Most of my life I never thought that what happened at Hiroshima or Nagasaki was immoral. I rather unreflectively reasoned that dropping those atomic bombs effectively ended the war with Japan, and also saved the lives of many American soldiers who would have died invading Japan. But in graduate school I started to realize that I had bought into the ethical pragmatism/utilitarianism of my time. I started to understand "just war" ethics, that the dictum "all is fair in love and war" is false, and that some acts are intrinsically immoral. One such act is the intentional destruction of civilian populations. In Hiroshima we instantly incinerated 90,000 civilians, and then three days later in Nagasaki we instantly incinerated 70,000 civilians.

Many American Christians have adopted this same pragmatism. We have, for the most part, defended the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the U.S.'s development of nuclear weapons. As Phyllis Schlafly put it, "God gave America the atom bomb".

Similarly, many American Christians generally think that torture of those suspected of terrorism is justified. Recently Vice President Cheney practically defended the use of 'waterboarding', the practice of dunking prisoners under water almost to the point of drowning. He said that dunking suspected terrorists is "a no-brainer". Most American Christians hardly batted an eye. What we have here is an "ends justifies the means" mentality. In short, we have an ethic of pragmatism/utilitarianism.

Elizabeth Anscombe serves as a remarkable hero in this respect. She worked hard to fight utilitarianism. She vigorously protested Oxford's decision to bestow an honorary degree on Harry Truman, because of his decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan. Her actions and words reflect the Catholic Catechism's statement that, "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."

Similarly, Mark Shea is speaking out against torture, as intrinsically immoral. So is Gerald Russello (of Seton Hall) who writes,

"The Catechism could not be clearer on this issue: “Torture that uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and human dignity” (No. 2297). That is, the human dignity of all concerned — torturers and tortured. The Catechism then teaches that the torture of innocent persons is “against the moral law.” Calling torture methods “degrading,” it says, “It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors” (No. 2298). ... The 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) reaffirms this teaching. It places torture with abortion and euthanasia as equally a disgrace to society, “and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honor due to the Creator” (No. 80). That is, torture contaminates us more than the terrorists, because in deciding to torture we choose to inflict violence on others. That torture may have a beneficial result — obtaining information, for example — is not in itself a justification for a dehumanizing act.... Once a society starts arguing about when such coercive methods are “appropriate,” it has already begun to condone permitting its own citizens to brutalize and debase themselves as well as harm their victims."

In October of last year at the UN, the US cast the sole 'no' vote on a proposed treaty to restrict the trade of arms. The vote was 153 to 1. But our 'no' vote effectively eviscerates the treaty, since we are the largest supplier of arms in the world. If you have never seen Nicholas Cage's "Lord of War", I highly recommend it (unless you are squeamish about violence). Is this vote an example on our part of raw unfettered capitalism and greed trumping an ethical concern for the good of humanity? If unrestrained capitalism or torture-justifying utilitarianism belonged to the *essence* of conservatism, no Catholic could have anything to do with it.

Why do we not see ourselves rightly? If it were discovered that the Taliban were waterboarding our soldiers, you can bet that Cheney would be referring to human rights and international law and barbaric practices. But it is justified when we do it because we're right, we're the land of the free and the home of the brave; we're the "good guys". If Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, said that "Allah gave Iran the atom bomb", you can bet that Schlafly would write off such a claim as ludicrous and delusional. Everyone thinks that he or she is among "the good guys", among "the orthodox", among the "chosen people". It is a built-in bias that makes it hard for us to see things from a neutral point of view, let alone the other's point of view. For the radical Islamicists, America is "the great Satan". For many American Christians, Islam itself is literally the work of Satan. For some reason it is fine for us to build thousands of nuclear warheads, but other countries must not do so. American Christians generally applauded and supported domestic nuclear proliferation during the cold war and even today, not even considering the ethicality of producing WMDs. We, of course, won't use them, but other countries might. We are peace-loving, so we can mass-produce WMDs and bomb and invade other countries that seem to us not as peace-loving as ourselves and which might be developing WMDs. If that is not imperialism and hypocrisy, I don't know what is. As Cardinal Ratzinger once said (before becoming pope), "Pre-emptive war is not in the Catechism."

I remember studying lots of Francis Schaeffer's writings in seminary, so much so that I eventually became the mentor for all the Schaeffer courses taught by extension (i.e. distance learning). When I learned that Francis's son Franky Schaeffer had left Presbyterianism and become Orthodox, I mentally wrote it off. He must have done it out of rebellion against his father, I thought. Perhaps he got mixed up with the wrong crowd, maybe with people who liked to add 'smells and bells' to the simplicity of the gospel. Somehow or other, he got caught up in the snare of the devil, since obviously he had departed from the gospel taught in Scripture and handed down by the Reformers. It never even crossed my mind that he had discovered that there were major problems with Protestantism. When extension students would ask me about Franky, I would say something like, "We should remember him in our prayers." I am ashamed to admit it. I didn't even try to figure out why Franky left. My untouched and (at the time) untouchable assumption was that Calvinism/Presbyterianism was right, and therefore it didn't matter what Franky's reasons were. Since he was wrong, there was no point in investigating his reasons.

So when one of my relatives responded to the news that I had become Catholic by claiming that I had become Catholic "out of a spirit of rebellion", and didn't even try to understand why I had done it, didn't even write or call me to ask why, that person was doing the same thing I had done to Franky Schaeffer. Basically, since I had obviously gone off the deep end, there was no need to ask me for my reasons or to take the time to try to show me how I am wrong. The only thing to be done was "remember him in our prayers". It is painful to be treated as so irrational that even an attempt at discourse is not considered worthwhile. But, I myself have done this to others. We are all, I think, naturally biased in this way. And we have to work hard to overcome it.

The same bias I had toward Franky, and that my relative had toward me, is the same bias we (as a nation) tend to have toward other nations, especially those of different religions, ethnicities, and cultures. Shea quotes Chesterton as saying, "Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable." And bias deeply affects what we think is excusable. That is why we condemn the events of 9/11 as morally reprehensible, but continue to justify instantly incinerating 160,000 Japanese civilians. It is incredible to me that even sixty years later we have not, as a nation, issued a formal apology for what we did to the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How can we protest the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran and North Korea with the stain of the blood of those Japanese citizens still on our hands, and our arsenal still piled up with nuclear warheads? If we wish to protest the proliferation of nuclear weapons, we must at least apologize for our own use of such weapons, if not dismantle and destroy our own.

What is the most charitable thing someone can do when we are unaware of our own biases, hypocrisies, or inconsistencies (or any other serious vices)? Help us to see them for what they are.