What’s Wrong with the World

Amen.

There are few better prayers than to pray that a man be led to righteousness, his soul first troubled, then agonized, then cleansed by the raging fire of an awakened conscience.

Pray for Barack Obama, that he may have uneasy nights.

Perhaps it would be better to pray for the ends, rather than the means.

I have thought of the Chambers quote many times over the past few years. I assume you all are aware of the context: the 2 AM knock on the door and folks hauled off to be tortured and imprisoned or executed. Since some of those Soviet era prisons have seen recent use, I guess the question is the use of the quote now and the too frequent absence of the Diplomat's moral sensitivity.

Perhaps it would be better to pray for the ends, rather than the means.

Ah, but if I did that, I'd be tempted never to pray for B. O. at all. Just "Dear Lord, please bring an end to the legalized slaughter of the unborn in our nation," etc.

I have discovered in life that God can't make anyone like you, love you, or help you. Yet, I know God is providential. I think it's possible for God to interfere to this extent: if a man has a disposition, a readiness for a change of thinking, an inkling for a charitable act, then God may visit a dollop of grace upon him, like a bit of a sweet to a child to coax him into a good choice; a little infusion of grace that anyone is free to simply enjoy or further act upon.

Is Obama disposed to charity and "change" himself? I don't think so. I believe he is committed to evil with his whole heart. Not the kind of raving lunatic Hitlerian frothing at the mouth evil - the quiet, sophisticated kind of intellectual certainty that trivializes gross evils like abortion, high taxes (thievery), sodomy, and so on.

Thus I pray that others find the energy to oppose his plans and make them fail.

Is Obama disposed to charity and "change" himself? I don't think so. I believe he is committed to evil with his whole heart. Not the kind of raving lunatic Hitlerian frothing at the mouth evil - the quiet, sophisticated kind of intellectual certainty that trivializes gross evils like abortion, high taxes (thievery), sodomy, and so on.

Thus I pray that others find the energy to oppose his plans and make them fail.

Mark, I think your statements and predictions are all too depressingly correct. But I am being reminded a number of times these days that we've been told to pray for our rulers. (I'll hear "especially Barack our President" in the liturgy this coming Sunday.) And I had to face this when Clinton was President, too. I agree to the hilt that the main hope for evil to fail here is for Obama's policies to be opposed effectively. But since we have to pray for our rulers, the idea in the main post is one idea of how one can pray for Obama himself. There is also just sheerly the prayer that he would *for whatever reason* not pursue his evil policies or not pursue them effectively. That reason might not be a change of heart at all. It might be sheer political strategizing. He might decide that he will "look bad" if he tries to push FOCA, for example. And that is also something we can pray _for him_--that God would restrain his evil actions by whatever means.

When I passed this suggestion on to a friend who was urging us all to pray for Obama (following the scriptural command), he was inclined to think such a prayer mean-spirited, or at least to think that if he prayed it, it would be mean-spirited.

Yes, well, the Psalmist sure was a mean-spirited cuss -- Psalm 94: 12, and etc...

Lydia & others - pray that our newest president serves as the perfect foil for the pro-life cause:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2CaBR3z85c

HT - Mommylife.net

This same question, about praying for Obama, came up over on the Mere Comments blog. Poster Joe Long wrote this, with which I heartily agree, and which I repeat with his permission:

'"Thanks be to God, Barack's no emperor. By our Constitution he is a public servant, and I will try to treat him well, remembering I also have a master in heaven. Nevertheless I did defer from the majority of the committee who selected this particular servant, and I expect and intend to dismiss him when the next opportunity arises. I will also pray for those in authority - that is, the mad, mad, mad, mad electorate.

Our forebears found their way around the difficulty of dealing with a REAL king, where the theology is tougher, methinks. Nor must I any longer concern myself with a military chain-of-command, which ties many tongues and dispirits many hearts for the next while. So my prayers can be simple enough: "Confound his politics, frustrate his knavish tricks; God save the Constitution."'

Amen.

When Bill Clinton was President, I believed, and still believe, that the highest respect I could show to the office was to say that he was a disgrace to it. (Lydia Mc Grew)

So, having oral sex is a disgrace, but killing ten thousands of people in an unconstitutional war, legalizing torture, violating Habeas Corpus, cumulating the biggest budgetary deficit in the history of Western culture (in times of economic prosperity!!), indirectly causing the gravest financial crisis since 1929, thereby destroying the reputation of the Unites States all over the world for decades to come, is, though kind of suboptimal, less than a disgrace. Why?

Well, at least Bush jr. is an (alleged) reborn Christian, (verbally) pro choice and abhors promiscuity and sodomia (which means in the idiom of this remarkable blog: homosexuality), whereas Clinton and Obama (and McCain, R. Paul etc.) hold the evil (unamerican?) position, that a person's sexual life (even if (s)he is a politician) is not the business of anybody outside the person's family.

Lydia, I've read a lot of your other contributions as well and I think you've lost your moral coordinate system - which is a pity, because I know from your philosophical writings that you are a smart and perspicious author.
There is no one more in need of prayers than you yourself.

Let me assure you that I am neither a "truculent atheist, irascible Liberal, intransigent Islamist, ill-tempered radical, petulant nihilist, brassbound freethinking polemicist, nor a cantankerous evolutionist" - in most cases the terms do not fit me even without the epitheta.

Correction: "(verbally) pro life", of course

whereas you feel quite comfortable with Bush's waging illegal war ...

I've read a lot of your other contributions

I'm pretty sure that the latter did not happen if the former is believed to be true. That is unless insanity is somehow involved.

Chris, it never fails to amaze me what thread-jackers liberals are. It's like a compulsion. One could be talking about the price of tea in China and a liberal would find a way of bringing in the Iraq war. To be fair, I've known a few liberal commentators here on W4 and elsewhere who don't do this, but it's a fairly typical pattern. I get rather tired of saying this, and frankly, it seems to me outrageous that I should be thinking of doing so on this particular thread, where the whole subject is irrelevant, but I opposed the Iraq war from the outset. (I just don't happen to be obsessed about it.) As for its being "illegal," I don't believe in international law as a real entity, so I don't buy that, but I think it was unjustified and hence unjust.

But you are, as usual with liberals, full of moral equivalences. Suffice it to say that I believe Bush to have been weak-willed and a sad compromiser but no monster and Barack Obama to be a moral monster. But as, no doubt, a "pro-choicer" yourself, Chris (I am guessing here, I admit), you will not appreciate that description. Nor do I intend to debate the abortion issue in this thread (or the homosexual rights agenda, or infantiticide, or suicide, or...). As for the rest of your list of descriptions ("truculent atheist," etc.), I have no idea where they are coming from. I certainly didn't write them.

The post was meant to be advice to my fellow conservatives, of course.

Oh, and thanks for the compliment on my philosophical writings.

And yet, Chris, you presume to know the exact reasons why Lydia feels that Clinton is a disgrace.

For sure, it's not that he vetoed a ban on delivering unborn children up to their necks, cutting a hole in their head, and sucking their brains out (aka partial-birth abortion). Or his multiple affairs. It must be the one thing he did in the Oval Office that she has a problem with. Or his committing perjury (if we did that we would be in prison).

All the things you listed about Bush are opinionated conjecture. And the millions of unborn children who have died is, in fact, worse than all the things you have accused Bush of.

That being said, Bush is only sentimentally pro-life. At least one thing you said has a basis in reality.

Why do these liberal clowns assume that all conservatives are pro-Iraq War and big W supporters? Apparently they don't get out much.

Dear Lydia,
I am sorry for saying that you "feel quite comfortable with Bush's war", I've read a couple of your statements, but not enough of them for being justified in saying so. I sincerely apologize for that.
As for the list of descriptions ("truculent atheist," etc.), I've copied them from this site's "rules for posting". You should read them.

I am not "pro choice" or as you embarrasingly prefer to say "pro death"; I think that abortion is morally wrong, but I don't think that its wrongness is comparable to murder or homicide, nor that a few weeks old embryo is a person in the same sense that you and I are. In my opinion no person not blinded by some sort of (by the way: very modern) religious extremism, can think otherwise.

It's outrageous to call someone a "moral monster", because he or she thinks that the decision between continuing or ending the life of an unborn fetus should in the final analysis be up to the parent's conscience, while at the same time "not being much obsessed" with the deaths of ten thousands full-blooded persons, many of them as innocent as the unborn fetuses.

The alleged "monster's" position on abortion might be wrong - as I admit - but it is certainly not obviously wrong, therefore it deserves somewhat more respect than you are willing to concede.

Sorry for hijacking this post on "prayers for monster Obama", but I got angry.

My own prayer for Obama is that he get's all that he deserves. In other words, "May justice be done upon'm." It absolves me of the need to specify the means, and saves me the temptation to vengence.

Chris, I think you're guilty of a rather narrow view of the right. Very many have assessed Bush as "worst president ever." Doesn't that make you happy?

It's outrageous to call someone a "moral monster", because he or she thinks that the decision between continuing or ending the life of an unborn fetus should in the final analysis be up to the parent's conscience

Not pro-choice. Not a little bit. (Golly, and they usually _like_ to be called "pro-choice" rather than "pro-abortion.")

unborn fetus

Ah, the term of art. After the birth of the fetus, I assume that the term is then, 'born fetus,' or, to stay wholly within the idiom, fetus natus. Few would think of killing a newborn child, but perhaps more than a few would at least consider terminating the fetus natus, should circumstance necessitate and conscience allow. But I am only continuing the thread-jack, and anyway, all of this arcane moral reasoning (and Latin!) is quite above my pay-grade.

No man, perhaps, ever at first described to himself the act he was about to do as Murder, or Adultery, or Fraud, or Treachery, or Perversion; and when he hears it so described by other men, he is (in a way) sincerely shocked and surprised. Those others 'don't understand.' If they knew what it had really been like for him, they would not use those crude 'stock' names.

C.S. Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost, XVIII

Great Lewis quote, Byronic.

Apropos of President Clinton (since I brought him up in passing in the main post), I will say that I believe Barack Obama to be far more self-disciplined and ideologically committed to his principles than Clinton ever was. His principles just happen to be very bad ones. Bill Clinton was so immature and opportunistic that he was an embarrassment to his own party. The Lewinsky affair was just a symptom of Clinton's underlying utter lack of character. Obama, in contrast, has character. For this reason he is by a margin the more dangerous man from a conservative perspective.

Did you pray that President Bush and Vice President Cheney heard the screams of dying Iraqi civilians and of the men they wrongfully tortured and imprisoned? Did you pray that they heard the cries of the poor and the dispossessed in the Gulf Coast after Katrina? And, yes, did you pray that they heard the screams of the unborn when Bush nominated a lightweight like Harriet Myers to the bench (how seriously pro-life is that?). Did you pray that President Bush heard their cries when their mothers were driven by economic and educational poverty seek abortions?

I'm just saying that a consistent ethic of life cuts both ways and I didn't hear this kind of squirreliness from folks like you over the last eight years. I'm resolutely pro-life but the restriction of life ethics to abortion and, perhaps, euthanasia is theologically unjustifiable.

One need not be a liberal to say that your labeling President Obama a "moral monster" is plain old Pharisaic hypocrisy.

Lydia,

"Obama, in contrast, has character."

What has become of that animus you once harbored for Obama (for his abortion extremism) originally contained and accordingly exhibited in your original comments here?

I don't think it's wonderful at all, for any reason, on any level. Any black man of the past who wasn't a moral monster would be appalled at Obama's election and consider him a disgrace to the country as well as (if possible) to the race, because Obama is a moral monster.

Posted by Lydia | November 5, 2008 4:46 PM

How easily we find ourselves tossed to and fro and carried about by the popular opinions of the times, by the wickedness of men, and by the cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive!

Remember: FOCA.

Fr. Michael,

With all due respect, I beg to differ --

There is a stark difference between a life so innocent as that in the womb and those of men & women who distinctly volunteered to fight in war and dutifully carry out their orders for their country.

You seem to think that murdering the life of the unborn child such as that of John the Baptist who leapt in his mother's womb is no different than the lost of lives of those men and women who actually volunteered theirs in order to fight in times of war!

For your information, that child did not choose to be murdered!

This is distinctly different from the patriotic men and women in the service who actually chose their fate, knowing quite well the very likelihood that they may very well lose their own lives in battle!

Did you pray that President Bush and Vice President Cheney heard the screams of dying Iraqi civilians and of the men they wrongfully tortured and imprisoned? Did you pray that they heard the cries of the poor and the dispossessed in the Gulf Coast after Katrina? And, yes, did you pray that they heard the screams of the unborn when Bush nominated a lightweight like Harriet Myers to the bench (how seriously pro-life is that?). Did you pray that President Bush heard their cries when their mothers were driven by economic and educational poverty seek abortions?

I'm just saying that a consistent ethic of life cuts both ways and I didn't hear this kind of squirreliness from folks like you over the last eight years. I'm resolutely pro-life but the restriction of life ethics to abortion and, perhaps, euthanasia is theologically unjustifiable.

One need not be a liberal to say that your labeling President Obama a "moral monster" is plain old Pharisaic hypocrisy.

A perfect example of moral equivalence. The wrongs committed by Bush and Cheney have no effect on the wrongs committed by Obama. Furthermore, even if one was a silent bystander to Bush's wrongdoings, does that mean one should also be a silent bystander to Obama's? Shouldn't evil be regarded as evil, regardless of who is evil and any failures to recognize evil we may have had in the past?

By the way, any man who supports laws that legalize the murder of unborn human beings is indeed, unequivocally, a moral monster. An awareness of our own faults as human beings is not a mandate to ignore the truth of morality.

Aristocles,

I think you gravely misread Lydia's comment. When she says, "Obama has character," she means it in the sense in which the Grand Inquisitor has character. It is not a moral compliment; it is an estimation of his ability to subordinate other, lesser considerations to the achievement of his objectives. Hence the contrast with Bill Clinton.

There is a higher sense of the word "character," of course. And Lydia is not ascribing character to Obama in that sense.

Attention to context should help you to sort these out.

Goodness, Aristocles, didn't you just see me call him a moral monster in this very thread? And am getting the liberals' goat by doing so, too, in case you didn't notice. I'm proud of that comment of mine you quoted from earlier. Indeed, I mean this post to be a further comment in the same direction. I have no, no time for the people who are going wussy on Obama just because he won, and you should have heard me here at home heap scorn on the "conservatives" who got teary-eyed about the inauguration.

Tim's interpretation of my comment is exactly right. Some very evil men have had "character" in the restricted sense (in contrast with Bill Clinton) in which I meant it.

I'm resolutely pro-life but the restriction of life ethics to abortion and, perhaps, euthanasia is theologically unjustifiable.

Uh-huh. God forbid we should get too focused on the direct, deliberate, individual, active, brutal, legal murder of helpless, innocent human beings. As opposed to, you know, not sending "enough" federal aid to Katrina victims. Good grief.

Lydia,

I'm very pleased that you've yet maintained your integrity in spite of your mean-spirited detractors (and I would anticipate, the approaching mob that will all soon gather to continue such hostilities all because they have become so swept up in what seems like the blinding charisma of the man and the seductive spirit of the times) and continue ever so bravely and with such great fortitude this incredible struggle for the Pro-Life cause on behalf of the Innocent.

I found it a little depressing, I have to admit, to see some of my mainstream conservative friends going all "Land of Hope and Glory"-ish over the inauguration. "Setting aside our differences..." (cue stirring music) "Tears in my eyes..." etc.

It's making me think I'm not a mainstream conservative after all. Perhaps this will not be a surprise to my readers, but it's a bit of a surprise to me. "I didn't leave mainstream conservatism. Mainstream conservatism left me." (Lydia McGrew in 2020.)

I can never figure out whether we are to set aside our differences or to celebrate diversity.

Lydia, et.al.

The moral-theological mistake you are making has to do with your application of innocence as a category to create a hierarchy in the value of lives.

First and very precisely speaking, to the extent that you are heirs of the Western Christian tradition and its Augustinianism, there is no such thing as perfectly innocent life. We partake of original sin from the moment of our conception (Jesus, and according to Roman Catholics, Mary being the only exceptions). Given that this is so, you are on very shaky moral and theological ground to create gradations in levels of innocence and or vulnerability. This is true for the same reason that it is illegitimate to create gradations in the value of human life by appeals to the length of in utero gestation. It is arbitrary to create a distinction between an unborn child and a 5 year old Iraqi child and a 24 year old victim of torture for the same reason it is arbitrary to create a distinction between a 4 week old embryo and an in utero child on the day before she is born.

Second, your criteria fail on Trinitarian theological grounds. There is no hierarchy in the ontological being of God. Father is God, Son is God, and Spirit is God. This absence of distinction in ontology disallows a distinction in the ontological weight of human beings who uniquely bear God's image and likeness. All human life bears the image and likeness of God and all human life has a claim to be regarded with equal dignity.

The problem here is that you have a deficiency of love for those that you consider "the least of these" - something that, by the by, includes the impoverished person with no clothing, the one who is sick and lacks adequate, affordable healthcare, and the one who is in prison. At least that's the way I remember the parable of the sheep and the goats. "The least of these" is not a fixed category in the estimation of Jesus, but is dictated by the evaluation of the one who makes the false evaluation. Thus "the least of these" may just be, President Obama, the dumb ol' liberals who hijacked your blog space, the detainees (how's that for a euphamism equivalent to "fetus", Lydia?) at Guantanimo, or the noncombatant Iraqis who have been killed in this unjustifiable war.

I could go on, but herein is the value of sound moral theology. It is no respecter of partisan politics and lays bare all our idolatries.

Let me be clear. I am pro-life, but I aspire to be pro-life in a consistent and comprehensive manner. That is what our struggle against the culture of death is all about, no?

Peace.

Father Michael, your response above is about as severe a case of self justifying scripture twisting as any I've seen. This is why it is good that the average lay person has the scriptures in the common language--so that self serving clergy cannot successfully deliver this type of holier than thou spanking toward another. I think you classify as the blind leading the blind after reading your two entries here. Anyone who'd legitimately offer an argument equating the murder of innocent unborn to a mistreatment of prisoners loses all credibility to me. Until such time as the prisoners are having their arms and legs ripped off and then shown their moral innocence, I wont entertain such extreme comparisons.

Father Michael, I don't know what moral universe you're from, but here on planet Earth we make a great many moral distinctions in respect of _relative_ guilt or innocence. Of course no distinctions are made where none are called for, such as all of your in utero exammples. (Original sin being common to all, it is not a factor -sophistry)

Ontology and the theology of Trinity haven't got anything to do with it. No one, to my knowledge, is grading weights of "being" and making distinctions on that basis, or saying that one life is "worth" more than another. Rather we evaluate actions, intents, and mitigating circumstances to determine culpability, the gradations of which and our beliefs in respect of them are codified into law. To pretend that you don't know this is more sophistry on your part. Likewise, human "dignity" hasn't got a thing to do with anything. More sophistry.

I think your real problem with "people like us" is that we make moral distinctions instead of moral equivalence between dissimilar cases. You want to wipe out all distinctions and return to the cradle, inarticulately wailing and pointing at everything you see. Sorry Father, but making distinctions and discriminating is part of being an adult. Grow up.

Augustine is one of the original architects of the Just War theory that the Catholic Church embraces. People are killed in war, sometimes even defenseless non combatants. This tragic fact does not necessarily nullify the justness of the war, since if it did, the Catholic Church would be stuck in a radical contradiction. For some, the possibility of such a radical contradiction in Catholic moral teaching would not present a problem at all, but an orthodox Catholic (Lydia isn't Catholic) will not accept that possibility (I assume "Fr. Michael" is a Catholic). To demand that pacifism is the only moral option is a position fraught with difficulties. Catholics are free to take the position, but the Church does not demand it of us.

Also, should someone attempt to equate the support for the legalization (and government subsidy of) the intentional killing of a human being in abortion with the ineptitude of the federal government to adequately respond to Hurricane Katrina, I'd think that to be quite a reach. We don't assign value to life based on some presumption of innocence. But we do assign culpability for killing based on such presumption, among other considerations.

I am pro-life, but I aspire to be pro-life in a consistent and comprehensive manner.

As am I, and as do I, and I am sensitive to the concerns you have raised. I simply must object to the sort of radical illogic of moral equivalency that I see among some who hold to the "seamless garment" position. Likewise, there are those, on the Left and Right, who simply allow the party they support to do their moral mathematics for them. By neither method can we hope to arrive at true moral conclusions.

If I were to assume anything about "Father Michael," it would be that he most probably a modern, or rather post-modern Jesuit.

Which means he's not a Roman Catholic at all..............................

Dan,

FWIW, perhaps that's not a helpful comment.

byronican, et.al.

I'll try to answer this quickly and then drop it...

First, in rejecting what appears to be a hierarchy of values on human life, I am, of course, arguing from an eschatological perspective. There is a distinction to be made between eschatology and history, and thus between the City of God and the church, but these distinctions cannot be employed to somehow negate the moral evil of killing. Thus, the comment from Dan that I need to grow up is misplaced. Indeed, I need to grow up into the full stature of Christ as do we all(Eph. 4:13). This may begin with facing the lived terror of the distinction between this age and the age to come, but true maturity comes in working by faith, hope, and love to collapse the distinction. This is merely to pray that God's will be done on earth as in heaven. So, Dan, you go right ahead and "live in the real world" if you so choose, but know that this present order has an expiration date and that the future really does look like the pounding of swords into plowshares and learning of war no more.

Second, just war theory is not to be interpreted as giving purchase to ontological violence. That is a misreading of Augustine (though Augustine, here and there, acts inconsistently with his ontology) and more importantly it is a misreading of Catholic moral teaching. Just war theory exists, not validate a war deemed to be just, but to restrain its evil. It works the same way with capital punishment, where legitimate circumstances for the death penalty are nearly impossible (by John Paul II's own lights) to realize in fact. The theory envisions a worst case scenario and intends to limit a compounding of evil with greater evil. It's still evil.

Third, applying just war theory to somehow gain approval of the invasion of Iraq fails on at least ten different grounds. To think otherwise is to twist the theory out of all recognition for ideological purposes.

Fourth, the charge that I have twisted Scripture seems unwarranted. It seems to me a fair reading of Matthew 25:31-46. Did I miss the interrogation of Christ that he was to be found among "the least of these" identified as the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned? Did the interrogation not lead to the self-implication of the goats? Was their failure to recognize Jesus in "the least of these" something other than a moral and spiritual failure?

Finally, I would submit that all the bluster at my "scripture twisting" or "liberalism" or "post-modernism" may be rooted, not in my shortcomings (which are many), but in discomfort at being pressed to consistency in your own ethos. I suggest that you yourselves stand condemned in your condemnations of whatever moral monstrosity you perceive in the President. I'll grant you that the President is on the wrong side of the abortion issue (though his economic policies have potential to reduce abortions in fact) and I'll applaud your efforts on behalf of the unborn. Don't think, however, that this gains you an occasion of boasting your righteousness before God. Despite his impeccable righteousness according to the flesh, even St. Paul was compelled to count it all as "shit" (Gk. "skubalon") compared to the surpassing greatness of being found forgiven of great sin (even homocide) in Christ.

As I said, I'll drop it there. Consider my words, however.

Peace.

Fr. Michael,

Just war theory exists, not validate a war deemed to be just, but to restrain its evil.

Now that is certainly a very good point. War, once engaged, tends to obey its own monstrous, internal logic. Especially modern war with modern weapons. The mere conviction that a war is just is not enough to make it so. The evil of war can at best be limited, not eliminated.

It works the same way with capital punishment, where legitimate circumstances for the death penalty are nearly impossible (by John Paul II's own lights) to realize in fact.

Certainly a possibility I have considered, an argument I do not take lightly. A critic may wonder whether a society without a death penalty is a society that takes murder with sufficient seriousness. And he may also insist that there must be a difference between clear acts of individual moral evil, which both demonstrate and determine character, and participation in systemic evil, such as war, which may be from time to time unavoidable.

The theory envisions a worst case scenario and intends to limit a compounding of evil with greater evil. It's still evil.

Again, this seems to me indisputably true. And implicit in this statement, I think, is the realization that the eschaton has not yet come. That being the case, we may simply have to live with war--doing all that is within our power to see that we wage them justly, if we must wage them--and also, perhaps, even to live with death penalties, although the latter perhaps does not rise to the same degree of inevitability as the former (can there be degrees of inevitability?)

But must we learn to live with abortion? I'm quite certain, Fr. Michael, that you would answer an emphatic "no." Nevertheless, there is this to consider. While some wars may be just (though still evil), and a just death penalty is in principle (if not in practice), possible, it is not morally possible to have legal abortion in principle. And there, for me, is a clue as to the fundamental difference in the three cases. And a man who argues that it may be, in principle, just, to perform an abortion, is not, thus, merely in error on the application of a true moral principle. Such a man is, rather, completely upside down. A President may carelessly and callously go to war or execute a man, claiming he does so in the cause of justice (as of course, he always will claim), but without having taken due consideration to the facts and circumstances involved, and thus be morally culpable for lack of due diligence at least, and worse if he is wrong as to the facts and circumstances. He will have let his true belief in the objective morality of the possibility overwhelm his immediate responsibility to properly weigh his particular obligation. Because a war may be waged, and a man (in principle) may be executed. But an abortion may never be performed. President Obama is not just wrong about the application. He's wrong about the principle. There isn't even the possibility of justice in the act of abortion. At best, I can say that the president is in a profound state of moral confusion on this point. Lydia used a stronger term. I'll cut it down the middle. President Obama's fundamental position on abortion is a morally monstrous position. I feel bound to say that, both by conscience, and in virtue of my certainty of Catholic teaching on the matter. It can't mean that I'm pridefully crowing my personal moral righteousness just for saying it.

Don't think, however, that this gains you an occasion of boasting your righteousness before God.

Another indisputable truth, and something not ever to be forgotten. For my part, Fr. Michael, thank you for your comments and admonitions.

"First, in rejecting what appears to be a hierarchy of values on human life, I am, of course, arguing from an eschatological perspective."

First, no one has argued for a "hierarchy of values on human life." That's the straw man that you would rather argue against in your effort to destroy moral distinctions.

"There is a distinction to be made between eschatology and history, and thus between the City of God and the church, but these distinctions cannot be employed to somehow negate the moral evil of killing."

What a marvelous piece of drivel. There are indeed distinctions to be made among and between all of these things, and none of them are profitably employed to any effect here. No one has attempted somehow to "negate" the moral evil of killing, as your own simplistic understanding would have it. I have however been defending moral distinctions of all types, including types of killing. There is, after all, still a distinction for most of us between a killing in self-defense and what we call murder, and the latter usually in at least two degrees. This much is just obvious, though it seems that you would deny it as "negating" moral evil somehow, or setting up a hierarchy of values on human life. If I'm reading your obscurantism correctly then you stand in opposition to the whole moral tradition of the West. It's certainly not Catholicism that you defend, but the moral equivalence of radical liberalism.

"This may begin with facing the lived terror of the distinction between this age and the age to come, but true maturity comes in working by faith, hope, and love to collapse the distinction."

You began above by insisting on a necessary distinction between eschatology/history and City of God/Church, and now, three sentences later, you want to "collapse" the distinction? And even better, you want _us_ to bring about this collapse? It seems to me that if the distinction is to collapse, Christ will collapse it, not us. But it's here that you reveal your utopianism. Aside from that, you're just being silly. There's no killing to argue over in the City of God, is there? As much as you would like to usher in a new age where all moral distinctions collapse, it's just fantasy. I made fun of you before suggesting that perhaps your moral universe was not of this Earth - Now you've gone and confirmed it!

Living as though we're in the City of God does not mean collapsing moral distinctions. If anything, they will become even more distinct. The beating of swords into ploughshares will happen - after Christ returns - and not one minute before. Those who jump the gun will merely be the last to lose their heads.

You chose deliberately to misunderstand the point about just war. The point was not that the Iraq war is justified, but that if you are correct, just war theory is destroyed, which again is not a Catholic position.

You finish up with a bunch of vainglorious, self-righteous triumphalism and the accusation that any who oppose your silly misunderstanding of moral theology are the real moral monsters. Wow. Ok. But since you're the greatest champion of moral relativism I've ever encountered in my life, I hearby nominate you for the Theodore Bundy Chair of Ethics at Inferno U.

The moral-theological mistake you are making has to do with your application of innocence as a category to create a hierarchy in the value of lives.

I have so little patience with Fr. Michael's attempt to equate an insufficient amount of Katrina aid, welfare, etc., with sticking an instrument in the back of an infant's head and sucking out its brains, or killing a helpless disabled person in euthanasia, I am so revolted by his attempt to take innocence out of the equation and out of the evaluation of acts as murder by reference to original sin, and I am so contemptuous of his attempt to label my post as "pharisaical" on the basis of such ridiculous moral equivalences, that I have left it to the rest of you to answer him. But I'm glad he's said he will at this point "drop it." That's fine, Fr. You do that.

"he was inclined to think such a prayer mean-spirited, or at least to think that if he prayed it, it would be mean-spirited."

I disagree. It is not mean-spirited. It is much worse, as it is far closer to black-magic and voodoo than Christ's example.

Christ's example, as from Luke 22: 49-51:

49When Jesus' followers saw what was going to happen, they said, "Lord, should we strike with our swords?" 50And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear.

51But Jesus answered, "No more of this!" And he touched the man's ear and healed him.

Jesus does not wish physical pain and discomfort to any human being. This includes whom we perceive to be our political and theological opponents. The High Priest's servant who came to arrest Jesus was clearly a political and theological opponent or an instrument thereof. Should you assume that Barack Obama is, then Jesus would rather him be whole, just as the High Priest servant's ear was healed.

Speaking as an American, why you want the man who can start nuclear warfare to have uncomfortable nights, I find immensely un-patriotic. And I hope your prayer is not answered.

However, I know your prayer will not be answered. At least by Jesus.

And my prayer for you is exactly the same as it is for Barack Obama - long life, good health, and restfull nights.

Being troubled by one's conscience and therefore having trouble sleeping is a far cry from _being actively harmed by some person_. I have not wished any violence against Obama and do not wish any violence. I wish and pray for him that he may be troubled by his conscience, which is, as I point out in the post, to wish him good. To say that we want everybody to be happy, healthy, and comfortable sounds nice but is not, for the evil, really wishing them well. I refer particularly here to the "comfortable" part. The way is broad that leads to destruction. The man who said to his soul that it should eat, drink, and be merry was too comfortable. And God said to him, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee." He would have been better off if he'd had a few more uneasy nights before that point in his life. Jesus was loving but seldom simply nice. It is a fictional grandfather in heaven, not the Father in heaven, who just wishes everybody "long life, good health, and restful nights."

As for patriotism, that the head should lie uneasy that wears the crown is not such a bad thing, particularly if the head in question is filled with plans to fund and vastly promote and expand the slaughter of his own innocent citizens. Let his head lie uneasy, and let him think again about (for example) FOCA.

People with nonfunctional or poorly functioning consciences are suffering from the moral equivalent of congenital analgia. It is no more wrong to pray that Obama feel the deep and overwhelming pangs that a properly formed conscience would necessarily bring to someone with his history and public positions than it is to pray that Ashlyn Blocker be freed from the dangers, torments, and ultimately death-dealing consequences of a life without pain.

I can only marvel at the audacity of Fr. Michael's persistence in equating the deliberate destruction of unborn children by abortionists with the failure of a government to provide "enough" welfare and aid to storm victims.

Let's hope it was just inadvertence on his part to post that on the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Father Michael wrote:

...(though his economic policies have potential to reduce abortions in fact)...

Yes, yes, in the same way that Hussein's economic policies have the potential reduce the number of hard-core drug users, and children born without fathers in America, and etc...

Uh huh. You liberals are all alike. But what's going to happen when the abortion industry in America needs a bailout ... after the initiation of all of these wonderful economic policies of Hussein's reduces the demand for abortions, of course?

You should have said "real potential" and "greatly reduce," it would've sounded better.

Oh, and let's not forget that the democrat controlled House of Horrors has already crafted Obama supported legislation to overturn our "Mexico City Policy".

So I guess as long as Obama's domestic economic policies have the "potential" to reduce abortions in America, it matters not his support for legislation that will most definitely increase abortions overseas.

Fr. Michael, perhaps you have left us for good, but (in case not) I am going to ask you, firmly, to cease imputing to the contributors and commenters of this blog positions that they do not hold -- namely, positions with respect to the war in Iraq and the Bush administration more generally.

I consider Fr. Michael's seamless garment to have been thoroughly disassembled, and thanks to everybody with the precision cutting tools. Let's hope that if we leave him alone after this, he will reciprocate.

Hi Royale, I am thankful for sleepless nights when the gnawing of guilt for some action or thinking I have that opposes perfect obedience. That makes me willing to repent--to be left alone to sin in ignorance is not loving. Is it wrong or unpatriotic to pray that our leader have his conscience bound? Remember it's lex rex, not rex lex. The supreme Law that ought to be reflected in civil law only will have it's effect as the consciences of evil men are set at odds with their actions and thinking. The Lord scourges every son He loves.

I may be reading you wrong, but I see Lydia's intents as loving and your intents as indifferent at best.

thebyronicman,

Please don't tell me you're actually giving credence to this 'Fr. Michael', whoever this person may be.

Do you really subscribe to his opinion concerning the death penalty?

As I've recounted on the matter before (which I shall again attempt to reiterate herein), those who should stubbornly insist if any theological considerations are to be invoked at all concerning the death penalty, that these would actually weigh against it, are severely mistaken.

The underlying principle of retributive justice seems to escape them entirely. To be clear, 'retributive justice' is not that animalistic indulgence, impersonal spite, or maliciousness against an offender. Rather, this ironically and even more precisely strikes at the very heart of the matter with respect to the upholding of important social values (i.e., the RIGHT TO LIFE); that these can only be upheld for the sake of an orderly society when those who affront these values by their violent behaviour are called to account for their actions by proportionate punishment.

That is, in the case of someone who deliberately takes a life, our willingness to impose the death penalty is our testimony to how seriously we take that value against which he has offended. There is nothing brutal in treating a person as a responsible agent who can be held accountable for his acts and requiring that he sustain the burden proportionate to that which he has wrongly inflicted upon others.

On the contrary, what would be brutalizing and dehumanizing is to overthrow our principle of retributive justice and, in effect, treat the criminal as less than a responsible agent -- as some sort of behavioral animal who's not really responsible and culpable for his crimes, but rather that he is to be treated and cured, however, not punished accordingly.

Finally, we can't have a concept of mercy if we don't have a principle of retributive justice to begin with.

There first has to be an understanding that these offences demand such punishment and once we have a principle like this in place, then there can be mercy on the part of a governor or whoever can relax the strict requirements of Justice in an individual case.

To codify the notion of mercy without a sense of retributive justice in the first place is a serious wrong. In such a system, we would not have mercy -- instead, we would have SENTIMENTALITY!

Catholics should take note that the previous Holy Father, John Paul II, in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae looked at the situation in terms of modern social conditions and judged, in his personal opinion, that the conditions under which Capital Punishment should be used would be quite rare. Yet, he didn’t eliminate it all together.

Moreover, Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, issued a memorandum subsequent to the issuance of the aforementioned encyclical in which he pointed out that presumably because of several ambiguities surrounding the question, there can be a legitimate diversity of opinion amongst Catholics concerning capital punishment and when it should be used. However, even he did not go on to expressly state that he was actually against it.

Father Michael, your response above is about as severe a case of self justifying scripture twisting as any I've seen. This is why it is good that the average lay person has the scriptures in the common language--so that self serving clergy cannot successfully deliver this type of holier than thou spanking toward another.

Surely, the gloss of a million (and still multiplying) other individual sects can't be as wrong; also, each and every cleric (especially one or another who simply assumes such a persona on a blog that allows any number and manner of names) carries with them a thorough and precise understanding of Church doctrine, much like those ministers who came after the Reformers, yet managed to egregiously stray away from their original intentions and teachings.

Father Michael, while you clearly wandered into a hornet's nest here, a few fellow explorers at least really appreciate what you had to say. If you are still reading, and have a blog or website, would you mind letting us know where we could engage in conversation in a friendlier environment?

Ari,

thebyronicman,

Please don't tell me you're actually giving credence to this 'Fr. Michael', whoever this person may be.

Do you really subscribe to his opinion concerning the death penalty?

My assumption is that "Fr. Michael" is Fr. Michael, a Catholic priest. Secondly, I do not take lightly the criticism of the death penalty by JP II. If you read my post carefully, you'll see that I lodged a criticism. I appreciate that you have taken the time to put forward your thoughts on the issue, although I don't intend to argue the matter further here. I only had two goals in my response to Fr. Michael. To try and explain why I think there cannot be equivalency between the Iraq War and Death Penalty, and Abortion, and to be civil and respectful in the process of doing so.

I appreciated Fr. Michael's reminder that the purpose of Just War doctrine is to limit the evils of war.

"a few fellow explorers at least really appreciate what you had to say...
would you mind letting us know where we could engage in conversation in a friendlier environment?"

Yes, all those lacking logical thinking skills and who wish merely to emote may feel free to make their exit.

Lydia and Byronican, et.al.

Sorry to go back on my pledge to drop it, but the subsequent comments reopen the question.

First, I really am amazed at the bitterness and personal invective leveled in my direction. I have certainly raised objections to what I consider an overly narrow and nakedly partisan instantiation of an ethics of life (which stands distinct, Paul, from Lydia's personal views concerning the Bush Administration or the War in Iraq), but aside from the suggestion that this smacks of Pharisaism (a point drawn directly from the parable of Jesus in Matthew 25 and, thereby, applicable to us all in some way or other), I don't think and have not written that this forum is the habitation of the damned. And yet you folks don't even know me or my journey as a Christian and a priest. You don't even have sufficient evidence here to even guess at my politics and yet I stand accused of apostasy and am consigned to Hell? One hopes that you don't behave in this manner beyond the anonymity of the internet. Otherwise, things are far worse for the integrity of Christian witness in the world than I have feared.

Second, while this is your forum, Lydia, you well know from your philosophical pursuits that there are dangers in precipitous totalizing judgments such as the one you have pronounced over my "seamless garment." Put simply, saying a thing doesn't make it so and after encountering real precision instruments in guys like Alvin and Nick, I'm amazed that you couldn't tell the difference. I'm sorry that the suggestion of our duty to the poor in New Orleans offended either Libertarian or Chicago school economic sensibilities, but what do you do if even one woman has chosen an abortion over carrying her child to term because her place of employment (and with it, health insurance) was swept away and because her home is still uninhabitable in the Lower Ninth Ward? Some of this really does connect and I think that you would be compelled to admit this without the cloudiness of your emotional outrage at being challenged. Even so, I remain unpersuaded by anything leveled my way here.

Third, Byronicus, I think that as a Christian I am not permitted to live or become contented with either. The distinction between the City of God and the earthly city or between the City of God and the church cannot be employed to give purchase to ontological violence. Jesus is risen from the dead and he has graced the present age with the abiding presence of the Spirit of resurrection life. This necessitates that we imagine a theological cosmology in which the world is not a closed system only to be destroyed or redeemed outright at the eschaton. Rather, God is giving of new gifts NOW and the world is even now being redeemed from the reign of death and sin. As I said, this is what we pray for and what we are called to faithfully embody in saying "Thy kingdom come." This is not intended to imply a naive mythology of progress wherein everything is getting better and better. Indeed, the ideal of the City of God functions as critique of our temporal approximations. It is, however, to say that in Christ we are being summoned forward to a fuller revelation of the Kingdom of God. There are setbacks but we are ever-renewed.

I think that your proposed parallel is imperfect, therefore. While some may disagree it is certainly the majority report among Christian ethicists and moral theologians that some abortions are permissible in cases where pregnancy presents an clear and immanent danger to the life of the mother. This would be the ethical parallel to a just war. In both cases, there is no implied duty to either go to war or abort the child in a life-threatening preganancy. There is merely a concession to the unavoidability of an inherent evil and thus moral guidelines to restrict and contain the evil.

Finally, most of this resolves to the question of which evils present the most urgent claim on our attention and our redemptive efforts. For most of you here it appears that abortion represents the preeminent moral evil of our time and I would concede that this is perfectly reasonable and defensible. I would argue, however, that severing abortion from Cardinal Bernardin's seamless garment risks an overly narrow moral theology and a theologically mistaken hierarchy of human dignity. One strains out some camels but cheerfully swallows other camels under the illusory protestation that they are merely gnats. The impression created thereby is that whatever moral concern motivated the original scrupulosity of purpose has been swallowed up in baser partisan concerns. This does not place us in a position where we must do nothing because we can't do everything, but it does require that we soberly consider that our high-handed moral denunciations may be off the mark. It certainly requires that we reconsider the bile and contempt we would display toward those that question us.

No, not baser partisan concerns. I did not, for example, vote for John McCain and was annoyed at the partisan compromises the pro-life movement made on his behalf. It's just that I, and several others here, think it _is_ murder to kill the innocent deliberately, personally, and directly, and think it is _not_ murder to defend oneself against the guilty and is certainly not murder not to pour out X number of dollars (beyond the Y amount already being poured out) in government aid, and that the distinction between murder and non-murder is an extremely important one. In my opinion, the business about Bush's "hearing the cries" of various mascot groups for peace-n-justice liberals and the attempt to draw parallels there to Obama's "hearing the cries" of unborn infants killed (and for that matter, even born infants gasping out their lives on a table, which is A-OK with Mr. Obama, lest we "burden" abortionists with rendering aid) is...beneath contempt.

I'm a proud Protestant, and the fact that you are a priest, Fr., makes you in my opinion *at most* the more responsible for such pathetic attempts at moral equivalence. We have it on high authority that teachers shall receive the greater judgement. I'm certainly not bound to defer to your opinion.

I realize that my deliberate characterization of Obama as being specially in need of an awakened conscience is annoying to liberals. Good. I would be the more worried if I garnered praise from people who think as you do, Fr. Michael.

But I think this will be enough now.

All this simply because 'Father Michael' considers it a moral sin for anybody to dare utter any such things about his beloved Messiah, who now holds the presidential office!

Let us all blindly ignore the markedly extreme pro-abortionist views of Obama (which extends to even live-birth abortions), that abortion itself isn't at all the murdering of the innocent, and joyously celebrate the much anticipated horrendous extension and enlargement of the holocaust since, after all, such acts are quite mild in comparison to the tremendously dark and wicked offences committed by the Bush administration!

Why, the very fact that Bush even limited federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research and placed on the Supreme Court two notably Pro-Life Judges (which Obama is seeking to undo by his own appointments of Pro-Abortion judges), that has, thus far, resulted in the ban for partial birth abortions, is sure testament of how evil Bush is in comparison and his anti-ProLife stance.

Fr. Michael, that last comment contained a reasonable enough argument, even it fails to persuade anyone. But it stands in pretty stark contrast to your first one, which the detached observer would be forgiven for assuming it issued from, indeed, a certain bitterness: "Did you pray that President Bush and Vice President Cheney heard the screams of dying Iraqi civilians and of the men they wrongfully tortured and imprisoned? Did you pray that they heard the cries of the poor and the dispossessed in the Gulf Coast after Katrina?"

Even though most of us here opposed the war in Iraq, surely you can understands that (a) there is an element of intent missing in the death of Iraqi civilians which is quite plainly present in the case of abortion and (b) that element of intent is so attenuated in the case of Katrina as to vanish completely from view. Perhaps we could just play the same game of sophistry and demand that you answer whether you prayed that the NOLA mayor and LA governor heard the wails of the victims of Katrina. It could go on forever, with hurled rhetorical questions to deflect from the issue at hand, namely, abortion.

I'm just saying that a consistent ethic of life cuts both ways and I didn't hear this kind of squirreliness from folks like you over the last eight years.

What exactly have you "heard" from us over the past eight years? Have you even visited this site before yesterday? Are you aware, for instance, that one of our contributors has engaged in a very long running debate with other right-wingers on the subjects of torture, just war and consequentialism? Are you aware of the several furious debates we've had here with other right-wingers over the morality of the nuclear attacks on Japanese cities? (No points for guessing which side most of us are on.)

In short, it is a strange thing to be lectured about bitterness and invective by a first-time commenter who arrives armed with false assumptions, and proceeds immediately to deploy them as the ground for some rather unfair innuendo.

May I suggest, with respect, that you get to know the site a bit better before hurling accusations of partisanship and narrowness?

Fr. Michael,

For my part (in directly addressing me) you are speaking to profound concerns of mine, and alluding to some practical and theological questions regarding the City of God, the City of Man, the Church, and the responsibilities of each, and of each to each, which I have yet to solve to my own satisfaction as much as you clearly have to yours. That being the case, I will simply go forward to think on them.

While some may disagree it is certainly the majority report among Christian ethicists and moral theologians that some abortions are permissible in cases where pregnancy presents an clear and immanent danger to the life of the mother. This would be the ethical parallel to a just war. In both cases, there is no implied duty to either go to war or abort the child in a life-threatening preganancy. There is merely a concession to the unavoidability of an inherent evil and thus moral guidelines to restrict and contain the evil.

This may be the essence of our disagreement, as I think there are clearly cases in which there is a duty to go to war, but no cases in which there is a duty to perform an abortion, even in the rarest of cases in which the mother's life is truly threatened in the literal, not metaphorical sense of "being punished with a baby."

Otherwise, I thank you for your thoughtful and eloquently articulated responses.

Lydia,

Again, calling something "pathetic" doesn't make it so. This is especially so when the statement itself betrays an apparent absence of genuine pathos.

As I said, I'm not really interested in the person you voted for and you have no warrant to judge that I am a "liberal." Most Libertarians and Freedman-style economic conservatives hate McCain precisely because he's not a purist (as you have indicated). Partisanship is no respecter of candidates in a given election cycle; it's all about the ideology. I simply think that the ideology here has occluded the moral coherence of your position.

Proud Protestant or not, you are still heir of the same Augustinian theological anthropology as everyone else in Western Christendom. You are right to protest that you owe me no special allegiance because of my office. Nor would any Catholic. I am simply arguing for Scripture and reason as Luther would have wished and while you possess the free will to dissent, you are as ultimately accountable to the truth as the rest of us. I don't claim sole possession of the truth in this case, but I have advanced an argument.

I don't disagree with your assertion that abortion is a form of homicide or with the proposition that it be outlawed. I also would not dispute that it self-defense is always-already unjustifiable. I would argue, however, that you have smuggled in unwarranted assumptions about who is guilty. The torture victims I wrote of above have, for example,lacked recourse to legal defense and are even now being acquitted and/or released. You also lack the ability to demonstrate that the death penalty overrides the inherent claims of human dignity as the only recourse for a modern society's self-preservation. [Retributive justice simply gives purchase on ontological violence and retribution is contained rather than established by just war and self defense theories of justice, aristocles.]

Finally, you really don't seam to grasp how the ethic of life functions as a comprehensive guarantor of human dignity. Where that dignity is under assault anywhere it is under assault everywhere. As my illustration with the woman in the Lower Ninth Ward indicates, there are those pesky things called consequences. I'm wondering where such a person would ever pick up on the pedagogical potency of your advocacy for the rights of her unborn child when you seem content to disclaim her human dignity as a wrongful infringement on your money and your convenience.

While some may disagree it is certainly the majority report among Christian ethicists and moral theologians that some abortions are permissible in cases where pregnancy presents an clear and immanent danger to the life of the mother. This would be the ethical parallel to a just war.

Didn't Zippy dedicate an entire tome on this matter wherein he puts forward a whole catalog of Catholic resources and materials consisting of current and even historical papal and concilliar teachings, which go on to disprove such a notion?

Also, I find it considerably offensive (not to mention, morally repugnant) than one should equate (and even go so far as to declare as morally acceptable) the deliberate killing of an innocent baby in the proposed example to that of the unintentional killing of a civilian(s) or even the necessary deployment of soldiers who happen to get killed in the course of a just war.

byronicman,

Just to clarify...Is it really your position that a woman who suffers an ectopic pregnancy is obliged to carry a child despite the fact that she and her child will inevitably die from the tubal rupture? If so this would be a strange application of moral reasoning. To do so would create the moral duty of active defensive against an intractable and potentially mortal aggressor while at the same time creating a mortal duty of absolute passivity in the face of an intractable, aggressive, and mortally dangerous medical condition.

Paul,

You are correct to note that I am a newcomer to this forum and I am glad to hear of the prior debates. My statements, however, did not proceed from bitterness and do not hang on whether individuals were for our against the war/torture/the bombing of Hiroshima. What precipitated my response was the cavalier moral denunciation of President Obama as a seeming irredeemable sociopath. Whatever one makes of his policy on abortion (and I make a lot), other of his immediately consequential decisions in the three days of his presidency demonstrate that he is not without a moral impulse. I simply think that in Lydia's case in particular, base outrage coupled with an Ayn Rand ideology has gotten the better of sensible moral and theological judgment.

So, by all means, let us pray that we all sleep discontentedly. The Kingdom has come and is coming and will come, but it has not yet been consummated and it has not yet appeared what we shall be.

Just to clarify...Is it really your position that a woman who suffers an ectopic pregnancy is obliged to carry a child despite the fact that she and her child will inevitably die from the tubal rupture? If so this would be a strange application of moral reasoning. To do so would create the moral duty of active defensive against an intractable and potentially mortal aggressor while at the same time creating a mortal duty of absolute passivity in the face of an intractable, aggressive, and mortally dangerous medical condition.

If there is no way to save the child in any case, that is one consideration. However, isn't it true that, because of the ontological ordering of woman to motherhood, that a woman in that situation is thus morally bound to give life to her child, even at the expense of her own? This goes for both parents, of course, but a woman is in a unique situation in virtue of the biological nature of motherhood. I simply cannot view the child in this case as an aggressor. That a woman has the personal freedom to acquiesce willingly to her moral duty is part of the essence of her dignity. Society is responsible to encourage her in this, to encourage her to embrace her duty as a mother--a parent's first duty is to the life of the child, most especially when the child is so utterly helpless. A woman who dies giving life in a difficult pregnancy is not a moral failure, or a victim of false moral reasoning, but a heroine. My position is that the life of the mother can never be preferred, simpliciter, to the life of the child, and furthermore, a woman who's conscience is properly formed would be the first to affirm that.

I said,

if there is no way to save the child in any case, that is one consideration.

To which I should add, if we know that the child will die in any case, and the question is simply whether the mother will die as well, or whether at least one life can be saved (the mother's, since the child's situation is hopeless), then that is one consideration. But in such a case it is difficult for me to see that the we have a true medical abortion on our hands except in purely literal terms, since the tubal pregnancy will, it seems, be sure to naturally abort anyway, given enough time. If I am mistaken about he nature of tubal pregnancies here, I'll be happily corrected.

byronicman,

That would be one way to draw the lines of the argument and, indeed, would be MY preferred way.

Of course, the other way to draw it up would be to say that while the child is not the aggressor, the medical condition is. This would be to make the child a non-combatant and his or her death the unavoidable casualty of justifiable (and by some lights, morally necessary) conflict in a fallen world. Therein lies the parallel between justifiable abortions and justifiable war. Again, you seem to deny the moral duty of one while retaining the moral duty of another and I'm not clear as to your grounds for making that judgment.

From Michael Novak at NRO corner today.

I think many are now praying that the eyes of Barack and Michelle Obama will be opened and that they will not seek to narrow the circle the number of Americans whose rights are protected in law, but rather to widen the circle so that the rights of these great potential talents and loving persons will be protected during the months of their greatest vulnerability.

I admire this Michael. I first encountered him reading The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. There's a graciousness about him that I can only attribute to maturity.

Fr. M,

That would be one way to draw the lines of the argument and, indeed, would be MY preferred way.

Of course, the other way to draw it up would be to say that while the child is not the aggressor, the medical condition is. This would be to make the child a non-combatant and his or her death the unavoidable casualty of justifiable (and by some lights, morally necessary) conflict in a fallen world. Therein lies the parallel between justifiable abortions and justifiable war. Again, you seem to deny the moral duty of one while retaining the moral duty of another and I'm not clear as to your grounds for making that judgment.

That is a reasonable argument. It seems to me that we are, in the case of both abortion culture and American foreign policy, involved in something like a systemic error that has its own internal logic, but is based on a false premise--that abortion, on the one hand, and military conflict, on the other, are legitimate methods of dealing with a broad range of real difficulties. That such difficulties are indeed real, but also in another sense, manufactured difficulties, conditions brought about by the erection of social and world-political structures founded on fallacies, both moral, and otherwise, I take as a principle fundamental to a sound Catholic critique of the issues in question. Once this fallacious reality is admitted and institutionalized in public policy and social/political custom, the necessity of drastic measures become a commonplace, and a self-fulfilling principle. That war, for instance, is nothing more than, in the famous aphorism of Clausewitz "a continuation of politics by other means," is merely a truism, but if it is taken for a practical axiom, then systemic injustice ensues (and abortion culture ascends in the same way--as an answer to a false need, a created necessity based on a fallacy). Whenever a nation is presented with a seemingly intractable diplomatic difficulty, it simply threatens war, if it can. If it can't it must ultimately acquiesce to the stronger opponent. Critics of the modern American global empire charge that our world-wide military presence and commitment to economic hegemony merely act as a constant threat, an agitation to conflict in which more or less constant recourse to military action is thus made inevitable. There are always "American interests" at stake, and we are always on the verge of some conflict, somewhere. Pandora's Box has been opened, and a terror of new, dark, "realities" unleashed. Geopolitical theorist George Friedman argues that Globalization makes for more war, not less. American politicians find the use of our military not only amenable, for a variety of reasons, politically, but rendered by the state of things necessary, for how can we retreat from our global commitments, commitments which every administration merely inherits?

Now, I personally believe the error of the second Iraq war, especially, to be an error of just this kind. While there is no denying the evil of the Baathist regime in Iraq, it seems foolish to argue that our war there was based on an evenly applied principle, to wit, that we launch invasions whenever brutal state dictatorships rattle sabres, commit genocide on their own people, support international terrorism, and seek fissionable nuclear material for the construction of WMD's. We did what we did in Iraq because we could, not because we had to. Saddaam's regime was boxed in by no-fly zones and economically strangled. His regime was living on borrowed time, and we could have left things with the seige that was already in place. The escalation was morally unwarranted, but warranted on the basis of expediency, due to a myriad of other considerations arising from the false reality the nature of which I have discussed above. This is my view, and because of it, I hold the Bush's war was unjust, and I don't have a problem with those who associate it with the "Culture of Death."

However, this situation of global necessity is new only in its particulars, not in itself. Some such situations have always been in existence, and I agree with contributor Maximos (Empire, Destroying Subsidiarity), that Empire itself is not bad, but certain sorts of empires can be. While societies have always, it seems likely, suffered the existence of abortions, the resurgence of abortion culture in the last half of the last century is something that seems altogether novel in our society since the ancient Greek practice of abandoning unwanted children on the outskirts of town. We are fighting, in a sense, a new moral battle against a rising false public consciousness which has yet to fully take hold. President Obama appears intent on firing the last shot in this battle, and that for the wrong side. President Obama's argument is an argument for choice, not an argument for radical responses in radical and rare emergencies. The nature of the moral deception of which he is victim is of a different order than Mr. Bush's, I hold, because he refuses to acknowledge that the question of abortion is one of any objective moral import. Mr. Bush will spend the rest of his life arguing for the justice of his decision to invade Iraq precisely because he knows that he could have possibly been wrong. Mr. Obama acknowledges no such objective possibility in his abortion position. An abortion is, for him, in principle an action that any woman can instigate for any reason whatsoever, his personal sentiments of discontentment at the frequency of abortion not withstanding. For him, it is at bottom a matter of personal freedom. If Obama's abortion position were carved down in such a way as to virtually amount to allowing the procedure only in dire and immediate medical need, his position would, quite simply, not be a Pro-Choice position at all. He would be a man I could work with. But the president is not merely a do-nothing on abortion. He is a committed Pro-Choice advocate. He denies that the act of abortion has any inherent moral import. For him, it is only a question of personal sensitivity. This separates him, as to moral culpability, from Mr. Bush. Bush knows he could have been wrong. He did not come into office as a nation-builder. He responded to a situation that he did not create, and his responses were, at best, as moral decisions, mixed. Obama doesn't think the question of Right and Wrong enters into the abortion debate at all. He is an abortion fundamentalist, if I may appropriate the term. There's no debate to be had.

when you seem content to disclaim her human dignity as a wrongful infringement on your money and your convenience.

See, Fr. Michael, that's the kind of clause that just makes it impossible for me to take you seriously. Perhaps you really just don't "get" that a failure to give some particular sum of government money to some particular locality which indirectly and unintentionally may have resulted in some woman's asking a doctor to dismember her child is no way no how nowhere close to as evil as the evil committed by the man who dismembered her child. Maybe you really don't "get" that it is also nowhere close to the evil intentions of "abortion fundamentalists" (thanks, Byronic) like Barack Obama who will die in the breach for her "right to choose" to have her child dismembered. But that level of not getting it just puts you beyond the pale, as far as I'm concerned.

You know nothing about me and about what I do or don't think about convenience, money, and the human dignity of the poor. But you throw out purple, personal phrases like the above because it suits your partisan political desire to make moral equivalences that cannot even begin to hold water in order to justify your charge of "pharisaism" against those who hold Barack Obama in special moral opprobrium for his infanticidal views and intents. Where would I begin to argue with that? Why should I bother?

Now, chaps, no offense intended to anybody, but I'm going to close comments on this post, now. I feel we've gotten off the subject a bit too far, and since Fr. Michael is obviously the Energizer Bunny of the seamless garment Catholics and will keep on coming back through banging the moral equivalence drum, and since most of us just can't resist answering him, I'd rather politely end the discussion here.

Oh, and Byronic, I would just say this: Fr. Michael, being obviously no dummy, must _know_ all that you say about Barack Obama. Thus all his talk of "abortion in extreme cases" and the like, as if it has *anything remotely to do with* his moral equivalence-laden defenses of Barack and accusations of pharisaism, must be at least to some extent disingenuous. Maybe he's deceived himself first into thinking this life-of-the-mother-exception discussion is at all relevant, but somewhere the honesty ball has gotten dropped. I appreciate your desire to take the courtesy high road, and I appreciate, too, your laying it out w.r.t. Obama so that it can't be said that nobody ever said it to Fr. Michael, but his position overall really is utterly indefensible, to put it mildly.