Pax Christi Metro DC

By Alan Smigielski

The large and lumbering plane circled blindly in the thick clouds above the city. As the minutes ticked away, the pilot and his crew became increasingly anxious to complete their mission and return home. Fuel was running low and if the clouds did not lift soon, the plane’s unique payload would have to be dumped into the open ocean. Suddenly a break appeared in the clouds; seemingly an answer to the prayers of these Christian airmen and their chaplain. They could see a large and distinctive building, a landmark they recognized from their months of training. The men did what they were ordered by their nation and blessed by their Church to do. They dropped a single atomic bomb near the landmark, the Catholic Cathedral of Nagasaki; instantly killing 80,000 people and vaporizing a convent of religious women directly below.

On that August morning in 1945, an entirely Christian bomb crew did more than destroy Nagasaki; the traditional center of Christianity in Japan, where the earth was already stained with the blood of St. Paul Miki and so many other martyrs. They also desecrated the very sacrament of God’s peace. In the suffering and death of tens of thousands of innocents and in the Urakami Cathedral’s shattered tabernacle Jesus was crucified once again in a nuclear fireball. A more monstrous evil can scarcely be imagined; a monumental war crime against humanity and a sacrilege against God. Yet, this was the second time in a week that such unspeakable horror was perpetrated.

Three days before, on the Feast of the Transfiguration, the first atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, killing 120,000 people. This was an anti-Transfiguration, an enactment of diabolical evil. Instead of Christ’s loving face shining like the sun, there was the ghoulish glow of nuclear fire cast on the horribly distorted bodies of the dead, the undead, the unborn. Those who planned, executed and supported the atomic bombings spurned the voice from the cloud at the Transfiguration which exclaimed “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him!”

What do we hear if we really listen to Jesus? The voice of Jesus invites us to live as God lives, to be “perfect as your heavenly God,” to love one another as God loves us, to abandon violence and enmity and to return hatred with love. The Gospels unfold with wave upon wave of God’s perfect love and with our calling to emulate Jesus as His followers: “Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called the children of God,” “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” And at the hour when violence and killing could perhaps be most justified, when Jesus was being led away to be arrested, tortured and executed, He told Peter to “put back your sword.” God’s way is the way of love. Jesus even forgave his torturers and executioners with perfect non-violence: “Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.”

Pope Benedict XVI has reflected on the non-violence of Jesus in saying: “Why does Jesus ask us to love our very enemies, that is, ask a love that exceeds human capacities? What is certain is that Christ’s proposal is realistic, because it takes into account that in the world there is too much violence, too much injustice, and that this situation cannot be overcome without positing more love, more kindness. This “more” comes from God: It is his mercy that has become flesh in Jesus and that alone can redress the balance of the world from evil to good, beginning from that small and decisive “world” which is man’s heart.”

Over time the man who blessed the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bomb crews heard the voice from the cloud beckoning him to listen to Jesus and inviting him to change his heart. In 1945, Fr. George Zabelka was a young Catholic priest, freshly enlisted into the chaplain corps of the U.S. Army Air Force. His patriotic zeal led him to an assignment with the 509th Composite Group, the unit responsible for planning and executing the atomic bombings on Japan. At the time Fr. Zabelka recalled, “I was certain that this mass destruction was right, certain to the point that the question of its morality never seriously entered my mind. I was “brainwashed” not by force or torture but by my Church’s silence and wholehearted cooperation in thousands of little ways with the country’s war machine.”

George Zabelka came to hear the voice of Jesus in the Civil Rights movement, in the life and writings of Mahatma Gandhi and in his friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King especially helped him to understand the connection between justice, peace and the non-violence of Jesus. After nearly twenty five years in the chaplain corps, George Zabelka became an outspoken witness to peace and nonviolence and an anti-nuclear weapons advocate for the rest of his life. His prophetic words challenge each one of us and our Church: “Each one of us becomes responsible for the crime of war by cooperating in its preparation and in its execution. This includes the military. This includes the making of weapons. And it includes paying for the weapons. There’s no question about that. We’ve got to realize we all become responsible. Silence, doing nothing, can be one of the greatest sins.”