The U.S. Catholic bishops have welcomed the Obama administration’s tentative agreement aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and their top spokesman on international affairs bluntly warned Congress against doing anything to undermine it.
The bishops “oppose efforts that seek to undermine the negotiation process or make a responsible multi-party agreement more difficult to achieve and implement,” Bishop Oscar Cantu, chairman of the bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace Committee, wrote to House and Senate lawmakers on Monday (April 13).
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In a parallel development, dozens of other U.S. Christian leaders, largely mainline Protestants and liberal evangelicals, ran a full-page ad Monday in the Washington newspaper Roll Call that called on lawmakers to support the framework agreement.
Titled “Hope, But Verify” — a riff on Ronald Reagan’s “Trust, but verify” slogan about negotiating with the Soviets in the 1980s — the statement was organized by the Rev. Jim Wallis, head of Sojourners, and it says the framework must be fleshed out and compliance carefully monitored.
But the ad praises the framework as a crucial step forward for peace, and the dozens of signatories call on the nation’s political leaders to “pursue this agreement with integrity, commitment, and perseverance.”