Archbishop Fulton Sheen traced abortion and today’s moral chaos to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was right. Here’s why...

[Michie]

No faithful Catholic could look at the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and be proud of that decision.

The dropping of the atomic bomb was evil. For the average conservative commentator, this comment automatically causes a knee-jerk reaction with the same old platitudes. For decades, the American Right has been the defender of our usage of the atomic bomb, with either “it saved more American lives” or “it was the lesser of two evils” being some of the strongest candidates.

Phyllis Schlafly once declared, in a 1982 New York Times article, that “the atomic bomb is a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God.” For many years, I would have championed Schlafly’s point, parroting all the appropriate conservative talking points on the subject. I believed that by defending America’s decision, I was somehow being patriotic and defending the nation. I now know I was wrong.

Russell Kirk, one of the greatest conservative thinkers, disdained America’s use of the atomic bomb. He wrote to a close friend, Warren Fleishauer, “It will not be long before we are reduced to savagery. We are the barbarians within our own empire.” Kirk could not be more correct, for this action and the conservative defense of the bomb has created a generation of American barbarians.

Continued below.

The Bomb and the American Barbarian

No faithful Catholic could look at the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and be proud of that decision.

crisismagazine.com

 

[AlexB23]

No faithful Catholic could look at the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and be proud of that decision.

The dropping of the atomic bomb was evil. For the average conservative commentator, this comment automatically causes a knee-jerk reaction with the same old platitudes. For decades, the American Right has been the defender of our usage of the atomic bomb, with either “it saved more American lives” or “it was the lesser of two evils” being some of the strongest candidates.

Phyllis Schlafly once declared, in a 1982 New York Times article, that “the atomic bomb is a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God.” For many years, I would have championed Schlafly’s point, parroting all the appropriate conservative talking points on the subject. I believed that by defending America’s decision, I was somehow being patriotic and defending the nation. I now know I was wrong.

Russell Kirk, one of the greatest conservative thinkers, disdained America’s use of the atomic bomb. He wrote to a close friend, Warren Fleishauer, “It will not be long before we are reduced to savagery. We are the barbarians within our own empire.” Kirk could not be more correct, for this action and the conservative defense of the bomb has created a generation of American barbarians.

Continued below.

The Bomb and the American Barbarian

No faithful Catholic could look at the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and be proud of that decision.

crisismagazine.com

For me, I am against nuclear weapons as well, including the two weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While both nukes may have ended WWII, the tech unleashed a Pandora's box for more weapons to be built, and the potential to wipe out millions. Same could be said for unbridled abortions, which let out a Pandora's box for people to abort whenever they feel like it, when it should be only used for ectopic pregnancies or where both mother and baby are at risk of dying.

 

[Michie]

For me, I am against nuclear weapons as well, including the two weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While both nukes may have ended WWII, the tech unleashed a Pandora's box for more weapons to be built, and the potential to wipe out millions. Same could be said for unbridled abortions, which let out a Pandora's box for people to abort whenever they feel like it, when it should be only used for ectopic pregnancies or where both mother and baby are at risk of dying.

Alex, abortion is not used in ectopic pregnancies. It’s a different procedure altogether.

 

[AlexB23]

Alex, abortion is not used in ectopic pregnancies. It’s a different procedure altogether.

Agreed. But, not many people who are non-Catholic might understand that ectopic pregnancies are allowed in Catholicism, so I simplified my explanation by a lot.

 

[Michie]

For me, I am against nuclear weapons as well, including the two weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While both nukes may have ended WWII, the tech unleashed a Pandora's box for more weapons to be built, and the potential to wipe out millions. Same could be said for unbridled abortions, which let out a Pandora's box for people to abort whenever they feel like it, when it should be only used for ectopic pregnancies or where both mother and baby are at risk of dying.

Alex, abortion is not used in ectopic pregnancies. It’s a different procedure altogether

Agreed. But, not many people who are non-Catholic might understand that ectopic pregnancies are allowed in Catholicism, so I simplified my explanation by a lot.

Abortion is not a treatment to ectopic pregnancies. It’s a huge misunderstanding that people think, but it’s untrue.

 

[AlexB23]

Alex, abortion is not used in ectopic pregnancies. It’s a different procedure altogether

Abortion is not a treatment to ectopic pregnancies. It’s a huge misunderstanding that people think, but it’s untrue.

Agreed. We should actually make a post about ectopic pregnancies in OBOB, and pin it, as some of us here may not know the difference.

From the archive: Wayback Machine

 

[Wolseley]

I'm not sure what to say on this one. I agree that nuclear weapons have been a constant threat hanging over the world since we invented them 80 years ago; but they have also prevented (so far) another world war, since most sane governments are afraid to use them. They make better bargaining chips than they do actual weapons. Only a madman would want to see them used in actual combat.

Going back to 1945, however; my own dear father was just getting out of the military hospital in Calcutta, India, from wounds he received some time before; and he was slated to go into the land invasion of mainland Japan. Everybody knew it was coming, and everybody was pretty jumpy about it. Every island we'd fought on, from Gualacanal to New Guinea to Peleliu to Guam to Saipan to Okinawa, the Japanese had fought harder and more desperately; and we knew that in any attempted invasion of the home islands, it would be a bloodbath of both American and Japanese lives.

The invasion of Kyushu (Operation "Olympic") was scheduled for November 1, 1945; the invasion of Honshu (Operation "Coronet") was scheduled for March 1, 1946. General George C. Marshall estimated that they would cost, at minimum, a quarter of a million American lives, and at worst, a million or more. The Pacific Command gave figures of 20,000 dead and 75,000 wounded, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that the figures would surpass all existing casualty lists for both Europe and the Pacific combined.

General Douglas MacArthur was more pessimistic; he expected to take 50,000 casualties in just establishing a beachhead, and warned Washington that the Japanese might very well simply disband, take to the mountains, and carry on a guerilla war of attrition, with the aim being to take as many American lives as possible. If this happened, he predicted a protracted 10-year war with no ceiling on American losses.

As it was, 200,000 Japanese died from the atomic bombs, which is horrific; but without them, we would have ended up with several million dead on both sides, and World War II would have gone on until 1955, or possibly even 1960.

And my dear old dad would have been dead, and I wouldn't be here. So, as I say, I don't know what to say on this one.

 

[AlexB23]

I'm not sure what to say on this one. I agree that nuclear weapons have been a constant threat hanging over the world since we invented them 80 years ago; but they have also prevented (so far) another world war, since most sane governments are afraid to use them. They make better bargaining chips than they do actual weapons. Only a madman would want to see them used in actual combat.

Going back to 1945, however; my own dear father was just getting out of the military hospital in Calcutta, India, from wounds he received some time before; and he was slated to go into the land invasion of mainland Japan. Everybody knew it was coming, and everybody was pretty jumpy about it. Every island we'd fought on, from Gualacanal to New Guinea to Peleliu to Guam to Saipan to Okinawa, the Japanese had fought harder and more desperately; and we knew that in any attempted invasion of the home islands, it would be a bloodbath of both American and Japanese lives.

The invasion of Kyushu (Operation "Olympic") was scheduled for November 1, 1945; the invasion of Honshu (Operation "Coronet") was scheduled for March 1, 1946. General George C. Marshall estimated that they would cost, at minimum, a quarter of a million American lives, and at worst, a million or more. The Pacific Command gave figures of 20,000 dead and 75,000 wounded, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that the figures would surpass all existing casualty lists for both Europe and the Pacific combined.

General Douglas MacArthur was more pessimistic; he expected to take 50,000 casualties in just establishing a beachhead, and warned Washington that the Japanese might very well simply disband, take to the mountains, and carry on a guerilla war of attrition, with the aim being to take as many American lives as possible. If this happened, he predicted a protracted 10-year war with no ceiling on American losses.

As it was, 200,000 Japanese died from the atomic bombs, which is horrific; but without them, we would have ended up with several million dead on both sides, and World War II would have gone on until 1955, or possibly even 1960.

And my dear old dad would have been dead, and I wouldn't be here. So, as I say, I don't know what to say on this one.

I understand, and it is good that we saved the lives of potentially a million people, but if I was making the decision to drop the nuke, I wouldn't know what to do. There is a term for this. It is dubbed the Trolley Problem.

Next Stop: ‘Trolley Problem’

We have a hard decision to make.

www.merriam-webster.com

There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two (and only two) options:

1. Do nothing, in which case the trolley will kill the five people on the main track.
2. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?

There is an article that discusses exactly what you are talking about: https://philarchive.org/archive/MORTTP-7

 

[Wolseley]

I understand, and it is good that we saved the lives of potentially a million people, but if I was making the decision to drop the nuke, I wouldn't know what to do. There is a term for this. It is dubbed the Trolley Problem.

Next Stop: ‘Trolley Problem’

We have a hard decision to make.

www.merriam-webster.com

There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two (and only two) options:

1. Do nothing, in which case the trolley will kill the five people on the main track.
2. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?

View attachment 347759

There is an article that discusses exactly what you are talking about: https://philarchive.org/archive/MORTTP-7

It's a lot like triage in military hospitals. You have a casualty come in who's really shot up badly. As you do the pre-surgery check, you discover his liver is gone. What do you do?

You can patch him up, in the hopes that another casualty might come in who's not going to make it, and just also happens to have the same blood type, etc., as your wounded man, and do a liver transplant. But there's no guarantee that will happen. In the meantime, as you're spending hours plugging this guy's holes, several other casualties who can be saved might die because you can't get to them soon enough.

What do you do? You rely on triage: you save the ones that you know you can save: Class 2. The lightly-wounded men, Class 1, can wait for treatment, as they're in no danger of dying. The men in Class 3, like our friend with no liver above, are set aside. After the ones who can be saved have been treated, then you do what you can for the class 3 patients, provided they're still alive. But if they're in really bad shape, they go to last place....because they're probably going to die anyway.

The concept of triage is not an American invention; it was developed by the French in the First World War. But it still places man in the position of having to decide who's going to live and who's going to die, a position that none of us, really, should ever be placed into in the first place.

 

[AlexB23]

It's a lot like triage in military hospitals. You have a casualty come in who's really shot up badly. As you do the pre-surgery check, you discover his liver is gone. What do you do?

You can patch him up, in the hopes that another casualty might come in who's not going to make it, and just also happens to have the same blood type, etc., as your wounded man, and do a liver transplant. But there's no guarantee that will happen. In the meantime, as you're spending hours plugging this guy's holes, several other casualties who can be saved might die because you can't get to them soon enough.

What do you do? You rely on triage: you save the ones that you know you can save: Class 2. The lightly-wounded men, Class 1, can wait for treatment, as they're in no danger of dying. The men in Class 3, like our friend with no liver above, are set aside. After the ones who can be saved have been treated, then you do what you can for the class 3 patients, provided they're still alive. But if they're in really bad shape, they go to last place....because they're probably going to die anyway.

The concept of triage is not an American invention; it was developed by the French in the First World War. But it still places man in the position of having to decide who's going to live and who's going to die, a position that none of us, really, should ever be placed into in the first place.

Yeah, I have heard of triage, and it is a good way to prioritize certain wounds over others, though man has to make the ultimate decision.