An Air Force navigator, the author was given a new assignment with awesome responsibility. In his hand he held a key, one of two, that — upon receipt of an authentic order — he was to insert into a lock and turn. He had no reason to believe his fellow officer would not do the same. Each Minuteman II missile in the cluster he was tasked to launch had multiple warheads, each with more destructive power than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He didn't know their destinations. He knew, however, that such warheads were not designed just to take out enemy combatants, their equipment, and installations. If launched, each would incinerate tens if not hundreds of thousands of civilians; men, women, and children and severely injure many more. Complacent at first, a question from the officer with the other key awakened his sleeping conscience. The outcome, for this courageous author's military career and his life, provides a sobering lesson regarding the morality of the use of weapons of mass destruction, then and now.
JEROME D. GILMARTIN
AUTHOR OF The 7-Step Reason to be Catholic, 2nd Ed.:
Science, the Bible and History Point to Catholicism
Civilian noncombatants may never intentionally be killed to advance the objectives of a nation at war. Conviction about this simple truth, taught and upheld by the Catholic Church for two millennia, led Robert Margetts to make courageous sacrifices in defense of the sanctity of human life. The account of his life contained herein witnesses compellingly to the cross every faithful Catholic must carry on behalf of the vulnerable as the Church proclaims in word and deed the Gospel of Life.
REV. ERIC BERGMAN, CHAPLAIN
St. Thomas More Society
Blessed John Paul II spoke of a “culture of death” that is confronted by the Gospel of Life. In his book, Witness for Atonement, Robert Margetts unmasks these dark forces of the culture of death and clearly shows the links and connections between these forces of darkness and destruction. From 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki to 1973 Washington (Roe v. Wade), we see these forces of death justified by rational men and women. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen said in one of his essays that he believed that the opening of the door to abortion and the taking of innocent of life came with the unleashing of atomic warfare in 1945. Robert Margetts gives us a deep look into these realities through his own experience and witness as an air force officer and as a Catholic Christian. In Dominum et vivificantum (The Lord and Giver of Life), Blessed John Paul II speaks to us of God's Spirit as “the Giver of Life,” and this same Spirit is at work revealing this present darkness and the culture of death through this insightful book. As we have heard in the Torah: “I set before you today life and death...choose life.” Having shared and worked with Robert Margetts, it is with joy that I recommend this personal reflection on a most important subject.
FR. LEO J. McKERNAN
THE AUTHOR'S SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR
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