Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

New York Pastor Violates Children’s Rights, Causes Scandal

CHT to the reader who sent a link to a story which says:

The pastor of a Staten Island Catholic church is playing holy hardball – kicking hundreds of kids out of religious ed classes because their families aren’t showing up at Mass.

The Rev. Michael Cichon, pastor of St. Joseph/St. Thomas in Pleasant Plains, used each family’s bar-coded donation envelope to track attendance.

He’s tossed about 300 kids from classes and told them not to reapply until next April.

Without the classes, children cannot receive the sacraments, meaning some youngsters who thought they’d be making their First Communion next year will have to wait.

The suspensions, legalFLAGRANTLY ILLEGAL under church doctrinelaw, were a shock to many parents with kids enrolled in the 1,400-child program, which caters to kids who don’t attend Catholic schools.

GET THE (HORRIFYING) STORY.

Assuming this story is correct, the pastor of the parish in question is violating the fundamental ecclesiastical rights of the children, as well as causing public scandal by misrepresenting the position of the Church on this matter.

While it is true that folks are gravely obliged to go to Mass unless a justifying cause exists, what this pastor is doing is totally contrary to the Church’s law.

Witness . . .

Can. 213 The Christian faithful have the right to receive assistance from the sacred pastors out of the spiritual goods of the Church, especially the word of God and the sacraments.

Okay, now right there that makes this a matter of an ecclesiastical right. The kiddos have to receive from the sacred pastors (most particularly their pastor) goods from among the spiritual goods of the Church, "especially . . . the sacraments."

A pastor is not at liberty to deny or impede anyone’s access to the sacraments except in keeping with the law.

Want proof?

Can.  843 §1. Sacred ministers cannot deny the sacraments to those who seek them at appropriate times, are properly disposed, and are not prohibited by law from receiving them.

So unless the pastor has something in the law that would bar the child from the sacraments, he can’t deny them access.

This applies most especially to the Eucharist, for the Code devotes an additional canon to hammering home point that:

Can.  912 Any baptized person not prohibited by law can and must be admitted to holy Communion.

Is there anything in the law that would allow him to deny the kids the Eucharist? Well, there’s this:

Can.  913 §1. The administration of the Most Holy Eucharist to children
requires that they have sufficient knowledge and careful preparation so
that they understand the mystery of Christ according to their capacity
and are able to receive the body of Christ with faith and devotion.

If the kids don’t have sufficient knowledge and careful preparation then they can’t receive the Eucharist. What the offending priest is doing is trying to keep them from gaining sufficient knowledge and careful preparation by barring them from the catechetical courses they were attending in order to acquire these things.

What law is the priest offending against by barring the children from attending these courses? This one:

Can. 843 §2. Pastors of souls and other members of the Christian faithful, according to their respective ecclesiastical function, have the duty to take care that those who seek the sacraments are prepared to receive them by proper evangelization and catechetical instruction, attentive to the norms issued by competent authority.

He thus has the "duty to take care that those who seek the sacraments"–that’s the kids, folks–"are prepared to receive them by proper evangelization and catechetical instruction." The kids are willing to take the instruction. It’s the pastor who’s refusing to offer it. He is thus in violation of his duty under canon 843.

There’s also a rights issue here as well, because:

Can. 217 Since they are called by baptism to lead a life in keeping with the teaching of the gospel, the Christian faithful have the right to a Christian education by which they are to be instructed properly to strive for the maturity of the human person and at the same time to know and live the mystery of salvation.

The pastor is thus not only falling down on his duty to educate the kids under 843. He’s also violating the kids’ right to an education in how to live the mystery of salvation (e.g., by receiving the sacraments) under 217.

But wait! He’s only booted them out for this year. Can it be argued that he’s just delaying their education rather than prohibiting it to them? There are several responses to this:

  1. The course of action he has undertaken may well lead to the kids never receiving the education that is their right because the pastor may so offend their parents that they stop taking their kids to church at all and cease practicing the faith.
  2. There is still nothing in the law (more on this below) that allows a pastor to punish children by denying them their right to sacramental catechesis because their parents don’t go to Mass or don’t take them to Mass. Consequently, what if the parents dug in their heels and said: "I’m still not going to Mass next year either. You either let my kid back into this class or you don’t." The parents could continue that pattern of behavior indefinitely, and either the pastor concedes at some point that he doesn’t have the authority to punish the children in this way or he continues his refusal to catechize them indefinitely, in which case their sacramental education is not just delayed but is ultimately denied.
  3. The Church has established a timeframe for when this sacramental education is supposed to happen. To wit:

Can.  914 It is primarily the duty of parents and those who take the place of parents, as well as the duty of pastors, to take care that children who have reached the use of reason are prepared properly and, after they have made sacramental confession, are refreshed with this divine food as soon as possible. It is for the pastor to exercise vigilance so that children who have not attained the use of reason or whom he judges are not sufficiently disposed do not approach holy Communion.

It is thus the duty of the pastor to see that, once the children reach the age of reason that they make their first holy Communion "as soon as possible." He’s falling down on that duty because, as we have seen he is delaying the children’s sacramental education by at least a year (possibly indefinitely) by imposing a requirement not found in the law that their parents attend Mass. Such a delay is inconsistent with the duty to make sure they receive Communion "as soon as possible."

You can’t punish the children for what their parents don’t do. This is contrary to the first principles of justice. Neither can you punish the children even if the parents fail to take them to Mass. Why? Because Church law expressly envisions cases in which it is not possible for someone to attend Mass:

Can 1248 §2. If participation in the eucharistic celebration
becomes impossible because of the absence of a sacred minister or for another
grave cause, it is strongly recommended that the faithful take part in a
liturgy of the word if such a liturgy is celebrated in a parish church or other
sacred place according to the prescripts of the diocesan bishop or that they
devote themselves to prayer for a suitable time alone, as a family, or, as the
occasion permits, in groups of families.

Now, hi-ho Sunshine! "I’m seven years old and there isn’t a parish on my corner and I can’t drive a car and my parents won’t take me" is a grave cause for missing Mass! For that matter, "I’m seven and my parents insist that I stay with them and they won’t go to Mass" is a grave cause!

The Church in that case recommends various alternatives to the child (the most practical one–in the absence of the ability to drive a car–is spending some personal time praying on Sunday), but these are recommendations rather than mandates, and in no case does it say that you can deny a kid’s right to sacramental catechesis and subsequent admission to the Eucharist on these grounds.

How do we know that the kid can’t be disqualified on these grounds?

Can. 10 Only
those laws must be considered invalidating or disqualifying which expressly
establish that an act is null or that a person is affected.

Since the law doesn’t say that the kids are disqualified, they ain’t.

Is there any doubt about this? NO!

Can. 18 Laws which
establish a penalty, restrict the free exercise of rights, or contain an
exception from the law are subject to strict interpretation.

Since the children have a right to sacramental education and
subsequently to the reception of the  Eucharist, any restriction the
pastor wishes to place on the exercise of those rights must be subject
to strict interpretation.

As the green CLSA commentary notes: "Strict interpretation limits the law’s application to the minimum stated in the law" (p. 75). Since it is not stated in the law that the pastor can delay or deny children’s rights on the basis that their parents don’t go to Mass or won’t take their children to Mass, he cannot deny their rights on these grounds.

What the pastor is doing–however well motivated he may be in trying to encourage parents to take their kids (and themselves) to Mass–is not permitted under Church law. It is a violation of the childrens’ fundamental rights to receive the sacramental education needed to receive the Eucharist in a timely manner.

Incidentally, the green CLSA commentary happens to note regarding canon 18:

[A]ll the faithful have a right to receive Holy Communion (cc. 213, 912). To restrict this right, there must be a clear basis in the law, or the right is unlawfully denied. Thus, pastors are not free to extend to parents the requirements of preparation of children for the sacrament (c. 913, §1), and unlawfully deny the sacrament to children whose parents do not participate (p. 76).

What the pastor in New York is doing is worse than the case just envisioned. He is not merely telling the parents "Y’all go catechize these kids; I’m not gonna do it." So far as can be determined from the article, he’s letting neither the parents catechize their kids nor is he allowing them to receive catechesis at the parish.

If the article is right (and one must always leave the possibility that the press has, once again, got it wrong) then what he’s doing to these children is simply unlawful.

Yes, their parents should take them to Mass, but no, you can’t punish them by interfering with their rights to catechesis and the Eucharist if they don’t.

New York Pastor Violates Children's Rights, Causes Scandal

CHT to the reader who sent a link to a story which says:

The pastor of a Staten Island Catholic church is playing holy hardball – kicking hundreds of kids out of religious ed classes because their families aren’t showing up at Mass.

The Rev. Michael Cichon, pastor of St. Joseph/St. Thomas in Pleasant Plains, used each family’s bar-coded donation envelope to track attendance.

He’s tossed about 300 kids from classes and told them not to reapply until next April.

Without the classes, children cannot receive the sacraments, meaning some youngsters who thought they’d be making their First Communion next year will have to wait.

The suspensions, legalFLAGRANTLY ILLEGAL under church doctrinelaw, were a shock to many parents with kids enrolled in the 1,400-child program, which caters to kids who don’t attend Catholic schools.

GET THE (HORRIFYING) STORY.

Assuming this story is correct, the pastor of the parish in question is violating the fundamental ecclesiastical rights of the children, as well as causing public scandal by misrepresenting the position of the Church on this matter.

While it is true that folks are gravely obliged to go to Mass unless a justifying cause exists, what this pastor is doing is totally contrary to the Church’s law.

Witness . . .

Can. 213 The Christian faithful have the right to receive assistance from the sacred pastors out of the spiritual goods of the Church, especially the word of God and the sacraments.

Okay, now right there that makes this a matter of an ecclesiastical right. The kiddos have to receive from the sacred pastors (most particularly their pastor) goods from among the spiritual goods of the Church, "especially . . . the sacraments."

A pastor is not at liberty to deny or impede anyone’s access to the sacraments except in keeping with the law.

Want proof?

Can.  843 §1. Sacred ministers cannot deny the sacraments to those who seek them at appropriate times, are properly disposed, and are not prohibited by law from receiving them.

So unless the pastor has something in the law that would bar the child from the sacraments, he can’t deny them access.

This applies most especially to the Eucharist, for the Code devotes an additional canon to hammering home point that:

Can.  912 Any baptized person not prohibited by law can and must be admitted to holy Communion.

Is there anything in the law that would allow him to deny the kids the Eucharist? Well, there’s this:

Can.  913 §1. The administration of the Most Holy Eucharist to children

requires that they have sufficient knowledge and careful preparation so

that they understand the mystery of Christ according to their capacity

and are able to receive the body of Christ with faith and devotion.

If the kids don’t have sufficient knowledge and careful preparation then they can’t receive the Eucharist. What the offending priest is doing is trying to keep them from gaining sufficient knowledge and careful preparation by barring them from the catechetical courses they were attending in order to acquire these things.

What law is the priest offending against by barring the children from attending these courses? This one:

Can. 843 §2. Pastors of souls and other members of the Christian faithful, according to their respective ecclesiastical function, have the duty to take care that those who seek the sacraments are prepared to receive them by proper evangelization and catechetical instruction, attentive to the norms issued by competent authority.

He thus has the "duty to take care that those who seek the sacraments"–that’s the kids, folks–"are prepared to receive them by proper evangelization and catechetical instruction." The kids are willing to take the instruction. It’s the pastor who’s refusing to offer it. He is thus in violation of his duty under canon 843.

There’s also a rights issue here as well, because:

Can. 217 Since they are called by baptism to lead a life in keeping with the teaching of the gospel, the Christian faithful have the right to a Christian education by which they are to be instructed properly to strive for the maturity of the human person and at the same time to know and live the mystery of salvation.

The pastor is thus not only falling down on his duty to educate the kids under 843. He’s also violating the kids’ right to an education in how to live the mystery of salvation (e.g., by receiving the sacraments) under 217.

But wait! He’s only booted them out for this year. Can it be argued that he’s just delaying their education rather than prohibiting it to them? There are several responses to this:

  1. The course of action he has undertaken may well lead to the kids never receiving the education that is their right because the pastor may so offend their parents that they stop taking their kids to church at all and cease practicing the faith.
  2. There is still nothing in the law (more on this below) that allows a pastor to punish children by denying them their right to sacramental catechesis because their parents don’t go to Mass or don’t take them to Mass. Consequently, what if the parents dug in their heels and said: "I’m still not going to Mass next year either. You either let my kid back into this class or you don’t." The parents could continue that pattern of behavior indefinitely, and either the pastor concedes at some point that he doesn’t have the authority to punish the children in this way or he continues his refusal to catechize them indefinitely, in which case their sacramental education is not just delayed but is ultimately denied.
  3. The Church has established a timeframe for when this sacramental education is supposed to happen. To wit:

Can.  914 It is primarily the duty of parents and those who take the place of parents, as well as the duty of pastors, to take care that children who have reached the use of reason are prepared properly and, after they have made sacramental confession, are refreshed with this divine food as soon as possible. It is for the pastor to exercise vigilance so that children who have not attained the use of reason or whom he judges are not sufficiently disposed do not approach holy Communion.

It is thus the duty of the pastor to see that, once the children reach the age of reason that they make their first holy Communion "as soon as possible." He’s falling down on that duty because, as we have seen he is delaying the children’s sacramental education by at least a year (possibly indefinitely) by imposing a requirement not found in the law that their parents attend Mass. Such a delay is inconsistent with the duty to make sure they receive Communion "as soon as possible."

You can’t punish the children for what their parents don’t do. This is contrary to the first principles of justice. Neither can you punish the children even if the parents fail to take them to Mass. Why? Because Church law expressly envisions cases in which it is not possible for someone to attend Mass:

Can 1248 §2. If participation in the eucharistic celebration

becomes impossible because of the absence of a sacred minister or for another

grave cause, it is strongly recommended that the faithful take part in a

liturgy of the word if such a liturgy is celebrated in a parish church or other

sacred place according to the prescripts of the diocesan bishop or that they

devote themselves to prayer for a suitable time alone, as a family, or, as the

occasion permits, in groups of families.

Now, hi-ho Sunshine! "I’m seven years old and there isn’t a parish on my corner and I can’t drive a car and my parents won’t take me" is a grave cause for missing Mass! For that matter, "I’m seven and my parents insist that I stay with them and they won’t go to Mass" is a grave cause!

The Church in that case recommends various alternatives to the child (the most practical one–in the absence of the ability to drive a car–is spending some personal time praying on Sunday), but these are recommendations rather than mandates, and in no case does it say that you can deny a kid’s right to sacramental catechesis and subsequent admission to the Eucharist on these grounds.

How do we know that the kid can’t be disqualified on these grounds?

Can. 10 Only

those laws must be considered invalidating or disqualifying which expressly

establish that an act is null or that a person is affected.

Since the law doesn’t say that the kids are disqualified, they ain’t.

Is there any doubt about this? NO!

Can. 18 Laws which

establish a penalty, restrict the free exercise of rights, or contain an

exception from the law are subject to strict interpretation.

Since the children have a right to sacramental education and

subsequently to the reception of the  Eucharist, any restriction the

pastor wishes to place on the exercise of those rights must be subject

to strict interpretation.

As the green CLSA commentary notes: "Strict interpretation limits the law’s application to the minimum stated in the law" (p. 75). Since it is not stated in the law that the pastor can delay or deny children’s rights on the basis that their parents don’t go to Mass or won’t take their children to Mass, he cannot deny their rights on these grounds.

What the pastor is doing–however well motivated he may be in trying to encourage parents to take their kids (and themselves) to Mass–is not permitted under Church law. It is a violation of the childrens’ fundamental rights to receive the sacramental education needed to receive the Eucharist in a timely manner.

Incidentally, the green CLSA commentary happens to note regarding canon 18:

[A]ll the faithful have a right to receive Holy Communion (cc. 213, 912). To restrict this right, there must be a clear basis in the law, or the right is unlawfully denied. Thus, pastors are not free to extend to parents the requirements of preparation of children for the sacrament (c. 913, §1), and unlawfully deny the sacrament to children whose parents do not participate (p. 76).

What the pastor in New York is doing is worse than the case just envisioned. He is not merely telling the parents "Y’all go catechize these kids; I’m not gonna do it." So far as can be determined from the article, he’s letting neither the parents catechize their kids nor is he allowing them to receive catechesis at the parish.

If the article is right (and one must always leave the possibility that the press has, once again, got it wrong) then what he’s doing to these children is simply unlawful.

Yes, their parents should take them to Mass, but no, you can’t punish them by interfering with their rights to catechesis and the Eucharist if they don’t.

Calling All Podcast Listeners! (And Would-Be Listeners!)

iTunes 4.9 . . . IS OUT!!!

That means one thing: Built-in podcast support!!!

Now you can listen to podcasts on your iPod without having to use a piece of third-party software!

YEE-HAW!!!

Even if you don’t have an iPod, my understanding is that you can still download iTunes (for free) and use it to listen to podcasts and other audio content right on your computer, so don’t let not having an iPod stop you from joining the fun!

I’ve already downloaded 4.9 and installed it. Poked around the podcast area of the iTunes Music Store, too.

They have at least a couple of Catholic podcasts already in the store (Catholic Cast and Catholic Insider–in fact, they have two podcasts called "Catholic Insider" by different folks).

The selection is still somewhat limited, but they’re just starting out.

One limitation: So far all the podcasts they have in the store are free. You may think that’s a good thing, but it will keep some podcasts that folks (like me) would want to get from being in the store. Hope that they change that policy soon and let in podcasts where you pay an access charge (some radio programs do that).

In the meantime

DOWNLOAD iTUNES 4.9!!!

(NOTE: Just opening your current iTunes–if you already have it–should also prompt you to download the new version.)

The Freakonomics Of Advertising

Time prevents me from being able to do a more detailed post on Freakonomics today, so lemme give you a brief one.

One of the things that you can do with economic analyses is figure out which terms in advertisements result in better sales. F’rinstance: Here are five words commonly used in advertising homes for sale that correlate with higher priced sales of the homes:

  • Granite
  • State-of-the-Art
  • Corian
  • Maple
  • Gourmet

How all those get worked into ad for houses, I’m not sure. (I don’t know anybody who has a "gourmet house," though I suppose people might advertise that the home comes with "gourmet kitchen equipment" of some kind.)

You can similar track what advertising elements are correlated with lower sale prices on houses–i.e., things you don’t want in your ad. Here are five such terms:

  • Fantastic
  • Spacious
  • ! (an exclamation point)
  • Charming
  • Great Neighborhood

Why do these correlate negatively? And what do the positive terms have in common? For those answers you can

READ THIS EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK.

Freakonomics also contains info on what elements are most (and least) successful in personal ads on Internet dating sites, though if you want to know what they have to say about that subject then you’ll need to

GET THE BOOK.

The Freakonomics Of Abortion

The most controversial claim of the book Freakonomics is that abortion appears to be a key factor in lowering the crime rate in recent years.

A decade ago, you may remember, the press was filled with stories about how the youth of America were disintegrating and that soon we would be awash in an unstoppable crimewave perpetrated by "superpredators" who were totally sociopathic.

The experts were sure this was going to happen.

But it didn’t.

Why?

Various explanations were tried: Better law-enforcement techniques, more police officers, a justice system that finally "got tough" with offenders, stricter gun control laws, an aging of the population.

As the authors of Freakonomics explain, some of these (e.g., the justice system getting tough, more police officers) really do have an impact on crime. Others (e.g., restrictive gun control laws) don’t. But even the ones that had an effect weren’t enough to explain the dramatic drop in crime that occurred.

Author Steven Levitt, and his then-co-author John J. Donohue, proposed a different explanation: Abortion was responsible.

The argument runs something like this: If women of every socioeconomic group were equally likely to have an abortion then we wouldn’t expect to see abortion decreasing the crime rate. But that’s not the way thing are. In point of fact, women from certain socioeconomic groups are more likely than others to have abortions, and the groups more likely to do so (e.g., among the poor) are the very groups that tend to give rise to the most criminals. As a result, babies likely to grow up to be criminals were disproportionately aborted and so the overall crime rate went down.

In other words, Evil eugenicists like Margaret Sanger and her cohorts were right: By legalizing abortion it would alleviate certain social problems (crime, at least) by wiping out the people involved. These were, in the words of some, "pre-emptive executions"–applications of capital punishment to those who would have committed crimes in the future (as well as an awful lot who wouldn’t have).

When Donohue and Levitt published their paper, it caused a Big Argument.

When Levitt and new co-author, Stephen J. Dubner, released Freakonomics and rehashed the issue in a more popular format, it again caused a Big Argument.

Many pro-lifers, understandably, did not want to credit abortion with solving or helping to solve any social problems.

My own attitude toward the issue is somewhat reserved. I’m not prepared to concede that their Levitt and Donohue’s work is correct unless I go through it in detail, which I haven’t.

THOUGH THE ORIGINAL PAPER IS ONLINE HERE. (WARNING! Evil file format! [.pdf])

I’m not going to dismiss the claim, either, though. After all <philosophical thought experiment>if the abortion rate were raised to 100% then the crime rate would automatically fall to 0% in one generation</philosophical thought experiment>. There wouldn’t be anybody left to commit crimes!

If it happens to be the case that allowing abortion on demand (for a price) in contemporary American society has a negative impact on the crime rate, that’s an empirical matter, not a moral one.

It does, however, raise a legal question–and a semantic one. The "crime" that we’re talking about is the kind tracked by law-enforcement officials. There are two kinds of crime, though, that are not tracked by law-enforcement.

First, there are crimes that are never discovered and recorded, such as when you stole that pen from work a while back. It may have been illegal for you to do that, but it’s not worth anybody’s time to both hunting down and prosecuting such offenders.

Second, there are crimes that are not illegal. These are crimes against the higher law to which human law is oriented. They are "crimes against humanity," "immoralities," "sins," or whatever you want to call them. They violate human rights, natural law, moral law, God’s law, or whatever you want to name the higher law.

Abortion is one of these.

So what happens to the violent crime picture if we take these crimes into account? Well, currently there are about 15,000 people killed a year in the tracked-by-law-enforcement sense of "killed." Now let’s add to that the 1.6 million people killed a year by abortion in an "off the books" way. What’s the actual homicide rate in the United States? 1.615 million people murdered each year.

That dwarfs any "savings" caused by abortion in the "on the books" homicide level that the Bureau of Justice Statistics might tell you about. Even if you subtract out the abortions that were occurring before 1973 (so that we have an apples to apples comparison), the same remains true.

So no, abortion has not decreased the violent crime rate in the U.S. It has dramatically increased it. Whether it has alleviated the "on the books" violent crime rate, or even the "on the books" crime rate in general, is a subsidiary question. The fact remains that far more people are being slaughtered in the era of abortion than was the case before.

Now let’s loop this back to Freakonomics: How does the book treat this aspect of the issue? Surprisingly well.

The authors do have an overly simplistic analysis of the effects of "wantedness" versus "unwantedness" on children. (Not surprising since one is a journalist and the other is an economist; neither is a pro-life researcher who has gone over the subject carefully enough to see past those simplistic labels). The authors also betray their own perspective by fatuously editorializing that when the government lets women make decisions in this area that they do a "good job" deciding whether they can raise a child. (This is fatuous because abortion is not the only alternative to raising a child. Not conceiving a child or putting one up for adoption also are, and the government had been letting people use these options and thus make the decision of whether to raise a child long before Roe v. Wade. Roe simply added murder to the list of options parents had if they concluded they didn’t want to raise a child.)

Nevertheless, the authors are much more evenhanded than one would expect. Not only do they make the pro-life point I made above, they also cite a quotation attributed to G. K. Chesterton to the effect that when there is a shortage of hats the solution is not to lop off a few heads.

They even go above and beyond by exploring a middle view between the pure pro-life and pro-abort positions.

What if someone put some value on the life of an unborn child, the authors ask, but not as much as they put on the life of a newborn?–as, in fact, many people in the "mushy middle" of American politics do. What should people in such a position conclude about whether abortion has been a good thing or a bad thing for society in terms of its impact on crime?

Suppose that a person thought that the life of an unborn child was worth 1% of the life of a born person?

Now, you may be thinking: "That’s sounding pretty dang close to the pure pro-abort view to me!"–which it is. But here’s where the math kicks in: If the life of an unborn child is just 1% the life of someone post-birth and you multiply that by the 1.6 million abortions we have a year then that makes the number of abortions equilvalent to 16,000 murders, which is roughly the number of people that are killed in the U.S. each year by legally-trackable homicide. It’s also more than the "savings" in the homicide rate that they hold abortion to have produced.

So even if you only view unborn children as 1% as valuable as post-born people, abortion has still been a net negative to the country in terms of loss of life.

The conclusion–though the authors don’t pose it in these terms–would be that only pure pro-aborts (who view the kid’s life as worth nothing), and those who view unborn children as worth less than 1% what born children are, should be touting the violent crime-reducing effects as a justification for having abortion in this country.

My point is not that I buy their analysis of whether abortion cuts crimes. I’m not in the market to buy into any position until such time as I’d be able to go over the case in detail (the original, Donohue-Levitt one) and the best rebuttals available to it.

There may be a surface plausibility to the argument, but then there are superficial plausibilities all over the place that don’t pan out in economics. Levitt and Dubner point to some of them in their book (as when fining parents for being late to pick up their kids from daycare resulted in an increase in parental lateness). Letting people abort their babies does not mean that the resultant babies will be more "wanted" than if abortion were not allowed. Giving kids contraceptives results in more conceptions out of wedlock, not less, and something similar may be true with abortion. The net impact of abortion may be a devaluing of children and viewing them with a more jaundiced and calculating eye, leading to worse parenting rather than better parenting.

I’m merely suggesting that the book offers a less polemicized discussion of the argument than many might suppose and that before pro-lifers start foaming at the mouth when they hear the abortion-crime link being discussed that they

READ THE BOOK.

Let's Be Careful Out There…

A timely warning from our new Holy Father to kick off the summer travel season:

"Pope Benedict XVI urged motorists Sunday to take care as they embark on their summer holidays, lamenting the ‘tragic’ loss of life on highways from careless drivers.

"Benedict made the appeal in his noontime blessing to thousands of tourists and faithful gathered under a scorching sun in St. Peter’s Square.

"The pope noted that the end of June marks the start of summer holidays, when many Italians head to the seashore or the mountains — and the death toll from highway accidents increases, particularly on weekends.

"Benedict wished everyone a good ‘well-earned’ rest, but he said he also wanted to make an appeal for ‘prudence’ for those who will be traveling.

GET THE STORY.

I’ve very much admired those "The Cafeteria Is Now Closed" bumper stickers that Jimmy and others have mentioned in the week’s following the Pope’s election. But this story makes me think that I should create one for my car that states "The Pope Told You To Slow Down!"

Night Of The Living Canines!

Snarling_dogNEWS.com.au (an Australian news site) announced the shocking fact:

Boffins Create Zombie Dogs!

You’re probably going: "Wait! I didn’t know that scientists had created boffins! Much less that the boffins had in turn created zombie dogs!"

"Boffin," apparently, is a UK (and Aussie) slang term for scientists and doctors who work for the military, so a U.S. translation of the headline would be:

Military Scientists Create Zombie Dogs!

Except . . . they’re not really zombie dogs. They’re more like cryogenically-suspended-and-then-revived dogs.

But let’s not let that get in the way of a good headline! Let’s pretend that they really are zombie dogs.

The <pun intended>chilling thing</pun intended> is that the "boffins" intend next to create "zombie" humans!

Oooo-oooooo! Pretty scary, eh, kids?

Just like that movie on Monster Chiller Horror Theater!

No word on whether the "zombie" dogs have a taste for human brains, but I can imagine what would happen if you put them in a bowl in front of the "zombie" dogs!

In the meantime . . .

GET THE (CHILLING) STORY!

RedState Sees Red

RedState.Org recently ran three book reviews of Thomas Woods’ How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t comment on it, but I have read the three book reviews, and I can comment on them. Each had serious flaws, but the first was of truly notable merit. Let’s read . . . .

JOSH TREVINO:

"How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization," by Thomas Woods, PhD, is a book masquerading as a necessary corrective that reveals itself as an inadequate one; and a serious work of history marred by some deeply unserious historiography. By which I mean that I disagree with it theologically. The author’s stated intent is to counter much of the calumny which has befallen the institution of Catholicism in the modern era — specifically the calumny that it is and has always been an anti-modernist, anti-science, anti-humanist force — and in this, his approach makes the fatal errors of answering the critics on their own terms, and adopting Catholic historical prejudice to a degree that weakens his broader argument. Allow me to smear Catholics up front by referring univocally to "Catholic historical prejudice." I’m still an unbiased arbiter of history, myself, though.

It is the latter flaw that we turn to first. Those familiar with Church history know that <scare quotes>"Catholicism"</scare quotes> as we understand it was a concept that emerged in nascent form only with the progressive divergence of the Greek and Latin Churches between the 11th and 15th centuries; the Catholic Church as we know it in the modern era did not emerge until roughly the 16th century.

When I refer to Catholicism as "we" know it, the "we" in question is, of course, myself and my cat, Tibbles. Tibbles is an expert on such matters and assures me that the word "Catholic" wasn’t even used until roughly the sixteenth century. There was no consciousness of the Catholic Church as a distinct institution prior to that time. In fact, Tibbles’ papyrological studies have revealed that the quotations attributed to St. Augustine in the fourth century displaying a clear institutional awareness of the Catholic Church in contrast to other churches are, in fact, forgeries salted into the historical record by tricky papists.

The same goes for all the other evidence for the existence of the institution today called "the Catholic Church" prior to the sixteenth century. The Protestant Reformers may have thought that they were protesting against an institution known as "the Catholic Church" that had been around for centuries, but in fact it had only been in existence for a few weeks, following an extensive salting campaign undertaken as part of a hoax stemming from a college fraternity’s hazing rite. Please see Tibbles’ doctoral disseration for the references.

This latter Church development, mostly codified in the Council of Trent, came about as the Church defined itself against a Protestant Reformation. When I say "codified," I mean "made up out of thin air" rather than "confirming what was already in existence, against which Protestants were protesting." which Protestantism emerged as something rather different from, and more lasting than, previous anti-hierarchical rebellions such as Arianism, Donatism, and the Cathar and Hussite movements. By "anti-hierarchical" I don’t mean "against hierarchy," for each of these groups had bishops.

So, when we–Tibbles and I–speak of Catholicism as understood as that Christian church led by the Pope in Rome and governed by his clerical and bureaucratic apparatus, we are certainly not speaking of the historical Church from the time of St Peter to the modern day. For there were no popes in Rome prior to roughly the sixteenth century, nor did they have any clerics associated with them nor any bureaucratic apparatus. Tibbles has shown that all the alleged "records" of such individuals are fake.

 NSurprisingly, none of this seems to matter to Wood. It is as if he is completely unaware of Tibbles’ brilliant work in this area. The great accomplishments of the fourth through eleventh centuries, when the Church — and specifically the monastic communities — essentially alone preserved the civilizational heritage of antiquity, are presented as specifically Catholic accomplishments. The nerve! It is as if Woods really believes the records purporting to show that the monastic communities of the fourth through the eleventh centuries regarded themselves as Catholic institutions!

This is fundamentally inaccurate on several counts, most notably in that much of the preservation of the Roman and Greek corpus took place in imperial Constantinople, certainly never a location within the orbit of the Bishop of Rome. Yes, Constantinople was never within the "orbit" of the Bishop of Rome. Not even before the East-West Schism, when the Rome and Constantinople were in communion and councils like the First Council of Constantinople (A.D. 381) were saying things like: "The Bishop of Constantinople, however, shall have the prerogative of honour after the Bishop of Rome; because Constantinople is New Rome" (canon 3).

(Excepting, of course, a rather regrettable sixty years or so beginning 1204, which Woods sensibly omits as an accomplishment of the Catholic Church since it would harm my case.) Indeed, following the Fall of Constantinople to the Muslims in 1453, the arrival of these preserved manuscripts in the baggage of Greek refugees was a major spur to the Renaissance in Italy. See! The fact that post-schism Byzantines preserved manuscripts important to Western civilization ipso facto disproves the idea that the Catholic Church had anything to do with it!

The reality is that the preservation of civilization in Europe during the Dark Ages and medieval era, while creditable to Christianity at large, was not exclusively, nor even mostly, the doing of the Pope or a Catholicism that did not then exist. By way of parallel, it is wrong to credit to the United States the spread of democracy in the world during an age of monarchy, beginning with the American Revolution. The U.S. as Tibbles and I know it today did not exist in 1776 for there were only thirteen states at the time, its people spoke a now archaic form of English, and they were far less democratic than we are. It was only with the Warren Court that what we now call "America" became truly democratic, and thus it is a category mistake to attribute any democratizing influence in the world to an America that did not then exist.

When "we" speak of America, we mean America since the Warren Court, just as when "we" speak of the Catholic Church, we mean the Catholic Church since the sixteenth century. Tibbles and I are entitled to do this since, as Humpy Dumpty told Alice, "When I use a word . . . it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less."

In certain tea parties that Tibbles and I frequent in modern-day Christian Orthodoxy there is a certain (misguided, to my mind) nostalgia for "Western Orthodoxy," which is defined as the Latin or "Western" rites as they existed prior to the late-medieval split between Constantinople and Rome. According to this thesis, prior to that, all Christendom was "Orthodox," and hence we can discuss St Patrick of Ireland, for example, as an Orthodox saint. While there is theological validity to this, it is a dishonest reading of history. Historical dishonesty thus can be theologically valid. — St Patrick almost certainly never looked to the Constantinopolitan Patriarch for guidance, for example — and it is also an misleading interpretation of cultural heritage, for nobody should be allowed to take pride in anything that the West has ever done. Westerners must only execrate their ancestors and laud the glories of Byzantium.

The consequent establishment of "Western Orthodox" parishes in the United States and Britain, which utilize various forms of liturgy extant in the churches of the era of the Venerable Bede, is based upon this false appropriation. Westerners must repudiate all of their own liturgical heritage and adhere strictly to the one, true form of liturgy as practiced in  Constantinople, "where also their Lord was crucified."

Woods is guilty of precisely this same error from the Catholic side: his interpretation of history, and specifically his presentation of Catholicism through the medieval era, leads inevitably — though he shrinks from making this point explicit — to the concept of a pre-split "Catholic Greece," among other things. I mean, just because both East and West regarded themselves as being part of one Church prior to the split, and just because that Church was commonly called the "Catholic" Church in that age, and just because it had the bishop of Rome as its foremost bishop according to the First Council of Constantinople (among others), that in no way allows a Catholic to lay any kind of claim to the heritage of this age!

It ill-befits any person from any Christian tradition to posit such a <adjectival meltdown>thinly-defensible, revisionist, and ahistorically exclusionist</adjectival meltdown> interpretation of Church history. By which I mean: I disagree with Woods theologically. I hold it as a theological truth that the Church before the split was Orthodox rather than Catholic. Woods therefore must be wrong historically. If the evidence is against me, so be it. As I’ve already established, historical dishonesty can be theologically valid.

Now, let me be up-front and state that I am coming at this from an Orthodox perspective. Yes! Disclosing one’s point of view half-way through a piece is being "up front" about it! I hope, though, that the reader finds that the argument against this manner of historiography stands on its own.

The second major flaw in Woods’ book stems from the first. <syntactical meltdown>In claiming all things for Catholicism, and in concurrently expanding Catholicism to claim those things he wishes to claim, he of necessity does so according to that which he wishes to refute.</syntactical meltdown> Woods finds the charge that the Church is a retarding force in the development of modern civilization — specifically modern science, which seizes his attention, and hence his book, to a great degree — to be one that eminently deserves answering. All of which is just to say: He wants to show that the Catholic Church isn’t anti-science.

His implicit acceptance of the equating of science with civilization (I have to say "implicit" acceptance because if I didn’t then he’d protest that he hasn’t equated science with civilization and that I am setting up a straw man), and his explicit acceptance that the Church may be justified on these terms (whatever that means), are both profoundly wrong.

This is not the place to examine in full the contention that science is an independent, self-justifying value (since Woods presumably didn’t claim this), or the contention that science is itself an independent, self-justifying indicator of civilization (which Woods presumably also didn’t claim). It is enough to say that the Catholic Church and Christianity at large reject both these views. They are thus irrelevant to the matter at hand. I only mention them so I can dazzle the reader with my sparkling philosophical prose.

Modern Catholicism quite laudably espouses the position that, as a Catholic priest from my own childhood explained, "Good science and good faith do not conflict." This begs the question of what constitutes "good science." Certainly there is quite a lot of bad science: the Dachau hypothermia experiments, the eugenics movement, and the Tuskegee experiments are only the tip of that iceberg. Particularly in an era where science is pushing the frontiers of human control — although not human wisdom — ever further, it is the Church that has frequently been the loudest voice in reminding society that knowledge is not an end in itself, and that its application is not inherently useful, wise or right. In a faith the holy text of which begins with an allegory of unwise knowledge and its consequences, this is in keeping with its most ancient intellectual traditions. That they are still applicable and cautionary thousands of years after that allegory’s first telling is a testament to the enduring nature of man and his folly.

One searches in vain for this recognition in Woods’ book. Instead, we are treated to a proud catalogue of mostly monastic and Jesuit accomplishments in science and technology. How dare Woods try to prove that the Church isn’t anti-science without mentioning my personal hobby-horse on the subject! Tibbles is outraged and spitting up hairballs!

These in themselves are good things inasmuch as they demonstrate that the Church is not a wholly malign force in the temporal world, pace the attacks of its critics. But Woods appears to forget that the Church is not justified by those things. This is a subtle point. When I first read Woods, I missed it, thinking that he was merely conducting a negative apologia–showing that the charge of the Church being anti-science is false. But Tibbles’ careful reading of the text revealed that Woods was actually doing a positive apologia, claiming that people ought to be Catholic because of how much good science the Church has done! He thus forgets that the Church is not justified by how much good science it’s done!

iIndeed, from the standpoint of the believer, the Church in the world is justified by the simple act of belief and the promulgation of the worship of Christ. All those miracles and fulfilled prophecies that Jesus and St. Paul so keen about were just a waste of time. To justify it on any other terms — say, a clever tenth-century Benedictine integration of waterwheels and trip-hammers, or a useful seventeenth-century Jesuit advance in lens-grinding — is to implicitly accede to the secularist contention that it is material betterment that is the bellwether of human progress, and the moral justifier of institutions. In this, the Church in the modern era will lose, and lose badly: no local parish is the equal of the supermarket in the provision of bread to the masses; no bishop alive has utilized waterpower so well as does the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Why, then, does Woods keep telling us that we ought to be Catholic because it will give us technological doo-dads and material prosperity? I mean, I haven’t seen this kind of pro-technology apologetic for Catholicism since John Paul II wrote his most recent encyclical on the virtues of consumerism and the sacramental character of shopping at Best Buy!

Useful social advancement based upon the rational satisfaction of material needs is, of course, the basis of the domestication of dogs, just as the law of gravitation operating between bodies that have mass in the Einsteinan space-time continuum is, of course, the basis of why a domesticated dog will drop to the ground if you suddently disintegrate his legs. It is not what distinguishes nor what "built Western Civilization," nor, one hopes, is it the purpose of man on earth. Not that Woods said it was those things. I’m just showing off my sparklingly intellectual prose again.

It is that transcendent need to define and achieve that purpose–i.e., the purpose of man on earth–that the Church, and religion in general, presumably seeks to fulfill; and if it is to be justified, it must be on those terms. It is the task of the Church’s apologists to do so, and to argue that that transcendence has not lost an iota of its relevance in our era. Tibbles therefore decrees that it is superfluous and counter-productive for a person to write a book on the Catholic Church’s role in the building of Western Civilization. The only books that should be written are those showing the value of transcendence in the world today!

Thomas Woods shows how well the Catholic Church, as defined by him and most of mankind, has delivered on those material needs for millennia. Fine, say the critics he attempts to refute: can we not accomplish this today by means of a government program without this Jesus baggage? There is no good answer to this question in this book since it was not a book about proposed government programs. Since it is the crucial question of the modern age, it is an omission that reduces Woods’ work from a serious apologia to a collection of trivia–a charge that can be equally leveled against any book published today that is not an apologia based on the value of transcendance in modern society contra irreligious government programs. That’s the only kind of book that counts!
 

I therefore fault the book because the author chose to write on a theme not to my liking.

Tibbles, feeling generous, gives it one hairball out of a possible five.

SOURCE.

READ WOODS’ BOOK FOR YOURSELF.

A Person's A Person

… no matter how small, in the words of the great philosopher Dr. Seuss.

Pope Benedict XVI’s first book published since his election to the papacy, noted in a previous post by Jimmy, will include a defense of the Church’s commitment to fighting for all life, even the lives of those the greater culture deems "insignificant":

"In his first book published since his election as Pope, Benedict XVI rejects the suggestion that the Church has given up its fight for the right to life of the unborn, instead emphasizing that ‘There is no such thing as "small murders."

"’Respect for every single life is an essential condition for anything worthy of being called social life,’ he wrote, as reported by Reuters news. The book, The Europe of Benedict, in the Crisis of Cultures — only available in Italian — is a compilation of three sermons delivered between 1992 and April 2005 by the Pope while he was still Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

"’Why don’t we resign ourselves to the fact that we lost [the abortion] battle and dedicate our energies instead to projects where we can find greater social consensus?’ Pope Benedict XVI asks rhetorically. ‘Recognising the sacred nature of human life and its inviolability without any exceptions is not a small problem or something that can be considered part of the pluralism of opinions in modern society,’ he answers."

GET THE STORY.

Now, what I want to know is when the Pope’s new book will be translated into English.