Nun, 83, faces ‘life’ sentence in US after nuclear protest

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Are we to assume that an old head can’t be a level head?

ICXC NIKA
I was being facetious. 😃

That said, if she hasn’t got a history of doing this before, an early dementia is still a possibility. Personality changes and disinhibition are early signs.
 
I think conflating these two issues is an error.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - whatever the excuses conventionally trotted out - was a grave sin. No amount of jingoism or quoting secular apologists can annul that. This is what the Church teaches. There’s even a CA article to this effect.

However, the Church also teaches us that we are not to openly break just laws or violate property rights. That is what this Sister and her associates have done, and it was wrong. Hiroshima and Nagasaki have nothing to do with it.
I guess that’s where we’ll disagee. I don’t think building nuclear weapons is just.
 
I guess that’s where we’ll disagee. I don’t think building nuclear weapons is just.
I think that just having nuclear weapons has resulted in peace, saving thousands if not millions of lives.

Peace

Tim
 
Yes, so treat her the same way the law treats punks who graffiti and vandalize government property. I’ve yet to hear of any of them getting a life sentence (or even 3 years). 90 days and restitution is about right for the actual crime.
Except that they didn’t just graffiti the outside of some public building on the side of the road and wander off, they got into a high security (theoretically) nuclear weapons plant. The fact that they could is embarrassing for the plant, but nonetheless that is a big deal, and I don’t think the fact that their success depended on incompetence on the part of security forces really enters into sentencing. A few years seems about right. Maybe they can do some actual good for their fellow inmates while they’re there.
 
I think that just having nuclear weapons has resulted in peace, saving thousands if not millions of lives.

Peace

Tim
I don’t buy it. How can something that is designed to kill indiscriminately with long lasting negative effects be anything but evil. Violence only breeds more violence. What kind of peace do we have if the threat of nuclear war is hanging over everyones heads? That’s not peace, it’s war.
 
I don’t buy it. How can something that is designed to kill indiscriminately with long lasting negative effects be anything but evil. Violence only breeds more violence. What kind of peace do we have if the threat of nuclear war is hanging over everyones heads? That’s not peace, it’s war.
What you call war is different than any war ever fought. One where no one dies. I prefer that over the killing kind.

Would you prefer a re-play of WWII minus Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The bombing of cities with conventional weapons? The incredible numbers of soldiers AND civilians killed during combat actions?

No?

Thank the presence, or more specifically the fear, of nuclear weapons. The mere presence of those weapons prevented an all-out war between the allies and the Soviet Union.

I would prefer a world without war or the need for weapons, but that isn’t reality.

Peace

Tim
 
The Church has an army of professional philosophers.

Because it has not had to fight a real war since the 1800s, it is free to say anything.

I accede to its pronouncements; but remain thankful that the atom bomb made it unnecessary to invade Japan, with all the human losses ON BOTH sides that would have required.

And it has prevented a return to world war since then.

ICXC NIKA
 
It looks like – due to the weather – the sentencing was postponed and has been rescheduled for February 18th. So I guess we’ll have to wait three more weeks to see how much prison time they will receive.
 
It doesn’t sound as though the elderly peace protesters actually made it inside any building. They cut through fences, evaded security patrols and guard dogs to get to a secure building, where they spray painted graffiti and hammered on the building but did not enter.

Sounds like simple vandalism to me. Personally, I would not throw the book at them.

Plus they certainly alerted the facility managers to the need for better security.

I wonder if these are the same nuns who used to break into Minuteman ICBM launch facilities, and spread blood or red paint around. Cutting through fences always set off alarms and caused the USAF security police to come out and arrest them. But in fact, the police could have let them stay there for weeks for all the damage they could have accomplished, which was practically none of consequence.

Plus, I wonder what the nuns would think if they were actually successful in closing down the U.S. nuclear deterrent. In my view, they would make war much more likely.

A U.S. without a nuclear deterrent would cause an increase in aggression and wars throughout the world, and increase even the chance for nuclear war. Would they want that on their conscience?
 
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - whatever the excuses conventionally trotted out - was a grave sin. No amount of jingoism or quoting secular apologists can annul that.
I’m pretty sure it’s not that simple. Much as I tend to be a black and white sort of guy, I’m REALLY glad I’ve never been in a position to make such a decision. By deciding to drop the bomb, tens of thousands died, including innocent women and children. But what such critics tend to ignore is the reality of the situation in Japan at the time of surrender. Japan cannot feed itself on home island agriculture and its shipping fleet had been obliterated by 1945. Massive and I mean MASSIVE shipments of food and cold weather gear by occupying US forces is all that prevented hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians from dying of hunger and exposure the winter following the surrender. Examination of Japanese military records indicates that the command was willing to put the Japanese population through that ordeal in order to buy time for additional weapons development and production which they hoped would allow them to negotiate a favorable armistice. Arguably, the use of atomic weapons greatly reduced the number of deaths of American and Japanese military AND civilian casualties that would have resulted from the war dragging through another winter.

While I can’t defend the decision to drop the bomb via my understanding of catholic moral theology, I’m not prepared to condemn those who did what they judged to be necessary to end the war and get the killing stopped sooner rather than later.

And let’s not forget that nukes haven’t been used in war since then. That’s actually a pretty impressive achievement for humanity!
 
Also…

From ncronline.org/news/peace-justice/activists-who-broke-security-complex-found-guilty-face-30-years-jail :

"Video footage from surveillance cameras that showed a security officer confronting the activists was shown to jurors during the three-day trial.

In the video, Rice bows to Y-12 security officer Kirk Garland in what she called a Buddhist greeting while Walli, 63, and Boertje-Obed, 57, hold lit candles."

And in other reports, she’s described as a “Buddhist nun”. Huh? 🤷
Buddhism is agnostic with regards to God. In my opinion it’s closer to a philosophy than a religion so you can be a Christian Buddhist without any contradiction.
 
Buddhism is agnostic with regards to God. In my opinion it’s closer to a philosophy than a religion so you can be a Christian Buddhist without any contradiction.
I’d be curious as to how one does that, or attempts to. :confused: The Buddhism practiced by those with whom I’m familiar doesn’t seem very compatible.
 
Buddhism is agnostic with regards to God. In my opinion it’s closer to a philosophy than a religion so you can be a Christian Buddhist without any contradiction.
I don’t know how, given that the goals of Buddhism (preparation for reincarnation, nirvana, etc) seen diametrically opposed to those of Christianity.
 
Buddhism is agnostic with regards to God. In my opinion it’s closer to a philosophy than a religion so you can be a Christian Buddhist without any contradiction.
No you can’t be both. Buddhism is technically an atheistic religion, in that it specifically denies the existence of a supernatural god.

All that we define as supernatural (soul, spirit) is considered to be part of the natural order.

To be both a Christian and a Buddhist would require for a person to simultaneously believe that God exists, and that hGod does not exist, likewise with a Heaven that exists outside of the created universe, and, at the same time, to deny the existence of anything outside of the natural universe.
 
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