Nuclear war will be both more terrible and less terrible
[Letter to the Holland Sentinel, 16 December 1983]
My philosophy and opinion on nuclear war will probably be very unpopular. [Editor's Note: A brief discussion of an ABC-TV movie that had just aired called The Day After is omitted here.]
During the Warsaw Insurrection, about 300,000 people were killed and the city, which had had a population of over a million, was completely destroyed. The ruins were full of the dead and the decomposing. Pieces of human bodies were everywhere. People had been shot and burned. There were hunger and all the other terrible things that come with war.
In my view, nuclear war will be both much more terrible and much less terrible than what I experienced and saw during the Warsaw Insurrection. It will be more terrible because the destruction will be greater and the dead will be more numerous, less terrible because most of the dying will be over in split seconds.
Everybody will die sooner or later. Seen from this point of view, nuclear war would not be the ultimate catastrophe, even if half of the world population were to die. The real ultimate catastrophe would be if the whole world had to live under the Communist devil. This opinion is shared by many of the 130 million people who, thanks to America, are under Communist domination. Their hope for freedom is often connected with war: many will die, but some will survive and be free!
The Soviet Union respects only strength. Those who serve Communism by trying to disarm America do not realize that they are provoking war and that they would be responsible for such a war. Why does America not develop a defense against nuclear missiles as so well described by General Graham in his book We Must Defend America — Put an End to Madness? Such defenses would, for all practical purposes, make nuclear war obsolete.
Too many Americans, however, have lost their spirit. Instead of thinking offense, or at least defense, they think surrender! They do not understand how precious freedom is and many of them misuse it.
Now a different, but related, consideration. Communism is atheism. How, then, does God judge his "servants" in the clergy who cooperate with Communists, find excuses for Communist ideology, or even deliver weapons to Communists? How does He judge America, "one nation under God," for supporting and supplying the Soviet Union for years? How does He look at the decadence and immorality prevailing in the West? Maybe He will find the world deserving of nuclear war. I wonder....
Webmaster's Note: In the Encyclical Divini Redemptoris (1937), Pope Pius XI unambiguously declared that "no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with [Communism] in any undertaking whatsoever" (¶58).