In his most glaring instance of moral equivalence yet, Pope Benedict xvi has described the means that America used to finally end World War ii in terms that should be music to the ears of every one of America’s enemies. During a mass in the Vatican Basilica on Sunday of last week, the pope exclaimed, “The tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain as a perennial admonition where atomic energy, used for bellicose ends, ended up causing death on an unprecedented scale.”
This pope is, as British historian Paul Johnson has pointed out, a pope whose “thinking is elaborate, refined, confident and energetic.” Johnson described what is perhaps Benedict’s most famous speech, delivered at his old university in Regensburg, Bavaria, in September 2006, as a “brilliant lecture” and “a cool, calm, well-documented and penetrating presentation” (Spectator, April 11, 2007).
