Over at the Catholic Vote blog, my friend John Barnes notes this curious development
In case you are wondering, that is a product warning label on a dental floss container, lest you fail to understand how to dispense the dental floss, leading to unforeseen horrors too terrible to describe on a Catholic news site.
I am something of a gourmand of product warning labels and instructions written by giant corporations on the assumption that if any consumer can do the stupidest thing possible with any product, he or she will. Sadly, some of the best dumb product warning labels turn out to be fakes ("Odor Eaters: Do Not Eat"), but plenty more turn out to be quite real (such as the warning on the windshield screen for blocking out the heat in parked cars: "Do not drive with windshield screen in place."). This being the web, there is a website for everything, including multiple sites devoted simply to stupid product warning labels such as:
Warning: May cause drowsiness. Do not operate heavy machinery after taking.
Prescription Ambien Sleep Aid
“Additional purchase idea’s: rocks, aquatic plant life, fish”
Wal-Mart Fish Tank
Peel fruit from cellophane backing before eating.
Fruit By the Foot
Intentional misuse by deliberately concentrating and inhaling the contents can be harmful or fatal.
Pantene Pro-V Flexible Hold Pro Vitamin Hairspray
Warning: For indoor or outdoor use only.
Unknown Christmas Lights
Do not pass while opposing traffic present.
Boyne Falls, Michigan, U.S. 131
(Placed on bottom of tray) Do not turn upside down
TV Dinner
The reason for the existence of these and other labels--such as instructions on your shampoo bottle ("Wet hair. Apply shampoo, Lather. Rinse. Repeat.")--is fourfold.
First, there are people out there dumb enough to apply shampoo to dry hair.
Second, among this set of dumb people there is a subset of dumb people who then blame somebody else for not warning them not to be dumb enough to apply shampoo to dry hair.
Third, among that subset of dumb, blame-shifting people is a third subset of dumb, blame-shifting people who are aggressive enough to take giant corporations to court for damages if the corporation does not protect itself with a product warning label designed for people with the common sense of a sea cucumber.
Fourth, some lawyer is always happy to oblige these aggressive sea cucumbers.
In short, the reason for product warning labels is that our civilization, having forgotten big laws of common sense and justice is not capable of constructing a system in which absurd frivolous lawsuits are immediately thrown out of court and the frivolous complainer is punished for wasting everybody's time. Instead, we live in a litigious culture in which silly people can hold sane ones hostage with ridiculous legal threats about trivialities.
The whole thing illustrates Chesterton's remark that when a civilization gets rid of the Big Laws, it does not get freedom. It does not even get anarchy. It's gets the small laws.
The HHS Mandate is, among other things, an illustration of this principle. Our civilization has actively rejected Big Laws like Be Fruitful and Multiply or Love Neighbor and Love God. So now we are embarking upon a new phase of the Federal Imperium obsessing over forcing Catholics into the bedrooms of strangers and shelling out the nickel necessary for a new condom. Very clearly, the point of the Obama Administration is "It's not the money. It's the principle of the thing." You can buy rubbers for a few cents a piece from Amazon. Birth control pills are so cheap and common they are screwing up the water supply. There's no economic need to force Catholics to buy them for other people.
But there is a huge ideological need for Obama and his ilk to force Catholics to buy them for other people. This is the modern secular equivalent of compelling a pinch of incense to the Divine Caesar. The point is to make the Church knuckle under to a jealous god. It's an exceedingly small law. Petty, even. But it betokens a civilization that is making war on the biggest law of all: You shall love the Lord your God.
Resist the Tyrant!
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May I remind you of Wonko the sane?
He lives outside of the asylum - get to know him in “So long and thanks for all the fish” the fourth book in the Hitchhiker trilogy!
Shalom
Hermann
Thank you for this insightful post. The mandate to violate our religious beliefs by being forced to provide for the killing of babies is nothing less than being forced to bend our knees to Baal. This is an ancient battle.
Has anybody ever tried the “lather, rinse, repeat” instructions”?
Which did you run out of first, shampoo or hot water?
Remember Bill Cosby’s line about his strict father? He would say, “I brought you into the world and I can take you right out again!” A good joke from Cosby, but not so funny when religious people practice it.
‘Abortion is wrong because it’s the taking of human life’, is the usual reasoning, with which I agree. (I’m confident also in my belief that a fertilized egg is a human by God’s standards.) But does a human stop being a human when he’s 18? When there’s a war on and the human is “on the other side”? I don’t think so, and neither does God. People in heaven understand that, from Rev 4:11, Douay: “You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honour and power. Because you have created all things: and for your will they were and have been created.” So why are the churches so eager to get involved in man’s wars and killings?
Is there a double standard here?
Very good question Doug. I don’t know why many in the Church who are orthodox and pro-life are also the biggest proponents of wars. It makes no sense :(.
So why are the churches so eager to get involved in man’s wars and killings?
The Church isn’t. It specifically condemned, well, all of the US military escapades of the last decade. Rachel is correct that many in the Church have supported them, but they don’t speak for the Church.
I defy you to outdo the label on a child’s Batman costume, warning that it “does not enable the wearer to fly.” Not even a SUPERMAN costume.
Doug and Rachel - That there are warmongers in the church isn’t surprising. That there are people, presumably including you two, who are surprised by this is. But what is truly shocking is that there are people who hold right beliefs about some things, again, presumably including you two, who also [insert whatever your besetting sins are]. (If NCR allowed links, I’d link the famous scene with Captain Renault here.)
Doug and Rachel, people of faith are not a monolithic set in lockstep on issues such as war.
On the one hand, we have people of faith such as the Amish, the Mennonites, the Society of Friends (Quakers), many of whose adherents are absolute pacifists and will allow themselves to be robbed, imprisoned or even executed, rather than to take up arms for any reason. Even in self-defense. Even in defense of their children, or other peoples’ children.
Authentic Catholic teaching on war shares some thing in common with a pacificist view, in that it does not support preemptive wars. However, unlike absolute pacifists Catholics may participate in wars when necessary to defend themselves or to defend others. Hence, for example, it was a righteous and praiseworthy act on the part of those Catholics among the forces who liberated the concentration camps at the end of World War II, even though, in doing so, our soldiers would have shot Nazis who were defending Auschwitz and Dachau.
Unlike our total pacifist bretheren, Catholics believe it is also a praiseworthy act for a person to take up arms *only as necessary* and *only to the extent necessary*, to defend himself or herself or another person who is unable to or precluded from defending himself or herself. So a police sharpshooter may morally pick off a perpetrator who is holding a child hostage with a knife to her throat, screaming demands. Whereas a total pacifist would not take up arms even in that situation, a Catholic is right to do so.
In a nutshell, for Catholics indiscriminate killing - whether carpet bombing a city, or booby-trapping a warehouse - is never legitimate. The key is that any act of lethal force must be an absolute last resort and necessary to defend oneself or another from harm to life or limb.
So, with under certain limited conditions which must be studied and understood, Catholics may justly take up arms. There have not been many U.S. military actions in my lifetime which have received the unqualified endorsement of the Holy Father the Pope. That should tell you something.
@Marion - much more charitable than my response. Well put.
“So why are the churches so eager to get involved in man’s wars and killings?”
Is this some kind of shot at the Crusades?
WARNING: Reading Mark Shea’s blog may be hazardous to your health because sometimes he may make you cry, thus resulting in a short-cirguit in your computer with a subsequent explosion or you may be fatally injured while rolling on the floor laughing and causing a big bookcase to fall on you.
Now THAT’s a warning, don’t you think? Maybe I shoulda been a lawyer for sea cucumbers.
Josh: You mean to imply that they are poor corrupt officials?
My personal (and personally seen) favorite:
“1. Pull down your undergarments” (the beginning of an instruction how to create a urine sample, in the bathroom of a Canadian medical lab)
“rejected Big Laws like Be Fruitful and Multiply”
Yea. 7 billion is too many. Too may are sick and hungry.
“forcing Catholics into the bedrooms of strangers”
What a stupid thing to say!
“It’s the principle of the thing.”
Yes, it is. Why should one religion imposed their views on others?
“biggest law of all: You shall love the Lord your God.”
What a puny “god” that requires human love! How silly!
My favourite is a bag of unshelled peanuts which said “Warning: may contain nuts”. I blame the lawyers more than ignorant humans.
The detail of providing contraception as one of the “reasonable coverage” items as part of universal health care is a poor example. No doubt one could find other cheap medications which are included. I don’t think the cost of the Pill is mainly the pills themselves but the doctor diagnosis and follow up for possible side-effects.
The bigger law that is missing that causes this anomaly is the lack of a Single Payer (as supported by the US Catholic Bishops) as part of universal coverage. That would avoid the contraception issue for Catholic employers. IIRC a Single Payer system was the first proposal but this was watered down by Republicans- ideologically opposed to universal coverage.
An example of someone who lost their fear of universal health care and now admires the Canadian system
http://ayoungmomsmusings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/how-i-lost-my-fear-of-universal-health.html
You missed “repeat”. The single most brilliant word added to a list of product instructions ever, immediately doubling shampoo sales.
Oh, and link to Catholic Vote is broken for some reason.
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