Month: February 2005

New Rule Update

A reader writes:

Is there any chance that we could have a link to "Rule 20 of Da Rulz" at the end of any post to which you think this rule applies? That way, we’ll know to think twice before contradicting.

I don’t want to allude expressly to Rule 20 in the post because it could disturb the person asking the pastoral question (not disturbing them unnecessarily being the goal of Rule 20), so tell you what: For posts subject to Rule 20, I’ll simply put a "20" at the bottom of the post and regular blog readers will know what I mean. How’s that? (Rule 20 has now been modified to mention this so new readers can get up to speed on it.)

Another reader writes:

I think rule 1 should also be amended so that it is consistent with rule 20: "1. People are welcome to disagree with me in the comments boxes as long as they are polite. I don’t mind disagreement. I do mind rudeness."

DONE.

"The Moral Question"

Recently I posted on the legal aspects of copying music and several asked me to go into more detail about the moral aspects of doing so.

Live to serve. Here goes:

  1. Private property is not an absolute right. According to the teaching of the Church, the goods of the earth have been given as a common gift to mankind. As a result, no individual has an absolute right to any particular piece of property (CCC 2403).
  2. Theft is thus defined not as "usurping another’s property" but as "usurping another’s property against the reasonable will of the owner." The Catechism then notes: "There is no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods" (CCC 2408).
  3. The orderly functioning of society requires us to have laws to regulate the flow of goods and services, and the State is the entity charged by God (Rom. 13) to oversee such matters. Therefore, "Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good" (CCC 2406).
  4. One must presume that the entities charged by God with performing a task are performing it correctly unless the contrary is shown. Therefore, one needs to give the laws of the state regarding the regulation of private property the benefit of the doubt.
  5. If you can show that, in a particular case, these laws are contrary to the common good and that the costs of violating them (to oneself and others) are less than the benefits of doing so then one can, in principle, deviate from them (in which case one bears one’s punishment if one is caught).

Now let’s apply this to copying music. There are two aspects that need to be covered (a) copying music where it is not permitted by the civil law and (b) refusing to copy music when it is permitted.

In regard to the first:

  • Artists have a moral right to be rewarded for their efforts in creating works of music to entertain and edify us. So do the record company employees that invest in and promote artists in hoping of earning a living.
  • It must be presumed until the contrary is proven that the civil law adequately expresses these rights.
  • To show that in a particular case it is morally licit to make uncompensated copies of a song one will have to show that in that particular case the requirements of the civil law are contrary to reason and the common good required by the universal destination of goods. This is going to be much harder to do than in the typical example of a starving man needing food that he has no money to pay for.
  • In particular: It means showing that there is some reason why you need that song right now and you can’t pay the 88 cents needed to download it from Wal-Mart or another service. (Wanting to make a mix disk for your friend isn’t a good reason since you can pay for the burns you need to make of individual songs and then give the resulting disk to your friend.)
  • In the old days it may have been easier to show such things, but today, with all the ways we have available to us to get music in a way that compensates the artist and record company, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so.
  • The only way I can see to argue for widespread uncompensated downloading would be to argue that copyright law is fundamentally contrary to the common good, which seems plainly incorrect (and contrary to the Bible’s teaching that artists need to be compensated for their labor; as in "the worker is worth his wages"). Also, if there were no copyright laws then fewer artistic works would be produced because there would be no profit in them, so such laws seem to foster the common good.
  • While one could argue something other than copyright as a way of ensuring compensation for artists, such systems are hypothetical. Copyright is what our society is using now to compensate artists.
  • The general damage done to society by widespread disregard for the law and the scandal done if others are aware of your covert variance of the law also must be factored into the above decisions.

Now for refusing to exercise all of the copying options that the civil law affords:

  • Again, the provisions of civil law enjoy the benefit of the doubt.
  • Therefore, if civil law judges a particular act of copying as licit, it should be presumed to be morally licit as well.
  • Thus if the civil law allows for the copying of a broadcast piece of music then it is to be presumed to be licit until the contrary is shown.
  • If one wants to argue against this, one could argue to the particular case or in general.
  • The only way I can see to argue against it in the particular (i.e., it is wrong to copy this particular piece of music when the law says you can) would be if doing so would gravely harm the artist (i.e., he really badly needs the two cents he would make off the copy if you bought it) or if the song itself will have bad effects on someone else (e.g., it’s going to tempt you to sin).
  • Arguing against taking advantage of copyright law’s fair use provisions in general also seems problematic. First, fair use provisions exist in order to protect the common destination of goods that the Church teaches to exist.
  • Second, many of the cases of fair use copying are actually compensated indirectly, removing the need for direct compensation. For example, if you’re copying a song from a broadcast service then the service from which you are copying it is compensating the artist and record company. The service then expects to make its money back from its audience either directly (e.g., by subscriptions, as with cable or sattelite radio) or indirectly (e.g., by advertising, as with broadcast TV and radio). The value added premium on blank recording media also contributes to this (Cowboy hat tip to the reader who provided the link in the comments box on the original post!).
  • Thus the money to sustain the system still flows from the audience to the service to the record company to the artist, it’s just handled differently. If it weren’t the players in the system would stop performing their function in it. If it weren’t profitable for them, they’d go out of business or find another line of work.
  • Third, and related to the former, the artists and record companies that have bought into the system have chosen to do so. Sure, they might like to make more money, but the fact is that they have chosen to do business under the conditions afforded by the civil law. If they don’t like that law, they can lobby to change it, but their decision to do business under the terms of civil law establishes a presumption that, while they may not like all provisions of civil law, they feel it better to do business under these terms than otherwise.
  • It is true that the Church recognizes that the consent of the worker is not a sufficient condition for the moral licitness of an arrangement, but this does not mean that the consent of the worker is not relevant to the moral licitness of the arrangement. The Church’s teaching on this point is meant to protect workers who are impoverished and virtually enslaved to their employers. It is not directed to multi-millionaire recording artists or multi-billionnaire record companies. When they consent to an arrangement, it is because they feel it is profitable for them to do so, not because they will starve if they choose to make money another way.
  • I thus see no problem in relying on the civil law’s provisions for fair use copying as a general matter.

“The Moral Question”

Recently I posted on the legal aspects of copying music and several asked me to go into more detail about the moral aspects of doing so.

Live to serve. Here goes:

  1. Private property is not an absolute right. According to the teaching of the Church, the goods of the earth have been given as a common gift to mankind. As a result, no individual has an absolute right to any particular piece of property (CCC 2403).
  2. Theft is thus defined not as "usurping another’s property" but as "usurping another’s property against the reasonable will of the owner." The Catechism then notes: "There is no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods" (CCC 2408).
  3. The orderly functioning of society requires us to have laws to regulate the flow of goods and services, and the State is the entity charged by God (Rom. 13) to oversee such matters. Therefore, "Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good" (CCC 2406).
  4. One must presume that the entities charged by God with performing a task are performing it correctly unless the contrary is shown. Therefore, one needs to give the laws of the state regarding the regulation of private property the benefit of the doubt.
  5. If you can show that, in a particular case, these laws are contrary to the common good and that the costs of violating them (to oneself and others) are less than the benefits of doing so then one can, in principle, deviate from them (in which case one bears one’s punishment if one is caught).

Now let’s apply this to copying music. There are two aspects that need to be covered (a) copying music where it is not permitted by the civil law and (b) refusing to copy music when it is permitted.

In regard to the first:

  • Artists have a moral right to be rewarded for their efforts in creating works of music to entertain and edify us. So do the record company employees that invest in and promote artists in hoping of earning a living.
  • It must be presumed until the contrary is proven that the civil law adequately expresses these rights.
  • To show that in a particular case it is morally licit to make uncompensated copies of a song one will have to show that in that particular case the requirements of the civil law are contrary to reason and the common good required by the universal destination of goods. This is going to be much harder to do than in the typical example of a starving man needing food that he has no money to pay for.
  • In particular: It means showing that there is some reason why you need that song right now and you can’t pay the 88 cents needed to download it from Wal-Mart or another service. (Wanting to make a mix disk for your friend isn’t a good reason since you can pay for the burns you need to make of individual songs and then give the resulting disk to your friend.)
  • In the old days it may have been easier to show such things, but today, with all the ways we have available to us to get music in a way that compensates the artist and record company, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so.
  • The only way I can see to argue for widespread uncompensated downloading would be to argue that copyright law is fundamentally contrary to the common good, which seems plainly incorrect (and contrary to the Bible’s teaching that artists need to be compensated for their labor; as in "the worker is worth his wages"). Also, if there were no copyright laws then fewer artistic works would be produced because there would be no profit in them, so such laws seem to foster the common good.
  • While one could argue something other than copyright as a way of ensuring compensation for artists, such systems are hypothetical. Copyright is what our society is using now to compensate artists.
  • The general damage done to society by widespread disregard for the law and the scandal done if others are aware of your covert variance of the law also must be factored into the above decisions.

Now for refusing to exercise all of the copying options that the civil law affords:

  • Again, the provisions of civil law enjoy the benefit of the doubt.
  • Therefore, if civil law judges a particular act of copying as licit, it should be presumed to be morally licit as well.
  • Thus if the civil law allows for the copying of a broadcast piece of music then it is to be presumed to be licit until the contrary is shown.
  • If one wants to argue against this, one could argue to the particular case or in general.
  • The only way I can see to argue against it in the particular (i.e., it is wrong to copy this particular piece of music when the law says you can) would be if doing so would gravely harm the artist (i.e., he really badly needs the two cents he would make off the copy if you bought it) or if the song itself will have bad effects on someone else (e.g., it’s going to tempt you to sin).
  • Arguing against taking advantage of copyright law’s fair use provisions in general also seems problematic. First, fair use provisions exist in order to protect the common destination of goods that the Church teaches to exist.
  • Second, many of the cases of fair use copying are actually compensated indirectly, removing the need for direct compensation. For example, if you’re copying a song from a broadcast service then the service from which you are copying it is compensating the artist and record company. The service then expects to make its money back from its audience either directly (e.g., by subscriptions, as with cable or sattelite radio) or indirectly (e.g., by advertising, as with broadcast TV and radio). The value added premium on blank recording media also contributes to this (Cowboy hat tip to the reader who provided the link in the comments box on the original post!).
  • Thus the money to sustain the system still flows from the audience to the service to the record company to the artist, it’s just handled differently. If it weren’t the players in the system would stop performing their function in it. If it weren’t profitable for them, they’d go out of business or find another line of work.
  • Third, and related to the former, the artists and record companies that have bought into the system have chosen to do so. Sure, they might like to make more money, but the fact is that they have chosen to do business under the conditions afforded by the civil law. If they don’t like that law, they can lobby to change it, but their decision to do business under the terms of civil law establishes a presumption that, while they may not like all provisions of civil law, they feel it better to do business under these terms than otherwise.
  • It is true that the Church recognizes that the consent of the worker is not a sufficient condition for the moral licitness of an arrangement, but this does not mean that the consent of the worker is not relevant to the moral licitness of the arrangement. The Church’s teaching on this point is meant to protect workers who are impoverished and virtually enslaved to their employers. It is not directed to multi-millionaire recording artists or multi-billionnaire record companies. When they consent to an arrangement, it is because they feel it is profitable for them to do so, not because they will starve if they choose to make money another way.
  • I thus see no problem in relying on the civil law’s provisions for fair use copying as a general matter.

The Broken Household Fallacy

Remember the broken window fallacy? In case you don’t, it’s a fallacy that underlies much bogus economic reasoning, according to which, when bad things happen to people (e.g., when a kid throws a rock through your window) it is actually good for the economy because it provides economic stimulus.

Actually, it doesn’t. If your window gets broken you have to pay to get a new one, and that does give money to the window-makers and provide economic stimulus in that area, but in reality there’s a net loss to the economy: If your window was never broken then you’d have both a good window and the money you would have spent to replace it. Unless that money goes to the Land of the Lost, it’ll eventually get spent (by you or your heirs) and thus provide economic stimulus. It might not be given to a window-maker, but it’ll get given to someone.

Say that replacing a broken window costs $50 (to pull a number out of the air). Which is better for you (and society) to have: a broken window and $50 or a good window and $50? More wealth is in existence if you have a good window and $50 than if the window gets broken and $50 has to be spent to replace it. Surprise! Bad things like broken windows really are bad.

Now let’s think about this:

  1. A family consisting of a dad, a mom, and children would like more money.
  2. The mom decides to get a full-time job outside the home to make that money.
  3. Mom makes money!
  4. The family has the additional money it wanted.
  5. Society benefits by having an additional worker in the workforce.
  6. Every family gets the same idea and does likewise.
  7. Society benefits economically from "not having half its potential workers out of the workforce."

Right?

Well, think about this (and BE SURE to read the important note at the bottom):

  1. BROKEN WINDOW #1: Since mom is working outside the home, somebody has to take care of the children, so they are put in outside-the-home schools or daycare centers. The family pays for this either directly by fees or indirectly by taxes.
  2. BROKEN WINDOW #2: The family is not willing to have all of mom’s salary go to paying someone else to be a surrogate mom, but the alternative caretakers are not willing to be paid only a fraction of a normal salary. They need to make a living, too, so they aggregate the children of different famlies together to get economies of scale going. This means each child gets less attention than if mom were the caretaker.
  3. BROKEN WINDOW #3: It also means that the children operate in a standardized environment that is less customized to their individual needs than the home would be (e.g., if the slow learners in class set the pace of learning then the fast learners are slowed down and visa versa mutatis mutandis).
  4. BROKEN WINDOW #4: By being shipped to child aggregation centers, very young infants end up not being breastfed for the first year of life, with the result that their health suffers..
  5. BROKEN WINDOW #5: By being taken care of by someone other than their parents, the influence of the parents over the children is weakened as they become attached to their caretakers.
  6. BROKEN WINDOW #6: The children begin to adopt the values and ideology of the aggregation environment, which can never fully reflect the parents’ wishes since it must cater to the needs of children of different families which have parents with different beliefs–and that’s assuming that the caretakers aren’t idealogues trying to push a particular agenda on the children. Further, most of the socialization (raising) is done by child-to-child interaction rather than adult-to-child interaction. In other words, to a significant degree the kids "raise" themselves.
  7. BROKEN WINDOW #7: Friction errupts in the home as the values the child has absorbed from the caretakers are brought into conflict with the values of the home.
  8. BROKEN WINDOW #8: Many children end up alienated from their parents and doing things that significantly harm themselves (e.g., drinking, taking drugs, having sex). These result in health problems, human suffering, and a rise in the number of children murdered by abortion.
  9. BROKEN WINDOW #9: By aggregating children together on a daily basis and by making it hard for them to be pulled out unless they are really sick (e.g., mom has to take a day off to care for a sick child), the kids get sick more often, resulting in higher medical costs and human suffering.
  10. BROKEN WINDOW #10: Since mom can’t be in two places at once, she can’t both be at her job and taking care of domestic needs in addition to childcare (cleaning, shopping, cooking, etc.). This means (a) that these must be done after work, increasing her stress level (and likely that of her husband as well as he will want to help if he is at all a person of conscience) or (b) someone else is paid to do them or (c) nobody does them and the family suffers.
  11. BROKEN WINDOW #11: Because some domestic needs like food provision have to be done, stressed families will increasingly turn to food that is prepared outside the home and that is quick and convient. Such "for profit" food will be configured to maximize profits for its makers. This means pushing more profitable rather than more nutritious food on the public, as well as pushing more food on the public, leading to health problems, medical costs, and human suffering.
  12. BROKEN WINDOW #12: Moms will increasingly feel the stress of juggling job and family, leading many to feel like they are expected to be "superwomen" and effortlessly achieve things that no one person should be expected to do.
  13. BROKEN WINDOW #13: At some points in their lives, particularly in late pregnancy, with an infant in the house, or when small children are in the house, women will either put their careers "on hold" or otherwise have the consequences of what is going on in their lives impinge on their work environment (e.g., by cutting back number of hours worked), causing their career to suffer. As a result, more men than women will end up in higher and higher-paying positions, leading to dissatisfaction, charges of discrimination, and lawsuits.
  14. BROKEN WINDOW #14: Calls of "equal pay for equal work" will result in the erroding of the family wage idea. Since the norm is now for a family to have two wage-earners, the idea than an individual wage-earner should be able to support a family on the income received will go away as employers begin configuring salary scales predicated on a two-income family. Thus the gains in income by the first generation of moms entering the workforce will be lost in the second generation as incomes fail to grow as quickly in order to accomodate the family wage concept.
  15. BROKEN WINDOW #15: Wages are also depressed from where they would be more directly: By doubling the number of people competing for a position, labor is in abundant supply and will have the effect of lowering the salaries laborers can command by a standard supply-and-demand dynamic.
  16. BROKEN WINDOW #16: As a result of the above effects, voters will turn to government to provide social programs to ease their difficulties (e.g., government-subsidized childcare). These programs represent an additional cost that the family will have to pay indirectly through taxes.
  17. BROKEN WINDOW #17: As families feel the pinch of higher taxes, calls will be made for the wealthy to pay more in taxes than regular folks. This results in the wealthy having less money to invest in the economy because the money is being taken out of the economy and being shuttled through government programs that are inherently less efficient than the market because they are shielded from supply-and-demand considerations. The economy thus shrinks, meaning fewer job opportunities, fewer raises, and more layoffs.
  18. BROKEN WINDOW #18: As families turn to the government to solve problems that the family once solved for itself (e.g., how to raise and educate a child), the government becomes more and more intrusive into family life, creating models that try to standardize the handling of situations, leading to a loss of parental freedom (e.g., can you spank your child or is that child abuse? must your child be taught evolution only or can he be taught intelligent design?).
  19. BROKEN WINDOW #19: As families feel the pinch of the above considerations, they begin to decide that–in financial, emotional, and time concerns–they cannot afford as many children any more. There are fewer large families and more small ones. Eventually the number of children falls below the replacement level.
  20. BROKEN WINDOW #20: As the childbirth rate falls below the replacement level, attempts will be made to cover the gap by increasing immigration, often illegal immigration. These attempts either will fail or will radically change the nature of American culture or both.
  21. BROKEN WINDOW #21: As a result of immigration, including and especially illegal immigration, there will be more competition for jobs, depressed wages, and additional costs to the taxpayer (e.g., emergency medical care) that are not covered by the immigrants due to the fact many are illegals not paying taxes.
  22. BROKEN WINDOW #22: As a result of increased immigration, and especially illegal immigration, a nativist movement will emerge resulting in friction between the nativists and the immigrants.
  23. BROKEN WINDOW #23: Because birth rates begin to fall among the immigrants, and because birthrates are falling world-wide, immigration proves not to be a long-term solution to the problem, leading to proposed other solutions to keep the economy from shrinking–like extending the retirement age. That means many people will have to work longer before they get to retire. (And which also is likely not to solve the problem.)
  24. BROKEN WINDOW #24: As the working population begins to shrink the burden of caring for retirees (by Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and direct personal care of family members) begins to grow for each two-income family. This causes further pressure to keep the number of children down since, by government mandate and human compassion, more resources must go to caring for the retirees.
  25. BROKEN WINDOW #25: Because of the increase in the burden of caring for the elderly, increased deaths through euthanasia occur.
  26. BROKEN WINDOW #26: Because of the pressure families are under, the divorce rate goes up, harming everybody in the family.
  27. BROKEN WINDOW #27: Because of the rise in family break-ups, the out-of-wedlock birthrate goes up (harming children and single mothers, particularly), but it is not enough to offset the overall shrinkage of the population.
  28. BROKEN WINDOW #28: As the birthrate continues to shrink, the economy shrinks, leading to a generational depression (because it will take a generation to turn it around by conceiving and raising the workers needed to get the economy growing again).
  29. BROKEN WINDOW #29: Because of the interlinkage of the global economy, a global generational depression happens.
  30. BROKEN WINDOW #30: Because of economic shrinkage. the United States starts being less generous with the rest of the world and is less able to serve as global policeman.
  31. BROKEN WINDOW #31: An increase in warfare occurs as nations compete for scarcer-resources due to the depression and due to the lessened stabilizing role of the United States.
  32. BROKEN WINDOW #32: A civilizational crisis explodes and the situation gets dramatically worse until a restructuring of societal values along more traditional lines (especially having more babies!) is achieved.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The above represents a line of economic reasoning rather than moral reasoning. In particular:

  • It is not a policy proposal.
  • It does not suggest that there should be no two-income households.
  • It does not suggest that women should be driven from the workforce.
  • It does not suggest that immigration should be stopped (I myself have worked very hard to facilitate the immigration of a particular individual).
  • It does not suggest that no children should be cared for or educated outside the home.
  • It does not suggest that the two-income family is the only source contributing to the problems mentioned above.
  • It does not suggest that the two-income family will lead to the death of western civilization. Not all of the items mentioned in the above scenario may occur (especially the more futuristic ones) and alternative solutions may be found to some of them (e.g., another technological revolution equivalent to computers and the Internet increases productivity and keeps the economy growing).
  • It does not even suggest that the costs of the two-income household outweigh the benefits of it.

What it does do is point out that the idea that by having two-income households be the norm does not automatically benefit the economy. There are economic and other costs (the broken windows) associated with having a society with nuclear families where both parents work outside the home. How many of those costs a society should be willing to bear and thus what degree of two-income families there should be is an entirely separate question (which gets to the morality subject).

What it also does is point out that raising and educating children in the home is itself work! It is work that makes a valuable contribution to society and, if someone is not available in the home to do it then it has to be handled another way. That means that the advent of the two-income household is not simply an economic gain to the family or to the economy as a whole. It also has significant costs that have to be weighed in determining whether or not it should be pursued.

That calculus, of what benefits one is willing to pursue and at what costs, is what economics is all about.

Contraception Outside Marriage

A reader writes:

Please help me understand the Church’s teaching on this issue.  Is it ok for a catholic single person to use contraceptives, if they do not want to end a sexual relationship with their partner, to avoid bringing a child into the situation?  A priest said that God is not in this sexual act, so they cannot be coming between God and the child is not part of God’s will.  (which I know God didn’t will the child to come into the world this way, but he permits the child to be born).

Here is what Pope Paul VI wrote in Humanae Vitae:

We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary.

Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means [Section 14].

There are no qualifiers in this about this situation only pertaining to the case of married couples. What your friend is doing is disrupting the way God designed human sexuality to work.

Specifically, your friend is doing two things:

  1. Separating the procreative aspect of the sexual act from the act itself (i.e., contracepting), and
  2. Separating the sexual act from the marital context in which it is meant to occur (i.e., fornicating).

Your friend’s behavior thus is "coming between [them and] God"–and in two ways. They are compounding the sin of fornication by adding to it the sin of contraception.

Indeed, their use of contraception is facilitating their fornication. You note that the use of contraceptives is because your friend does not want "to end a sexual relationship with their partner, to avoid bringing a child into the situation." The contraception is thus facilitating your friend’s rejection of God’s will by letting her avoid making the choice between (a) ending the sexual relationship or (b) having a baby by a man she isn’t married to. The contraception is thus a sin in itself and it compounds the sin of fornication by lengthening its duration.

What your friend needs to do is to resolve to do what is right: End the sexual relationship and not have sex until marriage and, even then, not to use contraception.

The above-described sins are grave matter, meaning that if they are mortal if done with adequate knowledge and consent.

What the priest said was wrong and was a disservice to your friend.

God will hold him accountable for it.

Marriage Involvement

A reader writes:

About 5 or 6 years ago my friend started coming back to Church.

[One of her Catholic daughters pursued] a relationship with a divorced father of two and is now getting married. Mom disapproves of the marriage because he is divorced and it is not a Catholic wedding but she has accepted their plans because she know there is nothing she can do about it and does not want to ostrasize her daughter from her.

The question is, can she at all participate in any plans with the wedding or will this come accross as a approval? They asked her to find a blessing to be read at the begining of the ceremony. I thought that seemed a little unusal since the daughter knows how her mother feels. The mother has been praying alot and attending mass alot in order to bring about a change of heart in her daughter.

I could not recommend her involvement in this wedding. There are two problems with it:

  1. The gentleman is divorced and, since you don’t mention him having received an annulment, I presume he doesn’t have one. That being the case, he must be assumed to be actually married to his first wife and thus not free to marry your friend’s daughter.
  2. Since the daughter is a Catholic who, so far as you say, has not defected from the Church by a formal act, she is bound to observe the Catholic form of marriage or obtain a dispensation from it. Since you don’t mention a dispensation, I assume that she doesn’t have one. If that is the case then the marriage will be invalid due to lack of form.

The marriage thus looks to be invalid on two grounds, and I cannot recommend the participation of individuals in any marriage presumed to be invalid as their involvement constitutes a kind of false witness.

On the other hand, if the gentleman has received an annulment from the Catholic Church and if the daughter has obtained a dispensation from form then the marriage will be presumably valid. In that case, her participation would be perfectly legitimate.

Hope this helps!

Ethical Question Concerning Conjoined Twins

A reader writes:

You may have heard of the recent surgery to remove a second head from a ten month old girl. 

I found this very troubling for a couple of reasons.

1. The kept on refering to the "second head".  Looking at the photograph and the fact that "it" could smile and blink, I would be inclined to refer to "it" as a conjoined twin.

2.  By refering to the conjoined twin as a second head, it seemed as if they were trying to remove or ignore the personhood of the conjoined twin.

With all of that in mind, was it morally licit for them to have the twins seperated knowing that the not fully formed twin would surely die.

If the unintended consequence of the seperation is the guaranteed death of one of the children is it still permissable to have the seperation surgery.

First, I agree that the situation here is not merely a case of a "second head" but of a conjoined twin who happens to (a) be joined at the top of the head and (b) lacks a body below the neck.

VIEW THE CHILDREN (PRE-OPERATION) HERE.

(I won’t reproduce the photo here since it’s a little disturbing.)

The fact that the body-less child is able to blink and smile makes her personhood easier to demonstrate, but the fact that she is a head with a brain shows it as well. A head is not just an extra organ. If a child were born with an extra leg, you could remove the extra leg without it leading to the death of a person, but removing a head with a brain and not sustaining its life somehow results in the death of that person.

Consequently, it could be done only under those conditions in which it would be morally licit to disconnect on person from another knowing that this would lead to the death of the disconnected person.

Are there such conditions?

The closest well-thought-through situation is that of a mother with a tubal pregnancy. In such cases the child will definitely die when it grows too large for the fallopian tube to contain it and it will cause a hemmorage that threatens the mother’s life as well.

Catholic moralists have been debating about whether the law of double-effect may apply to the case of removing an ectopic child in the case of a tubal pregnancy. For a survey of the debate SEE HERE (scroll down). A consensus seems to have emerged that at least one type of surgical procedure (known as a salpingectomy) might be morally licit to deal with the situation.

One group of conservative moral theologians, including William May and William Smith, hold that the thing that makes a salpingectomy possible is that it is a procedure done on the mother rather than on the child. Specifically, the segment of the mother’s fallopian tube is cut out that happens to contain the child. The child will die as a result of this procedure (until such time as we can transplant the child to the womb or to an artificial womb), but the procedure does not directly kill the child (in contrast to other procedures, such as injecting methotrexate to stop the child’s placenta from developing and functioning. Since a salpingecotomy does not directly kill the child, it is argued to be potentially justifiable under the law of double effect (i.e., for a porportionate reason an action can be taken that is licit in itself though it will have a foreseen but unintended evil side effect).

If it were the case that the bodiless-twin was certain to die or posed a grave threat to the life of the bodied-twin (which would also result in the death of the bodiless-twin) then it might be possible to perform a procedure on the bodied-twin that would disconnect it from the bodiless-twin in such a way that the death of the bodiless-twin is an unintended but foreseen side effect, analogous to the case of a salpingectomy.

Unfortunately, the story give me no reason to think that the bodiless-twin poses any threat to the life of the bodied-twin. As far as I know, they could live a normal life while remaining conjoined. The bodied-twin’s heart might have to develop a little more to cover the extra blood pumping to the bodiless-twin, but no evidence is presented that this would be problematic.

Consequently, I have no reason to regard the severing of the bodiless-twin as anything other than murder.

READ THE (DISGUSTING) STORY. [WARNING: Also has picture.]

Release The Hounds!

FoxhuntCertain U.K. yahoos have now passed a law outlawing foxhunting.

Actually, it’s worse than that.

They’ve passed a law to ban the use of dogs in hunting.

It’s apparently "wrong."

Yeah.

Dogs can go out and hunt naturally, as their instincts tell them to, but humans can’t faciliate dog’s natural instincts because that’s "wrong."

Uh-huh.

To quote Ford Prefect: "YOU’RE A LOAD OF USELESS BLOODY LOONIES!!!"

Now, I should note that the last comment was not directed at all people in the U.K. It’s only direted to those who are yahoos. Not everybody in the U.K. is a yahoo. For example, I’d extent a special holler to those entrerprising ex-hunters who, lest their dogs suffer from lack of exercise, have started to get gussied up with the red coats and all and then hop on their horses and take the dogs out for a brisk run and everything stays well within the law as long as no foxes happen to cross their paths . . . in which case canine instincts might take over . . . through no fault at all of the ex-hunters, of course!

GET THE (STUPID) STORY.

Powerline (cowboy hat tip to them) notes:

This is one time when we can say "It can’t happen here," and really mean it. America’s hunters are too powerful; I suspect they’re also better armed than their English counterparts. I think it’s time for the NRA to open a branch in England [SOURCE].

New Rule!

Just made an addition to DA RULZ:

20. When Jimmy is answering a pastoral question (i.e., for a person asking about an actual rather than a hypothetical situation) that can be phrased  in the form "Is it morally licit to do X?", do not contradict Jimmy in the comments box. People asking pastoral questions on moral subjects often feel very disoriented and confused if they get a debate rather than an answer on a sensitive question about a situation they, a friend, or a family member is involved in. For the peace of mind of the person who asked the question, challenges to such answers need to be handled a different way. Instead of using the comments box to pose your challenge, e-mail Jimmy. If you win him over, he’ll make a correction and notify the person who asked the question. Comments violating this policy will be deleted. Widespread violation of this policy will result in the comments box being turned off for such questions.