The Catholic Blogosphere has been talking about the morality of dropping the atomic bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mark Shea has a post about it.
I must share his frustration concerning selective consequentialism.
It's wrong for abortion to be performed to save the life of the woman.
But if the USA wants to drop a bomb on a country and kill thousands of innocents, that's A-OK.
I think this bears repeating:
Any act that is intended to cause the death of an innocent human being is never justified. It is intrinsically evil.
The gravity of the act is multiplied if many thousands of innocents are targeted.
That's why use of nuclear arms, in practical terms, can never be justified, because innocents will always be killed.
The reason why opinions justifying killing innocents are given any currency among Catholics is that the natural law is poorly taught. I wish some Catholic philosophy major would take it upon himself to do quickie posts on this subject!
So many Catholics don't know how to reason with the Church. It should be obvious to anyone who knows natural law that killing innocents is wrong. I mean does "pro-life" mean if not the defense of the right to life of innocent human beings?
And, as an addendum, I want to add that this is why I do not call myself a conservative. Although I think it is correct to say that I am right-wing, because that is where I stand on the political spectrum, my allegiance isn't first and foremost to a political ideology. My primary allegiance is to God, Faith and the Natural Law philosophy. And sometimes this comes into conflict with conservative ideology.
