More Phoenix, and scandal
I know, I know, we’ve discussed this already. I just can’t get this case out of my mind, though. And apparently neither can the NY Times’ Nicholas Kristof, whose May 26 editorial ends with this zingy turn of phrase:
When a hierarchy of mostly aging men pounce on and excommunicate a revered nun who was merely trying to save a mother’s life, the church seems to me almost as out of touch as it was in the cruel and debauched days of the Borgias in the Renaissance.
Kristof is no Church-basher–I’ve raised questions before about his ecclesiology, since he tends to imply the existence of two churches, the church of saintly people, clerics and lay, living the Christlike life and doing real good in the world, and a Roman hierarchy that he described above. Catholics, of course, can’t pick one or the other, as tempting as it may be. We in the rank and file of the laity are connected to, part of, and responsible for, the hierarchy, just as they are for us. The notion of reciprocity of consciences cuts deep here, too, when those of us who find Phoenix Bishop Olmsted’s public remarks thoughtless and cruel, (and, if the canonists whispering among themselves are onto anything, defamatory under the code of canon law,) wonder how we should address the whole mess. Theologians (including thoughtful bloggers here like Prof. Kaveney and others,) have been raising questions about the absoluteness of Church teaching in cases like these. However, recent magisterial teaching and the behavior of hierarchs like Olmsted seem obdurate to questions about whether the life of the woman counts for anything in situations in which mother and fetus will both die.
When I teach my students about scandal, I have them repeat after me: “Scandal always has two sides.” When Olmsted avoids the scandal that people might think (rightly or wrongly) that the Church has suddenly gone soft on abortion by publicly announcing the excommunication of Sr. McBride, he unwittingly creates the flip-side of the scandal–people will believe (rightly or wrongly) that the Church cares more for the life of any fetus than for the life of the woman carrying the fetus. When we make exceptions like excising Fallopian tubes in some cases of ectopic pregnancy instead of allowing less damaging chemical means to the same end, we avoid the scandal that people might think some elective abortion is justifiable, and create the opposite scandal–that it’s okay to unnecessarily mutilate women in order to maintain a moral distinction between direct and indirect in situations in which the result for the embryo is identical. Similarly, when the magisterium refuses to strongly support the use of condoms by HIV sero-discordant married couples, they avoid the scandal that people might think that the Church no longer opposes birth control. (In fact, this is a clear case of classic double-effect.) Then they create the opposite scandal–that the Church cares more about the particularities of its sexual teaching than about the life and well-being of uninfected partners, and, by extension, their children. When USCCB (then) vice president Francis Cardinal George was voted into the presidency as per usual practice despite having publicly admitted to violating the Dallas Charter in the very recent past, they avoided the scandal of, what? Seeming to be influenced by bad press? Instead they created the opposite scandal–that the USCCB cares more for the smooth accession to power of its leadership than for the observance of the Dallas Charter. And on, and on.
If an appeal to moral imagination (Might a bishop consider what it might be like to be a woman in danger of death from pregnancy, with other kids at home? Or at least consider being her husband, and loving her deeply?) doesn’t help here, and if deft parsing of the Catholic moral tradition falls on deaf ears, and if the canonists don’t step up to defend mere laypeople against mighty bishops who defame them, well, perhaps the Church’s leaders might consider the fact that scandal always has two sides.
on May 29th, 2010 at 12:26 am
We in the rank and file of the laity are connected to, part of, and responsible for, the hierarchy, just as they are for us.
That’s precisely why it’s painful. We’d like to just shake the dust off our feet and leave them behind, but we can no more forget about them than about a wayward father, son, or brother.
on May 29th, 2010 at 3:42 am
It is one thing to question the wisdom of the public nature of this pronouncement (it seems to be tone deaf to the discourse over abortion)…or to, on the Church’s own terms, try to come up with different ways of thinking about what it means to indirectly cause the death of an innocent person to save another’s life (this is what Cathy has been trying to explore)…but isn’t there a danger when one speaks of ‘different means to the same end’ and ‘result for the embryo is identical’? Doesn’t the object of the act matter?
I would also point out that the Roman Catholic serious consideration of the object of the act frustrates folks on the right as well. The example of torture has been well-documented at Commonweal, but an even better example for this context is ‘hierarchs’ like Paul VI and John Paul II calling the atomic bombing of Japan a ‘butchery of untold magnitude’ and comparing it to the sin of the holocaust because the death of innocent people was part of the object of the act(s). The right accuse the Church of making a similarly ‘deft distinction’ between direct and indirect killing…and suggest that it is OK to kill the innocent when death is guaranteed anyway and the end result is that more lives are saved.
Though, again, I think the public pronouncement was a mistake and that Cathy is right about rethinking the object of the act, in evaluating what is going on in this case why wouldn’t we conclude that the Church is simply attempting to consistently apply a moral principle across many different kinds of cases?
on May 29th, 2010 at 5:45 am
The usual polarization is on display in today NYT letters: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/elh/v066/66.4wallen.html
The clash can be softened if it can be argued that the sister’s action lies within the field of the morally acceptable by Catholic reasoning — which must be consistent but also responsive to the complexity of each case.
For a long-term defusing of these scandalous situations the entire abortion discourse of the bishops needs to be steeped in the element of dialogue with and consultation of women. Also the bishops who seized so precipitately on scientific opinions suggesting that human life begins at conception should also consider carefully the implications of what science tells of the development of the foetus, when these implication go against their “abortion is murder” rhetoric. Failure to practice ongoing consultation with women and the scientific and medical community (as opposed to chosen ideologues) convicts the episcopal discourse of irrationality and of the violence that goes with irrationality.
on May 29th, 2010 at 6:57 am
Sadly, the emotional heart of the Kristoff piece is the observation that this one nun, who made a perhaps wrong decision in the heat of a very difficult and complicated and fraught situation, has received the ultimate sentence of excommunication, while the hierarchy has spent much of the last decade dithering and hand wringing about the question of whether to accept resignations or — at most — to laicize priests and bishops who repeatedly caused huge suffering and damage in the abuse scandals. It is the specter of instantaneously using the ultimate penalty against this one nun who made one mistake versus all the public worrying about being sure to be fair to the priests and bishops that’s hard to take.
on May 29th, 2010 at 7:40 am
I think there’s some difference between how prophets and casuists respond to hard cases. For moral casuists, and common lawyers, “hard cases make bad law.” They need to be dealt with, and decided fairly, but they ought not to be publicized or talked about too much, because they give a distorted picture of the general moral system and the social life it organizes.
For prophets,exactly the opposite is true. Hard cases are to be welcomed, and proclaimed, because they provide an opportunity to demonstrate radical commitment to a particular overriding value.
on May 29th, 2010 at 8:11 am
The successors of the Apostles in our time have thrown away their moral authority in favor of gathering their sorry version of prestige and privilege. They care for very little beyond that. Of course there are some exceptions here but there is not evidence that these exceptions are challenging their brothers. Please be careful about the way the term “prophet” is employed. The decision in Phoenix is a short-term, self important proclamation being absolutized as the “teaching of the Church.” This man prefers two dead people to one live person. That is not prophecy.,
on May 29th, 2010 at 8:48 am
Criticizing the bishops is unuseful in my humble opinion. As I understand Catholic doctrine, in fact, the bishop is likely correct but in my opinion the doctrine is wrong. If the bishop is filled with denial when the first point he makes in his unbelievably obtuse statement is that there was no way to be 100% sure that death was the outcome for the mother, most of the rest of the faithful are filled with denial about exactly how harsh the Catholic doctrine is for women facing life threatening pregnancies.
Making the argument ad hominem avoids the very real point made by Cathy, above, which is that “For prophets . . . hard cases are to be welcomed, and proclaimed, because they provide an opportunity to demonstrate radical commitment to a particular overriding value.” The bishop has done you a favor. Now you have a good reason to be honest and stop avoiding “the particular overriding value” and explain why you think the value — not the bishop — is wrong.
on May 29th, 2010 at 8:57 am
I don’t understand why students should be taught: “Scandal always has two sides.” Or why they should be made to repeat that dictum. Maybe it means someone must give scandal and someone else must take scandal? No scandals in hermitages?
Saying a crime has two sides seems, imho, to make the perp and the victim equal.
In the pedophile scandal, there are more than two sides, and they’re hardly equal. There are the predators, their enablers and defenders, their victims, their victims’ parents, etc., etc.
In the Phoenix case, there’s the bishop, but he had predecessors who did not act as he has. (See the letters to the editor about Kristoff’s column.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/opinion/l29kristof.html?ref=opinion
There’s the nun, but she had predecessors and fellow committee members who acted as she did in previous cases and were not excommunicated and publicly denounced by a bishop. (Letters, again.)
There’s the mother, her husband, her children, her relatives, her friends.
There are all women who have had abortions, spontaneous (innumerable), or deliberate (43% of all women).
There are observers of this issue for whom it may extinguish the last spark. (Or ignite the first spark. Two sides to every scandal.)
on May 29th, 2010 at 9:12 am
Molly, I’m using the term “prophet” as a shorthand–for someone who uses the rhetoric and framing devices of the prophets.
on May 29th, 2010 at 9:43 am
I guess the discourse on this will just continue with, in fact, many echoing the sentiments of Claire at the very begining. In that context, the Bishop here and other bishops are indeed worthy of criticism for being much into their own small world in which they overestimate their importance and knowledge.
The other discussion concerns broader issues about teaching and morality and more.
I note Thomas Shannon’s piece on Moral Theology in the current America and the shift in how that affects views – a piece I feel very much in agreement with.
There is alengthy plecture by Sipe in Boston at Catolica today that calls for papal resignation but is really a major statemen tagainst the curent views on man yisues related to human sexuality and the issues of ‘natural law.”
This kind of debate, no matter what the hierarchy wishes to impose wil go on, and actions such as Olmsted”s will only undermine the traditional approach.
on May 29th, 2010 at 10:03 am
You’re still being too charitable. The whole thing is just ridiculous. Even Bush was pro-choice when the mother’s life is in danger. Funny how none of these hypocrites thought of that when he was coming to speak at Notre Dame.
on May 29th, 2010 at 11:38 am
For prophets,… Hard cases … provide an opportunity to demonstrate radical commitment
Cathleen, I really don’t like your shorthand. Their radical commitment will only be demonstrated if they suffer significantly for their views, say, by being put in prison (like John Dear) or demoted (like Tom Doyle). Calling Bishop Olmsted a prophet is akin to equating the willingness to make others suffer (by excommunating the sister and by letting the mother die) with the willingness to undergo some suffering. This shorthand is very unfortunate.
How about replacing it by “fake prophets” or “cheap prophets” or “pseudo-prophets”? A pseudo-prophet would be someone who uses the rhetoric that you analyzed, but without the commitment behind it that would be demonstrated by their suffering for their proclamations.
on May 29th, 2010 at 11:51 am
“…the Church cares more for the life of any fetus than for the life of the woman carrying the fetus.”
Unfortunately, it can’t be demonstrated that the Church cares more for the life of this fetus, because this fetus (or the child, if you prefer) was doomed regardless.
So, while I take Cathy’s point about hard cases, and prophetic use of them to prove their absolute claims, I think a different (or perhaps an additional) message is sent out here. To wit: the Church believes that God cares more about moral purity than about life. After all, the utility factor is absent. The opportunity to save a life does not count. To me, the implication is that Sister violated a divinely sanctioned purity code, for which there are no exceptions. Of course she was excommunicated. Purity codes work that way.
This incident from the first has reminded me of Mark 3:4. And automatic excommunication sounds an awful lot like what the Levite crossed the street to avoid when he encountered the bloodied man who was attacked by robbers on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho (Luke 10:30-37). Many commentors have made reference to Bishop Olmstead’s evident lack of compassion. Bill DeHaas, if I remember correctly, called it legalism.
In other words, this event can be read as the scandal of being untrue to the gospel of life and compassion, while claiming to be more faithful to the will of God than others are.
on May 29th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Back to the casuistry issue, Barbara is right. Arguing Ad-Hominem isn’t very productive. In fact, it seems like a red herring intended to avoid confronting the real issue, which is Catholic doctrine, as she says. How many cases like this have to occur before the faithful wake up to that fact?
In my opinion, pushed to the limit, the issue has ramifications that go far beyond this matter and speak to the reach of episcopal authority over the faithful and the notion of the clergy as the intermediary between God and humanity.
on May 29th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
In the Gospel of John, when Our Lord describes himself as the Good Shepherd–as opposed to hirelings–he says that the sheep do not recognize any voice but that of the Shepherd…and they will not follow the voice they do not recognize. When some of our ’shepherds’ speak without the love or compassion of the trtue Shepherd…more and more members of the flock are refusing to follow…. It is cause for deep and serioius introspection on the part of our ’shepherds’.
on May 29th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Charles,
Of course the object of the act matters. But in cases of tubal pregnancy, we accept salpingectomy instead of chemical abortion–an act that causes more harm to the woman while upholding the moral fiction that the tube is somehow damaged. The problem with the tube is simply that there’s an embryo in it, threatening to rupture it. The embryo dies whether we remove the tube also or not. Given the option of less harmful means, it would seem that salpingectomy while we pretend that the problem is the tube and not the presence of the embryo in it, is to discount the value of sustaining the woman’s physical integrity, opting to mutilate her instead. Heck, such a procedure is halfway to a surgical sterilization, and it need not be.
Gerelyn,
I may have been unclear. Scandal is like saying “if we do X, people will think Y,” where Y is a morally hazardous position. Fear of scandal is fear that people will be led into sin by extrapolating from an approved act to an immoral principle. E.g., if church groups paricipate in needle exchange, some folks might think that (somehow) the Church approves of IV drug abuse, rather than seeing the true intent of the exchange, which is to limit the spread of HIV/AIDS. Scandal can be seen as an inferential slippery-slope, in which it is feared that one act liable to multiple interpretations will be interpreted wrongly. Sometimes, fear of scandal assumes the moral ignorance of the “simple faithful,” so the bishops thought that if the truth about abusing priests became public, people would lose respect for priests. They risked the opposite scandal. When it became obvious that bishops covered up for abusing priests to “protect the good name of the Church,” people inferred that bishops valued protecting the abusers over protecting the victims. In no way do i mean to imply that a crime has two sides–only that invoking fear of scandal (”If we do X people will think…”) should always take into account what “people will think” when we don’t.
on May 29th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Claire, I think the rhetorical analysis is worth doing on its own. I don’t consider–and don’t see why we should consider- “prophet” to mean a “true prophet.” True and false prophets use the rhetoric in the same way.
I don’t think prophets, in order to be prophets–messengers –have to suffer.
on May 29th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
I don’t think prophets, in order to be prophets–messengers –have to suffer.
What good does prophecy do if the prophet is not seen to have ’skin in the game’?
on May 29th, 2010 at 2:26 pm
What would actually happen to a bishop who in the situation discussed either (1) maintained silence or (2) said that he agreed with Sr. McBride’s decision?
on May 29th, 2010 at 2:38 pm
Lisa –
Thanks for your analysis of some of the meanings of “scandal”. I wish you’d do more, for instance, on the propensity of some of us (or all of us at times) to *take* scandal, to judge others badly in order to make ourselves appear better than we are. I don’t doubt that what you say here was a definite factor in the thinking of some well-meaning bishops who have been told all their professional lives not to shake the faith of “the little old ladies in the pews”. Little do they know about little old ladies. Do a book on the subject :-)
on May 29th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
” — the canonists whispering among themselves —”
Let them grow cojones and speak out loud of just shut up (among themselves). I’m getting sick and tired of ecclesiastical politics dictation what common sense should dictate.
Bishop or no bishop: if he was defamatory under canon law, then he needs to be called on it here and now.
I don’t expect “fraternal correction” from his peers, but I do expect others to call a spade a spade.
on May 29th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Lisa, thank you for the explanation. I see what you mean.
I guess I’m too old and too cynical to think anyone who has the power bishops have is really concerned about what the powerless think.
(And I find it impossible to believe any adult thinks the Creator of the universe is interested in or bound by moral theology or canon law. The lessons of the Gospels are far more human. If your ass falls in a hole on the Sabbath, you pull her out, regardless of moral theology or canon law.)
—-
I wonder what’s happening with Sr. McBride. Will her community leave with her rather than see her expelled from their midst?
on May 29th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Lisa, that doesn’t seem to focus on the object of the act either…at least as it relates to the primary concern of the Church in this scenario: avoiding the intrinsic evil of aiming at the death of an innocent person. (Now, perhaps this should not be their primary concern…but this, as you know, is the ethical theory the bishops are working with.) The idea of removing all or part of the tube is not because the tube is diseased…but because this a way of saving the mother’s life that is not a direct attack on the embryo in the way a chemical abortion (depending on the mechanism of action) would be.
If the object of the act matters, and if aiming at the death of an innocent person (either as a means or end) is never morally acceptable as the object of an act, and this bishop thought that this abortion had as its object the death of an innocent person, mustn’t he arrive at the conclusion he did?
(Noting once again, however, that he didn’t have to make this public and one could reasonably come to a different conclusion about the object of the act.)
on May 29th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
No matter how ancient and the principles, no matter how great the minds that formulated them, and no matter what authority the Catholic Church claims, when a system of thought leads to the inevitable conclusion that a mother and her unborn baby must both be allowed to die rather than the life of the mother be saved, the only conclusion for many of us is that there is something wrong with the system of thought. What for some is a defense of Bishop Olmsted’s position for many of us amounts to a reductio ad absurdum of one strain of Catholic thought. For faithful Catholics, Germain Grisez seems to offer an alternative interpretation of Catholic thought that is not vulnerable to the reductio ad absurdum argument that it is better to let two die than to save one. But apparently many believe Grisez is just engaging in some sleight of hand to justify “direct” abortion in difficult cases, where it is a Catholic’s duty to sit by and let both the mother and fetus die.
One of the things that bothers me is that the defenders of Olmsted embrace the hard teachings of the Church (if people like Grisez are wrong and Olmsted is right about what the teaching are or should be) without much acknowledgment that they are indeed hard.
on May 29th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
I agree totally with what Rita said. I have often thought approximately the same thing about the elevation of “purity” or “clean hands” over other rather more weighty considerations (life of woman).
The problem with the approach towards ectopic pregnancy is that it uses a kind of reasoning that we would ridicule as laughable sophistry were it applied in just about any other context. Consider a car accident — murder: I shot the driver; not murder: I cut his brake lines. Consider a rope bridge across a chasm — murder: I pushed the guy overboard; not murder: I cut the rope attachments to one side.
No, you will say, that isn’t analogous: because in the case of ectopic pregnancy there is a NEED to cut out the fallopian tube where there is none in those other cases. Ah, I say, the “need” here is to save the mother and to do that one must do the equivalent of cutting the brake line or the rope bridge because taking out the tube leads to death as inevitably as if one had cut the rope bridge. Hence, the ends justify the means, at least sometimes. Pretending they don’t is dishonest and in cases like this one, incredibly cruel.
on May 29th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
David, for the record I have a great deal of sympathy for your position (I’m more on Grisez and Cathy’s side here) but reductio arguments are very difficult to defend and have a way of coming back to bite you.
I mean, suppose someone argues in a similar way against the Church’s position that torture or intentionally targeting civilians in war is always forbidden as intrinsically evil. They would claim that this strain of Catholic thought has also been reduced to the absurd if it means that one cannot waterboard someone to stop 9/11 or that one cannot save 10s of millions of lives by killing several thousand civilians.
The only sense in which I’m defending Olmsted is against the claim that his view is totally absurd or is somehow evidence of his not caring about the lives of women. I think his view (apart from its tone deaf public articulation) could simply be an attempt to consistently apply the the principle that aiming at the death of an innocent person is always wrong.
Barbara, not from the perspective of Roman Catholic moral theology. One can aim at death by omission. So, I’m just as guilty of murder (in the moral sense) if I aim at the driver’s death by shooting him or cutting his brake lines. In both cases the death of the person was the object of my act.
on May 29th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
“If the object of the act matters, and if aiming at the death of an innocent person (either as a means or end) is never morally acceptable as the object of an act, and this bishop thought that this abortion had as its object the death of an innocent person, mustn’t he arrive at the conclusion he did?”
Charles –
Yes, he must. But why must he start from those precise principles? Innocent soldiers are directly killed in wars all the time. The bishops know that. So if they have any brains they must see that the principle “aiming at the death of an innocent person (either as a means or end) is never morally acceptable as the object of an act” simply isn’t an absolute moral principle as the official Church continues to claim.
What is called for now is not continued handwringing and wailing and accusations of mauvais foi against the bishops, but rather, a review of the basic principles involved in the current official Catholic version of basic natural law. I would be the last one to say we should abandon natural law theory completely. Why? It is simply the best ethical theory available so far. But by now the official Church should realize that the principles it adheres to are not so sound as the Vatican claims. We know that because some of the principles are contradicory.
A review will have to result in some realizations that the Church has been teaching some false principles. The official Church will resist doing this. It is always hard to admit error. But let them do it as penance for the sex scandal..
A review must be done and revisions made if the official Church is to retain any respect as a moral force whether within or outside the Church, not to mention simply trying to get our principles right.
While the moral theologians are reviewing their contradictory principles, those who claim that theory/abstractions/logic has nothing to do with facts need to look again. Theories can be wrong, but they are wrong only because they don’t describe or explain facts. Those that last do last because they have benn at least generally (if not universally) confirmed by widespread human experience. The attempt to divorce theory and fact in our culture and to dismiss theory as irrelevant when it conflicts with feeling/the heart/commonsense is as dangerous as ignoring contradictions in a moral system.
on May 29th, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Speaking of prophecy, the following is from a 1999 paper by Robert A. Burt published in the Roger Williams University law review:
There are clearly…ways to blind oneself to the existence of terrible evil; there is an important, though often scorned, social role for zealous advocates of moral truths, for prophets of righteousness hurling thunderous condemnations of the darkness surrounding them. Justice Brandeis himself was widely understood to be imbued with a prophetic temperament. His contemporaries referred to him as “Isaiah” with a mixture of admiration and exasperation. I read his warning against “men of zeal” not as disdain for the prophet’s vision, but as a self-corrective, a moral discipline that he struggled to impose on himself to keep his sense of balance and humility.
…
We are surrounded, in this country and internationally, by exemplars of both practices-both by selfish indifference that turns away from obvious and easily remedied suffering and by religious fundamentalists, sexual vigilantes and self-righteous moralists who in the
supposed service of eradicating sin are, in fact, collaborating with evil…[T]he basic challenge of a lifetime, is to clearly identify and act on the difference between moral conviction and moral arrogance. It is not easy to accomplish this goal.
Pretty good, huh.
on May 29th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Well, duh, Charles: that’s the whole point. Of course I would be guilty of murder in those scenarios. No one would accept the excuse that I just wanted some rope for my own bridge, but had no “object” of killing the guy on the existing one, and just as surely you are aiming to kill the fetus because it is the inevitable result of removing the fallopian tube, which no one would ever do if the fetus weren’t sitting inside of it. If I intend to take out the tube I intend to kill the fetus. The inevitable consequences of one’s knowing actions are intended for just about any other kind of analysis even if they are deeply regretted. The doctrine of double effect is a bit of complete intellectual sophistry in this case (I won’t say it could never provide a useful framework of moral analysis).
on May 29th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
(This is a fun distraction from other writing!)
Barbara, it isn’t clear to me that you are guilty of intentional homicide by taking some rope for your own bridge. You certainly don’t have a proportionate reason for taking such rope in the case you describe (merely because you want to your own bridge)…but if the dude doesn’t die, then the object of your act hasn’t been thwarted, right? But if you needed to cut the bridge to save your own life for some reason…then the scenarios are analogous…because now both cases (yours and that of the ectopic pregnancy) now involve a proportionate reason.
Anne, you may be right about that (though if Grisez can get away with describing a direct abortion has not having the death of the fetus as the object of the act, then presumably that could apply to killing innocent soldiers in war), but my point was that one could give the same benefit of the doubt to the bishop in this case that one would give ANY person who was trying to consistently apply the principle that it is always wrong to aim at the death of an innocent person. I take it from your comment that you agree with me that the issue isn’t necessarily the person, but the ethical theory underlying his judgment.
on May 29th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
“. . . and just as surely you are aiming to kill the fetus because it is the inevitable result of removing the fallopian tube, which no one would ever do if the fetus weren’t sitting inside of it.”
Barbara –
I’m aiming to kill it *because* it is the inevitable result of removing the tube? Hmm. That’s like saying a firemen aimed to mess up my kitchen *because* it was the inevitable result of using a fire hose to put out a fire. Or like saying that you aimed to hit the telephone pole because you swerved to avoid an oncoming truck
There are two very important kinds of factors in these moral circumstances — the subjective acts of the will which, in conjunction with intellect and imagination chooses an end/goal. The goal is expressed only mentally by our cognitive capacities. Then the will, together with the possible goal presented by the intellect and imagination, chooses a means to actualize that goal or end. Then the will acts to directs our physical actions to the realization of that goal. The goal is usually objective, but can be subjective, as when I choose to stop thinking about a second desert.
“Intend” and “intention” are highly ambiguous words. “Intention” can mean the goal of an act of choice with the goal being present only in a mental representation,, e.g., “It is my intention to cook the steaks later”. Here the cooked steak is only a representation of a cooked steak. Or “intention” can mean the fully realized goal of a physical, objective action which actualizes that mental representationl, e.g., “Yes, the steaks were rather rare. That was my intention”. Here, “the steaks”‘ refers to something objective and actual. Both the mental representation and the real things can be called my “intention” but their meanings are somewhat different. We really need some more words to speak about all of these factors.
Complexity, complexity. Ambiguity, ambiguity.
“Intend” and “intention” ambiguous words.
on May 29th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Charles –
Yes, I definitely agree with you about the bishop. He might very well, considering his training, be doing exactly what his conscience requires him to do. Once more, Jesus’ caution comes to mind: Judge not that you be not judged.
But my conscience tells me that we are obliged to reconsider our ethical principles when we find they contradict each other. True, we might not find the answers we need to be consistent, but at least we should try. This is especially true when the problems, like this one, are difficul in every wayt. This is why we need that new Aquinas. Let’s home the bishops don’t require him/her to become a martyr, as so many moral theologians have recently been required to do.
on May 29th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Is the claim that the Bishop, as the paraclete’s messenger, has made a judgement? If so, on what basis can that be challenged?
AM
on May 29th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
No, Ann, forgive me, but I think you see complexity and ambiguity only because you want to give the Church benefit of the doubt, but in law, if I “knowingly do something” that I understand the nature of, then for all important purposes I “intend” the result. The point is, you don’t have to “want” to kill the fetus to intend to kill it. Killing may not be your direct or primary object but it is the inevitable result. So yes, the fireman did intend to mess up your kitchen — but it was almost certainly a forgivable intent under the circumstances. If he had come into your kitchen and decided to have a good time spraying the hose around without there being a fire, it would not be so forgivable even if the level of destruction to your kitchen was identical. In that case, circumstances are the most determinative factor in judging the morality of the action.
Charles, I would most certainly be guilty of homicide if I took the rope and I knew the man was standing there unless I were a small child or someone with a comparably low level of understanding.
To the extent that your desire — your primary goal — matters, that as I understand it is what Cathy was trying to get at earlier — whether moral intent is defined solely by means, which is the formalism the Church relies on to distinguish between removing a fallopian tube versus infusing it with methotrexate. In that case, what does NOT matter are the circumstances of the mother’s distress as such a condition of distress would often (not always) be looked at in other circumstances, like the fire in the kitchen.
on May 29th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Barbara, I think you are saying ‘intention’ when you actually mean ‘moral responsibility.’
It makes no sense to say that I ‘intend’ the death of the person on the rope bridge because, if he doesn’t die (say, he grabs onto the rope at the last minute, or there is a miracle gust of wind, whatever) nothing about my intention is thwarted. I got the rope I wanted.
But we are still ‘morally responsible’ for things that we foresee but don’t intend if we don’t have a proportionate reason. So let’s say that the rope bridge walker did die…then I would still be morally responsible for his death, but I wouldn’t be guilty (in a moral sense) of aiming at his death in a way that would justify calling it intentional homicide.
on May 29th, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Barbara –
I’m not defending “the Church”. I’m trying to show that people are indeed highly complex, and that there are often many factors both subjective and objective that must be considered when trying to judge whether an act or series of acts is moral or immoral.
You say, “The point is, you don’t have to “want” to kill the fetus to intend to kill it.” I would have to ask, what your meaning of “intend” is before I could comment. Unfortunately, the meanings of the verb “intend”are not exactly correlative with the meanings of the noun “intention”.
Both the semantics of “intention’/ “intends” and the psychology of choice are complex, not to mention the rights and duties involved in many situation. The varied meanings of “intention”/”intend” and related words have been a huge area of interest in contemporary ethics intially due to the classic work “Intention” by Elizabeth Anscombe. She, one of Wittgenstein’s most important students, became an analytic Thomist, and she could really split some hairs. The result is that is one of the most highly respected woman philosopher of the 20th century, if not the most respected. “Intention” is generally regarded as a brilliant work. I don’t ‘agree with all of it, but it does show, regardless of one’s philosophical inclinations, that the whole subject is hugely complex.
Life wouldn’t be nearly so difficult if all of our ethical problems were simple and could be settled simply by feelings that arise spontaneously in difficult circumstances. But, as you point out wanting and intending are not the same things.
on May 29th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
“Scandal always has two sides.”
This is wide of the mark, probably because of a inadequate understanding of scandal. Assuming we’re talking about the correct definition–an attitude or behavior that leads another to do evil–then scandal, almost by definition, is “one-sided.” So, for example, to avoid scandal, a bishop may need to publicly rebuke a public figure who professes to be Catholic and persists in trying to rationalize immoral behaviour. Without such a public correction, the faithful may become confused about the Church’s true teaching and be led astray. The present example is nothing of the kind. Equating it to scandal is akin to saying Jesus’ hard words to the rich man could cause scandal because he thought Christ did not love rich people–perhaps some non-conservatives actually believe that!
on May 29th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
Rita – thanks and I did use the term, “legalism”……for many reasons:
- why a public announcement? Diocese Q&A sheds little light on this question?
- why only Sister McBride? why the six month delay?
- NCR just did an article about a lay canon lawyer named to Rome from the Detroit Major Seminary – this canonist is very conservative but even his comments about this situation question the church’s use of automatic excommunications as the wrong response to a situation and that the church needs to reconsider the use of automatic anything?
- appreciate Prof. Kaveny’s prophetic definition & distinctions…..like any prophet, it can be for good or evil; not sure that Olmsted was called to be a prophet in a situation that required him to be a pastoral leader?
- as many of you continue to parse definitions and concepts around abortion, double effect, intentional, etc., Rita, my starting point is to posit that the church began to relook at moral theology during Vatican II but subsequent papal pronouncements and the 1983 canon law either failed to implement these insights or turned the clock back to a manualist approach – thus, my comment about legalism; canon law is a tool; not an end in itself;
- legalism – for me, it puts observance of the law in the primary place…..rather, I think as people of faith we are called to live and love; to value life. I find Olmsted’s issue to mix up theological truth with moral theology – they are always different and separate – that is why we have pastoral ministers. To me, what we have here is the application of the law of the ruler vs. the rule of law…….the rule of law is to always try to love and support life even in difficult/complex situations vs. an arbitrary, almost non-thinking response to impose law over all other considerations.
- it is interesting that a canon lawyer, Tom Doyle, applies other canons and even directives from the Ethical Directives of Catholic Health Care and arrives at totally different results than Olmsted…in fact, some canons suggest that Olmsted has violated Sister McBride’s rights as a baptized catholic and I would tend to agree
- there is a new article about Phoenix and sexual abuse and Olmsted’s two episcopal predecessors in Phoenix by Doyle….the history is sordid at best and leaves a reader with much to contemplate in terms of bishops and how the use or misuse their power? This diocese has now had three bishops in a row whose personal ethics and public actions have not exactly matched the gospel message – link: http://www.richardsipe.com; scroll down to Tom Doyle and click on the first article – Turgia…NEW. This alone indicates the inequality of canon law, excommunications, the hypocrisy of Rome and bishops, etc.
- finally, agree with Mark Proska’s thoughts on scandal – earlier comments taken to an extreme such as Olmsted results in things such as a clerical culture that puts the institution over the people of God; law over love; canon law before pastoral considerations.
-
on May 29th, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Hello Lisa (and All),
I had a question regarding part of your post. You stated
“when the magisterium refuses to strongly support the use of condoms by HIV sero-discordant married couples, they avoid the scandal that people might think that the Church no longer opposes birth control. (In fact, this is a clear case of classic double-effect.)”
I’m not certain this case is so clearly one where the doctrine of double effect (DDE) applies, even though you and other moral theologians whom I respect have stated in print that the use of condoms by HIV sero-discordant married couples appears to be a correct application of the DDE.
Although I’ve not seen it explicitly stated in any presentation of the DDE I have seen, there appears to be a background assumption, namely, that the act that one contemplates that will produce the desired good effect and have the foreseen but unintended bad side effect is the only means by which the desired good effect can be produced. In the case of a HIV sero-discordant married couple, the use of condoms is one way the couple can achieve the desired end of preventing or at least greatly reducing the transmission of disease. But the couple apparently have another means at their disposal that would achieve the same desired good end, namely, they can abstain from sex completely for the remainder of their married years. So does the DDE apply in this case after all?
I’ve been curious about this case and other related cases for some time, and I’d be glad to know your insights and those of other participants. My curiosity was peaked about two years ago when I was discussing the case of someone I know who had a vasectomy when he and his wife learned that another pregnancy would be life threatening. I had thought that in this case having a vasectomy would be an acceptable application of the DDE, although I am well aware that the Roman Catholic Church teaches that a man must not have a vasectomy under any circumstances. But my friend with whom I was discussing the case pointed out that this couple could have achieved the same desired end of avoiding a life threatening pregnancy by practicing NFP rigorously for the rest of their marriage, so she thought that the DDE did not apply in this case.
on May 29th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
We can muse about intent all night long. For any rational person, thinking about what it means to intend to do something, to intentionally remove a fallopian tube “filled” with a fetus is to intentionally end the life of the fetus. That is the main point: from the perspective of moral intent, it’s the same. When the diabolical father hired a hitman to kill his disabled child, it hardly mattered whether he unplugged the ventilator (indirect) or smothered him with a pillow (direct). To distinguish morality on the basis of the means of an intentionally undertaken course of conduct — when any means has the same inevitable outcome — is sophistry and formalism, and more important, is very different from the way that we normally conduct moral inquiry. Of course intent incorporates different concepts, but when used in a legal sense, one intends the natural and probable consequences of one’s knowing actions, and for the most part, the church has virtually no quibble with this as a rule of moral understanding as well. What it tries to do with ectopic pregnancy (or other circumstances where a woman’s life is threatened by a pregnancy) is remove “circumstance” from the moral equation and rest all of its permission to act on a kind of distinction that would be considered completely meaningless in a legal setting.
on May 29th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Charles, in a legal setting, “intent” incorporates responsibility. That’s how I use it: but as Ann says, the word is certainly a challenging one to pin down.
on May 30th, 2010 at 12:01 am
Hi Peter,
As I understand it, DDE requires (among other things,) proportionality, i.e., that the good effect outweigh the cost of the bad side-effect. So while, yes, a married HIV sero-discordant couple could simply never have sex again, it seems to me that eliminating sex is a fairly dire thing to do in a marriage. In other words, since condoms carefully used do protect the uninfected partner (though of course not 100%) the couple might weigh the benefit of continuing to share intercourse to be worth a minimized risk. If there were no other way than sexual abstinence, then fine, that’s the way to go. But condoms provide very good protection. Sex is important in marriage.
More strongly, in many cultures women simply cannot insist on sexual abstinence from their partners (who, in the usual scenario, brought HIV home from a roadside brothel in the first place.) Sex with his wife is thought to be a man’s prerogative, just like the old language of “marriage debt.” However it is possible, given encouragement from socially-influential bodies like the Church, to convince people that, if they are to continue to be sexually active, they use a condom.
As to the vasectomy, reliable NFP requires, among other things, regular cycles (e.g., uninterrupted by stress, yes? And who lives stress-free?) It simply does not work for many women, and also has negative effects on the sex lives of many couples. (Not all.) Since sex is important in marriage, if pregnancy is dangerous, effective means to prevent it should be taken. They could use condoms, but, in a stable, perhaps already reproductive relationship, vasectomy doesn’t seem unreasonable. (Yes, she could die and he might want kids with a subsequent wife, but really…) However, deliberate sterilization is, if I remember correctly, on that list of “intrinsic evils.” So the first step–the act you propose cannot be intrinsically evil, would cause this case not to fall under DDE IF one regards sterilization as intrinsically evil. Many folks have trouble seeing deliberate sterilization as always and everywhere evil.
on May 30th, 2010 at 1:36 am
I am reading this thread with interest, and with feeling, because I myself had an ectopic pregnancy. Several years ago, my husband and I found ourselves seated in an ob/gyn office at 5:30 PM on a Thursday, looking at an ultrasound of our first child in my fallopian tube. Prior to that point I barely knew what an ectopic pregnancy was. Time was of the essence, so we had one night to decide whether to do the surgical option or to do the methotrexate. The doctor told us to call her at 7 the next morning and tell her what we’d decided.
I can hardly describe the grief and pain I was feeling. My husband and I tried hard to sort through the options and I ended up choosing the methotrexate. Why? Because women who had treated their ectopics with methotrexate had a slightly higher rate of subsequent uterine pregnancies than those who had the tube removed. There was no question that, to me, it was the more pro-life option.
I will tell you that the moral “differences” between the two treatments, such as they are, never entered my mind. I didn’t even think to see if one was considered acceptable by the Church or not because, to me, they were the same. They were both about removing a fetus that would kill me if it were left there. It was not about removing a damaged tube (how could it be, when we didn’t even know whether the tube was damaged to begin with? Many ectopics, including mine, are just flukes in otherwise healthy fallopian tubes.) It is horrible to think that you are going in there to remove a fetus — beyond horrible, actually; it’s excruciating. But I knew that I had no choice. Had there been a chance, ANY chance, that we could have somehow saved that fetus, even at risk to myself, I would have done it; God, I would have done it. But that is the painful reality of an ectopic.
I’ve made my peace with it in the years since (though it has taken a lot of prayer, dialogue, time, and sensitive listeners). But I’ll tell you this: for any woman who has faced this situation, and who has made the choice I did, the abstract splitting of hairs of the Catholic hierarchy who wants to make surgery okay but methotrexate a sin is, well, ludicrous. It is also cruel to those of us who have suffered enough already.
The bishops need to listen to women who have gone through this. We know what we’re talking about.
on May 30th, 2010 at 1:55 am
“canon law is a tool; not an end in itself;”"
Bill deH. –
This reminds me of what Raissa Maritain said: “Law is a necessity. Only a necessity.”
on May 30th, 2010 at 8:01 am
Barbara, the word “intent” is frequently not used in the same way in contemporary English or American law as it’s used in Catholic moral theology.
on May 30th, 2010 at 9:31 am
Cathy, how is that meaningful in this circumstance? Are you saying that Catholic moral theology is so steeped in its own definitional vocabulary that any crossover with Anglo-American jurisprudence is tangential at best? Doesn’t that say something about how influential Catholic morality should be when its moral reference is so distinguishable from American legal traditions?
on May 30th, 2010 at 9:37 am
Despite the scandalous and upsetting actions and omissions of individual bishops, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church is much more reliable in clarifying and defending ethical truths than are some of the editors and readers of *Commonweal*. Those who, under the requisite circumstances, make us hear the voice of Jesus in accordance with his own promise (*Lk* 10:16), know that, logically, there can be no gaps in the moral law’s prohibition against directly assailing innocent human lives, including the lives of those brothers and sisters who are still developing in their mothers’ wombs. Every direct abortion is what John Paul II called it: murder.
The official teachers who adamantly and uncompromisingly teach the inviolability of the life of every unborn child without exception are–fortunately for us all–the same bishops who denounce nuclear warfare as “a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation” (*CCC* 2314).
on May 30th, 2010 at 9:53 am
Mr. O’Brien – unfortunately, anyone can cite the significant factual errors of your last paragraph. The inconsistencies across catholic social teachings, right to life, etc. as expressed by many US bishops is well documented. Your statement is wrong.
Also, why don’t you peruse the books written by many of the bishops who have retired over the hast 10 years….in almost every case, they have written about the mess of ethical teachings around sexual morality; the hypocrisy and inconsistencies of how it is developed and applied.
Here is a link to an excellent summary of this situation: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/irish-nun-pays-ultimate-price-for-defying-bishop-in-abortion-case-2200425.html
on May 30th, 2010 at 10:16 am
Yesterday I happened upon the book “Readings in Moral theology No. 6: Dissent in the Church,” ed. by Charles curran and Richard McCormick, S. J., published by Paulist Press in 1988 and containingarticles written mostly inthe eqarly 1980s. Articles by then Cardinal Ratzinger and then Archbishop Levada both argued vigorously against the legitimacy of dissent in the Church to noninfallible but officila teachings of the Magisterium concerning morality, including sexual morality, etc. On the other hand, several theologians, including Curran, Mc Cormick as well as the Jesuits Francis Sullivan and Joseph Fuchs bot of whom were then professors at Rome’s Gregorian University argued that especially in the moral application of the principles of natural law especially in the rapidly changing circumstances of our times, informed scholarly debate was needed to help insure the truthfulness of the Church’s teaching and practice, especially in these matters.
I’m no theologian, so I don’t dare make any pronouncement about all this. Nonetheless, reflecting on Phoenix and other USCCB pronouncements especially about sexual morality, I get the impression that in the 22 years since the publication of this volume, Rome has been appointing, in the U. S. at least, bishops who do not readily tolerate dissent in these matters. They seem to demand obedience, as though they already had definitive answers to these ever more complicated issues.
My own sense is that this apparent determination to delegitimize debate is wrongheaded and is very bad for the Church.
A question for those of you who are up to date in moral theology: Has there been a major crackdown by the hierarchy since 1988 on theological debate about these matters?
on May 30th, 2010 at 11:07 am
Every direct abortion is what John Paul II called it: murder.
Stephen,
Unless I have missed something, none of the opinions put forth by the editors and readers of Commonweal are defending direct abortion. The question under discussion is what constitutes a direct abortion, and what the meaning of direct is.
The official teachers who adamantly and uncompromisingly teach the inviolability of the life of every unborn child without exception . . . .
Are the unborn somehow more important than those of us who have already been born? And please note that in the specific case under discussion, the choice was to save one person rather than let two people die. Those who are so sure that Bishop Olmsted is correct must come to grips with the fact that the position he advocates places more value on following technical rules than on the lives involved. He is not “pro-life.” He’s anti-abortion. Of course, according to my understanding of Catholic thought, there may be many instances in which it is impermissible to cause the death of some in order to save the lives of others. But the question is whether in this particular case, it was better to let the mother and the unborn child die rather than save the mother at the expense of the fetus.
on May 30th, 2010 at 11:24 am
As usual, I agree with Bill D. on the issue of legalism and not only here.
An interesting take on this and beyond is Fr. Mrtin at the America blog asking if the catholicChurch ttoday “groks” it?
on May 30th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
official teachers who adamantly and uncompromisingly teach the inviolability of the life of every unborn child without exception
Mr O’Brien,
Are there official teachers who teach this? Who would not allow a fetus to die as a result of a mother’s cancer treatment?
The principle is about respecting the life of every innocent individual. The mother’s life is not more valuable than the child, but it is not less valuable as you would have it. Unless pregnancy is a sin, the mother is not guilty here, and the drs and ethicists have as much of a duty to protect her life as the life of the child. It is as much of a sin to cause her death by inaction as it would be to cause the death of the child by acting.
The difficulty seems to be that Olmstead and others have misunderstood the object of the action that saved the mother’s life. Based on a purely physical description, they decided the object of the action was the death of the child. A proper evaluation would presumably have concluded that the object of the act was to treat the mother’s pulmonary hypertension. [btw, this is the main peculiarity of catholic ideas of 'intent'; most others would include the object of the act within intent]
This mistake about object is probably why Olmstead can reach the horrifying conclusion that an innocent life(the mother) must be sacrificed if an innocent life(the child) is not to be sacrificed. In order to prevent the guilt of the doctors, Olmstead makes the moral theologian the guilty one, for counseling inaction when action might save the mother.
on May 30th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
It is very clear to me that “V” made a good decision for good reasons, and that Sr. McBride also made a good decision (Rita’s post was crystal clear about that.) I think that the subject of this thread is to decide whether Bp. Olmsted was mistaken in his application of Catholic law, in which case he needs to be corrected, or whether he correctly applied canon law, in which case in addition the law needs to be changed.
on May 30th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Reading some of the comments here suggests the question: Why not allow any medical procedure that is judged by doctors or vocal onlookers to be compassionate?
Then we could do away with legalisms, Catholic ethics boards and any hierarchical oversight.
Or, better yet, we could, with a little ingenuity, direct the same resources to the task of condemning torture in a ticking time-bomb scenario and explain why compassion should have no role.
on May 30th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Thank you, V. for your story, which makes real and vivid some of the matters we have been discussing in abstract and impersonal terms. Although abstraction allows sometimes for greater clarity, I personally would find this discussion stultifying in the absence of living, breathing human beings like you for whom the questions are (and have been) urgently concrete.
Both the current case we have been discussing, and the question raised by Peter V. (why not have couples abstain from sex for life as an alternative to using condoms) have in a certain way rendered strange the church’s familiar teaching.
I find myself asking: does natural law theory in effect deify nature? Nature can be cruel and destructive as well as kind and benificent. How can we seriously maintain that whatever nature decrees concerning human reproduction is an immediate expression of God’s will, including all the misfires, physical maladies, and unfruitful expressions of the same? Perhaps those who understand natural law theory better than I do can explain how this is not somehow pretending that nature is God.
on May 30th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
The bishops are not the only ones concerned with the principle “the end does not justify the means”. It is reflected in the so-called “trolley problem”, a thought experiment with many variations that has been of great interest to secular ethicists because the fundamental problem re-appears often in very important real life situations. Wikipedia’s article puts it clearly in the “trolley problem” page:
From Wikipedia:
“A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are 5 people who have been tied to the track by a mad philosopher. Fortunately, you can flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch?”
This dilemma is echoed in the real-world problem of torture: is it just to torture one person to save the lives of many? Of all mankind? The justification of war itself involves the same basic problem: Some say soldiers may be justly sent to die in order to save the lives of many at home. Or consider The Bomb: Was it right to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed hundreds of thousands of non-combattants, in order to save the lives of millions of soldiers, both American and Japanese, who would have been killed in an invasion and subsequent battles? The bishops don’t justify that either and are often praised for it. So why are they wrong to condemn Sr. Margaret?
It seems to me that in order to at least see the basic issues clearly, the use of thought experiements — semi-abstract considerations– eliminate the emotions that become part of our course of thought when we try to think straight about such real and heart-rending cases such as the Arizona case and the dropping of the bombs.
Here’s another hypothetical case that draws us into the issues without distracting emotions. Bernard Williams, an atheist ethicist, proposed this thought experiment. A brutal king has twenty prisoners. He tells a visiting anthropologist that he will spare the lives of 19 of them if the anthropologist will choose one and kill him. What ought the anthropoologist do?
On the other hand, *should* our emotions *ever* be the determining factor in our moral decisions? If so when? And when not, if ever? And, in either case, why? (Remember: Eichmann and Hitler, for instance, really, really *wanted* to kill all the Jews. Why shouldn’t *their* emotions have been dominant factors in their decisions?
Complexity, complexity.
on May 30th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
My response to Jim McK’s question is this: yes, the Magisterium teaches that “[d]irect abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law [. . .]” (*CCC* 2271). In this precise and careful statement, in which every word is crucial, and which thus takes into account solutions based on the principle of the double effect, what happened in Phoenix, Arizona, is condemned, not merely by one bishop, but by the whole hierarchy that stands behind the new catechism. If the Church’s teaching authority is mistaken in making this sweeping statement, then I do not see the point in trusting it on *any* matter, include the sinfulness of rape, child molestation, or nuclear annihilation.
In my view, the most incisive reaction to the tragic events in Phoenix appeared in just two brief sentences in a letter by Monsignor Daniel S. Hamilton in yesterday’s *New York Times*: “Unintended physical death is not the greatest of evils, since we will all ultimately die. But directly killing an innocent person is a grave evil.”
In my earlier post on this thread, I am retroactively deleting the unnecessary comma that the Devil slipped in after the citation of *Lk* 10:16.
on May 30th, 2010 at 6:38 pm
My response to Jim McK’s question is this: yes, the Magisterium teaches that “[d]irect abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law [. . .]” (*CCC* 2271).
Stephen,
Regarding the Church’s teaching authority, then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church
Now, here’s something I found, which was titled “From the reply of the Holy Office to the Dean of the faculty of theology of the University of Marienburg, the 5th day of March, 1902.”
The Holy Office (now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) appeared to declare quite definitively in 1902 that nothing could be done for a woman with an ectopic pregnancy until the 6th month of pregnancy. That is certainly not the consensus among moral theologians and medical ethicists today. If there is anything as seemingly authoritative [that is, a statement from the Vatican] on this subject as the 1902 statement, I don’t know what it is. Would you want to stick with it, or do you accept the developments in thinking that have occurred in the intervening 108 years?
on May 30th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
If the Church’s teaching authority is mistaken in making this sweeping statement, then I do not see the point in trusting it on *any* matter, include the sinfulness of rape, child molestation, or nuclear annihilation.
Stephen,
Is this how you view Catholic teaching? As a house of cards? Is your belief in the sinfulness of rape or child molestation based solely on the fact that the Catholic Church condemns them? If a believing Catholic loses his or her faith, should the result be that they have no moral beliefs whatsoever?
on May 30th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
My response to Jim McK’s question is this: yes, the Magisterium teaches that “[d]irect abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law [. . .]” (*CCC* 2271)
Mr O’Brien, your response unfortunately makes sense only if you think the CCC is an example of an official teacher who adamantly and uncompromisingly teach the inviolability of the life of every unborn child without exception I do not see any reason to join the two sentences. I offered two reasons why these differ, neither of which you addressed. My apologies for not being clearer. Let me try again:
1> CCC’s statement about abortion is part of a broader principle, the inviolability of innocent life. It cannot be taken in isolation from the broader principle, as if the life of the fetus is more valuable than any other life. Is the life of the mother valued? It appears that her life is to be sacrificed so that others may not sin. It is not the mother’s life against the child’s life, but the mother’s life against our sinlessness, a very different choice. Msgr. Hamilton has an opinion on this, but I did not see much justification of his stance. What do you find convincing about his remark?
2> As Ms Kaveny pointed out in an earlier discussion, it is not clear that a “direct abortion” was willed in this instance. I stated that the object of the procedure was to treat the mother’s hypertension, not to abort the child. In that case, the statement from the CCC is not even relevant, since it is about abortion and this instance does not include an abortion.
I am not an expert in these things, so if you have ideas on why this should be classified as an abortion, or why the life of the innocent mother should not be preserved, you might convince me. Just saying “Is too abortion” or “death is better than sin” does not illuminate the discussion much. They might be true, but they are not persuasive.
on May 30th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
In response to David Nickol, my statement about not trusting the Church’s teaching authority on *any* matter, “including [I am correcting the typo] the sinfulness of rape, child molestation, or nuclear annihilation” if the Church is wrong about abortion is not intended to deny the force of rational arguments based on the natural moral law. Instead, my point is to affirm the need for acceptance of the Magisterium as the authoritative interpreter of the natural law. No one who rejects that point can be a Catholic.
If Catholic teaching on abortion is not infallibly taught by the Church’s ordinary and universal Magisterium, then nothing is. The new catechism simply confirms what the Church has told us for centuries on this subject, as the catechism itself says (*CCC* 2271).
On the Church’s response to ectopic pregnancies (a subject that I wish to study further), I believe that David may be correct in noting disagreement between the current position of most moral theologians and past documents of the Holy Office. It is also my understanding that the current Catholic solution cannot be described as a direct abortion, but is rather the removal of a pathological condition analogous to uterine cancer. In the Phoenix case, however, it is precisely a direct abortion that is the issue. That is the reality that Catholics must face.
David and other *Commonweal* readers may agree with me in finding the following discussion of ectopic pregnancies helpful:
http://www.cuf.org/faithfacts/details_view.asp?ffID=57
on May 30th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Ann, I think your examples merely obfuscate. Crimes involving trolleys and train tracks are rather rare — pregnancies that threaten a woman’s life are recurrent and to some extent predictable. Your suggestion that we all distance ourselves from the emotional pull of a single case rather overlooks that point — that there are many people who have thought about this very scenario in the abstract, when no real person’s life was at imminent risk.
Let us suppose a boat wreck (since 48 hours last night was about a family whose boat hit a reef in the Pacific in the dead of night — unbelievably they all survived!), but our hypothetical family isn’t so fortunate: mom or dad tries valiantly to swim with a non-swimming child in each arm, but simply can’t continue swimming and so lets go of one and then the other. Was it murder to let them drown? Was the parent obligated to drown as well?
Basically, we would conclude, I think, that the parent tried as hard as he/she could but the force of nature and the limitations of human biology were stronger than the will to save. Here, so far as I can tell, everything is exactly the same — the mother extended the pregnancy until the force of biology took over. The only difference was that, instead of letting the child slip out of her arms, someone had to actively intervene to remove it from her uterus.
So I am done with this topic. I think the Church doctrine is wrong and I hope someone, somewhere is willing to re-examine it.
on May 31st, 2010 at 9:29 am
Stephen,
Time will tell whether you are just another fly by night visitor here. But if you are serious please relate to the following. Were we “hearing” Jesus when John Paul II gave a blanket endorsement to Maciel or when the CDF advised American bishops not to acknowledge crimes of pedophilia and their coverup? How do you reconcile Luke 10 when John Paul II led the famous prayer in Assissi while Ratzinger condemned it? Or when Augustine wrote that it was okay to use force against heretics which today is condemned? ETC.
Luke 10 applies when there is leadership coupled with humility. Not dominating clerics.
on May 31st, 2010 at 9:59 am
As to scandal and Maciel: the Post-Dispatch article on the Legion’s school in St. Louis was the most e-mailed a couple of days ago and has drawn 100 comments so far, including one from a mother describing how her son, a student at a different school — a parochial school, and all the boys in his 7th grade were made to meet one-on-one with a priest from the Legion.
Another mother mentions that the Legion exempts itself from the Protecting God’s Children program because “the sensitive material might scandalize the young Brothers”.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/emaf.nsf/comments?ReadForm&db=stltoday%5Cnews%5Cstories.nsf&docid=DA2135BC7D10B865862577310000960C
on May 31st, 2010 at 10:09 am
I want to say that I think the broad swath of anger I’ve seen towards Olmsted can’t be swept asie as “emotionalism” in the face of complexity, as many of the angry are quite well educated both formally and in the Church.
The argument here it strikes me is about natural law and moral thinking and the categories that one uses.
What’s important, IMO, is what is beleivable and resonates in experience.
on May 31st, 2010 at 10:13 am
Jim McK’s last post denies what should be obvious: what happened in Phoenix was a direct abortion. Moral reality cannot be changed by redefinitions–unless we wish to jump from the Ark of Catholicism into the treacherous waters of relativism. Do not jump. Even the U.S. Navy cannot retrieve everyone who falls overboard.
Monsignor Hamilton’s remarks are excellent because they get to the point quickly and clearly: we must all die, but no one may *ever* directly kill an innocent human life.
The mother’s life is not less important than that of her unborn child, but direct killing of the innocent is murder. Murder is never an acceptable means for saving the life of a mother or anyone else.
I thank Bill Mazzella for having raised the issue of John Paul II’s papacy. *Commonweal* should publish an editorial imploring Benedict XVI to halt all efforts to canonize his predecessor. John Paul II’s failure to order an immediate investigation of the 1998 canonical complaint against Father Marcial Maciel Degollado is only one reason for abandoning those misguided efforts.
In my last post, the Devil switched tactics and filched a comma that should have been included after “annihilation” in the first paragraph.
on May 31st, 2010 at 10:38 am
Barbara –
I must confess that my general point in presenting similar cases which seem to require conflicting resolutions was indeed meant to obfuscate, not for the sake of obfuscation but to show that we can all be wrong. (Was that immoral? ;) My specific point was that something must be wrong somewhere with the Church’s use of the principle that says do no evil directly, plus we also need to admit that we both praise and blame the bishops for holding fast to it, an inconsistency on our part. Like you I think the principle needs to be re-thought. But we also need to see that those we disagree with aren’t necessarily moral monster, and we need to face the fact that we can be wrong too.
Stephen –
Criticizing the Church’s moral principles, or applications of them, does not inevitably leads to skepticism or, worse, to nihilism. Inconsistent thinking (and the Church has often been inconsistent) is a sure sign that something is wrong with it. But our choice isn’t between 100% certitude and skepticism or nihilism, it’s between accepting the fact that we — both the Church and the non-Church — can be wrong.
It seems to me that you and the current set of bishops are putting words in Jesus’ mouth by *your interpretations* of what He actually says. Nowhere does Jesus promise us that the Church will always manage to teach the exact truth. He promises only that the Holy Spirit will be with us always to *guide* the Church, not that He will impose His intentions on it automatically. Why He chose it to be this way, God alone knows. But the fact seems to be that until the Second Coming we must deal with a flawed world and a flawed Church and a flawed self within it, but that the grace of God will help us to improve it if we but try. Yes, Heaven is a dogma, but so is Original Sin and all its ugly consequences.
on May 31st, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Stephen, suppose a young child (say 6 years old) has been conscripted by a terrorist group to blow herself up in a crowded marketplace…and a U.S. soldier, just before she pulls the cord, shoots and kills her in order to save other lives. Suppose also that he really was trying to kill her because attempts to shoot her in a non-lethal area might allow her to pull the cord.
Is this solider guilty of murder? According to the way you’ve set things up, it certainly looks as if he directly killed an innocent person. According to Catholic teaching, are you saying that this solider must let this child blow up the marketplace?
If not, don’t we have to rethink what ‘direct killing’ actually means and how the object of an act is constructed?
on May 31st, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Well, Mr O’Brien has stated his position pretty clearly: “what happened in Phoenix was a direct abortion.” It is better to allow someone to die than to commit a sin. (this is pro-life?) Killing is never an acceptable means for saving the life of a mother or anyone else.
He could be right on these things. He may even be correct that this is what the Church teaches. The best I can do is post some passages from Veritatis Splendor, wherein John Paul II describes the “object of a moral act” and hope that someone can explain to me how his position, or contrary positions, fit in with acknowledged Catholic teaching:
Certainly there is need to take into account both the intention — as Jesus forcefully insisted in clear disagreement with the scribes and Pharisees, who prescribed in great detail certain outward practices without paying attention to the heart — and the goods obtained and the evils avoided as a result of a particular act. Responsibility demands as much. But the consideration of these consequences, and also of intentions, is not sufficient for judging the moral quality of a concrete choice. The weighing of the goods and evils foreseeable as the consequence of an action is not an adequate method for determining whether the choice of that concrete kind of behaviour is “according to its species”, or “in itself”, morally good or bad, licit or illicit…
By the object of a given moral act, then, one cannot mean a process or an event of the merely physical order, to be assessed on the basis of its ability to bring about a given state of affairs in the outside world. Rather, that object is the proximate end of a deliberate decision which determines the act of willing on the part of the acting person…
The reason why a good intention is not itself sufficient, but a correct choice of actions is also needed, is that the human act depends on its object, whether that object is capable or not of being ordered to God, to the One who “alone is good”, and thus brings about the perfection of the person. An act is therefore good if its object is in conformity with the good of the person with respect for the goods morally relevant for him.
on May 31st, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Bernard – excellent resources – late 1980’s moral theology by Curran, et. alii. Curran lives and teaches not far from my home at SMU; everyone once and awhile he will cover a Mass at a nearby parish…he is an excellent homilist.
I am not aware of any other moral theologians and their works. I equate this period of moral theology to the period from 1890’s – the start of Vatican II for ecclesiology and liturgy – theologians who were sanctioned or restricted from writing/publishing – partial list would include Congar, Rahner, Schillebeeckx, etc.
At some point in time, the same dynamic will occur in terms of moral theology and a reconsideration of “natural law”. Remember, examples of the use of natural law over the last two hundred years justified slavery, usury, etc. Natural law can be an excellent foundation to express immutable truths – but how these truths are lived, experienced, etc. evolves. Unfortunately, the heirarchy seems to fail to learn that lesson of church history over and over again. IMO, HV in 1968 will go down as a moment when moral theology was undone by a minority opinion that placed the image and power of the institution above the truth of natural law – a decision made from fear and about power/authority.
on May 31st, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Charles Camosy’s question reminds me of a discussion in which I took part as a civilian instructor aboard a Navy ship right after the 9/11 attacks. I told some officers that I considered it morally wrong to shoot down a civilian airliner under the circumstances of that terrible day. By the same token, I consider it morally wrong for the soldier to aim to kill the six-year-old in the marketplace.
In any case, the Catholic Church has explicitly spoken, and spoken in the name of Christ, on the intrinsic evil of every direct abortion without exception. Since I wish to be a consistent and coherent Catholic, I am acutely conscious of my grave ethical and intellectual obligation to acknowledge the truth of that teaching.
I have the uncomfortable feeling that millions of our fellow citizens may believe that it would be morally justifiable for the U.S. government to kill millions of Russians, Chinese, or Iranians in retaliation for a nuclear attack on our nation or one of our allies. A sign of the truth of the Catholic Faith is that the Church’s Magisterium lucidly and emphatically condemns such insane thinking–on the basis of the very same principle that it invokes to condemn what occurred in Phoenix.
on May 31st, 2010 at 6:07 pm
So, what different moral reasoning is involved between shooting down a plane headed for the twin towers, which just happends to be carrying 100 passengers and the removal of a fallopian tube, which just happens to be carrying a conceptus?
Anyhow, while searching for a precise definition of “intrinsic evil” I came across the following “instruction” from “The Holy Office” of the Catholic Church issued in 1866, presumably speaking in the name of Jesus Christ, in reply to some questions by a Vicar Apostolic in Africa. I thought folks might find it interesting.
“[N]evertheless, slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery and these are referred to by approved [!] theologians and commentators of the sacred canons.
“For the sort of ownership which a slave-owner had over a slave is understood as nothing other than the perpetual right of disposing of the work of the slave for ones own benefits – services which it is right for one man to provide for another. From this it follows that it is not contrary to the natural law and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought or exchanged or given, provided that in this sale, purchase exchange or gift, the due conditions are strictly observed which the approved authors likewise describe and explain.” (Maxwell 1969-1970, 306)
Quoted in “Deep Down Things: Essay on Catholic Culture”, by Joseph A. Cirincione.
on May 31st, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Antonio–nifty quotation. Indeed Thomas Aquinas also went to bat for slavery, doubtless one of the sources consulted by the author of this little gem.
So when people want to say that the magisterium always gets it right, I want to ask, “which magisterium?” The ones who justify slavery, or those who condemn it? When a Jesuit wants to imply that the 4th vow (of obedience to the Pope with respect to missions,) means just “obey the Pope,” I ask, “Which Pope? The one who allowed the Society of Jesus to exist, the one who suppressed it, clearly intending its end, or the one who restored it, contradicting his predecessor?”
As we see in hard moral cases, experience matters. So does history, which has a way of shaking certitude.
on May 31st, 2010 at 8:52 pm
I’m in the process of of moving–so not able to engage here, but for those who are interested, here’s a link to an article I wrote in the “Law Quarterly Review,” called Inferring Intention from Foresight –dealing with the muddled Englsih mens rea of murder.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1135672
What Professor Callaghan, here, strikes me as both muddled and puzzling==-nothing I say is inconsistent with the business about external observation in Anscombe’s book on Intention. The core of the debate is between Anscombe in the book on Intention and Anscombe in her Medalist’s address–what Anthony Fisher calls a “natural acts” approach and a “purposed acts approach” –( I think those are the terms–don’t have access to the book now). I hold to the early arguments in Anscombe because I think they’re sound. I don’t think they’re sound simply because she made them. I disagree with her strongly on many other things, e.g., her argument that contracepted sex is analogized appropriately to bestiality. So Ad hominem arguments, even favorable ones, aren’t relevant here. I treat her as an analytic philosopher–not a saint or even as a person who’s specially blessed with practical wisdom.
http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/05/ocallaghan-on-the-arizona-case-anscombe-and-abortion.html
on May 31st, 2010 at 11:49 pm
Cathy,
It seems clear to me that those on Mirror of Justice who are writing in disagreement with you — official contributors and invited guests — have not actually read what you have written (especially Father Kevin Flannery) or have not read the Grisez piece you linked to (especially Robert John Araujo, SJ). It will be very interesting to see if Robert George weighs in again, since based on this snippet from his first comment — “her endorsement of Germain Grisez’s theory of human action as applied to the analysis of abortion and killing generally (a theory I, too, endorse)” — it appears he agrees with you.
on June 1st, 2010 at 6:41 am
Interestingly put.
There’s an idea missing from “not an unintended side effect; rather, it is something that should not be done.” In any case, wouldn’t Father Araujo’s reasoning rule out surgical intervention in the classic cases of ectopic pregnancy and a pregnant woman with cancer of the uterus?
There is a difference between drawing from Shakespeare and desecrating Shakespeare. And setting aside matters of prose style, the removal of a cancerous uterus of a pregnant mother is called a hysterectomy abortion.
on June 1st, 2010 at 10:33 am
The Mirror of Justice comments are interesting, but we have to remember context. Moral theology and Law approach the questions from different angles. In moral theology, according to JP2, the object of a moral act is internal, the proximate end of a deliberate decision which determines the act of willing on the part of the acting person.(from JP2, quoted in my note above) This may, and probably does, differ from legal ideas.
The greater part of Callaghan’s remarks are dedicated to denying another part of what I quoted above: By the object of a given moral act, then, one cannot mean a process or an event of the merely physical order. He even casually refers to VS, as if it supports his position, even though he is arguing against its central notion that morality has to do with choices made within the heart. He may be right about VS. I do not see how, but there are a lot of things I do not understand.
As always, I appreciate any illumination others may offer on these questions.
on June 1st, 2010 at 10:46 am
David’s quote from Fr Araujo raises some of the most difficult questions. What is in the interests of the child? With two distinct individuals, which is how Araujo presents it, the answer might be his life must no be taken. But is his life more in his interests than the life of his mother, without which he will die? Is his death really in the interests of the mother, whose identity is formed around being able to be a mother?
In the situation, the life of the child has been entrusted by God to the mother in the most intimate way possible. Their interests are intertwined, and the only one who can choose is the mother. She must weigh life and motherhood, her child’s dependence on her and what she can give the child. Those are thorny questions. (Is this in fact the problem in this case — that the mother did not want the procedure?)
on June 1st, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Here is a genetic counselor at the hospital quoting the Catholic health guidelines, which seem to indicate the right decision was made. Her letter in the NYTimes:
Nicholas D. Kristof’s column was excellent. For anyone condemning Sister Margaret McBride’s actions, please note the actual Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care, written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:
In Part 4, Issues in Care for the Beginning of Life, No. 47: “Operations, treatments and medications that can have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child.”
Sister Margaret did no wrong.
Cathy McCann
Phoenix, May 27, 2010
The writer is a genetic counselor at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center Comprehensive Cancer Center.
on June 1st, 2010 at 8:43 pm
Carolyn, I don’t think that interpretation is correct. The removal of the fetus is, per se, not considered to be for the direct purpose of a cure, hence can never fall within this exception. Basically, you have to find something “else” to do, which results in the death of the fetus, for DDE to apply. Hence, you can remove the tube but not administer methotrexate to resolve an ectopic pregnancy. But I predict that, Olmsted or no, if the same thing happens again tomorrow, somehow, the hospital will find a way to do exactly the same thing. I realize that utilitarianism is a slippery place to begin one’s ethical inquiry, but it does seem to me that when you get to a point where there is no choice that validates both lives, recognizing the good of the life you can save and acting on it is a worthwhile moral principle. If someone wants to call me a moral monster then have at it.
on June 1st, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Joining you, Barbara, as a moral monster.
My head spins at all the spinning of concepts, theologies, and Lord knows what. It seems like some intellectual run-around of hypotheticals, contingencies, and hair-splitting abstractions of one sort of another, when the most powerful post to me is the woman who shared her experience with ectopic pregnancy.
To quote you: “that there are many people who have thought about this very scenario in the abstract, when no real person’s life was at imminent risk.” Exactly!
“So I am done with this topic. I think the Church doctrine is wrong and I hope someone, somewhere is willing to re-examine it.” Amen.
Tom Doyle’s analysis stands as the most sane thing I have read:
http://ncronline.org/news/justice/shades-grey-world-apparent-absolutes
I can’t find the God I pray to in the Church’s position. He becomes a celestial sadist twisting situations just to challenge vulnerable mothers.
on June 2nd, 2010 at 12:32 pm
On a pragmatic level, has the hospital made its treatment policy known to pregnant women and health care providers? It would seem to me in general that this is a duty that every hospital has if their treatment policy deviates from the ‘expected standard of care’ for sectarian ethical reasons.
Also, what legal liability does the hospital have if it refuses to perform such a legally licit procedure when such a case occurs?
Apologies if these matters have been discussed elsewhere.
on June 2nd, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Complexity in this tragic situation — even if some folks are quick and comfortable seeing the Phoenix case as nothing more than a simple abortion. Wouldn’t it be nice if life were black-and-white and utterly changeless?
Unless I misunderstand official teaching, it’s OK to remove the human offspring as long as it’s surrounded by the mother’s fallopian tube, but (if otherwise possible) it would not be OK to “suck out” the human offspring from a fallopian tube, thereby leaving the tube intact.
Perhaps the challenge for moral theologians and philosophers and for canon lawyers is to articulate what us “ordinary folks” see as a morally proper, “common sense” solution to this tragic situation? In other words, might we have here (in the hospital’s decision) a correct approach merely awaiting a new and morally proper articulation by the church?
Does widespread support for Sister McBride’s decision reflect a “sense of the faith” being guided by the Holy Spirit? I’m not persuaded to answer in the negative.
on June 2nd, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Since I was curious about the issue of policy notification, I checked the web page for St. Joseph Hospital in Phoenix. A reference to “Women Services”
(http://www.stjosephs-phx.org/Medical_Services/Womens_Services/index.htm ) returns a page with the following message:
“There has been an error processing your request.
The page you are trying to reach is not available.”
A google search for the URL turned up the following reference:
——————————–
Search ResultsWomen’s Services
Helpful Links… http://www.stjosephs-phx.org / 1, Payment Assistance … At St. Joseph’s, we provide complete obstetric and gynecologic care to meet the …
http://www.stjosephs-phx.org/Medical_Services/Womens_Services/index.htm
——————————–
The actual page does not contain this text.
on June 2nd, 2010 at 1:55 pm
I found it, and found this as well:
Complicated Pregnancies
For many women, pregnancies are uncomplicated and babies are carried to full term with few problems. However, the reality is that some women do experience complications. These complications can be due to a preexisting medical illness, a congenital anomaly in the fetus or the development of pregnancy-specific conditions.
At St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, the Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine (MFM) within the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, consists of a team of specialists and perinatologists who are specialized in obstetrics and gynecology with additional formal education and clinical experience in the care of high-risk pregnancies. This specialization allows our MFMs to care for both mother and fetus in a complicated pregnancy, either as the primary caregiver, or in partnership with a woman’s primary OB provider. St. Joseph’s is the only hospital in Arizona to have full-service high-risk care keeping the mother and baby together.
on June 2nd, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Barbara and Claire –
I was the first one to use the term “moral monsters” on this thread. My point was that it does not further progress in moral thinking to call the bishops who agree with Bishop Olmstead moral monsters because of their views. In fact, I disagree with their views– I think Sr. Margaret was right and they were wrong, and I said so earlier. But it’s a rare day in June when name-calling gets anybody anywhere..
on June 2nd, 2010 at 3:31 pm
“My head spins at all the spinning of concepts, theologies, and Lord knows what. It seems like some intellectual run-around of hypotheticals, contingencies, and hair-splitting abstractions of one sort of another, when the most powerful post to me is the woman who shared her experience with ectopic pregnancy.”
Carolyn –
I agree with you that the arguments about this case are mind-spinning, and even said so to Cathy a while back. The legal arguments seem to get the most complicated of all, dealing as they do with the sometimes terrible complexity of the nitty-gritty of living a human life. But does the complexity of law imply that we should do without law? That judges should decide cases by gut-feelings? I think not, even though there are some — I think very few — gut-feelings which seem to have some moral weight, I would add that I think that topic deserves a great deal more attention from the moralists, especially from the Christian ones.
If we shouldn’t give up on the abstractions and complexities of law, why should ignore the abstractions and complexity of ethics/morality?. Your own words “powerful”, ‘post”, “me”, “woman”, “who”, etc., etc., etc. are all abstractions, not to mention highly complex abstractions “ectopic” and “pregnancy”.
As a defender of morality, please tell us what you mean by “powerful” here, and why it should change Bishop Olmstead’s mind. I agree with you, that V.’s post was an extremely powerful one. But except for the fact that it was heart-rending in the extreme, I can’t tell you exactly why I agree with her, except by appealing to the most abstract science of all — math tells us that one plus one is two, from which it follows that one life lost plus one other life lost is two lives lost. Abstract? Yes. Boring??? I say No.
It’s often said that American culture is an anti-intellectual one. I think that’s true too. And we’re all-round poorer for it.
The principle that I do defend contrary to many on this blog is that describing realities is what abstractions/theories or for. Some are not really applicable, of course, or not applicable in all instances, but the great ones are great because they stand the test of human experience. Otherwise they’re dropped or are revised or restricted in their use. In the meantime, I don’t think that those who hold on to worn-out theories are perverse. They’re just mistaken. Does these errors have moral implicaitons? Sometimes, of course. But this doesn’t imply that we should give up giving our own reasons and subjecting them to the experiences of others. U
on June 2nd, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Susan Stabile, over at the MoJ blog, points to the following column by Patrick McCormick, STD professor of Religious Studies at Gonzaga. Definitely worth a read.
http://www.uscatholic.org/blog/2010/06/was-excommunication-right-response-arizona-abortion
Fr. McCormick’s column concludes with the following:
Bishop Olmsted and the Vatican have a grave pastoral problem. Catholic moral teaching on this question has become unpersuasive (even unintelligible) to a large number of committed and educated Catholics, and excommunicating a nun will not resolve this pastoral problem, only worsen it, for it suggests that the bishop and the Vatican do not have clear, cogent, and persuasive answers to tough moral questions. That is not “good news.” It is a scandal.
on June 2nd, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Claire –
Sorry, I wrote “Barbara and Claire” instead of “Barbara and Carolyn”.
on June 2nd, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Back in the nineteen fifties, when I was a senior in a strict Catholic academy in New York, my classmates and I were extremely innocent and expected to be “docile.” In fact ,our report cards included grades for docility. (God knows how anyone ascertained that we were or were not so.)
However, as seniors we were required to take a short course in “our duty as women and future mothers” given by a young clergyman who was presented as an expert in these matters. He “explained ” our duties in absolutely hair-raising terms, culminating in a description of an ectopic pregnancy dilemma which “fortunately” could now be resolved because there were pious Catholic doctors locally who were willing to wait until very last moment when the fallopian tubes would be about to rupture and they then (and only then) could with “clear conscience” invoke the principle of double effect and act to (possibly) save a mother’s life.
He presented this as a triumphant benefit to us. We were shocked,and on the whole, scandalized, by this presentation, and when many of us went on to a local Catholic college where we were required to take eighteen credits of mostly scholastic philosophy (and eight of ethics), we were only more confirmed in our belief that the moral position taught to us as required was an appalling mistake. It is comforting to find at this very late date that so many other r people agree with us. But how sad that many Catholic women of our generation felt it was there duty to die in these circumstances, and they were encouraged in this by clergy and Catholic medical personnel,
on June 2nd, 2010 at 9:49 pm
I should perhaps say that women were taught to believe it was their Christian duty in these circumstances, to accept the risk of risk death and mutilation,surrendering themselves to the “better judgment” of pious Catholic doctors and clerical advisors.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 8:30 am
If Bishop Olmsted oversimplified this case with his excommunication, others are creating their own black and white scenario by using a purely consequentialist analysis of this case to come to the conclusion that *obviously* the pregnancy should of been terminated to save the life of the Mother.
I think we should just let the case be hard. And it’s hard in part because as Plato said (and I think the Church believes): it’s better to suffer evil than to do it.
Assuming that the abortion was indeed direct, does it make any sense–in the defense of the value of human life–to sacrifice one life to save another? If Plato was right, and there are things that must be considered apart from weighing the consequences of alternate courses of actions, will this not lead sometimes to situations where we must suffer evil rather than gets our hands dirty to spare ourselves tragedy?
I’m not saying that I wouldn’t make the same decision if it was my wife, it’s just that there’s a difference between what we do under duress (and therefore are less culpable for) and what is right objectively speaking. This is partly why I think that the bishop was wrong, because he doesn’t seem to recognize this distinction between what is objectively right and wrong, and the subjective culpability of individuals in particular circumstances.
I realize that the sometimes tortuous reasoning involved in thinking about these issues can make decision makers look like moral monsters, but the purpose of thinking about these hard cases is to help people to pursue the good and to keep society from falling down a slippery slope into a moral black hole. It’s possible that the procedure chosen in this instance instrumentalized the life of the child. People’s perceptions and beliefs soon follow their actions. If we don’t act like the eucharist is a sacred object, we soon won’t believe that it is a sacred object. That’s why it’s necessary to surround it with actions like bowing and genuflecting. The same holds true for human life. If we allow ourselves to instrumentalize a human being, then we are threatening our belief that humans are never to be used. Seamless garment right?
on June 3rd, 2010 at 8:57 am
Brian
What Plato said was that it is better to suffer an injustice (adikia) that than to do an injustice. If an act is justified, then no injustice is done. What one needs to do is show that an act in question is unjustified. Being the cause of harm to another is not the same as doing an injustice. If A takes B’s life in defence of himself or someone else, A may not be doing B an injustice.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 9:17 am
Brian, thank you for your thoughtful comments – please continue to comment here.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 9:47 am
“If we don’t act like the eucharist is a sacred object, we soon won’t believe that it is a sacred object. That’s why it’s necessary to surround it with actions like bowing and genuflecting. The same holds true for human life. If we allow ourselves to instrumentalize a human being, then we are threatening our belief that humans are never to be used. Seamless garment right?”
What an unintentionally revealing statement.
Can you reread this and try to explain why I wouldn’t conclude that you are actually analogizing refraining from intervening to save a woman’s life as being on a par with other important gestures or symbols of faith, like bowing and genuflecting? Do you not see the lack of proportionality between these two situations?
So I have rewritten to clarify what I think you are saying: It’s important to let women in this situation die so that we do not threaten our beliefs about the value of human life.
Your beliefs are more important than her life. And yet your asserted “belief” is that nothing is more important than life.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 10:01 am
Jim – I’ll try!
Joseph, that works for me. I was assuming that the procedure performed was a direct abortion. But we don’t know the actual procedure that was performed do we? It makes all the difference. Some, like Cathleen, question whether a direct abortion was the object of the act. But others don’t seem bothered by the distinction and just defend the action even if it was a direct abortion.
In fact, the article linked to a few comments above questions the very legitimacy of the distinction between direct and indirect actions. The author claims that the (direct?)abortion was justified because it was done to save the Mother’s life. This is just pure consequentialism. Do “social justice” Catholics not realize that this line of arguing makes it impossible to protest unjust wars and torture?
Isn’t it ironic that the rationalizations of this action are the same arguments used to justify torture?
But anyway, yeah…isn’t it better to suffer injustice rather than do it?
on June 3rd, 2010 at 11:18 am
Barbara,
I was making a point about the relationship between actions and beliefs, and then relating that to the seamless garment. And the point is simply this:
instrumentalize the baby today, instrumentalize the Mother tomorrow.
Barbara wrote:
“So I have rewritten to clarify what I think you are saying: It’s important to let women in this situation die so that we do not threaten our beliefs about the value of human life.
Your beliefs are more important than her life. And yet your asserted “belief” is that nothing is more important than life.”
Do you resolve the apparent contradiction by saving the woman’s life when that ’saving’ involves taking a life? That’s why I asked if it wasn’t contradictory with respect to the value of human life, to save one life by taking another life.
You would take issue with me for letting the woman die, but you would have me kill the unborn life.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 11:31 am
Brian,
I really do not understand the notion of “direct”, so I may be misreading you. JP2 defined that object is the proximate end of a deliberate decision which determines the act of willing on the part of the acting person.
I would think a ‘direct’ abortion, is one performed in order to achieve a further end, eg we kill the child so that the mother will live. The life of the mother is a consequence, and so this is consequentialism.
‘Indirect’ would be one in which the act is determined by something other than abortion, but results in the death of the child. For example, we remove the uterus to treat cancer, and the child dies. Here, the death of the child is the consequence of the treatment. (is condemning it as abortion is consequentialism? is even calling it an abortion consequentialism?)
Where does the situation in Phoenix belong? What is “the proximate end of a deliberate decision which determines the act of willing on the part of the acting person”? I think treating the mother’a hypertension is the object that determines this choice, and judging the act based on the death of the child is consequentialism. Others think killing the child is what determines the act, and the consequence is that the mother lives. (Is this what you are saying?) I do not see how to get to that conclusion.
But there is a lot I do not understand, so that is not too surprising. What makes you, or anyone else, think the act was determined by a desire to kill a child? What makes it a ‘direct’ abortion?
on June 3rd, 2010 at 11:36 am
Brian, in a circumstance where it is going to die no matter what you do. At the end of the day, this is really about a bunch of men trying to figure out what women’s lives are worth, and finding they aren’t worth much if it challenges their beliefs. You said it perfectly the first time.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 11:57 am
I disagree that the decision for abortion in order to save the mother’s life is “pure consequentialism.” Rather, I think it has more to do with proportionality, a key concept in just war tradition.
But I wonder if the back-and-forth between Brian and Barbara points to a deeper dynamic in discussions like this: are we (in part,) simply re-hashing Plato vs Aristotle here? For Plato and his ilk, the truth lies in the realm of the Forms, ultimately in the Form of the Good, a pure abstraction that we perceive only “as in a glass, darkly.” (Please pardon the literary hash there of Paul with Plato.) Plato’s student Aristotle thought that the truth lies in the world around us, and abstractions are corrigible inductions from that. So for Aristotle and his ilk, laws whose application is unjust are wrong–since the lawmaker intends justice, epikeia corrects an unjust application of a law in the name of justice. The law (the abstract formulation intended to direct action,) is approximate, and might need re-working or ignoring in hard cases, if justice is to be upheld.
I’m an Aristotelian, perhaps due to my first training in science. Ideas, including moral precepts, are lovely, but they must be considered abstractions which are corrigible if they do not actually reflect the moral experience of people of good will seeking the right course of action. The notion that a woman should die in order to uphold a principle that would avoid directly killing a doomed early embryo rings of human sacrifice to me. A platonist is much more likely to submit human realities, even very painful realities, to the bar of ideals, since they are less likely to be swayed by unruly drives and desires (hence the tendency to invoke slippery slope fears.)
I’m NOT saying that’s all that’s going on here, but merely part of the philosophical impasse. The catch is that women’s lives and bodies are the matter of the issue.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Barbara, you can take the moral dilemma in this case and transcribe it into a hypothetical case that doesn’t even involve any women. The moral issues and difficulties would remain the same.
Therefore, you are wrong that this about “a bunch of men trying to figure out what women’s lives are worth, and finding they aren’t worth much if it challenges their beliefs.” That sort of thing may exist, but it’s not what I’m about.
Why are you so bitter and judgmental?
on June 3rd, 2010 at 1:02 pm
No, Brian, there is nothing like pregnancy. I challenge you to provide an example. This is the real failure of the Church IMHO, the refusal to see pregnancy as a unique condition that calls for serious moral examination beyond the black and white categories it has created that ignores various biological realities.
For instance, I note that you say you probably would have done the same thing if it were your wife. Jim Pauwels said the same thing. You ascribe that to duress or some such emotional condition. But I can give you a counterexample: Imagine if your wife were dying from kidney failure and one of your already born children was a perfect match but only had one kidney and therefore would not survive. There is a black and white situation: no one would even think to do such a thing, ever, under any circumstances, even if the child otherwise had a terminal illness.
There is a chasm between these two situations — the one where you hem and haw about whether your wife’s pregnancy should be ended if her life is threatened by a non-viable fetus and the one where you are sure your child’s life should not be threatened to save your wife’s. That chasm is directly related to the fact that pregnancy is a unique biological state that results in a variety of dilemmas that deserve more sophisticated moral examination than we currently see.
I’m not using or responding to epithets.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Lisa and Barbara,
Thank you, thank you, for your comments, plus the education in philosophy, and the reasoning of a sharp legal mind.
I hope I can find some time this evening to pull up material about the abstract versus the flesh and blood realities facing us in issues like the Phoenix case. This is an important opportunity to clarify choices beyond what bishops have outlined. Women’s voices are finally being raised, if not heard.
No wonder my mother chose specifically in 1940 not to go to a Catholic hospital for my difficult birth, and I second her decision, Lord rest her soul.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 3:49 pm
“But I can give you a counterexample: Imagine if your wife were dying from kidney failure and one of your already born children was a perfect match but only had one kidney and therefore would not survive. ”
The analogy isn’t perfect because one or the other would survive regardless of the decision.
Perhaps a more fitting analogy, and one that avoids any question of gender discrimination, would be a suicide-bomber scenario. A Palestinian wired with explosives enters a crowded Israeli market. You are an armed Israeli police officer who happens upon the situation. You comprehend what the suicide bomber intends. If you shoot him dead, the bomb is certain to not detonate. Any other action makes it likely that the suicide bomber will detonate the explosives, killing himself, you and many others nearby. What is the correct action?
on June 3rd, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Another thought on the suicide-bomber analogy – I suppose it’s an easy decision to shoot the suicide bomber, because unlike the baby in the womb, the suicide bomber is not innocent. So we could rig the circumstances, say by supposing that the suicide bomber was a student whose backpack, unbeknownst to him, has been packed with explosives by Hamas.
I remember hearing about a situation in the Vietnam war in which an American soldier shot a Vietnamese kid who was walking toward them with a grenade or a bomb or some such. But whether that was a true story or not, I don’t know.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 4:17 pm
The thread goes on, much of it focusing on the teaching -which clearly shows divided opinions held with passion.
I think that Bishop Olmstead himself though is very much part of the discussion and there is an NCR piece on him today, which I think is correct, portraying him not as a “moral monster” bu tas a rigid company man who can’t divorece himself fro mwhat he sees as the(black and white) truth.
His approach may be much like the approach of some here as well.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 5:08 pm
instrumentalize the baby today, instrumentalize the Mother tomorrow.
By asserting that the mother’s life must be forfeit in this case, her life has already been ‘instrumentalized.’
on June 3rd, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Zenit, a pro-life news service, has an article in which William May, a pro-life moral theologian, supports the use of methotrexate for ectopic pregnancies:
http://www.zenit.org/article-29448?l=english
The problem is not the Church’s teaching, but the misapplication of Church teaching that lays burdens on women like V who are alive because of difficult choices they have made on issues like this.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 6:47 pm
“It’s possible that the procedure chosen in this instance instrumentalized the life of the child.It’s possible that the procedure chosen in this instance instrumentalized the life of the child.”
Brian –
The child’s life was doomed no matter what choice its mother made. So there was no issue of instrumentalizing the child rather than saving its life or even just allowing it to live.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If your doomed life in your mothers womb also threatened her life, and if you could choose at that point, would you not choose to die so that at least she could live? It seems to me that charity would requires it, if nothing else.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 6:53 pm
“Isn’t it ironic that the rationalizations of this action are the same arguments used to justify torture?
Brian –
“Rationalizations”? You are making the assumption that people here are dishonest in order to reach a conclusion we want. Judge not, and we won’t judge you.
on June 3rd, 2010 at 9:35 pm
@Ann ‘Rationalization’ was a poor word choice on my part. I don’t intend to assume that people are being dishonest in order to reach a conclusion.
on June 4th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Brian –
About “pure” consequentialism: if one defines moral evil simply as the effect of an act, then, yes, it is a gross oversimplification. There are three factors in a moral act: the internal intention of the agent, the act itself and the consequences of the action. The internal intention can include *more* than one intention at a time, the action of the agent (physical movement) can also be complex with a number of submovements leading to the end, and there can be more than one consequence, with both proximate and ultimate enda/consequences/telos involved.
So I hate seeing this word “consequences” being used as in effect a really dirty word, as if consequences weren’t at the heart of all of the aspects of morality, whether ultimate end, means, or internal intention. What I’m saying is that Aristotelian natural law, esp. the Thomist kind, is essentially very much a “consequentialism’ if one looks at the complexity of moral issues.
In the case of the threatened deaths of both mother and child, the consequences — good and terrible — are particularly complex and the physical evil of killing a child is just one consequence among a number of consequences. Those who say it is always morally wrong (in the sense that a *choice* to abort it is right or wrong) do not, in my opinion, give enough attention to the consequence that if nothing is done, they both will die.
on June 5th, 2010 at 6:59 am
Ann,
Consequentialism *is* a dirty word for Catholics, and it is wrong precisely because it simplifies the complexity of moral acts, which also have to take into account the justice of the object, the intention, and the consequences. Justice doesn’t reduce to a simple utilitarian calculus or having a good intention.
The article that was last linked to in the comments, seemed to me to be minimalizing the distinction between direct and indirect, simplifying the morality of actions to the goodness of an intention. That’s what I was objecting to.
For Aquinas, all the parts of a moral act–which include circumstances–must be good in order to say that the action was good. Proportionalism and other kinds of consequentialism simplify morality by reducing it to the weighing of consequences or to simply having a good intention. That’s what I see happening in some of the defenses of this Phoenix case. But the good intention often can not determine fully the ’species’ of the moral act.
It was never my intention to take a position on this Phoenix case, only to appeal to everyone to let the case be a hard case! There is more than one way to make an issue black and white. Let’s also keep justice in mind, and the fact that it may be true that as Plato said: it’s better to suffer injustice than to do it.
In this particular case, I think it depends on what the procedure was. I have an open mind about Cathleen’s that the perhaps a direct abortion was not the object of the act. But it depends.
on June 5th, 2010 at 9:09 am
Depends on what?
Isn’t Olmsted a consequentialist for judging the act solely on one consequence, the death of the child?
on June 5th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
“Consequentialism *is* a dirty word for Catholics, and it is wrong precisely because it simplifies the complexity of moral acts, which also have to take into account the justice of the object, the intention, and the consequences. Justice doesn’t reduce to a simple utilitarian calculus or having a good intention.”
Brian –
I agree about not appealing to utilitarianism as the way to settle hard cases, or any cases for that matter. However, the very negative use of that particular word weakens the natural law claim that the telos of an act is intrinsic to its morality. Just look and see — you yourself use the word with a favorable meaning in the text above.
While it is true that Aquinas maintained the principle that all the elements must be good, but when he defended his just war theory, he violated that principle — it allows innocent soldiers to be intentionally killed, an intrinsic physical evil. That is what gets me about the Vatican’s trumpeting the value of natural law. It is really talking about Thomas’ version of natural law and Thomas’ version is in some ways severely deficient. It needs revision badly.
on June 6th, 2010 at 8:03 am
Ann,
Well I think a Thomist would say that it isn’t intrinsically evil because the soldiers are acting under the proper authority of the state and not on their own authority, as also in the case of capital punishment.
But I agree with you that there seems to be a conflict here. For me, I don’t see how the state could be said to have any intrinsic authority, and certainly not any authority to ask people to kill another person — guilty or innocent.
And I don’t believe that Aquinas permitted intentionally killing someone in self-defense.
For consistency’s sake, I would rather say that it’s never permissible to intentionally kill someone.
on June 6th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
The Commonweal blog has already aired at length the views of both sides in the case if the Phoenix bishop and Sister Margaret, so I won’t weigh in at length except to say that I think the bishop’s decision was wrong-headed and perfectly in line with so many embarrasing statements or decisions by the American bishops that we have been subjected to in recent years, usually in response to the priesty abuse scandal or about abortion or gay marriage, the only other two issues they seem to care about.
But, as the brother of a Sister of Mercy, I must ask rhetorically why the bishop singled out the nun for “automatic excommunication” when presumably other Cathoics served on the Ethics Committee and also assented to the decision? Because, I would submit, he could. Pure and simple. Nuns have always been the whipping posts of the clergy, treated as second-class citizens. The most recent evidence of this are the two Vatican investigations. One, called an “apostolic visitation,” is looking into the quality of life” in sisters’ religious communities. The other reportedly targets the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an organization that represents 95 percent of the nation’s 59,000 nuns. Both of these investigations were launched, albeit rather quietly and mysteriously, at the height of the publicity over the priestly abuse scandal.
Over the years, no single group in the Catholic Church has distinguished itself and covered itself with more honor than nuns. They are the people quietly going about the work of the Gospel, caring for sick and elderly in hospitals and nursing homes, running first-rate elementary schools in inner cities, serving the poorest of the poor in this country and around the globe.
So, the irony of this misplaced focus by the Vatican couldn’t be more breathtaking in its hypocrisy and moral obtuseness. To paraphrase General Omar Bradley: “It’s the wrong focus, at the wrong time, against the wrong enemy.” For all its presumed learning and knowledge of Ethics and Moral Theology, the Church leadership has still not learned a fundamental step toward honest self-awareness that Pogo taught us many years ago: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Gerald E. Lavey
Annandale, Virginia
on June 6th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Mr. Lavey –
Thanks for your defense of the nuns. I wonder if the bishops’ actions are motivated at least partly by jealousy. I bet the bishops know in their hearts that if a lay person (and maybe some priests) had to choose between rescuing a nun and rescuing a bishop, we’d save the nun every time. (Now there’s a moral quandary for them to worry their minds over == is it intrinsically evil for a lay person save a nun before saving a bishop? :-)
on June 6th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Re Aquinas on killing in self-defense.
From: http://praxeology.net/summa7.htm
It is written (Ex. 22:2): “If a thief be found breaking into a house or undermining it, and be wounded so as to die; he that slew him shall not be guilty of blood.” Now it is much more lawful to defend one’s life than one’s house. Therefore neither is a man guilty of murder if he kill another in defense of his own life.
I answer that: Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention. Now moral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is beside the intention, since this is accidental as explained above (Question [43], Article [3]; FS, Question [12], Article [1]). Accordingly the act of self-defense may have two effects, one is the saving of one’s life, the other is the slaying of the aggressor. Therefore this act, since one’s intention is to save one’s own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in “being,” as far as possible.
on June 6th, 2010 at 11:55 pm
Antonio –
Thanks for the quotation. I note that in the second article Objection 3 quotes Pope Nicholas, and that Aquinas, without mentioning Nicholas’ name, contradicts him in his Reply to objection 3. So much for those who view Thomas as a rubber stamp.
What is the home page of the site that you got this from? The name doesn’t show on the page I got. (I like it because it is easy on my old eyes.)
on June 7th, 2010 at 2:40 am
Try http://praxeology.net. Folks uncomfortable with this site owner’s libertarian views can find a translation on the “New Advent” web site at.
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3064.htm#article7
on June 7th, 2010 at 8:04 am
Antonio, right; Aquinas doesn’t justify the intention to kill the aggressor, only to save one’s life by using potentially lethal force. This is where the discussion about the principle of double effect started.
Aquinas also contradicted the authority of Augustine, and his writings were condemned by the bishop of Paris.
on June 7th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Accordingly the act of self-defense may have two effects, one is the saving of one’s life, the other is the slaying of the aggressor. Therefore this act, since one’s intention is to save one’s own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in “being,” as far as possible.
So how exactly does the situation in Phoenix differ from this one described by Aquinas?
on June 7th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
Jim McK –
It seems to me one aspect of the Arizona case that we haven’t gone over carefully is the objective reality that the fetus is analogous to an aggressor. No, it is not an aggressor because aggression requires a choice to injure another, and the child does not make such a choice. But it is in its *physical* reality a threat to the mother, just as much, say, as a a ravenous lion attacking her would be. Bishop Olmstead said that pregnancy is not a disease, but some pregnancies *are*. I’ll say it — they are not natural occurrences. That particular child in that particular mother was the moral equivalent of a disease (a threat to the mother’s life), so intending to rid the mother only of the threat would not be the same as choosing for the child to die. This is a hard saying, a terrible one. But the alternate — doing nothing — is even worse.
on June 8th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Ann, I agree with your analysis completely. The use of the term “innocent” to describe the child in this instance is indefensible. It is a major flaw in JP2’s Evangelium Vitae.
But that whole line of reasoning is irrelevant in the situation Aquinas presents. He describes two effects, but only the intention to save one’s own life matters. The effect of killing another is “beside the intention”, so whether the one killed is an aggressor or not is likewise irrelevant. (if effect 2 is irrelevant, the qualities of the components of effect 2 are also irrelevant)
on June 8th, 2010 at 11:12 pm
Jim McK –
I agree with you that the innocence of the child should be irrelevant, but the official teaching of the Church is that it is not. that was the point I was speaking to.
on June 9th, 2010 at 8:08 am
A question I have long had: when did this concept of “innocence” enter the list of factors considered relevant to self-defense? Isn’t it a bit inconsistent with other Church doctrines (however suspect their origins), e.g., original sin?
If I postulate an outrageous hypothetical of a very developmentally disabled adult who somehow gets his hands on a gun and doesn’t really understand that it can cause death, who might not even understand what death is — am I to conclude that if he is shooting at people who have no way to escape, no one would be justified in shooting him if they had a gun as well? Are we supposed to say, “well he’s really innocent and doesn’t understand that he is hurting us so our response is supposed to be tantamount to suicide”?
on June 9th, 2010 at 8:49 am
There’s the concept of a “material unjust aggressor” which is designed to cover this situation. It has not been extended–but I think it could be extended–to life-threatening pregnancies. In Evangelium Vitae, the pope doesn’t have an argument as to why the category doesn’t apply–just an emotional appeal to the innocence of the baby.
on June 9th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
I think exploring the innocence issue could actually be very fruitful. It raises questions about God’s benevolence — can a gift from God like a pregnancy really be a threat?
Of course, that would move us beyond Natural Law and into a faith based discussion that is more difficult to sell as a political project.
on June 9th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Barbara –
Good hypothetical.
Cathy and Jim —
It seems to me that the Vatican has a propensity to avoid the existential facts of typical human lives. Nature can be horrible as well as benevolent, and sometimes horrible choices must be made. I know I’m constantly faulting the bishops and the Vatican, but I think it is part of the culture of the hierarchy to ignore the terrible problems, the terrible choices that many people have to make at times.
Yes, this involves the problem of the suffering of innocents. So far as I know the popes and official theologians have been silent on that subject, at least in my lifetime. I say this as a a former philosophy teacher: the problem of the suffering of innocents is probably the most intense spiritual problem that most people ever have to face. It is, I am quite sure, the main reason that people become agnostics and atheists. No, I don’t think philosophy can help with that issue, at least not enough to matter when someone is in extreme distress. But theology can help. Yet we hear nothing from the official theologians, not even the gifted Ratzinger. It reflects, I think, the general immaturity of the hierarchical culture that has been so evident in the sex scandal. When will they grow up.