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Archbishop of Canterbury backs efforts for a world free of nuclear arms

Posted On : September 24, 2009 4:52 PM | Posted By : Admin ACO
Related Categories: Lambeth

ACNS: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/news.cfm/2009/9/24/ACNS4658

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, currently visiting the
Anglican Church in Japan, today took part in an Act of Remembrance at
the epicentre of the atomic bomb blast in Nagasaki. During the Act of
Remembrance, Dr Williams laid flowers at the memorial and spoke about
the pressing importance of working for a world free from nuclear
weapons:

"There are no victories in human history without their element of
tragedy. Victory in human affairs always means that someone has lost
...sometimes the victory has been gained at the price of such violence
that we have to say that everyone has lost. Those who have won the
conflict have lost some dimension of their own life, their own welfare
and integrity."

"To see the effects of the use of the atomic bomb here in Nagasaki is to
see how this degree of slaughter and violence leaves everyone defeated.
The wholesale killing of the innocent and the destruction of an entire
environment, natural as well as cultural, the long-term effects,
physical and psychological, on those who survived - all of this
constitutes a would that affects the attackers as well as the victims."

"The Catholic writer Ronald Knox, commenting in 1945 upon the events
that took place in August that year, said that the bomb was an attack on
faith, hope and love - an attack on the central virtues of Christian
existence."

"That attack will continue so long as weapons of mass destruction like
nuclear armaments are used as threats in international conflict. They
are necessarily indiscriminate; that is, the will always kill the
innocent. They destroy the living environment; they have long-term
effects on every aspect of the material and organic world. To plan a
strategy around such weapons is to be defeated by them. To threaten such
an outrage against humanity and its world is to begin to lose one's
moral and human dignity."

"To work for a world free from nuclear arms is to work for the sake of
that moral and human dignity."

"It is tempting to think that the task is too difficult. Once we have
discovered this destructive technology, we cannot pretend it does not
exist. Yet equally we cannot - if we are serious about our human dignity
- behave as though we had no choice ..... However precisely we seek to
make real the hope of a world without nuclear arms, we should not lose
sight of the need to make real moral choices about them. Even a small
step is an act of witness."

The Archbishop also paid a paid a visit to the memorial to the 26
Christian martyrs who were crucified in 1549. Dr Williams offered
prayers alongside the Most Revd Joseph Mitsuaki Takami, the Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Nagasaki.

> Ends

> Notes to editors:

A high resolution image of the Archbishop laying flowers at the memorial
in Nagasaki is available on request from Lambeth Palace.

The Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan refers to a group of Christians who were
executed by crucifixion on February 5th, 1597 at Nagasaki.

On August 15, 1549, St. Francis Xavier (later canonized by Gregory XV in
1622), Fr. Cosne de Torres, S.J. (a Jesuit priesy), and Fr. John
Fernandez arrived in Kagoshima, Japan, from Spain with hopes of bringing
Catholicism to Japan. On September 29, St. Francis Xavier visited
Shimazu Takahisa, the daimy of Kagoshima, asking for permission to build
the first Catholic mission in Japan. The daimyo agreed in hopes of
creating a trade relationship with Europe.

A promising beginning to those missions - perhaps as many as 300,000
Christians by the end of the sixteenth century - met complications from
competition between the missionary groups, political difficulty between
Spain and Portugal, and factions within the government of Japan.
Christianity was suppressed. By 1630, Christianity was driven
underground.

The first Martyrs of Japan were canonized in 1862. They are commemorated
on February 5th when, on that date in 1597, twenty-six missionaries and
converts were killed by crucifixion. Two hundred and fifty years later,
when Christian missionaries returned to Japan, they found a community of
Japanese Christians that had survived underground.

The full text of the Archbishop's address at the Act of Remembrance can
be found below:

> Archbishop of Canterbury's Address

Act of Remembrance at the epicentre of the atomic bomb blast in Nagasaki

> Thursday 24th September 2009

There are no victories in human history without their element of
tragedy. Victory in human affairs always means that someone has lost.
And this usually means that life or welfare, hope or security has been
lost.

But sometimes the victory has been gained at the price of such violence
that we have to say that everyone has lost. Those who have won the
conflict have lost some dimension of their own life, their own welfare
and integrity.

To see the effects of the use of the atomic bomb here in Nagasaki is to
see how this degree of slaughter and violence leaves everyone defeated.
The wholesale killing of the innocent and the destruction of an entire
environment, natural as well as cultural, the long-term effects,
physical and psychological, on those who survived - all of this
constitutes a wound that affects the attackers as well as the victims.

The Catholic writer Ronald Knox, commenting in 1945 upon the events that
took place in August that year, said that the bomb was an attack on
faith, hope and love - an attack on the central virtues of Christian
existence.

That attack will continue so long as weapons of mass destruction like
nuclear armaments are used as threats in international conflict. They
are necessarily indiscriminate; that is, the will always kill the
innocent. They destroy the living environment; they have long-term
effects on every aspect of the material and organic world. To plan a
strategy around such weapons is to be defeated by them. To threaten such
an outrage against humanity and its world is to begin to lose one's
moral and human dignity. To work for a world free from nuclear arms is
to work for the sake of that moral and human dignity.

It is tempting to think that the task is too difficult. Once we have
discovered this destructive technology, we cannot pretend it does not
exist. Yet equally we cannot - if we are serious about our human dignity
- behave as though we had no choice, as if we were the slaves of what
our own hands had made. That would be a kind of idolatry: a sin against
the God who has made us free to choose between life and death. However
precisely we seek to make real the hope of a world without nuclear arms,
we should not lose sight of the need to make real moral choices about
them. Even a small step is an act of witness.

Dr Takashi Nagai, the great saint and sage of Christian Nagasaki, wrote
in his remarkable book, The Bells of Nagasaki, that in the age of atomic
energy humanity had grasped hold of a 'two-edged sword', hidden by God
in the fabric of the universe and at last put into our hands: but, he
went on, 'to turn to the left or the right' as wee hold this sword 'is
entrusted to the free will of the human family' (p.116). His book

ends, unforgettably, with the sound of the cathedral bells ringing for
the Angelus - the call to prayer that is heard three times each day in
the bells of Catholic (and some Anglican) churches. It commemorates the
moment when the angel tells the Virgin Mary that she is chosen to be the
mother of the Saviour. And it commemorates Mary's response - her choice
to accept that calling.

Human freedom can start a process that transfigures the whole world.
Mary's acceptance is the beginning of God's action in renewing the
creation through Jesus. You could almost say that it sets up a 'chain
reaction' through the human race. And even now our free actions of
turning to God and doing his will have effects greater than we can see
or understand - though we see a little of how such processes work when
we look at the lives of Christian men and women who say yes to God's
call in the most terrible and demanding situations - just as Takashi
Nagai said yes, and helped to bring hope and meaning back to so many
lives.

Freedom matters. And the free choice that unleashed destruction on this
city also started a chain reaction - literally in the massive force of
an explosion, less directly in the long-term devastation caused by
radiation, symbolically in starting the age of atomic and nuclear
rivalry between nations. It is like a negative image of the creative
impetus of freedom turned towards God.

Our prayer must be that this creative impetus will break through the
chains we have fastened on ourselves, so that we can live in the
certainty that there will never be a repetition of the terrible fate
visited on this city, and that we shall discover by God's grace and
guidance how to live together without the threat of mass killing.

'Choose life', says God to his people in the Bible. May his own free
love set us free to make that choice.

> (c) Rowan Williams

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