Just War 101: Catholic Teaching for a Dangerous Moment

The story of Father George Zabelka, the military chaplain who blessed the Enola Gay crew before Hiroshima, and who spent the rest of his life wrestling publicly with it, is a story that I only recently came across.

Father George Zabelka was a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Air Force and served as a priest for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In August of 1945, he was called upon to give the crew of the Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a blessing for their safety. This was an action that he had routinely performed hundreds of times, if not thousands. In fact, priests are called upon to bestow blessings for a variety of reasons. Blessing people is one of the gifts we priests are privileged to perform.

Just days later, Father Zabelka counseled an airman who had flown a low-level reconnaissance flight over the city of Nagasaki shortly after the detonation of “Fat Man.” The man described how thousands of scorched, twisted bodies writhed on the ground in the final throes of death, while those still on their feet wandered aimlessly in shock—flesh seared, melted, and falling off. The crewman’s description raised a stifled cry from the depths of Zabelka’s soul: “My God, what have we done?”

Over the next 20 years, Father Zabelka gradually came to believe that he had been terribly wrong, that he had denied the very foundations of his faith by lending moral and religious support to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The moral weight of war falls on human beings precisely because humans bear moral responsibility, and this is as it should be. Reading about a brother priest who wrestled with his conscience and eventually had the courage to speak out against the actions of his country was a moment of prophetic grace and moral righteousness.

Continued below.