Since many straight couples indulge in anal sex, it can not be looked upon as a strictly gay issue.
I didnât say it was. It just shows an issue that at least as serious as gay marriage, and yet is not on the âlistâ of non-negotiable issues (which apparently needs to be renamed as the âlist of non-negotiable current political issues that correlate well with lower taxes, smaller government and no gun controlâ - sorry, I just couldnât resist.)
But âattempts to diminish the negative impact on a particular partyâ is a motive.
Can you provide a church document (not an opinion from a member of clergy) which outlines that these five things are ânon-negotiableâ when voting?
What will you do if all the viable candidates are not opposed, for example, to same-sex marriage, etc.? For example, what if Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump are the two candidates? Hereâs what Donald Trump said recently about the same-sex marriage issue:
cnn.com/2015/09/04/politics/donald-trump-gay-marriage-kentucky-clerk-kim-davis/
huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-roe-wade-abortion_us_565f22b3e4b08e945fed9db5
Concerning abortion, CCC 2273 seems pretty clear.
This does not answer CatholicSheilaâs question. The issue is not whether abortion or human cloning or any of the other sins mentioned in the list are debatable as sins. Or that they are intrinsically evil. They are evil. No question about it. The question raised by CatholicSheila and others is whether voting for someone because of some other issue (which is also an important moral issue, but not on the âlistâ) is allowed, even if that person does not happen to agree with civil laws against the âlistâ issues. On that question, none of the official sources you cite has said anything.
That is not quite accurate. Cardinal Ratzinger was quite explicit in pointing this out: *âNot all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.â *Beyond that, very few political issues can reasonably be considered to involve moral choices. For instance, despite the way it has been characterized, immigration is not a moral issue, and just as there is no justification in equating most moral issues with abortion in point of seriousness, there is no justification at all in equating non moral issues with moral ones.
It is certainly true that all sins should not be legally prohibited. Some, however, are so transparently evil that no society can be considered just that accepts them.
It is not on the list becauseâŚit is not a current political issue. You keep referring to this topic despite its irrelevancy. Slavery is not on the list either; does that make the list any less meaningful because it includes only issues that are politically relevant today?
That reference is not one of the references cited by Generic_Name, and those were the only references I was claiming not to address CatholicSheliaâs question. But even adding in that reference does not completely answer her question either. One does not have to believe that all moral issues have equal weight to decide that the âlistâ is not a hard and fast veto over all other moral questions.
I disagree. It may not have a unique solution, but it certainly involves moral questions, over which people of good faith can disagree. That doesnât make them amoral questions.
One does not need to equate abortion with immigration in seriousness to decide to do something for immigration instead of abortion.
Even this claim is questionable. There are many choices we make in life to favor a non moral issue over a moral one. For example, I might decide to cut my lawn one day rather than attend a pro-life march.
Slavery is irrelevant because the political judgement came down on the side that is consistent with Church teaching. But the political judgement on sodomy came down on the opposite side of Church teaching. One would think this makes it a battle that has not yet been won, or is already lost. Is that why it is not on the list? Because we have âgiven upâ on that issue?
Yes, it does. If people may legitimately disagree then the question is prudential, not moral. Moral issues do not permit both the for and against positions to be equally valid.
How does one choose to address problem A over problem B without implying that A is more important than B? If you cannot do both, would you not seek to resolve the more significant problem?
True. You might even decide to cut your lawn instead of helping your neighbor escape from his burning house. The choice is clearly yours; the issue is whether your choice is defensible.
It is not politically relevant. There is no distinction between candidates on this issue. It is not a characteristic that separates one candidate from another. It makes no difference in the choice of who to vote for. The purpose of the list is to distinguish one candidate from another; it is not a list of all our national pathologies.
This assertion is simply false. There is no justification whatsoever for this claim. It is a talking point invented to counter the political problem that supporting the destruction of a million children a year has caused.
Again, this is purely fanciful. It equates disagreements over means (this program but not that one) to a disagreement over the ends of helping those in need. It says âopposing my program to help the poor means you donât want to help the poorâ when the actual meaning is usually: âI oppose your program because I donât think will work.â
Too true, but these problems exist for women who carry their children on their hip as well as those who still carry them in their womb. Shouldnât we also allow mothers to terminate their children because, âsadly, we do live in a world marked by etcâŚâ?
Wouldnât it be just as merciful to put such children out of their misery after they are born as before?
If you google the word âmoralâ you will find:
âAddressingâ an issue is not guaranteed to âresolveâ that issue. Sometimes addressing a less-important issue that can be resolved easily is preferable to addressing a more-important issue that may not be resolved by just addressing it. That is why it is OK sometimes to cut your lawn instead of attend a pro-life march.
That is indeed the question.
What if I could find some state legislator who was in favor of a return to anti-sodomy laws? Would that put sodomy on the list of the now 6 non-negotiable issues, and therefore bind me to vote for him over his opponent, who favors keeping sodomy legal?
This is a misleading way to phrase the issue. âRight and wrongâ can mean moral and immoral, but it can also mean correct and incorrect; the first deals with sin, the second with error. Letâs be clear: the question is about moral and immoral, and if the church has issued a judgment on a particular point, then disagreement is not legitimate. If you disagree then you need to provide an example of how people may appropriately take opposite positions on a moral question, that is, on church doctrine.
*âPrudentialâ has a technical theological meaning ⌠It refers to the application of Catholic doctrine to changing concrete circumstances. *(Cardinal Dulles)
He meant what should be obvious; the word moral is not mysterious.
Absolutely correct. I keep repeating the same point over and over: the list is not a compendium of moral concerns. It is a list of current political issues that are also moral issues. Cardinal Ratzinger was addressing moral issues; the list addresses issues that are both moral as well as politically relevant.
The application of moral doctrines is prudential, which is why any number of possible solutions are allowable. Prudential solutions are generally not morally distinguishable.
Weâre not dealing with the âwhat ifâ but the âwhat isâ.
What I disagree about is your equating a moral question with a question that has a single definite answer in Church doctrine. I am not claiming that moral means âright or wrongâ in the sense of circumstantially correct. I mean good vs. bad - what most people mean (even atheists) when they say âmoralâ.
What you have shown is that prudential and doctrinal are mutually exclusive. But I never disagreed with that. I disagreed with prudential and moral being mutually exclusive. It is only your insistence on equating moral and doctrinal that make that fly.
When those âprudentialâ solutions abuse the liberty of prudential judgement so far, so as not to be guided by a well-formed conscience, they do become distinguishable on a moral level. And I do believe that is what is actually happening today.
Hypothetical situations, especially those that have happened in the past, are still happening today in some parts of the world, and could reasonably be expected to happen again in the US, are fair game in asking how such and such a list is constructed. If we cannot ask what would happen if an anti-sodomy movement developed, that undercuts a lot of the justification for this list. I think that question deserves to be answered.
This is too vague for me; Iâm trying to be as precise as possible so that our disagreements are over more than the meaning of terms. I think the word moral is often incorrectly used and in fact means different things to different people. In my discussions with others I have discovered that for some, an act is moral if it turns out for the best. That clearly is not what the church means by the term.
Say again? The Ten Commandments lists moral obligations and immoral actions: we must not steal, we must honor our parents. Certain acts are forbidden, but our moral obligations are generic: we are not told what specific acts honor or dishonor our parents, so while we may not disagree about whether we must honor them, we may certainly disagree about how we should or should not behave toward them.
Exactly.
No, that is a judgment of someone else. It is certainly true that people can behave badly about anything, but that doesnât change the nature of the issue. My behavior toward an issue doesnât change what that issue really is. I can make all sorts of bad excuses for not helping my neighbor get his car our of a snowbank, but that doesnât make disagreements over how to do it a moral choice.
You can only say a question about immigration is moral if you phrase it so vaguely as to include the intentions of the people involved, but as I said before, this is invalid. My intentions reflect solely on me, they do not change the essential nature of the problem I am addressing.
Yes, you have set yourself up as one capable of judging the intentions of others. This is what it all comes down to.
We are not discussing values; the conversation is about issues. The ânon-negotionableâ expression refers to this: some acts are forbidden so discussions about when they might be beneficial are irrelevant. Abortion is such an issue. Other issues deal with options that include acts that are all morally neutral in themselves, and therefore allow legitimate differences of opinion. That is, they are negotiable. Pope Francisâ comment really doesnât address the questions being raised here.
It actually seems to me to address it quite well when I consider that their values define peopleâs stands on issues and Pope Francis doesnât count 5 non negotiable values.
Yet the Catholic Church claims them to be Catholic on the basis of their Baptism or Confirmation. So to say they should not claim to be Catholic can cause confusion to those on CAF trying to learn the teachings of Catholicism which would include who it is the Catholic Church claims to be and considers Catholic.
