By: The Bishop of the United Methodist Church in Georgia, The Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, The Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta.

We have studied the Panama Canal treaties signed by the President last September and now under consideration by the Senate. We support their ratification.

We acknowledge that many citizens of patriot concern and Christian commitment resist the treaties. We respect the right of all people to hold strong views, but plead that the members of our Churches regard the issue reasonably and with charity. Certain moral principles are implicit here.

A. First, treaties have value and force only as they serve the mutual self-interest of the contracting parties. This does not contradict a Christian ideal. Simple altruism is not the basis of Christian morality. Jesus of Nazareth implied an ethic of enlightened self-regard in commanding that we love others as we love ourselves. In our view, this moral principle would be violated by a treaty arrangement that did not work to the advantage of the United States -- and equally to the Republic of Panama.

We are persuaded that American self-interest is best served not by fixing on the question of ownership, but on the practical issue of the canal's continued usefulness to the United States and all nations. The treaties provide for a training interval between now and the year 2000 when the Panamanians would assume full sovereignty. It seems clear to us that the surest way to guard the usefulness of the canal is to cooperate with the Republic of Panama in their just and natural desire to exercise sovereignty over their own territory. Provisions in the treaties grant the United States the right of intervention in the case of military threat, and preferential passage of our naval vessels in case of war. To refuse the treaties, with these concessions, would be to precipitate a political and military crisis for which we would have to assume responsibility. Instantly we would need to protect the canal in a hostile and doubtless guerrilla territory -- assuming, or being ready to assume, a military, economic and surveillance burden that could reach unthinkable proportions.

B. To regard this as blackmail by the Republic of Panama is to misjudge the meaning of the word. Pressure can be called blackmail only when the advantage sought is itself unjust or immoral. A second moral principle is operative here which cancels the possibility that unjust pressure is being applied. We have long called this principle the Golden Rule. Jesus of Nazareth stated it simply and positively as a decisive moral norm.

Christian Americans need only perceive that if the language of the original treaty, which grants the United States rights "as if sovereign," were used to describe the presence of a foreign power as owner and operator of the Mississippi River and five miles of land on both sides of its entire length, we would find it intolerable. The Panamanians seek to redress what may have been appropriate 75 years ago, but which in an era of rising national consciousness around the world, is no longer endurable.

The Golden Rule is binding on Christian conscience. By this standard, it is morally inadmissible to demand freedom, sovereignty and self-determination for ourselves while deliberately denying these rights to others when it is in our power to bestow or advance them. The United States of America is closely watched by the nations of the world and quickly measured for the congruence of our declared beliefs and our actual behavior. Ratification of the treaties would enhance our standing among the nations of the free world, especially in Latin America. Refusal to ratify would just as equally play in to the hands of our adversaries in the Communist bloc whose interests would be served by American action that alienates us from our friends.

To aim high, striving to do the right thing for all concerned, is the way a great nation behaves.

We send greetings in Christ Jesus to all in one another's Churches.

William R. Cannon, Bishop

Bennett J. Sims, Bishop

Thomas A. Donnellan, Archbishop