I recant a little

Posted on August 10, 2010 by faithvictoria

Okay, before I get excommunicated for consequentialism, I’m against the terror bombing of civilians.
If you look carefully at my comments, as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will, I am sure, I never actually said it was morally just, I just im-sorry, you just inferred that from all that stuff about ending the war I included.
Really, my point was that Hiroshima was no big deal: more were killed conventionally by bombs at Dresden and Tokyo. The crime is saturation bombing, not nuclear weapons. Lots of people think Hiroshima was wrong: the ones who show up at annual ceremonies about it, and never demonstrate comparable discomfort for the larger crimes against civilians perpetrated by the Japanese (germ warfare, killing millions of Chinese) and Germans (Holocaust, anyone, and Soviet Russians (starvation of 7 million Ukrainians) are guilty of a selective moral outrage, which to me looks political and lot like anti Americanism.

About faithvictoria

Steve Weatherbe is a journalist with 30 years experience, specializing in religion and public issues, a conservative Catholic Christian, a supporter of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, living in Victoria, British Columbia. Canada
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3 Responses to I recant a little

  1. goyodelarosa says:
    August 10, 2010 at 3:48 pm

    I’ve been to a lot more Victoria Day parades with Canadian military and militaristic American high school marching bands than I have been to peace rallies, but I’ve been to a few of those too, and I haven’t seen Bishop De Roo or any of his leftist fellow travellers at the Island Catholic news at these peace rallies. When I do, I will let readers here know.

    However, to accuse other people who in good faith attend such peace rallies of all being anti-American leftists and of being ‘guilty’ of selective’ condemnation of the great crimes against humanity… well, that is really a stretch.

    People who attend peace rallies are no more ‘guilty’ of anything at all than wanting to show up for something generally considered to be a blessing and intrinsically good, and we choose to do it on Hiroshima Day because the problem of the stockpiling and threats to use these weapons is still with us, and that day has real meaning for us in its commemorative aspect.

    I went to one such commemorative event on the Gorge, found it to be moving and poetic, with the release of small candles on paper boats at dusk it reminded me of classic Japanese wood block print subject matter, but it certainly was not a ‘service’, nor do I recall any Wiccans there singing praises to the moon.

    Learning from the mistakes of the past, these peaceful civilians use their God-given and Canadian Charter-protected rights to assembly and free speech for a good goal at a global event, and I see no problem with this, but I do see a problem in our governments’ over-eager welcoming of nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers like the USS Abraham Lincoln to our local waters.

    Obama and Hilary retain the posture of having ‘all options on the table,’ meaning they use the same nuclear threats against Iran that Bush, Rumsfeld and Co. did.

    One doesn’t have to be ‘anti-American’ or anti-semitic to condemn the nuclear belligerence of the USA vis a vis Iran, North Korea or even Russia (still), or of Israel toward the Iranians.

    I’ve been to some pro-life rallies where, to his credit, I’ve seen Bishop Richard Gagnon show up, expressing his concerns about abortion and euthanasia. But I’ve never heard him say anything about these nuclear problems, nor has he condemned our participation in the unjust, futile, costly and unpopular Afghan misadventure.

    I suppose I could condemn him for ‘selective’ outrage on pro-life issues, as he never says anything intelligent about the so-called ‘war on drugs’ either, but what would be the point?

    We all show up (whether anti-abortionists, peaceniks, tree-huggers or wild salmon advocates0 for what we believe in when we can at events usually organized by others, but to condemn people for not showing up to rallies that are purely imaginary or non-existent… seems odd, to say the least.

    Peace of Christ

    Gregory Hartnell

    Reply
  2. Murray Love says:
    August 10, 2010 at 11:14 pm

    I’m still torn on the issue, though I acknowledge the force and weight of the Church’s arguments. You could argue the following:

    – That we did not foresee the effects of radiation from the bombing, instead assuming that the A-bomb was just a bigger version of conventional bombs. In the event, long-term effects of radiation were much lower than expected (as they were in Chernobyl), but the short-term effects added substantially to the death and suffering. This does seem a little beside the point at issue, though.

    – That the horror resulting from the use of the Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki made future bombings less likely (and as we know, they have never been used since). I can understand why the Japanese would not appreciate this as much as the rest of us might.

    – That every decision made under such desperate circumstances is, to some extent, consequentialist in practice. Had we decided to forgo the Bomb and instead invade the Japanese Home Islands, we would still end up doing evil (killing civilians in massive numbers) in order to bring about a good end, as we did in Europe. I suspect this argument doesn’t hold water with traditional Catholic morality, but I’m not certain why.

    I remain uneasy with the strict application of traditional Catholic morality in such circumstances. A couple of years ago, the Catholic traditionalists at What’s Wrong With The World argued (along the same lines) that you could not licitly shoot down a hijacked civilian airliner that was aimed at a civilian building, because you would be taking the lives of the innocents on board, even though they were certain to die anyway, along with hundreds or thousands of other innocents on the ground. According to the WWWTW bloggers, this dilemma is no different in principle from that presented by an ectopic pregnancy, and while I acknowledge the parallel (as well as the corollary that the numbers involved should not matter), it does not sit well with me at all. See here for a long critical discussion, which goes a long way beyond the facile and naive pacifist approach.

    Reply
    • steve weatherbe says:
      August 11, 2010 at 12:06 am

      I would have thought that the doctrine of double effect would cover the plane with some terrorists but mostly civilians aboard. We could shoot it down if it were headed toward the Twin Towers because our goal is to protect those in the building, not to kill the civilians on board. We intend the good effect but not the bad effect. We intend to save the mother, not to kill the unborn child.
      But I don’t think this works for Hiroshima, where the bad effect, the killing of as many people as possible, was very much intended, with the second effect flowing from it: ending the war.

      Reply

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