I've come up with a thought experiment to reveal your ethical priorities when forced to choose between well-being in the here and now or in the hereaf

[Freddy]

This is why I compare it to the trolley dilemma, and why I say it’s useless. Philosophy is good only insofar as it has meaning, and how does a thing have meaning except in our experience of it?

I am constantly amazed by the number of people in this forum who either don’t understand hypothetical questions or consider them useless. You won’t find many psychology courses that don’t use them to some extent. And for good reason.

You will often find yourself making decisions that have implications that you wouldn’t normally entertain. You might pull the lever but not push the fat man (as per the trolley problem). Whatever anyone chooses, it’s an opportunity to dig a little deeper as to why we make the decisions we do.

If you don’t like the specific scenario that the op has proposed then perhaps offer a slightly different scenario. Would you expect a ppriest to minister to someone’s spiritual needs as opposed to physical if that person was an atheist for example.

 

[Usagi]

Is the question of whether spiritual needs are more important than physical needs really unanswerable? Why?

It is not usefully answerable in the general case with a simple yes or no, and asking ir that way comes across as laying a trap so that you can berate whoever answers “wrongly.”

Physical nourishment is certainly a more immediate need, especially in the case of a starving person. There is even an objective answer to your question, given that humans can only go without food for three weeks or so, while the Church requires Catholics to receive the Eucharist only once per year (though, in both cases, more often than the minimum is both common and advisable). And of course, the Eucharist is literal food and drink, though usually not very much of it and not nutritionally balanced. But if your starving person is still going to die tomorrow even after the “real” meal, the latter might not be much.more physically nourishing.

However, spiritual needs are still real and still need to be met. They may even be said to be more important in the big picture, since physical life is ultimately a brief prelude to eternity.

No Christian in his or her right mind would refuse physical aid to a dying person on the grounds that more time might give them more opportunity to commit mortal sin, and therefore they are better off dead.

On the other hand, a Catholic who knows that he or she is dying either today or tomorrow no matter what might prefer viaticum — “food for the journey,” the Eucharist given as part of the last rites — to one more meal that will only delay death by starvation by one day, (As hunger is a very powerful drive, the true preference is likely to be “last meal today, viaticum tomorrow after that runs out,” but your scenario allows for only one of the two.)

 

[Theo520]

So the priest is choosing between letting the guy starve or survive at least another Day?

I don’t see the Dilemma. Obviously you feed the man.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Would you expect a ppriest to minister to someone’s spiritual needs as opposed to physical if that person was an atheist for example.

I think the problem people are having is that

1. the original question, which appeared to be “does priest say Mass or help a starving man” isn’t an either / or. Priests have a duty to say Mass daily. Priests also would consider it their duty to practice charity towards others, and if the priest was the only one available to help a starving person then he would do that. But he’s capable of saying Mass and helping a person in need on the same day.
2. if the actual question is more like what Theo said, does priest let the person die and pray for him vs. Does priest try to keep person alive knowing that he might sin, there’s no dilemma, since as Theo said no priest and no Catholic would refrain from helping someone on the basis that they might sin if they lived.

 

[John_Martin]

This is the philosophy forum right? Welcome to philosophy! ; )

Actually, philosophy is concerned with the correct understanding of reality, and has no concern for cute situations. Also, philosophy is not theology, the Sacred Science, which deals with the means of Grace and which alone might answer as Jesus did about what he needed to consume for life.

FYI a priest is a person sent to give what the sender intends; he is a servant and not authorized to give something else in place of what he is sent to do.
If he can do added things, fine, but he may not define his own work. Philosophy must seek to explain a reality where the priest is a servant rather than an undecided person to be persuaded by arguments of sophistry.

 

[Annie]

One of the big problems I have with this type of question is that they pose unrealistic situations in which there is an either/or solution proposed and generally an exclusion of points of reality.

Aside from being impossible, in the situation which you propose, the answer is, it depends. A priest could not know if the person would sin mortally the following day. A priest might be presented with someone who is on the verge of death and in need of both, or a person who is late for lunch and more in need of the Eucharist.

What the priest would do in such a case would not show what he considers to be more important in the vast scheme of things, but only the order of priorities in the particular situation.

 

[EndTimes]

If a priest had to choose whether to offer the Eucharist or a meal that would save a starving man for just one more day, during which he’d perhaps commit a mortal sin, which should he offer?

The Meal . . .