Notes: Saturday-Monday, November 13-15, 2010

1. Figures on Catholic religious in Australia today

http://www.smh.com.au/national/down-but-not-out-catholic-orders-shrink-by-half-but-energy-unchanged-20101112-17r78.html?skin=text-only

Main points from the article (which CathNews featured):

• There were 8422 "religious personnel" (including retired religious) in Australia in 2009, down from 17029 in 1976.
• "The median age is 73, and only 8.2 per cent are aged under 50, whereas 26.6 per cent are aged 80 or more."
• "Three-quarters of all religious came from Australia and the rest came from 75 different nations, with Ireland, New Zealand and Vietnam the greatest source countries."
• "[T]he tradition of being taught by a nun or a brother in a Catholic school belongs mostly to previous generations. While 48 per cent of the religious worked in education in 1976, that cohort has shrunk to 12 per cent, as lay-people have taken over Catholic education."
• Despite the decline in membership, "40 congregations out of 109 said they were ''not contemplating change''".

2. Figures on whether a sample of Australians agreed or disagreed with the following statements: "Homosexual couples should be allowed to adopt children", "I believe homosexuality is immoral", "I consider myself a homosexual"

http://www.smh.com.au/national/country-divided-as-support-for-gay-marriage-varies-wildly-20101114-17sq4.html?skin=text-only
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-tricky-political-topography-of-samesex-marriage-20101115-17t6y.html?skin=text-only

Neither the descriptive report nor its analysis focus on the figure which I regard as the most remarkable: Only 3% of Australians identify as homosexual. (Terra has more on this.)

3. Mr. Rowney on the philosphical distinction between intended consequences and merely foreseen ones

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=24169

I was surprised to see Mr. Rowney write that

Even utilitarians need to decide where they stand on this one. Do they side with Hume and Mill on the Aristotelian side or with Sidgwick, Adams, Singer and the Consequentialists on the other?

since I thought that utilitarianism was an inherently consequentialist moral philosophy.

4. Dr. Jones (responding to Msgr. Williamson) on the teachings of Vatican II

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34678

I disagree with Dr. Jones's conclusions, but I was interested to read the following:

John Courtney [sic] Murray ... was working for Henry Luce’s Time/Life empire, which had intimate connections with the CIA. [That story] will appear in the pages of Culture Wars and a forthcoming book by David Wemhoff.

5. Another benefit of which male same-sex couples deprive their respective children

From a letter by Mrs. Babette Francis in The Australian today:

... the significance of breastfeeding in early education should not be overlooked.

During breastfeeding, an infant's eyes focus on its mother's face and it learns from her "baby-talk" and conversation, whereas bottle-fed babies look away from the mother towards the bottle, and are sometimes propped up with pillows with no adult holding the bottle. ...
[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/breast-versus-bottle/comments-fn558imw-1225953455135]

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Feast of St. Albert the Great, Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Church, A.D. 2010

Notes: Friday, October 29, 2010

For future reference: Prof. Bagaric on his moral philosophy

... I regularly make wide-ranging comments that conflict with policies of the Left and Right. I'm apolitical; the policies of Labor and Liberal are so similar to make the debate almost irrelevant. Most of my writing is informed by one underlying principle. It's called utilitarianism. It is the theory that when you are faced with a moral or political choice you should make the decision that will maximise human flourishing, where each person's interest counts equally.

The Left doesn't like me because I'm a fan of tough counter-terrorism laws and harsher sentences for sex and violent offenders. I also oppose euthanasia, abortion and dispute the desperate need for a reduction in greenhouse gases. I often upset the Right because I push for gay marriages, animal rights, no tax for the poor and mega taxes for the rich, multiculturalism and tolerance towards Muslim values.
[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/mutant-rebels-need-some-causes/story-e6frg6zo-1225944885437]

"Salazar and Catholic Social Teaching"

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34429

Excerpt of most interest to me:

Salazar was above all things a Christian and a Catholic. Yet, for the revival of religion or the restoration of the Church he had done so little positively that some foreign observers had even taken scandal thereat. General Franco, who in so many ways resembled him, had done much more in 12. Why this? Some had attributed it to timidity. But Salazar was not timid. His personal influence had been exerted to its utmost for religion.

If then, he had moved so slowly there must have been grave reason. Salazar felt that State patronage exercised against the present disposition of important sections of opinion, would not help to anchor the Church in the hearts of the people.

He thought it wiser to give the Church freedom and let it rebuild from the base upwards upon new and better foundations than could be laid by any statesman setting it up as a department of the new State. In giving the Church liberty and equality before the law he had already done much.

"Qld pro-abortion MPs would face 12% against them, says survey"

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=23973

"Tasmanian Labor-Green Coalition Government has released a discussion paper on a Human Rights bill"

http://australiaincognita.blogspot.com/2010/10/secularist-attacks.html
http://www.media.tas.gov.au/release.php?id=30717

Interesting comment by Mr. Schütz:

Yes, and I am not rejecting that centuries old tradition and synthesis in any way. The problem comes when this synthesis is read back into the exegesis of the scriptural passages, thus missing an important element in the understanding of the passage (nb. I am not saying that the passage cannot be legitimately understood in other ways, but that we must have appreciation for how it sounded to the first readers). When it comes to the Lutheran Catholic dialogue, it is quite appropriate to argue about “infused grace” or “imparted righteousness” over against “imputed righteousness” and “forensic justification”, as long as we understand that this was not Paul’s argument. And that is important, because the Lutheran argument is that Catholic doctrine is “unscriptural”, not “untrue”. The fact is that Lutheran doctrine is “unscriptural” too, because the scriptures they quote to support their position doesn’t address their position any more than it addresses the Catholic position.
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/taking-your-greek-bible-to-church/#comment-17856]

H.H. The Pope on, among other things, "the depenalisation of abortion [and] euthanasia"

Excerpts from an item from today's edition of the Vatican Information Service daily e-mail bulletin:

BRAZIL: CHURCH TEACHES MAN HIS DIGNITY AS CHILD OF GOD

VATICAN CITY, 28 OCT 2010 (VIS) - Prelates from the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (Northeast region 5) who have just complete their five-yearly "ad limina" visit were received this morning by the Holy Father. [...]

"First, the duty of direct action to ensure a just ordering of society falls to the lay faithful who, as free and responsible citizens, strive to contribute to the just configuration of social life, while respecting legitimate autonomy and natural moral law", the Holy Father explained. "Your duty as bishops, together with your clergy, is indirect because you must contribute to the purification of reason, and to the moral awakening of the forces necessary to build a just and fraternal society. Nonetheless, when required by the fundamental rights of the person or the salvation of souls, pastors have the binding duty to emit moral judgments, even on political themes".

"When forming these judgements, pastors must bear in mind the absolute value of those ... precepts which make it morally unacceptable to chose a particular action which is intrinsically evil and incompatible with human dignity. This decision cannot be justified by the merit of some specific goal, intention, consequence or circumstance, Thus it would be completely false and illusory to defend, political, economic or social rights which do not comprehend a vigorous defence of the right to life from conception to natural end. When it comes to defending the weakest, who is more defenceless than an unborn child or a patient in a vegetative or comatose state?"

"When political projects openly or covertly contemplate the depenalisation of abortion or euthanasia, the democratic ideal (which is truly democratic when it recognises and protects the dignity of all human beings) is betrayed at its very foundations. For this reason, dear brothers in the episcopate, when defending life we must not fear hostility or unpopularity, rejecting all compromise and ambiguity which would conform us to the mentality of this world". [...]
AL/ VIS 20101028 (630)
[my square-bracketed interpolations]

Blog comments by me

Just this one:

Cardinal Pole
October 29, 2010 at 2:52 am

Here’s the rectified link:

http://coo-eesfromthecloister.blogspot.com/search/label/Fr%20Crothers
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/our-st-mary-more-likely-to-pray-for-vocations-than-to-challenge-for-women-priests/#comment-17874]

Reginaldvs Cantvar

29.X.2010

Notes: Saturday-Tuesday, July 24-27, 2010

"U. of IL Says Catholic Prof 'Not Fired' - Just Can't Teach"

Apparently Dr. Howell's employment was not terminated; he was just barred from teaching (same effect, of course):

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32699

Blog comments by me

At Mr. Schütz's blog:

Cardinal Pole
July 27, 2010 at 4:06 am

“But oddly, Your Eminence, according to Gleeson, the prevailing secular ideology DOES consider it possible to harm others and rejects any act that might result in such harm.”

Mr. Schütz, did you mean to say “DOES NOT“? Otherwise there seems to be an internal contradiction there.

“[You are] sure that in some circumstances a person can be (and should be) criminally charged for abuse even if (at the time of the abuse) the victim “consented”.”

I agree, and presumably so would most, perhaps all, secular (Godless) ethicists, but my point is that the Godless ethicist cannot prove, in the light of his first principles, that it is morally wrong–as in transgressing a moral obligation–to harm others, even against their will.
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/how-useful-would-a-secular-catechism-be/#comment-16060]

At Terra's blog:

(Response to Wolsey)

"A state that compels participation in liberal democracy is not acting in furtherance of the common good as liberal democracy does not further the common good."

Interesting that you say that, York; it had occurred to me that Australia's liberalism was a factor to consider in this discussion, though no-one had raised it explicitly until your comment. I see it this way: Democracy is a legitimate form of government. Liberalism, however, is evil, false, absurd, and condemned irrevocably by the Church. Liberalism, then, is like a cancer in the body politic. Now we know that the common good is to the State what health and well-being is to a human person. So if a person had a cancer, even a self-inflicted one, would that mean that we were forbidden to help that person with other aspects of his health and well-being? No, not necessarily, so long as we weren't co-operating formally in the carcinogenic behaviour. Hence I don't see why the natural law would necessarily forbid us to participate in the political life of a liberal democracy.

(Response to Anon.)

Anon., I don't dispute that Australian governments have sometimes, perhaps often, acted against the common good; I dispute that Australian governments have ceased to be legimitate governments or that they are legitimate but that their laws are to be regarded as invalid until proven otherwise.

(Response to Salvatore)

"Surely the AEC represents a reasonable source of information in such a discussion?"

A few problem with that information come to mind:

1. It only applies to Queensland.
2. Were government members the only M.P.s to vote for the relevant Bill (remember, a government doesn't legislate--Parliament legislates)?
3. Even supposing that that Act was invalid at the time, subsequent governments, including Labor governments presumably, didn't repeal it.

And as you concede, the law still wasn't necessarily invalid just because it might have been badly motivated.

"Consequently, if the Australian Government’s imposition of this duty is to be just, there must be some characteristic(s) of our nation or its system of government which requires it. What might this (these) be?"

I don't know, and I don't need to know in order for the Act to bind my conscience, just as I don't need to know that, say, a given industry and its influence on the common good require a certain piece of industrial legislation in order for it to bind my conscience. I can only regard legislation as valid until proven invalid, and nobody has proven the Act, or the relevant parts, invalid.

July 27, 2010 3:53 AM
Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval.
[http://australiaincognita.blogspot.com/2010/07/and-it-is-on-australia-goes-to-polls-on.html]

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Feast of St. Pantaleon, Martyr, A.D. 2010

Notes: Friday, July 23, 2010

Just some blog comments by me:

At Mr. Schütz's blog:

Cardinal Pole
July 23, 2010 at 4:37 am

“It is true that we don’t have a collection of secular doctrines neatly arranged as a sort of “Secular Catechism” – but wouldn’t it be helpful if we did?”

We do. Read The Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Syllabus of Errors, Quanta cura, things like that.
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/how-useful-would-a-secular-catechism-be/#comment-15995]

Cardinal Pole
July 23, 2010 at 4:53 am

“does secular ethics ever say it is possible to do harm to yourself, even if your action does no harm to anyone else?”

If by secular ethics we mean Godless ethics, and if without God there is no such thing as true and proper moral obligation, and if the absence of moral obligation is moral liberty, then secular ethics tells us that we not only have the moral liberty to harm ourselves, but also unrestricted moral liberty to harm others, indeed, to do anything we please. That’s why, as Fr. Fahey mentions in The Kingship of Christ according to the Principles of St. Thomas Aquinas, in the secularist ethics axiom which can be stated as ‘do whatever you want, however self- or mutually-destructive, so long as everyone involved consents’, the ‘so long as everyone else involved consents’ bit is baseless. Secular ethics’s first and only principle is: Do whatever you want, full stop. And if you don’t like the sound of that, then, as Professor Dawkins might say, tough!
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/how-useful-would-a-secular-catechism-be/#comment-15996]

At Terra's blog:

Cardinal Pole said...

"compulsory voting was introduced in this country by (various) Governments solely because they believed it would be an advantage to them in an upcoming election."

Prove it. (Not that it would matter; a bad motive on the part of a legislator doesn't necessarily invalidate his legislation.)

"Compulsory Voting unjustly vitiates [your] ‘Right to Participate’ by depriving [you] of [your] ‘Right to Not Participate’."

Absurd. People in a democracy have no more 'right not to participate' than the king in a monarchy has a 'right not to participate'.

Another way to look at it is this: Rights are either natural or acquired. Obviously your supposed 'right not to participate' is not an acquired right, so it must be a natural right. So you need to show how the natural law gives you this 'right'.

"Given that ‘right’ and ‘duty’ are antithetical, the statement is
meaningless."

So you deny that someone with a right can conceivably have, on occasions, a duty to exercise that right?

July 23, 2010 2:54 AM
Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval.
[http://australiaincognita.blogspot.com/2010/07/and-it-is-on-australia-goes-to-polls-on.html]

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Apollinaris, Bishop, Martyr, and of St. Liborius, Bishop, Confessor, A.D. 2010

Question to readers: how to prove the teaching of Romans 3:8 from natural reason?

In Romans 3:8 one finds the well-know precept that one must not do evil in order that good may come of it. Obviously I, as should all who profess to be Christian, accept this precept by the authority with which it was promulgated, but I’m wondering how to prove it, by natural reason alone, to secularists, many of whom are infected with utilitarianism and would not hesitate to do evil if they thought that they would thereby procure a greater good or avert a greater evil. St. Thomas Aquinas does not, as far as I know, answer the utilitarian objection directly (please correct me if I’m wrong and let me know where he does), though he does invoke Romans 3:8 a couple of times in other contexts. Also, in St. Thomas’s treatment of the natural law he notes that

… the first principle of practical reason is one founded on the notion of good, viz. that "good is that which all things seek after." Hence this is the first precept of law, that "good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided." All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this …
(Ia IIæ, q. 94, a. 2,
http://newadvent.org/summa/2094.htm)

So is it as simple, then, as asserting that the first precept of the natural law enjoins the avoidance of evil? If so, then how does one answer the more moderate utilarians who, while agreeing that one should never do grave evil (like what Catholics would call a mortal sin), would nevertheless argue that if the evil were small in some absolute sense (rather than just relative to the good that one expects to obtain), like what Catholics mean by venial sin, then one ought to do it if a greater good were expected to be obtained thereby? I would be interested in, and appreciate greatly, any arguments and/or references that you could provide for me, readers.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
13.III.2009 A.D.

The State as a mirror

I was reading the transcript of the debate on Victoria’s new abortion laws in the Upper House (downloaded via Mr. Schütz’s Sentire cum Ecclesia) when I came across this revealing little thought from pro-abortion Member Mr. Shaun Leane M.L.C.:

I think some people who want to maintain these provisions in the Crimes Act want to say to women who want to have an abortion or are thinking of having an abortion, ‘Thou shalt not’. That is what they want to say. It is not the state’s role to do that. The state’s job is to reflect modern-day conditions and to reflect what real people are actually doing and what is acceptable for the majority.

Now in the traditional Catholic theory of the State, the State is the juridical and moral person that exercises God-given temporal authority over a given populace in a given territory. The State’s proper end is the building-up of the common good, and with it the upholding of justice—it must legislate in accordance with the eternal moral law, discernible by the light of natural reason. ‘Thou shalt not’ is exactly what the State should be saying sometimes, perhaps even most of the time. But for Mr. Leane, the State wields not a sword, as St. Paul put it, but a mirror—it simply serves the populace directly rather than serving God or serving the common good directly, and the populace only indirectly. Thus the very meaning of the State’s authority is subverted. What Mr. Leane is advocating here is a naked positivism whereby the State simply indulges the populace in whatever debauchery takes its fancy, so long as a majority can agree on it.

One can hardly be surprised at this sort of madness taking root in the corridors of power, though, when many of Mr. Leane’s electors no doubt would agree with him. One suspects that this sort of positivism and utilitarianism is rampant among Westerners, and one wonders, then, whether universal suffrage is really the best way to choose a government. Look at the recent comment of MgS when I begged her to give me some clue as to what she understands by justice:

justice is largely a part of the broader social contract that is the society in which one lives.
(http://cardinalpole.blogspot.com/2008/10/on-revenge-and-retribution-plus-request.html)

So justice, far from being a virtue on which all other goods hinge (hence its status as a cardinal virtue), itself hinges on the whim of society. Justice becomes whatever the majority (or whatever decision rule is used) wants it to be; there is no longer any question of trying to discern unchanging moral standards against which to evaluate right and wrong. Positivism, utilitarianism and relativism are the order of the day, even to the extent of forcing people to disobey their consciences. This is what we are up against.

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

On the Henson controversy

So Mr. Bill Henson is in the news again, with a book on the controversy surrounding his ‘artworks’ in May to be published today. Extracts from the book (written by homosexual activist Mr. David Marr) appeared in The Sydney Morning Herod’s Good Weekend magazine on Saturday. Now no-one can suggest that Mr. Henson intended to produce child pornography i.e. that he intended to produce photographs for titillation, but child pornography was what he produced nonetheless, and so these creepy pictures should be consigned to the Bonfire of the Vanities.

But the bigger issue here is not the ‘pornography vs. art’ debate that dominated the mainstream media, but whether it is moral to make children pose naked for photographs, regardless of the end for which the photographs were intended. It is perhaps an indictment of how deeply utilitarianism pervades mainstream discourse that no commentators that I am aware of picked up on this. The only person I know of to have noted this in the media was a letter writer to the Herod; her Christian name was Lucy, though I cannot recall the surname. She pointed out that it was not primarily a question of whether the photographs should have been displayed, but whether they should have been taken in the first place. That is: suppose that Mr. Henson’s photographs were art, even great art; does this justify the means to this end? Of course it doesn’t.

Mr. Marr alludes to this, presumably unwittingly, when he writes that

Kids may be resilient and able to pick a phoney at 40 paces, but can they assess the impact of being his model? Won’t their naked images haunt them all their lives? Henson offers no clear-cut answer to this. He doesn’t claim that growing into adults will give these kids the complete disguise of age. He acknowledges they may be recognised, but argues that the “strangeness” and strong abstraction of his work makes it unlikely.

So Mr. Henson has no ‘clear-cut answer’, even with hindsight, but he did it anyway?! What moral bankruptcy. I suppose this is what to expect from those who fancy themselves as having ‘outgrown bourgeois morality’ or whatever pompous slogans they affect. As far as I can tell the only situation in which nude child photos might (and I stress might) be justified is when it involves capturing events as they unfold. The only three examples that I can imagine satisfying this criterion would be family ‘happy-snaps’, photography during a medical examination or surgery, or journalistic photography e.g. the famous photo of a young Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack. But even in these cases I am open to being persuaded that it is still unjustified.

Episodes like this, as well as the utter rubbish that one sees every week in the broadsheets’ art pages, make me wonder whether it is time to reclaim a term from the Nazis. That term is ‘degenerate art’. But I suspect that that has about as much of a prospect for success as reclaiming ‘gay’ from the sodomites.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

On revenge and retribution, plus: a request to MgS

It appears that in a recent post I did not make myself clear on the meaning of revenge and of retribution. My contention was that they have the same etymological roots. ‘Revenge’, as we know, means ‘getting someone back’, while ‘retribution’ means ‘pay-back’, just as ‘contribute’ means ‘pay with’, ‘distribute’ means ‘pay among’, and so one. But just as, say, ‘terrific’ and ‘terrible’ have the same roots but opposite meanings, so it is that revenge and retribution are not synonymous. Revenge involves exacting personal pay-back, while retribution is rightly the State’s impartial imposition of a due relation between crime and punishment. A private individual might try to exact retribution, but this would be unjust, since no-one should be a judge in his own case and no-one should usurp the State's authority.

As an illustration of this distinction, consider the following example. Assume two individuals, William and Edward, with the same level of wealth, identical utility functions and a constant marginal utility of income, so that each individual values a gain or loss of $x the same as the other does. Now suppose that William steals $x from Edward. (Suppose further that he does so in such a way as not to cause any harm beyond that stemming from the loss of the $x i.e. there is no question of additional ‘pain and suffering.’)

Now the ‘restorative justice’ crowd would demand only that the $x be restored to Edward and that William be reformed. Revenge would seem to require that an additional $x be transferred to Edward (or at least that Edward be the one to exact the money from William). But retribution requires only that $x in addition to the original $x be exacted from William; to whom it goes is a matter of indifference (though arguably it should go into deterrence and rehabilitation funding. I have never denied that deterrence and rehabilitation are worthy ends, only that they are subordinate to justice.) The ‘restorative justice’ crowd could approve of additional money being exacted from William in addition to the original $x only if it could serve as some kind of behavioural disincentive.

Now retribution is a complex variable for the courts to determine. That is where it is good to know that God is just. If the retribution meted out by a judge is excessive, then the offender may offer up the excess in satisfaction for other sins. If too lenient, then the remaining temporal punishment will be exacted in purgatory. But there are at least two cases where retribution is quite straightforward. One is the simple financial example just cited. The other is the case of culpable, pre-meditated murder. Execution is the only adequate punishment. Think of it this way: a punishment can either be excessive, adequate or too lenient. Now no-one would say that depriving someone of his life for depriving another of his life is too lenient. As regards the possibility of it being excessive, to paraphrase Kant, no murderer has ever gone to the gallows protesting that ‘this punishment is excessive!’ People would laugh in his face. So capital punishment is an adequate punishment for murder.

Now the necessity of punishment presupposes that one accepts that justice is a metaphysical concept that is illustrated perfectly by the image of the ‘scales of justice’. But if one rejects this and therefore rejects retributive justice, then one ought to conclude that if punishment for bad deeds is unnecessary, then reward for good deeds is unnecessary, too. Reward is the ‘good deeds’ side of justice, while penalty is the ‘bad deeds’ side. Strict legal justice demands punishment as an end in itself and reward as an end in itself. Take the concept of a just wage. Presumably the ‘restorative justice’ crowd has no problem with workers being denied a just wage (a ‘just wage’ being the value of their marginal product, as the economists say). After all, there are solid utilitarian reasons for withholding a just wage, chief among those being the downward pressure on unemployment. But an employer who tried to rationalise an unjust wage would be dismissed as a thief. The implication for the anti-retribution crowd hardly needs spelling out. They are either consistent, and are therefore no better than thieves, or they are inconsistent, treating good deeds and bad deeds with a different calculus, and are therefore guilty of a double standard. The more I think about it, the more I understand how incoherent and unjust the ‘restorative justice’ ideology is.

So I ask you MgS (and any other anti-retribution folk): what, to you, is justice? A thumbnail sketch will do; I have avoided the jargon of commutative justice, vindicatory justice, and so on, myself. What does it mean to treat justly a good deed or a bad deed? And who are the major figures in this school of thought?

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Mr. Hayes and Dr. Costigan on the death penalty

An article in yesterday’s Sydney Catholic Weekly reported on the plans of Mr. Chris Hayes M.P. (my local Member) for “passing laws making it illegal for states and territories to reintroduce the death penalty.” But what was of more interest to me were the remarks of Dr. Michael Costigan, “former executive secretary of the Bishops’ Committee for Justice, Development, Ecology and Peace”, to whom the Weekly turned for comment. (This is the same Dr. Costigan who recently glibly asserted that the maxim that ‘error has no rights’ has been abandoned.) He said that

such a law, if adopted, could presumably be reversed in the future by a pro-death penalty administration, but one hopes such a return to support for barbarism would be more difficult to achieve after the passage of such legislation than it may be now.

He added: “Those pro-life advocates who are firm in their opposition to capital punishment believe that Australia should be as consistent as the Popes in calling for its abolition everywhere and in all cases, even where heinous crimes are involved.”

The report notes that

[Mr. Hayes’ notice of motion] asks Indonesia to “understand Australia’s principled position in relation to the imposition of the death penalty.”

So here we see several of the usual errors that crop up in discussion on the death penalty. Firstly, the notion that support for it is ‘barbarism’, in contrast, presumably, to the ‘principled position’ of the abolitionists. Secondly, the question of permanently valid Catholic doctrine on the matter. And thirdly, the notion that support for capital punishment is somehow a betrayal of the pro-life cause.

As regards the supposedly unprincipled barbarism of the pro-execution movement, one wonders who is the less principled: those who are so deeply infected with utilitarianism that they can only understand punishment as a means to other ends, or those who understand that punishment is an end in itself, as suggested by the status of justice as a cardinal virtue, to which other ends are subordinate.

And are we really expected to believe that dozens of generations of Catholics, spread over almost two millennia, were really just poor benighted barbarians awaiting the glorious dawn of the 1960s and the revelation that the death penalty is in fact immoral? What arrogance. As for the ‘consistency of the Popes’, presumably Dr. Costigan is not referring to Leo X, who condemned the error

That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit.
(http://www.catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma8.php)

Or St. Pius V, whose Catechism of the Council of Trent taught that execution

is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder.
(http://www.catecheticsonline.com/Trent3.php)

Or Pius XII, who taught, in a speech of September 14, 1952, that the State does not dispose of the condemned man’s right to life, since the condemned man forfeited it by his actions. And no doubt these Popes would just be the tip of the iceberg, whereas the Popes of the 1960s till now are the iceberg, as far as opposition to the death penalty goes.

As for the notion that support for the death penalty is a betrayal of the pro-life cause, it should be noted that we can only really speak of the innocent as having a right to life, since the duty not to kill does not cover execution. The falseness of the notion that execution is a breach of the right to life is apparent from the teaching of Pius XII that I have cited.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

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