Notes: Wednesday, July 13-Tuesday, July 19, 2011 (part 1 of 2)

1. Interesting discussion on Assisi III

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2011/07/card-levada-opines-about-the-upcoming-assisi-meeting/#comments

Labels: Benedict XVI. Ratzinger, ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue

2. Mr. Muehlenberg on the A.B.C. and its recent Compass episode on so-called gay marriage

http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2011/07/11/the-abc-should-be-put-out-of-its-misery/

(See also Mr. Clarkson's comment of 13.7.11 / 2pm in that post's combox; his comment deals with the first episode of what was apparently a two-part series.) The remarks by Prof. Altman as recorded in the episode transcript are of particular interest. (See this web-page for a follow-up piece by Mr. Muehlenberg on one of those remarks and gay polyamory.)

Labels: A.B.C., Compass, Dennis Altman, Frank Brennan, G.L.B.T., marriage, morality, polyamory

3. Msgr. de Galarreta with some quotations from then-Cardinal Ratzinger

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38113

Labels: Benedict XVI. Ratzinger

4. Fr. Zuhlsdorf on the nine ways in which one might "participate in the sin of another person"

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2011/07/quaeritur-participation-in-the-sins-of-other-people/

Labels: morality

5. "[Ireland's] Justice Minister Alan Shatter vowed to bring in ... new laws" under which priests "will be jailed for up to five years if they fail to report paedophiles to gardai -- even if they are told of the abuse in the confession box"

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/priests-will-be-jailed-if-they-dont-report-abuse-2821151.html

(That web-page came to my attention via this AQ comment.) Related coverage:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/vatican-ignored-abuse-guidelines-irish-report-finds-20110714-1hfxt.html?skin=text-only

http://www.smh.com.au/world/irish-child-abuse-report-attacks-vatican-and-powerful-bishop-20110714-1hfzy.html?skin=text-only

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=27239

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38149

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38195

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38200

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=27270

Labels: Alan Shatter, Ireland, sexual abuse

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Vincent de Paul, Confessor, A.D. 2011

Notes: Monday-Tuesday, June 7-8, 2010

"Human rights by back door"

http://www.smh.com.au/national/human-rights-by-back-door-20100606-xn8a.html?skin=text-only

Full article: (it's only short)

THE man whose recommendation for a human rights act was rejected by the Rudd government believes much of what he proposed will be adopted through the back door.

Frank Brennan chaired the consultation committee that recommended an act that would allow judges to assess Commonwealth laws and practices for their compliance with human rights.

Writing in a coming Australia Institute newsletter, Father Brennan says that although the government rejected the idea in April, it accepted other recommendations that would have much the same effect.

He says that as a result: ''Parliament will legislate to ensure that each new bill is accompanied by a statement to which it is compatible with the seven UN human rights treaties.''

Ultimately, Father Brennan says, Australia will require a human rights act to set workable limits.

But here is Fr. Brennan's response:

Transparent rights

You report that I believe that much of what the National Human Rights Consultation Committee proposed "will be adopted through the back door" (''Human rights by back door'', June 7). To the contrary, I believe much of what we proposed, other than a Human Rights Act, will be achieved by the government's national human rights framework; and some of what we proposed through a Human Rights Act will be achieved by the courts rightly applying the legislation introduced to Parliament last week. Nothing back door about any of that.

These are front door measures in which the executive, Parliament and the courts will play their distinctive roles transparently in the public domain, improving the protection of human rights.

Father Frank Brennan Chairman, National Human Rights Consultation Committee, Yarralumla (ACT)
[http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/stop-the-waffle-and-do-whats-right-for-australia-20100607-xqjh.html?skin=text-only]

"Backlash over Church of England's move to allow divorced bishops"

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/backlash-over-church-of-englands-move-to-allow-divorced-bishops/story-e6frg6so-1225876189319

Excerpt:

DIVORCED clergy could be allowed to become Church of England bishops for the first time.

Church leaders have discussed the move and are set to reveal their decision next month at the General Synod, the national assembly of the Church of England.

[...] The change was agreed to at a meeting of the House of Bishops, the newspaper said.

A Church of England spokesman said the house considered the issue last month after seeking legal advice. "The house had asked for clarification of the relevant legal background and, in the light of that, has now agreed that a statement setting out its approach to these issues should be prepared," the spokesman said.

"It is expected that the statement addressing the relevant legal and theological issues will be available in July when the General Synod meets.

"There is no legal obstacle to persons who have remarried after divorce, or are married to spouses remarried after divorce, becoming bishops. The agreed policy is to pursue a discretionary approach on a case-by-case basis.

It will be interesting to see what goes on at the forthcoming General Synod, not just for its decision on this policy, but its decisions on other matters too.

AQ thread on post-Vatican-II changes to the celebration of the Sacraments

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31985

Particularly useful is this comment (though its source is sedevacantist).

Mr. Coyne on Original Sin

http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?mode=thread&id=49310

Here's the relevant paragraph:

I think a large part of the problem with "Original Sin" comes from the name itself. I think that perhaps if we called it "the fundamental disjunction" or some different expression like that it wouldn't have ended up attracting such a negative press. My sense is that it is NOT trying to tell us about some "first sin" committed by some "first parents" and we are saddled with their transgression and have to perpetually do penance for it until we are "redeemed" by some magic act by Jesus. It's trying to convey to us (humankind) that there is a "fundamental disjunction" built into creation and we are perpetually fighting against it as it were. To my own mind the "disjunction" is a by-product of the choice, or right to participation, that was extended to sentient creation. The by-product is that in our choices we will inevitably also make wrong choices — often for the very best of intentions. Our offspring very often cannot 'undo' the consequences of those wrong choices. The Godhead, or heaven (to use another term), is the only place in the whole of Creation where we are likely to get to a place where this 'disjunction' is finally resolved, ironed flat, or ruled out of contention as a factor in our lives. In the Christian context, Jesus represents the God-head, so it is true to argue that Jesus is the one who wipes away Original Sin or this Original Disjunction that we all have to battle against like Sisyphus perpetually rolling his stone up a steep hill. But it is not some "magic act" by Jesus that wipes away "the original disjunction" — it's by our entering into "the Way" (of thinking, feeling and acting) modelled by Jesus.

More from him on these matters here. This sort of thinking is nothing new at the Catholica forum, of course; see here and here for further coverage.

Two events, one recent and one upcoming:

1. The recent one:

Cardinal George Pell - Diary & Events
Thursday, June 3: 10am Chairs, NSW/ACT bishops’ meeting at St Mary’s Cathedral House, Sydney.
[http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/people/archbishop/diary_and_events.shtml]

2. The upcoming one:

The sixth annual St Thomas More Forum lecture will be held from 6.30pm, for 7pm, on June 22 at the Canberra Southern Cross Club, 92–96 Corinna St, Phillip, ACT. The topic is St Thomas More – The Friend of Bishops. It will be presented by Archbishop Phillip Wilson, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Archbishop of Adelaide. The cost is $50 per person. Bookings close on June 14. For more details ring 6201 9814.
[http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=74&articleID=7020&class=Features&subclass=Parish
noticeboard]

See also this advertisement for the lecture.

Blog comments by me

At Mr. Schütz's blog:

Cardinal Pole
June 8, 2010 at 12:40 am

“what “Cardinal Pole” says it flat wrong and contradictory to the Gospel and Christ’s church, but at least it is Catholic”

I have shown that the Social Reign of Christ is not “flat wrong” by natural-law reasoning. Now can you show how it is “contradictory to the Gospel and Christ’s church”?
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/simon-shama-on-the-snares-of-history-for-the-secular-humanist/#comment-15185]

Cardinal Pole
June 8, 2010 at 2:29 am

Oh, and our friends at Catholica helpfully remind us that the Roman Empire was not the first Catholic Confessional State:

“An extraordinary Christian called Gregory (known as the Enlightener or Illuminator) stepped into the breach and filled the vacuum. Like many of the saints of this period his life has been seriously obscured with fabulous legend. He is supposed to have been the son of a Parthian who had murdered King Khosrov I of Armenia. The baby Gregory was taken to Caesarea in Cappadocia where he was baptized and brought up. He married there and had two sons before returning to Armenia where he succeeded in converting King Tiridates III to Christianity at about the same time as the victory over the Persians; this after fourteen years of incarceration in a pit, presumably at the hands of the Zoroastrians, who were opposed to his mission. Having been consecrated as a bishop at Caesarea, Gregory spent the remainder of his life preaching and organizing the church in Armenia. Tiridates III helpfully destroyed the Zoroastrian sanctuary at Ashtishat that had been built on a pagan foundation, and erected a church in its place. He decreed Christianity the official religion of his country, the first ruler in the world to do so.”
[http://www.catholica.com.au/specials/first500-2/057_tl_080609.php]
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/simon-shama-on-the-snares-of-history-for-the-secular-humanist/#comment-15186]

Reginaldvs Cantvar
8.VI.2010

Fr. Brennan on the National Human Rights Consultation Committee

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24831528-7583,00.html

Rev. Fr. Frank Brennan S.J. A.O. has an interesting piece in today’s The Australian on a charter of rights and the work of the National Human Rights Consultation Committee, of which he is the Chairman. It begins by reminding the reader that

The Government has asked the four-member committee to consult the Australian community on three questions:

Which human rights (including corresponding responsibilities) should be protected and promoted? Are these human rights currently sufficiently protected and promoted? How could Australia better protect and promote human rights?

The first question is, though: what do the Government and its collaborators mean by a ‘human right’? In an age in which the Sex Discrimination Commissoner can make the inexplicable, but apparently unchallenged, assertion that ‘there can no longer be any doubt that paid maternity leave is a basic human right’, and the Victorian charter of rights explicitly excludes coverage of child destruction and abortion, one has to begin by clarifying just what are human rights, and when exactly does a human begin to enjoy them?

It’s interesting to note also that Fr. Brennan says that

Any options for change "should preserve the sovereignty of the parliament and not include a constitutionally entrenched bill of rights".

It’s interesting that the word ‘sovereignty’ is used, rather than saying instead something like ‘should preserve the power/influence of Parliament’. As students of political science know well, there is ‘soft power’ and there is ‘hard power’, and it’s hard to see how a legislated bill of rights could avoid transferring power and influence to the judiciary from the legislature.

And I was a little surprised to read Fr. Brennan writing that

During the abortion debate in Victoria this year I argued that politicians, public servants and some civil libertarians showed scant regard for the Victorian Charter's right to freedom of conscience when they insisted that the new abortion law include compulsory referral of a patient by a doctor who had a conscientious objection to abortion.

I thought interference with the doctor's right could not be justified because the intended purpose of the interference could be met by the state providing the patient with information about available abortion providers.
(my emphasis)

But I would have thought that interference with the doctors’ right could not be justified simple because it is involved an explicit directive to defy one’s conscience, regardless of whatever alternatives might have been available.

Fr. Brennan goes on to provide some data on support for a legislated bill of rights. He notes that submissions to inquiries on the matter largely supported human rights legislation, but Father fails to note what proportion of these submissions came from activists rather than citizens with no explicit political/activist affiliations, or what proportion of citizens even bothered to participate in the inquiries. I was surprised, though, to read that

A public opinion survey revealed that 89 per cent of respondents believed that WA should have a law that aims to protect the human rights of people.

It would have been interesting to know exactly what the survey question was. Not at all surprising, though, was Father’s observation that

The result has been the passage of human rights laws in Victoria and the ACT without any strong, broad-based community opposition.

But a lack of “strong, broad-based community opposition” is probably just a sign of apathy, not approval.

Fr. Brennan gets to the crux of what he would view as the case for a charter here:

From my 27 years of involvement in issues relating to human rights and civil liberties, I am convinced our existing arrangements are most under strain in three instances: when the major political parties acting in the "national interest" agree to overlook the basic rights of a powerless minority; when the government of the day controls the Senate; and when the majority of High Court judges cannot see their way clear while interpreting a statute to uphold long-treasured common-law rights and freedoms.

What exactly he means by ‘powerless minorities’ is not clear; if he is referring to refugees then there is clearly a whole range of other issues to consider that aren’t relevant to the question of how to balance the liberties of local citizens with their duties to the common good. Meanwhile on the domestic front one can imagine that the Sodomites’ League would be only too happy to claim for itself the title of ‘powerless minority’ and demand its confected ‘rights’ by appeal to this status. As for problems with the High Court, this is connected to Fr. Brennan’s interesting observation that

Those who oppose bills of rights in any form face a novel problem. In the past, Australian judges could refer to decisions by their colleagues in Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Those jurisdictions now have their own bills of rights, with the result that their judicial decisions are less likely to be useful to judges who continue to work without the aid of a bill of rights. This judicial isolation is compounded by internal judicial fragmentation, with Victorian and ACT judges deciding cases through a bill of rights template while other judges do not.

But the argument that ‘they have one, so let’s get one too’ could have done with a bit more elaboration by Fr. Brennan; I would have been interested to see the implications of this teased out.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
22.XII.2008 A.D.

More on an Australian Bill (or Charter) of Rights

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/fencesitter-heads-charter-team/2008/12/09/1228584839248.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24778075-7583,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24780185-601,00.html
http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=10648
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/keep_power_with_the_people/

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/might-a-right-but-lets-not-bill-the-rest/2008/12/08/1228584738166.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

The Federal Attorney-General, The Hon. Robert McClelland M.P. has appointed Rev. Fr. Frank Brennan S.J. A.O. to head the Federal Government’s public consultation on the prospect of an Australian Bill or Charter of Rights. The Sydney Morning Herod notes that Fr. Brennan “calls himself a "fence-sitter" in the bill of rights debate”, but a report in The Australian points out that Fr. Brennan “is on the record as a supporter of "legislating for the federal protection of human rights " - which is code language for a charter”.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Janet Albrechtson has a very good (but very cynical) opinion piece on the whole topic in today’s The Australian. She writes that

ANALYSING calls for so-called reforms should always start with a few golden rules. Follow the money. And follow the power. This week both paths lead you straight to the legal profession and to the heartland of politically driven activists. Like pigs sniffing for truffles, lawyers can smell the enticing waft of money and power in the air as they push open new legal industries. For the activists, it’s about influence as they seek to move from the irrelevant fringe of political life to the centre of the action.

[…] If you doubt that a charter of rights will involve a fundamental transfer of power to lawyers, judges and activists, ask yourself this. Would these champions of a charter be so energetically supporting a charter if it didn’t transfer power to them? Would High Court Justice Michael Kirby be eager for a charter if it did not boost judges’ ability to socially engineer a better society according to them? Likewise, the activists. Their glee is driven by the new power they will wield as they seek out like-minded judges only too willing to cement their political agendas into law.
(http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/keep_power_with_the_people/)

I recommend that you read the whole thing; it is a trenchant and timely analysis of this latest outbreak of ‘human rights’ mania.

Perhaps the last word, though, should go to Prof. Helen Irving in yesterday’s Herald. She points out that

Paradoxically, the very attempt to protect parliament by empowering the courts to make "declarations" may itself prove unconstitutional. The commonwealth constitution prevents the High Court from giving advisory opinions. The court may only rule on actual legal disputes.

This hurdle may prove fatal. It will require close attention by the government.
(http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/might-a-right-but-lets-not-bill-the-rest/2008/12/08/1228584738166.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1)

May prove fatal? It sounds to me like a total demolition of the very foundation of a potential statutory charter of rights. And given the historical reluctance of Australians to vote in favour of Constitutional amendments, there’s no chance of human rights (whatever they might be) being enshrined in the Constitution. What a mess this is shaping up to be.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Melchiades, Pope, Martyr, 2008 A.D.

Secular liberal democracy vs. the confessional State: which is the better defender of conscience?

[Updated, October 17, 2008, approx. 1600 hrs.: I have corrected the paragraph beginning "Now it was not" in order to make clear that one cannot force anyone to disobey his conscience, but that if someone is going to disobey it, then others must not co-operate with this disobedience except under the conditions that I mention.]

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=9408

So the Victorian Upper House has passed its monstrous abortion liberalisation laws, and they now await Vice-Regal assent. (If only the Governor could exercise a ‘conscience vote’ like everyone else at the other stages of the passage of the laws.) But of course a law that contravenes the eternal moral law is no law at all. It is a mere piece of human scribbling, worthy of nothing but our defiance and contempt; the pages on which these laws are written would be more suitable as a lining for one’s spittoon than as an addition to the statute books.

Obviously, any freeing-up of access to the means to the wanton destruction of unborn human life is repugnant enough in itself. But what makes these laws uniquely odious (as far as I know) among the various pieces of anti-baby legislation floating around the unflushed toilet bowl of present-day Western ‘civilisation’ is their provision, or rather non-provision, for conscientious objectors. It is these non-provisions that elevate Her Majesty’s Government into the annals of infamy occupied by régimes, like those in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, that thought that they could trample on individual conscience at will. Fr. Brennan reported on these conscience non-provisions recently, and the Sydney Catholic Weekly reminded us of them at the weekend:

Under the legislation doctors with a conscientious objection to abortion would be required to refer a woman to doctor [sic] who didn’t. They would also be obliged to perform abortions in an emergency if necessary to protect the woman’s life.

It is a basic truth of Catholic moral theology that it is a sin to disobey one’s conscience, and that sin is a free act—no-one is forced to sin. Yet these laws attempt to do just that. Furthermore, it is wrong to co-operate in someone else’s wrongdoing, except under very restricted conditions. His late Grace Msgr. Lefebvre reminds us of these conditions in his excellent Religious Liberty Questioned. He writes that

To act against one’s honestly erroneous conscience is to sin. Thus, to force someone to act against such conscience is to cooperate in his sin; but again, we need to further distinguish between two different cases:

To formally cooperate in someone else’s sin is never permissible (in this case, willing precisely to extort from someone an act against his wishes); it is a sin against charity.

It is, however, permissible to cooperate materially in someone else’s sin (desiring that someone do willingly what at first he did not want to do without opposing the eventuality of a forced act) provided that this cooperation be remote and that there is a grievous proportional cause for such a course of action.
(emphasis in the original)

So the conditions are that the co-operation be: purely material, remote, and that it is involves a grievous proportional cause. So let’s see, then, if the Bill’s conscience clauses satisfy these criteria, examining firstly the requirement to perform an abortion in the case of an emergency:

The co-operation is indeed material—the authors of the law (presumably) do not desire to elicit disobedience of conscience as an end in itself.

The co-operation involves a grievous proportional cause—they think that the baby is just a ‘clump of cells’, a human non-person, while the mother is indeed a human person. (This is wrong, of course, since if we are to adopt a radically materialist outlook then the mother is just a ‘clump of cells’ too, and in any case, an organism is never a mere ‘clump of cells’—it is a united whole; perhaps the ‘clump of cells’ folk need to consult an elementary biology textbook.)

But I cannot see how the co-operation is remote, since it requires a direct order to perform an abortion.

Now for the requirement for conscientious objectors to refer infanticidal mothers to a neutral second doctor. Could a conscientious objector make such a referral with a clear conscience? By making the referral his co-operation would clearly be purely material, and possibly remote too, but there can be no possibility of a grievous proportional cause, since what ‘proportion’ can there possibly be between mere financial livelihood and the very destruction of human life? So the laws are morally wrong on both counts, even when evaluated on the pro-abortion crowd’s own terms (assuming, of course, that they agree that it is wrong to force someone to disobey his conscience except under limited conditions—one hopes desperately that they are not so far gone as to disagree on that point).

Now it was not for no reason that I chose Religious Liberty Questioned as my source for the conditions necessary for co-operation in evil. Respect for honestly-erroneous conscience would be one of the basic principles of a Catholic confessional State. It is licit, of course, to restrain someone from acting to obey his conscience, but one cannot force him actively to disobey his conscience, and one may only co-operate in such disobedience under the most limited of circumstances. So examination of these horrendous laws produces the remarkable result that a Catholic confessional State would be a better defender of conscience than the secularist abortocratic brutopia.

This conclusion raises two important questions, one for secularists and one for Catholics. For the secularists, how do you feel about the fact that your cherished liberal democracy is less sympathetic to individual conscience than the supposedly ‘mediæval’, ‘fundamentalist’ confessional State? It is not so long ago that you would no doubt have been scoffing at then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s warning of the rise of a ‘dictatorship of relativism’, yet now you have passed laws that encapsulate perfectly the paradox of a régime that is simultaneously relativistic and dictatorial.

And for Catholics who are opposed to the doctrine of the confessional State, how can you continue in your opposition when this vile legislation gives the decisive proof of H.H. The Pope’s words during WYD08:

There are many today who claim that God should be left on the sidelines, and that religion and faith, while fine for individuals, should either be excluded from the public forum altogether or included only in the pursuit of limited pragmatic goals. This secularist vision seeks to explain human life and shape society with little or no reference to the Creator. It presents itself as neutral, impartial and inclusive of everyone. But in reality, like every ideology, secularism imposes a world-view. If God is irrelevant to public life, then society will be shaped in a godless image. When God is eclipsed, our ability to recognize the natural order, purpose, and the “good” begins to wane. What was ostensibly promoted as human ingenuity soon manifests itself as folly, greed and selfish exploitation. And so we have become more and more aware of our need for humility before the delicate complexity of God’s world.
(http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008/july/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080717_barangaroo_en.html)
(my emphasis)

Given that no régime is truly neutral, why continue to defend one whose agnosticism towards faith and morals constitutes a veritable Social Reign of Pontius Pilate, washing its hands of guilt while permitting injustice to fester? All States are confessional, it’s just a matter of whether they confess Christ or Belial. The ‘integral humanism’ advanced by Fr. Maritain and influential even at the highest levels of the Hierarchy has been shown to be a pipe dream; the benign phase of secular liberal democracy has now well and truly passed.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Feast of St. Edward, Confessor, 2008 A.D.

When agnosticism passes into moral cowardice

http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=9155

Rev. Fr. Frank Brennan S.J. A.O. had another good piece on Victoria’s abortion laws the other day. In it, we read that

Section 48 [of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities] provides that 'Nothing in this Charter affects any law applicable to abortion or child destruction'. It was included in the Charter to accommodate the concerns of Professor [George] Williams and his colleagues that the Charter not purport to resolve the question of when life begins for the purposes of defining the right to life.

What good is a charter on human rights if it fails to decide which humans get the rights?! This kind of indifference is an example of how agnosticism passes into moral cowardice.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Fr. Brennan on Victoria’s impending abortion free-for-all

http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=8868

Rev. Fr. Frank Brennan S.J. A.O. has made some timely remarks on the imminent Victorian pro-abortion legislation. I was interested to learn that the new laws will be

requiring health professionals with a conscientious objection to abortion to participate in abortion in some circumstances, and requiring doctors with a conscientious objection always to refer a woman seeking an abortion to another doctor known not to have a conscientious objection

This is interesting, but unsurprising. A right to have one’s own child killed implies a duty of trained abortionists to do so.

Furthermore,

Ms Maxine Morand, the Victorian Minister for Women's Affairs, has taken the view that all Charter rights and freedoms of all individuals are irrelevant when it comes to abortion because s.48 provides: 'Nothing in this Charter affects any law applicable to abortion or child destruction'.

It is interesting that, of all the possible exceptions that one might have imagined, it is only abortion and “child destruction” (it’s nice to dispense with the euphemisms sometimes) that are singled out. Abortion on demand is clearly one of the most prized victories of the abortionists.

But the most acute observation came from a commenter, one Gavan Breen:

The dictionary (e.g. the Macquarie) gives several definitions of 'viable'. In all except one, it means capable of living or functioning, which means that if something is not viable there is something wrong with it.

Only when it applies to the foetus is there the additional requirement, that it must be capable of living outside its natural environment. Only in the case of the foetus can the term 'unviable' be used of something that is perfectly normal.

It's not fair; it's like calling me unviable because I couldn't live on Mars. I couldn't live there because I don't belong there; a young foetus can't live in the outside world because it doesn't belong there. There's no suggestion that there's anything wrong with it.

At the least, the words 'viable' and 'unviable' should be used in quotes when they are applied to a normal healthy foetus.

It is good to keep in mind, then, that ‘viability’ is a completely arbitrary criterion. Take away oxygen, water, food and shelter and an adult's life isn't 'viable' either; every creature has its natural habitat. The key question is always: is the fertilised ovum a human body? Embryology tells us that the answer is ‘yes’. And since a human’s living body has a human’s soul, abortion is always wrong.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Do you want the good (Cath)news or the bad (Cath)news?

Firstly, the good (Cath)news:

Apparently His Eminence Cardinal Pell had some involvement in the A.L.P.’s abandonment of its policy unambiguously in favour of a Bill of Rights. This is a most welcome development, and one that invites some reflection on the notion of ‘human rights’.

The Christian acknowledges that everything he has is from God, and recognises that God is entitled, therefore, to impose such duties as might please Him. From these duties we can infer corresponding ‘rights’, e.g., ‘thou shalt not kill’ implies a right to life (with certain qualifications, as I shall examine shortly). But the basis for ‘human rights’ is rather shaky in the secularist world-view. It seems that for the secularist, ‘rights’ are not ‘rights’ as a Christian conceives of them, but that the term in fact has no absolute foundation but is just a convention for referring to some of the agreed implications of the principle that we should all be able to seek pleasure, constrained only by the pain that obtaining our pleasure might inflict on other pleasure-seekers (the harm principle). This, of course, is basically preference utilitarianism, and seems to me to be the only internally coherent (though nonetheless false) atheistic world-view, since humanism, for instance, asserts things like the uniqueness of mankind and ‘man as the end of all things’, which have no basis in the (false) evolutionary world-view, since man is just one species among many, and many of these other species can feel pain too (speaking of pain, that’s why it’s call ‘preference’ utilitarianism, since some people, namely sadists, quite enjoy pain, thankyou very much). Now the harm principle is nonetheless every bit as arbitrary as any humanist principle, but as an ordering principle for society, it has proven quite good (in the U.S.A.) at preventing complete anarchy, by enshrining rights in law. But nonetheless, it is a completely inadequate way to order a Christian society, since some who cannot feel pain enjoy, nonetheless, a right to life (as well as all the rights that the fully sentient enjoy) because of their innate capacity for God—their ontological dignity.

Now for the bad (Cath)news:

We see that Rev. Fr. Frank Brennan S.J. has reiterated his universal, in-principle stand against the death penalty. This goes by the name of the 'seamless garment approach', the idea that abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty and unjust wars are all to be rejected for being anti-life (ignoring the fact that only innocent life has a right to life). It would be regrettable if any readers inferred from this that the Catholic Church has somehow changed Her ancient teaching on the matter, especially if an alleged change were part of a compromise ('we'll oppose the death penalty if you'll oppose abortion') with secularism, meeting it on secularism's terms as so many clerics are keen to do. See Dr. Peter Chojnowski’s essay at the American S.S.P.X. home-page (in the ‘against the sound bites' section, as I recall) for the timeless truth. Now let me be clear that I do not support the death penalty being applied to ‘drug-running’, since it is not in the worst category of crimes and since, as practised in some South-East Asian countries, it treats the destruction of human life as a means to an end, namely deterrence, when it can only ever be taken in this manner as an end in itself, i.e. for justice’s sake.

Now some (many, I suspect) will object that it is not licit to impose the death penalty except when it is impossible for the offender to be prevented from doing more harm. They base this on the relevant section of Evangelium Vitæ. But when one thinks through the situation that His late Holiness John Paul II envisioned, it becomes clear that he made a category mistake. Think about it: we have a criminal who is, purportedly, so psychopathic and violent that it is impossible to restrain him safely, and so he must be executed. So evidence is gathered, the trial is convened, a jury empanelled, witnesses gathered, the jurors have their deliberations and give their verdict, and the judge considers and hands down his sentence. But the criminal was restrained the whole time! All John Paul II was really doing was reiterating the liceity of using lethal force against an unjust aggressor. Capital punishment is not self-defence; it’s a category mistake. The death penalty is to be applied whenever no other combination of imprisonment, corporal punishment and financial penalty can balance the scales of justices. At the very least, then, murderers must receive the death penalty. To deprive a man of his liberty for life (life imprisonment) is an inadequate substitute for depriving him of life itself. To which one might object: that’s an eye for an eye! We’re more civilized than that! But ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ is true in principle, it’s just that if one, say, puts someone else’s eye out intentionally, justice can be satisfied through some combination of imprisonment, corporal punishment and financial penalty; it is not necessary literally to put the offender’s eye out in order to satisfy justice. But no such combination of other non-lethal punishments can ever compensate for the injustice of murder.

One might raise an even more fundamental objection, though: the very conception of justice involved. Many in the legal fraternity will argue that we have ‘outgrown’ retributive justice in favour of the presently-fashionable ‘restorative justice’, in which punishment is only ever a means (and one of a range of means) to one or another of a range of ends (rehabilitation for offenders, closure for victims, deterrence for potential offenders). But the essence of justice is giving to someone what he is owed. If the situation of the ‘scales of justice’ being balanced means a situation where good deeds are properly rewarded and bad deeds are properly punished, then as far as the ‘bad deeds’ side of the ledger is concerned, justice is retribution. Rehabilitation for offenders, closure for victims, deterrence for potential offenders, among others, are all worthy ends, but they are subordinate to justice.

Reginaldvs Cantvar