Until I read this post at Whosoever Desires, I had forgotten that today is the 64th anniversary of the incineration of Nagasaki by an atomic bomb. I’d like to highlight the following passage, quoted in the original post, written by Dorothy Day in The Catholic Worker:
Mr. Truman was jubilant. President Truman. “True man:” what a strange name, come to think of it. We refer to Jesus Christ as true God and true Man. Truman is a true man of his time in that he was jubilant. He was not a son of God, brother of Christ, brother of the Japanese, jubilating as he did. He went from table to table on the cruiser which was bringing him home from the Big Three conference, telling the great news; “jubilant” the newspapers said. Jubilate Deo. We have killed 318,000 Japanese.
That is, we hope we have killed them, the Associated Press, on page one, column one of the Herald Tribune says. The effect is hoped for, not known. It is to be hoped they are vaporized, our Japanese brothers, scattered, men, women and babies, to the four winds, over the seven seas. Perhaps we will breathe their dust into our nostrils, feel them in the fog of New York on our faces, feel them in the rain on the hills of Eton.
Jubilate Deo. President Truman was jubilant. We have created. We have created destruction. We have created a new element, called Pluto. Nature had nothing to do with it.
The papers list the scientists (the murderers) who are credited with perfecting this new weapon. Scientists, army officers, great universities, and captains of industry-all are given credit lines in the press for their work of preparing the bomb-and other bombs, the President assures us, are in production now.
Everyone says, “I wonder what the Pope thinks of it?” How everyone turns to the Vatican for judgment, even though they do not seem to listen to the voice there! But our Lord Himself has already pronounced judgment on the atomic bomb. When James and John (John the beloved) wished to call down fire from heaven on their enemies, Jesus said:
“You know not of what spirit you are. The Son of Man came not to destroy souls but to save.” He said also, “What you do unto the least of these my brethren, you do unto me.
Nuclear weapons are intrinsically, objectively evil, the tools and creation of Satan himself. One need not peruse the nuances of Catholic just war theory to know that there is no possible reason for their use that could escape the judgment of the Most High God, Who avenges the death of the innocent.
Ah, but the the Bomb ended the war, saved millions of American lives! And? We are not permitted to do evil in the hope that good might result. When we dropped atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we were well aware of their power, having previously tested one in the New Mexico desert. When presented with the option to drop them on non-populated areas as a warning to the Japanese, President Truman and his advisers insisted that the targets be cities. We did not simply proceed reluctantly with the knowledge that the Bomb would kill thousands of civilians; these deaths were fully willed and intended.
But what about deterrence? Surely it’s not evil to keep the nukes that we already have, just to make sure that the Russians and Chinese don’t use theirs! Deterrence implies a willingness on our part to use our weapons, a willingness, indeed a desire, to have the consolation of dragging several hundred million Russians and/or Chinese with us should we go down. To suggest that an American president, having repeatedly and publicly affirmed this willingness (as the strategy of deterrence requires), would show mercy and choose not to take these hundred million “enemy” civilians with us when faced with imminent annihilation betrays, in my view, a dangerously strong faith in fallen human nature.The power to completely destroy the Earth belongs rightfully only to God; in human hands, it will inevitably result in catastrophe, no matter how many nice neat theories of “deterrence” are constructed by the think tanks and defense contractors. To suggest that the fact that it has not happened yet makes it any less inevitable is a fallacy of the highest order.
Nuclear weapons are an affront both to the dignity of man and the Divine Majesty of God, and must be eliminated from the face of the Earth.
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