Catholics and Eugenics

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The Church has never regarded the marriage of degenerates as unlawful in itself: they cannot be deprived of their right without a grave reason. Even eugenists like Dr. Saleeby and Dr. Havelock Ellis disapprove of compulsory surgery. As for compulsory segregation it seems to be both right and good, provided that all due safeguards are taken in respect of the grades of feebleness. The spirit of the Church is to extend rather than curtail the freedom of the individual. The Catholic conscience guards against the State being unduly exalted at the expense of the family.

-From the Catholic Encyclopedia

I’m assuming that eugenics (assuming it works) is good if and only if the state must be saved by it (since you can’t bar “degenerates” from marriage (by segregation for instance) w/o grave reason)?

But since eugenics’s end is stated, in the same encyclopedia, as including selection in marriage and with the exercise of the marital function. Negative eugenics also seeks to eradicate the racial defects of alcohol, venereal disease, lead poisoning, feeble-mindedness, and consumption." And since these are all common things, then wouldn’t eugenics apply to more instances than just a crises of the state?
 
Clue me in to the topic if you don’t mind. What degree of intelligence fitness is there to engage someone in the sacraments? Communion requires memorization of a couple of prayers and ability to be cognizant of personal sin? What about confession and penance, Pre Cana, and the Confirmation of the individual prior to marriage. It looks to me as if baptism is the only sacrament that involves no consent of the individual receiving the Grace conferred?
 
fakename said:
The Church has never regarded the marriage of degenerates as unlawful in itself: they cannot be deprived of their right without a grave reason. Even eugenists like Dr. Saleeby and Dr. Havelock Ellis disapprove of compulsory surgery. As for compulsory segregation it seems to be both right and good, provided that all due safeguards are taken in respect of the grades of feebleness. The spirit of the Church is to extend rather than curtail the freedom of the individual. The Catholic conscience guards against the State being unduly exalted at the expense of the family.

-From the Catholic Encyclopedia

I’m assuming that eugenics (assuming it works) is good if and only if the state must be saved by it (since you can’t bar “degenerates” from marriage (by segregation for instance) w/o grave reason)?
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Why do you think something regarding the state must be the grave reason? I would imagin that the grave reason would consist in something like an acute danger of pregnancy which the person is unable to appreciate, or an inability to consummate the marriage, or such a mental defect which would prevent the person from truly consenting to the marriage.
But since eugenics’s end is stated, in the same encyclopedia, as including selection in marriage and with the exercise of the marital function. Negative eugenics also seeks to eradicate the racial defects of alcohol, venereal disease, lead poisoning, feeble-mindedness, and consumption." And since these are all common things, then wouldn’t eugenics apply to more instances than just a crises of the state?
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It might be in the interest of the state to forbid a marriage if someone had a dangerous and incurable std. Also, I could see the state preventing the marriage of someone who was dangerous, if being married might help him act dangerously (like if a person’s relatives had him locked up, but if he married, his wife could sign him out).
 
user "St. Francis":
Why do you think something regarding the state must be the grave reason? I would imagin that the grave reason would consist in something like an acute danger of pregnancy which the person is unable to appreciate, or an inability to consummate the marriage, or such a mental defect which would prevent the person from truly consenting to the marriage.
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Sorry, maybe I didn’t post it, but the same encyclopedia entry says that “The welfare of the State, if seriously threatened by the degenerate, could be better protected by segregation…”

and I wonder if this means to give conditions where eugenic policy becomes justified or if it is just a rhetorical flourish?
user "St. Francis":
It might be in the interest of the state to forbid a marriage if someone had a dangerous and incurable std. Also, I could see the state preventing the marriage of someone who was dangerous, if being married might help him act dangerously (like if a person’s relatives had him locked up, but if he married, his wife could sign him out).
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I think that that’s defining “interest of the state” far too broadly such that it dissolves subsidiarity. If someone had a dangerous sexual disease or if someone violent was about to marry, it is probably much easier for people “on-the-ground” to deal with it then the unwieldy machinery of the state.
 
fakename said:
Sorry, maybe I didn’t post it, but the same encyclopedia entry says that “The welfare of the State, if seriously threatened by the degenerate, could be better protected by segregation…”

and I wonder if this means to give conditions where eugenic policy becomes justified or if it is just a rhetorical flourish?
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Oh, sorry about that. I would say that the CE was not ruling out a situation in which that might occur, because the science was at that point still very much in flux. Or they could have been referring to certain types of inappropriate marriages, such as between two members of the same sex. All in all, the CE simply did not want to rule out the possibility.
I think that that’s defining “interest of the state” far too broadly such that it dissolves subsidiarity. If someone had a dangerous sexual disease or if someone violent was about to marry, it is probably much easier for people “on-the-ground” to deal with it then the unwieldy machinery of the state.
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Well, you have to remember that “the state” does not always refer to a central government 3000 miles away. It can also refers to more local governments, some of which may require that the couple each pass a blood test before allowing people to marry, for example. (I don’t know if they still do that, but they used to.)
 
To: St. Francis

So you mean that the survival of the state is just one in a number of sufficient conditions for eugenic practices?

But then, would “grave reasons” even exist as conditions for eugenics, since it seems that virtually any condition would suffice?
 
fakename said:
To: St. Francis

So you mean that the survival of the state is just one in a number of sufficient conditions for eugenic practices?

But then, would “grave reasons” even exist as conditions for eugenics, since it seems that virtually any condition would suffice?
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The bit about regulating marriage did not refer back to eugenics. What the passage is saying is that some of the sorts of things suggested by eugenicists are permissible for grave reasons, but apart from being eugenic activities. Other things advocated by eugenicists are always impermissible. So, sterilization is wrong altogether, but the state (in the US, the local, state, or federal governments) may regulate marriage for grave reasons.

It’s sort of like saying swinging a baseball bat in a store to scare the cashier is wrong but that swinging a baseball bat under other circumstances is permissible.
 
user "St. Francis":
The bit about regulating marriage did not refer back to eugenics. What the passage is saying is that some of the sorts of things suggested by eugenicists are permissible for grave reasons, but apart from being eugenic activities.
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So it’s saying that some eugenics things are good all the time, but others are only permissible on grave reason and so these eugenic actions are not good universally but only insofar as a circumstance makes them necessary?
 
fakename said:
So it’s saying that some eugenics things are good all the time,
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That word was IMpermissable, not permissable.
but others are only permissible on grave reason and so these eugenic actions are not good universally but only insofar as a circumstance makes them necessary?
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No. The article discusses eugenics and some of the eugenicists’s proposed actions. Those proposals are not necessarily limited to eugenicists. A person might say, let’s improve the human race by sterilizing all people with an IQ below 90, or a person might say, all these people with IQs under 90 are having babies whom we then have to feed or give welfare to, let’s sterilize them all so at least we won’t have more people to feed.

Either way, the proposal would be immoral. Sterilization of humans is immoral.

Or, a eugenicist might propose passing a blood test before a marriage license is issued to rid the human species of people who get STDs (remember that back when this was written, there were no cures for the STDs and they could not only be passed on to the wife but the childrren), or people could propose that people had to pass a blood test to marry to protect the other spouse and any children.

The CE was saying that the Church could accept something along the lines of the latter, even tho for the most part, the Church opposed restrictions on marriage.
 
DihydrogenOxide said:
No. Eugenics is evil.

Reading on eugenics:

Eugenics and Other Evils by GK Chesterton

A fantastic video on the eugenics movement and it’s link to contraception, abortion, and euthanasia:

CIA: The Rockerfeller Foundation
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The more I read of Chesterton, the more apparent it becomes to me what an awful snob the man was. Here’s a quote from the document you linked to in order to illustrate what I’m talking about:

Our world
would be more silent if it were more strenuous.
And this which is true of the apparent physical
bustle is true also of the apparent bustle of the
intellect. Most of the machinery of modern
language is labour-saving machinery; and it
saves mental labour very much more than it
ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific
wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and
smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long
words go rattling by us like long railway trains.
We know they are carrying thousands who are
too tired or too indolent to walk and think for
themselves.
 
AngryAtheist8 said:
The more I read of Chesterton, the more apparent it becomes to me what an awful snob the man was. Here’s a quote from the document you linked to in order to illustrate what I’m talking about:

Our world
would be more silent if it were more strenuous.
And this which is true of the apparent physical
bustle is true also of the apparent bustle of the
intellect. Most of the machinery of modern
language is labour-saving machinery; and it
saves mental labour very much more than it
ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific
wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and
smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long
words go rattling by us like long railway trains.
We know they are carrying thousands who are
too tired or too indolent to walk and think for
themselves.
Click to expand...
I am very curious as to why you think this is snobbish.
 
user "St. Francis":
The CE was saying that the Church could accept something along the lines of the latter, even tho for the most part, the Church opposed restrictions on marriage.
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because there has to be a grave reason to restrict marriage?
 
St_Francis said:
I am very curious as to why you think this is snobbish.
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Because he appears to be operating under the assumption that people who use scientific ideas and phrases in daily conversation (in other worlds, educated people who are not quite like him) are intellectually lazy and/or stupid.
 
AngryAtheist8 said:
Because he appears to be operating under the assumption that people who use scientific ideas and phrases in daily conversation (in other worlds, educated people who are not quite like him) are intellectually lazy and/or stupid.
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I see.

I thought he was talking about individuals whose utilization of verbiage associated with sociology and other scientific undertakings in order to obfuscate the ulterior motivation underlying their verbiage.
 
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