Whether there is any excitement in the otherwise unimaginative Article 25 ("On Making Lasting Peace") of Schema XIII depends on the meaning of a reference to nuclear arms. The relevant passage reads:

This reply, under oath, by Air Commodore Magill to Pat Pottle at the British Official Secrets Trial of February 1962, distils the essence of the deterrence strategy. In the light of common sense, and especially with reference to the just-war tradition, it also defines its essential immorality.

As a prosecution witness, the Air Commodore was being cross-examined by one of the accused who had invaded a nuclear base in protest and who was later sentenced to imprisonment for this offense.

Two paragraphs of Schema XIII, on the Church and the Modern World, have been briefly debated by the Vatican Council and will be considered when it reconvenes. They bring to mind the following parable: Once there was a parent whose son was a chronic juvenile delinquent. Early on the boy displayed spectacular anti-social tendencies and everyone urged that the professional advice of psychiatrists be solicited and followed. But for nineteen years the parent avoided a showdown, only occasionally facing the real problem. Rather, his concern took the form of deploring and attempting to deal only with the manifestations of bis son's underlying mental illness. Finally, in despair, the father took the son to the first psychiatrist who was available for a half-hour interview.

There is no doubt that any statement made by the Council, unless it is an utterly innocuous declaration of inapplicable generalities, is going to have the effect of penalizing the Western nations, since obviously whatever public opinion is engendered by the conciliar decrees will be ignored or suppressed within the Soviet Union. Nevertheless the Council must speak, and this for both moral and "political" reasons.