Beyond Nuclear - NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Our Lady of Mount Carmel icon by Kristin McCarthy, daughter of Fr. E.C. McCarthy.Beyond Nuclear's friend and colleague from the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability network, Ann Suellentrop of Kansas City Physicians for Social Responsibility, writes:

"I'm here in Socorro, New Mexico, for the annual prayer vigil near the Trinity site, now in its 25th year. This is my first time, and it was started by Fr. Charles McCarthy, a priest who is trained as a lawyer and debater. He's one of the few clergy who teaches Jesus' way of non-violent love of friends and enemies...I'll be posting pics on my FaceBook site."

Ann has shared Fr. McCarthy's message below:

"Friends,

July 16 marks the 69th Anniversary of the entrance into the the human condition of murder by nuclear energy. On July 16, 1945 at Trinity Site in the New Mexico desert the first atomic bomb in the history of the world was exploded. For the last 25 years on that day a prayer vigil has been held for twenty four consecutive hours(6 P.M. July 15 to 6 P.M. July 16). Since it is also a feast day commemorating Mary, the Mother of Jesus, under the name of Our Lady of Mount Carmel by the Roman Catholic Church and other Churches, we ask Mary, at whose request Jesus performed His first miracle at Cana to pray with us at Trinity Site on that day.

I would also ask you to pray with us at Trinity Site on July 16. Everyone is always as welcome as the Mother of Jesus to come and pray with us at this 24 hour prayer vigil at Trinity Site. Recognizing though, that a journey to Trinity Site is very difficult, physically and financially, for you and for many, I would invite you to set aside a piece of time that day with folks in your Church, with your P&J group or with God and yourself to pray that humanity be protected and save from the scourge of evil that human beings have brought upon themselves. If ever there was an example of and incontestable evidence for the truth of Jesus' warning to Peter and to all humanity in the Gethsemane, "The one who lives by the sword will perish by the sword," Trinity Site on July 16, 1945 is it. The sword of nuclear murder was drawn on that day, but unlike the sword Peter drew in the Gospel it was not "Put up." So, for the pass sixty-nine years nuclear murder, in various disguises, has been ravaging the men, women and children of the society that created, drew and used the first nuclear sword. Since then other societies have gotten into the lucrative business of possessing and producing nuclear weapons and devises to assure their survival and future prosperity with the same multi-level anti-survival, self-destructive results from Semipalatinsk in Kazakhastan, to Chernobyl in the Ukraine, to St. George, Utah in the United States, to Fukushima in Japan—and everywhere in between!

Here is an short excerpt from the Statement of Purpose of the Day of Prayer, composed for the first such Day in 1990 and used for every Trinity Site Prayer Vigil since:

"July 16 is the symbol and reality of weaponry that kills even if it is never used, as well as, weaponry that kills long after it is used. By its cost alone it murders the working class and poor by depriving them of indispensable resources, which they need to live, and to which every human being has an inalienable right—a right conferred simply by the fact that he or she is a human being.

Once the soul and the soil are seeded by the production of such weapons, no one on the planet can protect himself or herself from being contaminated by their ever-mutating spiritual and physical manifestations. They have already created within humanity a cauldron of physical, spiritual, social, personal, and economic pathologies that have infected and affected humanity in ways never before seen. Every child in the womb, every farm, every lake, every person, every person’s loved ones and offspring for untold generations must eventually wind up living downwind from the mushroom cloud."

Jesus tells His disciples when they are unable to remove an evil spirit from their midst, "This kind of evil can be driven out only by prayer" (Mk 9:29). The only way that prayer would be inefficacious and of no importance is if no One were listening. But, IAM, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, I am the resurrection is listening.

Attached are two items of pertinence, an Icon of Our Lady of Mount Carmel at Trinity Site [see above left]...and the full Statement of Purpose for this July 16 Prayer Vigil at Trinity Site [linked here].

-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy"