Reaching the Chaplain that Blessed the Bomb
by Jim Hewes
Fr. Charlie McCarthy [Emanuel Charles McCarthy] once told me about a conference he was to give to the priests of the Diocese of Detroit. The Cardinal sent a letter asking all of his 800 priests to come to Charlie’s presentation. When he got there, only 8 had come. Yet Charlie gave his talks on nonviolence as if there were 800 in attendance.
At each of his talks, one particular priest gave Charlie a hard time, arguing that some violence was justified. Charlie was patient and gentle but also clearly and strongly answered each of his questions.
A few weeks after the conference, Charlie got a surprise call from this very same priest. He wanted Charlie to give those presentations on nonviolence in his own parish. Charlie was taken back by the request, but agreed to come to this priest’s parish. When he gave the presentations, this priest still kept commenting and asking many tough questions of Charlie, but he was not as confrontative as the last time.
A year later Charlie was coming to another parish in Detroit. This same priest heard about it and asked if they could have lunch together. Charlie said that he wouldn’t have the time but why doesn’t he come to lunch at this other parish, where Charlie was presenting; so the priest did come.
During lunch they discussed the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Someone would make a comment about this and this same priest would intervene and comment that the statement that the other person made was not true. A different person made another comment about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the priest would intervene again and comment that the statement that this other person made was also not true.
This went on for a while. Finally one person got so upset that he confronted the priest by asking him: “why are you so sure of this? Were you there?”
The priest answered him: “Yes, I was there. I was the Catholic Chaplain that blessed the Christian men who dropped the atom bombs.”
There was silence in the room.
His name was Father George Zabelka. He spent the rest of his life going across the United States and talking on nonviolence. His story can be found at the website: www.centerforchristiannonviolence.org.
There is a meaning for me is his story. Even though it’s so natural to look for numbers in our programs, God has a different purpose. Charlie could have cancelled because there were only 8 people, but that didn’t faze him. As it turned out, one of those eight was Fr. George Zabelka. That was not only an incredible grace of conversion for him, but a tremendous means of grace though his witness to so many people, people that Fr. George touched by his speaking out across the country.
Father George Zabelka, left, with Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy in Toronto, Aug. 9, 1985 Credit: Photo courtesy of Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, in America: The Jesuit Review
More on Fr. McCarthy
Fr. Charlie McCarthy I consider a friend. Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy is a priest of the Eastern Rite (Byzantine) of the Catholic Church. He was formerly a lawyer, university educator and founder and original director of The Program for the Study and Practice of Nonviolent Conflict Resolution at the University of Notre Dame. He is also a co-founder of Pax Christi-USA.
For over forty years he has directed educational programs and conducted spiritual retreats throughout the world on the issue of the relationship of faith and violence. He is author of three books: All Things Flee Thee for Thou Fleest Me!: A Cry to the Churches and Their Leaders to Stop Running from the Nonviolent Jesus and His Nonviolent Way, August 9, and Christian Just War Theory: The Logic of Deceit. He has also authored numerous essays and articles on the subject of violence and religion.
His audio/video series on Gospel Nonviolence, Behold the Lamb, is internationally recognized as the most spiritually penetrating and logically ordered presentation on this dimension of the person and teaching of Jesus available in this format. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his life’s work on behalf of peace within people and among people.
These quotes come from Abortion and War, October 4, 2011, though the full article is no longer up – but there is a video version:
As I read the triumphant headlines in the newspapers day after day—‘U.S. Pounds Iraq from Air’—and saw the pictures of missiles streaking into Iraq, I could not help but hear the silent screams of all the little Iraqi children in utero who were having their lives ripped from them. The lucky ones were the ones who took a direct hit. The ones, who were aborted because of percussion, vibration or because of the terror, trauma, malnourishment and/or exhaustion visited upon their mothers by war, would probably have suffered less agonizing deaths at the wrong end of a suction machine in an abortion clinic . . .
In the very first news program I saw on TV after the start of the 1991 war between the U.S. and Iraq, an American pilot was being interviewed. He said he experienced no interference in dropping his bombs and that when he left Baghdad, “It was lit up like a Christmas tree!” . . . To analogize a Baghdad of a thousand horror-filled infernos to a “lit Christmas tree” is a grotesque misrepresentation of the event that is taking place. However, it is an accurate representation of a human mind and heart drugged into a moral stupor by the war propaganda of erotic nationalism. . . . Is it not the flagrant misnaming of reality that is the foundation for all pro-abortion philosophies and politics? Is it not the obstinate refusal to call murder by its correct name, murder, that is at the heart of the pro-choice position? Is not the misnaming of murder as just another “medical operation” the hook on which all pro-choice propaganda hangs?”
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For more of our posts relating to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, here are two recent ones:
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