You know how you sometimes hear arguments that particular policies should be adopted because they will save human lives? These arguments have the right goal. But a shortsighted refusal to take any form of risk ends up costing human lives in the very attempt to save them.
THOMAS (“HE’S SO SMART”) SOWELL REVEALS A FLAW IN THE “IF IT SAVE JUST ONE LIFE” ARGUMENT.
You know how you sometimes hear arguments that particular policies should be adopted because they will save human lives? These arguments have the right goal. But a shortsighted refusal to take any form of risk ends up costing human lives in the very attempt to save them.
THOMAS (“HE’S SO SMART”) SOWELL REVEALS A FLAW IN THE “IF IT SAVE JUST ONE LIFE” ARGUMENT.
(Sigh.)
People may not like what I have to say in this post, but it’s one of those obligation-to-tell-the-truth situations because there are things out there in the Catholic press right now that are (at best) misleading and as someone who is aware of this fact and who works in the setting-the-record-straight business I have something of an obligation to try to clarify matters.
First, the standard disclaimers: As anyone who reads this blog knows, I think that John Kerry’s support of the American abortion holocaust is horrendous. I would like to see him and every other Catholic pro-abort politician slapped with severe ecclesiastical sanctions. What they are doing is a crime against humanity of unimaginable proportions, and I think they should be prosecuted to the full extent of ecclesiastical law, including–if necessary–creating stronger ecclesiastical laws with which to prosecute them. (That’s the pope’s job, though, not mine.)
Now, you are probably aware that there is a canonical suit currently filed with the Archbishop of Boston by a young canonist named Marc Balestrieri, who is part of the Gen X crop of orthodox canon lawyers who will play an important role in the future of the Church. But the Gen Xers are still rather green at this point, and I find things in their writings that either don’t quite square with the law or that involve (at best) very dubious interpretations of the law. (This is in contrast to the Greatest Generation generation and the Baby Boom generation of canon lawyers, many of whom actively seek to subvert the law.)
I’m afraid that Mr. Balestrieri’s suit against Kerry is problematic. I read the original complaint (online here), and was unconvinced that he had found a canonical way to nail Kerry for his pro-abort stance. Mind you, I think there are ways to do that, and the Archbishop of Boston or one of several dicasteries in the Roman curia could choose to use Balestrieri’s complaint as the occasion to come down hard on Kerry, I just don’t think that he has put together a set of reasons that demand this response (which might not be forthcoming even if his reasoning was impeccable). In particular, his assertion that Kerry’s “I’m personally opposed but . . . ” stance amounts to heresy appears to be very problematic, for reasons I will explain below.
Yesterday the news broke that there had been a “Vatican response” to his case and that he had received a letter (online here; evil file format [.pdf] warning!) from Fr. Basil Cole at the Dominican House of Studies. Fr. Cole had been asked by Fr. Augustin DiNoia of the CDF to send Balestrieri an unofficial response to a couple of questions he had posed to the CDF.
In his letter (which is written as an informal personal opinion and not as a formal reply), Fr. Cole argues (plausibly) that direct support for abortion (i.e., saying that abortion is a morally permissible thing) is theologically heretical and can (in the conditions described in canon 751) become the canonical crime of heresy, triggering automatic excommunication. All this is fine.
At the very end of the letter, Fr. Cole has a very brief treatment of advocating a civil right (as opposed to a moral right) to abortion, and he states:
[I]f a Catholic publicly and obstinately supports the civil right to abortion, knowing that the Church teaches officially against that legislation, he or she commits that heresy envisioned by Can. 751 of the Code. Provided that the presumption of knowledge of the law and penalty (Can. 15, § 2) and imputability (Can. 1321, § 3) are not rebutted in the external forum, one is automatically excommunicated according to Can. 1364, § 1.
Well, Balestrieri published Cole’s letter to his web page and advertised it as a Vatican response (see the graphic above, which is from a screenshot of his web page this morning). The letter then set off a firestorm of “Kerry automatically excommunicated” posts and news stories on the Internet.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to apply to Kerry’s situation. Fr. Cole appears to be speaking of advocating a civil right to abortion in a way that Kerry is not (or would not if called upon to explain himself to a Church tribunal). Kerry has expressed his opposition to abortion and justified his support of a civil right to abortion not saying that he thinks such a civil right is a good thing in and of itself (which is what Fr. Cole seems to be thinking of), but by (wrongly) appealing to the pluralistic nature of our society.
If called upon to explain himself by a Church tribunal, Kerry would be able to plausibly argue in this way:
I do not support abortion. I have repeatedly and publicly said that I accept the Church’s teaching on this point as an article of faith. I have said this in front of the nation in the presidential debates. And at that time I said that because of the nature of our society in America, I cannot impose that article of faith on others. In saying this, I appealed to the same kind of considerations that John Paul II appealed to in Evangelium Vitae 73, in which he said that in circumstances where it is impossible to remove or ameliorate an abortion law, it is permissible for an elected official whose personal opposition to abortion is well known to support a law that contains provisions allowing abortion.
I am such a politician. My personal opposition is well known. In fact, after the debates my pesonal opposition is better known than that of any other Catholic politician. Yet I am telling you that removing the civil right to abortion in America would cause a huge convulsion to our society that would be worse than leaving the civil right in place. I therefore do not support the civil right as a good thing in and of itself but as something that the nature of American society presently requires.
Heresy involves denying or doubting specific propositions, and I am with the Church on the evil of abortion. I do not doubt or deny any propositions of a theological nature. What I doubt or deny is that the civil right to abortion could be removed from American law without causing an enormous cataclysm in American society that would be worse than leaving the civil right in place. This is not a matter that has been definitively treated by the Chruch’s ordinary or extraordinary magisterium and therefore is not capable of triggering the Code of Canon Law’s provisions regarding the crime of heresy. Further, since John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae noted that there are situations where elected officials can support legislation that contains abortion provisions because the attempt to overturn this legislation would be ineffective or produce a worse situation, it is clear that I am not committing heresy, however much one may disagree with my stance on this matter.
If he made such a statement I would regard it as a hypocritical, duplicitous, and flatly erroneous position to take. Abortion must end in America, and efforts to end it would not be worse than the 1.5 million deaths it causes every year in this country. So Kerry’s claim would be howlingly wrong, but howlingly wrong does not make it heretical in the sense that the Code of Canon Law defines that concept, which requires (among other things) a matter to have been infallibly settled. The Church has made no such determination regarding the sociological situation in America. It thus would be extraordinarily difficult to show that heresy has been committed by an individual taking the kind of position described above.
Now it turns out, as Ed Peters informs us, that Fr. Cole has issued a clarification indicating that neither he nor Fr. DiNoia knew that they were talking to a guy who was a litigant in a case. They thought that they were helping out a canon law student (Balestrieri is pursuing a doctorate; he already has a standard canon law degree on the basis of which he has practiced) and that the reply Cole gave was in no way an official reply from the Vatican (as is obvious from the text of the letter itself) and was a comment on principle not directed to the case of Sen. Kerry. Indeed, Cole’s letter doesn’t even seem to engage Kerry’s actual position.
Cole says in part:
Neither Fr. DiNoia nor I had any knowledge that he was going to “go after” Kerry or any other Catholic figure for their public stance concerning the evil of abortion. So, in my letter to Marc Balestrieri, I began by mentioning that my letter is a personal and private opinion to him about anyone who would publically and persistently teach that abortion is not morally prohibited. It in no way is authoritative from the Congregation nor was I representing the Congregation.
Further, the CDF has now issued a statement saying Cole’s letter is not an official determination on anything concerning the Kerry case.
Peters comments:
It is a pity that a refined and thoughtful letter by a thinker of Fr. Cole’s credentials was so mischaracterized (as if it were a Vatican determination on a key point in Balestrieri’s case), and that so many people (eager perhaps for something finally to be done about the Kerry scandal) relied on those mischaracterizations (despite the plain wording of Cole’s letter itself!) and circulated them uncritically.
Whatever else happens now (and I fear several repercussions actually), I think a gaff like this appears to be is going to make it even more difficult for Balestrieri to pursue his heresy case against Kerry, a case that was already facing some significant procedural and substantive canonical hurdles.
(Sigh.)
People may not like what I have to say in this post, but it’s one of those obligation-to-tell-the-truth situations because there are things out there in the Catholic press right now that are (at best) misleading and as someone who is aware of this fact and who works in the setting-the-record-straight business I have something of an obligation to try to clarify matters.
First, the standard disclaimers: As anyone who reads this blog knows, I think that John Kerry’s support of the American abortion holocaust is horrendous. I would like to see him and every other Catholic pro-abort politician slapped with severe ecclesiastical sanctions. What they are doing is a crime against humanity of unimaginable proportions, and I think they should be prosecuted to the full extent of ecclesiastical law, including–if necessary–creating stronger ecclesiastical laws with which to prosecute them. (That’s the pope’s job, though, not mine.)
Now, you are probably aware that there is a canonical suit currently filed with the Archbishop of Boston by a young canonist named Marc Balestrieri, who is part of the Gen X crop of orthodox canon lawyers who will play an important role in the future of the Church. But the Gen Xers are still rather green at this point, and I find things in their writings that either don’t quite square with the law or that involve (at best) very dubious interpretations of the law. (This is in contrast to the Greatest Generation generation and the Baby Boom generation of canon lawyers, many of whom actively seek to subvert the law.)
I’m afraid that Mr. Balestrieri’s suit against Kerry is problematic. I read the original complaint (online here), and was unconvinced that he had found a canonical way to nail Kerry for his pro-abort stance. Mind you, I think there are ways to do that, and the Archbishop of Boston or one of several dicasteries in the Roman curia could choose to use Balestrieri’s complaint as the occasion to come down hard on Kerry, I just don’t think that he has put together a set of reasons that demand this response (which might not be forthcoming even if his reasoning was impeccable). In particular, his assertion that Kerry’s “I’m personally opposed but . . . ” stance amounts to heresy appears to be very problematic, for reasons I will explain below.
Yesterday the news broke that there had been a “Vatican response” to his case and that he had received a letter (online here; evil file format [.pdf] warning!) from Fr. Basil Cole at the Dominican House of Studies. Fr. Cole had been asked by Fr. Augustin DiNoia of the CDF to send Balestrieri an unofficial response to a couple of questions he had posed to the CDF.
In his letter (which is written as an informal personal opinion and not as a formal reply), Fr. Cole argues (plausibly) that direct support for abortion (i.e., saying that abortion is a morally permissible thing) is theologically heretical and can (in the conditions described in canon 751) become the canonical crime of heresy, triggering automatic excommunication. All this is fine.
At the very end of the letter, Fr. Cole has a very brief treatment of advocating a civil right (as opposed to a moral right) to abortion, and he states:
[I]f a Catholic publicly and obstinately supports the civil right to abortion, knowing that the Church teaches officially against that legislation, he or she commits that heresy envisioned by Can. 751 of the Code. Provided that the presumption of knowledge of the law and penalty (Can. 15, § 2) and imputability (Can. 1321, § 3) are not rebutted in the external forum, one is automatically excommunicated according to Can. 1364, § 1.
Well, Balestrieri published Cole’s letter to his web page and advertised it as a Vatican response (see the graphic above, which is from a screenshot of his web page this morning). The letter then set off a firestorm of “Kerry automatically excommunicated” posts and news stories on the Internet.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to apply to Kerry’s situation. Fr. Cole appears to be speaking of advocating a civil right to abortion in a way that Kerry is not (or would not if called upon to explain himself to a Church tribunal). Kerry has expressed his opposition to abortion and justified his support of a civil right to abortion not saying that he thinks such a civil right is a good thing in and of itself (which is what Fr. Cole seems to be thinking of), but by (wrongly) appealing to the pluralistic nature of our society.
If called upon to explain himself by a Church tribunal, Kerry would be able to plausibly argue in this way:
I do not support abortion. I have repeatedly and publicly said that I accept the Church’s teaching on this point as an article of faith. I have said this in front of the nation in the presidential debates. And at that time I said that because of the nature of our society in America, I cannot impose that article of faith on others. In saying this, I appealed to the same kind of considerations that John Paul II appealed to in Evangelium Vitae 73, in which he said that in circumstances where it is impossible to remove or ameliorate an abortion law, it is permissible for an elected official whose personal opposition to abortion is well known to support a law that contains provisions allowing abortion.
I am such a politician. My personal opposition is well known. In fact, after the debates my pesonal opposition is better known than that of any other Catholic politician. Yet I am telling you that removing the civil right to abortion in America would cause a huge convulsion to our society that would be worse than leaving the civil right in place. I therefore do not support the civil right as a good thing in and of itself but as something that the nature of American society presently requires.
Heresy involves denying or doubting specific propositions, and I am with the Church on the evil of abortion. I do not doubt or deny any propositions of a theological nature. What I doubt or deny is that the civil right to abortion could be removed from American law without causing an enormous cataclysm in American society that would be worse than leaving the civil right in place. This is not a matter that has been definitively treated by the Chruch’s ordinary or extraordinary magisterium and therefore is not capable of triggering the Code of Canon Law’s provisions regarding the crime of heresy. Further, since John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae noted that there are situations where elected officials can support legislation that contains abortion provisions because the attempt to overturn this legislation would be ineffective or produce a worse situation, it is clear that I am not committing heresy, however much one may disagree with my stance on this matter.
If he made such a statement I would regard it as a hypocritical, duplicitous, and flatly erroneous position to take. Abortion must end in America, and efforts to end it would not be worse than the 1.5 million deaths it causes every year in this country. So Kerry’s claim would be howlingly wrong, but howlingly wrong does not make it heretical in the sense that the Code of Canon Law defines that concept, which requires (among other things) a matter to have been infallibly settled. The Church has made no such determination regarding the sociological situation in America. It thus would be extraordinarily difficult to show that heresy has been committed by an individual taking the kind of position described above.
Now it turns out, as Ed Peters informs us, that Fr. Cole has issued a clarification indicating that neither he nor Fr. DiNoia knew that they were talking to a guy who was a litigant in a case. They thought that they were helping out a canon law student (Balestrieri is pursuing a doctorate; he already has a standard canon law degree on the basis of which he has practiced) and that the reply Cole gave was in no way an official reply from the Vatican (as is obvious from the text of the letter itself) and was a comment on principle not directed to the case of Sen. Kerry. Indeed, Cole’s letter doesn’t even seem to engage Kerry’s actual position.
Cole says in part:
Neither Fr. DiNoia nor I had any knowledge that he was going to “go after” Kerry or any other Catholic figure for their public stance concerning the evil of abortion. So, in my letter to Marc Balestrieri, I began by mentioning that my letter is a personal and private opinion to him about anyone who would publically and persistently teach that abortion is not morally prohibited. It in no way is authoritative from the Congregation nor was I representing the Congregation.
Further, the CDF has now issued a statement saying Cole’s letter is not an official determination on anything concerning the Kerry case.
Peters comments:
It is a pity that a refined and thoughtful letter by a thinker of Fr. Cole’s credentials was so mischaracterized (as if it were a Vatican determination on a key point in Balestrieri’s case), and that so many people (eager perhaps for something finally to be done about the Kerry scandal) relied on those mischaracterizations (despite the plain wording of Cole’s letter itself!) and circulated them uncritically.
Whatever else happens now (and I fear several repercussions actually), I think a gaff like this appears to be is going to make it even more difficult for Balestrieri to pursue his heresy case against Kerry, a case that was already facing some significant procedural and substantive canonical hurdles.
Mark Brumley of Ignatius Press is an apologist’s apologist. He’s a true gem. One of the very, very best.
In recent days, he has turned his formidable talents to commenting on moral matters raised in the current political debate.
In one piece on National Review Online, he takes on the argument that abortion is an article of faith for Catholics that shouldn’t be “imposed on others.”
In another piece on Ignatius Insight, he debunks the attempt to level out the importance of political issues and pretend that things like the war in Iraq are as important as abortion.
Well worth reading.
A reader writes:
I ABSOLUTELY love your teaching content/style, Brother! I do have two questions of you, though: 1, a follow-up from your comment on “forgiveness” and 2, a question on suffering (in general, on how to treat & react to it):
1) FORGIVENESS – It sounded so liberating to hear you say “Why do it (ie. forgive someone) in a greater way than God does? In other words, if someone “asks” God for forgiveness, He does. If someone doesn’t ask, God doesn’t. Coming from a Protestant background, that statement seemed so liberating and just knocked my socks off. I’ve had folks that bruised me (emotionally) pretty badly and I severely struggled, trying to make myself “Believe” that I’d actually forgiven them (without them ever asking), but never quite “feeling” that I’d forgiven them (and feeling guilty about NOT quite forgiving them!). DO I HEAR you saying that I can keep them in a separate “you really hurt me” category and keep a feeling of wariness when around them? (I suppose that I might just have to keep that wariness from appearing grudgeful, though). Bottom-line, Jimmy; I need to know what is correct and what is desired (with my thinking about them and my treatment of them). I KNOW that I need to be ready to forgive them if they ask……and I would suppose that I need to keep from “holding a grudge). ??
2) SUFFERING – is allowed by God and can actually, if I “offer it so”, somehow actually have “positive effects” on folks coming to Salvation??
Finally, I’d love to be able to order your sessions from Catholic Answers Live. Listening to you on AM 990 (just north of Detroit) is a blessing……truly!!
THANKS, my friend and Brother-in-Christ!
Thank you very much for the support and the kind words. Regarding your questions:
1) It is entirely reasonable to be wary of those who have gravely hurt one in the past. The fact that they have done it before counts as evidence that they might one day do it again, though if they recognize and own up to what they did then this constitutes evidence that they are less likely to do it again than if they have not repented.
You are not in direct control of your feelings, and so you do not need to worry that you have feelings of anger or frustration regarding these people. You do, however, need to be prudent in not allowing these feelings to hurt you and your relations to others. This means willing yourself to try looking on the bright side, not taking things in a sharply personal way, and not obsessing about the feelings. In other words, you should make choices that will help you “chill out” and not focus on the negative feelings that arise when you think about these things.
You need to be willing to forgive, as you say, if they ask forgiveness. You also need to will their good. This means willing that they repent (at least before God, if not before you), find his forgiveness, and end up in heaven.
As long as you do these things, you are not holding a grudge against them, even if you do continue to feel wary and at times pained and angered by the memory of what they did.
For more info, read this article.
2) Suffering is allowed by God and we can ask him to bless others if we handle it in a way that pleases him. This is what Jesus did, and we follow his example when we ask God to bless others if we handle our sufferings in a God-pleasing manner.
We are to pray for others, including their salvation (which means praying that they will be given the graces enabling them to come to faith), and we may add extra “oomph” to these prayers–if I may put it that way–by asking God to bless them if we have pleased him, including how we have handled the sufferings that come to us.
Finally, though you can’t order my appearances on Catholic Answers Live (except for a “best of” CD of the kids’ show), you can download them for free from catholic.com.
Hope this helps, and God bless!
Medpundit has some information on how post-natal abortions (i.e., infanticides) are performed in India, especially in rural areas, along with other information about the India sex-selection problem.
GOOD CAUTIONARY INFORMATION FOR PRO-LIFERS TO USE WHEN ARGUING THEIR CASE.
Apparently sixty percent of doctors in Jerusalem prescribe placebos for their patients.
AMAZING!
(I wonder what the figure is here?)
Apparently sixty percent of doctors in Jerusalem prescribe placebos for their patients.
AMAZING!
(I wonder what the figure is here?)
Turns out that if you harbor abortion, contraception, and an an anti-child mentality, you have fewer kids than those who reject abortion, contraception, and have a pro-child mentality.
The future’s lookin’ rosy.
(Not to say there won’t be bumps in the road or things that could upset matters.)