U.S. Roman Catholic bishops raised serious moral doubts yesterday about the nation going to war with Iraq.
By a vote of 228 to 14 with three abstentions, the bishops endorsed a statement declaring that they "find it difficult to justify the resort to war against Iraq, lacking clear and adequate evidence of an imminent attack of a grave nature."
The hierarchy said it is "deeply concerned" about the use of preventive wars "to overthrow threatening regimes or to deal with weapons of mass destruction."
The bishops also said a decision to attack Iraq requires "some form of international sanction, preferably by the U.N. Security Council," though several bishops opposed mention of the United Nations.
"We are saying, in our judgment concerning possible war in Iraq -- this situation here and now -- we shouldn't do this alone. The better way to do this is internationally," said Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law.
The statement was written hurriedly by the international policy committee chaired by Law, who has been subject to intense criticism all year for his handling of sex abuse claims against Boston priests.
The document also reaffirmed the Catholic teaching that the faithful have the right to object to participation in war in general or to a specific war. And the bishops acknowledged that "people of good will may differ" on which wars are moral.
Officials from major U.S. Protestant and Eastern Orthodox denominations have also opposed war with Iraq over the past several months, though spokesmen for the largest Protestant body, the Southern Baptist Convention, have backed President Bush's policy.
"We have no illusions about the behavior or intentions of the Iraqi government," the Catholic bishops said. They called on the Iraqi regime to halt internal repression, threats to neighbors, support for terrorism and the development of weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq accepted yesterday a United Nations resolution that demands that it allow weapons inspectors to return to the country. Bush has made it clear that the United States is ready to attack Iraq if it does not disarm.
The president of the conference of U.S. bishops, Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Ill., delivered to Bush in September a letter that expressed reservations about a preemptive military strike.
Gregory told Bush that the bishops' 50-member administrative committee had serious questions about "any preemptive, unilateral use of military force to overthrow the government of Iraq."
The bishops supported U.S. action in Afghanistan last year. Law told the meeting that Afghanistan was "a different case" because a preemptive strike was not involved.