La bomba, i vescovi e Reagan: la lettera pastorale "The Challenge of Peace" tra postconcilio e ricalibrature romane

While the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the United States was preparing its pastoral letter The Challenge of Peace, a document of unprecedented length and specificity that expressed dissent from the Reagan administration defense policy and redirected the just war theory back to the original presumption against violence and killing, some of its members were invited to Rome in 1983 to discuss this project with representatives of some European episcopal conferences. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who chaired the meeting, proposed five points for discussion, the first of which was his statement that the teaching authority (mandatum docendi) belongs only to individual bishops and to the entire college with the pope, and not to episcopal conferences. As a result, the pastoral changed significantly between the second and the third draft, in the wake of the Vatican consultation. Although the shared goals and level of trust that existed between the president and John Paul II certainly colored the way the letter was revised, this article argues that, despite any claim of direct causation, the source of all this was a very reductionist view of the nature and role of episcopal conferences.