Correspondence
MURRAY, MARGARET H. & WINEGARDEN, MARGARET BEAHON & GALLIGAN, ANDREW & RIGA, PETER J. & HOVEY, MICHAEL W. & Broderick, James A.
CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors War is hell, period After studying your August 18 issue, I feel I must separate myself from you, at least for a while. Your editorial on the ending of the war with...
...Concluding that the use of the bomb was immoral is no reason to deny or rewrite history...
...And why shouldn't they follow our lead...
...MICHAEL W. HOVEY New Rochelle, N.Y...
...Church teaching may be correct in condemning such attitudes, but what should be is not what is...
...We should ask consequential-ists to take a longer view of what may result when we dismiss the notion of moral absolutes as outdated and irrelevant...
...And we had better keep that in mind whenever we urge or condone a war between modern states...
...Why print an article at odds with the magazine's position...
...ANDREW GALLIGAN Tracy, Calif...
...The Great Hunger" (1942) was a major poem that is still influencing contemporary Irish literature...
...Whatever it takes, do it...
...James A. Broderick Washington, D.C...
...That is war, and the Japanese knew it when they attacked this country...
...The ancient inhibition against killing, founded on the belief that it is simply wrong, is ignored...
...War is destruction and killing: destruction of everything and killing of everyone, and once it is declared, there is no guilt in retaliation...
...MARGARET BEAHON WINEGARDEN Rochester, N. Y. The dynamic of war I do not stand by the corpse-and-casu-alty calculus of Bruce Loebs, and I do agree with J. Bryan Hehir and the editors on the principle of noncombatant immunity [August 18], but I suspect that our stance will never make much sense to Americans in general when they are engaged in warfare...
...The bombings confirmed me as an active "peacenik," as we were called in the '60s...
...From the editors: Commonweal's positions are expressed in editorials...
...an outcome that even some proponents of abortion find disturbing...
...In his August 18 article, "Hiroshima and Nagasaki: One Necessary Evil, One Tragic Mistake," Bruce Loebs honestly admits that he does not base his view on the traditional just-war criterion of "noncombatant immunity...
...And how...
...By their fruits you will know them...
...Kill, rather than be killed...
...They" would do it to us if "they" ever got the chance...
...Total war is wrong Twenty years ago, while serving at the U.S...
...In a theater of war, not much attention is given to theological niceties...
...Filled with horror at the realization of what our armed forces had done-and were prepared to do again- I filed for and received an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector...
...What do you think war is- an exchange of cream puffs at fifty paces between gentlemen...
...In view of Kavanagh's treatment by the Irish church and the De Valera vice squad, it is ironic that a Catholic encyclopedia would include an article on him...
...But I would have been far less disappointed and saddened if I had found a centerpiece article in your magazine which reminded your readers of the church's unambivalent attitude toward weapons of mass destruction, rather than one that only repeated the conventional "wisdom" regarding those August days of infamy...
...At the time of the Hiroshima bombing I was a young mother, at an early stage of my second pregnancy...
...Can you imagine any military or civilian leader telling us: "I could have brought hundreds of thousands of your sons and daughters home alive, but I didn't do that, because I wanted to treat the enemy fairly in accord with the principles of the just-war theory that I learned in a Catholic classroom...
...Father Hehir said it well: Wars "produce a dynamic that seeks to eliminate restraint...
...The consequence of this fixation on consequences has been a massive increase in the number of abortions at all stages of pregnancy...
...A major Irish poet I always look forward to Lawrence S. Cunningham's "Religion Booknotes" in Commonweal, but must take issue with the passage in his column for the issue of June 2 in which he faults the Modern Catholic Encyclopedia for including "an entry on a minor Irish poet, Patrick Kavanaugh [sic...
...Navy base in Sasebo, Japan, I visited Nagasaki, just thirty miles south of the base...
...It is therefore not surprising to find him justifying mass killing and obliteration bombings-even if only once-in order to achieve the desirable goals of ending a war and saving lives (especially American lives...
...margaret h. murray Cincinnati, Ohio Hiroshima remembered Along with my renewal as a member of the Commonweal Associates, I want to send congratulations on your issue of August 18, and especially for your reprinting of the "Hiroshima 1945" editorial from the August 24, 1945 issue of Commonweal...
...wipe the enemy out first...
...But in fact he was probably the most important Irish poet between Yeats and Heaney...
...PETER J. RIGA Houston, Tex...
...The writer is coordinator of Peace and Justice Education at Iona College...
...The end justifies the means...
...The same principle rules: If, in the mind of the actor, the end is good, the means don't matter...
...Hamas may bomb an Israeli bus, the IRA may destroy a London department store, because they are acting against what they deem to be unjust oppression...
...Loebs's history gave an accurate account of the role of the A-bomb in Hirohito's decision to surrender...
...If we can...
...Professor Loebs, of course, has every right to hold a position at odds with Catholic teaching, and Commonweal, of course, is not bound to publish only articles that reflect that teaching...
...don't give them the chance...
...Where does this consequen-tialist-pragmatic calculus lead us...
...If we accept consequentialism to justify our own acts, how can we condemn these others as "terrorists" just because their targets are civilians...
...Standing at "ground zero," I understood why the entire leadership of our Catholic church was moved to declare, at the Second Vatican Council: "Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their populations is a crime against God and man himself...
...We thought Mr...
...Abortion: Those who defend it focus all but exclusively on the end sought, the woman's (or the couple's) freedom of choice, the defectiveness of the fetus, the origin of the pregnancy (rape or incest)-but rarely or never on whether the act itself, the deliberate killing of the unborn, may be intrinsically evil...
...Face the consequences The consequentialist approach to assessing the morality of total war (for example, large-scale attacks deliberately aimed at noncombatants)-defended by Bruce Loebs, criticized by J. Bryan Hehir in your issue of August 18-deserves to be judged by its own standard...
...As the euthanasia movement (Continued on page 30) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) gains ground in every jurisdiction in the United States over the next ten years, the likely long-term consequence will be a weakening of respect for life, even within the medical profession, and we'll have to live with it...
...Our regular columnist J. Bryan Hehir analyzed Professor Loebs's argument and rejected it in favor of the just-war prohibition against total warfare...
...Consider these results: Terrorism: What the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were de magno, all forms of terrorism are de parvo...
...The American people were not asked for their approval of the decision, and most of our friends, learning of it, were stunned and horrified, especially when details were (very slowly) revealed...
...Keep our body count down...
...A second editorial, "Hiroshima 1995," reaffirmed that judgment and distinguished it from the views of Bruce Loebs...
...The enemy, in most people's minds, is not confined to the hostile armed forces...
...And if that involves the indiscriminate bombing of cities, so be it...
...The issue of August 18 reprinted the editorial of August 24, 1945, an unequivocal condemnation of the use of atomic weapons against Japan...
...To judge by interviews and letters to editors, a vast majority of Americans, at least in matters of war and economics, tend toward pragmatism, utilitarianism, consequentialism: If it works, do it...
...Euthanasia: Helping sick people who are in pain kill themselves, or doing it on their behalf, either at their request or, as occurs in Holland, without their request, is justified by conse-quentialists solely in terms of the motive (kindness) and the result (an end of suffering...
...Your editorial on the ending of the war with Japan was appalling...
...It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation...
Vol. 122 • September 1995 • No. 16
