Comments on: The Communion Question

By: Danny Yee

Danny Yee — Sat, 19 Jun 2004 04:50:09 +0000

How about excommunicating anyone who votes for leaders who supported an aggressive war that failed to meet the Church’s “just war” criteria?

By: Anthony

Anthony — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 01:41:48 +0000

From a Catholic standpoint, the difference between the death penalty and abortion is innocence. Abortion is taking of innocent human life, while the death penalty is usually not. Thus it is perfectly reasonable, within Catholic thought, to believe that the death penalty is moral in general, provided that there are sufficient safeguards against execution of the innocent and that the death penalty is only applied for homicide.

By: patrick

patrick — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 23:49:27 +0000

Pregnancy terminations in cases where the mother’s life is at risk are performed in hospital in Ireland. They are legal.

By: nick

nick — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 19:46:21 +0000

The Supreme Court has ruled that a suicidally distressed woman is entitled to an abortion if her life depends on it. That’s understood, paddy: but since there are no facilities in Ireland that carry out abortions, as far as I know, then that’s a de facto permission to go abroad. (I was reading the ‘C’ case ruling in relation to this.) You’re right, though, that I conflated the findings of the ‘X’ case and ‘C’ case; and you’re right, the law’s a mess.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 19:06:29 +0000

Regarding the death penalty. It's always dangerous when people who don't accept a belief-system try to critique it from the inside, e.g. claim that it is inconsistent. Often the critic just isn't looking at the situation from the internal perspective of the belief-system in question. The moral question of the death penalty in Catholic thought is very tricky. Clearly the current Pope and most of the Church hierarchy are quite opposed to the death penalty. It is also clear that the Church has not, in the past, consistently taught that the death penalty is immoral. From a Catholic perspective, there are several ways to resolve this, none of which involve inconsistency. 1) The death penalty really is intrinsically immoral in the same way abortion is -- i.e., never justified no matter what the consequences. Since the church hasn't always taken that position, it would have to be understood as a "development" in moral teaching: that is, not a contradiction of previous doctrine, but a deeper and more complete understanding of something always known and taught by the church (that is, the principle that it's always wrong intentionally to take human life). 2) The death penalty is not intrinsically immoral, and could be legitimately used in a society where it was necessary. But in modern society, with advanced penal systems, it is almost never necessary, and thus should almost never be used. This is suggested by the current Catechism (see para. 2267). 3) The Pope is simply wrong in his teaching about the immorality of the death penalty. This is the position Justice Antonin Scalia has taken. Of course, Catholics don't think the Pope is infallible in every statement he makes -- infallibility is a highly technical concept in theology and I know of no one who has suggested that the Pope's teaching on the death penalty qualifies. Finally, no matter how you view the Church's teaching on the death penalty, there are many reasons why the bishops might legitimately treat it differently from abortion as regards denial of communion. It's laughably facile when people claim, as a commenter above did, that "if the Catholic Church had any coherence whatsoever," it would treat the two the same.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 18:52:52 +0000

Dan the Man: I think you’re confusing objective immorality with subjective culpability. Of course everyone who owned slaves in antebellum America was acting in an objectively immoral way. But their subjective culpability really does depend on a lot of factors, one of which is the degree to which they reasonably believed that blacks weren’t humans with full moral status. I emphasize “reasonably,” because it’s so hard to imagine that anyone could think such a thing if he was thinking at all reasonably. But in an extreme case where someone actually had good reason to believe, wrongly, that blacks aren’t people, I don’t think you could accurately call that person “immoral and dumb.” “Q”: You’re right; I shouldn’t have claimed that most women who have abortions think that it’s no big deal. I guess it’s just very hard for me to imagine someone who actually believes that a fetus is a living human person choosing to have an abortion—but it obviously happens, and it shouldn’t be any harder to imagine than any other kind of murder.

By: zippy

zippy — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 16:14:57 +0000

Also, an interview with Karen Finley who didn’t do what wasn’t stated with a yam, in fact.

By: Jon H

Jon H — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 13:58:19 +0000

“Anyway, it didn’t look as though she was exactly grooming herself for papal ascendancy, or particularly wanted the job, or was in any way temperamentally suited for it.” Oh, I don’t know. There are popes in whose term a yam up their whatsit would be the sign that the party’s going fairly well. Then there’s pope Stephen VII who had his 8 months dead predecessor brought from the tomb, dressed in the papal robes, propped up in his throne, provided with counsel, and “tried”. Upon “conviction”, three fingers were cut off, the body was stripped and thrown to the crowd outside, who tossed it in the Tiber.

By: Jon H

Jon H — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 13:53:04 +0000

By: pepi

pepi — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 08:37:37 +0000

peter murphy – I gather that the Catholic church opposes the death penalty. If they are denying communion to pro-choice politicians, are they going to turn around and deny it to pro-death penalty pollies as well? very good question. I suppose the answer is no, seen as it’s not even being considered or raised at all – but if the Catholic Church had any coherence whatsoever, it should be “yes”. Therefore…

By: Tom Irish

Tom Irish — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 08:06:55 +0000

This is a great piece of analysis by someone who understands political liberalism very well and Catholicism not so well. I have some perspective on the Catholic clerical mentality of the day, since I was in a seminary from 1999 to 2003 (I’ve now left, and am mostly estranged from official Catholicism), so here are some thoughts. I feel I can safely say that no living member of the Catholic hierarchy nourishes hopes or even dreams of exerting direct influence on political processes a la Innocent III in the early 13th century. Your worries about a slippery slope of politcial activism that begins with abortion, leads to homosexuality and stem cell research, and ends with Mass on Sunday is outlandish, for the simple reason that Catholic bishops have studied logic and philosophy, unlike the Pat Robertsons of the Respublica Evangelica. The argument for singling out abortion from all other issues, including the death penalty and unjust wars, is that these other issues are only conditionally inveighed against by the Pope and the bishops. Catholic moral theology regards the (and here I’m using official jargon) deliberate termination of innocent human life as a seriously immoral act under pretty much all circumstances. There are some cases, like ectopic pregnancies, where “saving the life of the mother” becomes the immediately intended act, so that the taking of innocent life is no longer strictly regarded as deliberate. But for the vast majority of abortions that take place in America today, Catholic moral theology has an exceedingly lucid and simple reason for regarding it as an intolerable violation of basic human rights. For the Catholic bishops, all those other issues do not even come close to abortion as a question that is both deadly serious and conceptually straightforward. (Granted, when you take a close look at the question of abortion, conceptual muddles abound, but that’s true of everything.) At any rate, official Catholicism is, and knows itself to be, profoundly weak as a political presence in just about every country of the world, at least the wealthy and developed ones. Your essay talked about the rubber of pragmatism that separates the “machinery” of Catholicism from that of political liberalism, but I’d say you’ve overlooked the extent to which Catholic political ideology has died or been defanged since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960’s. The rubber isn’t necessary because there isn’t any metal in the gears of contemporary Catholicism. If you’d like specific proof for this point, just compare the 1983 Code of Canon Law with that of 1917, or compare Cardinal Ratzinger (a theological liberal by the standards of the 1950’s) to Cardinal Ottaviani, who preceded him in the Office of the Holy Inquisition by only 20 years, a blink of the eye in terms of Church history. Despite all these qualifications, it IS a big deal that the bishops are sticking their fingers in the pot of the 2004 election, with potentially disastrous results. The great irony in my view is that the bishops are deliberating in an essentially political manner about whether Kerry, a professional politician, ought to be allowed to deliberate in a political manner about secular law, and still be accepted as a Catholic in good standing. If the bishops cannot decide whether they themselves have a categorical moral obligation to exert pressure on Catholic politicians by certain means (ie, withholding communion), how can they demand that Kerry both recognize and act on a similar obligation to exert pressure on the members of his pluralistic society to pass anti-abortion legislation? The Catholic Church hierarcy is one of the most exquisitely political (in the Carl Schmitt sense of the word) institutions in human history, and even today it does not understand the difference between morals, which has some deontological clarity about it, and politics, which has none. To conclude, I wish both pro-lifers and the Democratic Party would moderate their dogmatic positions with a bit of logic, humanity, and pragmatism. Some points to consider would be the following: One: Americans don’t have a clear agreement about the meaning of the term “person”, and perhaps also “murder”. Two: it is a raw political fact that Americans will never tolerate the criminalization of abortion. Three: legalized abortion has many negative ethical implications and many damaging social effects. Four: the vast majority of Americans do not agree with the Democratic Party’s rigidly and unconditionally pro-choice position, and find in the DNC’s platform not even an acknowledgement that some pro-life concerns might be legitimate. I don’t see the intervention of the Catholic bishops in election 2004 as a good thing, but neither do I find it surprising, given how poorly the issue of abortion has been handled in American politics. (P.S. I’m new to the blogosphere; if you’d like to hear more along these lines, check out http://www.expectator.blogspot.com. Thanks.)

By: q

Thu, 17 Jun 2004 07:32:05 +0000

*** Abortion-Generalisation-Alert *** Just because a woman has an abortion, does not mean that she necessarily thinks that the baby is (1) not a person (2) not alive (3) not hurt by the procedure.

By: Dan the Man

Dan the Man — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 07:19:46 +0000

Someone who has a abortion has probably been convinced that she’s just having a mass of tissue removed from her body, no bigger deal than having your wisdom teeth out. Probably? Sheesh. Almost certainly not. It’s perfectly reasonable, even for a staunch pro-lifer, to view that woman as subjectively far less culpable than someone who commits infanticide of a post-natal infant. That’s absurd. Many white Americans use to view black slaves as less than human. Of course that didn’t mean anti-slave activists viewed the white Americans as subjectively far less culpable than someone who enslaved people of all races. Instead, the white Americans were seen as not simply being evil slave owners but evil racists also. If it really is so wrong when a woman a views a fetus as non-human, then it wouldn’t make her far less culpable for having an abortion (or in the view of pro-lifers, murdering a human fetus). Instead it would make her both immoral and dumb and not just immoral.

By: q

Thu, 17 Jun 2004 07:10:14 +0000

Chris has reminded me of something a cousin of mine told me. She was brought up in Dublin by Irish Catholic Nuns. They taught that: -you can only go to heaven if you are a Catholic, -people who had never heard of the church would never get there (which she thought was a bit hard on people in countries the church had not reached), -Purgatory and Hell appeared to be the resting ground for all sorts of “sinners”, -whistling would make the Virgin Mary cry.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 06:44:44 +0000

(Because I understand the “consciousness is what matters” position—I think I used to more-or-less believe it myself. I just don’t see how someone who thinks that avoids the Peter Singer road where a chimpanzee is more valuable than a retarded human, and it’s okay to kill newborn infants.)