By Gretchen Keiser

Nearly 1,000 pages of signatures, probably well in excess of 10,000 individual names, were presented symbolically to Georgia’s senators and congressmen recently as the conclusion to an Advent petition drive in support of a nuclear test ban treaty.

Actual petition pages were mailed to President Ronald Reagan at the White House following a presentation ceremony Feb. 22 in which aides to Georgia’s senators and representatives were given copies. The ceremony took place at the Catholic Center in Atlanta and was hosted by the archdiocese of Atlanta and the local chapter of Pax Christi.

Catholics were given a chance during Advent to read and sign the petition, if they wanted to, following Sunday Masses. The text called upon the U.S. government to “conclude negotiations” with the Soviet Union “for a bilateral, verifiable and comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and to adopt and ratify such a treaty at the earliest possible dates.”

The idea for such a petition drive began with the national Pax Christi organization, a Catholic peace organization, according to William Brown of Pax Christi/Atlanta. The local chapter wanted to conduct the drive in the archdiocese and the idea won support from members of the Priests’ Council, who advise the archbishop. After a presentation about the topic was made by two Pax Christi members to the Priests’ Council, the group unanimously recommended to the archbishop that the archdiocese co-sponsor the drive and Archbishop Thomas Donnellan accepted the recommendation. The diocese of Savannah was also invited to take part.

“The archdiocese of Atlanta did a fantastic job” in coordinating and supporting the drive, Brown said. The overwhelming majority of archdiocesan parishes sent in signature sheets when the drive was over. A total of 990 pages were returned from both dioceses with names on them, some with signatures front and back, Brown said. “I think it was a riproaring success.” A total count was not made, but a conservative estimate would indicate more than 10,000 signatures, he said.

Pax Christi/Atlanta is a small chapter which began following the 1983 publication of the U.S. bishops’ pastoral on war and peace and renewed concern about nuclear weapons and the direction of U.S. defense strategy and that of other nuclear powers around the world. Meeting at the Catholic Center at Emory University in Atlanta, the peace group has studied the pastoral and other documents expressing the Church’s position on war and peace throughout history.

Groundwork for the petition drive was laid by the pastoral, Brown said, which recommended support for a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and concluded that world leaders must resist the “notion that nuclear conflict can be limited, contained or won in any traditional sense.”

Last year the Soviet Union had a unilateral moratorium on testing, but then resumed testing. The United States, according to Brown, has a strategic reason for wanting to continue testing in order to develop the Star Wars program supported by President Reagan.

Right now negotiations on a test ban treaty are in process between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, he said, but the seriousness of the negotiations is unclear. The concern is that a “new generation of nuclear arms” with the capability of burrowing underground to reach missile silos is being developed, Brown said. “You can’t create new weapons without testing,” he said, which is the pragmatic reason for supporting a test ban treaty.

From a Christian perspective, the petition drive was “meant to be an active step toward peacemaking” during the season preparing for the birth of the Savior. But another goal was “to get people talking and thinking terms,” so even debate and opposition to the drive contributes to the development of a greater sensitivity. The drive was concerned with the question of “where we as Christians place our trust,” Brown said, “in weapons, or in our faith in Jesus Christ and His message.”