What is the official Church position regarding the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

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Eric_Hyom said:
I can’t bring myself to call America a template of modern peaceful democracy. They seem to have fought in endless wars since WW2, and millions have died.
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It is one war after another with no end in sight. It was terrible to see how children have suffered and screamed as burning napalm is being dropped on them from the sky. The South Vietnamese, allies of the US, were being supplied with deadly weapons. And how many innocent people were killed in the My Lai massacre and for what purpose? In the end after all the bombs, after all the killing, after all the horrible harm done to innocent children, the Americans just left the country and let the communists take over anyway?
 
GKMotley said:
I deal in history, you in the RCC definition of morality. Which you may find someone to discuss with you. It won’t be me.
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I thought that this thread was about the official position of the Catholic Church regarding the use of atomic weapons on Japan.
 
It is, as far as I know, and well may it stay in those confines.

Drag in history, and I’ll see if it needs correcting. Stick to morality, and I get to do more reading.
 
“Arthur T. Hadley said recently that those for whom
the use of the A-bomb was “wrong” seem to be implying “that it would have been better to allow thousands on thousands of American and Japanese infantrymen to die in honest hand-to-hand combat on the beaches than to drop those two bombs.” People holding such views, he notes, “do not come
from the ranks of society that produce infantrymen or pilots.”

Paul Fussell, writing in 1981 in an essay titled “Thank God for the atom bomb.”

 
Curious11 said:
Yes and why is that better?
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I made no assertion about what is better, thus I don’t understand your question.
Curious11 said:
Why is it not intrinsically evil to invade a country and kill all who resist, including civilian militia and civilians who will die as an inevitable consequence and knowing full well the USSR would invade and Japan would be divided with half of the country living in communist slavery. All that could be foreseen. Why is that not intrinsically evil?
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Intrinsic Evil is not defined based on a view of what motivates our actions, nor the anticipated outcomes, but rather the moral object of what we do.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a4.htm

Killing “all who resist” might involve intrinsically evil acts (eg murder).
 
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Rau said:
Killing “all who resist” might involve intrinsically evil acts (eg murder).
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I think you mean to add a not there.
Curious11 said:
How about not launching attacks forever? You must understand, “a while” is not good enough, after 2 world wars and the bloodiest century in the history of mankind. If you cut off a psychopathic killer’s arm but you don’t put him in prison, what are you really solving?
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Forever is indeed preferable but allowing a conditional surrender, combined with being prepared if they launch another attack is not intrinsically evil.

Also there is the probability that Japan would have worked to get nukes and launched a nuke attack in retaliation when they got the chance.

It’s not like Hitler kept to the terms of Versailles, partly he was let violate them, but it may be possible to have done it covertly.
 
pnewton said:
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omgriley:
The Japanese never eviscerated over 300,000 innocent women and children.
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Neither did the United States. What in the world are you talking about???
According to very highly respected men of high military rank, and available declassified intelligence material, we know the Japanese were seeking a peaceful way to end the war as early as December of 1944.
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Repeating the same thing makes it no more true or believable.
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omgriley said:
I’m taking about the deaths resulting from the bombing of Nagasaki, Iwo Jima, and firebombing of Tokyo —all of which were civilian targets.
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Okay, then do you know what the word “eviscerated” even means? It does not mean “kill.” Also, I believe you gave the total number of victims, all of whom were not women and children. I will have to give your interpretation of the situation less credibility under the circumstances. Those who speak truthfully and accurately have more of a grasp on what it was like.
 
Elf01 said:
I think you mean to add a not there.
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No, I was agreeing with curious That doing what s/he said might indeed involve intrinsically evil acts. Well, it might or it might not. Prisoners can be taken in many cases, in other cases, that’s not a possibility.
 
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Killing in a just war is not intrinsically evil.

Given the attack on Pearl Harbour I do think that declaring war on Japan was justified but continuing purely in order to dictate the surrender terms would not have been by any means.

A land attack to end the war would not be intrinsically evil. The goal there is not killing civilians.
 
GKMotley said:
The subject, from a RC teaching viewpoint, is simple, and the relevant history is not, and is not…relevant. It would seem to me that it would thus be simple to keep to the teachings of the RCC, at the appropriate level of theological certainty.
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The teaching here is simple, but the implications are hard. I dislike historical inaccuracy. Nothing is accomplished by skewed facts. In this case, as I have said repeatedly, we simply cannot apply the moral lessons learned back in time, but the principle is really unavoidable. We understand as Catholics today that such an action, should it be needed in the future, is a gravely immoral act which cannot be justified through any positive result. Like I said, morality is hard. If it wasn’t, everyone would be a saint.

Thank you again for your contribution in keeping the facts clear.
 
Elf01 said:
Killing in a just war is not intrinsically evil.
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It may be. The other poster spoke of “killing all who resist”; whether or not the war is just, such may involve intrinsically evil acts. Shooting dead the 10 year old throwing stones, for example.
 
JimG said:
“Arthur T. Hadley said recently…
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We are called to transcend conventional reasoning for the sake of morality. I know the bombings were proper based on worldly wisdom. I think that is a given.
 
You are very welcome. Over the years it gets tiresome. I promise myself I’ll stop. Consider not doing it. Then I do. So far.
 
Guys and girls thank you for contributing to this thread which deals with a topic that has been debated many times for the past 70 years.

I may be wrong with my thoughts on this, but I won’t argue anymore, no use dividing brothers and sisters unnecessarily. It’s far more important to love your neighbor no matter whether you agree or not.

I love you all, I’ll pray for you all and for myself
 
I always ask people: what would YOU have done. And they just stammer and sputter.

And after a pause of five seconds, I usually say, “time is up and you are dead.”
 
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MonteRCMS said:
I always ask people: what would YOU have done. And they just stammer and sputter.
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Well, I have not done that. I have been outspoken that the A-bomb should have been reserved for one purpose and one purpose only: to prevent the USSR from developing the same.

Furthermore, it is not 100% proven that the two A-bomb attacks actually caused the surrender. We will never know for sure that Japan would not have surrendered under the terms that Truman offered which were that Hirohito could retain his position as emperor.

If Japan had refused Truman’s terms, the invasion could have been turned over to the USSR.
And, please, let’s not put forth the idea that the USA A-bombed Japan to save them from the Russians. The USA A-bombed Japan because we felt sorry for them? I don’t think so.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and, in this case, actually useful. We can see that the USA gave away its chance to become the world’s sole nuclear weapons power by using that bomb prematurely. My friends, there is room in this world for only one nuclear superpower. Two of those eventually leads to the disaster of global nuclear war. The USA’s only option now for avoiding that catastrophe is unilateral nuclear disarmament. And, whatever the negative consequences of that action might be, it is still 100 times better than the inevitable alternative.
 
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pnewton said:
Okay, then do you know what the word “eviscerated” even means? It does not mean “kill.” Also, I believe you gave the total number of victims, all of whom were not women and children. I will have to give your interpretation of the situation less credibility under the circumstances. Those who speak truthfully and accurately have more of a grasp on what it was like.
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I would hope you could see that I was using the term colloquially. And most assuredly the total number of victims were not only women and children. The fact remains the number of targeted victims was at least 300,000. The subject of this thread is the morality of those murders.

The Church has always said these were morally evil acts perpetrated against innocent people. There is no excuse for them. End of story.
 
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