{"id":54294,"date":"2014-08-06T00:11:18","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T07:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=54294"},"modified":"2014-12-28T22:11:34","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T05:11:34","slug":"reader-john-herried-writes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2014\/08\/reader-john-herried-writes.html","title":{"rendered":"Reader John Herried writes …"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Welp, we\u2019re likely to be treated to the annual round of defenses of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Interesting factoid I found out last year when reading Russell Shaw\u2019s book American Church was that the leading American theologian condemning the bombings was also influential in defending the Church\u2019s position on artificial birth control.<\/p>\n

An excerpt from the book:<\/p>\n

One of the few Catholics who protested [the atomic bombing] was the leading American moral theologian of the day, John C. Ford, S.J. Father Ford is remembered now as a leader of the minority on the papal birth control commission who supported the Church\u2019s constant teaching on contraception before Pope Paul VI\u2019s encyclical \u201cHumanae vitae\u201d of 1968. But that was to come later. In 1944, in the journal \u201cTheological Studies\u201d, Ford published a 49-page article arguing against the killing of the innocent by the obliteration bombing of cities that was then being carried out by the American and British air forces. A year later, in his \u201cNotes on Moral Theology\u201d in the same journal, after having acknowledged the atrocities committed by the Soviets, the Nazis, and the Japanese, he nevertheless spoke of \u201cthe greatest and most extensive single atrocity of all this period, our atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki\u201d.<\/p>\n

The words were widely noted in theological circles, but they didn\u2019t reach me or most other American Catholics at the time. Even now, it appears they haven\u2019t reached many.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There is a prolife culture that is actually prolife: that consistently defends the proposition that human life is sacred from conception to natural death. \u00a0But a lot of \u201cprolife\u201d culture is merely anti-abortion (and even the prohibition on abortion only holds\u00a0till\u00a0the child to be murdered lives in a place deemed worthy of murder, such as Hiroshima, or in the womb of somebody Dirty Harry decides is unfit to live<\/a>\u00a0(yes, I know she lied, but he didn\u2019t know that when he murdered her)). \u00a0Today is a major feast day of that subculture, so we can expect the rationalizations for that act of mass murder, just as we are seeing the rationalizations for crimes against children in Gaza and on the border right now. There\u2019s always a good reason for killing children who get in the way of the plans of the powerful\u2013even among many who call themselves \u201cprolife\u201d. \u00a0And when the human life is deemed guilty? \u00a0Lots of \u201cprolife\u201d people have no conception of the sanctity of *that* human life at all. \u00a0War, torture, and the death penalty are eagerly supported in large percentages by \u201cprolife\u201d people.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the disconnect: \u00a0The Church\u2019s preferential option for life asks \u201cHow can we minimize harm and killing as much as possible even in the case of guilty human life?\u201d \u00a0Jesus, after all, came to save not merely babies, but everybody. But our culture, including anti-abortion-but-not-prolife culture, asks \u201cWhen do we *get* to harm and kill human life?\u201d and strains at the leash, not to save as many as possible but to justify even the murder of babies as much as possible (for a worthy cause, of course). \u00a0Both Planned Parenthood and the people screaming at busses full of kids and demanding they be sent back to murderous narco-states or cheering for the bombs raining on Gaza or Hiroshima have their arguments for why the harm and murder of these children, sad though it is, constitute\u00a0acceptable losses.<\/p>\n

Jesus, in contrast, says, \u201cIt is not the will of my Father\u00a0who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.\u201d \u00a0It is imperative that we internalize that and stop thinking with the world.<\/p>\n

A couple more\u00a0quotes:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anyone were to declare that modern war is necessarily total, and necessarily involves direct attack on the life of innocent civilians, and, therefore, that obliteration bombing is justified,<\/span><\/span>\u00a0my reply would be: So much the worse for modern war. If it necessarily includes such means, it is necessarily immoral itself.\u201d<\/span>

http:\/\/theahi.org\/\u2026\/Ford-Morality-of-Obliteration\u2026<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and:<\/p>\n

\u201cwe must begin asking ourselves whether as things stand, with new weapons that cause destruction that goes well beyond the groups involved in the fight, it is still licit to allow that a \u2018just war\u2019 might exist.\u201d \u2013 \u00a0Pope Benedict XVI<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The world\u2019s response to the possibility that a war might simply have no good guys and be impossible to fight justly is typically to spout something about \u201crealism\u201d and then get on with the work of murder for the Greater Good. \u00a0Another term for Murder for the Greater Good is \u201cMurder\u201d. \u00a0And murder will send you to hell, particularly if you spout rubbish about your great \u201ccourage<\/a>\u201d in being willing to murder for the Greater Good. \u00a0Jesus, in contrast, offers the terrifying and breathtaking alternative of preferring martyrdom to committing sin:<\/p>\n

\u201cI tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. 5 But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear him! \u00a0(Lk 12:4\u20136).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a popular alternative. \u00a0But it remains a possible one\u2013and might become a necessary one if we find ourselves faced with a choice of saving our skins or sinning against Almighty God to save them.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welp, we\u2019re likely to be treated to the annual round of defenses of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Interesting factoid I found out last year when reading Russell Shaw\u2019s book American Church was that the leading American theologian condemning the bombings was also influential in defending the Church\u2019s position on artificial birth control. An […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[133,442],"class_list":["post-54294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture-of-death","tag-prolife-means-more-than-anti-abortion"],"yoast_head":"\nReader John Herried writes ...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Welp, we're likely to be treated to the annual round of defenses of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 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