Learn how to apply Catholic ethics and morality in a worldly sense; that is, something is right because it has long lasting ethical value, it’s been tried and found true. A Catholic might say "I do such and such because God tells me, " and ultimately that is good, but someone who does not know God needs to see the sanity in God’s natural law. All of God’s laws resound with logic and goodness and SURVIVAL!
Example: Birth control: Is it truly safe? Has it really set women free or has it objectified them more? Are we truly using our technology to help women safely plan their families? Has violence to women and children increased or decreased since abortion has been legalized?
Overpopulation: By what measure of time, centuries, famines, wars, and plagues yet-to-come do you conclude that we are overpopulated? Is China the best place in the world to live since they limit their offspring to one? What about all of the selective “weeding” of females through abortion and how it has created a very lopsided unbalance of the sexes? Is greed the force behind making an issue of overpopulation?
It’s good to read and there are a lot of good books on Catholic ethics. Start with one which is written for children and work your way up to the tougher stuff. But also take a topic and ask yourself the pro and con using a natural law perspective (defined: not messing with God’s laws) and also prepare yourself for their old, tired, arguments that just keep rising to the surface.
Challenge "common knowledge: Did you know that Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist? She wanted to see the end of the poor, not by economic uplift but by selective breeding and abortion. So was Henry Ford, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Lindberg, Luther Burbank. Yet, in our society we see Hitler: BAD, Sanger and the others: GOOD? Did you know that the first Sufragettes were against abortion. Did you know that there is presently a group called “Feminists for Life” who believe that abortion is the most unfeminist, suppressive, and barbaric practice for how it treats women, born and unborn?
Yet you will be sitting, perhaps, in a class where your instructor will ask everyone to think of your values as being just one of MANY different values, “all valid”. I had to endure that awful story/exercise in my medical ethics class where we had to choose which six of the ten possible patients would I choose for the dialysis machines if they could only accomodate six. They listed an elderly woman, a prostitute, a nun, a politician, an athlete, a drug addict, a Nobel Prize winner, etc. etc. I think you get it. They asked us to break into groups and I convinced my group to refuse to play this awful game. What good can come from choosing who is to live and who is to die? I politely asked what is the purpose of this exercise? When would I be in a position to decide whose life is more valuable than another’s. And if it is all so individual and “relative”, wouldn’t it be chaotic in a health care setting to have such arguments (sad to say, I have since witnessed such arguments, too, in a health care setting)
Ask “why” when you get stuck. So many of these teachers are Kool Aid drinkers. They haven’t thought it through. They just accept the “common knowledge” (or Al Gore movie) as fact.
Good luck and you may find me and write me anytime on this CAF website. I’ll keep you in my prayers.
