St. Ignatius, Pedro Arrupe, Hiroshima and Abortion

As my colleague and MOJ’s resident Jesuit, Father Bob Araujo, S.J., reminded us (here), last Wednesday the Church celebrated the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, one of the outstanding leaders in the Catholic Reformation and the beloved founder of the Society of Jesus.

Pope Francis chose to celebrate the feast with his brother Jesuits at Rome’s Gesu Church.  As Rocco Palmo notes in his story on the day’s events (here), following Mass the Holy Father went to pray at the tombs of St. Ignatius, St. Francis Xavier, and Pedro Arrupe, the Father General who led the Society following the Council and oversaw the changes that took place (both for the better and for the worse) as the Society redefined its mission as “the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement” (GC 32, Decree 4, ¶ 2, available here).

Prior to his service as Father General, Arrupe served as a Jesuit missionary in Japan.  He was living outside of Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped, August 6, 1945.  Arrupe described the bombing as “a permanent experience, outside of history, engraved on my memory.”  A trained doctor, Father Arrupe helped to care for the wounded and dying transforming the Jesuit novitiate into a make-shift hospital.

Today is the anniversary of that cataclysmic event.  As such, it is an appropriate time to reflect upon the death and misery that it caused, and on the moral calculus that led to the fateful decision to use so indiscriminate a weapon.

It is also an appropriate time to reflect upon the death and misery wrought by the scandal of abortion.  Of course abortion is not a single event, but one that occurs millions of times in a single year.  And unlike the bomb, abortion is not indiscriminate.  Each time it takes place its aim is the death of a particular child.  In the United States alone, over 55 million abortions have taken place since 1973.  What is the moral calculus behind this staggering death toll and the law that makes it possible?

Some may think there is no connection between abortion and the dropping of the atom bomb?

Pedro Arrupe had no trouble discerning a connection, a fact I recently discovered in the course of some of my research on the history of abortion.

As reported in the Chicago Tribune (August 3, 1970), Father Arrupe gave a radio interview in Rome to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.  He said that the bombing “looks like a symbol of another kind of explosion, which is much more dangerous.  Nobody raises his voice for the hundreds of thousands, even millions of innocent lives that are doomed . . . I refer to planned and legalized abortion.”

Since the tumultuous years that followed in the wake of the Council many Jesuits, as well as many other Catholics, have not seen the “promotion of justice” as including the cause of the unborn.  This fact is reflected at the parish level in the separation of “peace and justice” ministries from “respect life” ministries.   In some instances there is even an understated hostility between the two groups.

Let us pray for the followers of St. Ignatius including all those who see in Pedro Arrupe the model of a “a man for others.”  Let us pray that all the followers of Jesus will be more faithful to the promotion of justice of which the Gospel of Life is “an absolute requirement.”  Let us pray that, in promoting the justice that is indispensible to proclaiming and living the faith, the Society of Jesus (as well as its students and other collaborators) will take up the cause of the unborn with renewed vigor.