We are called to remember and witness: Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Maureen Lahiff, JPIC Member, Alameda Companion
In 1945, over 200,000 people, most of them civilians, died in Japan from the atomic bombs that we, the United States, dropped on the cities of Hiroshima on August 6 and on Nagasaki three days later. Millions others suffered life-long health consequences from radiation exposure, including vulnerabilities to many forms of cancer.
Although the United States is the only country that has, so far, used nuclear weapons against human targets, there are now nine nations that have the ability to do so: the US, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Things are getting worse, not better, on the arms control front. The US and Russia are “modernizing” their nuclear weapons. In 2019, the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, claiming it was responding to Russian violations. The war in Ukraine has brought the threat of nuclear weapons use even more urgently to mind. Largely because of that, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has advanced its Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds before midnight. The Doomsday Clock is a metaphor that summarizes “the perils we must address if we are to survive on the planet.” This is the closest to midnight the hands have ever been set.
Like everything else, Catholic Church teaching is complex and complicated. Popes since Pius XII have condemned the use of nuclear weapons, and most have rejected even the possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrent. In Gaudium et Spes: The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Vatican Council II says ”Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.” The US bishops conference issued a pastoral letter on modern warfare in 1983, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response. In that letter, the US bishops expressed “conditional moral acceptance [of nuclear weapons] for deterrence.” Pope Francis has spoken several times against even the possession of nuclear weapons. In his Apostolic Address at the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, November 23, 2019, he said:
With deep conviction, I wish once more to declare that the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is today, more than ever, a crime not only against the dignity of human beings, but against any possible future for our common home. The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral, as I said two years ago. We will be judged on this. Future generations will rise to condemn our failure if we spoke of peace but did not act to bring it about among the peoples of the earth. How can we speak of peace even as we build terrifying new weapons of war?
As we celebrate the feast of the Transfiguration on August 6, let us pray and commit ourselves to working against the continued threat of nuclear weapons, on behalf of our world and future generations.
Maureen Lahiff is a member of the Alameda Companion Group and a member of the province’s Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation Committee.