A bare-bones moral dilemma

[SonCatcher]

Don’t be so naive. You know for certain that he would be tortured and eventually killed. And again you use the word “murder”, which is incorrect. In the army it is definitely not prohibited to perform a mercy killing, so the action is lawful.

Really. How do you suppose that I came across such foreknowledge - by reading his horroscope?

POWs have actually been treated well in the past. I would have every reasonable expectation that my comrade could be, as well.

But leaving her to be gnawed to death by rats would be “moral”. On the other hand, giving a quick and clean way out to an enemy (who even begs for it!) you call “immoral”. I am constantly amazed by the “ethics” you propose.

Your amazement only exists to the response you imagine.

The moral response would be to evacuate her to a medical facility (preferably one under miitary control so she could by subsequently detained).

Only in those cases where euthanasia is illegal.

Why conflate legality with morality? They are not the same.

There are many things that are legal but remain immoral.

It is reality that beyond a certain point pain cannot be managed any more. The only viable option is to administer an overdose. It is humane and compassionate to do it for a pet, but not for a human being. Unbelievable.

Did you pay attention to what I wrote? The lethal dose is unknown for a particular individual. It is allowed to increase the dose little by little in attempt to manage the pain, knowing that eventually you will hit the overdose level (but not knowing when that will be or what that particulat amount is) because the intent is to manage the pain. This is true even if the chosen doses do not actually succeed in managing pain at all before the person finally dies of overdose.

It is not permissible, however, to choose to suddenly increase the dose dramatically to one adequate to kill a horse since that is a decision to take a life (whether one’s own or someone else’s).

Yes, and sometimes it can be justified. One justification is to defend others.

Your other scenarios are not defense, however.

 

[Actaeon]

Murder is simply a legal term, indicating an unlawful homicide.

Murder is a LEGAL term? How do you figure? After all, “Thou shalt not murder” is part of the canon of Sacred Scripture. It is, therefore, necessarily a religious and moral term.

You really should have made a better example; after all time travel is not possible. So, let’s take something that is possible.

I chose the example because Einstein never intended weapons development and as such one could not claim that killing him was “legitimate defense”.

We could come up with a similar analogy for any number of scientists working in viral genetics labs… MANY of their projects could be weaponized to create WMD, but that does not afford us the right to kill them to prevent their very valid research.

1. You are in the position to prevent a terrorist from blowing up a city. The only way you can do it is killing the terrorist. That act would be considered a justifyable homicide by any rational standard.

This is a case of legitimate defense, the object of which being a non-innocent person. As such it is not analogous in any way to murder, which is the killing of an innocent.

1. Another example is: you are a soldier; your buddy is severly injured and you are chased by the enemy. There is no way to bring him back to safety. You can choose to leave him and risk his capture and torture, or administer an action called “mercy killing”. That is another justified act - by rational standards, of course. As a matter of fact, it would also conform to the golden rule: “you do to the other soldier what you would want him to do if the roles were reversed”.

Thank God you’re not a soldier, because this is both illegal and immoral. If you did this and your command found out about it you would go to jail for a LONG time (and rightly so). The UCMJ makes NO distinction whatsoever for “mercy killing”

1. Or take the story from the movie “Full Metal Jacket”. The American soldiers are ambushed by a single Vietnamese woman, who kills a few members of the platoon. Eventually she is cornered and lethally injured. She begs to be killed. One of the soldiers says: “we shall just leave her to the mother-loving rats”. The main character (Joker) says: it is inhumane to leave her suffer, we should kill her. The other soldier says: “you wanna waste her, YOU waste her”. And Joker raises his gun and does it. Mind you she is harmless at that point, so the act cannot be considered self-defense. How does the church view the act of killing her: “mercy killing” or something else? It is still not murder, even though in a war murder is “redefined” for convenience sake.

This is not a case of legitimate defense, so at this point the action is, in fact, a murder. One can only use force (including potentially lethal force) while the threat exists. Once the threat is mitigated, you CANNOT morally use lethal force against someone. The Geneva Convention AND the UCMJ both share the church’s viewpoint on this: you may not kill an incapacitated enemy combatant.

Please, as a member of the US Armed Forces, don’t use movies as examples. The actions shown at the end of “Full Metal Jacket” were HIGHLY illegal and immoral, and in a perfect world those soldiers would have gone to jail. Did illegal war crimes occur and go unpunished during the Vietnam? Sure, but that was a lack of enforcement, and not due to the fact that such actions were not CRIMES.

1. Your close relative is in hospital, under terrible pain, which resists all the pain killers and about to die soon. She begs you to end her misery. You can provide the means for her to commit suicide, or - if she is unable to do it herself - you can administer the drug to “put her to sleep”. Now, depending on the law, this might be considered “murder”, evne though the provision “with malice aforethought” is definitely missing. By the way, if it were your pet, you would have no problem with ending its misery (at least I would hope so) in the name of being compassionate and humane. Why is it considered “moral” to be more humane to a pet, than to a human being?

A pet and a person are not the same thing… and taking active actions to curtail the natural life of a person is most decidedly murder REGARDLESS of what the state law says. Furthermore, the idea that simply denying someone a finite amount of pain is somehow HUMANE while ending their natural and God ordained life is terribly disordered. We are NOT required to go to extraordinary means to prevent an impending death, but we may NEVER EVER euthenize the sick.

The point is that even with your definition of “action” you are still unable to make a judgment without taking the “intent” and the “outcome” into consideration.

I’m sorry, you are wrong in believing that there are not actions which are intrinsically disordered. The Catechism teaches you are wrong. The Bible Teaches that you are wrong. The Sacred Tradition of the Church teaches that you are wrong.