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Envision a World without Nuclear Weapons

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August 9 Santa Fe on line Nagasaki Commemoration!

August 4, 2022 By Bob Kinsey

Click to access 220803_News_Release_77th_Anniv_Nagasaki_Mass_Interfaith_Discussion.pdf

5:15 p.m. MT Mass at the Cathedral Basilica

of St. Francis of Assisi

 

Followed by Panel Discussion with Interfaith Leaders

at 6:15 p.m.

 

(In Japan this is 8:15 am and 9:15 am Wednesday, August 10, 2022)

 

 

ALBUQUERQUE – Wednesday, August 3, 2022 – IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Join Most Reverend John C. Wester, Archbishop of Santa Fe, on August 9, 2022, for 5:15 p.m. Mountain Time Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Archbishop Wester’s homily will be centered on his pastoral letter, “Living in the Light of Christ’s Peace: A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament,” released on January 11, 2022. Following his homily, Archbishop Wester will offer a healing prayer for those harmed by the production and use of nuclear weapons. This includes victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in Japan; Trinity Test Downwinders; uranium and nuclear weapons workers in New Mexico and beyond; and any future victims in the accelerating new nuclear arms race.

 

Mass will be followed by a panel discussion with prominent interfaith leaders on the need for nuclear disarmament and a Q&A session at 6:15 p.m. Confirmed interfaith leaders include Archbishop John C. Wester; Rev. Talitha Arnold, Senior Minister of the United Church of Santa Fe; Mrs. Samia Assed of the Islamic Center of New Mexico in Albuquerque; The Rev. Holly Beaumont of Interfaith Worker Justice; Roshi Joan Halifax of the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe; and Former Governor of Cochiti Pueblo, Regis Pecos.

 

In the pastoral letter, Archbishop Wester reflects upon his trip to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Catholic social teaching on nuclear weapons, the history of the development and production of nuclear weapons in New Mexico, and Jesus’ example of nonviolence. He encourages all to read the pastoral letter and use the reflection questions and suggestions for action.

The complete pastoral letter can be accessed here, and the summary here. Panel bios can be found here.

 

Livestream the event on August 9, 2022:

 

5:15 p.m. Mass and healing ceremony youtu.be/M4SnixeGwyE

 

6:15 p.m. Interfaith dialogue youtu.be/U88tJwq7yNsm

 

Masks and social distancing are encouraged. For more information, contact the Archdiocese of Santa Fe Office of Social Justice and Respect Life 505.831.8205.

 

This News Release is here.

–END

For our Japanese audience and other languages, youtube can provide automatically translated written captions. While in youtube turn on closed captions (“cc”) in bottom right screen. Then go into “Settings” and click on “Subtitles.” Then click on “Autotranslate” and pick your language for automatically translated written captions.

 

Please consider supporting our vital work! You can mail a check to: Nuclear Watch New Mexico, 903 W. Alameda #325, Santa Fe, NM 87501. Please make check out to “SRIC”, our fiscal agent. You can also donate online using the button below. All donations are fully tax deductible. Please be as generous as you can. 

 

Thank you!

Jay Coghlan, Executive Director

Scott Kovac, Research Director

Sophie Stroud, Digital Content Manager and Youth Specialist

 

Please mail a check today to: Nuclear Watch New Mexico, 903 W. Alameda #325, Santa Fe, NM 87501. Please make check out to “SRIC”, our fiscal agent. You can also donate online using the button below. All donations are fully tax deductible. Please be as generous as you can.

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Disarmament Quotes

Over the past 15 years, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.

Mikhail Gorbachev, January 31, 2007

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight Eisenhower US President 1953-1961

We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal ... 

George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, January 4, 2007

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford "The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

Viewing Trinity Test July 16,1945: "Now we are all Sons of Bitches"

Kenneth Bainbridge Deputy Director

We seek the elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. 

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1995

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not. 

Robert McNamara Former U.S. Secretary of Defense

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death. 

Albert Einstein, January 22, 1947

[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

5-Star Admiral William D. Leahy Chief of Staff to President's Roosevelt and Truman, leader of Combined US-UK Chiefs of Staff during WWII

It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth. 

Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986

There are still thousands of warheads loaded on operational systems and standing on high states of alert on virtually hair-trigger posture. And you have to ask yourself: Why is that? Who is the enemy? What is the threat? 

U.S. General Lee Butler Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command in 1991-92

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see... 

Mahatma Gandhi from The Essential Gandhi, Louis Fisher, ed.

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee Butler Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlister Kings Bay Protestor 2019

Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival. 

Former President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009

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