Mr. Auster responds (and even mentions
my post at his
blog):
I had forgotten that the Church has an official position denouncing the use of the A bomb on Japan in World War II. When did it announce this position?
Is it also the Church's official position that if a doomed hijacked airliner were about to crash into the U.S. Capitol, the U.S. authorities could not shoot it down to save the Capitol and the thousands of lives on the ground, because it would be immoral to kill the innocent passengers on the plane, even though they were about to die anyway? I ask, because the same reasoning that the writers at 4W use to arrive at that position, they also use to denounce the dropping of the A bomb on Japan. Indeed, by the same logic the WWWW writers also argue that if a hijacked airliner with 50 people aboard and armed with an atomic bomb were about to crash into Washington D.C., the U.S. authorities could not shoot it down to save the city and tens of thousands of people who would be killed by the atomic blast, because it would be immoral to kill the 50 innocent passengers on the plane, even though they were about to die anyway.
I just want to be sure which positions one must have in order to be a traditionalist. I didn't know that traditionalism requires a society to accept the destruction of a city and the deaths of ten thousands in order to killing one innocent person who is about to die in any case.
I found something through
Opinionated Catholic --
a collection by Dave Armstrong of various statements by Popes Paul VI and John Paul II on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, mixed with texts by popes, bishops, and Catholic theologians on the limits of aggression during war. The judgments of particular acts by individual popes may not be infallible, but like their judgement of the Iraq War, they should be respected and considered. These judgments are the application of Church teaching, and the Church teaches that to indiscriminately destroy whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is wrong (see CCC
2314).
Is the
shooting down of a hijacked airplane permissible under the principle of double
effect? It seems like it might be. (With the proviso that all other options to prevent the airplane from being used as a weapon have been exhausted or do not exist?) Zippy apparently does not understand what the
object of an action, relying upon
Veritatis Splendor instead of a treatise of moral theology. At least this is his state of mind in August of 2007. I have not looked through his
blog but I would assume that his posts from 2007 are representative of the best in Catholic moral theology. Consult instead Stephen Brock's
explication of the relevant passage of VS on moral object. See also his
Action and Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action on the principle of double-effect. (Chris Kaczor's
Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition is a good reference comparing consequentialism with the Natural Law tradition. I still have to read through Tom Cavanaugh's
Double-Effect Reasoning [
Google Books].)
If Zippy is wrong about whether it is permissible to shoot down a passenger airplane, he may still be right (and I think he is) about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I believe that the moral objects of the shooting of the plane and the bombing are different, but I will not attempt to argue for this here.
(Regarding the
dropping of pamphlets prior to the bombing of Hiroshima, someone
links to this
statement by a group of historians denying that it happened. Even if it did happen (with the expectation that the city would be mostly or completely deserted) , the bombing would probably still be wrong according to Catholic teaching since it is wrong to target and destroy civilian infrastructure.)
Related:WWWTW discussion in August 2007
Jimmy Akin's
article for the
National Catholic RegisterAtomic Anniversay by Allen Mendenhall
National Catholic Register editorial from a few years ago
SSPX FAQHiroshimaNuclear Weapons and Morality: An Unequivocal PositionCatholic Answers
