Moral Theology – Page 48

More on Tattoos

A reader writes:

What about the issue of vanity as well? When you get a tattoo, aren’t you making a statement concerning what the purpose of my body is for or that my body needs to be more beautiful? It would seem to me that we run the risk of speaking an wrongful language about the purpose of the human purpose. Granted it isn’t up there with contraception, but I think that there is a connection.

The same argument would apply to women’s make-up, and while Scripture counsels against excessive preoccupation with beauty, the Church does not hold that there is anything wrong with using make-up or other means to enhance one’s beauty.

Further, not all tattoos are for purposes of making oneself more beautiful or handsome. (Indeed, I wonder how many of them have this as a goal.) Frequently people get them because they want to make a statement about something on which they feel strongly. E.g., if a man has the Virgin of Guadalupe tattooed on his arm, that isn’t to make him more handsome, it’s to make a statement about his devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Other times people get tattoos because they want to create a certain aura about themselves, but the enhancement of beauty is not the goal.

In any event, the practice of tattooing is not ruled out by canon law or by the Catechism. Tattooing may have a somewhat "disreputable" connotation in American culture, but the Church does not prohibit it.

Tattoos

A correspondent writes:

I was wondering what the church has to say about getting tattoos? The
only reference I’ve heard of in the bible is from Leviticus:

"Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves.
I am the Lord." – Leviticus 19:28

what does the church have to say about this practice, is it lawful or
not?

The Leviticus passage is part of the Mosaic Law, which is not binding on Christians (or anybody else these days). Originally the Mosaic Law was binding on the Jewish people only; now it is binding on nobody except insofar as it repeats things that are part of the moral law, having been superceded by Christ.

Many of the precepts of the Mosaic Law are ceremonial and do not belong to the moral law. Their purpose, in many cases, is simply to make the Israelites culturally distinct from the Canaanites who surrounded them. This is one such command. The Canaanites cut their bodies for the dead and made tattoos as part of their religious practice, and this command forbids that in order to make the Israelites unable to participate in Canaanite religious practices.

A prohibition on tattooing is not part of the moral law, however. From a moral perspective, there is no reason why one cannot color one’s skin, which is what tattooing amounts to. One can apply color to one’s skin by make-up (as is common among women), magic markers (as is common among children), press-on tattoos (as are common in Crackerjack boxes), or with real tattoos. The mere fact that the ink goes into the skin in the latter case does not create a fundamental moral difference.

Of course, in doing this there are moral considerations to be factored in: (1) One should not use the tattoo to transmit an immoral message, (2) one should not use an unsafe process to get the tattoo (e.g., dirty tattoo needles that might be carrying who knows what diseases), (3) and one should be generally prudent about getting a tattoo (e.g., what effects will getting this tattoo have on your relationships with others? if you break up with your girlfriend, do you really want her name still on your arm? do you really want a permanent tattoo when they have temporary ones now?). However, the Church doesn’t have a problem with tattooing in principle.

The Law of Abstinence

The Fridays of Lent are days of abstinence in the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, and so every Lent gives rise to questions about what the law of abstinence involves. The Code of Canon Law establishes that "those who have completed their fourteenth year of age" (i.e., those who have passed their fourteenth birthday) are obliged to abstain (CIC 1251), but the Code does not give an explanation of abstinence itself. This explanation is found instead in a 1966 apostolic constitution from Paul VI called Paenitemini (in case you’re wondering, that’s pronounced PEN-ih-TEM-ih-nee in English). Here is an English translation of the relevant norm:

The law of abstinence forbids the use of meat, but not of eggs, the products of milk or condiments made of animal fat [III:1].

The trouble is that this explanation–at least in its English translation–is not as clear as one would like. It does not, for example, mention the exception of fish and other seafood from the law of abstinence, and this is universally acknowledged as an exception. The reason the exception is not mentioned is that it is implicit in the original Latin of the text, which reads:

Abstinentiae lex vetat carne vesei, non autem ovis, lacticiniis et quibuslibet condimentis etiam ex adipe animalium [III:1].

The word for "meat" in the original is carnis (here inflected in the ablative as carne), which does not correspond exactly in meaning to the English word "meat." In contemporary English, "meat" tends to mean the flesh of any animal, whether it is a mammal, a bird, a fish, or what have you. But as used here, carnis refers only to the flesh of mammals and birds. It does not include the flesh of fish (or, for that matter, of reptiles, amphibians, or insects).

Another possible exception to the rule may be found by comparing the norm in Paenitemini to the original regulation in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which held:

The law of abstinence prohibits meat and soups made from meat but not of eggs, milks, and also whatever condiments are derived from animal fat [CIC(1917) 1250].

Since the 1917 law included an exclusion of soups using meat but the 1966 norm does not, in the common opinion of canonists today appears to be that soups using meat no longer violate the law of abstinence. (A few Lents ago, I did an extensive check on this.) Notice that the rest of the sequence (meat, eggs, milk products, condiments) is entirely undisturbed, suggesting that soup was intentionally dropped.

Personally, I’m intrigued by the fact that amphibian flesh is not excluded. If I knew where to get frogs legs here in Southern California, I’d go out and order them. I haven’t had frogs legs since I was a boy, when I’d go frog gigging in the piney woods of East Texas with the menfolk of my family on warm summer nights.