Pro-Bomb? No, morality entails sacrifice and trust in God.

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 09, 2020

When George Weigel wrote his absurd defense of the bombing of Hiroshima and Fr. Jerry Pokorsky essentially called him out for it, I was surprised and saddened to find that some of our readers also defended the bombing, declaring that Fr. Pokorsky was wrong. In thinking about this, I realized two things:

1. Some otherwise serious Catholics do not understand the concept of intrinsic evil.
2. Some otherwise serious Catholics do not understand that sacrificial trust in God lies at the heart of morality, including moral public policy.

Intrinsic evil

If an action is intrinsically evil, it may not be directly willed under any circumstances whatsoever. Full stop. The simplest example is probably murder, defined as the deliberate taking of innocent human life. Suppose, for example, that a criminal invades my home, bringing with him a hostage whom I have never seen and do not know. The criminal tells me I have two choices. I can beat the hostage to death with a sledge hammer, and he will leave without harming me and my family. Or I can refuse that request, and he will kill me, my wife and my six children.

Note that my fatherly responsibility, my affections, and the numbers involved—not to mention my own self-interest—all favor one course of action: As Caiaphas put it, “It is expedient that one man should die for the people” (Jn 11:50)—and he was right, if morality is defined (as it so often is) as the moral actor’s human expediency. But the correct moral course is to refuse to bludgeon the hostage, even if it means the criminal will kill all of us. And the reason this is the correct moral course, is that killing the innocent hostage is murder, which is intrinsically evil. Therefore, I may not commit murder under any circumstances whatsoever.

I would try to prevent the logical outcome by launching a direct attack on the gunman, of course. We must always be alert to possibilities which lie “outside the box”, which so often means outside the box of our own fears. But with respect to the hostage, I have no Catholic choice except to trust in God and follow what I know to be His will.

Most readers of CatholicCulture.org understand this argument when it comes to abortion. It is intrinsically immoral to choose to directly cause the death of an unborn child even if doing so, according to competent medical opinion, is likely to save the life of the mother. Here again, the Catholic has no moral choice other than to strive to save both lives while trusting in God.

But it seems that some do not grasp the concept of intrinsic evil when it comes to war. It is intrinsically evil to directly will the deaths of non-combatants in order to increase the likelihood of victory in a war. Some level of undesired collateral damage can be tolerated when not directly intended, simply because, with the best will in the world, we cannot always completely control the results of military action. The effort to destroy a weapons factory, for example, even if properly targeted, may entail some collateral damage. But dropping a major nuclear device on a city, in order to demonstrate our power to destroy the general population, clearly targets not only non-combatants but a great many people, young and old, who never wanted the war, may not support it, or are too young even to understand it.

Some have tried to justify the American decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by explaining that Japanese culture made it likely that large numbers of civilians would actively resist an invasion, and/or that the American death toll in an invasion would have been very high. On this basis, the best calculation suggests that many American lives were saved by the decision to use the atomic bomb, perhaps even many lives on both sides. But intrinsic evil has nothing to do with the projection of future contingencies or the calculation of numbers. Such projections and calculations may play a role in prudential decisions, but intrinsic evil is not subject to considerations of prudence. An intrinsic evil is something we cannot do under any circumstances.

Moral clarity and sacrifice

Morality is not simply a series of ends and means to which we adhere by virtue of our perception of the natural law when it seems reasonable and within our abilities to do so. For all persons, it is much more than that, but this “much more” is clearly visible only in light of Divine Revelation and Catholic teaching. For the Christian, moral behavior is a participation in the life of God and, ultimately, a willingness to recognize that God is God, that we are not, and that God’s will is not only theoretically sovereign but always best. For this reason, Judaism, and to an even greater extent Christianity, enable us to grasp morality not only in terms of a true understanding of good and evil but in terms of the decision about whether or not to put our trust in God.

As I mentioned in a recent commentary, we know, or ought to know, that “unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it” (Ps 127:1a)—or, perhaps more to the point here, “unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (1b). We also know, or ought to know, that “a day in thy courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.” Indeed, as the Psalmist puts it, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness” (Ps 84:10).

We know that it is blessed to hunger and thirst for righteousness, for those who do will be satisfied (Mt 5:6). We pray daily, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done” (Mt 6:10). And presumably we try to accept the challenge of these words: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (Mt 6:33). But the key to embracing all of these statements—the root of the matter, the teeth of the moral instruction—is revealed here:

And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.” Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?” [Mt 16:22-26]

The reference here, of course, is to eternal life with God. Throughout the earthly stage of life, each of us is challenged in different ways when it comes to our willingness to “take up his cross”, whether in private matters or public affairs. Often that challenge is to avoid taking the easy way out of a difficult situation by choosing what is expedient. Our motive may be to prevent great evil, and since God knows perfectly all circumstances and all the pressures, our guilt for a transgression of His law may be judged lesser or greater in each case. But the point here is that we cannot do the good under duress if we do not trust that adherence to God’s will is always the right course—that is, if we are unwilling to take up the cross and follow Him, even when the results of doing so, to our human eyes, seem intolerable.

Christianity with teeth

One of the risks of the current “culture wars” is that we tend to think that a willingness to state the truth about contemporary problems is the essence of a Christianity with teeth. God knows it is better than nothing, but it is not the real test of our conviction as Catholics. The real test is our willingness to trust God even when we do not understand how His way can possibly be the right way. The real test is our willingness to refrain from an intrinsically evil action even under duress, when the outcomes we ourselves foresee are all wrong.

This applies as much to macro decisions about nuclear bombing as to micro decisions about one woman’s abortion. The difference may well be that some on “our side” can grasp the intrinsic evil of abortion and its consequences only because they are not personally involved. But put the same question in terms of a war in which their own family history or national self-image is involved, and suddenly the concept of intrinsic morality is discarded. Or perhaps it is simply the private aspect of abortion as compared with the public aspect of war that makes some think the concept of intrinsic evil should apply privately but cannot be applied to affairs of state. Either way, suddenly it is all about who started it, or about the lesser worth of “enemy” lives, or about numbers and tradeoffs.

But it isn’t, not really. Whether personal and private or national and public, morality is always first and foremost about the acceptance of suffering and trust in God. Every moral decision begins, ends and bears fruit only through the Cross of Christ.