Notes: Tuesday-Wednesday, November 2-3, 2010

1. Mr. MacIntyre on the history of Franco-British co-operation

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/britain-france-to-bury-the-hatchet-at-last/story-e6frg6ux-1225946879102

I was surprised to learn the following from that article:

David Cameron is not the first Tory leader to embrace closer military and political union with Britain's best enemy across the Channel. One of his predecessors once proposed an "indissoluble union" of Britain and France, suggesting that "the two governments declare that France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union. Every citizen of France will enjoy immediately citizenship of Great Britain; every British subject will become a citizen of France."

The author of this proposal was none other than Winston Churchill. In 1940, with Nazi forces pouring into France, Churchill, backed by the war cabinet, proposed that the two countries become one, combining armies, parliaments and currencies. It was rejected by French collaborationists led by Marshal Petain, who insisted that Britain would soon "have her neck wrung like a chicken".

I think that I had heard of the following earlier, though:

French documents discovered two years ago reveal that, in 1956, French prime minister Guy Mollet proposed to Anthony Eden that France merge with Britain, with the Queen head of the amalgamated state. Eden turned down the idea, but was more enthusiastic about a suggestion that France join the Commonwealth.

2. Dr. Peters on the canonical obligation of clerical continence

http://www.canonlaw.info/a_deacons.htm
(Brought to my attention by this comment at AQ, to which I have responded with this comment.)

3. Blog comments by me

Just these two, both of which are quite short and hence not worth copying-and-pasting, so I'll just give their respective links:

http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/thats-sooooo-20th-century/#comment-17950
http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/thats-sooooo-20th-century/#comment-17968

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Feast of St. Martin de Porres, Confessor, A.D. 2010

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

Genuine Freedom

(warning: the following link may not be suitable for tender consciences)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/tuning-in-to-an-old-beat-renewed/2008/08/15/1218307227894.html

Professor Clive Hamilton offered the following observation in an article on trends in television and society in the Sydney Morning Herod on Saturday:

"But when you walk around and see teenage girls wearing T-shirts that say 'Porn Star' or, even worse, one that says [a slogan too obscene to bear repetition]', then you ask yourself: where else can society go? And you realise the big disappointment of liberalism's failure to deliver genuine freedom."

It is pleasing that Prof. Hamilton, a political and social progressive, recognises a distinction between true freedom and false freedom, or licence. But what does true freedom constitute for this gentleman? He has published a book recently entitled The Freedom Paradox, and at his website it says that

[h]is search takes him to an unexpected conclusion: that we cannot be truly free unless we commit ourselves to a moral life. The implications of this conclusion are profound, and they challenge many deeply held beliefs in modern secular society.

An ‘unexpected conclusion’? For the secular humanist, perhaps. And what is this ‘moral life’ of which he speaks? Is it that of his Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics colleague, Professor Peter Singer, in which it is all about getting oneself onto one’s highest possible indifference curve without putting someone else on a lower one of his own, and with its horrifying scheme of ‘human non-persons’ and ‘non-human persons’? Perhaps I will obtain a copy of this volume and find out.

Catholics know what real freedom is all about, though. For the individual, St. John tells us that it is the truth that makes us free—it is truth and goodness that are the just objects of freedom. And as for society, His late Holiness Leo XIII puts it quite succinctly in Libertas Præstantissimum:

[…] the true liberty of human society does not consist in every man doing what he pleases, for this would simply end in turmoil and confusion, and bring on the overthrow of the State; but rather in this, that through the injunctions of the civil law all may more easily conform to the prescriptions of the eternal law.

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