Abstract
As a political statement, the Catholic bishops’ Pastoral Letter on War and Peace has been interpreted as an endorsement of the nuclear freeze movement andas a bold challenge to the policies of the Reagan Administration. Yet in its religious context, the letter reasserted the bishops’ authority to define Church teachings on war and peace, and it forcefully repudiated the theological and political “revisionism” of the Catholic New Left. As a response to Catholic antinuclear activists, the pastoral letter is not at all a “radical” statement. Within the Church, it functioned rhetorically not to foster but to manage dissent.