More on MgS's false and absurd pro-abortion principles

Firstly, I am going to try to put MgS's principles as succinctly as possibly, then prove, with citations, that they are indeed her principles, then finally refute them as briefly as possible, and offer some concluding thoughts.

Here are her principles:

1. An unborn child's (the object of the pregnancy) 'right' to life is not a proper right, but is, rather, a gratuity to be bestowed by the mother (the subject of the pregnancy) at her will, irrrespective of any objective (pertaining to the object) characteristics.

2. To deny 1. is to assert that the mother loses, at conception, the ability to make moral and ethical decisions.

3. The power of life and death of the mother over the unborn child as described in 1. arises from the child's condition of dependency on the mother.

Now in case anyone should dispute that these are a fair representation of MgS's principles, here is proof for her belief in each of them:

Proof that MgS holds 1.: "In short, both of these questions fall firmly into the domain of the pregnant woman - it is her decision and hers alone to make." The "questions" of which MgS speaks are: Does the unborn baby begin to enjoy the right to life at any point during his or her gestation? and: If not, how long after his or her birth does he or she begin to enjoy the right to life? (http://crystalgaze2.blogspot.com/2008/12/base-squirmeth.html)

Proof that MgS holds 2.: "Anything less [than 1.] presumes that a woman is incapable of making moral and ethical decisions of her own the moment she becomes pregnant." (http://crystalgaze2.blogspot.com/2008/12/base-squirmeth.html)
Further evidence, all from http://crystalgaze2.blogspot.com/2007/11/hypocrisy-of-pro-life-politics.html:

"the absolutist view of 'abortion as evil' lands smack in the same space, as it disregards the status of woman as a moral, intelligent human being capable of understanding and making difficult decisions."

"The second problem with such absolutes [as "protecting life at all costs"] is that it presupposes that a woman who is pregnant is unable to make moral (or ethical) decisions for herself regarding her pregnancy, its progress and its conclusion."

"It seems to me that the absolutist view of 'abortion as evil' lands smack in the same space, as it disregards the status of woman as a moral, intelligent human being capable of understanding and making difficult decisions."

Proof that MgS holds 3.: "You can argue until you are blue in the face about "when life begins", and frankly it is irrelevant to the fundamental fact that bearing the child has a significant biological cost for the woman. Paraphrasing the old adage "he who has the gold makes the rules", she who pays the price, makes the decisions. All the way up to birth." (http://crystalgaze2.blogspot.com/2008/12/base-squirmeth.html)

Now for a confutation of each principle:

Confutation of 1.: as I have said before, to uphold this principle is to create the absurd situation (but one that is all too real in present-day Western hospitals) where there can be two essentially identical babies, A and B, but with baby A having a right to life at point x because of being born, prematurely, before point x, while baby B has no right at the same point simply because not yet born.

Confutation of 2: this is simply false, a straightforward non sequitur. It is not a principle of Catholic bioethics, it is not a principle of any other anti-abortion bioethical system, it has never been asserted by any serious anti-abortion thinker or activist, and it does not follow logically from 1.—no State-enforced prohibition presumes a disabling of the transgressor's conscience, just that the transgressor reached a judgement that was contrary to the common good. The best MgS can do is to direct me to a theme from a science-fiction novel!

There is also another serious problem with 2. This problem is that the fact of someone having or not having a right is a distinct question from the question of whether it is moral or ethical to suppress that right. That is, it is a pure assertion on the part of MgS; it does not follow from her fundamental axiom that "Humanity creates morality, twit". A right is something that is owed in justice but which can be suppressed in prudence. Even liberals such as MgS would acknowledge that their cherished right to 'freedom of speech' can be suppressed when it threatens to disrupt the public peace.

Confutation of 3.: if one holds 3., then given that a newborn baby is also completely dependent on others, one must, for consistency, argue that the power of life and death is transferable between whoever happens to be caring for him or her once born, all the way up until such time as he or she can fend for himself.

So MgS's principles are simply untenable. If examined consistently, they produce the indisputable implication that children have no right to life until they are about school age or older. Pro-abortion, according to MgS's principles, truly does mean pro-infanticide. This much is clear. Now you might be wondering: why am I spending so much time refuting MgS's principles? She's just a 'Gender Studies' blogger from far-off Canada who cannot write elegantly, argue logically, nor even discuss civilly, right? Why bother? My reason is that these principles are not just MgS's, but, I suspect, those of most citizens in Western countries. I suspect that U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Ms Nancy Pelosi spoke for the silent majority when she made the incredible, unforgettable assertion that

We don’t know [when life begins]. The point is it that it shouldn’t have an impact on a woman’s right to chose.
(http://australiaincognita.blogspot.com/2008/08/us-politics-episcopal-censures-galore.html)

So the fundamental principle for the pro-abortion movement isn't consistency, but the principle of 'out of sight, out of mind'—one set of axioms for when a baby is concealed within the womb, and another set of axioms for when the baby is out of the womb. And I venture that the reason why consistency is so under-valued in the pro-abortion movement is that this is not a matter of principle, but of expediency. That is, it's a bunch of selfish, irresponsible, promiscuous people—men as well as women—looking at those among them who have been less successful in avoiding the consequences of their actions and thinking 'Well, if my contraception failed I wouldn't want to be punished [their words, see Mr. Obama, for instance] with a baby, so we'll all just turn a blind eye to what amounts to industrial-scale infanticide'.

But what of those of us who do value consistency? As far as I can tell, the only two bioethical systems for thinking consistently about abortion are the Catholic one and the preference-utilitarian one. That is, if one wants to be pro-abortion and consistent then one has to follow preference-utilarian ethics, and if one wants to be anti-abortion and consistent then one needs to follow Catholic bioethics. Each system has the following three fundamental premises, each of which is just the opposite of each of MgS's premises:

1. An unborn child's (the object of the pregnancy) right to life is a proper right, not a gratuity to be bestowed by the mother (the subject of the pregnancy) at her will, but, rather, one that depends on objective (pertaining to the object) characteristics.

2. To uphold 1. is not to assert that the mother loses, at conception, the ability to make moral and ethical decisions.

3. The right to life described in 1. is owed irrespective of any condition of dependency.

These principles are no more complex than MgS's (and, in the absense of reference to God or external, objective morality, no more arbitary), but are more consistent than hers, and so they are to be preferred to hers, all else equal (which is indeed the case, if we agree, for the sake of argument, to ignore the Divine natural law). Catholic bioethics and preference-utilitarian bioethics diverge so widely in their implications, though, because for Catholic bioethics the key objective characteristic is the infusion (or presumption, according to the deer hunter principle, of the infusion) of the rational soul, while for preference utilitarians it is the object's ability to make preference orderings over different states of natures. So to adhere to Catholic bioethics is to reject abortion at all stages of pregnancy, while to adhere to preference-utilitarian bioethics is to accept infanticide well into a child's early years. But instead of something as rigorous as either of these two systems, society sacrifices consistency (and, worldwide, millions of babies a year) in favour of something much simpler: out of sight, out of mind. And just shout down, or shut out, anyone who defies it.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of the Epiphany, A.D. 2009

On the reaction to H.H. The Pope’s end-of-year address to the S.R. Curia

http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/12/todays-battles_27.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/12/translations-from-vatican.html
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/theaustralian/comments/the_pope_v_homosexuality/
http://crystalgaze2.blogspot.com/2008/12/dear-pope-ratz.html
http://cumecclesia.blogspot.com/2008/12/is-pope-christian.html
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/adele-horin/its-time-to-sing-out-if-youre-gay-catholic-133-and-angry/2008/12/27/1229998727650.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/letters/government-has-picked-a-loser-with-car-industry/2008/12/27/1229998729454.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24840277-2703,00.html

Firstly, let me say that I hope that you had a merry Christmas and are looking forward to the new year.

Now I know I’m getting round to this topic a bit late, but my tardiness has given me the advantage of letting me absorb the way that this latest episode of secularist hysteria has played out. Let’s start by looking at what H.H. The Pope actually said (in contrast to what his enemies fancy he might have said). The following extract comes from the Vatican Information Service (V.I.S.) e-mail bulletin of December 22, 2008:

While highlighting that the Church "cannot and should not limit herself to transmitting just the message of salvation to her faithful", the Holy Father said that it must also "protect the human being against self-destruction. It is necessary to have something like an ecology of the human being, understood in the proper manner. It is not a surpassed metaphysics when Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and demands that this order of creation be respected. ... That which is often expressed and understood by the term 'gender', is definitively resolved in the self-emancipation of the human being from creation and the Creator".

So what the Holy Father has done is to question the positivism and constructivism of the ‘Gender Studies’ intelligentsia and its fellow-travellers. But the remarks are brief enough and vague enough to open them to all sorts of wild misinterpretations, and as such they constitute a sort of Rorschach (ink blot) test, revealing a lot more about their self-appointed interpreters than they do about the thoughts of His Holiness. Hence the Sodomites’ League takes the remarks as an attack on ‘gay rights’, the ‘gender identity’ theorists takes them as an attack on transsexuals/intersex, feminists take them as an attack on women, and somewhere out there there’s probably an anti-sodomite Catholic environmental group lamenting the diversion from green issues!

The reaction from the Sodomites’ League was swift and predictable. Hysteria reigned:

“It's the latest homophobic attack by this Pope,” said Gustav Hofer, co-director of a documentary on the life of a gay couple in Italy called Suddenly Last Winter.

[…] Reverend Sharon Ferguson, chief executive of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, called the comments “totally irresponsible and unacceptable”.

[…] Reverend Doctor Giles Fraser, president of the pro-gay Anglican movement the Inclusive Church and vicar of a London parish, said: “The Pope is spreading fear that gay people somehow threaten the planet, and that's just absurd.
(http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/theaustralian/comments/the_pope_v_homosexuality/)

Some of the straw men and non sequiturs in the reactions of sodomite activists were simply preposterous. Had any of them actually read what the Holy Father said? This Mr. Hofer went on to assert that

“The Vatican talks about homosexuality or transsexuality as if it were a whim, never as suffering,”

But this is quite false. The S.R. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith spoke explicitly of the suffering of those with homosexual tendencies in its Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons:

12. What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord? Fundamentally, they are called to enact the will of God in their life by joining whatever sufferings and difficulties they experience in virtue of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross. That Cross, for the believer, is a fruitful sacrifice since from that death come life and redemption. While any call to carry the cross or to understand a Christian's suffering in this way will predictably be met with bitter ridicule by some, it should be remembered that this is the way to eternal life for all who follow Christ.
(http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.html)

And unsurprisingly, Mr. Hofer invokes the old identity vs. behaviour stratagem when he says that the Church

“reduces sexual orientation to the sexual act as if it had nothing to do with a person's identity.”

First things first: sexual orientation means the sexual orientation of a man towards a woman and vice versa; anything else is properly called a sexual disorientation, since reproductive faculties are ordered towards procreation. Secondly, has it occurred to this man that a “[pseudo-]sexual act” that tends to anal fissures and penile infections might indicate an inherently unhealthy identity?

And the priestess Sharon Ferguson asserts that

“When you have religious leaders like that making that sort of statement, then followers feel they are justified in behaving in an aggressive and violent way because they feel that they are doing God's work in ridding the world of these people,” she said.

What nonsense. By the same logic, does Ms Ferguson fear that her own remarks might incite sodomite extremists to acts of violence against Catholics?

As for the pseudo-priest Dr. Fraser, for him to assert that “The Pope is spreading fear that gay people somehow threaten the planet” is the true absurdity here, not anything that His Holiness said. An assertion like this indicates just how naturalistic this Anglican pseudo-priest’s thinking is—did it not occur to Dr. Fraser that the Holy Father might have been speaking of moral and spiritual self-destruction rather than biological and material self-destruction? The ravings of the gender theorists won’t do much to advance the cause of the lunatics in the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, but they certainly serve to corrode society’s moral fibre. (I might add that Mr. Schütz had a blog post quoting Dr. Fraser as inferring that The Pope had said that

"gay people threaten the existence of the planet in a way that is comparable to the destruction of the rainforest."

(http://cumecclesia.blogspot.com/2008/12/is-pope-christian.html)

How preposterous. The detonation of a hand grenade causes destruction ‘in a way that is comparable to’ the destruction wrought by a nuclear bomb, but there’s a pretty considerable difference in scale. And again, it’s a question of spiritual destruction, not necessarily material destruction.)

In good time the G.L.B.T. bloggers got in on the act. Rather than making any attempt seriously to engage with what the Holy Father actually said, the Canadian blogger MgS simply found the piece of yellow journalism that best suited her own prejudices and ran with it. In doing so she brought out another of the reliable assertions of Sodomites’ League, the idea that somehow speaking out against private violence (sodomy, for instance) is somehow exclusive of speaking out against public violence:

He would do far better for the world to focus his attentions on the horrors in Africa
(http://crystalgaze2.blogspot.com/2008/12/dear-pope-ratz.html)

Given that the Holy Father speaks out against violence in war-torn countries EVERY YEAR IN THE URBI ET ORBI ADDRESS she really should have known better. Ms Zoe Brain, meanwhile, appeared to make a serious attempt to determine what His Holiness had actually said, but ended up with pretty much the same inferences anyway; if anything they exceeded MgS in their lack of charity. For instance, Ms Brain speaks, in all seriousness, of the Sovereign Pontiff implying that transsexual/intersex individuals

can only be described in a purely ecological sense as human-created vermin, though that word in merely implied, not stated. Something undesirable and dangerous to the Ecology, the product of Humanity's prideful nature in wishing to be in sole and exclusive control of his own destiny. He does not go so far as to say that such (purely ecologically speaking, no pejorative meaning is implied) "vermin" should be exterminated, he leaves the question of what to do with them open. He merely states that they are a danger to all Humanity, and against the Natural order as ordained by God.
(http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/12/todays-battles_27.html)

Come on, Zoe, vermin? The only things pestiferous around here are the ravings of the Pope’s enemies.

And eventually the mainstream media commentators and letter-writers got round to venting their spleen at what the Holy Pontiff never even said. Ms Adele Horin had her say in an opinion piece in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herod, headlined “It's time to sing out if you're gay, Catholic … and angry”. Now presumably Ms Horin did not write the headline, but already readers ought to be suspicious, given that ‘gayness’ implies freely immersing oneself in the so-called gay culture, and hence is a freely-chosen identity, distinct from mere homosexual inclinations. It is an identity whose tenets are totally incompatible with Catholic teachings and hence gayness and Catholicism are two mutually-exclusive and competing identities.

I can agree with Ms Horin on at least one point though:

Why gays want to belong to a club that despises their way of living and loving is beyond me
(http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/adele-horin/its-time-to-sing-out-if-youre-gay-catholic-133-and-angry/2008/12/27/1229998727650.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1)

I would modify this slightly though, preferring to describe it, if ACON’s figures are anything to go by, as a way of dying rather than of living, and therefore a sickening parody of loving rather than a legitimate expression of it.

Curiously, Ms Horin asserts that

What the Pope said about homosexuals is rather opaque, but the subtext was the usual denunciation.

She must have superhuman powers of inference, because the Sovereign Pontiff made no reference to homosexuality. Surprisingly though, she goes on to offer a pretty accurate summary of what The Pope had to say:

He attacked what he called "gender" theories and said humanity needed to listen to "the language of creation" to understand the intended roles of man and woman, and that behaviour beyond traditional heterosexual relations was a "destruction of God's work".

That small portion of a single paragraph was, unfortunately, about the extent of Ms Horin’s powers of logical argumentation. She goes on to say that

The church teaches that homosexual people are not sinful, but that homosexual acts are. The spurious distinction condemns a significant minority to a loveless, lonely life. The Pope may see no problems in choosing life-long celibacy, but many of his priests failed the test.

A spurious distinction? Only if one is a determinist and thinks that material circumstances dictate behaviour. And what does the failure of some priests to abide by their vows of continence have to do with the matter at hand?

Then she invokes the ‘speaking out against something gives justification to acts of violence’ non sequitur:

As well as its lack of humanity, the church's view provides bigots with the moral justification for their homophobia.

What nonsense. More nonsense follows though:

They have instead maintained a hardline interpretation of a few scattered references in the Bible.

Well, a single reference would suffice, and I’m not sure which part of ‘sodomites shall not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven’ Ms Horin finds ambiguous. These objections notwithstanding, Ms Horin humbly tells the Hierarchy how to do its job:

Church leaders should be spreading a message of love and acceptance of gays. Instead, they are part of the problem.

Indulging people in whatever self-destructive behaviour they fancy might be Ms Horin’s idea of small-l love but it’s a pretty pathetic substitute for capital-C Charity.

And that brings us to what the letter-writers had to say. A Mr. David Sayers of Gwandalan offered his variant of the ‘speaking out against sodomy means not speaking out on other issues’:

We would have been better served if he had told us he was dedicating his energy to investigating and getting rid of all the child molesters in his own organisation.

Then a Mr. Des Mulcahy offered a textbook case of how not to write a well-argued letter:

The pontiff's decision to attack homosexuals and transsexuals this Christmas was a triumph of dogma over pastoral care.

He has vilified men and women who are at times marginalised and ostracised, while grappling with a lifestyle which has chosen them; people often battling with disease and other disadvantage, yet who immeasurably enrich society.

He, however, represents a group of men who have chosen an unnatural lifestyle, whose ranks are contaminated with pedophiles, who in turn have been protected by his organisation. He and his close associates in religion live in wealth and splendour.

Were Christ alive and living among us today, with which group would his sympathies lie?

Des Mulcahy Orange
(http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/letters/government-has-picked-a-loser-with-car-industry/2008/12/27/1229998729454.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1)

So firstly Mr. Mulcahy asserts some sort of conflict between dogma and pastoral care, without bothering to demonstrate this, of course. Then he makes the baffling assertion that the so-called gay lifestyle has chosen the sodomites. But if it’s a lifestyle then it was their own free choice, I would have thought. And he notes that many sodomites are battling disease, but these diseases are the direct result of the so-called gay lifestyle that they have chosen! As for the assertion that sodomites “enrich society”, the recent decision of the N.S.W. Government to fund the annual Sodomites’ Parade and the millions of dollars poured into the pro-sodomite lobby group that laughingly calls itself the A.I.D.S. Council of N.S.W. suggest that the ‘enrichment’ is flowing in the opposite direction. And his assertions in the second-last paragraph could just as easily be applied to the Sodomites’ League (not to mention the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ logical fallacy). Then he finishes of with the oldest one of them all, the idea that Our Lord would be siding with the poor, downtrodden sodomites rather than the teaching, ruling and sanctifying authority that He founded and continues to protect.

Then another letter-writer made what was presumably some kind of attempt at cleverness rather than the usually ferocious messenger-shooting:

I wonder if the Government, the Opposition and community leaders will publicly condemn the Pope's Christmas comments that homosexuality is a threat to the survival of human race as they did Sheik Hilaly's comparison of unveiled women to uncovered meat?

Paul Sadler Newtown

Perhaps someone could arrange to send Mr. Sadler some apples and oranges.

There was more at The Australian’s letters section over the weekend, with another writer wheeling out the old ‘homosexuality is a part of nature’ fallacy:

IF Benedict XVI really took his teaching on “human nature” from the natural world he would have noticed, along with the biologists, that so-called “homosexual” acts have been observed among literally thousands of species, from insects to mammals. In fact, such acts are normal variations of sexual behaviour.

What kind of nature is he referring to, then? A construction that manipulates nature in the service of church ideology. Religion is part of the problem, not a solution. This pope is fuelling a discourse of divisiveness where he ought to be a healer.

Victor Marsh
Ocean Shores, NSW
(http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/theaustralian/comments/the_pope_v_homosexuality)

So ‘homosexual acts’ have been observed among the lower orders of creation. Some creatures eat their respective mates after copulation. Some creatures consume their young. All manner of internecine behaviour is observable in the animal kingdom. That doesn’t make it any healthier. Sodomy is not a normal variation of sexual behaviour; it is an abnormal variation of pseudo-sexual misbehaviour. Information on its deleterious consequences is available from any G.L.B.T. so-called health advisory body.

And Mr. Marsh asks “What kind of nature is [His Holiness] referring to, then?” Obviously this is where the Holy Father departs most markedly from the positivists, constructivists and nihilists. For the gender theorists and sodomite activists, humanity creates morality, and there is no such thing as natural law. For Catholics, morality is that which corresponds to right reason; to behave immorally—to sin—is, by definition, to offend reason. Hence when we say that God cannot sin this is not a mere tautology; to say that God cannot sin is to say that God cannot offend reason, that it is God’s nature to be reasonable. That is the kind of “nature” to which His Holiness was referring, and which was, of course, the theme of another of His Holiness’s monstrously misrepresented addresses, namely, the Regensburg address of 2006. What a delicious irony then, to see sundry secularist degenerates behaving like the intellectual equivalent of their enemies the Muslims. As I have noted on other occasions, secularists and Muslims have a lot more in common with each other than they might like to imagine.

But if I could offer just one little suggestion, if I may be so bold, for how the Holy Father might have improved the Curia address, I would suggest that it might have packed a bit more punch if His Holiness had ramped up the rhetoric and asked:

How is it that some people can be so vocal about the figurative sodomising and castration of the environment when they remain silent about the literal sodomising and castration of their fellow man?

Finally, just in case any sodomites, positivists, constructivists or nihilists should (as has happened on other occasions) happen across this blog and wish to engage me in debate (which I welcome, preferably after you’ve taken a cold shower though), please READ WHAT THE POPE ACTUALLY SAID and avoid the following non sequiturs, straw men, logical fallacies and preposterous falsehoods in your argumentation:

1. The Pope has implied that sodomites threaten the extinction of the human race.
2. The Pope has implied that gender theorists threaten the extinction of the human race.
3. There are neither teleological nor physiological reasons for criticising sodomy.
4. Criticising homosexual behaviour means vilifying homosexuals as persons.
5. The Pope would have been better off criticising war/disease/starvation/paedophilia, as if criticising these things and criticising the so-called gay culture and gender theory were mutually exclusive.
6. By criticising gays/gender theory The Pope has provided moral justification for vigilantes.
7. The Pope is a sinner therefore he cannot criticise other sinners.
8. The Pope has opposed dogma to pastoral care.
9. Our Lord would side with the sodomites and gender theorists against the very Hierarchy to which He communicated His authority.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury, A.D. 2008

Pernicious Proportionalism

A subversive little article appeared in one of last week’s editions of Cathnews, entitled “Benedict XVI and Proportionalism”, by one Brian Lewis (presumably Dr. Lewis). I offer, firstly, some of Dr. Lewis’ key points:

• Proportionalism’s proponents “attempted to stress personal freedom and creative responsibility and to develop a more realistic approach to the place and meaning of moral rules in Christian ethics”
• “Proportionalism shifts the focus of moral judgment of right and wrong squarely onto consequences and other attendant circumstances of an action.”
• “For [proportionalists] there are no intrinsically evil acts if by acts is meant physical actions considered in the abstract … The reason for this is that the context enters in the very object or meaning of the act.”
• “Acts are not good or bad in themselves, according to proportionalists. The other side of the coin is that, in order to act rightly, it is necessary to weigh up the good that will be achieved and the evil that may result.”
• “Because of the central importance of proportionate reason in this theory, it is referred to as Proportionalism”

And perhaps most importantly:

• “For proportionalists a good intention certainly does not justify a morally wrong action. For them it is necessary to look at all the morally relevant circumstances before one can know exactly what the action is and whether it is to be judged as morally wrong.”

Now it is not clear to me exactly what Dr. Lewis thinks of this school of thought. I detect in him a certain sympathy for it, with the proviso that “the dignity of the human person and the place of human rights” must be “the centrepiece of moral decision making.” But this is completely the wrong angle from which to approach the question (not least because it is unclear whether Dr. Lewis means ontological dignity or operative dignity). The right ‘angle’, I contend, is the Will of God. Some of God’s laws are, if you will, descriptive (Divine natural law) and others are prescriptive (Divine positive law). Some actions are morally wrong simply because He has revealed them to be so—He has revealed this to be His Will—regardless of what their respective consequences might be. Proportionalism makes a mockery of the Divine positive law. But then, God hardly enters into Dr. Lewis’ analysis at all.

There is also a tension, to which Dr. Lewis appears oblivious, between stressing “personal freedom and creative responsibility” and developing “a more realistic approach to the place and meaning of moral rules in Christian ethics”. What approach could be more realistic than the traditional Catholic understanding of fallen man, with his weakened will, clouded intellect and base appetites, all of which constrain, in a sense, his freedom? This is in contrast to the pervasive evolutionary humanist understanding of man as a ‘work in progress’, progressing ‘onwards and upwards’ through evolution towards an ever-higher consciousness, perhaps towards some ultimate ‘Omega Point’. I denounce this all as nothing more than an updated utilitarianism and an attempt to sideline God in moral reasoning.

Reginaldvs Cantvar