The Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas, is the end of the line for the assembly of all U.S. nuclear weapons. Parts of nuclear warheads are shipped from all over the United States to Pantex, where they undergo final assembly.
The Trident submarine base at Bangor, Washington, is the end of the line for the deployment of a number of those weapons. Every three to five months the heavily armored White Train winds its way north from Pantex to Bangor to deliver approximately 200 more nuclear warheads to the Trident base.
The Catholic bishops of the two dioceses in which Pantex and Bangor are located, Amarillo Bishop Leroy Matthiesen and Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, help provide a nonviolent counterforce to the Pantex-Bangor connection.
On June 12, 1981, Hunthausen announced his support for widespread tax resistance, an action he has personally taken, as a nonviolent way to halt the arms race. The most widely quoted statement in his speech was: "I say with a deep consciousness of these words that Trident is the Auschwitz of Puget Sound."
Matthiesen made his statement against the neutron bomb on August 21, 1981, using words that shocked Catholics working at Pantex: "We urge individuals involved in the production and stockpiling of nuclear bombs to consider what they are doing, to resign from such activities, and to seek employment in peaceful pursuits."
Members of the Ground Zero community in Bangor, Washington, conducted the following interview with Matthiesen and Hunthausen.
Ground Zero: Perhaps we could look back a moment at the statements you made against nuclear weapons that brought each of you into the consciousness of the church and nation. Bishop Matthiesen, were you surprised at the strong reaction to your appeal to workers in nuclear industries that they reconsider their activities and resign from such jobs?
Bishop Leroy Matthiesen: At the time I made the statement, I thought it was the logical conclusion of the generalizations I had made and have heard others make condemning the arms race. I did not, in the wildest moments, imagine that it would have the kind of impact that it had. The response seemed to me almost like a very personal reaction to someone preaching a sermon, in which I was accused of deserting the realm of religion and meddling in personal lives.
But that also told me that underneath the denials, a very definite feeling persists among many of us that we are involved personally in producing these weapons. We don't care to admit it, but we are. And we are concerned about our actions. The denials, I think, take many forms: "It's none of my affairs," "It's too complicated for me," "I don't make the decisions," "I can't influence the future."
I think we suspect and know at heart that we can act, and that we must—that we have a responsibility to do so.
Archbishop Hunthausen, many people, including the secretary of the navy, took issue with your statement that Trident is the Auschwitz of Puget Sound. How do you feel now about that statement and the impact it has had?
Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen: I think it was misunderstood by some who took it primarily as a criticism of Seattle and its surroundings. It wasn't meant to be that personal. It was meant to point out that wherever there is an instrument of destruction comparable to the Trident base, we have to reckon with the fact that this is tantamount to Auschwitz and all the evil that entailed. I hope more people came to an awareness that truly the magnitude of the evil is there, and that my comment is not an overstatement.
We in the Seattle area were aware of the presence of the Trident base, yet not really taking responsibility for it, just as so many people who lived in the presence of Auschwitz did not choose to become involved. I've come to believe that probably the people who lived in and around Auschwitz were less aware of what was happening there than we are aware of what's happening here. The statement was an attempt to point out that we in this area have a very heavy, heavy responsibility to speak out about what we see in our own neighborhood.
The Pantex plant in your diocese, Bishop Matthiesen, and the Bangor base in yours, Archbishop Hunthausen, are connected by railroad tracks on which the White Train delivers nuclear warheads from one to the other. The Agape Community, an extended nonviolent network, has come together along these tracks. How do you think people can best respond to the White Train going through their towns and cities?
Matthiesen: I see the value of raising our awareness about the reality of the nuclear weapons being concretely here in the train. At Pantex you really don't have the ability to see this because, of course, the plant is highly secure. It has only been recently, as a result of the work of Ground Zero, that I personally have become aware of how these nuclear warheads are actually transported.
It seems to me that this is an important way in which the consciousness of people can be raised: This train actually goes through their towns, goes through their counties, goes through where they live. They become part of it as it passes through their area on its way to the Trident submarines.
Two things can happen in this process. The first is that we can become aware of the magnitude of the nuclear arms race. The second is that we have a way of responding to it: in prayer. If the arms race is ever going to be reversed, if it's ever going to be stopped, it's going to be done, I think, out of a response of faith—an awareness that in our time we are finally going to be forced to decide between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. It's going to come to one or the other. We cannot continue what we're doing, and we've got to make the choice.
The tracks campaign is one way, and a very important way, of simply presenting that question to us: there goes the train. There goes the load of destruction. I'm part of it. And I'm going to have to decide either that I approve of it or that I'm going to stand in front of that train.
Hunthausen: I would certainly agree with that. The Agape Community provides many of us with a sense of oneness, a sense of unity of purpose, a sense of solidarity. All of that generates hope in a time when hope is a rather scarce commodity.
I'm extremely grateful that there has arisen this network of people all intent on trying to bring to the fore what their name really says—the strength and the power of love and truth. They are saying by their lives and by their prayerful attitude, directed toward the train that carries these hideous weapons, that there is another way.
They are challenging people to shift their sense of security, now so totally given over to these weapons of destruction, to what ought to be more our calling and our response, love for the God who made us and for one another as brothers and sisters. In resisting the train and all it signifies, they are trying to bring that love into the lives of other people.
The Department of Energy is now trying to obtain a law on "Unclassified Controlled Nuclear Information" that would make it a felony for people to share information about the transportation of nuclear weapons. Even train-watching activities that people in the Agape Community are doing could become illegal by interpretation of this regulation. How do you see people responding to such a law?
Matthiesen: I would say that it could only merit the strongest condemnation. It would allow the Soviets to have more information about what goes on in our own country than we ourselves would have access to. The Soviets through their satellite system obviously can track those trains.
I see no purpose in such a law other than possibly to veil a determination on the part of our government to escalate the arms race in the face of citizens' demands to de-escalate it. It seems to me that this is an effort to practice deceit on our own citizens. That strikes at the very heart of the democratic process in our country. It is a much more dangerous thing than any threat you could possibly imagine from the outside.
Gandhi said that non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good. Archbishop Hunthausen, now that the bishops are identifying nuclear warmaking as a profound evil, what form, do you see non-cooperation with that evil taking in the Catholic Church in the United States?
Hunthausen: I think, first of all, it demands a further strong statement on the part of the American bishops. And that statement will not be easily reached, nor will it be easily transmitted, because it will tend to divide not only the bishops but our people.
We have to continue to bring ourselves back to an awareness that we are talking here about ultimates. Somehow we have to admit it to ourselves and make a statement to bring that reality to our people and to the world. People are still not hearing. People are still not accepting the fact that we are dealing with ultimates.
I don't know exactly what we as bishops would say about non-cooperation, except that the whole area of civil disobedience would seem to be much more an acceptable tactic. With reluctance and sadness, I suppose, we may accept that personally and maybe even propose it to our people. But I can't see, quite frankly, anything short of that step which will accomplish the end, because we seem to have exhausted all other possibilities.
Bishop Matthiesen, what are your thoughts on non-cooperation with evil taking the form of increasing civil disobedience?
Matthiesen: I think that individuals are doing civil disobedience now, not waiting for the bishops to make any further statement. I think it is something that needs to be supported whenever it happens.
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