The recurring question without an answer

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Beryllos said:
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If I respond to an active shooter situation, my duty is to stop the threat without regard for status of that person’s mental health. The Sandy Hooks Massacre comes immediately to mind along with many others.

If the shooter survived, he would be charged with murder. His defense counsel would, naturally, bring into question his mental health issues and, whether or not he is culpable because of that, is a decision rendered by a judge or jury.
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First, it would be much, much harder to sacrifice my children than myself.

Second, I only brought them in because of what you said above about its being more likely that someone would refuse to save the lives of others if their mother was involved.
 
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Annie said:
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macska:
I don’t need the catechism to understand simple, secular concepts. A law is “absolute”, if it is applicable in ALL conceivable circumstances. A law is “relative”, it is is applicable in some, but not all conceivable circumstances.
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I think if you look at the discussion Freddy and I have been having, it shows the difference between situation ethics and Catholic morality.

Consider a common example: a crazy woman has kidnapped a heinous criminal who will die in the next few days. The woman hands me a gun and tells me to kill the guy or she will blow up New York with a dirty bomb she got on the internet.

For reasons I will not go into here, I happen to know she does have the bomb and she is serious.

My entire family live in New York, not to mention all the other people.

@Freddy would say shoot the guy! >> situation ethics

And I would be praying for the grace not to do it. >>Catholic morality
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I don’t think that changing the scenario helps improve my opinion of your moral position.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
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Freddy:
The closest you are going to get to that from a Catholic viewpoint is the catechism 2488, which confirms that there is no absolute moral position: ‘This requires us in concrete situations to judge whether or not it is appropriate to reveal the truth to someone who asks for it.’ In other words, telling a lie is conditional to the circumstances.

If that isn’t a relative position then I’m at a loss to be able to define the difference between absolute and relative.
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It is absolute in the sense that no conditions other than the ones mentioned in the law would change the outcome. For example, if I have an opportunity through lying to cause a million dollars to be transferred to the charity of my choice from a company that is polluting rivers, situational ethics would say that “considering everything” more good can be done by lying, and to people who subscribe to that view, that situation justifies lying. But the law is absolute in the sense that this situation, as noble as it appears, does not change the applicability of the law.
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That would relate more to stealing. If I steal something to prevent a crime, like my neighbours gun because he just threatened to kill my family, that would be justified. So if the companynis breaking the law by polluting the rivers then it should be ok tonsteal from them to prevent them doing it.

And in nay case, how do you relate that to the obviously conditional example in the catechism: ‘This requires us in concrete situations to judge whether or not it is appropriate to reveal the truth to someone who asks for it’.
 
Freddy said:
And in nay case, how do you relate that to the obviously conditional example in the catechism: ‘This requires us in concrete situations to judge whether or not it is appropriate to reveal the truth to someone who asks for it’.
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That means you don’t have to tell the truth by ommission, not that you can lie.
 
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Annie said:
I am not changing the scenario, I am giving a scenario in which the absolute moral of not killing people who are not in the process of attacking you is shown…

And the difference between Catholic morality and situation ethics is delineated.
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The original scenario I suggested was you doing exactly the same as the biblical example. That is, allowing your own children to die, not to prevent others from dying, but just for you to make a moral stand.

I can understand (but not agree with) someone who says they would not allow one person to die to save five. But for the life of me, I cannot see anything worthy in allowing people to die - and your family no less, simply to uphold a moral position.
 
VanitasVanitatum said:
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Freddy:
And in nay case, how do you relate that to the obviously conditional example in the catechism: ‘This requires us in concrete situations to judge whether or not it is appropriate to reveal the truth to someone who asks for it’.
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That means you don’t have to tell the truth by ommission, not that you can lie.
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Yeah. Right.

‘Is anyone hiding here?’
‘Well, I’m not allowed to answer that, I’m afraid’.
 
When I wrote that now-deleted post, I thought Mascka had written your post. When I realized it was you, I saw that I had written something that did not make sense in terms of the conversation you and I had been having.

I apologize for all this confusion :o
 
For what it’s worth, I tend to write examples in the first person so as to reduce the problem with pronouns.

Suppose I had used myself as a victim: that I would want my parents to sacrifice me rather than to commit sin?
 
Annie said:
For what it’s worth, I tend to write examples in the first person so as to reduce the problem with pronouns.

Suppose I had used myself as a victim: that I would want my parents to sacrifice me rather than to commit sin?
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You’ve made your position quite clear, Annie. It’s a little late to blame it on grammar.
 
I was thinking of less serious circumstances. It’s unlikely that they would believe a lie anyways.
 
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VanitasVanitatum said:
I was thinking of less serious circumstances. It’s unlikely that they would believe anything anyways.
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It apparently doesn’t matter if the circumstances are serious or not. Annie will give you examples of people allowing their children to be tortured and killed rather that eat a pork chop.
 
I am not “blaming” it on grammar; I just wanted to clarify that if I were in the position of one of the children, I would want the parent to act morally also, even knowing it would lead to my death.
 
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