HIROSHIMA: Am reprinting in full a post at Dappled Things.

Hiroshima and Peace — The Sixth of August is not only the Feast of the Transfiguration. It is also the anniversary of the dropping of the first atom bomb on Hiroshima, to be followed by the bomb for Nagasaki. Those two weapons of mass destruction not only ended a war, they also wiped out the lives of countless men, women, and children in the blink of an eye. It’s sad to recall that it was our country that did the deed — an action condemned as an indefensible atrocity by Pius XII’s Vatican and considered a war crime by traditional Catholic morality. It’s also often forgotten that the bomb that erased Nagasaki also destroyed one of the few Catholic enclaves in Japan, the descendants of the Christians who saw their martyrs nailed to crosses in the days of the persecution.

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