To the eight people who missed me: sorry I dropped off the face of the Earth. I’m going to do it again after this post. Real life. Very busy. Sorry.
The answer is a resounding NO. It is never, ever, ever “moral” to fight evil WITH evil.
Marie’s statement nails the general sentiment that has run underneath post after post in this thread: you can’t fight violence with violence; you can’t fight evil with evil; you can’t fight a monster with their methods or you become the monster.
This belief, which holds anti-abortion violence is always evil, is not compatible with Catholicism (unless you are a Catholic pacifist, in which case, more power to ya’). Violence is not inherently evil, contrary to what
Marie and others have suggested. Violence employed towards evil ends is evil. Violence employed through evil methods (for instance, targeting the innocent) would be an evil means, and therefore evil. There is nothing inherently evil, though, in employing violence, including lethal violence, as a last-resort tool to prevent the enactment or further carrying-out of a grave injustice by a deliberate (non-innocent) actor. In fact, far from being an inherent evil, it is a positive duty to prevent injustices like abortion or the Holocaust by all legitimate means, which, unless you are a total pacifist, does include deadly violence. Using violence in a just situation doesn’t turn you into a
monster. It turns you into St. Michael.
To answer the OP: there is no inherent evil in destroying an abortion clinic or any other equipment, property, or accessories of the abortion industry. There is also no inherent evil in employing lethal force against a professional abortionist or the political authority that protects such an abortionist. However, certain prudential conditions must be met in order to justify such extreme action. Those conditions are defined by the Catechism, in a key passage I’m surprised no one has yet quoted:
CCC 2243 said:
2243: Armed resistance to oppression by political authority is not legitimate, unless all the following conditions are met: 1) there is certain, grave, and prolonged violation of fundamental rights; 2) all other means of redress have been exhausted; 3) such resistance will not provoke worse disorders; 4) there is well-founded hope of success; and 5) it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution.
–
CCC 2243
Condition (1) has clearly been met in the case of American abortion. I believe (2) and (5) have also been met, especially if, instead of considering abortion in the abstract, you consider the 4,000 people who will die
tomorrow if you do not act
tonight. However, I do not believe that (3) and (4) have been met. Nor is is likely that they will be met in the near future. However, since (2) through (5) are prudential considerations (as opposed to inherent ones), there may be legitimate disagreement over which conditions have been met and which ones have not.
Regardless, I think you’d be hard-pressed to argue that
all the conditions have been met. Therefore, the destruction of property and successful use of lethal force against abortionists (that is, killing them) is not legitimate at this time. No abortion clinic bomber to date has conducted operations in which these conditions have been met; therefore, abortion clinic bombers to date have not acted legitimately. Their actions were not rightgeous nor heroic, but, like John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry, they were sinful. I do not deny that Eric Rudolph committed serious sin. However, had Rudolph and these other bombers waited until the exhaustion of political solutions and subsequently found some way to provide a reasonable chance of success without causing greater evil, they
could have been heroes.
We anti-abortionists don’t like to admit this, because it is much easier to revile, without distinction or allowance, those fringe crazies who make us look bad by fruitlessly setting off bombs and killing abortionists. Yet the Catholic teaching is quite clear: armed resistence against a grave and persistent evil (a category in which there is no stronger example than abortion) can, under some circumstances, be legitimate. Therefore, it cannot be an inherent evil (because inherent evils are never legitimate under any circumstances).
I will now, after dropping
daughteroftruth an apology for my sudden absence, disappear again. Back to the grindstone. Sigh.
You are Loved. Skills with language is very effective for wageing the battle of the minds, But skills of a Christian out ways any battle in body, mind, and fields. Nancy
Melvin I come in agreement with you,no one want’s war or any suffering but the fact is when people Genocide, and no one helps them because they have a gov. that is the reason for it, then some one should help these people, had we gone in sooner when the Jews were being genocide alot of lives would have been saved. If every thing has been tried and people are still being raped, mutilated, and put in front of fireing squards, because they stole an apple, My God, Are we not our Brothers Keeper? A balance even in nature is “stable equilibrium” A small change in some particular parameter will be corrected by some negative feed back, that will bring the parameter back to it’s original point. Love of Christ Nancy
