Notes: Friday, October 15, 2010

Queensland couple acquitted of abortion-related charges

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/reform-unlikely-after-abortion-verdict-20101014-16lwm.html?skin=text-only

I was interested, and perplexed, to learn from that article that

In his closing directions, Judge Bill Everson told the jury it needed to be satisfied the drugs Ms Leach had taken were noxious to her own health. This was a significant direction: the drugs needed to be harmful to her, as distinct from the foetus.

I haven't read the text of the relevant section of Queensland's Crimes Act, but I would have thought that if 'procuring one's miscarriage' were a fair description of the crime then the question of whether the drug's direct effect was to harm the mother's health, with miscarriage as an indirect effect, or whether the miscarriage was the direct effect, would be irrelevant. The Australian has more information:

The jurors returned their not-guilty verdict after Cairns District Court judge Bill Everson instructed them that in order to convict 21-year-old Tegan Simone Leach, they had to be satisfied that the drugs she took were harmful or noxious to her own health, rather than the fetus.

[...] In summing up the two-day trial, Judge Everson explained to the jury that Ms Leach could be found guilty regardless of whether she had been pregnant or not when she attempted to procure her own miscarriage.

As a result, he said, the jury must be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the drugs Ms Leach took were noxious to her health, rather than to the health of her unborn child.
[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/jury-frees-abortion-couple-in-less-than-an-hour/story-e6frg6nf-1225938906094]

If so, then it would seem that the description of the charges as "procuring an abortion and supplying drugs for the abortion" is inadequate.

Interesting mix of Herald letters on God, miracles, and religion

A better balance than one might have expected. Under the heading "Consensus on divine power would be the miracle":

http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/consensus-on-divine-power-would-be-the-miracle-20101014-16lop.html?skin=text-only

Also interesting was the pair of letters under the heading "An abortion always takes a life".

More from Mr. Hitchens on morality

But [Christopher] Hitchens is weaker on the personal and ethical challenge presented by atheism: of course we can be good without God, but why the hell bother? If there are no moral lines except the ones we draw ourselves, why not draw and redraw them in places most favourable to our interests? Hitchens parries these concerns instead of answering them: since all moral rules have exceptions and complications, he says, all moral choices are relative. Peter Hitchens responds that any journey becomes difficult when a compass points differently at different times.

[...] At the Pew Forum, [Christopher] Hitchens was asked: What positive lesson have you learned from Christianity? He replied, with great earnestness: the transience and ephemeral nature of power and all things human. ...
[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/the-courage-of-a-deathbed-atheist/story-e6frg6zo-1225938873174]

"Bugnini: "I am the liturgical reform!""

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34192
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/10/bugnini-i-am-the-liturgical-reform/

I would be interested to obtain and read that book by The Rev. Fr. Anscar Chupungco O.S.B.

(Here's an interesting comment by Dr. Brown talking about what 'I am the liturgical reform' refers to.)

Mr. Rudd still a Catholic?

One of the items in yesterday's edition of CathNews drew from a Sydney Daily Telegraph article on The Hon. Kevin Rudd M.P. and his connection to Bl. Mary of the Cross (née Mary MacKillop). That CathNews article did not mention (understandably, given its desired context) the most interesting thing to be learnt from that Tele article, which I learnt from reading the print edition before reading CathNews: Mr. Rudd still identifies as Catholic:

Mr Rudd, who is Catholic but attends an Anglican Church, also revealed that he carries an image of Australia's first saint in his wallet.

[...] Mr Rudd was raised a Catholic but now attends an Anglican Church with his wife Therese Rein.

His acceptance of communion at Mary MacKillop Chapel last year sparked controversy.

"I certainly grew up as a Catholic, the only reason I go to Anglican Church is because my wife is Anglican," he said.

"For me denominational questions have never been terribly important, so I have maintained close connection with Christians of all sorts of denominational affiliations. The most important thing is whether people are of faith, that they are serious about their faith and what they try to do with their lives.
[http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/specials/mary-mackillop/tea-breaks-with-nuns-takes-rudd-to-vatican/story-fn6qd4pl-1225938398462
That CathNews item linked to the wrong article's web-page.]

Interesting comment by "gpmtrad" at AQ:

St. Ephrem the Syriac, Doctor of the Church, explains that what most provoked God concerning Cain was the latter's indifference to sacrifice.
[italics in the original,
http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=383362#383362]

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Feast of St. Teresa of Avila, Virgin, A.D. 2010

Facts and figures: On Australian working mothers feeling "pressed for time"

Here's a counterpoint to yesterday's Notes item "There's no harm done being a working mum"--supposedly 'no harm done' to the child, but what about the working mum? In today's Herald:

Despite a 7 per cent decline in total hours worked by Australians between 2008 and 2009, researchers from the University of South Australia have found the proportion of workers dissatisfied with their work-life balance is growing.

The survey of about 2800 workers, which has been taken annually since 2007, found about a quarter of women working full time and a fifth of full-time men to be unhappy with the balance.

''We see no letting up … and we see quite a significant deterioration for full-time women,'' said Barbara Pocock, the director of the university's Centre for Work and Life.

The survey found seven in 10 working mothers felt ''often'' or ''almost always'' pressed for time. ...
[my emphasis,
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/stop-the-work-i-want-to-get-off-20100803-115g9.html?skin=text-only]

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Dominic, Confessor, A.D. 2010

Cardinal Pell, contra Mr. Hitchens, on sexual abuse

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/popes-critics-must-get-their-facts-straight/story-e6frg6zo-1225844481258

His Eminence The Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney has a good opinion piece in today's edition of The Australian. Here's an excerpt:

In 2001, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, [H.H. The Pope] issued an instruction to all bishops requiring them to refer allegations of pedophilia against priests to the congregation for investigation. It is frequently claimed that this 2001 instruction required bishops to treat these allegations with total secrecy and not inform the police, under penalty of excommunication.

This claim was repeated in The Australian on March 18 by Christopher Hitchens. Referring to the 2001 instruction, Hitchens wrote: "The accusations, intoned Ratzinger, were only treatable within the church's own exclusive jurisdiction. Any sharing of the evidence with legal authorities or the press was utterly forbidden. Charges were to be investigated `in the most secretive way restrained by a perpetual silence and everyone is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office under the penalty of excommunication'."

However, the letter Ratzinger issued in 2001 made no reference to excommunication. The words Hitchens quotes are taken from an earlier letter from the Holy See on this matter, issued in 1962, which was superseded by the 2001 document.

I received the 2001 letter soon after I became Archbishop of Sydney. Five years earlier I had established an independent commission, headed by Peter O'Callaghan QC, to investigate complaints of abuse in the archdiocese of Melbourne.

I was not excommunicated and neither were the other bishops when they set up the Towards Healing process soon afterwards.
[my square-bracketed interpolation]

Reginaldvs Cantvar
24.III.2010

Mr. Hitchens on morality

http://www.smh.com.au/national/heathens-above-gods-harshest-critic-smokes-in-the-shower-20091001-ger1.html?skin=text-only

The famous journalist, author and neo-atheist Mr. Christopher Hitchens said the following, among other things, when he spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald for a story in today’s issue:

''Most [believers] believe that without religion their children, and even they, would not know right from wrong. I have two arguments to which no answer has yet been received. One: Name me a moral kindness or action that they can do because of their belief but that I can't. Two: Can you think of one evil action done by a religion person? You can, and you can think of another, and another.''
[square-bracketed interpolation in the original]

There are three things to say about this. The first is in regard to his point one: it misses the mark, because there is no question that the unregenerate can (albeit usually with difficulty) perform acts of “moral kindness”, as Mr. Hitchens calls it. See, for instance, St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, writing in his magnificent Treatise on Civil Government:

… But this justification from sin is said to be a certain liberty, for he who is in sin cannot, until he is freed by grace, will that good which is ordained for eternal life; he has, indeed, free will, since he can choose one evil from among many, and he can even choose moral good, but he cannot choose salutary good unless he at least begins to be freed by the ... grace of God, since he is held captive by the Devil according to his will, as it is written. [Tim. II.]
[http://catholicism.org/oldsite/de-laicis10.html]

So infidels can choose moral good—that is, they can choose to perform acts which suit human nature—but this choice avails them nothing towards salvation, which one can only merit in union with Our Lord’s Passion.

The second thing to say is that Mr. Hitchens’s second point is also ill-conceived, because the contention which Mr. Hitchens is supposed to be refuting is that the irreligious cannot behave morally; whether or not the religious will necessarily behave morally is another matter. Furthermore, abuse does not detract from use: that religious folk do evil in defiance of the tenets of their respective religions does nothing to detract from the fact that the ‘ought’ of moral obligation can issue only from the will of a superior, usually enacted in law.

And that brings us to the third thing, and the most important thing, which needs to be said here. Now Mr. Hitchens says that

''Most [believers] believe that without religion their children, and even they, would not know right from wrong.

Perhaps he is right, and most believers think that without religion (however Mr. Hitchens defines that term) one is incapable of telling right from wrong, though I haven’t seen any data to support this contention. What matters, though, is not whether believers subjectively think that one cannot know right from wrong without religion, but whether, objectively, one can know right from wrong without religion. And one can indeed know right from wrong without being religious; one knows it by an intellectual consideration of the respective natures and ends of things. But the problem for Mr. Hitchens is not knowing what good is but, rather, knowing whether one ought to do good. And, as they say, one cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. An ‘is’ imposes itself by the force of reason, but the ‘ought’ of unconditional obligation can only be imposed by the will of a superior. (I say “unconditional” because one can impose on oneself a conditional obligation—if I want to be good then I should do such-and-such—but a purely self-imposed obligation is not a true and proper obligation, and can be revoked at will.) An obligation obviously cannot be imposed by an inferior, and nor can it be imposed by oneself or one equal in authority to oneself, for reasons just mentioned. Without some being with authority over man who (the authority-figure) can impose upon him (man) the obligation to do good and avoid evil, we just have people following their tastes and preferences—those who have a taste for good do good, those who have a taste for evil do evil, and the two sides can only agree to disagree. (Now an atheist might retort: so only a superior can impose true and proper obligations. Well and good. But why would the superior necessarily impose an obligation to do good? If his authority is absolute, then is he not free to bind his subordinates to do evil if he so wills? The answer to this objection is: not if the superior is good by nature and all-perfect, in which case he would never abuse his freedom and authority by obliging his subjects to do evil.)

The Herald article was in connection with the so-called Festival of Dangerous Ideas, which begins tomorrow and whose opening address will be given by Mr. Hitchens. It will be interesting to see what he has to say. I would be fascinated to see how he elaborates on his moral philosophy.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of The Holy Guardian Angels, A.D. 2009