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Not the Common Good

Justice Scalia's majority opinion in Heller was a tonic for those of us, as Paul notes, waiting in various states of anxiety to learn whether the Robed Masters, ever inclined to practice the techniques of deconstruction upon law, precedent, and both the grammar and syntax of the English language, would again dabble in the black arts. It is, in a word, pathetic - pathetic that this is what the Republic has come to, pathetic that more of us are not prepared to - if the phrase may be pardoned - man the barricades of self-government against such grotesqueries. We have become acculturated to a regime in which each branch of government routinely disgraces itself, so much so that most mistake dysfunction for vitality.

Not everyone, though, was so well pleased by the ruling. In point of fact, it has even been argued that the proscription of the private possession of firearms is integral to the common good, and that opposition to gun control has its origins in Enlightenment theories of individuality, asserted over against the common good. I'll note, in passing, that Feddie of Southern Appeal, who has written an excellent synopsis of the logic of Heller, dispenses with this argument within the span of a few dozen comments in the extensive thread, at least as a legal matter. Rather, however, than descending into the slough of political philosophy in order to demonstrate the errors of assimilating gun control to the common good, and of equating firearms possession with invidious Enlightenment individualism, I'd prefer to make a simpler demonstration.

In 2005, the Court handed down its decision in the case of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, a case which had its genesis in the failure of a police department to enforce a "shall arrest" restraining order against an estranged husband, who proceeded to kill his three daughters after abducting them from the home of his wife, and subsequently was killed in a shootout with police. Gonzales filed suit, claiming violations of substantive and procedural due process rights, and the Tenth Circuit found in her favour, albeit only on the procedural basis. The Supreme Court overturned the decision of the Tenth Circuit, on the grounds that a mandate for the enforcement of the order would not generate an individual right to its enforcement, but that, even if it did generate such a right, such a right could not be considered property under the due process clause. The decision was, though controversial, in accord with established precedent. Even more philosophically, the notion of an individual claim right upon the protection of the authorities cannot be sustained, inasmuch as, the authorities lacking omniscience and omnipotence as powers, many crimes would still occur, generating liabilities on the part of the authorities and their officers. One cannot be held liable for a failure to perform the impossible. The very notion, off at the end, would render governance impossible.

The upshot of the case, therefore, is that there obtains no individual right to protection provided by the authorities from malefactors.

According, moreover, to the detractors of Heller, neither is there an individual right to the most effective, equalizing means of self-defense. In fact, self-defense is apparently a dubious concept only tenuously connected to the common good.

Hence, in this equation, one has no claim right to protection provided by the state, and one has no effective right to self-defense. The common good itself stipulates powerlessness before the random criminal evils of this world. Manifestly, this is absurd, a species of utopianism - at best, the fantasy that the elimination of all implements of violence, along with the alleged "root causes" of criminality, will produce a peaceful society - and at worst, a piece of anarcho-tyranny, by which the lawful majority are to be bludgeoned into submission by both crime and petty proscriptions, the better to impose some whackaloon scheme of social reconstruction. In this instance, it is obviously the former, though I suspect many on the left fall into the latter category. It is, in any event, a violation of the common good for the fundamental units of society, families, to be left bereft of defenses against predation and savagery.

Which is why the Second Amendment, and the rights it enshrines, are in fact integral to the common good, and not contrary thereto.

Comments (167)

The Vox Nova posts on this would be embarrassing if you didn't consider the source. I'm pretty ambivalent about gun control, truth be told, but there are, shall we say, minor differences between Heller and RvW. For one thing, murdering children actually is against the natural law, while owning a gun is not. For another, the Constitution actually mentions a right to keep and bear arms, while it does not mention a right to abortion. Morning's Minion is always attempting a kind of tu quoque between Democrats and Republicans in order to justify his fawning for Democrats, and this is just one of the most cringeworthy examples.

Mind you, I think judicial review and stare decisis have shown us their rotten fruit and ought to be thrown under the bus. (That in itself would likely, as a practical matter, resolve most of Lydia and my ongoing disagreements about legal positivism). But I don't understand why anyone takes MM seriously when he tries to wedge a square argument into a round hole this way.

Yes, that is his M.O. Every now and then, the arguments against Republicans and mainstream conservatives are actually compelling.

And then, there is something like his opinion on Heller.

In Italy there used to be a law (I've read that it was reversed eventually) that you had a right to self defense only insofar as you used weapons no greater than those possessed by your attacker. So a woman attacked by a man with no weapon could not defend herself with a knife or gun, for example. Insane? You bet. But that's the liberals' idea of a "right to self defense." You have a right to self defense, sort of, and only insofar as it isn't "unfair" or "disproportionate" in relation to the poor aggressor.

Heller was far too watered down. The way that it was handed down leaves the right barely useful to the general public as governments can still put so many onerous restrictions on firearm ownership and use that the right "recognized" in this ruling is effectively useless.

Scalia and others were too conservative. They were too squeamish about being radical, and refused to admit the obvious which is that if you 20,000 federal laws that violate the 2nd amendment, then all 20,000 need to be struck down at once by the Supreme Court. Roberts spoke for them best when he said that he would still support RvW on the grounds that it is "decided law." Not that it is good law, not that it is even based on anything other than satanic-level sophistry and mendacity. It's decided, and God forbid we be radical and turn the law on its head when it is just flat out wrong.

I'm sorry you're ambivalent about gun control, Zippy. :-) I understand you're an excellent shot yourself. I wish I knew enough about the matter--how, where, etc.--to set up each of my daughters as she grows to adulthood with a loaded handgun in her apartment and full training and knowledge of how to use it in self-defense. This especially if they live on their own for a time before getting married. After they get married it's up to Bob (or whoever the husband is) to defend them.

I realize that what I am about to state is a stale cliche among gun enthusiasts, but my idea of gun control is being able to reproduce a tight shot grouping on a target. Beyond obvious exceptions to the right such as prohibitions on firearms ownership by felons and the insane, I think gun control inspired by the same lunacy which first stripped Britons of the right to possess firearms, and now ends by criminalizing resistance to criminality. And most advocates are creepy scolds who prattle on about "root causes", which, being translated, means that the victims of crime are probably at fault, since they actively participate in, benefit from, explicitly endorse, or at least 'consent' to - in that fallacious modern sense, according to which non-opposition translates to identification with the institutions or policies in question - structural evils alleged to be productive of criminality. It is a mindset straight from the abyssal depths of the Sixties and Seventies, when wave after wave of crime broke upon the American body politic, and those who expressed the desire that it be dealt with proportionately, as opposed to therapeutically, and who moved their families from urban abattoirs in order to escape the slaughter, were stigmatized with every invidious epithet from the Five Minute Hate of liberalism. And I say this as someone who maintains that our economic institutions give the lower half a raw deal, often simply the shaft. But my grandparents were working poor, and never committed a crime. So I've no sympathy for the "root causes" trope, to which most gun-controllers make quick recourse.

Lydia:

You might be surprised, but if you walked into your local gun shop and told the owner: "I wish I knew enough about the matter--how, where, etc.--to set up each of my daughters as she grows to adulthood with a loaded handgun in her apartment and full training and knowledge of how to use it in self-defense," I'm sure he'd be more than happy to explain everything in detail, recommend you to a local gun club, and sell you a nice little Ruger .22 target pistol so that you (and your daughters) can get started. Or find a Cabela's or Bass Pro shop -- they'll do the same, and you might find them a little less intimidating.

Beyond obvious exceptions to the right such as prohibitions on firearms ownership by felons and the insane

This is problematic when so many offenses are deemed felonies, and the definition of insanity may be subject to government, not medical, definition the way that the DEA has determined in its wisdom how many pain killers may be prescribed. Do you really think someone whose worst crime is to have committed felony copyright infringement by sending a few thousand songs to a friend (a felony under the No Electronic Theft Act) should be barred for life from owning a firearm?

I think it stands to reason that if felons that are a threat to the public are getting out of prison, it's a sign that other laws need to be changed. For example, why waste time ensuring that a convicted murderer cannot own a firearm when your bigger concern is the fact that a cold-blooded murderer is back in the community?

Do you really think someone whose worst crime is to have committed felony copyright infringement by sending a few thousand songs to a friend (a felony under the No Electronic Theft Act) should be barred for life from owning a firearm?

Not in the slightest. I'm presupposing, you know, real felonies, like rape, assault, grand theft, and so forth - not pseudo-felonies intended to enforce our preposterous regime of copyrights and patents, which often amount to rents-in-perpetuity for those whose great-great grandfathers may have had one clever idea.

Subjectivity in determinations of mental health is unavoidable, even if political definitions are excluded. Despite the comprehensive pseudo-rigour of something like the DSM, there will always been gradations and grey areas. The metasticization of bureaucratic and administrative procedures for defining and addressing mental health problems is a direct result of the decline of compact, integral communities, in which, in the ordinary business of life, those who were just a little nutty could be given much informal supervision and kept from harm. So, yes, this is a potential problem, but I don't know how much can be done to rectify it.

I can't speak for Maximos, MikeT, but my guess is that he had in mind serious violent crimes, and it would be no difficult thing, from a practical statutory perspective, to proscribe firearm ownership for that particular class of felonies.

For example, why waste time ensuring that a convicted murderer cannot own a firearm when your bigger concern is the fact that a cold-blooded murderer is back in the community?

I agree, which is why I left murder out of my representative list of real felonies.

Then again, I support capital punishment, and, absent that, "life" should mean that the malefactor draws his last breath in a prison somewhere.

Not in the slightest. I'm presupposing, you know, real felonies, like rape, assault, grand theft, and so forth - not pseudo-felonies intended to enforce our preposterous regime of copyrights and patents, which often amount to rents-in-perpetuity for those whose great-great grandfathers may have had one clever idea.

I actually knew what you were getting at, but wanted to use that as an opportunity to remind everyone how much of a disconnect there is between the ideal scenario that everyone speaks about when they talk about how it should be, and the real world in which the idea will be implemented. For this reason, I oppose disarming felons. Disarming felons is not the answer, and it allows politicians to escape from having to answer for why there are dangerous felons getting reintroduced to society.

Personally, I am of the belief that anyone who commits armed robbery, home invasion, rape, assault that seriously injures or cripples the victim or murder should be execute for the benefit of society. I don't believe it is incumbent upon society to rehabilitate or provide opportunity for such people to repent.

This issue goes back to a conservative-libertarian principle of mine: any restriction on a basic natural right in the name of public safety is invariably nothing more than a symptom that the system is failing to do its basic job.

Zippy knows perfectly well that I am not equating the act of abortion with the act of owning a handgun. He knows perfectly well that I have said that owning a gun is not a sin. But I do stand with the Church in holding that banning handguns would be in accord with the common good, an application to the particular circumstances in the United States-- a country ravaged by gun violence and too enamored by a culture of violence. I am quite shocked, here and on Vox Nova, by how many orthodoc Catholics are not merely ignoring the US bishops on this matter, but are gleefully supporting the unfettered right to gun ownership, totally ignoring solidarity and other common good concerns. I see an outbreak of a narrow Americanist perspective, grasping at logic that would puzzle your Catholic brothers and sisters around the world. And what has this to do with the Democrats? Obama is pandering badly on this one. My view, the the US should adopt the stringent gun laws of the UK, would render me completely unelectable in this country. But the truth is funny like that, isn't it?

And I totally stand by my point that the legal philosophy that gives us an individual right to handguns is the same as that giving us extremist versions of a "right to privacy" that include taking the life of an unborn child. It's the same old flawed thinking of the Enlightment, manifesting in different ways-- I thought this blog in particular would appreciate this. Nah, it's just the same old Americanism...

Lydia:
I'm sorry you're ambivalent about gun control, Zippy. :-) I understand you're an excellent shot yourself.

Nah, just lucky, and cool-headed in situations where others (for reasons I don't understand) tend to get freaky. I don't own any guns at all myself, though I am somewhat familiar with their use. My brother now, he is an excellent shot. I've seen him shoot clay pigeons from the hip with a '22 pistol.

I would ideally leave prudential judgments about things like the DC gun ban in the hands of local officials. On the other hand, I do recognize that that is problemmatic given the requirements of the Constitution: that is, in order to do so the right way would probably be a Constitutional amendment.

MM:
I totally stand by my point that the legal philosophy that gives us an individual right to handguns is the same as that giving us extremist versions of a "right to privacy" that include taking the life of an unborn child.

You can stand by that 'argument' all you want, and be 'shocked' that others don't buy it, but neither makes it is worth the pixels that represent it.

Mind you, they are connected in a very remote sense. I myself am against even using 'rights' as a term to describe the moral obligations involved in human relations. If your argument is that we should throw rights-talk under the bus completely, I'm with you. But about the only thing Heller and Roe have in common is that they are both modern US Supreme Court decisions.

I suppose if we got rid of the pernicious 'incorporation' doctrine, that would leave local gun control in the hands of local officials, since the Bill of Rights would no longer apply to states, counties, municipalities, etc. So perhaps MM's argument isn't quite as 'distant' as I had at first thought, if what he is saying is that the incorporation doctrine should be rolled back.

If that is so, perhaps he should be explicit that he thinks the incorporation doctrine should be rolled back.

"I see an outbreak of a narrow Americanist perspective,"

Morning Minion,
Appreciate your attempt to call those Catholics who mistake the GOP for the politcal arm of the Church, back to reality. However, too many at Vox Nova succumb to the dark temptation to engage in reverse evangelization and think it their vocation to convert the Church to cultural norms. So maybe, physician heal thyself, is in order, given how some waterboard their mental faculities in order to justify supporting Obama. I don't know how any Catholic can get behind either candidate, but it fear the consequences of compromising ourselves like this.

For a truly sobering account of where this can lead, read; Burleigh's "Earthly Powers". In it, he devotes the closing chapters to chronicle the nationalism that corrupted European Christianity, especially the clergy, prior to and during World War I. I was depressed to learn, that even after the aggressive anti-clerical measures of republican France and Bismarck's Kulturkampf, Catholics in each country placed temporal loyalties and political-socio calculations over Church doctrine and the proclamations of Benedict XV. I view the history lesson as a cautionary tale best applied to my own life and hope all factions of the Church learn from it.

Oh, gosh, according to MM you're not a good Catholic if you don't support a ban on handguns.

I'm so glad I don't hang out with that kind of Catholic very much. My blood pressure wouldn't stand it.

At least one Vox Nova blogger claims that subsidiarity justifies the pro-choice position. It is like haggling over tea and crumpets at Birkenau.

At least one Vox Nova blogger claims that subsidiarity justifies the pro-choice position.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

!?!?!?!?

Maximos:
Yeah, I kid you not. See here. The dude is a contributor. Apparently he is also some kind of Beltway insider. I never heard of him before my little 'encounter' in that thread.

Oh and he's a RealTrue Philosopher too, so what he Pronounces is Above Our Pitiful Understanding, and we are Too Ignorant to Follow His Profundities.

One learns something new, monstrous, and disconcerting every day.

"One learns something new, monstrous, and disconcerting every day."

It's not new. It goes back to the Garden and found it's apex in Judas. The key is to seach one's soul and immediately kill it. And, if one can't find it - search again. It's there, lurking behind a thicket of nobel sentiments and sophisticated philosophies.

I hate simple "rights" talk, since rights only exist alongside duties, within relationships, and under the rule of justice. A right to bear arms exists because of the natural duty to defend one's family, friends and community, which springs from the duty one has to love and honor them, and which in turn exist because of the nature these relationships possess.

Now, if I owe it to those I am in these relationships with to defend them, the question arises as to what means I may employ to do so. Justice seems to demand that the means must be proportional to the type of threat that exists or may develop. It strikes me as absurd to say that handguns are disproportional. It is an empirical fact that any number of threats to one's family and society at large are armed with handguns or worse. It seems an obvious and gross injustice to remove such a necessary and proportional means of defending one's family and community when there is little to no chance that the numerous threats to them will be so disarmed.

Or does this reasoning depend too much on "Enlightenment theories of individuality, asserted over against the common good"?

Well stated, Brendon.

Brendon:

Justice seems to demand that the means must be proportional to the type of threat that exists or may develop.

Couldn't this argument be employed against us by tyrannical nations that seek to arm themselves with nuclear capabilities due to threat of attack by the U.S. and its allies for fear of an (Iraq-type) invasion, etc.?

I have no idea why you all keep bringing Obama into this. It reflects an inability to think outside the narrow frame of contemporary American politics. I oppose Obama's positions on abortion, the death penalty, and yes, guns too. Is he a superior choice to McCain? I believe so, absolutely, but that is another argument.

I also place God's law above the US constitution.

Kevin: the historical analysis is correct. The correct modern analogy, however, is the Americans Catholics who place nationalism before the Church (or who-- like many evangelicals- mix Christainity with what amounts to a pagan civic religion). I'm thinking of the Weigel-Novak-Neuhaus set and their cheerleading a gravely unjust war.

Brendon: that kind of reasoning would justify an escalation in more powerful and more destructive weapons. By that reason, Somalia should be the safest country in the world. I detect a Hobbesian strain to your argument, a war of all against all. I prefer the Catholic notion that everybody should look upon neighbor as another self. When you think the unfettered availability of handguns would protect yourself and family (a dubious claim to start with), you are ignoring the carnage in your midst caused by such free availability. Just because we do not live in the inner cities, and are not the acting moral agents in the particular incidents of violence, do we not bear some responsibility toward our neighbors? Of course we do. Your argument is similar to those who support private health insurance based on personal risks, rather than social insurance that allows for the young and healthy to subsidize the old and the sick. The first way is a great deal for young and healthy people, but we pass our brothers and sisters on the road.

And when did the Church ever say the right to private property was unlimited?

I also place God's law above the US constitution.

But since God's law allows for personal self-defense and the execution of offenders for the protection of the commonweal, this statement it irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

I detect a Hobbesian strain to your argument, a war of all against all. I prefer the Catholic notion that everybody should look upon neighbor as another self.

My entire argument is based upon the existence of particular, existing relationships between people, the very relationships that make someone our neighbor. How you get Hobbes out of that is a matter of your own thought process, not anything I wrote.

When you think the unfettered availability of handguns...

I said nothing about "the unfettered availability of handguns." Again, this is a matter of your thought process, not what I wrote. But if it makes you feel better, I do not support "the unfettered availability of handguns" by violent criminal offender and the mentally incompetent. Or children either, for that matter.

Just because we do not live in the inner cities...

How do you have any idea where I live?

I am the third generation of my family to have lived in, been schooled in, and/or worked in the inner city of Allentown. My family knows from experience its degeneration and growing danger. But thanks for pretending you know anything about me and mine.

...do we not bear some responsibility toward our neighbors? Of course we do..

This is the very core of my argument. I don't see how you can think it refutes me.

And when did the Church ever say the right to private property was unlimited?

Never. But your non sequitur is neither here nor there.

My entire argument is based upon the existence of particular, existing relationships between people, the very relationships that make someone our neighbor.

When Jesus taught "Turn the Other Cheek", he meant Dirty Harry's "Go Ahead -- Make My Day"!

Aristcoles is indeed correct. Brenden's weird logic wouold provide theological support for an arms race-- when the Church teaches pricisely the opposite.

And Brenden, simply stating over and over that you-don't-say-I-claim-you-say is a rather inedequate retort. And enough with the snideness, please: I use "we" in an encompassing sense to describe those of us who live rather comfortably; where you personally live is quite irrelevant.

God's law allows for execution of criminals? In a theoretical sense, yes; but in the current circumstances of modern society, NO WAY.

As opposed to your personal arms race, I would recommend some Catholic responses to violence in society: remove the underlying conditions that foster violence, work to change the culture. More proximately, the community places its collective self-defense in the hands of agents of law (the more local the better), not in a bunch of vigilantes seeking bigger and bigger guns. And local police forces in crime-ridden areas always seek to reduce the availability of guns. Talk to Mayor Fenty about that.

What in the name of God is the deal with Americans and guns????? You should listen to the bishops. That's good advice in general, whatever the topic.

"remove the underlying conditions that foster violence..."

Like evil hearts? Good luck with that.

"More proximately, the community places its collective self-defense in the hands of agents of law..."


Which being interpreted is, if a big, evil man comes up to your wife and tries to drag her off and no cop happens to be on the spot to stop him, you're outta luck. Didn't you know, you don't have _personal_ self-defense, you only have this thing called "collective self-defense." And you don't have that, either, because it's been placed in the hands of the "agents of law," only none of them happen to be around just at the moment. Tough luck, buddy. Say bye to your good lady, or your child, or someone else's child, or the retarded boy being beaten to death by the gang, or...

Because it's written somewhere or other, God knows where, that no one who isn't a formal police officer has the right to defend the innocent. And maybe not them either. Perhaps only with pepper spray or something. Mustn't hurt the bad guys. AFter all, they're only bad because someone ignored the "underlying causes."

Ick.

When Jesus taught "Turn the Other Cheek", he meant Dirty Harry's "Go Ahead -- Make My Day"!

How you think I could possibly be saying that boggles my mind. But it is blindingly obvious that "turn the other cheek" is not a universal precept of the moral law, since the one time Scripture shows us the Lord being so struck, he rebukes the guards that strikes Him for injustice rather than offering His other cheek to strike.

"And when he had said these things, one of the servants standing by, gave Jesus a blow, saying: Answerest thou the high priest so? Jesus answered him: If I have spoken evil, give testimony of the evil; but if well, why strikest thou me?" (John XVIII.xxii-xxiii)

Brenden's weird logic wouold provide theological support for an arms race

No, Brendon's logic would not. You keep trying to make the concrete abstract, to turn concrete relationships and situations into some kind of universal norm. The positive precepts of the natural law cannot be applied without the prudent consideration of particular circumstances. Something you fail to do when you compare a discussion about the United States to Somalia, and compare a discussion about what means a person can use to defend themselves against unjust aggression with the nuclear arms race engaged in by world governments.

And enough with the snideness, please...

You first. Unless you consider making pronouncements without arguments and attributing things to me that I did not say to somehow be devoid of "snideness."

I use "we" in an encompassing sense to describe those of us who live rather comfortably; where you personally live is quite irrelevant.

No, it's not, since this whole argument is about the application of positive precepts to particular circumstances. It is impossible to have such a discussion without actually considering particular circumstances.

More proximately, the community places its collective self-defense in the hands of agents of law (the more local the better), not in a bunch of vigilantes seeking bigger and bigger guns.

This is a false dichotomy. Where did I suggest that we should eliminate law enforcement personnel, or that each of us should hunt down those who have committed crimes against us and execute justice according to our own personal whims? I merely suggested that justice allows for me to defend my life and the life of my family, friends and neighbors. Law enforcement personnel cannot do this for me because they are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. There is no justice in letting a neighbor be brutalized because the police have not arrived.

God's law allows for execution of criminals? In a theoretical sense, yes; but in the current circumstances of modern society, NO WAY.

Assertion is not argument. Something is not true simply because you WRITE IT IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

Lydia, you sound very Protestant. If you don't accept that underlying social and economic change is crucial to any attempts to reduce violence, and that it's all about personal conversion, then you are out of step with Catholic social teaching. This notion is deep in the thought of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Brendon, my assetion is assertion of Catholic teaching. If you are dissenting from core teaching that the death penalty is only licit when there are no bloodless means to protect society, and that these circumstances are rare if not practically non-existent in modern society, then we're done here.

"The positive precepts of the natural law cannot be applied without the prudent consideration of particular circumstances."

That statement is absolutely correct, which is actually the whole basis of my argument. Given the appalling level of gun violence in the US, a reflection of the liberal gun laws at present, and a true manifestation of the culture of death, a proper "ordinance of reason for the common good" would be for the person who has care for the community to restrict access to such handguns. This is an application of the natural law to specific concrete circumstances. You argument derives more from classical liberalism, whether you think so or not.

Lydia, you sound very Protestant.

LOL! MM, Lydia is very Protestant. This is not a Catholic blog; indeed the majority of the contributors are not Catholic.

But in any case, one can accept that "underlying social and economic change is crucial to any attempts to reduce violence" - indeed I think that is very much the case, though we would doubtless disagree on the particulars of what changes are required - without concluding that if one does not believe that guns must be banned one is a heretic.

You are at least as bad as your right-liberal counterparts whom you criticize (correctly, much of the time). Have the temerity, please, to actually argue for what you think is true, rather than attempting to sit in the Chair of Peter and proclaim it by fiat.

FWIW, I think much of the comeuppance that right-liberal Catholics (Weigel etc.) are going to get, good and hard, comes from their attempts to sit in the Chair of Peter and pronounce (for example) that there are five voting non-negotiables which happen to make it impossible to do other than vote Republican, and that (e.g.) a manifestly unjust war doesn't count. Not the opinion, mind you, but the attempt to sit in the Chair of Peter in promulgating it. It is a dangerous place to try to sit when one is not in fact the Vicar of Christ. God is not mocked, and you seem to me to run the same risk under a different set of propositions.

Brendon: that kind of reasoning would justify an escalation in more powerful and more destructive weapons. By that reason, Somalia should be the safest country in the world. I detect a Hobbesian strain to your argument, a war of all against all. I prefer the Catholic notion that everybody should look upon neighbor as another self. When you think the unfettered availability of handguns would protect yourself and family (a dubious claim to start with), you are ignoring the carnage in your midst caused by such free availability. Just because we do not live in the inner cities, and are not the acting moral agents in the particular incidents of violence, do we not bear some responsibility toward our neighbors? Of course we do. Your argument is similar to those who support private health insurance based on personal risks, rather than social insurance that allows for the young and healthy to subsidize the old and the sick. The first way is a great deal for young and healthy people, but we pass our brothers and sisters on the road.

Like virtually all Catholics you forget that these teachings apply only to believers. The mandate to protect your neighbor and provide for the needy is not a burden that is to be shouldered by those who have not been born again! It is part of what Jesus meant when He said that you must take up your cross daily and follow him.

Maximos isn't very Protestant. He's Orthodox, and he and I have had our bouts and laid down our arms in a truce (or something like that) in the Prot-non-Prot wars. And he's batting a thousand on this thread. Go, Maximos. Believe it or not, I'd never heard that one about what gun control means. From which you can infer that, surprisingly enough, I haven't gotten around formally to joining the NRA.

By the way, a reader on VFR had a great line apropos of this very type of discussion: The Bible is not a suicide pact.

Like virtually all Catholics you forget that these teachings apply only to believers.

FWIW, the Catholic understanding of self-defense is that it is a matter of the natural law, and so applies to everyone, and can be known by everyone. Of course the Catholic understanding of self-defense is also quite different from what MM presents as The Catholic Understanding of Self-Defense.

First, "that these circumstances are rare if not practically non-existent in modern society," cannot be part of the Church's "core teaching" on the use of the death penalty, since it is a statement about circumstances as they really exist, something that the Church has no power to alter by pronouncement. If the Pope says it will rain and it doesn't, I do not have to pretend it did rain--or even that it was "sort of raining spiritually, only we were too sinful to see it"--simply because he said so.

Given the appalling level of gun violence in the US...

"Gun violence" is a useless statistic. How much "gun violence" was done in the commission of a crime vs. as a defense against it? How much was done with weapons illegally possessed by criminals vs. weapons legally possessed by law-abiding citizens? Simply speaking about "gun violence" ignores obvious and important distinctions, and, as such, is worthless to the discussion.

You argument derives more from classical liberalism, whether you think so or not.

Yes, obviously. My entire argument blatantly relies on the will being man's highest power and unrestricted liberty as being the foundation of a just society and the summum bonum. How could I have been so mistaken and confused. Nothing either explicitly or implicitly about practical reason, the truth about circumstances, order, the common good or subsidiarity at all.

"LOL! MM, Lydia is very Protestant. This is not a Catholic blog; indeed the majority of the contributors are not Catholic."

Oops, mea culpa, I'm so used to Catholic blogs!!

Zippy,

When you compare me to the Neuhaus-Novak-Weigel triumvirate, you forget one crucial difference: I stand with, not against, Church teaching. On matters such as who to vote for, the Church does not and cannot make that decision-- and I likewise do not tell other Catholics who to vote for. I have made the case for Obama, and will do so again no doubt, and I believe I am right-- but I would never tell another Catholic they cannot pick McCain, Nader, Barr, or simply abstain.

But what bothers me is the rote dismissal of a teaching because it is a "prudential judgment". Prudential judgment does not mean dutifully listen and then ignore. It means you weigh up facts and circumstances. There is of course no certainty here, but that does not mean all prudential judgments are equal. Having looked at the evidence, the statistics myself, it is quite clear to me that gun deaths are associated with high levels of gun ownership. That is a statistical relationship, and there is always outliers, there is never certainity. But still, that is a sound basis for the public authority to restrict access to guns to protect the common good. It is in accord with reason. The USCCB comes to a similar conclusion. I guarantee you that the Church in other countries is quite strident on this point. How does anything I say here mock God?

Brendon:

The teaching that the death penalty is only licit when no bloodless means are available to protect society is doctrine, and is owed religious assent. The prudential judgment comes in when John Paul argues that such situations are rare and non-existent in modern penal systems. This circumstantial fact is so blindingly obvious that I cannpt imagine an argument against it. Maybe it doesn't hold in Somalia, to keep an example you love so much, it most certainly holds in the US.

On violence, please read my discussion of statistics in the original post.

And I'm not sure I would classify your arguments as voluntarist, but certainly I see the primacy of the individual and the freedom of that individual from outside constraint in some of what you say.

When you compare me to the Neuhaus-Novak-Weigel triumvirate, you forget one crucial difference: I stand with, not against, Church teaching.

They would say the same.

How does anything I say here mock God?

In taking on the posture - like many of those you criticize, indeed including those we have both criticized - that you speak for the Church, rather than for yourself.

MM:
And I'm not sure I would classify your [Brendon's] arguments as voluntarist, but certainly I see the primacy of the individual and the freedom of that individual from outside constraint in some of what you say.

You really need to quit grossly mischaracterizing Brendon's argument. Well, you don't need to do it, but you might as well staple a sign that says 'partisan hack' to your forehead if you don't.

One reason I'm a fan of quote-and-respond in discussion threads is because then we are responding to what someone actually says, rather than just making things up and attributing them to another.

And whose partisan am I exactly, Zippy? Certainly no entity in the US, with its attached to the "right to own guns". Perhaps Europe? Perhaps the rest of the civilized world?

And in terms of tone, with all due repect Zippy-- but you are one of the most rigid people in the Catholic blogosphere. Now, that's often a good thing, and I admire much of your thinking-- but it is what it is. You often assert positions that bypass the nuance that can be found in Church teaching.

And I do not believe I am mischaracterizing Brendon's argument. His key point is that in the current US environment, widespread gun ownership is a "necessary and proportional means of defending one's family and community." I find the implications of this to be utterly horrendous, on so many different levels. It reflects a sickness in contemporary American society, a society that is too inclined to resort to violence as a solution to problems, and that often glorifies the man with the gun.*

*Ths is me speaking for me, not the Church, lest there be any doubt.

And in terms of tone, ...

I wasn't criticizing your tone. I was criticizing your adoption of a Magisterial posture. I suggest that where you want to adopt a Magisterial posture in your argument, you quote the Magisterium. Where you don't quote the Magisterium, don't start telling people that they owe religious assent to your opinions.

I find the implications of this to be utterly horrendous, on so many different levels.

Well, yes, we get it that you find it horrifying. But you said of his arguments, just as two examples:

certainly I see the primacy of the individual and the freedom of that individual from outside constraint in some of what you say.

You argument derives more from classical liberalism, whether you think so or not.

Which is, technically speaking, tommyrot.

The reason you don't quote him meticulously and respond to what he actually says is because if you did that, the shovel you are using to scoop words and concepts in his mouth would not work. I personally have little patience with that sort of thing, even when it is being done to someone else.

First of all, I only used "religious assent" (the technical langauge of LG 25) in reference to the magsisterial teaching on the death penalty. I did not quote it, for I thought it was pellucid.

And you may assert tommyrot; I respectfully disagree. The basis of his analysis is that the response to a social situation that leads to a level of gun violence is to grant the individual a proportional right to fight fire with fire, as it well. Forgive me if I find this hard to reconcile with the Gospel. Forgive me if I fail to see this as compatible with the call to see neighbor as another self, with an all-econompassing culture of life, with the call to be guided and sustained by the law of love, with the natural unity of the human race sundered and "individualized" by original sin and recovered by the redemption of Christ.

In this vein, a Christian response to the problem of gun violence would be to tackle the underlying social, economic, and cultural problems that lead to such violence -- which in the United States includes the residue of racism. And just as Americans must bear reponsibility for creating chaos in Iraq, if even they are not directly responsible for each particular act of violence, so are people who refuse to restrict access to handguns implicated in the violence that arises. Here is the issue: the US is not a particularly violent place, in relation to comparator nations at equal levels of development. What differs about the US is “lethal violence”. So while guns may not induce people to commit crimes, they make crimes lethal. Remember Virginia Tech and the countless other tragedies that could have been avoided had this country some sane gun laws. Remember social sin.

And as I'm quite tired of saying, the US bishops support gun control-- why are they not out there calling for more people to get bigger guns to protect themselves from armed malefactors? This is an element of the culture of life.

So, yes, I do see classical liberalism rather than classical Christianity in the argument put forth. After all, who gives a tinker's damn about inner-city carnage or Virgina Tech as long as each individual has the right to protect his family in his fortress with a really big gun?

The basis of his analysis is that the response to a social situation that leads to a level of gun violence is to grant the individual a proportional right to fight fire with fire, as it well.

The basis of my analysis is that we live in a society continually beset by gang violence and a criminal justice system that habitually releases violent criminals back into society. A middle-aged father is not not equal to three gang members in their prime of life unless he has something that makes their numbers and superior physical condition irrelevant. I am not talking about "a social situation that leads to a level of gun violence." I am talking about a situation where violence thrusts itself upon a family or community and one has a duty to act in their defense.

...a Christian response to the problem of gun violence would be to tackle the underlying social, economic, and cultural problems that lead to such violence...

Where did I say anything that would lead you to think that I am opposed to these things? Can you explain to me how a law-abiding citizen cannot possess a weapon for the protection of his family and community as well as work towards such goals?

And as I'm quite tired of saying, the US bishops support gun control...

The bishops do not possess a special charism of infallible political analysis.

So, yes, I do see classical liberalism rather than classical Christianity in the argument put forth. After all, who gives a tinker's damn about inner-city carnage or Virgina Tech as long as each individual has the right to protect his family in his fortress with a really big gun?

You continue to try to paint me as arguing for the ability to protect my stuff from the unwashed masses instead of acting with solidarity towards others. All you are doing is demonstrating that you do not understand my argument at all. I have nowhere mentioned protection of things. I have rarely even mentioned the protection of self. I have continually mentioned the protection of family, neighbors and community.

My entire argument is based upon solidarity. It is the solidarity to run towards the screams so as to offer assistance after contacting the police rather than to run away from them because you have no means of helping. It is the solidarity to defend a stranger from a group of attackers because they are a neighbor and a member of your community. It is the solidarity to personally act in defense of the weaker members of your community when you find them beset by violence.

I am done with this discussion. You keep putting words in my mouth and attributing to me positions I do not hold. I can only assume it is because you have a little, ideological box in your head labeled "conservative" that you keep trying to fit me in. The apparent content of this box is not at all what I believe. But since you refuse to be convinced otherwise, further discussion is a waste of both our time.

Here is the issue: the US is not a particularly violent place, in relation to comparator nations at equal levels of development. What differs about the US is “lethal violence”.
Really? Per the uniform crime report The overall murder and non-negligent manslaughter rate for the US for 2006 was 5.7 offenses per 100,000 residents, of which just under 68% were committed with firearms of all types, somewhat more than half overall with handguns. The non-gun murder rate was approximately 1.8. In the same year in Canada, the total murder rate, including shootings, was 1.85. Nor is this particularly unusual. There are numerous industrialized countries whose overall rates of homicide are less than, or roughly equal to, the United States' rate of homicide committed without guns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_murder_rate Before US murder rates began to fall in the mid 1990s, this list would have been longer still, since the percentage of murders committed with guns has remained in the 65-70% range regardless of the overall rate for at least the last 25 years. For instance, when the murder rate was 8.2 in 1995, 68% of those were shootings, just as 68% were shootings in 2006 when the murder rate was 5.7. My point, if it is not sufficiently clear, is that your claim that the US is generally speaking like other industrialized countries in terms of the propensity of its inhabitants for lethal violence is dubious. Yes, Americans are more likely to shoot each other to death than English or Canadians, but they are also substantially more likely than English or Canadians to choke, beat, stab, or poison each other, too.
FWIW, the Catholic understanding of self-defense is that it is a matter of the natural law, and so applies to everyone, and can be known by everyone. Of course the Catholic understanding of self-defense is also quite different from what MM presents as The Catholic Understanding of Self-Defense.

I was actually referring to the "social obligations" to provide for the poor that come from divine mandates in the New Testament. There is an inherent distinction between believer and unbeliever there because the Gospel was addressed to those who would follow Jesus, not humanity in general. One verse that comes to mind from the epistles about those who expect humanity to behave like one big happy family of believers is "holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these."

Yes, Americans are more likely to shoot each other to death than English or Canadians, but they are also substantially more likely than English or Canadians to choke, beat, stab, or poison each other, too.

America is also far more demographically diverse than Canada or the United Kingdom. Furthermore, neither of those countries have a neighbor like Mexico which actively encourages a mass exodus into its borders.

And no, draft dodgers and liberals don't count as an equivalent migration into Canada.

America is also far more demographically diverse than Canada or the United Kingdom.
That is the elephant in the room. European countries aren't as racially homogeneous as they used to be, but to put it, ahh, delicately, the homicide rate among Americans of predominantly European descent (who incidentally are by far the most likely to own firearms) compares favorably to European rates even with shooting homicides taken into account. The FBI hasn't adjusted to the new, more diverse America, and counts offenders and victims as black, white, other, and unknown, with black and white making up 96% victims. Most people who are identified as Hispanic (an admittedly fuzzy ethnic category) on the census are counted as white by the FBI. In any event, the black murder rate is consistently around 8 times that of whites, and accounts for a majority of homicides where the offender's race is known, and since murderers tend to kill within their own racial and ethnic group, a near majority of total victims where the victim's race is known.

Morning's Minion,

You, and the U.S. Bishops labor under the following key assumption:

"In this vein, a Christian response to the problem of gun violence would be to tackle the underlying social, economic, and cultural problems that lead to such violence -- which in the United States includes the residue of racism."

I'm tempted to use Zippy's word "tommyrot" as an apt description of this assumption, but I will be more charitable. With all due respect, and given that I probably know 1/100th of the amount of Catholic theology that you do, I'll confine myself to plain old human reason and simply say that my own careful analysis of the social science research on the subject of violence suggests that you are totally wrong about "underlying social" and "economic...problems" leading to gun violence. Or to put it another way, there is no reason poverty and/or social disadvantage necessarily leads to gun violence. Instead, there are deep cultural reasons, namely the lack of a sense of individual moral agency (and our society's reluctance to focus on moral agency when thinking about crime), for the crime in the U.S.

I could site John Lott, Thomas Sowell and a whole host of smart economists and social scientists on this subject matter and I suspect you still wouldn't be convinced.

So instead, I'll simply note that the "First Things" crowd, which you seem to dislike, often makes the same type of arguments I'm trying to make -- assuming you get the theology right, you still have to use human reason to understand the world and how to appropriately respond to crime, terrorism, etc. And in doing so, the U.S. Bishops and for that matter the Pope, do not have a monopoly on reason and the analysis of how to shape a well-ordered society. So when a Catholic disagrees with the U.S. Bishops about gun control, this tells us nothing about whether or not either position is morally right. The only question should be whether or not gun control will eventually lead to a healthier and well-ordered society. And again, based on all the statistics and analysis I've read, it is clear to me that the individual right to bear arms leads to a safer and healthier society than those societies around the world that believe the individual should cede all their self-defense needs to the state.

In this entire thread I do not believe Morning's Minion has responded to the oft-repeated point that lawful ownership and wise use of firearms can and does provide the very community solidarity and common good he desires. I find this a revealing omission.

I feel confident saying that all the contributors here -- along with, mind you, the Supreme Court's majority -- share MM's view that some gun control is wise and necessary. The question is whether that control ought to be so onerous as to effectively preclude even law-abiding citizens to own the means to defend themselves and their community.

Now, not being a Catholic, I may be going out on a limb here; but gonna say it anyway: if the Magisterial teaching of the Roman Catholic Church strictly and implacably forbids personal ownership of handguns by common citizens, a la England, then I'm a donut.

MM: it so happens that I was called this spring to sit on the Fulton County (GA) Grand Jury for the March-April term. We heard upwards of 1000 cases during that time. Atlanta being a perennial fixture on the highest crime-rate lists in the country, I think I can say this experience gave me a pretty clear and impressive window into urban crime.

I would estimate that 50% or 60% of our cases included a gun charge, usually felon in possession of a firearm or possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. I do not recall a single case which involved a gun where the county failed to charge a firearm violation.

None of these statutes are in the least affected by Heller. If you commit a crime with a gun, even if the gun is not actually used in the crime, even if the victim is not even aware of the gun, you will face an additional charge. This talk of "unfettered availability of guns" is, I'm afraid, mostly a straw man.

“I have no idea why you all keep bringing Obama into this. It reflects an inability to think outside the narrow frame of contemporary American politics. “

Because your site obsessively labors to convince Catholics that voting for a man sworn to sign FOCA is...o.k. In fact, some there insist Obama is the” only moral option” and a failure to vote constitutes a dereliction in the duties of citizenship. Talk about soul-deadening submission to the pwers of this world!

I also place God's law above the US constitution.

Please sir, you are on Dorothy Day. She would take one look at Vox Nova and dismiss it a comical revival of “Call to Action” by those who missed out on the original ‘70’s version. She’d be amused by the chablis and brie radicalism found there, assume the writers clerk for Ted Kennedy and the USCCB, and all were happily ensconced in their chosen compromise.

“I'm thinking of the Weigel-Novak-Neuhaus set and their cheerleading a gravely unjust war. “

The Whigs at First Things are at home within the Liberal Tradition and desperately try to elevate democratic capitalism to the status of Church doctrine. It’s awful to watch. You too, have settled into Liberalism’s beguiling lair. To the point where you’ve signed a peace accord with the culture of death, agreeing to restrict your objections to some qualified essays on the internet and donations to a crisis pregnancy home, allowed to operate as long as it conforms to the strictures of the State.

Aside from some occasional corrections of your soul-mates on the other-side of Liberalism’s faux divide, your site offers nothing compelling, original or new. You strike me as a good guy struggling, like we all do, with the eternal tension that exists between being in, and of the world. I wish you well in finding a resolution that is in full accord with our Christian calling.

As for Vox Nova in it’s current form?
Slay the conformist wimp.

Sorry, the above was addressed to Morning Minion.

Since the dicussion is veering toward social science and statistics, I'm happy to go there too. Looking at internatonal evidence, there is a strong relastionship betweeg gun death and gun ownership: see here: http://bp3.blogger.com/_dehtj8kgqzM/Rp-7tnzAAVI/AAAAAAAAACI/0GbYmsAVnm8/s1600-h/gun+statistics_31043_image001.gif.

Albeit with a very small sample, I tried some basic statistical analysis some time back (http://vox-nova.com/2007/07/19/more-reasons-for-gun-control/). Using basic regression analysis, I found that gun ownership rate are positively and significantly related to homicide and suicide rates across 19 advanced economies, and that a bevy of other factors — GDP per capita, demographics, ethnic divisions, urbanization and inequality– did not seem to matter on their own. What causes gun deaths is the availability of guns. did a little further analysis, to see if the availability of guns enhanced the underlying factors that might cause violence. It does. Introducing a non-linear element in the regression suggests that gun ownership is especially detrimental when ethnic divisions and inequality are elevated. Oh any by the way, the US is far more ethnically divided and unequal than the other countries in the sample.
Look at the statistics on gun-related homicide and suicide rates in the US. See here: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=6166

And contra to what was said above, the most extrensive research on the topic conduicted by David Hemenway from Harvard's School of Public Health, shows that the US is actually not that exceptionally violent, at least among other high-income, industrialized nations. Crimes like assault, car theft, burglary, robbery, and sexual incidents are not particularly high by OECD standards. What differs about the US is "lethal violence". So while guns don't induce people to commit crimes, they make crimes lethal. The international evidence is beyond dispute: the availability of guns leads to greater rates of homicide and suicide, and no offset in terms of lower non-gun murders. How many deadly "crimes of passion" take place in the US that would ne non-lethal elsewhere? And would disturbed people like the perpetrators of the carnage at places like Columbine and Virginia Tech be able to do so much damage absent the free availability of guns?

The within-US evidence seems to be all predicated on the notion that some communities with high rates of gun ownership are quite peaceful while the violence is restricted to particular areas. But that cannot be an argument for a liberal approach to guns, for it is tantamount to ignoring the plight of the inner cities and other afflicted areas. And I'm sorry, it's cultural Calvinism to say that each individual is personally responsible for his own actions and that we have no broader social responsibility (I didn't come up with that term-- blame Cardinal George for that).

And this gets to the heart of my strong disagreement with Brendon and Zippy. They claim I misunderstand, or distort, Catholic teaching on self sefense. I do not. I'm well aware of it, and I support it. The problem is elevating a personal theory of self-defense to social policy-- as happens when one pushes for free availability of guns in the US. And I never said that ownership of guns was sinful or somehow condemned by the Church. What I do say is that given the particular circumstantial facts in the United States, a refusal to regulate guns stringently means we are not doing our duty to our neighbor. We are restricting the definition of neighbor, something Chirst told us we cannot do. We are ignoring that the essence of Christian redemption is unity, unity with God and unity in the human race. We are turning a blind eye to some serious problems, problems that are compounded by the free availability of guns. I think the Iraq example is apt: the US is particularly responsible for the violence unleashed by the unjust invasion and occupation, even if it is not the perpetrator of the particular act of violence in question. And giving every Iraqi citizen a gun to protect themselves and family is no solution at all.

I'll end on Brendon's point: "The bishops do not possess a special charism of infallible political analysis." That sounds eerily familiar. It sounds like the arguments that were made circa 2001-04 about the Iraq war. If only people had listened to the Church back again rather than follow the misguided leader that George Weigel believed was endowed with the "charism of political discernment."

I apologize if my tone has become shrill on occasion during this debate. It is a subject I feel strongly about. I feel that the gun culture, the glorication of violence in popular culture, the tendency to see the military solution as the first resort-- represents a major sickness in American society, and it upsets me that so many decent people remain unconcerned. After the Dunblane massacre in the UK, the public outcry was so great that private ownership of handguns was pretty much eliminated. Would that the US citizens showed suich concern for life. Would that the pro-life people included this within the culture of life.

I notice once again, MM, that you aren't responding to anything that Brendon actually said. The reason for that is obvious to everyone, it seems, but you.

Speaking of tommyrot, the term "gun-violence" is an instance of the genus. It is a term of agitprop slipped into the debate by gun-control activists to cause a subconscious reframing of the issue on terms favorable to them. As a rule, I refuse to use it, and I encourage others of like mind to refrain as well. By doing so, you're already granting your opponent's premises.

I'm not a Catholic, either. To crib a line from Will Rogers, I don't belong to any organized church; I'm an Anglican.

For those of you who aren't Catholic and don't keep up with these things--it was JPII's considered opinion that the death penalty was probably not just under almost any condition, but that's not a Magesterial teaching, even if MM thinks it some day will be or ought to be. It is an extremely recent and entirely contemporary view that must be weighed against centuries of "teaching" to the precise contrary. It's also manifestly false to assert that personal gun ownership violates some sacred and authoritatively defined moral doctrine of the Catholic faith. Presenting his views on gun control as some sort of "according to Church teaching" obligation for the faithful is insufferably, evilly presumptuous on MM's part.

In short, Paul, you can rest easy--you are not, in fact, a donut.

Well, lets be fair: Evangelium Vitae is not some private opinion or speech, it is (like all encyclicals) a Magisterial teaching document of the Church. It says:

It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.
In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: "If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person".
There does remain the difficult question of what is in fact sufficient, and whether fellow prisoners are included in those to be protected, etc. So it is a long way from being the 'sealed case' that MM wishes it was. On the other hand, one must admit that a DP hawk Catholic is in an awkward position. (In a final irony, my own DP position is rather similar to what I understand Barack Obama's to be: that in particularly clear and heinous cases it is necessary, but that it is not at all the sort of thing we should consider routine).

On gun control, though, MM is talking out of his hat, and pretending that he speaks for the Church.

That sounds eerily familiar. It sounds like the arguments that were made circa 2001-04 about the Iraq war.
Nobody, though, should make the mistake of thinking that Catholics should believe that the Iraq war was unjust because the Magisterium said it was as a particular judgement. (In fact the Magisterium said no such thing, but even if she had one should not believe it for that reason). That is ultramontane nonsense of the highest order.

The Iraq war was surely initiated unjustly, because the manifest facts do not conform to the Just War doctrine. But the notion that Weigel and co were wrong because they did not share in the prudential judgement of the facts as understood by the Magisterium is errant nonsense. The Magisterium herself claims no special charism, indeed expressly disclaims any special charism, in the assessment of such facts: something which must be taken into consideration in interpreting what I quoted from Evangelium Vitae above, as well.

Weigel and co were wrong because their arguments depended on premises obviously counter to manifest facts combined with a self-serving (mis)interpretation of the JWD. They weren't wrong because their opinion conflicted with the Magisterium on a particular judgement of the actual justice of the war.

"In a final irony, my own DP position is rather similar to what I understand Barack Obama's to be: that in particularly clear and heinous cases it is necessary, but that it is not at all the sort of thing we should consider routine."

Then, Zippy, you are just a little out of step with the Church. John Paul's teaching that the death penalty is only licit when there are no bloodless means available to protect society is not as vague as you are pretending. It is clear magisterial teaching. And it says nothing about how heinous the crime actually is, which is the position of Obama that you are seem to be attaching yourself to (irony indeed, I think Obama's position is abhorrent). As you yourself are fond of pointing out in other circumstances, the words speak for themselves. And, no, I am not pretending to be Peter, I am agreeing with Peter.

"It's also manifestly false to assert that personal gun ownership violates some sacred and authoritatively defined moral doctrine of the Catholic faith."

Sigh. How many times must we go over this? I said that the particular circumstances in the US mean that the common good would be best served by regulating handguns even to the point of an outright ban. There is nothing immoral about owning these weapons in a theoretical sense. And I will say it one more time: the bishops agree with me on that one!! I'm not the one out of line here.

And you, Zippy, are the one accusing me of misrepresenting other people's thoughts? This is truly the afternoon of ironies!

John Paul's teaching that the death penalty is only licit when there are no bloodless means available to protect society is not as vague as you are pretending.
I never suggested that it was a vague teaching. It isn't. What remains open is the actual facts of the matter regarding what it takes to protect society in actual particular cases.

This is precisely where your criticism of Iraq war supporters also falls apart: in your failure to recognize that the Magisterium has no special charism, indeeed disclaims any special charism, with respect to the particular facts. The problem for Iraq war supporters isn't that the Magisterium says they are wrong on the facts, it is that the facts say that they are wrong on the facts.

And you, Zippy, are the one accusing me of misrepresenting other people's thoughts? This is truly the afternoon of ironies!
I'm glad to see you beginning to adopt a quote-and-respond approach in your comments, since that means you can respond to what people actually say rather than your own strawmen. Unfortunately, in this case you misattributed someone else's words to me. Still, at least there is the beginning of an effort, for which I commend you. Baby steps.

Oops, right on the last point. I guess the mistake was me looking for you explaining why what I wrote above means I am talking through my hat on gun control. Still can't find anything beyond assertion.

On the Iraq war, I actually don't disagree with you. The reason the Iraq war was wrong is because the just war principles did not hold. In particular, there is no way to argue that it was a last resort based on the facts. In this case, the magisterium was quite well versed in the facts, even as Americans were caught in the web of lies spun by Bush and Cheney. Remember the Vatican delegation led (I believe) by Cardinal Pio Laghi that came to America to try and dissuade the administration from invading and occupying Iraq? They made two main points. First, there was no way the just war theory applied, especially as the threat was not imminent. Second, the Vatican’s sources stated that Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction, and they were pretty confident that this was the truth.

The response? The Bushies totally ignored the point on weapons of mass destruction, and instead proceeded to lecture the Vatican delegation on Michael Novak’s heterodox just war theory. The Vatican delegation left in a state of shock and disbelief. My source on this is somebody who was in the room.

So in this instance, the Vatican was actually quite on top of the facts. It was so because of its commitment to the truth. So it is too convenient to simply divorce the facts from the Church presenting these facts. I believe a similar argument can be made about what the Church has to say about gun control. Which is why the USCCB says quite clearly that its teachings are not optional concerns, and should not be treated as just another opinion. And that applies too to the judgments formed about particular facts and circumstances, for I trust the Church the interpret the facts better than pretty much everybody else who has a partisan and ideological position to defend. And the American gun ownership fetish is ideology pure and simple, liberal ideology.

So in this instance, the Vatican was actually quite on top of the facts.
Sure. But, again, the Magisterium specifically disclaims any special charism in this regard.
So it is too convenient to simply divorce the facts from the Church presenting these facts.
It is pretty clear that you are promoting something which is doctrinally false when you attempt to imply that the Magisterium has or claims any special authority as to what the facts are on the ground. This is just another spin on what I've for years been calling ultramontane moral relativism.

(In a final irony, my own DP position is rather similar to what I understand Barack Obama's to be: that in particularly clear and heinous cases it is necessary, but that it is not at all the sort of thing we should consider routine).

Why is it ironic? You're both Liberals.

And let me just add, Zippy, that portion of Evangelium Vitae is not Magisterial. It's supposed to be. That's what encyclicals are for. But instead of amplifying traditional Church teaching, JPII used the forum to promote his personalist notions on the "inviolable dignity of the human person," i.e., of murderers and rapists.

That is not the teaching of the Church. Never was. Never will be.

I'm somewhat befuddled as to how this became a discussion of capital punishment, when most of the strongest objections to MM's position, far from being left unanswered, have been left unacknowledged. How, for instance, I must understand the Roman Catholic Church to teach that, prudential circumstances considered, it is a sin for me to purchase a 9mm pistol for the purpose of protecting my family against the thousands of thugs that roam this city. And how the Supreme Court, in affirming the plain words of the document, fidelity to which each Justice swears upon Sacred Scripture, which affirms my liberty to take this step, violated the law of God and disgraced itself.

George R:

Why is it ironic? You're both Liberals.

You crack me up, George.

Paul:

I'm somewhat befuddled as to how this became a discussion of capital punishment...

It is called a 'red herring'. The more MM can steer the discussion to capital punishment, or pretty much anything else, the more people become distracted from the fact that when it comes to gun control and the teaching of the Church he is talking out of his hat.

"The more MM can steer the discussion to capital punishment, or pretty much anything else, the more people become distracted from the fact that when it comes to gun control and the teaching of the Church he is talking out of his hat."

I'm still waiting for why. All you so is say I misquote Brendon when I quote him verbatum.

"How, for instance, I must understand the Roman Catholic Church to teach that, prudential circumstances considered, it is a sin for me to purchase a 9mm pistol for the purpose of protecting my family against the thousands of thugs that roam this city."

It does not teach it, I do not say it teaches it, and I myself do not argue it. What I do argue is that the particular circumstances pertaining to the shameful levels of gun violence in the US mean the common good is best served by regulation even to the point of prohibition and the the US Catholic bishops have made similar arguments. I would go further and argue that the way you frame the debate ("me versus the criminals") is sympomatic of an individualized perspective that refuses to acknowledge the social dimension, the unity of the human race. Like others in this thread, you elevate a natural right to self defense into an entire social policy framework. For God's sake, it's not that different from Bush's "good guys versus evildoers" argument in his horribly misguided "war on terror". It is more Catholic to recognize the need to tackle the underlying problems that foment violence and terrorism, in the ommunity, in the country, and the the world. Creating a fortress against the world may protect you, but it does not to quell the chaos on the outside.

"...when it comes to gun control and the teaching of the Church he is talking out of his hat."

Minion's ignorance regarding Church teaching is not restricted to to gun control. Bishop's Conferences do not issue "teachings". They reinforce the Magisterium, promulgate the Catechism, guide and discipline their flock, but independently author "teachings"? Hardly.

Dissident Dutch bishops once authored their own "Catechism" as a response to Humanae Vitae. It served as a door-stop in the brothels of Amsterdam before joining the ash-heap of obscurity reserved for heterodoxy. Perhaps it will resurface at Vox Nova in time for their autumn ObamaFest.

Should anyone reading Minion think the US Bishops share his his strange ecclesiology, warped priorities and also downplay the preeminence of abortion as an issue, I encourage them to read the documents themselves.

"...the US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted overwhelmingly to approve its quadrennial statement offering guidance for Catholic voters, declaring abortion, cloning, and embryonic research to be "intrinsically evil" and warning that support for such acts could endanger a Catholic voter's salvation."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/11/15/omalley_draws_line_with_democrats/

Bishop's Voting Guide;
http://www.usccb.org/faithfulcitizenship/FCStatement.pdf


"It is pretty clear that you are promoting something which is doctrinally false when you attempt to imply that the Magisterium has or claims any special authority as to what the facts are on the ground."

It has no charism of authority, but its function is to always bear witness to the truth. So while it may err in certain facts and circumstances, I would argue that its claims in cases like this are more likely to be true simply because they are free from partisan and ideological taint. And that's almost impossible to find in any US debate. And in the debate at hand, the peculiar American fascination with guns is something that puzzles the rest of the world, and yet most Americans cannot get past their preconceptions in this area. The last few days have taught me that very clearly. People who are normally sane and sensible cast prudence out the window when it comes to guns. It has been eye-opening for me, and not in a good way. And with that, I bid you all goodnight.

Minion, your argument for gun control is very reasonable and has merit.

What is clearly wrong is your attempt to claim that you are merely reiterating a Church "teaching". That is false. And you have been called on it.

I think I've seen your graph before, MM, and I'm unimpressed. The most notable thing about is how much of an outlier the United States is from the otherwise very regular trend line, which indicates that there is something different about the US. A more subtle thing, but equally troubling to my mind, is the term "gun deaths," which quite deliberately conflates suicides, which make up the majority of fatal shootings in the US, with homicides. The US does not in fact have a particularly high suicide rate in comparison to other developed countries. Including suicides is a bit of rhetorical dirty pool by agenda-driven researchers. Suicide is a bad thing, but if guns caused suicide, America's rate ought to be off the charts, and it isn't. Since it is not, this calls in to question the relevance of the international comparisons on which this research is based.

As for rates of assault, rape, car theft, etc. in other countries, I think there is a conceptual problem in assuming that killing is accidental in the majority of cases, and that since guns are more lethal, having more of them turns what would otherwise be wholesome drunken beatings into killings. Sometimes, but certainly not always, and perhaps not very often. You can hit someone a little, you can even cut him a little, but you can't shoot him a little. Someone who shoots someone else intends to kill him (he probably thinks his death is more likely than it actually is based on the exaggerated firearms effects constantly shown on TV and in movies). We can not assume the same for beatings or even knifings in other countries, and then conclude that having more guns is the chief factor determining America's high murder rate.

You have a point re: Columbine, VA Tech, etc. On the other hand, such spree killings are rare, make up a vanishingly small percentage of murders, and have happened in countries with very strict gun control. Per wikipedia, the worst mass shooting ever was carried out by a South Korean policeman. Finally, the largest instances of mass murder in American history were committed with a gasoline can (Happy Land nightclub arson) and fertilizer (Oklahoma City bombing). At the risk of sounding dismissive, such killing sprees are symbolically powerful, but are a drop in the bucket. If those were the only murders in the US, this would be the safest large country in the world. Except for fetuses.

The within-US evidence seems to be all predicated on the notion that some communities with high rates of gun ownership are quite peaceful while the violence is restricted to particular areas.
This is true, is it not? Conversely, the rate of gun ownership in inner cities tends to be rather low, but nearly everyone who has one is a criminal.
But that cannot be an argument for a liberal approach to guns, for it is tantamount to ignoring the plight of the inner cities and other afflicted areas.
It's not necessarily an argument for a strict approach to guns, either.

I would argue that its claims in cases like this are more likely to be true simply because they are free from partisan and ideological taint.

Oh yeah. That's the Conference of Catholic Bishops we know and love.

What I do argue is that the particular circumstances pertaining to the shameful levels of gun violence in the US mean the common good is best served by regulation even to the point of prohibition and the the US Catholic bishops have made similar arguments.

As Kevin says, this is a reasonable enough argument, but one with which I am in firm, indeed implacable disagreement; and I am very grateful that we in this country have a constitutional amendment to prevent your view from becoming policy.

But I think what is somewhat galling to many of us is your pretense that this argument has the authority of Catholic teaching behind it.

I would go further and argue that the way you frame the debate ("me versus the criminals") is symptomatic of an individualized perspective that refuses to acknowledge the social dimension, the unity of the human race. Like others in this thread, you elevate a natural right to self defense into an entire social policy framework.

This is false. Simply because I have not brought up the social dimension, should not be construed as a refusal to acknowledge it. If you want to talk social dimension, I'm happy to do it -- thought I suspect we will run hard up against disagreement again. For instance, I would asseverate that far more important than gun availability in the constellation of causes of violence and mayhem is the staggering collapse of families in American inner cities. There you will find three or four generations in a row of people bereft of fathers who take responsibility of their existence. Or again, I would point to the coarsening of pop culture, the celebration of thugs and gangsters, and the sneering contempt for traditional morality. The social dysfunction in our cities would result in awful violence even if there were no guns at all.

(I'll note that your candidate has shown some admirable instincts on the former problem; he declares that fatherhood begins at conception, and indeed it does, and good for him for saying so. Now if we could only get him to also say that butchering an infant as he dangles out of the womb, or leaving him to die a cold, lonely, terrifying death on the operating table, is a wicked and horrifying crime . . .)

But I think what is somewhat galling to many of us is your pretense that this argument has the authority of Catholic teaching behind it.
That would definitely be galling if anyone other than MM actually believed it. MM's claims elsewhere about 'religious submission' to the putative 'teachings' of Bishops conferences are just outright false. That 'religious submission' language only applies when the College of Bishops as a whole, or the Supreme Pontiff, explicitly exercise the teaching office. Furthermore, even then it "require[s] degrees of adherence differentiated according to the mind and the will manifested; this is shown especially by the nature of the documents, by the frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or by the tenor of the verbal expression." At least, it requires that according to some fellow named Ratzinger, speaking as the head of the CDF. (I think he has been promoted since then). That doesn't mean 'otherwise, you can ignore everything a bishop or bishop's conference ever says, because they are morons'. That obviously disrespects the office. But MM's ecclesiology is way, way out in left field.

And that is when it comes to teachings on faith and morals: that is, before we even consider the fact that the Magisterium disclaims any special charism for discerning the kinds of 'facts on the ground' that MM is pushing as 'Church teaching'.

MM's whole approach is very much like the approach Weigel and company took on the Iraq war, despite his denials. Rather than arguing the merits of the case with actual Church teachings in their appropriate role, try to pretend that the Church teaches directly that there is no possible outcome other than agreement with Weigel/MM. IOW, try to argue that there are no independent facts which factor critically into the judgment, so only someone who is doctrinally in error can outright reject the conclusion. On the Iraq war, again, the problem supporters had was with the facts: and they attempted a tendentious and false reading of doctrine in order to try to dispense with that problem, to 'close out' the facts, just as MM attempts a tendentious and false ecclesiology when it comes to gun control in order to 'close out' the facts.

Despite MM's protest, for years my own writing has been oriented in the very opposite direction. I've argued many times, and on many subjects, against ultramontane moral relativism: one manifestation of which is this pernicious notion that the facts on the ground which enter into the judgment of a particular case are predetermined by the Magisterium.

As an aside to Minion, I think his argumentation suggests he is either a new arrival to the US and rightfully mystified by our gun culture, or he is writing from Europe or Canada. He sounds very much like a European Christian Democrat, which explains his incredible confusion over what actually constitutes Church teaching.

He is also largely unaware of how Vatican II was implemented here in the States, the Cromwellian razing of the altars, devotions and practices and the resultant loss of credibility in those episcopal or lay leaders preaching innovation. Those drawn by cultural assimilation have either left the Church, or are clock-watching in chanceries, nearing retirement. Hopefully he'll see Vox Nova for what it is; a tired, old ploy playing to a limited, aging audience and embrace sterner, more exciting stuff.

Kevin: you are perceptive in many ways. I grew in up Europe, and have resided in the US for many years. Although I am rather fond of it, I have many aspects of it utterly perplexing, if not downright frighting. Chief among these issues is the glorification of violence in the popular culture, which manifests in so many ways: kids playing obscenely violent computer games, teenagers listening music glorifying thugs, adults pretending that they need a big gun to protect themselves for tyrants ot martians with laser guns, and also cheering on war like the video games their sons are playing. And yes, I do describe my sensibilities as Christian Democrat-- I tell people I am an "Anto-Nationalist Christian Democrat" to see what happens!

But you are diverting to liturgical issues, and issues of Catholic culture. I don't know why, but let me tell you that I'm with you on that one. You may regard me as a "hippy dippy 1970s leftover", but I attend a Latin Mass every week, I am trying to get my parish to celebrate the extraordinary form of the Mass, and I can't get enough "smells and bells". So I'm with you on that one. But don't think the US went through this alone. But I don't know what it is relevant: why do people conflate views on politics and social policy with views on the liturgy?

Paul writes:

"For instance, I would asseverate that far more important than gun availability in the constellation of causes of violence and mayhem is the staggering collapse of families in American inner cities. There you will find three or four generations in a row of people bereft of fathers who take responsibility of their existence. Or again, I would point to the coarsening of pop culture, the celebration of thugs and gangsters, and the sneering contempt for traditional morality."

I don't disagree with any of this. I would merely add to it the effects of economic and social policies that to not attend to solidarity or the preferential aspect of the poor. Culture and economics are related, it's not an "either-or" choice. That's the false dichotomy of American politics (and yes, Obama is quite refreshing on that).

But you are wrong to assert: "The social dysfunction in our cities would result in awful violence even if there were no guns at all." As the evidence I keep referring to suggests, what the availability of guns does is turn any underlying tendency toward violence into lethal violence (see the work of Harvard's David Hemenway). And my regressional analysis, albiet crude, shows that the availability of guns is most likely to lead to death in the presence of ethnic and racial division, and inequality-- and the US stands out among comparator countries in the regard.

So, given this situation, if you hand somebody a gun, don't you think you bear some responsibility for any violence that arises? Isn't there a degree of proximity to the evil act? And isn't supporting laws for free availability of handguns entail cooperation with evil of some sort? I believe it certainly does. Zippy seems to believe that voting for a pro-abortion politician entails such cooperation, sufficient in proximity to rule out any chance of supporting this person. Is not the NRA and all who support the grossly irresonsible policies of the NRA not somehow implicated in these acts of violence? And who cares if acts like Virginia Tech are rare -- the malefactor did what he did becuase he could buy a gun easily. He could not have done this in the UK. The issue with evil acts, as we all know, is about more than headcount.

Don't even get me started on gang violence in the UK. Paul and Maximos have summed up well in recent posts my own attitude to the death of self-defense and the growth of sympathy for and refusal to control evildoers in the UK. And wouldja stop bringing up the Virginia Tech murderer as if everybody and his uncle is going to agree that that event supports the anti-gun case? From my perspective, the best thing that could have happened there would have been if someone else had had a gun and had taken that guy out while he was reloading. But all the good teachers and well-behaved boys and girls had obeyed the "gun-free zone" declaration of the school and hence lacked the most effective means of self-defense. Somehow the nanny-ist "gun-free zone" declaration made no difference to the evil perpetrator, so a lot of innocent people got gunned down like ducks in a barrel.

But no doubt you knew full well that this is how the anti-gun-control folks would respond. So why keep pushing it until you got the expected response?

Please note, all, too, that MM has no picture in his mind of manly self-defense, yes, even with (gasp) a gun. He thinks of it all (as the left does) just as "violence." To him a sheriff with a badge riding up on a white horse to defend the innocent with (gasp) a gun is just perpetrating _violence_ as do the gang members. To him the man who steps up to the plate and takes out the evildoer on a rampage is part and parcel of the same cultural trends as disgusting kids' video games and rap "music." Evil and good are not distinguished, and defense of the innocent has no glory to it. I suppose that the notion of the glory of the manly defense of the innocent--of the soldier for the right, the good cop, the sheriff in the white hat, the man who defends the women, the chivalrous knight--has been lost in Europe and is retained mostly if not only in the U.S. But not in gory videogames and rap music, for heavens' sake!

What is particularly sad is that this loss of a sense of true masculinity--gentle to the weak and helpless, kind to women and children, unyielding in defending against the evildoer--is one of the greatest causes of senseless, horrible, and evil violence in the world.

Paul Cella has talked a bit about the glory of the good soldier in some past posts.

"MM's claims elsewhere about 'religious submission' to the putative 'teachings' of Bishops conferences are just outright false."

Since Zippy, for want of any real argument on his side, is making a great deal of my supposed misquoting of other people, I cannot let this deliberate falsehood pass. As I mentioned before, I use the term "religious submission" (I think I actually used "religious assent") as it is meant in Lumen Gentium ch. 25. And by the way, when you quote Ratzinger, I laughed a little, because he is doing no more than quoting LG25 directly! I recommend the orginal source. But to repeat what I said because of your deliberate manifest mischaracterization, I only made this reference in connection to the teaching on the death penalty (only licit is no bloodless means to defend society), not gun control. And I most certainly do contend that this teaching reaches the standard of LG 25, even if not infallibly defined.

The teaching on gun control is a prudent judgment, applying a consistent ethic of life to the particular facts and circumstances of the modern day United States. This is clearly not LG 25 territory. But is also does not mean we can simply dismiss it, or give equal credence to the NRA argument. To put it bluntly, not all facts are equal. For example, on the death penalty, some Catholics may say that accept John Paul's teaching of principles, and argue that the modern penal system cannot possibly defend adequately from the criminal, necessitating the death penalty (an attack on the specific prudential judgment emanating from the principle itself). That is an opinion, but a pretty poor one. Likewise, the Weigelonians pretended to accept just war theory (the principle) but argued that the Iraq war did meet the "last resort" criterion (based on lies about WMDs and "mushroom clouds"). So when you say that the Church has no special charism to interpret the facts, I agree with you in the sense that any person endowed with reason and just as easily draw certain obvious conclusions from particular circumstances. So why listen to the Church? Because people's minds are clouded by ideological and liberal preconceptions, and the American gun fetish is one of them. So the teaching on handguns is not right "because" the US bishops say so, but it is right on its own merits, and the bishop's teaching are a handy roadmap through the ideological obstacle course of the mind.

Oh, and ultramontanism was a reaction against liberalism and nationalism, in many ways a natural course correction. If it is again attractive today, the reason is obvious.

Wit respect, Lydia, but I find some of your language (manly self-defense... true masculinity... the glory of the good soldier) more indicative of a pagan than a Christian ethos. Go back to the Church fathers, who faced these Roman attitides every day. They definitely espoused a theory of non-violence, and whether Christians could be soliders was subject to much soul-searching. As an example, St. Basil of Caesarea argued that soliders who kill in war should not be treated in the same way as those guilty of homocide. But they are not off the book either: “it is well to counsel that those whose hands are not clean only abstain from communion for three years.”

Contrast this with the pagan civic religion in the modern United States, that has annexed a good part of the evangelical movement.

Right, I get it: So pacifism or virtual pacifism is supposed to be the only true Christianity, and we aren't supposed to think of the physical defense of the innocent as an important and positive part of masculinity. You only confirm my point about where you are coming from. And though you don't know it, many of the inner-city pathologies you are worried about that function as "underlying causes" of bad violence in society are a result of exactly the loss of positive manly role models and a positive channeling of the masculine nature to the defense of goodness and innocence rather than to preying upon them.

MM:

But to repeat what I said because of your deliberate manifest mischaracterization, I only made this reference in connection to the teaching on the death penalty (only licit is no bloodless means to defend society), not gun control. And I most certainly do contend that this teaching reaches the standard of LG 25, even if not infallibly defined.
In your own thread - on the subject of gun control, not the DP - you certainly appeared to conflate the two when you said:
See Lumen Gentium 25 on religious assent. See USCCB Faithful Citizenship — guidance of Chuch leaders is not just another political opinion or policy preference among many. It is on another level entirely. Its teachings are not optional concerns that can be dismissed.
(That's why I said "claims elsewhere"). I'm glad to see you clarify the matter. You do seem to put a bunch of unrelated statements in close proximity as if they had a connection, when they don't, in addition to badly mischaracterizing the arguments of others. My main concern has been that - your mischaracterization of the arguments of others - and you masquerading your opinions as Church teaching, which they are manifestly not. Like, for example, in this very thread here, when you said specifically with reference to gun control and in response to me:
But what bothers me is the rote dismissal of a teaching because it is a "prudential judgment".
Nobody is dismissing a magisterial teaching on gun control. There is no magisterial teaching on gun control.

On this:

(an attack on the specific prudential judgment emanating from the principle itself).
I can't make any sense of that statement. A specific prudential judgement always flows from principles and particular facts. As I said two years ago:
Note to progressive ninnies: the Pope's opinion on the justice of a particular war - which depends not only on principles but on the facts on the ground - isn't any more privileged than yours, mine, or anyone else's. Note to George Weigel conservatives: the President's opinion on the justice of a particular war isn't any more privileged than yours, mine, or anyone else's.

I get the sense that you still haven't really fully 'clarified' though, MM. I mean, in your main post you say "At this stage, it is useful to see what the Church teaches on this matter. Here are some statements from the USCCB:". Here you begin to conflate "some statements from the USCCB" with "what the Church teaches". That frames the context for your later comment, admonishing to "See Lumen Gentium 25 on religious assent. See USCCB Faithful Citizenship — guidance of Chuch leaders is not just another political opinion or policy preference among many. It is on another level entirely. Its teachings are not optional concerns that can be dismissed.", followed by your comment to me in this thread, "But what bothers me is the rote dismissal of a teaching because it is a "prudential judgment". All of those comments were about gun control, not the DP.

Looks to me like you are trying to pass off your opinions as 'Church teaching'. You may be as equivocal about it as Weigel is on the Iraq war, but your game is as obvious to me as his.

Minion,
Never said you were a "hippy dippy 1970s leftover". Being able to claim the imprimatur (so to speak) of the Magisterium means too much for you. I can't say that for all of Vox Nova.

We're both in agreement; the Church is the only authority we can reliably turn to. Yet we all should be careful before we claim her mantle. She is more humble than either her friends or foes like to believe.

The Church raises up both the pacifists and warriors, knowing the world needs both. I wish we could thrive with just the former, but life in this realm apparently doesn't work that way.

Sursum corda.


Kevin,

Who on VN do you think is a "hippy dippy 1970s leftover"? Please provide examples.

I don't know about hippy dippy's, but at least one Vox Nova contributor says that subsidiarity justifies the pro-choice position. I don't know anything about the supply of tie-die at Vox Nova, but moral sanity is scarce.

Henry,
Are they singing Kumbaya and wearing bell-bottoms? Not likely, but commentators there, just like the dissidents that hijacked the Council, are remaking the Church in their own image. No one more obviously so than Gerald Campbell, who has managed to find penumbra emanating within the Church's understanding of Solidarity, a justification for abortion. Ongoing commentary there scandalously and implores us to elevate an apparatchik for the culture of death to the Presidency. We've seen this kind of shameless cultural conformity before and know it leads to Nowhere. Whether, those taking the ill-fated journey do so with, or without flowers in their hair, is not all that important.

Once agaid: Subsidiarity when combined with the present American situation does end up pro-abortion. Gerald has pointed out more than once his aim is to work for the end of abortion when laws made for that end can also work. It would do well to not misrepresent his point.

So once again-- show evidence, instead of claims. Show evidence, not lies. Misrepresentation, or your inability to understand someone's reasoning, does not make them a "hippy" or anything else.

Sometimes one needs to understand a phenomenologicl description of the situation does not mean "preference." It explains the situation and what must be worked with. Nothing else.

Subsidiarity when combined with the present American situation does end up pro-abortion.

The actual word was 'justifies', not 'end up'. But in either case the statement, the failure to retract it, the defense of it by other VN contributors (namely you Henry), and the deafening silence of the remaining contributors, speaks loudly for the state of moral thought at Vox Nova.

Show evidence, not lies.

You are an odd bird, Henry, to claim that it is a lie and not evidence when I link to what the man actually said. Do you think you are fooling anyone but yourself?

Zippy

You have shown one quote out of the whole context of the conversation he has been having. The discussion is about the practical reality of the American situation as it now exists. We know how easy it is to take quotes of the Bible, and say "see, it's clear" when things are not so clear. Charitable reading is always a necessary requirement in dialogue - and one which understands the conditions being discussed. It's all about the American situation. And he has more than once made it clear -- abortion is an intrinsic evil, and he is working for its elimination in society, and the time we can actually enforce laws against abortion.

Sad that you have to stoop that low to twist someone's point of view.

Henry: I've shown the only conversation I've ever had with the guy. He was in the conversation, and could have said whatever he chose to say. That isn't 'twisting' anything.

Charitable reading is always a necessary requirement in dialogue.

A charitable reading of 'subsidiarity justifies the pro-choice position' is 'dude, you need to get some help'.

No, Zippy. Even when you entered the conversation, it was on the whole American situation. Text without context is pretext -- as is quite clear. He even said he affirmed the JPII quote you gave! You ignore whatever facts are necessary to create a misleading representation of someone else.

Go read the Ten Commandments. You might learn something.

Keep digging, Henry. (Well, I'd really rather you didn't, for your own sake).

"Subsidiarity when combined with the present American situation does end up pro-abortion."

On a day when the Church raises her first Roman martyrs to the altars, your "phenomenologicl description" to justify collaborating with contemporary Nero's seems doubly obscene.

It must in any case be clearly understood that whatever may be laid down by civil law in this matter, man can never obey a law which is in itself immoral, and such is the case of a law which would admit in principle the liceity of abortion. Nor can he take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it.
I leave it up to the reader to judge whether Vox Nova takes part in a propaganda campaign for such laws.

Zippy:

I find it quite ironic that you accuse me of being like Weigel and co. when argument you are making fits rather neatly with the whole approach of Richard John Neuhaus: since the bishops have no special charism when it comes to discerning facts and circumstances, they just should shut the hell up. Of course, Neuhaus says this because he has an affinity for unjust war, and the bishops' position makes him uncomfortable. You, though, don't seem to pick and choose (your woolly interpretation of the death penalty teaching, aligning yourself with Obama of all people, is a notable exception). No, your tendencies are different: you promote a rigidity that goes well beyond the application of moral theology to practica circumstances supported by the Church. For example, when you argue that Catholics should lean toward absention in voting, when the bishops say otherwise, you are tacitly proclaiming your own understanding to be superior to theirs. Who's claiming the throne of Peter now?

...since the bishops have no special charism when it comes to discerning facts and circumstances, they just should shut the hell up.
It goes without saying that setting this up as the alternative to your false ecclesiology is a terrible straw man and a false dichotomy. But I'll say it anyway.

Minion, it's time to choose; the Teachings of the Catholic Church or the works of Karlson and Campbell. Mater et Magistra, or the obscure source for their brazen, detestable distortions. You can't have both.

By the way, a reader on VFR had a great line apropos of this very type of discussion: The Bible is not a suicide pact.

This would seem to largely ignore (and, if anything, distort) the manner in which the Apostles (as well as many of the Faithful of the early church) who lived the Gospel Teachings of Christ to the very extent of giving up their very lives to Christ and His Church by courageously embracing martyrdom.

In short, I don't find in the lives of the martyrs of the early church (and, notably, the Apostles themselves) a prefigurement of the modern-day 'RAMBO', for heavens sake!

Brutally persecuted, tortured, imprisoned and even murdered -- yes; fighting back by means of such retaliation -- no.

While it may be reasonable to argue the right to bear arms as an American right; let's not try and make this an historic virtue of the Christian Faith.

There is a major confusion here between suffering martyrdom for one's faith at the hands of the state or quasi-state officials and refusing to defend oneself and those dependent on oneself against immediate and private violence. The latter question is simply not addressed in the New Testament. One might take the example of David in the OT to be relevant, and David did indeed praise God who taught his hands to war and his fingers to fight. But frankly, I'm not terribly interested in proof-texting on this issue. I cannot understand why anyone--least of all a Catholic--should take the Bible to be the Big Book On Everything. I don't know why I, as a Protestant, should be pointing this out to people who supposedly taught the Protestants to value Natural Law. But as St. Paul said in another context, doth not nature herself teach you that a man has a responsibility to defend the innocent? I suppose I might try asking whether you would actually consider it morally wrong and a failure to follow the example of the Apostles if a murderous rapist were dragging away a beloved dependent of your own--a small daughter or wife, say--for you to step forward and fight him in her defense. Would you? Or would it suddenly at that point become clear to you that the Apostles' martyrdom really is not relevant to the case?

The sense in which this has been a Christian virtue is two-fold: First, Christianity has been a sociological underpinning of people's perception of the Natural Law. Put bluntly, people raised as Christians have historically tended to understand common sense things such as that there is a difference between innocence and guilt, that women are different from men, and so forth. Second, that understanding of the natural law has issued over the years in the understanding that Christian men can and should fight in defense of good things, such as Christianity and Christendom. I had meant to go and find (but don't have time now) the links several of Paul Cella's excellent historical pieces on this topic. One that I re-read recently was called "The Victory of September 11."

Ironically, and for what it's worth, it was in the Middle Ages the people who were extreme Protestants--the Lollards, for example--who were pacifists.

Ironically, and for what it's worth, it was in the Middle Ages the people who were extreme Protestants--the Lollards, for example--who were pacifists.

And not only this - it has always been considered heretical to require of all Christians, without exception, strict adherence to the evangelical counsels, which, in their fullness, are eschatological precepts imposed only upon monastics. The reasons for this, I should think, are manifest.

First, Christianity has been a sociological underpinning of people's perception of the Natural Law.
The same is true for understanding nature more generally, for that matter.

"As for WWwW, I am a contributor there but I only speak for myself. It is a rather eclectic group, and it has never been clear why they put up with me, but the purpose of that blog is different from my purpose here."

I would say the same about VN, Zippy. I find it amusing that you apply differing standards in your own backyward.

It isn't a different standard - on so many really obvious levels, which I leave to you as an exercise.

I suppose I might try asking whether you would actually consider it morally wrong and a failure to follow the example of the Apostles if a murderous rapist were dragging away a beloved dependent of your own--a small daughter or wife, say--for you to step forward and fight him in her defense.

When the early Christian women of various Christian families were dragged from their homes, beaten, raped and ultimately murdered; I've yet to find an account of members of the immediate Christian family or the early Christian community, for that matter, rising up against these heinous injustices and (justly) retaliating against these evil monsters sanctioned by the pagan powers that ruled the lands.

If there were indeed cases where the latter did occur, I doubt that history would recall a past of the Christian Faithful wherein they gave their very lives to Christ even unto persecution, torture and then, finally, death; instead, we might recall a past more reminiscent of perhaps, say, 'Spartacus' wherein you had early Christians who, rather than they and their families and friends suffer such horrendous and unjust violent acts as that of rape, torture, and death; rose up against their oppressors until they were vindicated and Christianity ultimately prevailed.

Is that an answer to the question? Are you perhaps confusing revolution against the government with defense against an immediate act of violence? And are you in fact intending to say that if some gangland thug climbs into your window and grabs your wife or child, you would consider it _morally wrong_ and _contrary to your Christian profession_ for you even to hit the guy in the nose? Or is hitting in the nose okay but not hitting with an object? Are both of those allowed but not shooting him if you happen to have a gun? Are you actually saying that you are morally obligated, because you are a Christian, to offer no physical defense whatever of those dependent on you in that situation?

Lydia:

I believe you are conflating 2 things: the idea of self-defense as a morally acceptable act vs. the standard of Christian Living evident in the lives of the Apostles and the early Christian church.

The point of my comments was more towards addressing the latter; that is, if the early Christians believed (and, more importantly, if the Apostles so taught) that they were to retaliate against such unjust acts, then the kind of Christian witness that has been so characteristic of the early Christian Faithful would not be.

We would find, instead, various and prevalent stories of how the early Christian communities bravely defended themselves, their families and loved ones, against the cruel and wicked injustices done to them by the evil forces of the pagan empire that came to persecute, pillage, rape and ultimately kill members of the Christian family.

Yet, I cannot find even one piece of evidence of such an incident of self-defense ever occuring amongst the early Christians -- in spite of the violence done to them and members of their families.

Now, that doesn't mean that self-defense should be deemed immoral -- of course, not!

But to subscribe to the idea that this is, in fact, an historic Christian ideal would alone be contradicted not only by the absence of such evidence for this but also by the well-known history of the early Christians that prove the contrary.

When the early Christian women of various Christian families were dragged from their homes, beaten, raped and ultimately murdered; I've yet to find an account of members of the immediate Christian family or the early Christian community, for that matter, rising up against these heinous injustices and (justly) retaliating against these evil monsters sanctioned by the pagan powers that ruled the lands.

There is a difference between persecution for your faith, and being subjected to violence "just because." In the latter case, a Christian has every right to self-defense and defense of his family and friends. Furthermore, it is not prudent to honor your wife's memory by giving a mob of heathens justification in their minds to kill your wife's family.

That said, if you are able to do so without putting your family at risk, it is not incompatible with the gospel to put to death a man or men who you have caught raping your wife. The penalty for that has not changed in the new covenant, and a man has always had the right to punish other men who harm his wife.

But to subscribe to the idea that this is, in fact, an historic Christian ideal would alone be contradicted not only by the absence of such evidence for this but also by the well-known history of the early Christians that prove the contrary.

It may not be the ideal, but it is permissible. Let's not forget that the early Christians had a more pressing motivation for laying down their lives: it saved lives. In that respect, I think it should be seen as a pragmatic move, not a move that should be emulated by Christians who have no reason to fear that their permissible use of self-defense will cause others to die by the hands of corrupt agents of the state.

I think that's a pretty confused argument (in part) from silence, Aristocles. We actually have no evidence whatsoever that Christians considered it part of their code of conduct not to defend themselves against, for example, an attack by thieves on the road. A wealthy slave-owner (and their were such in the early Christian church) would often have body-guards among the servants of his own household, and there is no reason to think that early Christians were told simply to leave themselves or even their possessions open to any evil person who happened to come by. The Apostle Paul availed himself of the whole might of the Romans--a fairly hefty company was sent with him--to defend him against possibly being waylaid by his Jewish accusers. He deliberately solicited such physical protection by having a boy who brought word of the plot taken to the centurion.

There simply is no evidence to bolster the idea that some sort of Christian ideal of conduct is that the wicked must be allowed to rampage about doing as they will to the innocent across the board.

By the way, I shd. also add that retaliation is an entirely different thing from defense of the innocent in the immediate case where they are under attack.

There simply is no evidence to bolster the idea that some sort of Christian ideal of conduct is that the wicked must be allowed to rampage about doing as they will to the innocent across the board.

That is NOT what I was saying at all and I would request that you kindly refrain from putting such words in my mouth.

I was more so expressing the fact that the early Christians, like the Apostles themselves, rather than retaliating against such depraved and evil people followed the command of the Lord in "turning the other cheek".

I just don't know why such an idea has become so abhorrent to the modern Christian!

In fact, if anybody were to survey the very lives of the saints all throughout history beginning with those of the early Christian church, including the Apostles and those that came after them; the genuine Christian ideal of "turning the other cheek" has remained a consistent virtue practiced by the devout Christian Faithful.

Well, but if that's putting words into your mouth, then...

Is the idea that only non-Christians are allowed to play the role of defenders of the innocent? That seems pretty odd, if we don't believe that the wicked have to be allowed to rampage about, and we don't think it's wrong to defend the innocent. Is the idea that Christians expect the non-Christians to do the "dirty work," as it were, of defending them (the Christians) from evildoers so that the Christians can sit about talking about the evils of violence? I'm sure you _don't_ think that. Well, okay, then...

And as for "retaliating," as a great man once said, there you go again. "Retaliating" has the connotation of waiting until after the whole thing is long over and then going out on your own to find the bad guy and punish him, which of course really _does_ raise the issue of vigilantism. But although anti-gun people talk as if every man who defends himself or his family against a present attack is a "vigilante" and is doing something wrong, in fact that has never been the position in law or in moral theory, either.

I'm sorry to have to say, Aristocles, that you just don't seem to have a very clear or definite position, which makes it a bit hard to know how to reason with you. You say you are _not_ saying that self-defense is immoral. You say you are _not_ saying that the Christian ideal is that everyone in a society should become pacifists and then simply allow the wicked to come in and rampage over their society unchecked. So exactly what's the beef? Or where's the beef? If a Christian man's family is being attacked and he defends them successfully, is the idea that we're all supposed to sort of feel bad about this, because even though it wasn't _wrong_, it violated a Christian ideal? So should he feel guilty for defending his family, because the ideal would have been for him to sit by and do nothing? Or what, exactly?

You remember when that informal security guard lady in a Colorado church gunned down the gunman who was rampaging about (literally) shooting people in the parking lot and had just come into the church? What, exactly, is your position on that? Was it unChristian for the church even to allow there to be armed patrolers of their premises? (She was a member of the church and a Christian herself.) Was it unChristian for her to act as she did? Apparently you aren't going to say it was _wrong_, but apparently you want to have some in-between category where she and the rest of us are supposed to sort of hang our heads because she violated a Christian ideal and the church didn't "turn the other cheek" by letting the guy go on his way with his gun through the halls until he stopped of his own accord or, maybe, the police got there. (What if the policemen were Christians? Or are they not supposed to be?)

Whereas to my mind, it is perfectly legitimate and not unChristian for us all to say the things that, in fact, I heard plenty of people say. "Phew!" "Good going!" "Annie get your gun!" "Let's hear it for the little lady with the gun!" And if one believes in praying for souls, it's not at all inconsistent to pray for the soul of the perpetrator while you're at it. But he had to be stopped, and it is absolutely fine to be very glad that earthly justice was done and the innocent preserved by the fast and excellent action of this young lady. She had been fasting to seek God's will for a day or so before that, by the way. I don't know if that has any relevance to the case.

Lydia:

What is so hard to grasp here?

1. I am not saying that self-defense is immoral; in fact, I have said it becomes a necessity in defending the innocent.

2. What the early Christians learned from the Apostles became manifest in how they lived out their lives, which was largely consistent with what the Lord taught re: "turning the other cheek".

Now, to make things clearer for you; let me say this: would they have been wrong had they acted out in self-defense against those who came to persecute them to the extent of rape, torture and ultimately death?

Of course not!

However, the accounts of their lives give evidence of their deliberately living out the Gospels and following the command of Our Lord in "turning the other cheek".

In that respect, are you then claiming that these saints (since time immemorial from the days of the early church up to even more recent times -- in the Catholic's case, perhaps Maria Goretti serves as a good example) should be looked upon as merely detestable remnants of a past where primitive Christians simply allowed themselves to be walked all over as a sort of proverbial doormat?

Really, I just can't believe that for some reason (perhaps due to the pride and arrogance of this age?) that the Christian ideal of "turning the other cheek" -- once cherished as traditional Christian virtue -- has all of a sudden not only become a somehow forgotten aspect of the devout Christian but, what's worse, in the eyes of the modern Christian, I dare say, is but a repugnant feature of that long-forgotten, simple-minded early Christian society whose lives, I guess, should not hold any relevance whatsoever to the more sophisticated modern-day Christian; for though we do not have the benefit, as they did then, of having the Apostles as direct teachers of the Faith -- we have something 100x better: a superbly advanced Christendom who intelligence and knowledge are without comparison!

I'm not saying that anyone is a detestable remnant of anything. There are so many different possibilities here that it's hard to know even where to start. For one thing, where we are talking about government power, we can easily be talking about irresistable power, and power in the form of immediate arrest without violence, where the hope is that perhaps one may later be released. If a bunch of cops come to arrest someone, it may be worse than pointless to resist with force, whereas if one bad guy comes to your house, it may be very much full of point to resist him. Another matter is the difference between refusing to defend _oneself_ and refusing to defend an innocent person committed to one's charge. A monk has no children, and it is one thing for a monk to refuse to fight the Vikings (for example) who come to loot his monastery and kill him and quite another for a farmer to refuse to fight the Vikings who come to murder his family. I don't think it's at all possible for you to tell that there were, in fact, adult males who, in the name of "turning the other cheek," refused to resist _resistable_ force against them, in the form of an immediate physical attack, where physical resistance could have saved another innocent person who depended on that adult male and had a natural claim on that adult male for defense. Frankly, I do think that for an able-bodied adult male to refuse to do exactly that in exactly those circumstances would in fact be wrong, and actually none of the extremely general things you are saying about the meekness of early Christians in the face of persecution go to show that they thus refused to defend their innocent dependents under such circumstances.

Moreover, if the refusal of defense of self and others is _admirable_ and is an _ideal_ of Christianity, as you seem still to be implying, then it actually is a duty to try to live up to that ideal. You really cannot have it both ways. You cannot simultaneously say that absolute pacifistic non-resistance to violence against oneself and others is a Christian ideal and also that one need not aim for that ideal. If that's the ideal, then the church in Colorado _should not_ have had an armed security guard. Having a security guard is going in the opposite direction of trying to live up to an ideal of non-resistance to violent physical attack.

But you didn't answer what I asked about the Colorado church.

Interesting that Henry shows up over here to continue to dissemble on Gerald's behalf.

For the record, here's where the problem with Vox Nova (and its pretense of being Catholic) comes from:

1. In this thread [http://vox-nova.com/2008/04/29/deal-hudson-and-deacon-sambi/], Gerald Campbell (a Vox Nova blogger) said in regards to abortion, "The better means should be decided at the level of the women, the doctor, and the pastor. This is subsidiarity."

He then followed that up with a defense of government subsidization of abortion: "Yes, because there is an economic factor involved when a women, her doctor, and her pastor make a their decision. The question here is one of equity for poor people. People should have equity in such choices. But this is not a program to promote abortion. That is not its intent."

2. I then made the obvious point that no one talks about "equity" in funding anything unless they view it as good. (For example, people speak of equity in helping the poor buy healthcare, not heroin).

3. Gerald responded to me, "You miss the point. No one is demanding that any individual use appropriated monies to get an abortion. The money is simply available. The choice is still the mother, the doctor, and the pastor. Subsidiarity."

4. I also made the obvious point that "referring to 'subsidiarity' here is a misuse of language and an perversion of Catholic doctrine."

5. Another Vox Nova blogger -- Politicraticus, who purports to be a consistent Catholic -- then joined the fray, not to disagree with the notion that abortion is a public good to be funded on an equitable basis, nor to disagree with the notion that subsidiarity means leaving the choice with the woman. No, he posted just to offer an empty sneer in my direction:

"I’m not sure you understand 'subsidiarity' much less are in position to claim perversian of the principle. Your assertions on doctrine and Gerald’s efforts are baseless, and I think I am not the only one here who outright dismisses your points on account of them."

That was it. No further explanation. No arguments. (Typical behavior on his part, though.)

6. Gerald later confirmed his belief in this unique conception of subsidiarity. In this comment, I had said that subsidiarity doesn't "justify the pro-choice position." Gerald specifically quoted me, and then responded, "It very clearly does."

Contrary to Henry Karlson's dissembling here, Gerald wasn't making any sort of factual prediction about the effects of subsidiarity. He was misusing subsidiarity as if it provided normative justification for being pro-choice.

Notably, some of the other Catholics at Vox Nova -- such as Morning's Minion and Michael Iafrate -- refuse to take a position on Gerald Campbell's ideas, notwithstanding their readiness to condemn their political enemies for supposedly contradicting Catholic teachings of much less weight and standing.

Most of these guys are proving to be rank hypocrites. The intellectual rot runs deep. Or else Gerald Campbell has a bunch of incriminating photos on somebody!


SB: just reading your post and relying upon my memory--

He was misusing subsidiarity as if it provided normative justification for being pro-choice.

I think it would be more accurate to say that he is misuing subsidiarity to argue that it is illicit for the government to regulate or prohibit abortion, because the decision of whether it should be employed or not should be left to the individual. So he misunderstands both subsidiarity and the role of government (or law).

In later developments, MM at least is now also adopting the position that it is licit to be pro-choice, as long as one has the goal of reducing the number of abortions (though he states that he does not hold that position himself). He pits a cherry-picked quote from Abp Chaput in some random interview against the body of Magisterial statements by the Pope and the CDF. Pay no attention to the perverse ecclesiology behind the curtain.

"The better means should be decided at the level of the women [sic], the doctor, and the pastor. This is subsidiarity."

What that says it that a Catholic moral or social doctrine can be used to justify killing babies. God almighty. I already told you Zippy: they don't care about the babies over at that place.

I'm glad you did the work to bring this to our attention, SB.

In later developments, MM at least is now also adopting the position that it is licit to be pro-choice, as long as one has the goal of reducing the number of abortions (though he states that he does not hold that position himself). He pits a cherry-picked quote from Abp Chaput in some random interview against the body of Magisterial statements by the Pope and the CDF. Pay no attention to the perverse ecclesiology behind the curtain.
And he has the nerve to lecture us on our sick fascination with/tolerance of guns? That's rich. At least guns have moral uses, and not even the most extreme advocates of civilian gun ownership (no, I don't mean the NRA) are pro-choice on murder. Guns should be illegal, even though the vast majority are employed for target shooting, hunting, and self defense, because some of their owners will use them to kill people unlawfully, but abortion should be legal, even though the Magisterium defines it as always and everywhere a grave evil, on the basis of an incredibly strained interpretation of subsidiarity. But he's not actually in favor of abortion, oh no. Look, in the tradition of pro-choice Catholics Andrew Cuomo and John Kerry, he makes a very long face as he discusses it. As the kids say, LOL.

So it is as I suspected, namely, that responsibility for the commission of grave evils, and the duty of resisting them, is essentially offloaded onto the generality of society: it is incumbent upon us to incentivize correct moral behaviours, and notwithstanding the fact that personal moral responsibility cannot be obviated, we will be indicted for each occurrence of those evils - for when they occur, it will be, in large measure, because we didn't proffer the proper incentives. And we all know what those incentives are. That malefactor who conducted a home invasion and slaughtered a family only perpetrated that crime because he was poor and aggrieved over unspecified injustices and imbalances in our society, and the victims ought never have possessed firearms for self-defense, because that would be reflective of a "Wild West" and "Individualist" mentality, and would derogate from the responsibility to prevent such crimes collectively, via the incentives. And if those incentives were insufficient, then that constitutes a collective failure in which the victims were complicit. Likewise with abortion: the woman who hired a "physician" to butcher her unborn child was merely responding to social incentives, which, given the outcome, must have been insufficient, in which case we are responsible for the abortion - which must remain a viable, legal option, the better to attest to our failure to fulfill our responsibilities. Subsidiarity doesn't mean that social responsibilities, political, economic, and other, should be discharged by the smallest social formations capable of realizing the goods towards which those duties are oriented; no, it means that we collectively participate in the evils that the evil do, that we, at a minimum, cooperate materially in their commission, and probably deserve the outcomes.

...and the victims ought never have possessed firearms for self-defense, because that would be reflective of a "Wild West" and "Individualist" mentality...

And don't forget, Maximos, to add "...and would be reflective of a pagan rather than a Christian mentality, as the victims owning firearms would be setting themselves up to do something other than turning the other cheek to the home invader who comes to slaughter them and hence would not be manifesting an attempt to live up to an ideal of Christian social behavior..."

Quite right; I ought to have added that set of aspersions.

Nevertheless, I've never once seen a demonstration of the logical relationship between collective responsibility - which, like Zippy, I accept, though probably under forms radically other than those MM would espouse - and the proscription of self defense. Is this one of those left-of-centre beliefs that requires the super-secret lefty decoder ring in order to interpret? - Because I discern no incompatibility between the versions of each that I espouse.

And don't forget, Maximos, to add "...and would be reflective of a pagan rather than a Christian mentality, as the victims owning firearms would be setting themselves up to do something other than turning the other cheek to the home invader who comes to slaughter them and hence would not be manifesting an attempt to live up to an ideal of Christian social behavior..."

Oh, please, Lydia!

Even after my having explained quite clearly that:

1) I am not saying that self-defense is immoral; in fact, I have said it becomes a necessity in defending the innocent
2) If the early Christians chose to defend themselves, I would have considered that morally acceptable

However, the fact that you continue to deliberately misrepresent my views and maliciously indulge in such subreptions in an attempt to denigrate the diachronic consensus of "turning the other cheek" evident in the lives of the saints all throughout history ranging from St. Perpetua to more recent times like St. Maria Goretti, speaks volumes of a distorted view that not only looks down on Christianity's past and the great heroes of the Faith who truly lived out the Gospels but, worse, seeks to deride them for doing so!

And I've told you, Aristocles, that you can't have it both ways. If you don't mean the things you get so annoyed about, then why bring up the "turn the other cheek" doctrine in this context at all? Either it's relevant to the contexts in which people actually do want to own guns for home defense (or church defense, in the Colorado case), or it isn't. If it isn't, then what are you talking about when you try to bring it up in this context to denigrate what _you_ call the "Rambo" approach of those of us who laud and encourage self-defense? If it is, indeed, a Christian ideal for people to refuse to defend themselves and their families against private violence--as your repeated invocation of [your interpretation of] church history seems to imply--then why is it not the responsibility of Christians to try to live up to that ideal? And why would this not forbid them from having a gun in the house to defend against an invader who was out to slaughter them?

I'm not distorting your words. I'm trying to show you that they have to have some sort of logical implications or you wouldn't even be saying them here, on this topic, in this thread.

Lydia,

Allow me to ask you: are rich Christians who don't sell all they have and give the proceeds to the poor -- are these people doing something immoral?

Yet, the Lord had taught such a notion in the Gospel when it came to the rich man.

My view on the matter is that folks have a choice to live out the Gospel to its fullest meaning, such as St. Francis did when he followed exactly the Scriptures in this context.

However, how about those who do not do so likewise?

Are you saying, then, that these folks are doing something immoral by not following Christ to this extent as did St. Francis of Assisi?

I should hope not!


That is what I have been trying to express to you with respect to our discussion.

Yes, people have the right to defend themselves and, in fact, it becomes a necessity in case of the innocent.

However, this does not negate the fact that there have been those saints throughout history who chose not to do so when it came to themselves and, instead, "turned the other cheek".

Are you, then, claiming that these people (as St. Felicity and Perpetua and, more recently, St. Maria Goretti) were actually awful for having actually practiced the sort of "turning the other cheek" taught by Christ in the Gospels?

It is for this very fact -- the fact that they lived out Scripture to this extent -- that makes these individuals heroic Christian saints in the first place!

But, as to the others who cannot do likewise, I should say that not being able to live the Gospels out to this extent doesn't necessarily make them awful persons -- for goodness sakes -- it doesn't even make them immoral!

God calls each with respect to their own capacity!

I notice your distinction w.r.t. oneself and other people. I don't think a father and the head of a family has the right to decide to "turn the other cheek" on behalf of those dependent on him where he has a plausibly effective physical defense of those people against immediate or imminent violence. You seem to go back and forth as to whether you agree with this statement or not. I also think you continue not to distinguish between resisting _arrest_ by overwhelming force of governmental powers and resisting _attack_. I really don't think we have any reason either from tradition or from Scripture to think that the following is admirable and a true "living out of Christianity" or that the rest of us should feel like we're not "living up to" something if we do not follow this pattern:

a) a male, able-bodied, adult
b) is present when a physical attack
c) is made by private persons
d) upon innocent people
e) who have a claim upon him for defense
f) and who are unable effectively to defend themselves
g) where he could defend them with some chance of saving them from immediate violence,
h) but he deliberately refrains from trying to defend them.

Please remember, Aristocles, how this started. Brendon made the extremely sensible statement, very similar to what I am saying now, that

My entire argument is based upon the existence of particular, existing relationships between people, the very relationships that make someone our neighbor.

To this, you thought it relevant to reply

When Jesus taught "Turn the Other Cheek", he meant Dirty Harry's "Go Ahead -- Make My Day"!

Why does this make it sound like you're _not_ in favor of people's defending the innocent around them? Why does this make it seem that I've _not_ been putting any words in your mouth at all? Why does this make it seem like you think that "turn the other cheek" means that Brendon was _wrong_ about existing relationships between people and the responsibilities these place upon the strong to defend the weak? Now, you want to sound far more moderate: "Everyone in the station to which he is called" and the like. Well, presumably, Brendon was saying that the men are called to defend the women and children who depend on them from imminent attack. Is that, or is it not, somehow negated by the call to "turn the other cheek," in your opinion? And if it isn't, then perhaps you shouldn't have gotten so quick with the proof-text quotes with Brendon back there at the outset, nor even (as you did) with your quick negative reaction to my line (cribbed from a VFR reader) that "the Bible is not a suicide pact." So the Bible _is_ a suicide pact? I mean, I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound the least tiny bit moderate.

And you still haven't said whether the Colorado church was falling short of a Christian ideal by having an armed guard, or whether the rest of us are allowed to think it highly satisfactory that justice was done and that she succeeded in taking the bad guy out. There is still this very strong whiff of the idea that we're all being "Rambos" (which is presumably bad) if we cheer for her, as though we need a long face on that one as a moral disinfectant.

Thanks, I'd rather remain honest and un-disinfected. God can deal with the fellow's soul.

On turning the other cheek, I offer the following passage from St. Thomas Aquinas' commentary on the Gospel of John XVIII, 22-3 ("And when he had said these things, one of the servants standing by, gave Jesus a blow, saying: Answerest thou the high priest so? Jesus answered him: If I have spoken evil, give testimony of the evil; but if well, why strikest thou me?"):

Holy Scripture must be understood according to all that Christ and the saints have kept. Christ did not offer His other cheek, nor Paul either (Acts XVI, 22ff). Thus it is not to be understood that Christ has commanded everyone to literally offer the physical other cheek to he that strikes someone; but this ought to be understood as preparation of the soul, that if it will be necessary, one ought therefore to be disposed to not be disturbed in soul facing a beating, but let one be prepared for the like and to put up with more besides. And this the Lord kept, whereby He offered his body at the fit time. So therefore this action of the Lord is useful for our instruction.[1]

The translation is my own and rather rough, but if you wish you can check the Latin original in the footnote and translate it yourself. Make of the passage what you will. Catholics, of course, hold St. Thomas in rather high esteem, an esteem supported by a number of Papal statements and his position as Doctor Communis. But all Christians, Catholic and non-Catholic, can judge the argument on its merits and make if it what they will.

And that is all I really have to say on the topic.

[1] Super Evangelium S. Ioannis, cap. 18, l. 4: "Sic sacra Scriptura intelligenda est secundum quod Christus et alii sancti servaverunt. Christus autem non praebuit isti aliam maxillam: nec Paulus, Act. XVI, 22 ss. Unde non est intelligendum quod Christus mandasset quod praeberent maxillam aliam corporalem ad litteram ei qui percutit unam; sed hoc debet intelligi quantum ad praeparationem animi, quod si necesse fuerit, ita debet esse dispositus ut non turbetur animo contra percutientem, sed paratus sit simile et etiam amplius sustinere. Et hoc dominus servavit, qui corpus suum praebuit occisioni. Sic ergo excusatio domini utilis fuit ad nostram instructionem."

Self-defense and "turning the other cheek" are compatible obligations, yet it appears the latter is the harder one to fulfill.

Kevin, that sounds plausible, and yet I'm not sure it's always true (that turning the other cheek is harder than self-defense). There is especially a question as to how easy it is when we're talking about defense of others. We've talked in another thread about the tendency to stand around, be paralyzed, and "not get involved," even when someone is beating someone else up before your eyes. Or take the Colorado guard. I'm a "safety for me first" kind of person, and I would probably not have wanted, in my heart of hearts, for myself or for someone I loved (a husband, say) to be in the position of that security guard--walking about in the lobby of a church, when an armed attack was plausible because of other events in a nearby city, armed and ready to try to stop a crazy bad guy who might come along trying to gun everybody down. Then there are all the strange stupidities one hears of where someone doesn't do the obviously prudent thing, for fear of "hurting somebody," and opts instead to try to talk to evil people bent on mayhem. For example: In a Detroit suburb not long ago, a group of 20 or 30 black "youths" went on a spree of beating random strangers with baseball bats,etc.. One young couple was driving along a road when this mob strung out across the road ahead of them. The man, driving, first tried to get around, and then, when the mob blocked him, he _got out of the car_ to ask them what was up! How stupid can you get? My mother always taught me, "If you're in a car, the car is a potential weapon. If some bad guy is standing in front of you, trying to force you to get out of the car, run him down." But this guy didn't want to _hurt_ anybody, right? So he got very badly beaten before his wife's eyes and could easily have been killed.

We have been trained in the West to be nice to everybody, and to my mind this often paralyzes the normal, common sense instinct for normal self-preservation and even defense of others to such an extent that, frankly, we've become a nation of wimps, and it's in one strange sense easier, certainly more instinctive, for many of our white-collar-class guys to try to reason everything out, or not to get involved, than to engage in normal defensive actions. If "turn the other cheek" can be brought to bear in such a guy's mind (if he's a Christian) to justify such behavior, it will only strengthen it.

Wikipedia has a thorough article about the multiple meanings of turning the other cheek. In the eye for an eye link, they also discuss the interpretation that it was meant as a call to go beyond and above the Hebrew law of lex talonis. The admonition Jesus gives to Peter, "...for all who take the sword will perish by the sword" is the verse that applies most directly to defense of the innocent.

the Bible is not a suicide pact

Probably not, but the statistics show that access to a gun is an invitation to suicide. The risk of suicide in a home with a gun is five times greater than a home without. To give some perspective, suicide accounts for about half of all firearm deaths. A gun in the home is eleven times more likely to be used in an attempted suicide than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.

Lydia,
What you are talking about; "to stand around, be paralyzed, and "not get involved," even when someone is beating someone else up before your eyes" is not Christian witness. It's the moral disarmament that follows de-Christianization. Cowardice is a parody of the self-sacrifice of martyrdom. Courage is required to quietly suffer injury and accept the lesser slights found in everyday life.

Our culture is saturated in violence and sick onto death. I'm convinced it's renewal lies in heroic acts of self-denial. A flowering of Christian life will produce the spiritual Wisdom necessary to balancing the natural virtue of self-preservation with the supernatural one of self-sacrifice.

Probably not, but the statistics show that access to a gun is an invitation to suicide. The risk of suicide in a home with a gun is five times greater than a home without. To give some perspective, suicide accounts for about half of all firearm deaths. A gun in the home is eleven times more likely to be used in an attempted suicide than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.

I'm curious. How does one easily survive an "attempted suicide by firearm?" If you place any weapon that's a .38 or higher in caliber to your neck or head and pull the trigger, the damage it will do is almost invariably going to be fatal.

Did you know that most of the "children" killed firearms every year are in fact gangbangers?

I smell a statistical rat.

"Did you know that most of the "children" killed firearms every year are in fact gangbangers?"

Should that make us feel better?

Well, it doesn't make me feel any better at all. On the other hand, disarming me will accomplish precisely nothing towards the mitigation of that tragedy.

Like all activists, those for gun control like to cherry-pick their facts. International comparisons that show the US has a higher rate of homicide than other supposedly comparable industrialized countries are siezed upon, and so too are raw numbers of deaths by gunshot by homicide, suicide, and accident that paint the picture of an America awash in blood. But if we accept that it is legitimate to count suicides and homicides together as posited by the "public health" paradigm of anti-gun activism, the US actually doesn't look bad at all in comparison to other industrialized countries. That is, unless one counts only deaths inflicted by gunshot. Yet dead is dead, and it ought not matter that your relative or friend killed himself by jumping from a window rather than shooting himself in the head. Assuming that homicide and suicide are related phenomena, that Germans, Scandinavians, French, Japanese are so much more likely to kill themselves than Americans, and without guns, ought to call into question the relevance of comparisons of the homicide rate between the US and those countries. Guns can't be the reason the Japanese are so likely to kill themselves compared to Americans, so perhaps guns aren't the reason Americans are so likely to kill each other compared to Japanese.

"Did you know that most of the "children" killed firearms every year are in fact gangbangers?"

Should that make us feel better?


Better than the emotionally loaded term "children," artfully employed to imply, without actually declaring it, that those killed were largely toddlers who found Dad's gun in a dresser or children playing hopscotch in the park when a madman decided to shoot them down, rather than young criminals whose fate illustrates that he who lives by the sword shall die by it. Perhaps it's a deficit of charity on my part, but I am unable to muster up as much concern for the untimely death by gunshot of 16 year old carjackers or gangsters as I am for innocent victims of crime or negligence. The latter is a crime, the former is the wages of sin.

"...disarming me will accomplish precisely nothing towards the mitigation of that tragedy."

A culture drained of the Spirit can rattle on for awhile, but it's destiny is set. We have not a shortage of arms, but a crisis of saints. Gun ownership is, as it should be, safe. Not much else is.

Courage is required to quietly suffer injury and accept the lesser slights found in everyday life.

Our culture is saturated in violence and sick onto death. I'm convinced it's renewal lies in heroic acts of self-denial.


AMEN, KEVIN! ! !

Yet, revisionists of Christian history (be they Catholic or otherwise) would not only rather overlook Christ's own life which instantiated the very ideal of "turning the other cheek" but the witness of thousands of Christian saints who likewise followed faithfully in this regard.

I fear the moderns will go to the very extent of re-writing such Christian ideals to mean such monstrosity as "Kill or be Killed"!

Already, now, they cannot even acknowledge the fact that Christian saints all the way back from Christ's own time even unto now lived out their lives with such Christian virtue emulating Christ himself in this regard.

If turning the other cheek is not harder than self-defense, then I wonder if the person who uttered as much would actually do so when confronted by such antagonists who dare do her such harm that would be an affront to her dignity; although, if anything, I would more so expect a Dirty Harry-ish type of response than anything else given past comments by her person.

"Perhaps it's a deficit of charity on my part,"

I'd add a very crimped moral imagination to your self-critigue.

Aristocles, I guess it depends on what you count as an "affront to one's dignity." Would I (if I were able) shoot a man who came up behind me on the street and started dragging me off? You bet, without feeling I was failing in any Christian virtue in so doing. Would I even go so far as to hit someone who verbally insulted me to my face? No. Not even close. In fact, I'd try not to insult him back.

Actually, Kevin has made a very good point in his statement that self-defense is not incompatible with turning the other cheek.

Kevin, I think Cyrus and MikeT are making a good point about the loading of the gun statistics by using the word "children." It's not so much an issue of making people feel better as of the anti-gun advocates' using the term to make the statistics seem to say something they don't--namely, that there is a significant probability that if you own a gun for home defense some little child who doesn't know any better is going to get killed with it by accident. If, in fact, the statistics are being inflated by including morally wicked minors who are deliberately seeking out guns for the purpose of committing crimes, being involved in gang wars, etc., then that changes the whole "moral" of the statistics. For one thing, it tends to support the idea that the rest of us need to be armed to defend ourselves against them rather than refraining from getting a gun out of fear that some little child will get killed with it by accident. For another thing, it raises the possibility that such young gang members would get hold of guns for their purposes even if it were harder for law-abiding citizens to get guns by following the rules. "When it's criminal to own a gun, only criminals..." etc.

Aristocles, I understand your larger point, but think there is confusion in your presentation. Red martyrdom comes by choosing death or suffering over apostasy. White martyrdom usually is choosing self-denial over self-assertion. I think we know which choices are truly counter-cultural. I once tried this very humbling exercise for week; record every act of self-sacrifice versus every act of self-aggrandizement. The results were ugly.

"that changes the whole "moral" of the statistics."

The heavy-lifting required to establishing a morally sane society goes way beyond gun rights. So my point is; take little solace in their exercise. Better to mourn, than celebrate the wide usage of the 2nd Amendment.

Lydia:

Would I (if I were able) shoot a man who came up behind me on the street and started dragging me off? You bet, without feeling I was failing in any Christian virtue in so doing.

I guess the prevailing reason for my remarks is heavily due to this: yes, although I feel self-defense is, indeed, morally acceptable and, in fact, necessary; I still have difficulty in accepting the prevailing attitude of most who actually revel in the violence of it all rather than for the act of self-defense itself.

"If some dirtbag tries to do something to me, they'll taste the fury of my AK47! I'll tear their guts out with multiple rounds until they're dead -- dead -- dead!!!"

And, yet, if a man came behind somebody who lived out the Gospels as faithfully as a St. Francis or what have you, would such a person actually shoot that person even if he were an assailant bent on his destruction?

I should think not.

Yes, one cannot blame such a person for defending herself in this case (and, let me say it again, it is just and morally acceptable to do so); however, one cannot deny the greater courage and higher Christian ideal of the Christian saint who, even at the cost of their own lives, would rather not and "turn the other cheek".

Kevin:

Red martyrdom comes by choosing death or suffering over apostasy.

It's not always about this, Kevin.

Look at St. Maria Goretti, for instance.

Her attacker sought to rape her.

Did she defend herself?

No -- instead, she chose to die for the sake of that very Christian virtue so often neglected by the modern world (and perhaps even looked down on).

If she had defended herself against her attacker who sought to violently rape her; that would have been certainly acceptable (and, in fact, a necessity in this case).

However, she chose not to; instead, this 19 year old suffered at the hands of her assailant, being stabbed 14 times as a result.

Yet, even in spite of this, having survived in the hospital after the attack, she nevertheless asked God to forgive him, dying at that hospital with a crucifix in her hands.

Did you know what became of her assailant?

I'll leave that to you.

The fact is because of her one courageous act that speaks of such high Christian ideal and piety, reminiscient of the saints before her and of the person of Christ himself, he became saved as he later repented of his actions, wherein after serving 30 years in prison, subsequently entered the Capuchin monastery.

Personally, if Maria Goretti were my daughter, I would have been more satisfied with a much darker fate for this individual; however, God chooses to save even the most horrible of creatures.

Did you know that most of the "children" killed (by) firearms every year are in fact gangbangers?

Surprisingly, I didn't mention children or homicides, so I am certain this is irrelevant to my point. To answer your first question, about ten percent survive an attempted gun suicide.

Go check out the statistics yourself:
http://www.bradycampaign.org/issues/gvstats/suicide/

Aristocles,
Maria did resist. She fought to protect her chastity and that is why she was killed. She did forgive her killer, her sacrifce lead to his redemption, and her was raised to the altars. She is a great witness against the sexual revolution, but not as a passive accomplice to debasenent or death.

Red martyrdom comes by choosing death or suffering over apostasy.

This is, apparently, what has occasioned some of the disputation in this thread, namely, a failure to draw distinctions between various forms of asceticism, and between the circumstances in which they are practiced. When a home invasion, for example, is perpetrated, the occupants are not presented with the binary choice of death or the renunciation of Christian faith; they are being robbed and probably threatened with death. In circumstances which do not implicate a potential victim's Christian profession, that potential victim is not confronted with the imperative to declare Christ, lest Christ deny him before the Father; rather, if he is the head of a household, he has a duty to defend the lives of those for whom he has responsibility, and, even if he is not the head of a household, he ought at least to offer what resistance he is able to muster, the better to ensure that he does not suffer an absolutely meaningless, nihilistic death. Should one be awakened in the night by what turns out, upon investigation, to be the sound of a thief absconding with a piece of electronic gadgetry, there would be no compelling rationale for intervention: why risk injury or death over a trifle? If however, the circumstances disclose a potential threat to life, one ought not accept that risk, potentially discarding one's life, over something so nugatory as another's will to perpetrate evil.

It is one thing to relinquish the goods of this world in preference to life; it is another to lay down one's life for the Kingdom of God; it is yet another cheapen one's life by laying it down for the privation, the nothing, that is an evil will.*

*Such renunciations as were performed by saints such as Maria Goretti are, properly speaking, works of supererogation; they surpass the virtues, and are, in that sense, not obligatory for the cultivation of virtue. Moreover, one cannot require of another than he perform such an act; ie., I, as a father, do not have the luxury of deciding to lay down the lives of my wife and children should they be so threatened: I am obligated to defend them to the extent of my capacity, even to the degree of sacrificing my own life for their preservation. Finally, while God, by the inscrutable and ineffable workings of grace, may transmute such evil occurrences into good, we may not presume upon such benefactions; not even saints may act with presumption, but least of all should those of us who know ourselves not to be saints so act.

**Ah, I see that there is some discussion of the circumstances of Goretti's death. I shall absent myself from further comments upon this matter, as an Orthodox Christian.

Kevin:

Maria did resist. She fought to protect her chastity and that is why she was killed.

Her manner of 'resisting' is not the same as the type that Lydia and others are in favor of the violent killing of such people in response to such a threat; mind you, Maria did not go to the extent of killing her assailant even when she had the means.


Maximos:

Such renunciations as were performed by saints such as Maria Goretti are, properly speaking, works of supererogation; they surpass the virtues, and are, in that sense, not obligatory for the cultivation of virtue.

This is certainly a fair statement.

This is why I previously brought up the example of Jesus and the rich man in the Gospels.

Surprisingly, I didn't mention children or homicides, so I am certain this is irrelevant to my point.

Actually, it's not, as the use of suicide as an argument for gun control is no less emotional than the "will somebody please think of the children" arguments for gun control. People commit suicide with a wide range of things which the brady campaign would never ban ranging from cars, to razor blades, to tylenol.

"Ah, I see that there is some discussion of the circumstances of Goretti's death. I shall absent myself from further comments upon this matter, as an Orthodox Christian."

No way. We're all invited to reflect on the meaning of Maria's life and death.

...the prevailing attitude of most who actually revel in the violence of it all rather than for the act of self-defense itself. "If some dirtbag tries to do something to me, they'll taste the fury of my AK47! I'll tear their guts out with multiple rounds until they're dead -- dead -- dead!!!"

I'm going to try to state where I'm coming from here clearly and then try to give it a rest. First of all, I certainly don't revel in violence for its own sake and _never_ in gory details (tearing guts out or what-have-you). In fact, I have extremely old-fashioned ideas about this sort of thing and am horrified at the movies that I hear about that even good people sit through because they think it would be rude to walk out. The actual gore that the defender of the innocent is exposed to is a cross for him to bear, not something for him or anyone else to revel in.

However, I do take what I consider to be a proper satisfaction in justice done and in the fact that an evil-doer was decisively stopped and received the death that he deserved. (I am an unabashed retributivist.) In saying this, I am possibly alienating myself from everyone else or virtually everyone else participating in this thread, but I actually think it is important. It is legitimate to be glad that good has triumphed over evil in the sense of a bad man's being killed in the act of doing evil and before he could do more evil. I think that the very young-looking man who just today stopped the bulldozer rampager in Jerusalem who was deliberately crushing people and cars--stopped him forever, and with a gun--should be properly a hero. I would be very proud of that act on his part were I his mother.

Again, I realize that in saying that we may legitimately take satisfaction in the physical victory of justice over evildoers in this way, I may be out of step with everyone else who reads this. But I actually consider it quite important. There is something to my mind inexpressibly _healthy_ about the older and innocent masculine ideal of the physical hero who fights the bad guys. We have lost that in the West. Contrary to what some say and clearly believe, the proliferation of horrible gore is not a result of Americans' love of self-defense but rather a perversion of the natural and legitimate masculine physical instinct. And that perversion may be a result of the fact that we have closed off healthy channels for that instinct. In short, God made men able and willing to fight for a reason, and we are irreparably harming our culture and individual young men and boys by, on the one hand, preaching what is in essence pacifism to them, denigrating all fighting simply as "violence," and on the other hand permitting their natural physical instincts to go every which way and to be fed by senseless violence and horrific gore in video games and film. What we need to recover is the clean fighting of the old Western or of the old tales of knights and damsels in distress, some of the adventure stories of the 19th century, for example. (I would mention here Conan Doyle's _The White Company_ and Rider Haggard's _Alan Quatermain_.) We need to put forward heroes for our boys who do indeed fight--for the right. We need to let them understand that we consider this to be a good and an admirable thing and thus properly to channel their God-given nature. To hold that we must always have a long face about fighting or a sense that somehow a man fought because he wasn't spiritually "up to" not fighting cooperates, on the Christian side, with the very forces undermining healthy masculinity that we see on the secular side. And I consider that perspective definitely incorrect.

I know nothing about St. Maria Goretti beyond what I just read in a Wikipedia article. I didn't see anything about her being able to kill her attacker and defend herself. She was (it says) eleven, and her attacker was a boy obviously a good deal bigger than she, and with a knife. Where she had an effective means to save herself in all of this by physical self-defense is a mystery to me, but if those of you who know a great deal about the case insist that it is so, I'll believe you.

I think that many of these stories about martyrdom fail to take into account the very real possibility that the people in question were quite simply under the complete control of their captors and had no possible way of defending themselves. Thus the choice was not self-defense or going "limp," as it were, and deliberately permitting senseless violence upon themselves, but rather as Maximos says, renouncing Christ (or in Maria's case, sexual virtue) or _in fact_ being harmed or killed by those in power over oneself.

I have no idea whether St. Francis of Assissi would, if he could have effectively defended himself, have simply allowed himself to be dragged off to the nihilistic violence (to use Maximos's word) of a street attacker. If he would have, and since it was simply his own life being lost in that case, I will not pronounce that he would have been definitely doing something _wrong_. But I completely reject the statement that a hypothetical St. Francis who thus deliberately eschewed effective self-defense against murder by a street thug would be _admirable_ for so doing and in that refusal some sort of Christian ideal high above the rest of us, more admirable than a hypothetical St. Francis who knocked the street thug down with a karate throw and got away, or even shot the street thug.

I probably ought to stop there.

It's somewhat unusual for me to think this, let alone write it, but I'm in complete agreement with your last, Lydia.

Lydia:
For what it's worth, however we may disagree in our views, I do thank you for your patience though through it all. That's a virtue that most, even myself, lack to some extent when thoroughly engaged in such discussions.

Lydia,
Two things regarding this issue.
1) there is a false dichotomy between 2 necessary and coexistent virtues, which create a healthy tension within the Christian life. St Francis would no more submit to his own murder by a street thug, than conjure up a predatory lending scheme on behalf of the Assisi Community Bank. Maria's sainthood is based on choosing purity over pain and the forgiveness extended her assailant. Had she been packing something other than rosary beads, she would likely have lived, but that does not diminish the power of her witness. Which might be the inference from some of Aristocoles comments. I don't think he means that.

2) a legitimate difference over what is needed more at this point in time;
A - the courage to defend oneself, family and faith from danger.
B - the courage to suffer the consequences that come with heroic public witness (example Operation Rescue) or the smaller deprivations that follow from
daily self-sacrifice.

Count me as one who believes that the strength for B - self-denial and vulnerable, risk-filled witness - belongs to the supernatural order. Carrying the Cross to one's own Golgotha is so profoundly transformative, that the ills you see in a cowering, feminized populace stand no chance when confronted by it.

St Francis would no more submit to his own murder by a street thug, than conjure up a predatory lending scheme on behalf of the Assisi Community Bank.

I couldn't agree more. :-)

Cyrus, thanks!

Aristocles, thanks!

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