To All Liberal Catholics

[MillTownCath]

Conservatives believe the poor deserve health care also. We differ in the best way to provide it.

I hear this all the time, but I see no evidence of it. People still die from lack of health insurance/coverage in this country, yet we still expect the free market to take care of all our problems.

 

[estesbob]

I hear this all the time, but I see no evidence of it. People still die from lack of health insurance/coverage in this country, yet we still expect the free market to take care of all our problems.

There is no moral equivalence between ones preferred method of providing Heath care and abortion.

 

[comrade1789]

Women do not get abortions because they do not have access to health care. They abortiins because they had sex when they were not ready to have a baby. The problem is not a lack of health care, but of people having sex when they are not ready to have babies…

Many women simply just get an abortion because they found they were pregnant with two or more babies and only wanted one, or their baby has a simple and correctable birth defect like cleft lip or club foot, or their child has Down’s Syndrome, maybe they didn’t want a girl, etc…

No Catholic can support abortion for any reason whatsoever. Any Catholic who does obviously is ignorant of their faith, or are opposed to the very faith they profess. In politics, we are dealing with moral issues these days, not issues such as putting in a stop light where Catholics can differ; we are dealing with issues that Catholics must be on the same page on, sanctity of marriage, dignity of all human life, chastity and other such issues.

 

[St_Francis]

I’m not sure that definitions are things that can be “actual.” Linguistic usage changes and varies. What I’m saying here is informed by another thread in which the point was made that the medical community defines “abortion” differently.
If you don’t make clear what your definition of “abortion” is, then you risk
miscommunicating with people and hurting the prolife cause. It’s rather important to clarify that when Catholics say “abortion is intrinsically evil” they mean “the direct, intentional killing of the unborn child,” and not “any medical intervention to end a pregnancy.”
But there’s no point arguing over this further.

It was very obvious what we were discussing: the act of abortion, not “spontaneous abortion,” not a spontaneous abortion brought about by medical treatment.By widening the “definition” of the act of abortion in order to make some sort of point about another topic altogether, you are equivocating.

Actually, many “prochoice” folks argue that abortion is a form of self-defense.
Certainly that case can be made when pregnancy threatens the life of the mother. So the question there is: what do you do when self-defense (protecting one’s own life) threatens the life of innocents? Does self-defense only allow you to kill a willful aggressor (which would be my position)?

Does the argument that abortion is a form of self-defense work for you? Do you think that because the unborn child is “trespassing” on the mother’s “property” that the mother has the right to kill the child? Or is it only when the mother’s life is in danger that you think an abortion is permissable? Because it makes no sense to use an argument that one has rejected in order to form an argument about something else. And the reality is that *we cannot directly and deliberately kill an innocent human being.

• It does not become right to kill the child to save the life of the mother any more than it would be right for me to kill someone else to get his heart if I needed one to keep from dying. There are certain things we cannot do even to save someone’s life.

And this is often true in the case of war as well–never mind that very few wars
are fought in strict self-defense by either side.

This is actually not the case. I have never heard of a case where the deliberate and direct taking of an innocent human life was necessary for some purpose of war. If The Soviets had said, unless you kill _____, an innocent person, we will drop nuclear bombs over all your cities, it would still be wrong to kill that person.

…However, I would still ungraciously press the point that civilians still do die in
fairly large numbers in wars waged by modern Western nations, and that this must be
taken into consideration, particularly given that the United States in particular has rarely if ever fought a war of true self-defense (i.e., on its own soil against an invader–obviously both WWII and the invasion of Afghanistan, if not the invasion of Iraq, were prompted by an attack on American soil, but they certainly went far beyond self-defense). Much the same would be true of Britain. In short, when considering an invasion or bombing of another country, however justified such an action may seem in the abstract, the inevitable deaths of innocents must be considered as very serious reasons for refraining from such an action,

The issue of civilian deaths needs to be considered in the conduct of the war, but, if the war is just, one must fight it regardless of that potential, while taking it into account. This is not to argue about particular wars, but to discuss the issue in general. I would not use the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq as examples, simply because they are very controversial.
It is indeed very sad when nations do not take care of or consider their own civilian
populations when making decisions against other nations. The flip side of the just war for a nation acting in self-defense is that the enemy is fighting an unjust war. (still not intending to refer to any particular war, just war in general)

just as the possible or inevitable death of the child should be considered when
considering an otherwise clearly legitimate intervention to end a pregnancy.

An intervention TO end the pregnancy is a procured abortion, directly targeting the
innocent child, can never be considered legitimate, as it is intrinsically evil.
I assume that you mean a medical intervention for the mother’s health which would, as a side-effect, possibly or probably cause the death of her unborn child. There is no moral problem here. One can morally chose either course, to accept treatment or postpone it.

(thinking of cases of rape, incest, danger to the mother, etc., here)

Now you make it sound like you think that abortion, the direct and delliberate killing of the unborn child, is acceptable in these cases. It is not. It is always wrong. That’s what makes it an intrinsic evil.
continued below…

 

[St_Francis]

…continued from above

Or to put not to fine a point upon it: it seems to me that if Bishop Olmstead was right in declaring the people at St. Joseph’s hospital excommunicated for performing dilation and curettage to save the mother’s life (in circumstances in which they were certain both mother and child would have died otherwise), then the same judgment should surely be passed on those who participate in wars that they know will kill innocents, even though they may do all in their power to minimize such deaths.

You are wrong to think that.
The idea seems all right to some, but you have to consider not only the material
ramifications of an act, but the spiritual. If a pilot drops a bomb on a legitimate military
target and civilians are killed, the pilot is not guilty of the sin of murder. But if a doctor
performs an abortion, even in cases or rape or incest (for which, ironically, the rapist
would not be killed), or even to save the life of the mother, he has committed the sin of
murder. That, too, is a death, the death of the life of the soul, objectively speaking.

I cannot see how ordering a bombing campaign that is statistically certain to result
in at least one innocent person being blown to bits is any less wicked morally than
ordering a medical intervention that you know will result in at least one innocent person being cut to pieces. Is it argued that innocent people would die if the war wasn’t waged?
Be it so–the same was the case at St. Joseph’s.
We can control only our own actions. We cannot control the side effects, we cannot
control the actions of others. We can only control our own actions.
We can refrain from targeting an innocent human being to death; we cannot keep a bomb from killing civilians, only to do what we can to mimimize those deaths. In a just war (ie, in general, not mentioning any particular wars), the danger to civilians exists because the nation needs to act in self-defense. They are not attacking that nation, just trying to stop that nation from attacking them.

Personally, I would find it easier to justify what was done at St. Joseph’s than any offensive war whatsoever, because in the former case it was practically certain that the specific innocent person who would be killed in the “abortion” would have died anyway, and in the case of war the certainties on both sides are less. I recognize that this very fact could be used to make the opposite argument, since it’s theoretically possible that a careful bombing campaign might avoid actually killing any noncombatants–but since there don’t seem to be any real instances of this happening so far I don’t find this a very convincing argument…

There is no more way to justify performing the abortion at St Joseph’s than there is to
order an unjust attack on another nation. Both of these are wrong.

However, for the nation who was unjustly attacked to act in defense of its citizens is
another matter altogether.

Consider this: if you went to potter’s house and he showed you his work and you picked one up and threw it to the ground, would that not be a different action than your
accidentally hitting one with your elbow and breaking it?

 

[St_Francis]

I hear this all the time, but I see no evidence of it. People still die from lack of health insurance/coverage in this country, yet we still expect the free market to take care of all our problems.

We already had in place a system whereby almost all the poor were either covered or eligible for coverage. No one was or has been talking about getting rid of that system.

If we had a problem in which a certain number of Americans did not have coverage, that could have been addressed. We did not need to completely overhaul the entire system to do that.

And for the record, my personal opinion is that our medical system has problems, but the solution (Obamacare) did not address the causes of the problems and so will not solve them.

 

[Contarini]

…continued from above

You are wrong to think that.
The idea seems all right to some, but you have to consider not only the material
ramifications of an act, but the spiritual. If a pilot drops a bomb on a legitimate military
target and civilians are killed, the pilot is not guilty of the sin of murder.

But the pilot is doing the kind of event that is statistically certain to kill civilians eventually. The pilot knows that. His commanders know this. Sure, modern bombing is more precise, and thus relatively less wicked, than WWII-era bombing. But in every bombing campaign, civilians wind up getting killed.

But if a doctor
performs an abortion, even in cases or rape or incest (for which, ironically, the rapist
would not be killed), or even to save the life of the mother, he has committed the sin of
murder.

Again, it depends on how we are defining “abortion.” A doctor who removes a child from the womb prematurely, risking the death of the child but intending that death, is not committing murder. A doctor who uses a method that intrinsically and directly kills the child is.

The case at St. Joseph’s is a very difficult one, because on the one hand the method used killed the child, but on the other it appears that the child would have died anyway. I am thus reluctant either to justify or to condemn it. I’m glad it wasn’t my call. If another method was possible, it certainly should have been used.

We can control only our own actions. We cannot control the side effects, we cannot
control the actions of others. We can only control our own actions.
We can refrain from targeting an innocent human being to death; we cannot keep a bomb from killing civilians, only to do what we can to mimimize those deaths. In a just war (ie, in general, not mentioning any particular wars), the danger to civilians exists because the nation needs to act in self-defense.

Modern “just wars” are almost never wars of pure self-defense. They are undertaken to neutralize threats, to stop aggressors, to topple tyrants, to protect national interests, etc.

If the purpose of the “abortion” is to save life, and the death of the child is a side effect, then I don’t see a fundamental difference. In both cases all the following need to be considered:

1. The need for the action in the first place: i.e., how grave is the danger to innocent people that needs to be averted by the action
2. How grave the risk is to innocents posed by the action; and
3. How direct and active the killing of innocents in the action would be.

If the need is dire, then 2 and 3 would have to be very strong to overcome it. In other words, if the action is taken to protect life from grave risk, then the deliberate killing of innocents is still wrong, but putting innocents in danger or even inevitably causing the death of an innocent person who would still die anyway might be legitimate. (For instance, if a criminal is holding a hostage, then how much risk you are willing to take of killing the hostage is going to depend on what you think the criminal would do with the hostage anyway.)

Again, the point I’m making is not that abortion is justifiable but that the same kind of process of moral reasoning takes place whenever we have legitimate reasons for engaging in an action that may result in the death of innocent people.

There is no more way to justify performing the abortion at St Joseph’s than there is to
order an unjust attack on another nation.

That doesn’t make sense. A better parallel would surely be between an unjust war and the majority of abortions, which do not address the very difficult situation faced at St. Joseph’s. My point is that the kind of dilemma faced at St. Joseph’s is essentially of the same kind as that faced by a president or other leader considering an action that is intended to defend life but will also involve the taking of life–almost certainly including innocent life.

Consider this: if you went to potter’s house and he showed you his work and you picked one up and threw it to the ground, would that not be a different action than your
accidentally hitting one with your elbow and breaking it?

Certainly. But if the floor was covered in pots, so that I couldn’t enter the house without breaking pots, and a vandal was already in the house breaking as many pots as possible, I would be justified in entering the house, stepping as carefully as possible, in order to prevent more pots from being broken.

Human life is far more precious than pots, so the analogy may not be a good one. (Breaking pots is not intrinsically wrong–killing an innocent person is.) But it wasn’t my analogy

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

We already had in place a system whereby almost all the poor were either covered or eligible for coverage

That’s not true. The cost of coverage is/was prohibitive for a number of people.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

But you can be liberal or conservative or moderate or moderate-conservative or moderate-liberal in politics.

Yes, and like me, you can be a combination of extremes

Edwin

 

[St_Francis]

That’s not true. The cost of coverage is/was prohibitive for a number of people.

Edwin

I’m talking about MediCaid and MediCare.

 

[St_Francis]

…

Edwin,
You seem confused about the reason that abortion, an act deliberately and directly targeting an unborn child for death, is wrong.

It is not wrong because the unborn child dies. It is wrong because the unborn child is deliberately targeted for death.

If I am failing English comp and I know I will be transferred into the easy grading teacher’s class if my current teacher dies, and I go out, find him, and run him over in my car for that purpose, I have committed a morally wrong act, no?

But if I am driving down the road and my brakes fail and I inadvertantly run over my English teacher, not even realizing it is him, because I am sterring the car away from a class of pre-schoolers crossing the street, I have not committed a moral wrong.

Can you see the difference between the two scenarios? Can you see that abortion, in its common usage of an act deliberately and directly targeting an unborn child, corresponds to the first scenario? And can you see that medically treating the mother with the possibility or even probability of killing the child is more like the second?

And can you see that there is a moral difference between the two scenarios because of the intention? And yet in each case, a death occurs.

It is not the fact that the child dies which makes abortion wrong. It is a very sad fact that women lose babies every day. What is wrong about abortion, in its common usage of deliberately and directly targeting the unborn child for death, is the intention of directly and intentionally killing an innocent human being, which is wrong.

 

[mysteryreligion]

What constitutes a liberal Catholic? What do you think they have to believe to not be in good standing with the Church? Socialized Medicine? Big Government? Taxing the rich? Supporting social services? Labor Unions and collective bargaining for just wages?

Peace,

David

socialized medicine is bad enough

but communism…

BHO is a communist…

because he wants to nationalize business, esp the health care business

he is telling us that we cannot have, in our Catholic hospitals, conscientous objectors to abortion/birth control pills…

if that is not the way Communists do things, what is?

 

[Contarini]

Edwin,
You seem confused about the reason that abortion, an act deliberately and directly targeting an unborn child for death, is wrong.

It is not wrong because the unborn child dies. It is wrong because the unborn child is deliberately targeted for death.

If I am failing English comp and I know I will be transferred into the easy grading teacher’s class if my current teacher dies, and I go out, find him, and run him over in my car for that purpose, I have committed a morally wrong act, no?

But if I am driving down the road and my brakes fail and I inadvertantly run over my English teacher, not even realizing it is him, because I am sterring the car away from a class of pre-schoolers crossing the street, I have not committed a moral wrong.

Can you see the difference between the two scenarios? Can you see that abortion, in its common usage of an act deliberately and directly targeting an unborn child, corresponds to the first scenario? And can you see that medically treating the mother with the possibility or even probability of killing the child is more like the second?

And can you see that there is a moral difference between the two scenarios because of the intention? And yet in each case, a death occurs.

It is not the fact that the child dies which makes abortion wrong. It is a very sad fact that women lose babies every day. What is wrong about abortion, in its common usage of deliberately and directly targeting the unborn child for death, is the intention of directly and intentionally killing an innocent human being, which is wrong.

Actually that’s my point. In the St. Joseph’s case the child was not targeted for death. The purpose was to save the mother’s life by removing the child from the womb. There was no desire or intention to kill the child, as far as I can see. The action that was taken was taken because otherwise both the child and the mother would have died.

I’m not necessarily condoning what the people running the hospital did. As I said, it’s an extremely difficult case, and I’m glad it wasn’t my call (either as the hospital officials or as the bishop trying to decide how to respond on behalf of the Church).

I’m saying that cases like this muddle the clearcut distinction many conservative Catholics want to make between “abortion” (always wrong) and “war” (may or may not be wrong).

I’m saying that targeting an innocent person for death, as you put it, is always wrong without exception. We have no disagreement on that.

Edwin

 

[St_Francis]

Actually that’s my point. In the St. Joseph’s case the child was not targeted for death. The purpose was to save the mother’s life by removing the child from the womb. There was no desire or intention to kill the child, as far as I can see. The action that was taken was taken because otherwise both the child and the mother would have died.

The unborn child in the case you are talking about was killed through abortion. The goal of the act of abortion is to kill the baby. The baby’s death was indeed the “end” or goal of the action taken.

As I have mentioned before, if I were going to die if I didn’t receive a heart transplant soon, and I went and killed someone in order to get his heart, that would be wrong. You cannot kill *even if that will save a life. *

Now, I have to live with my impending death, just as many others do. The fact that this woman could kill in order to save her life does not make it any more than my killing the man for his heart.

not necessarily condoning what the people running the hospital did. As I said, it’s an extremely difficult case, and I’m glad it wasn’t my call (either as the hospital officials or as the bishop trying to decide how to respond on behalf of the Church).

This actually a very simple case: abortion (in the everyday sense of directly and deliberately causing the death of the child) is intrinsically wrong and should not be considered as a solution anymore than my going oit and killing someone for his heart would be.

I’m saying that cases like this muddle the clearcut distinction many conservative Catholics want to make between “abortion” (always wrong) and “war” (may or may not be wrong).

This type of case in no way muddles anything. What muddles is trying to equate medical treatment which unintentionally kills the baby with directly killing the baby, two actions which are entirely different both physically and morally.

I’m saying that targeting an innocent person for death, as you put it, is always wrong without exception. We have no disagreement on that.

Then you understand that what the people at St Joseph’s did was wrong.

 

[Swiss_Guy]

Yes, and like me, you can be a combination of extremes

Edwin

Oooh, sounds fascinating. May I ask how? Fiscally very liberal and socially very conservative? or something like that?

 

[St_Francis]

Oops, just realized that in my attempt to make the pronouns easier, I may have given people the idea I am suffering from a heart ailment, but actually, I am not. I just hate dealing with all the ins and outs of pronouns…

 

[mysteryreligion]

hmmm…

this is encourageing

i didn’t get any rants from anyone about how BHO is not a Communist…

 

[Contarini]

hmmm…

this is encourageing

i didn’t get any rants from anyone about how BHO is not a Communist…

I thought the remark was too silly to dignify with refutation

Someone who thinks BHO is a Communist is either just plain ignorant or uses language pretty recklessly and arbitrarily.

Nationalizing health care does not make someone a communist in normal usage.

However, I appreciate that you gave a specific example. That way anyone reading it can say, “obviously that isn’t what I call Communism” and move on. . . .

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Oooh, sounds fascinating. May I ask how? Fiscally very liberal and socially very conservative? or something like that?

Fiscally I don’t have strong views.

I see myself as an old-fashioned conservative, so much so that I’m not sure I could be an American citizen in good conscience. I’m still dubious that this whole democracy thing was a good idea. I think that early modern city states were probably among the most just and truly Christian polities yet produced, and since they were swallowed up by the modern nation-state I find it hard to “root for” anyone. . . .

That makes me “left wing” because I talk about things like the common good rather than about individual rights and national interest.

Furthermore, as a Christian I think that even the praiseworthy desire to maintain local identity and sovereignty takes second place to Christian principles like welcoming the stranger and loving our enemies. I reject entirely the view that Christians ought to act by one set of principles in private and another in public. To some, that makes me an extreme liberal.

And I think that “progressive” reformers of the 19th century were correct in seeking to put the ancient Christian teaching against abortion into law, as opposed to the more pragmatic approach of common law (though I recognize that Roe v. Wade distorts the historical record on a number of points and I may not fully understand what the common-law position was).

Edwin

 

[Swiss_Guy]

Fiscally I don’t have strong views.

I see myself as an old-fashioned conservative, so much so that I’m not sure I could be an American citizen in good conscience. I’m still dubious that this whole democracy thing was a good idea. I think that early modern city states were probably among the most just and truly Christian polities yet produced, and since they were swallowed up by the modern nation-state I find it hard to “root for” anyone. . . .

That makes me “left wing” because I talk about things like the common good rather than about individual rights and national interest.

Furthermore, as a Christian I think that even the praiseworthy desire to maintain local identity and sovereignty takes second place to Christian principles like welcoming the stranger and loving our enemies. I reject entirely the view that Christians ought to act by one set of principles in private and another in public. To some, that makes me an extreme liberal.

And I think that “progressive” reformers of the 19th century were correct in seeking to put the ancient Christian teaching against abortion into law, as opposed to the more pragmatic approach of common law (though I recognize that Roe v. Wade distorts the historical record on a number of points and I may not fully understand what the common-law position was).

Edwin

Switzerland has always been very Christian, and they have been a democracy/modern state for a long time.

And by “welcoming the stranger” etc. (assuming I am right about what you are implying), that wouldn’t make you an extreme liberal to me - although that would make you semi-liberal. Maybe that’s extreme liberalism to some guy in the middle of Alabama .

But you don’t seem to be that liberal imo; your social views are probably conservative (based on what you’ve said, you seem to be implicitly saying Christian morality is right , and that’s generally conservative).