ination of all nuclear weapons. Our present Government, like the last, actually opposes starting any such negotiations even though a perfectly good draft convention, setting out the steps needed on the way to elimination, has been available for years. Then Peter Hennessy does not mention the


ethical dispute of the 1970s , which is now pub- lic knowledge. Dr David Owen, then Foreign Secretary, thought that it was enough to be able to kill a million Soviets to make deter- rence “work”. Sir Michael Quinlan disagreed. He said that the Soviet “threshold of horror” was higher than that and thought that a higher “order of magnitude” was needed. Ten mil- lion deaths was a more appropriate figure. Yet Sir Michael always maintained that


deterrence could not simply be a bluff. One had, he said, to be willing to do in extreme circumstances what one threatened to do. So much, it seems, has been made to depend, not on a more rational and moral assessment of security, but on what Peter Hennessy calls “gut instinct”. Did it not occur to these powerful people that others in other countries might develop the same nuclear weapon “gut instincts” themselves? Bruce Kent


Vice President Pax Christi, London N4


Lord Hennessy writes that Winston Churchill “alone decided … to concur with the United States using the [nuclear] weapons against Japan –the first and, I fervently hope, the last British Prime Minister to take the most awe- some decision conceivable”. While Churchill may well have dealt one to one with President Truman in agreeing “in principle” on the use of the bombs, this surely did not amount to Churchill's “awesome decision” actually to drop them. The distinction goes to the heart of the late Sir Michael Quinlan’s discussions about the British nuclear deterrent. If he is to be believed, Churchill’s personal


involvement in the decision to drop the bombs reveals a capacity for subtler judgement, and restraint, than Truman’s. In the final vol- ume of his history of the Second World War, Churchill claims that he attempted to persuade Truman to accept a Japanese surrender that fell short of unconditional, knowing that the consequence of Truman’s intransigence on the point would be the use of the atom bomb: “It was for [Truman] to consider,” wrote


Churchill, “whether this [unconditional sur- render] might not be expressed in some other way, so that we got all the essentials for future


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peace and security and yet left them some show of saving their military honour and some assur- ance of their national existence, after they had complied with all safeguards necessary for the conqueror. The President replied bluntly that he did not think the Japanese had any military honour after Pearl Harbour. I con- tented myself with saying that at any rate they had something for which they were ready to face certain death in very large numbers, and this might not be so important to us as it was to them … I felt there would be no rigid insis- tence upon ‘unconditional surrender’, apart from what was necessary for world peace and future security and for the punishment of a guilty and treacherous deed. Mr Stimson, General Marshall, and the President were evi- dently searching their hearts, and we had no need to press them.” Eventually the ultima- tum calling for unconditional surrender was sent. The terms were rejected by the Japanese and the United States Army Air Force made its plans to drop the bombs. John Cornwell Jesus College, Cambridge


A deacon’s lot The Second Vatican Council synthesised the ministry of permanent deacons in the three- fold diaconia of the Liturgy, the Word, and of Charity. Bishop Michael Campbell’s report on the permanent diaconate, headlined as “Permanent deacons told to stick to good works” (News from Britain and Ireland, 12 February), appears to be rather critical of per- manent deacons. We appear to be categorised as neither fish nor fowl, but most of us busy permanent deacons do seek to balance all three aspects of our ordained ministry of service. As almost all permanent deacons will have


been involved in lay ministry before ordina- tion, there is no way that we would seek – as the report appears to suggest – to “undermine lay ministry” in all its many forms. There are perhaps a few deacons who love parading around in clerical collars, but most of us do not seek to dress up in ultramontane clerical garb, apart from when visiting the sick in hos- pitals or homes, or when officiating at baptisms, weddings and funerals. Michael D. Phelan Permanent Deacon, St Teresa’s, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire


Have you met the wife? Travelling on Monday to this year’s national conference for rural Catholics, I found myself next to a man on his way to the General Synod. The subject arose of what the Anglican patri - mony might be which those joining the ordinariate might bring. He offered that the thought being shared among Anglicans was the patrimony would be matrimony. (Fr) Robert Miller Dulverton, Somerset


The living Spirit


The Bible, of course, my father and Owen read before going to bed, and I knew it in the end as well as Owen. It was then that I had thoughts about Christ, and I have never changed my mind. He did appear to me then as a man, and as a man I still think of him. In that way, I have had comfort. If he had been a God, or any more a son of God than any of us, then it is unfair to ask us to do what he did. But if he was a man who found out for himself what there is that is hidden in life, then we all have a chance to do the same. And with the help of God we shall.


Richard Llewellyn


How Green Was My Valley (Penguin Classics, 2001)


We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real, and which lives by a shadowy autonomy for the brief moment of earthly existence, and the hidden, inner person who seems to be nothing, but who can give himself eter- nally to the truth in which he subsists. It is this inner self that is taken up into the mystery of Christ, by his love, by the Holy Spirit, so that in secret we live “in Christ”.


Thomas Merton


New Seeds of Contemplation (New Directions, 1972)


There have always been, on the margins of the Christian world, holy fools who show us how to live well. These revolutionar- ies warn us against the cult of big, and remind us that living a day well is unavoidably parochial; that a holy life is a celebration of the local and the imme- diate – an exploration into the fabric of one place, rather than, superficially, the souvenir shops of many places. In short, to live gratefully is to recognise that even if one never travelled beyond one’s own backyard, it would still be possible to have lived well, for the truly prophetic life is lived out in actual places, with actual peo- ple, with actual stories. the setting is absolutely unique. And by entering into it, we see eternity in a day. Ian Stackhouse The Day Is Yours (Paternoster 2008)


19 February 2011 | THE TABLET | 19


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