The Fallacy of False Symmetry at work again

This is a great article and much needed.  Thank you for writing it, even though I’m sure you’re going to get killed in this comment section.  But maybe some will have ears to hear.  Here is something which is true, but no one in the “conservative” camp wants to hear: in order to end abortion in the country, we will need to win the hearts and votes of Republicans AND Democrats.  As long as it is divided by parties NOTHING WILL CHANGE.

http://www.newoxfordreview.org/letters.jsp?did=0599-letters

I have great admiration for the person and work of Russell Shaw. (Ignatius Press has published two of his books.) However, I believe he exemplifies a very widespread fallacy which I call the fallacy of false symmetry.

The fallacy results from the attempt to take a “moderate” position between what one perceives as two extremes. Referring to his own previous statement that “conservative Catholics often come across as good haters,” Shaw now adds that “progressive Catholics are pretty good haters too.” To demonstrate this, he continues: “A tale of two cardinals illustrates the problem.”

The first cardinal is Cardinal Ratzinger. And Shaw refers to the “character assassination” done by the National Catholic Reporter in quoting Hans Küng saying of Cardinal Ratzinger, “‘He is the chief authority of the Inquisitorial office. It’s like having a general conversation about

human rights with the head of the KGB.’” Thus is illustrated the hatred of the progressives. The second cardinal is Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago. Shaw mentions that a Catholic journal published a long profile “highly critical of him for championing the ‘consistent ethic of life’ that many prolifers think weakens their cause.” The unnamed journal is The Catholic World Report, of which I am the publisher. It was an article by James Hitchcock. What is the symmetric hatred evidenced by Hitchcock’s article?

“Missing from this account…was any mention of the presidential campaign of 1976 — a hugely serious omission for anyone claiming to interpret the late Cardinal’s record on abortion.” Thus is illustrated the hatred of conservative Catholics.

But how symmetrical is this? On the one hand, you have a journal (the Reporter) that has publicly opposed a number of irreformable magisterial teachings — notably on the ordination of women and on human sexuality — quoting someone who publicly dissents from Church teaching and who has been forbidden by the Holy See to teach in the name of the Church. On the other hand, you have a journal (The Catholic World Report) whose public

position is recognized by friends and enemies alike as magisterial, and an article by someone whose knowledge of and fidelity to the Magisterium are exemplary.

Usually it is The Wanderer which is used for this fallacy rather than The Catholic World Report. Whether or not one agrees with the content or style of The Wanderer, the important distinction between a publication which upholds the Church’s teaching and one which does not is disregarded.

About a year ago there was an article in the National Catholic Register — a periodical which I support and which I believe has been steadily improving over the last year — where someone was quoted without commentary as saying in effect that “there are two extreme factions in the Catholic Church. On the far left you have Call to Action. And on the far right you have Mother Angelica and EWTN.” That is simply preposterous.

Call to Action espouses positions which are inconsistent with the faith of the Catholic Church. Mother Angelica firmly supports the full teaching of the Church.

I will leave it to someone more competent to speculate on the psychological origins of this false symmetry. But empirically it seems to be most often used by those who want to consider themselves as “moderates” and think they can so position themselves and achieve a “consensus” by staking out a position between “extremes” of their definition, carefully avoiding any reference to a standard of objective truth which might be “divisive.”

Fr. Joseph Fessio, S. J.
Ignatius Press
San Francisco, California

Amadan:

You seem to have taken a lot of words to say, “Abortion *is* the sole moral issue of our time and ‘prudential judgment’ *does* mean ‘do whatever the hell you like as though the Church doesn’t even exist on any other issue where the Church offers counsel, but not command’.”

Precisely the *reason* I begin this article by saying “Abortion is the *PRE-EMINENT MORAL ISSUE OF OUR TIME” is because I deny the false symmetry that is constantly put forward by Progressive Dissenters who try to equate the minimum wage (or whatever) with our culture’s embrace of the slaughter of the innocent.  But Progressive folly does not excuse conservative folly.  A “conservative” Catholic who feels himself free to blow off (and even treat with contempt) the rest of the Church’s teaching on the grounds that he wears a precious feet pin is not approaching the faith like a Catholic.  He is training himself to ignore the Church on prudential issues and function as though it does not exist, and (if polls are any indication) he has, in the past few years, in statistical percentages greater than the rest of the American publi now passed on to ignoring the Church on matters of grave and intrinsic moral evil on exactly the same consequentialist basis as pro-aborts: because the end (security) justifies the means (torture).

Minimum Daily Adult Requirement thinking is not Catholic.  It is not False Symmetry to say that Abortion is the Pre-Eminent Moral Issue of our time, but not that only moral issue of our time.

Amaden:
Mark is not being a “moderate”.  In fact, the opinions he holds are fiercely and unwaveringly one sided.  Abortion is ALWAYS a wrong.  Torture is an intrinsic moral evil and is ALWAYS wrong.  Nothing moderate about that.  Now, the fact that those two opinions happen to fall on opposite sides of the POLITICAL isle in the United States says more about whats wrong with American POLITICS.  Those are two perfectly consistent moral opinions.  They also happen to be the teaching of the Bishops.

Ben, both parties agree that torture is an intrinsic evil and always wrong. We may all agree that things that shock the conscience constitute torture, but if you are referring to waterboarding, reasonable minds can disagree as to whether throwing a little water on a terrorist constitutes torture. Abortion is always wrong!  We cannot disagree as to what constitues an abortion, but we can disagree as to what constitutes torture.

This line of reasoning always seems to me to be equivalent to an EMT tech saying “That gunshot wound to your chest is the pre-eminent threat to your health at this time. But don’t forget, you also have high blood-pressure, and that’ll do you in for sure, too. Eventually.” Thanks for the heads up, Doc! Now, can we fix the hemorrhaging wound in my chest before we worry about lowering my tryglicerides?

This is not to excuse high blood-pressure, which is bad and should be corrected, but it’s important to prioritize these things.

Milbo:

A) The whole project of diminishing the torture called waterboarding to “throwing a little water on a terrorist” is *exactly* what I’m talking about.  The American bishops have been quite clear that simulated drowning (which is what ‘waterboarding’ is a euphemism for) is torture.  The convoluted moral reasoning employed by Conservative Catholic torture supporters in the desperate attempt to square the circle of their political allegiances with the obvious teaching of the Church has been thoroughly debunked.  Face it. Catholic torture supporters are engage in exactly the same philosophic project as Catholic abortion supporters.

B) Waternboarding is not the only form of torture the US has employed.  We have murdered numerous prisoners in the process of “enhanced interrogation”.  Hint: When people die, it was torture.  And still conservative Catholics go on making excuses for such policies.  That, again, is why reducing all Catholic moral teaching to abortion alone is just wrong.  You wind up undercutting even the rationale for condemning abortion.  Heresy always winds up destroying itself.

This line of reasoning always seems to me to be equivalent to an EMT tech saying “That gunshot wound to your chest is the pre-eminent threat to your health at this time. But don’t forget, you also have high blood-pressure, and that’ll do you in for sure, too. Eventually.”

No.  That’s the Progressive line of reasoning.  My line of reasoning says, “Abortion is the priority.  But if, in your zeal to deal with abortion, you declare, “I don’t see why we are wasting time with all this cancer research and all this other junk at these hospitals!  Shut it all down!” you’ve probably made a mistake somewhere.  The temptation of heresy is always to take some truly important truth and use it to attack all the other truths you find boring or inconvenient or difficult to understand.

Still beating the same old drum with a ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘literalist’ reading of Veritatis Splendor?  If you applied the same approach to papal teachings (written with more clear language BTW) you’d sound like the Dimond brothers and have everyone in the heretical camp.
So, waterboarding is okay for trainees but not for actual criminals.  Sigh.  What’s next, declaring the mere asking of a question thrice to be torture?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxZQL_Is0mE

And one can be in favor of a just livable wage without believing, along with our bishops. that a government decree is the best way of achieving it.  Where is the parallel with abortion (even though it is the PER-EMINENT MORAL ISSUE OF OUR DAY)?  The difference is one of kind not degree.

No, abortion is not the pre-eminent moral issue of our time. It is absolutely terrible and inexcusable, and it may be the most talked about and debated moral issue of our time, but it is, in reality, only an offshoot of the pre-eminent moral issue of all times: selfishness. This is hard to take and often gets shot down because many (most?) Christians don’t want to be implicated in any sort of sinful behavior. It’s much easier, and makes us feel less sinful ourselves, to point at an action like abortion, that very few of us actually participate in, and condemn it and its practitioners. Even if we beat back the scourge of abortion, the root sin remains. We’re all still selfish, just in other ways.

Abortion isn’t always caused by selfishness.  Despite the potential blood profits, some kill babies free.

The temptation of heresy is always to take some truly important truth and use it to attack all the other truths you find boring or inconvenient or difficult to understand.

I think that’s probably a valid assessment of some of the arguments here (just not mine ;-) ). When you get right down to it time, money, and attention spans are limited resources and the application of these limited resources has to be prioritized. My suspicion is that if we confront and correct the greatest affrontery to life with every resource that we’ve got, once that’s sorted addressing the other affronteries to life will either fall into place or be a whole lot easier to resolve.

But I am but a simple caveman….

That’s kind of a narrow understanding of selfishness, Amanda. We are selfish whenever our actions are done to serve ourselves. This is precisely what Mother Teresa meant when she said “it is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.”

So Amadan, you are arguing that since special forces- being trained to withstand torture -are voluntarily waterboarded, its therefore ok to involuntarily waterboard alleged terrorists to try to extract information from them? Makes perfect sense!

I think that’s probably a valid assessment of some of the arguments here (just not mine ;-) ).

True enough.  It wasn’t meant to be.  It was intended as an assessment of arguments like, “A political issue is also a moral issue only if it involves choices directly counter to an explicit Church teaching, otherwise it is only a prudential problem, so controversies like abortion and euthanasia are moral issues but health care and immigration are not.”

So, waterboarding is okay for trainees but not for actual criminals.

Congratulations!  Your argument comes in at number 3 in the ever growing compendium of fallacious defenses of torture.

3. ... we waterboarded SERE trainees.
Omitting facts in an analogy, equivocation. Furthermore, our own government has expressly said that “the SERE waterboard experience is so different from the subsequent Agency usage as to make it almost irrelevant.”

You do remind me though.  The whole “reading the Church’s teaching for what it obviously means is ‘fundamentalist’” strategy also needs to be addressed.  Thanks for the reminder.

Yay! We’re still friends :-)

If my argument has to be labeled, to keep it distinct from the “prudential but not moral” argument, I would choose to have it called the “Arm all batteries, full power to forward shields, weapons to maximum, ramming speed, we’re going in!” argument, never to be separated from its “Enemy flagship destroyed, now let’s mop up those stray fighers!” corollary.

I’m all in favor of it, just as I am in favor of a just peace at Versailles that doesn’t grind Germany into the dust and create a seed ground for some crazy anti-semite to seize power.

However, what I want is long past actually ever happening.  In the same way, the dream that either of our political parties are interested in upsetting the Roe status quo is just that: a dream.  Ain’t never gonna happen.  So our battle against abortion has to take place on other grounds than the political.  And it has to realistically face the fact that the party which is supposedly prolife is using prolifers to accomplish goals that have nothing to do with (and are sometimes diametrically opposed to) a commitment to the dignity of innocent human life.  That’s doesn’t mean “support the other party (which is also mortally opposed to the dignity of innocent human life)”.  It means “Think different.  Don’t get played into turning against the bedrock teaching of the Church for political gain by reducing all Catholic moral teaching to abortion and euthanasia and ignoring the moral basis (opposition to consquentialism) that is the only thing that makes the Church’s teaching on abortion and euthanasia coherent.”

Ben, then the question is: What’s wrong with Democrats’ hearts?

Ben, it’s obvious the Democrat side of the isle is the one that does not believe abortion is evil because they have a plank in their party platform supporting abortion “rights.”  The Republican Party has a plank supporting a Right-to-Life Constitutional Amendment.  But, which party are you accusing of supporting torture?

Much of this argument presumes that the liberals and progressives (including the bishops) are correct in their moral conclusions about the issues secondary to abortion which conservatives might characterize as prudential. I don’t take it as a given. I’ll be happy to proclaim to St Pete my my unwavering opposition to minimum wage laws and admit without too much trepidation my uncertainty on the morality of waterboarding.

Mark Shea writes: “In the same way, the dream that either of our political parties are interested in upsetting the Roe status quo is just that: a dream.  Ain’t never gonna happen.  So our battle against abortion has to take place on other grounds than the political.  And it has to realistically face the fact that the party which is supposedly prolife is using prolifers to accomplish goals that have nothing to do with (and are sometimes diametrically opposed to) a commitment to the dignity of innocent human life.”

This is one of the reasons why we need a Catholic party led by lay people.  Such a party should align itself with the whole corpus of Catholic social teaching by offering a platform that is unhesitatingly pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker, and anti-war.  It should work in coalitions with Protestants to defend unborn children and marriage, and with people on the “left” to end and prevent war, especially nuclear war.

The Catholic Social Democratic Party, or the Catholic Labor Party, should constantly remind its members and the larger society of Mother Teresa’s ominous words: “The fruit of abortion is nuclear war.”

I hope that Mark Shea will continue writing in the same vein.

Mark, the issue is not “moral” - it’s evil.  Abortion is evil.  It’s the intentional murder of an innocent human being.  Catholics profess weekly to believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.  We believe God is our Creator and He gave us a soul the moment we were created, a soul that will never die, even though our body will.  We believe that body will be resurrected and rejoined with the soul for eternity.  We pray for God’s will to be done on earth, and to be led not into temptation, but delivered from evil.  This is what we Catholics profess to believe and pray for in every Sunday Mass.  The question is, Do Catholics really believe what they say they believe and pray for?  That has to be asked because half or more of the Catholics, including the clergy, continue to give their name identification and votes to the political organization that is diabolically opposed to what they say they believe and pray for.  It’s not that those Catholics should become Republicans; they should stop being Democrats.  They can be what ever they want – just “stop feeding the beast.”  There is life after leaving the Democrat Party, I know.  Abortion is a spiritual issue, not political.  Our Creed and our Lord’s Prayer make it spiritual issue to us Catholics.  And as citizens, it concerns the only right in our Constitution that is being denied.

Now, about “social justice.”  None of the so-called “social justice” issues the bishops added to the word “Prolife” are evil; they are political.  There are pros and cons on how to obtain the desired objectives of each of those issues, but those pros and cons are ideas and concepts of what will work better and what won’t.  Nobody is working to send children to bed at night hungry, no matter what the Democrat Party Chairman says. 

It would have been helpful if the bishops had pin pointed the exact word where an idea or concept concerning a “social justice” issue became immoral or evil.  But they haven’t done that because they can’t.  There is no right or wrong concerning them; only what is the better way of reaching the desired objective.  Adding these issues to the name “Prolife,” a word coined to counter the pro-abortion supporters calling themselves “pro-cholice,” was a mistake, at best, and an intentional political move, at worst..  I know which it was, I read the biography entitled “Cardinal Bernardin.”

Mark, the issue is not “moral” - it’s evil. 

?

That statement makes absolutely no sense.

Long before the introduction of the “seamless garment” concept, with its unfortunate consequential erosion of the Pro-Life movement, a young Boston priest, Father John J. Wright, reminded his listeners at the Third Red Mass in New England, that “the rights of the unborn child are sacred to our state (Massachusetts) under a double title: they are the rights of a human, and of a human incapable of pleading his own right, and therefore with a greater claim, not a lesser on the protection of the state as our fathers understood it.” Our Declaration of Independence, described by former New York gubernatorial candidate Lewis E. Lehrman as as the “organic law of the American Founding” is the cornerstone of the principal enunciated by Father, later Cardinal Wright. While it’s right to be concerned about torture and war, surely the fate of the “least of the brethren” ought to be given preeminence.

Thank you for writing this!

Abortion is the most important of these issues, but they are related, and to separate them as though the Republican party has more wisdom than the Tradition of the Church is very short-sighted. Abortion tries to convince society that it’s ok to use violence against the innocent to achieve one’s ends. If people are employing violence against their own flesh and blood, how can we as a society *not* then use violence in other areas of life to get what we want?

Mark, I had to look it up to be sure of the connotation I had in mind.

“Moral” 1 a : of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior : ETHICAL   b : expressing or teaching a concept of right behavior   c : conforming to a standard of right   behavior   d :  sanctioned by or operative on one’s conscience or ethical judgment   e: capable of right and wrong action   2 : probable though not proved : VIRTUAL   3 :  of , relating to, or acting on the mind, character, or will.

“Evil” adj.  1 a : morally reprehensible : SINFUL WICKED b ; arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct   2 : causing harm : PENICIOUS.

“Evil”  n 1 :  something that brings sorrow, distress, or calamity   2 a : the fact of suffering, misfortune, and wrongdoing b : a cosmic evil force

Mark:

Perhaps you can enlighten me about this prudential business. The Catholic Church clearly states that a country has a right to enforce its borders, yet the Catholic bishops of Texas have said they will lobby in Austin against building a fence on the border, and that they oppose the enforcement of immigration laws.
  I was told at a Respect Life meeting at the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston that this is a prudential decision of the Texas Catholic bishops which Respect Life Coordinators need not focus our time on if we had a problem with it.
  I wholeheartedly support the church, but I have a real problem with this goal of the Texas bishops. Am I wrong?

Shara wrote: “Abortion is the most important of these issues, but they are related, and to separate them as though the Republican party has more wisdom than the Tradition of the Church is very short-sighted.”

Shara, perhaps then you can do something the bishops have failed to do since incorporating social justice issues in with prolife.  Just exactly where is the point of right and wrong, good and evil in these issues and what is the Republican’s positions concerning them?

: ) sorry, Sarah, not Shara.

I don’t think that anyone seriously contends that abortion is the only issue one should be concerned with. Rather, it is a qualifying issue, a threshold issue: Those who support abortion lack the moral qualification for public office (just as, regularly, for the other side a politician’s opposition to abortion serves to disqualify him for office). For those who accept that abortion is the pre-eminent moral issue of our time, a pragmatic political proposition might be: Humor me on abortion, and then I’m willing to listen to what you have to say about anything else.

The difference between abortion and almost all other issues is that the other issues—immigration, jobs and public debt, foreign wars,proper treatment of terrorists, what have you—involve valid moral concerns on both sides, and prudence consists in choosing among them. Sure we should welcome the stranger; and sure people have a right to try to better their lives; and sure countries have a right to defend their borders; and sure no one has the right to better oneself at the expense of innocent others: and on and on and on. The “Bishops” are as free as anyone else to pronounce on any such issues as they please, although to my mind many of their political pronouncements seem remarkably lacking in wisdom and oblivious to the obvious deleterious consequences of what they propose.But be that as it may.

There are two swords, and most mundane issues are in the province of the king (or, today, the citizen) rather than the priest. And in determining how to act, kings and citizens presumably take full account of the moral as well as the crassly pragmatic implications of their choices.

I fear the Republicans are about as interested in ending abortion as the Democrats are in ending poverty.
These things are just more valuable as issues than victories.

My first reaction to Mark’s article was to remember my neighbor’s comment that he went to a Jesuit school and there learned to be able to rationalize to any conclusion.  I take a simple view.  Abortion is wrong, an intrinsic evil and one should not vote for a candidate that is pro abortion.  The only reason abortion is considered with other social justice issues is because of those who do not want to accept the Church’s position on abortion, especially since the democrat party embraces abortion(and other social evils).  I was pleasantly (for a short time) surprised to find that there were “pro-life” people in congress on the democrat side and wondered why they hadn’t formed a coalition with their like minded compatriots on the other side.  Of course, Stupak brought us back to reality on that one.  There are no pro life democrats unless the vote doesn’t matter.  It is an interesting comment on our society today that politicians put party before country or their soul. 
    As someone mentioned in one of the comments, her puzzlement over the Texas bishops position on illegal immigration, I too am puzzled.  I have no problem with charity toward the individual but how can the Church encourage the breaking of the law?  Without the rule of law, all of us, illegals included, are at risk.  Seems to me the Church should be lobbying for a securing of the border and enforcement of the law as a prerequisite for any further legislation regarding immigration. 
  As for waterboarding, if you wish to define torture appropriately then you can make anything or nothing qualify as torture.  When the administration used it, it had been reviewed and was not considered torture though it was used sparingly ( I believe only on three individuals).  This is a debate that works well in the academic halls but is a completely different matter on the battlefield where lives are at stake.  It is best worked out ahead of time when cool minds can determine what the best course of action should be (hopefully within the boundaries of moral and Catholic Teachings)

simulated drowning (which is what ‘waterboarding’ is a euphemism for)

Just to be pedantic (which is the primary purpose of the internet), I object to the use of the phrase “simulated drowning.” Water is poured down the throat, which prevents the victim from breathing. This is known as actual drowning. It may be a controlled drowning, but there’s nothing simulated about it.

Waterboarding is NOT torture, that’s not an issuue. How could anyone compare waterboarding a terrerist to killing a child in the womb.

Amadan:

I fear the Republicans are about as interested in ending abortion as the Democrats are in ending poverty.
These things are just more valuable as issues than victories.

You got it.

Andy:

Fair enough.

Robert Rohn:

Thank you for illustrating my point so perfectly.  *Only* abortion and euthanasia are sins in the minds of many conservative Catholic culture warriors.  Beyond that, the loud and clear message from broad swaths of supposedly non-Cafeteria Catholics is “Feel free to do whatever the hell you want, even when the Church says that prisoners are to be treated humanely.  What does the Church know?  It’s good for one thing and one thing only when it comes to moral teaching: condemning abortion.  Otherwise, feel free to ignore Her with impugnity!”

waterboarding is humane -  no one ever died or was hurt from waterbarding and it saved lives by preventing terrerist attacks

“gang rape is humane -  no one ever died or was hurt from gang rape.”
You may say, “But people have died from gang rape”.  True enough.  And we had prisoners murdered by our torturers too, as our own government admitted.  Waterboarding isn’t the only form of torture we used.

or how about

“Threatening to torture children (which we did with Khalid Sheik Mohammeds children) saved lives by preventing terrerist attacks”.

Your argument is “Let us do evil that good may come of it”.  The Church has always condemned that logic.

Introducing torture into a discussion about abortion is like introducing food poisoning into a discussion about administering cyanide to help someone looking for euthanasia. The reason we have a health care bill that funds abortion is because the majority of Catholics in name only voted for Democrats and Obama.

I neither voted for Obama, nor remotely suggested anybody should vote for any politician who endorses abortion.  In fact, I believe no one should so vote.  I merely also say that refusing to vote for a politician who supports one grave and intrinsic evil that is absolutely irreconcilable with Church teaching is not a license to vote for a politician who supports another grave and intrinsic evil that is absolutely irreconcilable with Church teaching.  When you do that, you can wind up in the weird position of <a href=“http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?opti>cheering for pro-abortion, pro-ESCR, pro-torture nude models</a> as champions of your “values” because you come to care more passionately for party loyalties than you do for being a consistent Catholic.  Heresy always winds up destroying itself, and the reduction of all Catholic morality to nothing but opposition to abortion and contempt and neglect for the rest of the Church’s moral teaching is a heresy.

TJ Byrnes, I’m in agreement with what you wrote about torture vrs abortion, and about why taxpayers will now be paying for abortions as a result of the largest, single voting block, Catholics, voting for Obama and the Democrats this last election.

However, I would amend one aspect of your comment.  And that was your saying “Catholics in name only.”  I believe they are NOT Catholics in name only.  I reserve that phraseology to those who call themselves Catholic but don’t go to church.  The overwhelming number of Catholics who voted for Obama, and the Democrat Party candidates, are devout, church-going Catholics who receive Communion every Mass they attend.  This includes the bishops, clergy and religious. The church-going Catholics are the ones who stand and voluntarily profess to believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, and pray the Lords Prayer, praying for God’s will to be done on earth and to not be lead into temptation but delivered from evil, before they receive Communion. 

Those a Catholics justify giving their name identification and their votes to the pro-abortion party because of two reasons, in my view.  One, the social justice issues out number the single issue of abortion.  Two, they believe that the Democrat Party is more “prolife” on those other issues.  As some Democrat Catholics like to say, “Their belief in prolife doesn’t stop at the baby’s birth.”  That’s a cleaver sound bite, and a put down to the those prolifers in the Republican Party, but what it really reveals is their long held prejudice that they think they are better people because they believe the Democrat Party’s propaganda that they “are for the little people” and the Republican Party is for the wealthy. (Seems to me they have fallen for the “temptation” to feel morally superior to others not in the Democrat Party)  Such Catholics, which include the clergy, as well as a number of bishops, ignore totally what Pope John Paul II had to say about this. “Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights—for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture—is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition of all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination” (Pope John Paul II, 1988, The Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World (Christifideles Laici), n.38).

They even ignore what the U.S. bishops said themselves. “Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the ‘rightness’ of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community” (US Bishops, 1998, Living the Gospel of Life, n.23).

Between the two statements, I find JPII’s a much clearer statement.  “Maximum determination” is a stronger commitment than is “the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable states.”  A person can “defend life” without giving up anything.  “Maximum determination” means you do what you have to do to win.  One can not seriously fight prejudice against blacks while continuing to belong to the KKK. 

The “maximum determination” a Catholic Democrat can give to the “right to life” is to remove their name from the pro-abortion party and not vote for their candidates until the party removes its support for Roe v Wade from their Party platform, and supports Supreme Court nominees that will overturn Roe v Wade.  In essence, it’s a boycott.  They should send that statement to their Democrat representatives and to the party Chairmen, Federal, State, and local.  When they do that, afterwards, they may find they are saying their Profession of Faith, and Lord’s Prayer with bit louder voice, and their receiving the Holy Eucharist will be that much more fulfilling, as they pray for their former party’s conversion.

Mark - it is not a matter of picking one party over another, something your recent comment and link seem to be arguing against to a degree.  It is a matter of picking your professed religious beliefs over those of a political party that you give your name and votes to that are diabolically opposed to what you profess to believe and pray for every weekend before receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in Mass.  It is not any more complicated than that.  One doesn’t have to join another party to “prove” their prolife “credential.”  On the other hand, it is a lot clearer if a person who believes in equality of all - doesn’t remain a member of the KKK.

This is a wonderful article…I have a question: I know many Catholics who tell me that publicly promoting abortion and advocating for abortion publicly is not a serious sin or even a grave moral offense since our Cardinals and Bishops must consider those doing so to continue to publicly receive the Eucharist…therefore, Catholic politicians like Pelosi and Biden and others must be considered Catholics in good standing. This is so confusing!

Posted by Mark Shea on Friday, Jun 25, 2010 11:07 PM (EST):
Amadan:
I fear the Republicans are about as interested in ending abortion as the Democrats are in ending poverty.
These things are just more valuable as issues than victories.
You got it.

So vote Republican;  they’ll use effective means to eliminate poverty (thereby depriving the Dems of a constituency) and the Dems won’t get to send more money to promote abortions.

If only the Culture of Death required the same level of purity as our side does.  They wouldn’t have employed incrementalism to get where we are and the utopia of the 13th Century would still be going on along with advances in Medicine etc.

Mark - it is not a matter of picking one party over another, something your recent comment and link seem to be arguing against to a degree.  It is a matter of picking your professed religious beliefs over those of a political party that you give your name and votes to that are diabolically opposed to what you profess to believe and pray for every weekend before receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in Mass.  It is not any more complicated than that.  One doesn’t have to join another party to “prove” their prolife “credential.”  On the other hand, it is a lot clearer if a person who believes in equality of all - doesn’t remain a member of the KKK.

This sounds like “Vote any party you like, as long as it is Republican”.

Very well, I will try to be clearer.  I believe no Catholic should ever vote for a candidate who supports policies that involve us in grave and intrinsic evil.  Both parties, in national elections, tend to put forward candidates who vow to do just that.  When such candidates appear, I think Catholics should not support them.  That’s why I voted for neither McCain nor Obama.

Amadan:

You write: “So vote Republican”.

Not if the Republican advocates grave and intrinsic evil, as McCain did with his support of ESCR.  The only “incrementalism” we’ve seen from the GOP over the long haul is an incremental willingness to abandon its prolife position while adopting the use of Gestapo and Communist Chinese tactics (and euphemism) in prisoner interrogations and even prisoner experimentation.  No thanks.

Mark, no, I am not saying anything like what you said.  Let me be clear.  I’m saying sincere Catholic Democrats should remove their names from the Democrat voter rolls, and stop giving their votes to the pro-abortion party candidates, if they believe; one, in the Constitution and the right to life XIV Amendment; two,  their own words – standing in church, professing to believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life; three, their own words – praying the Lord’s Prayer anywhere, for God’s will to be done on earth, not be led into temptation, but delivered from evil; four, thinks abortion is evil; five, thinks God does not create life to be aborted; i.e., God is not in contradiction with himself; and six, does not want to be in contradiction with his or her own words.

It is called being true to your own word, and boycotting a secular entity that is on record in written word and action of being diabolically opposed to what you profess to believe and pray for.

There is nothing a Catholic stands in church and professes to believe and pray for that any other major secular entity is on record of being diabolically opposed to.

In other words, stop feeding the beast.  In time the beast will cease to exist or will change its ways.

If you think the republican party supports torture you’ve fallen for some of the democrats propaganda…..  There’s definitly some to that “Catholics in name only”.  All the Catholics I know of who voted for Obama rarely attend mass and all the faithfull practicing Catholic’s voted for McCain…..As for the clergy and Bishops who may have voted for Obama, liberalism grew in the church during the 70’s and 80’s, which is obvious when you look at what has happened to some of our Catholic Colleges.

If you think the republican party supports torture you’ve fallen for some of the democrats propaganda…..

No.  Just boned up on the facts of what was, in fact, authorized by the Bush Administration and remains, to this day, staunchly defended and even celebrated by far too many allegedly conservative Catholics.  One does not have to be a Democrat or Obama supporter to oppose the right’s enthusiastic embrace of torture.

Stillbelieve:

I have no problem with the idea that Catholics should renounce their affiliation with the Dems for their embrace of the intrinsic and grave evil of abortion.  I’d love to see it happen.  It’s just that I’d also love to see them send the same message to the GOP for their embrace of policies that are, likewise, ordered toward intrinisic and grave evil.  If I’d had my druthers, Catholics should have abandoned Bush when he gave the green light to ESCR and torture.

Party hacks always reply, “Oh!  So you expect politicians to be perfect!”

No.  I’m not really asking for perfection.  I’m just asking them not to have me support things that *will send me to hell for supporting them*.  I’m happy to have give and take on health care, the economy, gas prices, and so forth.  But there’s no give and take on things the Church says are inexcusably evil and damnable.  That’s why I don’t support either party’s candidates if they support things like murder or torture.

Mark, you say, “That’s why I don’t support either party’s candidates if they support things like murder or torture.”

While I have never heard of any candidate from any party come out and say they support torture, the concern I have about the bishops and Catholic Dems is that they don’t seem to need much counter arguments, such as you bring up with “torture,” to seemingly dismiss the seriousness and fact that one political party, and only one, is responsible for abortion-on-demand remaining the law of the land the past 37 years.  And in that time the largest, single voting block for that party has been members of the “one true Church.”  And the Democrat Senators who led the opposition of suspected “prolife” Supreme Court nominees were mostly church attending Catholics.  In those 37 years of significant Catholic name- identification and voter support for the pro-abortion party, over 51,000,000 babies have been murdered.  It is disheartening to me to see any church-going Catholic try to balance the scale of life with things like so-called “social justice” issues, or even torture, in order to hold on to their “deeply cherished, never to be forgotten grudges” towards the so called “party of the wealthy.” (A name the pro-abortion party gives them to keep the envy factor working for the Dems)

In your particular case, you hold individual legislators liable for an allegation of violating a Church teaching, when the issue is an entire political party is responsible for the murder of 51,000,000 unborn babies.  Your example seems to be concerned about some bad treatment of some suspected or known terrorist who may or may not have information that could led to the saving of innocent lives.  This person may have been responsible for murdering and crippling innocent human beings already.  Holding that against an entire party saying that party should be held accountable equally to that of the pro-abortion party’s activities seems grossly distorted and unfair.

In addition, the concern for some short term torture of some suspected terrorist that might save lives compared to a life time of torture the mother has to live with Satan whispering in her ear that God will never forgive her now for what she has done to her baby seems to me to be grossly out of balance, also.  Forty million plus women who had only one abortion, plus another eleven million who may have had multiple abortions, all tormented to one degree or another for the rest of their lives are to be balanced with maybe a dozen alleged tortured terrorist?

 
Mark, do you really believe that you could or would be sent to Hell for supporting a candidate who openly supported torturing suspected terrorist?  Then you must believe that all those Catholic Democrats the past 37 years who supported the pro-abortion party are going to Hell, also, including a number of bishops, priest and religious.  That is even more reason for you to help save those Catholics from the terrible mistake they have been making all those years, and urge them to join the boycott of the Democrat Party until it removes its support for Roe v Wade from the Party platform, and starts supporting Supreme Court nominees that will overturn Row v Wade, and oppose those who won’t.  This is a spiritual matter, Marl, not a political one because it would bring their actions into line with their professed beliefs and prayers.  And not only would you be saving them from eternal damnation, you will be helping God’s newest creation live out their purposes for which He created them, while at the same time, taking the cruelest weapon out of Satan’s hands - abortion - the murder of God’s loved creation at its earliest stage of life, and silence Satan’s tormenting whispering in the ears of women.

Stilbelieve:

You have an incredible grasp of the political dynamics in place and the manipulation of Catholics to achieve the ends of the Party of Death.

Coincidentally, this video appeared in my inbox this morning.  I think you’ll like it.

http://www.realcatholictv.com/cia/02fake/

SB:

Of course GOP polls don’t come out and say they support torture.  Neither do Dem pols come out and say they support the taking of innocent human life.  Both deploy euphemisms to avoid speaking clearly about what they advocate.

As to your insistence that Catholics should disassociate themselves from Dems who support abortion, I couldn’t agree more.  It feels like you are trying to convince me of something I already believe, or else assuming that because I oppose the GOP enthusiasm for torture, I must be offering some excuse for supporting the Dems.  I don’t.  I think no politician who support intrinsic and grave evil should recieve a Catholic vote.  I think any politician in either party who eschews support for grave moral evil should get preferential treatment from Catholics (assuming such an animal exists).

I am quite staggered that you could write, “Mark, do you really believe that you could or would be sent to Hell for supporting a candidate who openly supported torturing suspected terrorist?”  The answer is yes.  And whether you realize it or not, what you just said was, “Mark, do you really believe that you could or would be sent to Hell for supporting a candidate who openly supported torturing somebody who might well be an innocent man?”  The Church, not me, says torture is intrinisically and gravely immoral (Veritatis Splendor 80).  So your beef is with the Church, not me.  But what I find sinister is how the GOP had taught folks like you that not only is torture okay, but even torture of *suspected* people.  If it turns out the suspect was innocent, you apparently have no problem with that, just so long as one wears a Precious Feet pin.

That’s why I object to reducing all Catholic morality to abortion.  I choose to reject *any* politician who supports grave and intrinsic evil, Democrat or GOP.

Mark says, “That’s why I object to reducing all Catholic morality to abortion.  I choose to reject *any* politician who supports grave and intrinsic evil, Democrat or GOP.”

First, Mark, no one is reducing “all Catholic morality to abortion.”  But JP II is the one who rightly told the Church that “Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights—for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture—is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition of all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination” (Pope John Paul II, 1988, The Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World (Christifideles Laici), n.38. 

I think 51,000,000 murdered babies and probably 40,000,000 mothers mentally tortured by Satan for murdering their babies, compared to perhaps 12 alleged tortured terrorist you like to bring up amply demonstrates how “the common outcry – is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition of all other personal rights, - is not defended with maximum determination.“ 
Second, the issue is not “politicians who support grave and intrinsic evil.”  The issue an entire political party that supports “grave and intrinsic evil,” and those Catholics who support that party with their name identification and votes.  “Maximum determination” is what JP II called the Church to give, but she is not delivering on it.  And the consequence according to your belief is they are all going to hell for it.  One would think that people wouldn’t be wanting to “split hairs” on a matter as serious as this one.

Of *course* you are reducing all Catholic morality to abortion, SB.  Remember, you are not arguing with somebody who thinks a politician who supports abortion has an excuse.  I *agree* with you that no Catholic should ever vote for a candidate who does so.  Period.  And yet, despite that agreement, you keep attempting to minimize and deny the reality that, by and large, torture has now been enshrined as a sacred value by the GOP just as much as abortion has been by the Dems.  You emphasized comparative numbers, as though it would not matter if we tortured twelve innocent people (“suspect” mean “not proven guilty”) so long as we wore that Precious Feet pin.  You speak as though what matters is not the principle doing evil for a good end, but only how many people we do evil to.  You quote JPII and alter his meaning from “Abortion is the pre-eminent moral issue of our time” to “Abortion is the sole moral issue of our time” while simply ignoring that he himself taught that torture is intrinsically and gravely evil.

The question is not “How many were tortured under US policy?”  The question is “Is this policy gravely and intrinsically immoral?”  Abortion supporters likewise insisted that only a few would be affected by making abortion on demand policy. And they did so on exactly the same grounds that the GOP justifies abortion: that good ends justify evil means.  If, on behalf of torture, you grant that fundamental violation of all Catholic moral teaching, you’ve already given away the farm to the abortionists.  Your opposition simply becomes one of aesthetic preference, not moral teaching.

Again, I’m not disagreeing with you that no Catholic should support grave and intrinsic evil.  I’m merely disagreeing that we have to vote Republican when we stop voting Democrat.

stillbelieve -  you really should be a writer for this ” National Catholic Register”.  and Mark, I’ve enjoyed reading you but you really lost me on this one,

I’ve never voted for a pro-abort pol, but I think if one was running for dog catcher… voting for him would be okay.  Strange I’ve never seen this brought up.

And, what about the pro-Lifers who said, “I hope Obama gets elected ‘cause there’ll be such a backlash we’ll get the political leaders and judges we need to overturn Roe” ?  Misguided perhaps, but did they sin?

Too, there are some slick parliamentary procedures whereby you’d vote against your principles if it looked like a piece of legislation was going down to defeat so that you could bring in up later when the chances improved.  The losing side doesn’t have this right.

</i>I’ve never voted for a pro-abort pol, but I think if one was running for dog catcher… voting for him would be okay.  Strange I’ve never seen this brought up.</i>

Just so.  For similar reasons, I would support a prolife Dem if he was trying to reform his party (though whether such a creature exists, I don’t know).  As to slick parliamentary procedures, there may be situations where all that applies.  But in the broad picture, my basic approach is “Don’t vote for people who advocate gravely immoral policies. Period.”  What’s weird to me is that when I say stuff like that, I often hear things like, “Mark, I’ve enjoyed reading you but you really lost me on this one”.  I can’t for the life of me understand why.

Mark said, “I’m merely disagreeing that we have to vote Republican when we stop voting Democrat.” 

Mark, I agree with you!– you do not have to vote Republican when you stop voting for Democrats!  The point is to stop feeding the beast.  Please Catholics – boycott the Democrat Party until they reverse their position on abortion.  You will not die, and you do not have to vote Republican.  Mark believes you will not only be saving unborn babies, as do I, but you will be saving your own souls as well.

We’re at about 99% agreement.  However, I want to make it clear that I do not think any mortal is competent to say that somebody is damnable based on their voting record.  I know that *I* would be doing something hellworthy if I voted for a pro-abortion or pro-torture candidate, because I would be combining grave matter with a free and fully understood act of the will.  I don’t know that this is the case for anybody else, so I can’t say that such an act would be a grave sin for them (though it would certainly, I think, be grave matter).  Just being clear.  A person might vote for a candidate who advocates grave evil and there might be all sorts of circumstances that would reduce his culpability to nil.  Hence the command not to judge.

But I agree that Catholics should simply refuse to stop being played by any candidate that advocates policies in direct contradiction to the teaching of the Church.

Ok, so some conservative may say that torture or the death penalty is sometimes justifiable and abortion is always wrong. So What! Conservatives make mistakes too. They do not speak authoritatively for the Church. That still does not mitigate the intrinsic evil of abortion. I think we need to follow the dogmas of the Church and quit coming up with alot of excuses to give in to collaborating with the powerful, rich pro-abortion lobby on the abortion issue. And I also don’t drink hardly ever but I believe if you publicly advocate for free publicly funded abortion and doing away with healthcare worker’s conscience protections St. Peter will give you a whole lot more grief at the “pearly gates” than If you ccassionally had one-too-many watching the superbowl.

Dear Mr Shea,

Can you name the five conservatives who said that abortion is the only sin?

I really don’t have any idea who ever said that!

Ok, so some conservative may say that torture or the death penalty is sometimes justifiable and abortion is always wrong. So What! Conservatives make mistakes too. They do not speak authoritatively for the Church.

Well, when the “some conservative” is the President and Vice President of the United States, you wind up with a policy of torture, abuse, and prisonder experimentation that gets inflicted on quite a number of prisoners (the overwhelming majority never even charged with anything and subsequently released) as well as a tidy number of death which even our own government acknowledged were murder.  As a Catholic, I think torture and murder are wrong and, if unrepented, will send you to hell.  I don’t care if conservatives who support torture “don’t speak authoritatively for the Church”.  Nancy Pelosi doesn’t speak authoritatively for the Church either when she spouts her cockamamie nonsense about how Sts. Thomas and Augustive would cheer on her pro-abortion views and policies. I care that Catholics are ignoring the Church on matters of grave and intrinsic evil.

I think we need to follow the dogmas of the Church and quit coming up with alot of excuses to give in to collaborating with the powerful, rich pro-abortion lobby on the abortion issue.

It’s weird how many readers keep ignoring my “Don’t ever vote for a Catholic pol who supports abortion” and assuming that, because I don’t believe abortion is the sole moral issue of our time, I must secretly be saying, “Support Democrats!”

And I also don’t drink hardly ever but I believe if you publicly advocate for free publicly funded abortion and doing away with healthcare worker’s conscience protections St. Peter will give you a whole lot more grief at the “pearly gates” than If you ccassionally had one-too-many watching the superbowl.

And if I had said anything remotely like that, you’d have a point.

Can you name the five conservatives who said that abortion is the only sin?

I really don’t have any idea who ever said that!

Did you not read the quote that kicked off the article?  Have you not read many of the comments in the thread?  Even your own comment was calculated to diminish my point, which is not that getting tipsy at the Super Bowl was a mortal sin, but that assuming the entire corpus of moral guidance from the Church is disposable so long as you are prolife is simply not conservative of the tradition.  It’s that sort of thinking that has resulted in so-called “conservative” Catholic supporting the use of torture (which the Church calls intrinisically and gravely immoral) in percentages larger than the general American population.  The Cafeteria is open for business.

Sorry but what I see is and I quote “...but not the sole moral issue of our time.  That’s why the Magisterium, to the great frustration of many Catholics, talks about all of the Church’s social teaching and refuses to talk simply and solely about abortion.”

I don’t see any so called “Catholic Conservatives named or mentioned specifically,” Can you offer five names or not?

It’s also a sin to slander your opponents by mischaracterizing their positions.  You are the king of a lack of prudence in this matter, as well as a lack of charity.  I will pray for you.

‘One of the great lies that conservative Catholics in particular have embraced over the past few years is the reactionary notion that “prudential judgment” means “do whatever the hell you want and ignore the bishops and the Church just so long as you oppose abortion”.’

Right….

Sure, leObserving. Ender. Jasper. RR….

Shall I go on?  There are any number of people with whom I have corresponded on comboxes who talk this way.  Unfortunately, they only give me handles, not names.  If you are, on the other hand, seriously asking whether any politician would say something this foolish, then of course not.

Yan:

Apparently the samples of rhetoric I provided, out of the great ocean of combox rhetoric of similar mint, do not satisfy.  Oh well, can’t please everybody.

Which conservative Catholics are you referring too? It seems that you lack prudence and charity buy creating “strawman nameless enemies” and defeat nonsensical arguments that no one has ever proposed, Pray for yourself brother!

Mr. Shea I do appreciate your conviction and hope you will continue to pursue Truth. Your article was evidently directed to the ignorant conservative. To instruct the ignorant is an important spiritual work of mercy that I can certainly admire and appreciate. Please continue to try to serve the Truth and it really doesn’t matter if I get ticked off. I have used my real name in the past but persecution is alive and well automated today so I will not do that any more. Have a happy Fourth of July!

Mark:

It is not a question of satisfying me; it is a question of your bile and vitriol which you think is fair to use in pursuit of any cause in which you believe you are right, and, it is a question of a lack of charity shown towards those that think differently than you in nearly always refusing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they might also be as interested in pursuing and knowing the truth as you are.  Such people deserve respect.

Clever insults don’t win you points with St Peter, my friend.

Dear Yan,

Nice try, but I only asked some pointed questions. I made no hateful statements toward Mr. Shea. I do think that we as Catholics need to stand up to the pro-abortion lobby and not “play ball.” Unfortunately I can name many so called Catholic progressive politicians who lend support to abortion funding and the degredation of health care worker conscience rights. I think this is a great disgrace. If you see my pointing this out as a lack of charity then I feel that your are seriously misguided.

A hard-hitting documentary program by Michael Voris of RealCatholicTV, Catholic Investigative Agency (CIA), which reveals the truth behind many of the problems facing the Western Church today.

These 90 or so minutes will put everything into “perfect” perspective for you.  Everything we are seeing around us, the destruction of the Country, “confused” Catholics (to put it lightly), etc., it will all make perfect sense.  It will be worth your time.  Pass it on to as many family members and friends as you can. 

A MUST WATCH VIDEO - FIRST EPISODE (copy and paste on your browser): 
http://realcatholictv.com/cia/01cchd.php

SECOND EPISODE:
http://www.realcatholictv.com/cia/02fake/

What a wonderful exposition of Catholic angst wherein admission to heaven being sought for the wearing of tiny feet pins meets at the border with immigrants and torture victims. We cannot decide that a political party that openly espouses the killing of infants in the womb and the destruction of the institution of marriage, and soon will get behind the manipulation of the human genome and mercy killing to save public funds,  is any more our enemy than the party that espouses the opposite values. When the progressive end of the GOP does in the end achieve the elimination of those values from the party platform we will say “I told you so,” believing all along we have been such staunch defenders of those values, hands too clean to reward those who actually stuck their head up in some way for a vote.

In this weird Catholic world, we are being told to cue up in a good Christian fashion in the killing field. The end result is we are without power, without allies and without effect in the face the greatest evil of our time. We will stand before St. Peter and say, “We just couldn’t make up our mind but we kept it clean.”

Paul:

You argument appears to be “Ignore the fact that the only incrementalism we are seeing from the GOP is the acceptance of ESCR, the appointment of O’Connor, Kennedy, Souter and, most recently, Roberts and Alito (who insist that Roe is “settled law”).  Also, ignore those champions of the family Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh (happy fourth marriage, Rush!).  The point is, ‘Shut up and vote GOP!’”  Every time somebody points out that the GOP advocates grave evil, I hear this “Oh!  So you are going to be some prissy perfectionist and not help the GOP finally do something about abortion!”  Hey!  It was the GOP that give the greenlight to Blackmun, then to Kennedy, author of the “mystery clause” and most, recently, it was Bush that gave the greenlight to experimentation on embryos.  When I see some evidence that they care, I will take more seriously the command to shut up and vote GOP.  Meanwhile, I think the GOP is largely interested in empty promises, manipulating prolifers to cheer for their agenda, and giving as little as possible in return.  That’s why we wind up with prolifers shrugging off (or cheering for) war crimes and drunken sailor spending.  They get their neat clean skirts plenty dirty for the GOP—and they get almost squat for their efforts.  Looks like a losing deal to me.

Oh, and most recently, we got the grotesque spectacle of prolifers *rejoicing* over the election of a pro-Roe v. Wade, pro-abortion, pro-ESCR, pro-torture former nude model being elected in Massachusetts.  Boy, that’ll show those Dems what it means to be a committed pro-life Catholic!

Mark, NO, No, No, that is NOT what “we” are saying.  I’ll write in larger letters so you can read it.  What “we” are saying is, SINCERE CATHOLICS, IF YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU PROFESS TO BELIVE AND PRAY FOR IN THE LORD’S PRAYER IN MASS ON SUNDAYS - STOP GIVING YOUR NAME AND VOTES TO THE PRO-ABORTION PARTY WHICH IS DIABOLICALLY OPPOSED TO WHAT YOU SAY YOU BELIEVE AND PRAY FOR.  AND PLEASE, IF YOU DO THAT, DON’T VOTE FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY EITHER YOU FIND THEM NO MORE ETHICAL THAN THE DEMOCRAT PAYTY.

SB:

As I say, we’re at 99% agreement.  I don’t recall speaking for you.  However, you put words in my mouth when you said, “Mark believes you will not only be saving unborn babies, as do I, but you will be saving your own souls as well.”  A reader could get the impression that I think anybody who voted for a candidate who supported grave intrinsic evil must, ipso facto, be going to hell.  I don’t believe that since mortal sin requires freedom and understanding of the grave matter of sin in order to be be mortal.  A person may vote for a candidate who advocates grave evil for all sorts of reasons that may mitigate their culpability.  Since it’s not for me to judge hearts, I refrain from saying that those who vote for a candidate I might reject are “damning their souls”.  But yes, I agree that Catholics ought not to vote for candidates who advocate grave and intrinsic evil (at least, if they have the power to act on that evil.  A pro-abort who is running for water commissioner might get my vote if he was a competent water commissioner.

Mark said to me, “…you put words in my mouth when you said, “Mark believes you (Catholics who are Democrats and vote for the Democrat Party) will not only be saving unborn babies (if they remove their name from the Democrat rolls and stop voting for the Democrat Party), as do I, but you will be saving your own souls as well.”  The reason I thought I was able to say that was because of what you had said in prior post.

Mark, you said in a number of comments back the following in response to another poster: “Party hacks always reply, ‘Oh!  So you expect politicians to be perfect!’”  You answered your own assertion in the next paragraph, “No.  I’m not really asking for perfection.  I’m just asking them not to have me support things that *will send me to hell for supporting them*.  I’m happy to have give and take on health care, the economy, gas prices, and so forth.  But there’s no give and take on things the Church says are inexcusably evil and damnable.“

I then asked in a post to you, “Mark, do you really believe that you could or would be sent to Hell for supporting a candidate who openly supported torturing suspected terrorist? “  I followed with, “Then you must believe that all those Catholic Democrats the past 37 years who supported the pro-abortion party are going to Hell, also, including a number of bishops, priest and religious.  That is even more reason for you to help save those Catholics from the terrible mistake they have been making all those years, and urge them to join the boycott of the Democrat Party until it removes its support for Roe v Wade from the Party platform….”

You answered, “I am quite staggered that you could write, ‘Mark, do you really believe that you could or would be sent to Hell for supporting a candidate who openly supported torturing suspected terrorist?’  The answer is yes.  And whether you realize it or not, what you just said was, ‘Mark, do you really believe that you could or would be sent to Hell for supporting a candidate who openly supported torturing somebody who might well be an innocent man?’  The Church, not me, says torture is intrinisically and gravely immoral (Veritatis Splendor 80).  So your beef is with the Church, not me.”

Mark, I thought, based on your standing on Church teaching concerning “torture” and your, forgive the phraseology – preaching what is Church doctrine, that if you thought your support of the proabortion party, or any candidate that supported what you said is evil according to the Church, that you would be condemning your soul to Hell.  It followed that if you believe that, then all things being equal, all Catholics that did what you did would be condemning themselves to Hell as well, if the act is “intrinsically evil and damnable,” as you said.  Certainly, there can’t be a Church-going Catholic that doesn’t already know that abortion is evil especially the clergy and religious.

Dear Mr Shea,
Can you name the five conservatives who said that abortion is the only sin?
I really don’t have any idea who ever said that!

me neither

I say that when you offer support for a pol whose policies constitute grave matter for sin, you are putting your soul at risk of hellfire.  What I would never say (because it is impossible to know) is whether any particular person, supporting such a pol, is guilty of a mortal sin, since I can’t know whether such a person acted with sufficient freedom and knowledge.  If somebody, say, votes for a pol because “My Dad always voted for this party and I will be true to my Dad” they may be voting with almost no awareness of what the pol supports.  So their culpability may be greatly decreased.  I warn of the grave matter of supporting a pol who supports grave matter, but I don’t presume to know who has sinned in voting.  If a Catholic votes for a pol *because* they support grave evil, then they are sinning gravely, in all likelihood (though I supposed somebody could concoct a scenario that might mitigate culpability, though I can’t think of one off the top of my head. 

I note that, once again, you put torture in scare quotes, as though, for instance, suffocating a prisoner to death (as we, in fact, have done) is not *really* a grave sin, it’s just enhanced interrogation.  That’s the sort of rhetorical strategy proaborts use to say that it sort of silly to worry about killing “babies”, it’s just fetal tissue.  The scare quote: best friend of the euphemist.

We’re not really disagreeing here.  I’m simply saying that we can know what grave matter is, but we can’t know culpability, especially when we are talking about remote material cooperation with sin, such as voting.  I know what *my* culpability would be if I voted for a pol that advocates grave evil.  I don’t know what some stranger’s would be.  My task is to urge people to imitate me and not vote for pols who advocate grave intrinsic evil, not to pass judgment on those who do anyway.

Dear Mark,

Thank you for the article and for the consistency of your arguments in favor of not giving support to politicians and candidates who do give support to policies which are morally evil. 

This agonizing over the relative merits of voting for a republican who disapproves of abortion but supports waterboarding; or a democrat who goes the other way (to simplify the choices) sounds silly to me.

My late wife, may she rest in peace, was firmly convinced that an interest in standing for an elective office was prima facie evidence of serious mental disorder; as soon as the announcement is made one must begin to compromise and equivocate one’s beliefs, in other words begin to lie.  But that is a side issue.

We will not find anyone who will satisfy, because we are who we are, ignorant and prideful and selfish.  I have long believed and often said as you almost say that every act is a moral act.  The result of that way of thinking is a confrontation with the truth about ourselves, our radical weakness and fundamental position as beggars before God for His grace and mercy.  No politician thus composed would stand a chance of nomination for office, much less election.  Yet that is what is needed.

It is, finally, true, that as Pogo the wisest of possums once said, “..“I"t is us…” who are the enemy.  The majority of the comments on most of these kinds of things do not begin to deal with that, and until we do begin to understand our own guilt and responsibility in the matters facing us, well, getting rid of all of the Pelosis and Alitos in the world will not have any effect at all.

We don’t need democrats or republicans.  We need an examination of conscience, truth, confession and a firm resolve with the help of God to avoid the near occasion of sin; which is, I believe, thinking we are right and the other guy is wrong…among an awful lot of other things.

Not Yet Humble Enough Regards,
Peadar Ban

If there had been more Republicans in the Senate in 1987, Robert Bork would have been appointed to the Supreme Court instead of Anthony Kennedy.  If Bork was on the Supreme Court instead of Kennedy in 1992, Roe gets overturned in Casey, instead of Kennedy writing his absurd mysteries of the universe opinion that upoholds Roe.

As far as you minimizing the importance of Roberts and Alito being on the Supreme Court, they were the deciding votes in Gonzalez v. Carhart, which upheld the partial birth abortion ban.  Justice Ginsburg was furious about the decision in Gonzalez, believing it was the first step to overturning Roe.

Finally, I think it is disgraceful for you to accuse pro-life members of GOP of being insincere in their pro-life beliefs.  Who are you to make that judgment?

Mark,

Even Nancy Pelosi said she did’t know the CIA was actually using waterboarding. Please; give me a break, make a distincton here between “vitriol and bile” and simple irony…How were Catholic Conservative Voters supposed to know before they cast a vote for someone who would allow waterboarding, before it happened? Also when was the practice of waterboarding ever legislated as the law of the land? When was there a national debate, before the fact? Who were the progressive champions on “no more torture” before it happened?

I am neither a theologian or a scholar, so I can’t mince the finer points.  But it seems to me that water-boarding a prisoner to possibly prevent a bomb, possibly even a nuclear bomb, exploding in an American city without warning is morally and politically acceptable, despite all the hand-wringing by both the Left and the Right.  Having witnessed water-boarding of Marines in escape and evasion training during the Vietnam War, I can tell you that water-boarding is not torture in the classic sense of the word. Yes, it is extremely frightening and uncomfortable, but it’s non lethal and non damaging.  It produces information very quickly and effectively.  Protecting the nation is the first duty of the state. If you who oppose water-boarding would decline to water-board a prisoner who is reasonably suspected of being part of a plot to kill thousands or maybe tens of thousands of innocent Americans, lets hope the decision never falls to you.  I wouldn’t want your conscience to be tarnished. In the actual practical world of homeland defense reality, the whole argument is like a bunch of theologians arguing about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.

Well said Carl and there is perhaps a big distinction between a lethal committed perhaps crazed enemy and an unborn fetus; that many seem to overlook these days. Perhaps the pre-eminent moral issue of our time is not abortion; but, the lack of appreciation for the Goodness of God’s creation and the lack of courage and vigilance among the faithful to defend what God creates from those who for whatever reason seek to destroy His Creation.

I’m gonna kinda have to disagree with abortion being the number one moral issue of our time. I would say that child molestation is far more significant for the reasons that when an abortion is committed, well, the child in the womb dies and goes to heaven. End of story. But When a sexual assault is committed against a child, that child has to live with that shame for the rest of his life. But then also, it’s a double whammy because of the gay thing too. It is just laughable to suggest that homosexuality had nothing to do with the priest scandals. 88% of all victims were males. There is most certainly a correlation. It is 88% obvious.

But to go on, living, but really, dying, dying more and more everyday because of what a priest did to you, and not being able to move on with life in any normal way because all confidence in authority has been destroyed, all confidence in religion has been destroyed, and confidence in God has been destroyed. There is no trust and having any intimate relationships takes extreme understanding by the woman. We’re like damaged goods in this world. We can’t adapt, we hardly overcome, we try to focus on words like forgiveness and mercy, but still find no reprieve from our sense of guilt and shame. Most of us have seen counselors, most of us have seen counselors for a long time.

No. Child molestation is a far more grave sin. It leaves its victim like a dead person trying to walk among the living. At least those dead little babies did not have to suffer in this world for too long, they got a fast track to heaven. But my death is not yet complete, I’m dying more all the time.

I am a victim and I can tell you that Child Molestation is TANTAMOUNT to abortion, if not more important altogether.

I am truly sorry for your pain and suffering but don’t you see…there IS hope that you will find healing and will then be able to live a full and happy life.  Don’t give up…God can do what is impossible to humans. I will pray for you with all my heart from now on…with abortion, the baby in the womb is killed, as you said, and will never ever have the chance to live a full and happy life, to know the beauties of the earth - you may not know the joy and beauty of life, of love - but I pray and hope and believe that you will.  Over 60 million babies’ lives have been terminated…lives that would have meant something to all mankind…lives that came from God for a reason.  Why did you have to suffer so much, why were you so hurt????  Honestly, I don’t know…some people don’t follow what God wants and, since they have free will, they exploit others and harm children…and yes, you are right, homosexuality was You say the dead little babies did not have to suffer for too long - but neither did they have the opportunity to know life, and love…you still have that opportunity though it may not seem so…but you do, believe me.  If only you don’t give up.  We all have suffered and continue to suffer in some way and I don’t think we can measure one person’s suffering against another…but I do know and believe that there is hope…there can be a shifting in the pain and sense of hopelessness if we try to trust that God can bring good out of evil—-I pray the Lord will bring you full healing and lead you to fullness of life and of hope and of joy…may He enable you to see light in the darkness and hope in despair…just try to be open…once, I was in a bad situation and was asked to do something which I did not want to do…which was the good and right thing to do.  I’m very stubborn - so all I could say in prayer was: “I don’t want this but I want to want it.” and - that was enough.  God does not ask the impossible of us…and He will bring us through…if we want to be healed and made whole…you are in my heart and in my prayers…Samwise

samwise,

thanks for the kind response. i’m a little concerned though that you might not understand Catholic theology. to say that that little baby did not have a chance to live is so sad, but that’s not true. those babies are in heaven. we celebrate that every year. and those in heaven are FAR more alive than we will ever be on this earth. Earth is NOT the destination. Our final aim is living in heaven. it might help to go back and read the lives and writings of the saints. I urge you - do not look forward to another day on this earth. Look forward only to heaven, it’s more than you can ever imagine.

Mark, you said, “I say that when you offer support for a pol whose policies constitute grave matter for sin, you are putting your soul at risk of hellfire.  What I would never say (because it is impossible to know) is whether any particular person, supporting such a pol, is guilty of a mortal sin, since I can’t know whether such a person acted with sufficient freedom and knowledge.” 

Certainly bishops, priest and religious would have “acted with sufficient freedom and knowledge” as you, if not mores so; would you say their voting for Obama and the Democrats was sinful?  Sinful enough to be a mortal sin?

G writes, “I would say that child molestation is far more significant for the reasons that when an abortion is committed, well, the child in the womb dies and goes to heaven. End of story.” 

No, G, that is the story.  Does God create life and give it a soul to be aborted?

stilbelieve: I appreciate the theology, all I’m saying is that there are worse things than dying. I would have been happy to have died so young, so be in God’s graces, than to live though the hell and torment that I went through. Call it personal if you want to, but that’s real.

stillbelieve:

Are you seriously asking me to sit in judgment of another person’s eternal destiny?  That’s way above my pay grade.  I can talk about what constitutes grave matter.  I can say that if a sin has grave matter and is freely assented with sufficient knowledge of the gravity (and remains unrepented till death), the person committing that sin will go to hell.  But I’m not going to pretend I know what is going on in any person’s soul.  I’ve got my own sins to worry about.  I don’t need to apply for the job of God.

G, I would bet there are 51,000,000 souls that would have liked the opportunity to find out for themselves.  Certainly, God had a purpose for creating them and giving them souls - I doubt that it was so they could be aborted. 

Yeah, you got a raw deal, but at least you are alive and have the ability to recover.  Many of us have had raw deals.  How we deal with them determines our lives there after.  Some people say losing a child is something a parent never gets over.  The point is - you make a decision; either the raw deal controls the rest of your life, or you control it.  An aborted baby doesn’t get that choice.  And 51,000,000 murders with church-going Catholics contributing to its continuing means there is something seriously morally wrong going on in the world and in the “one true Church.”

Well, Mark, let me ask you this: If 51,000,000 humans were murdered in one country, and 12 were water-boarded in another, both under the same government approval – which offense would be more morally troubling to you?  And I’ll throw in a caveat; the murdering was going on with church-going Catholics known assistance, including the clergy and religious, as well as the laity.  While the other one wasn’t.

Which is most morally worrisome to you?  Which should be most worrisome to the people of that nation?  Ditto, for that Church?

Yes, our GOAL is heaven, and yes it is more than we can ever imagine but God did not create us to skip earth and go right to heaven…He even sent His Son Jesus to become Incarnate…in His human nature and to live fully for the Kingdom of God, to bring God’s love and mercy and forgiveness to all and THEN to die on the Cross for love of us and to redeem us…if God meant a baby to be conceived but not born, He would not have bothered with the process at all…He would just have created souls and would have kept them with Him in heaven and skipped the earthly, human part…but He didn’t…and, more than that, He did not create human babies to be killed at the order of their own mothers…the Word became Flesh in the womb of Mary, His mother…should Mary have allowed her baby Son to be aborted so that He could have returned to heaven immediately, without being born?  Christ, on the Cross, suffered what we suffered because He took our sufferings upon Himself…He does not want us to live in misery.  There will always be suffering, but He will always give us the means to get beyhond it…with His grace and His help.  I worked with inner city kids who came from families that abused them physically, sexually, emotionally…deeply wounded kids.  But I told them, and I believe this and so did they come to believe it, that in each one of us there is a place of original goodness that no one and nothing can touch because it is the place where God dwells within us, the place of our original innocence…believe that and pray and work to go beyond the suffering…I used to tell the boys that they would grow and heal only when they learned to love someone more than their own suffering and woundedness…and the boys, the deeply wounded boys,  that learned to think of others more than themselves, made the way to healing and hope…as they learned to grow in relationship to Christ and to trust in His mercy and His grace…and they learned by grace to forgive those who had hurt them…it’s hard but life is hard and we all have deep areas of suffering in our lives…we follow the wounded Christ who leads us beyond, if we are willing to follow…so let us pray for this and for each other…

we are all formed by our experiences. that’s just a fact. we like to think that we’re not, that it’s about about how we “respond” that’s so important, and it is, but you only delude yourself if you think an experience like being raped in the butt at 4 years old won’t absolutely destroy somebody. what i’m saying is that sexual abuse against a child IS MURDER.

what’s that old saying, “it was better to have a large stone place around his neck…” and again, “if you’ve broken one commandment, then you’ve broken them all.”

but i’ll tell you one more thing: if a school teacher or coach or politician abuses a child - so what. But when a priest does it - it means EVERYTHING!

Well, Mark, let me ask you this: If 51,000,000 humans were murdered in one country, and 12 were water-boarded in another, both under the same government approval – which offense would be more morally troubling to you?

Stillbelieve:

*shakes head*.  I get the feeling you can’t take yes for an answer.  What part of “Abortion is the pre-eminent moral issue of our time” was unclear to you?  You seem stuck on the notion that recognizing other evils besides abortion has to mean equating those evils with the question of abortion. 51,000,000 murders is a horrendous crime.  It does not follow from this that a dozen murders (or some other grave sin) is no big deal.  That’s why I said that while abortion is the pre-eminent issue, it is not the only issue.  Why is this so complicated?

Geisteswissenschaften,

A Priest didn’t do it. The “evil one” who had a “priest imposter” in his slimey grip did it! The “priest imposter” was a pawn. You were abused by Satan himself and Jesus himself died for you and that wretched “priest imposter.” The battle is always with Satan, not the sinner. That is why the Catholic Church teaches us to hate sin but to love the sinner. May God Bless and Heal you every minute and every day of the rest of your life. If you think the Church is the enemy then Satan is winning. God Bless!

ya gotta move from the idea that more is somehow more significant. jesus clearly taught us, vis-a-vis his apostles, that one sin is the same as 51,000 sins. Jesus suffers the same for them all. What part of there is no pre-eminence don’t you understand?

ark, I think it’s the “yes – but” in your answers, and the bringing up “torture” and Republicans, and the allegation that they support it, and listing the weak Supreme Court justices nominated by Republican presidents without commenting on the Catholic Democrat Senators character assassinations of their previous and better nominees who were scuttled by the Communion receiving Catholic Senators, or the Dems threatening to filibuster their appointments requiring 60 votes to get on the Court instead of the historical 51, and the fixation you have for the snide way of belittling prolifers wearing “Precious Feet” lapel pins, and bringing up the Church’s position on “torture” while ignoring JP II’s “false and illusionary” and “maximum determination” statement. 

r maybe it’s your inability or refusal to admit or face head-on the roll the bishops, clergy and a majority of church-going Catholics play in keeping abortion-on-demand the law-of-the-land by giving their name identification and votes to the only political party responsible for abortion remaining legal, and the bishops, under Bernardin, watering down the meaning of “prolife,” for political reasons.  And in doing so, such Catholics make a mockery of their Profession of Faith and their praying the Lord’s Prayer, and the bishops as a body can’t agree on whether pro-abortion Catholic politicians should be denied Communion to avoid scandal.  I think that is what I don’t understand in your “99% yes agreement” – all of which makes abortion the preeminent moral issue that necessitates “maximum determination” on the part of Catholics to bring it to an end.  Nothing in the other so-called social justice issues combined comes close to the damage abortion is causing in the world, our nation and in our Church.

And it is only getting worse under the Catholic elected Obama administration.

G - maybe it’s a combination of the Church’s teaching on the degradation of sin and the Center for Disease Control’s difference between a pandemic vrs a few hundred isolated cases.

This is not to lesson the seriousness of your experience, but to illustrate the evil crime committed on you by a clergy who did not live up to his oath and professed beliefs, and the evil crime committed by the majority of church attending Catholics, including the clergy, committed on a human beings younger than you, by the millions, due to those Catholics not living up to THEIR professed beliefs.

It is as simple as this:  (1) a Republican President and 55 Democrats in the Senate, you get Kennedy and Souter; (2) a Republican President and 55 Republicans in the Senate, you get Alito and Roberts; (3) a Democratic President and 60 Democrats in the Senate, you get Sotomayor and Kagan; (4) Obama in a second term with over 50 Democrats in the Senate, you will get Justices who will make Sotomayor and Kagan look like Roberts and Alito.

Mark, I think it’s the “yes – but” in your answers

Precisely.  Because the whole point of my piece is that, while abortion is the pre-eminent moral issue of our time, Catholic teaching does not allow us to say it is the sole moral issue of our time.  And your argument keeps trying to figure out a way to say that, at the end of the day, it *is* the sole moral issue—due to the fear that any acknowledgement of other moral issues constitutes an attempt to diminish abortion as the sole moral issue of our time.  No matter how often I state that abortion is pre-emininent, it’s not enough.  Because your argument keeps attempting to claim that mere pre-eminence is not enough.  It has to be the *sole* moral issue.  So my “yes, but” is regarded with suspicion.  What am I *really* saying?  Surely, I *must* be trying to diminish the significance of abortion.

No.  I’m not.  But you are acting like you don’t believe me.  Which is precisely why I wrote the piece, because a lot of Catholics do the same thing and reduce all Catholic morality to the question of abortion alone.

Mark said,  Stilbelieve, … “your argument keeps attempting to claim that mere pre-eminence is not enough.  It has to be the ‘sole’ moral issue.”
 
No, Mark.  You, like me, are reading into what the other person is writing and concluding what we are “hearing” in our heads.  I know of no prolifer/Catholic who ever said or wrote that abortion is the “sole moral issue.”  I know of no true prolife candidate or elected official being “prolife” for political advantage.  However, I do know of a high ranking Catholic clergyman who was “feared” that “the prolife movement” was “falling completely under the control of the right wing conservatives” and he decided to do something to keep that from happening.  What he did as Chairman of the bishops Prolife Committee was get the bishops conference to accept an expansion of the term “prolife” (a name coined to counter the pro-abortion supporters calling themselves “pro-choice) to include issues that had nothing to do with the intentional murder of innocent human beings.  Again, this was done under the guise that these were also “prolife” issues even if no innocent persons were being murdered.  The move was made for purely political reasons so that more liberal Catholics would become involved in the “prolife” movement.  Liberal in that they were anti-war, anti-capital punishment, pro expansion of welfare, pro union, etc.  Cardinal Bernardin sabotaged the prolife movement for the sake of Catholic liberalism.  This invigorated those Catholic Democrat politicians like Senators Biden and Kennedy who now had cover to challenge potential prolife GOP Supreme Court nominees, and brought relief to sincere Catholics who were still Democrat but were battling within themselves their Catholic beliefs and their political party’s support for abortion.  They now could keep their political identity and still be a Catholic in good standing.  Their conscience was assuaged.  The result is the pro-abortion party was saved, if not the unborn, by a Catholic Cardinal, the head of the archdiocese of Chicago. Chicago, the most corrupt Democrat controlled city in the county.  And our nation is now getting a taste of what it is like with the Democrat Catholic election of Obama.

So, Mark, you are right, abortion is not the only “moral” issue, but it still remains the only one that is undisputedly - “prolife.”

I’m not Cardinal Bernardin.  I’m me.  And I’ve repeatedly said that Abortion is the Pre-eminent Moral issue of our time.  And for my troubles, I’m repeatedly answered as though I had never said that and ask, “Well, Mark, let me ask you this: If 51,000,000 humans were murdered in one country, and 12 were water-boarded in another, both under the same government approval – which offense would be more morally troubling to you?” or told, “Mark, I think it’s the “yes – but” in your answers”.  That does rather suggest to me that you won’t take yes for an answer until I stop saying “Abortion is the pre-eminent moral issue” and start saying, “Abortion is the sole moral issue”.

Mark (lol) - it is NOT the “moralness” of the issue!  It’s that it is the ONLY - PROLIFE issue.  All the other issues are political issues that may or may not have moral implications to them that Bernardin and the bishops relocated under the “prolife” roof for political purposes. 

The other part of that fact, that you do not seem to grasp or will not acknowledge, is the reality that because of Bernardin and the bishops’ actions, Catholics remain the largest single voting block for the pro-abortion party, a moral contradiction that the bishops will not address.  To me, their silence concerning that;  i.e.,the Catholic contradiction in what they say they believe and what they do, is a serious MORAL matter because it is costing the lives of millions of unborn children.

?  The prolife issue is the only prolife issue?  Well, I’ll give you that.

As the peculiar charge that “the bishops” are engaged in a plot to relocate “political issues that may or may not have moral implications to them” in order to diminish the importance of abortion, I’m afraid that takes us back to the point I made at the beginning of the piece: namely that some people do seem to insist that when the bishops fail to reduce all Catholic teaching to the sole subject of abortion, they get accused of diminishing abortion’s importance.  So, for that matter, do I.  Which is why, after repeating for the umpteenth time that “Abortion is the pre-eminent moral issue of our time” I’m still being subjected to this strange cross examination as though I was vehemently suspected of speaking in some sinister code meant to deny what I plainly say.  It gets kind of wearying.  So I think I will sign off now.

Mark, I’ll match you one questionable moral issue - capital punishment.  Interested in signing back on?

SB:

What for?  I’ve already said that abortion is the pre-eminent issue of our time.  So it follows that capital punishment, while important, is not as grave an issue as abortion since abortion is the taking of innocent human life, while capital punishment is (assuming the conviction was just) the taking of guilty human life.  Personally, I agree with JPII and the American bishops that the death penalty should not be inflicted unless absolutely necessary.  But I don’t buy the progressive argument which attempts to raise capital punishment to the same level of gravity as abortion.  As I say, I agree with you that abortion is the pre-eminent moral issue of our time.  Why can’t you take yes for an answer, SB?

Really, I don’t think I have anything left to say.

Fair enoguh.

You’re entirely right… and will be used to justify those who claim, as you aptly put it, that the minimum wage is more important than preventing abortion.

Not binding =/= doesn’t matter, but I kind of wish you’d phrased it with the knowledge that folks are going to use that entire first paragraph as a club against those who are pro-life.