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Perhaps one of the last issues that can transcend culture wars and political polarization is the threat of nuclear annihilation. The buildup of nuclear arms endangers all of us, in every part of the globe, a kind of dark mirror revealing the interconnectedness of humankind.
This is why the lapsing of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, on Thursday was so concerning. New START was the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty to place limitations on the world’s two largest nuclear powers, the United States and Russia. It followed on previous agreements signed by both countries in the early 1990s and renewed in 2011 by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev.
“The urgency is hard to overstate,” the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft warned in a brief about the treaty. “If [New START] lapses without arrangements to continue the application of its core provisions while buying time for negotiating a successor, the door opens to an unconstrained nuclear arms race at precisely the moment when global nuclear risks are already dangerously elevated.”
Writing for the Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft website, Vermont Senator Peter Welch underscored the gravity of the issue: “A single use of a tactical nuclear weapon, either by accident or design, could trigger a flurry of escalating responses with far more powerful strategic weapons that would cause incalculable loss of life, widespread radiation poisoning, and destruction on a scale unlike anything seen in human history.”
Welch’s Senate colleague Ed Markey focused on the $10 trillion the US government spent to build more than 30,000 nuclear weapons at the height of the arms race in an op-ed for the Guardian. Speaking to the trans-partisan nature of nuclear disarmament, he cited one poll showing 91 percent of Americans in favor of negotiating a new agreement with Russia to either maintain current limits on nuclear weapons or further reduce both countries’ stockpiles.
That New START was allowed to lapse was not for lack of advocacy on the part of faith-based organizations. In January, over 40 communities, including several Catholic groups, signed a letter calling on Congress to publicly affirm the value of arms control, encourage the current administration to begin immediate negotiations on a New START agreement, and support diplomatic efforts with Russia and other nuclear powers to reduce global risk.
Among the signatories were several chapters of the Catholic organization Pax Christi USA. The organization’s communications director, Judy Coode, said via email that Pax Christi “has always prioritized nuclear disarmament” and called nuclear weapons “an existential threat to creation.” Resources spent on them “have stolen money from every other life-giving program,” she added.
Coode referenced Pope Francis’s remarks in his message for the First Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in 2022: “The use of nuclear weapons, as well as their mere possession, is immoral.” The idea of mutual deterrence, the pope said at the time, “inevitably ends up poisoning relationships between peoples and obstructing any possible form of real dialogue.”
Also in January, the Partnership for a World without Nuclear Weapons(PWNW) issued a statement in recognition of the fifth anniversary of the entry into force of the TPNW. PWNW describes itself as a “voluntary partnership, based on the principles of Remembering, Journeying Together, and Protecting.” It is an international organization comprising four founding Catholic (arch)dioceses—Santa Fe, New Mexico; Seattle, Washington; Hiroshima, Japan; and Nagasaki, Japan—as well as an international network of affiliates.
As of December 2025, 74 states have ratified or acceded to the TPNW, though none of the nuclear-armed states have thus far supported it. The Norwegian organization Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor observes, “[I]t is largely . . . the nuclear-armed states and nuclear umbrella states that stand in the way of progress towards universalisation of the TPNW and agreement on nuclear disarmament.”
The PWNW statement places a special responsibility on these states, writing: “The nuclear-armed states have a moral obligation to hear the voices of the majority of the world, and to listen to those who face the threat of annihilation due to the reckless decisions of any one of their nine leaders.”
Groups like Pax Christi and PWNW remind us that the work of nuclear disarmament cannot be consigned to state entities, but must be a vital task of the church as well. With its global reach and its ability to express an ethic of sacramentality, solidarity, and universal human dignity, the church is uniquely positioned to be a leader in the movement for disarmament—a movement that encompasses racial justice, public health, and care for creation, among other life issues.
Coode summarized this calling forcefully: “Catholic individuals and organizations must condemn the gross misuse of funds for nuclear weapons and the antagonism that is fomented through the arms race. We are called to be peacemakers and to embrace nonviolence; it is impossible to promote peace and weapons simultaneously.”
Michael Centore
Editor, Tomorrow’s American Catholic
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