Desperation or delirium as mitigating factor

[strngrnrth]

I was reading about the Donner Party and reflecting on how sometimes unusual circumstances cause people to be reduced to pure survival instinct. Under what conditions is the wrongness of an act mitigated by overwhelming conditions? Under what circumstances would one be less than fully culpable for, say, shooting someone out of fear or being driven by hunger to take food from other hungry people or even eat human flesh? What does the Church say? Is delirium a factor? This is a serious moral question to me.

 

[rwoehmke]

The taboo against eating human flesh protects those who might be murdered to provide a meal for someone else. In my opinion, however, when a situation like the Donner Party or the sports team whose plane crashed in the Andes arises, there should be no compunction about eating the flesh of those who died “naturally” in order to survive. It is my impression that in the Donner Party case it was at least strongly suspected that some of the survivors may have murdered others to get their flesh. That would certainly be gravely wrong. Could culpability be limited due to mental derangement caused by the circumstances? I suppose so. That would be up to the courts and God to determine. Under everyday circumstances our dead have a right to be respected and not eaten. It would be a grave moral wrong to do so. Survival situations cannot be solved by murdering someone.

 

[StCsDavid]

I was reading about the Donner Party and reflecting on how sometimes unusual circumstances cause people to be reduced to pure survival instinct. Under what conditions is the wrongness of an act mitigated by overwhelming conditions? Under what circumstances would one be less than fully culpable for, say, shooting someone out of fear or being driven by hunger to take food from other hungry people or even eat human flesh? What does the Church say? Is delirium a factor? This is a serious moral question to me.

I see you live in the Pacific Northwest where it is snowing right now as do I…You’re not stuck in snow with someone and feeling a bit snacky right now are you?

Seriously, the dignity of human life must always be put first so if one was with a group of starving people, it would be immoral to kill one of them for the group to eat. Certainly delirium would be a factor that would alter one’s mental state and might reduce the culpability of abusing a corpse by eating it.

I doubt you will find in the canon law or catechism a section that deals specifically with the situation you described as the broader moral principles already cover it. There are established ordinary ways to treat the human body while it is living and after it is dead. The extraordinary circumstances described would be a matter of conscience