I think this needs to be taken off thread. It’s well off topic.HomeschoolDad:
Suppose that the one life on the other track was your mother. And the five on the other side were prisoners. Would you pull the switch to kill your mother? You are saving 5 lives that way.
And the reality. From Evangelium Vitae, paragraph 58:
First, we’re discussing human life, not amoebae.
Yet our offspring ages, moves through all the stages of human life. The reality is plain. Some don’t want to acknowledge it because that leads to an inconvenient, perhaps painful, conclusion. Thus they prefer to talk about “opinions” and “points of view”.
I have to say that I am concerned that 4% didn’t think it did. Although there is a medical condition which might clarify that position. It’s called a blighted ovum and apparently happens about 15% of the time.
Very well put. I would just object that there is, indeed, room for “grayness”, at least up to a point. The Church does not define exactly when the immortal soul is infused into the body. It is possible that the soul is infused at conception, and the dogma of the Immaculate Conception hints at this, but does not absolutely say so. It doesn’t help anything that some modern English-speakers, not familiar with philosophical concepts, read the word “immediately” in the Catechism and think that means “at the moment of conception”, when it simply means “directly by God, without any mediation by the parents”. (Sadly, the study of basic philosophical concepts is not required curriculum in either high school or college. Homeschoolers have much more leeway.)
And therein lies the problem. A very large percentage of modern American Catholics cannot comprehend (or refuse to comprehend) that the pursuit of holiness requires absolute doctrinal orthodoxy, acceptance of Church teachings — intellectual if possible, docile if need be — and utter counter-culturalism if there is a conflict between the Church and society. Truth be told, there is no “if” to it.HomeschoolDad:
The underlying point is that all those Catholics who have no problem with contraception etc (and let’s face it, it’s a significant number) would have no problem in accepting Biden’s views on the same matters and wouldn’t consider those views to be a reason not to vote for him.
This may sound heartless, but it shouldn’t matter. Coincidentally, my mother turns 90 tomorrow. While she is in overall good health, and sharp as a tack mentally (I hope this augurs well for me), she frequently expresses that she has lived her life, and that in her eyes, she has lived too long. I have every confidence that she would gladly sacrifice her life to save the five other people.
I am perfectly willing to let it go at this point — not much I could add — but I don’t think that “extreme ethics and morality in hard cases” is off-topic at all. I’ll gladly defer to the moderators.
Interesting. As I said up-post, the conversation needs to begin. I’d like to see a lively public debate in American society and see people address the two questions:
Exactly the kind of questions that need to be brought front and center into the public forum.
For how long does one need to keep listening to the same “deny reality” statements?
Not I. My wife and I may have a child in eternity, or we may not. We went through this. Was it a blighted ovum or a pregnancy? We will never know in this life.
That’s something I was unaware of myself.
Why ask a question the answer to which which nobody would dispute? Why not ask the question which gets to the heart of the problem but which is disputed? Is even asking it too much? Is asking it tantamount to accepting that other people have different views on the matter?
But if you were 20, had several younger brothers and sisters, and your mother was 42 and there were 5 other prisoners on the other track? I would not recommend that you pull the lever in such a case. I think it is better to do nothing and let your mother live. There is a commandment: Honor thy Father and thy Mother. Also it would not be fair to your brothers and sisters and to your father.
Yes it does sound heartless to kill your mother and to leave your brothers and sisters without a mother and to kill the wife of your father who desperately loves her.
It’s difficult for me to post links without crossing the ‘no links to anti-Catholic sites’ rule. But here’s a news story. It’s pretty easy to Google this and I do think the evidence is much disputed. The argument becomes difficult because the countries with liberal abortion laws tend to have easily-available contraception and good medical services also. Probably the best comparator to the US states that restrict abortion is Canada, which has no restrictions. Remember you have to include US women who cross into other states for abortions.FiveLinden:
Do you have a good source for this (keep in mind that they may not have full numbers; in the US, for instance, multiple states don’t report their numbers, and then you have the definition issue)? That is indeed a bold claim. Does it compare nations with strict laws with loose, or where it is outlawed with no laws regarding it? Etc.
But what is your source for this? This is an interesting claim.
www.nbcnews.com