Steve Skojec

My latest column went up yesterday at Inside Catholic. Entitled “Guilt By Association”, it takes a rather dismissive look at the (in my opinion) overblown significance attached to the relationship between politicians and social pariahs, with a focus on the Obama/Rev. Wright fiasco.

Not surprisingly, it isn’t winning me many fans. I expected disagreement, and I got it. I feel a bit like everyone in the room suddenly stopped what they were doing, turned, and snarled at me. I find this reaction interesting, and even a little bit amusing. It seems that conservatives in particular are so bound up in this issue - despite the fact that they would never vote for Obama in the first place - that anyone questioning conventional wisdom on the topic needs to watch out for torches and pitchforks. The reactions, as few as they were, ranged from respectful, to dismissive, to downright hostile.

But I committed a bigger sin. I said that just maybe Rev. Wright was correct in some of his observations following 9/11. That perhaps we should reflect on the moral implications of what atomic bombs and carpet bombing on urban population centers during the Second World War. That what happened on 9/11, while evil, paled in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed through the deliberate military action of the United States.

That, my friends, is (as I’ve said before) secular blasphemy. One commenter made sure I knew it:

Are you trying to be provocative or did you do have a mental slip and implied that World War II veterans are no better than the 19 radical Muslims who slammed two planes into the Twin Towers?

Once is a mistake. Twice is a pattern.

Twice you’ve made moral equivalency arguments of JFK’s priests to Obama’s racist pastor and now the bombing of Hiroshima to 9/11.

We were fighting enemies in world war II that were actively engaged in a war of final destruction.

9/11 was a surprise attack on civilian targets.

Here in Houston we have a response to ’suggestions’ such as yours. “Are you on crack?”

I’m surprised that Inside Catholic has you as a contributer because you are starting to sound a bit irrational.

I responded by citing Fr. Richard Benson, who recently wrote an article published at Catholic Online about the topic of nuclear weapons in just war. Regarding what we did in Japan in World War II, he said:

In visiting Hiroshima, Pope John Paul II said, “In the past it was possible to destroy a town, a region, or even a country. Now it is the whole planet that has come under threat.” While the Church never condemns nuclear weapons as instrinsice malum (intrinsically evil) in themselves, magisterial teachings make it clear that they are forbidden for use, either tactically or strategically, during even legitimate conflicts. “The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties.” (Catechism, 2312).

Using this principle, the Vatican II Council Fathers, in Gaudium et Spes, teach the church regarding nuclear weapons:

“…acts of war involving these weapons can inflict massive and indiscriminate destruction far exceeding the bounds of legitimate defense.…With these truths in mind, the most holy Synod makes its own the condemnation of total war …and issues the following declaration. Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive area along with their population is a crime against God…It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation” (GS, n. 80).
— Fr. Richard Benson

I said that American patriotism tends to dull Catholic objections to these sorts of actions, for understandable reasons. But object we should. Fr. Benson goes on to say:

In its recent Compendium, the Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice states:

“The Magisterium condemns ‘the savagery of war and asks that we be considered in a new way. In fact, ‘it is hardly possible to imagine that in an atomic era, war could be used as an instrument of justice’“ (n. 497).

Those Catholics that would hold to a moral justification of the nuclear bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima are reminded that Catholic moral theology can never be reduced to a “utilitarian calculus.” In other words, moral actions can never be evaluated according to a utilitarian relativity, where “the end justifies the means.”

This is hard for many of us to swallow. We have a deep-rooted cultural connection to World War II. For just about any red-blooded American, nothing makes us more proud than the sacrifices our fathers, grandfathers, uncles or cousins made in defeating the forces of Nazism and Japanese Imperialism. I include myself in this category. But I also know it doesn’t absolve the American conscience of some of the policy decisions that resulted in the destruction of countless innocent lives.

Here in Northern Virginia, at the new Dulles Air and Space Museum, the Enola Gay is on exhibit for all visitors to see. Whenever I’m there, and I walk across the catwalk and look into the cockpit of the plane made famous by bringing nuclear destruction to war for the first time, I wonder what I would have done if I had gotten that order, if I had been serving on that plane. It’s hard not to be proud of our soldiers, even when we disagree with aspects of whatever war they’re in. But we must also remember not to blind ourselves to the moral obligations we owe to Our Divine Creator because we are loyal to the Red, White and Blue.