Whether Pp Francis' remarks are "meaningless" or not (see below post), the realities of Catholic moral teachings remain unchanged, no matter who says what.
...Pope Paul VI, as I understand it, did
approve of religious women threatened by rape using contraceptives. It
is obvious, though, that such measures were taken in self-defense
against criminal acts and, more importantly, would have occurred outside
the context of conjugal relations. Avoiding pregnancy under outlaw circumstances is not only ‘not an absolute evil’, it’s not an evil act at all....
...An individual becomes “Christian” by, and
only by, (valid) baptism. Donald Trump was apparently baptized
Presbyterian, which faith community has valid baptism. Donald Trump is,
therefore, as a matter of canon law (c. 204), Christian....
...There is no legitimate “principle” by which a “lesser of two evils” may ever be licitly engaged in. It is fundamental moral theology that even a small evil action may never
be licitly engaged in—no matter how much good might seem to result
therefrom and no matter how much evil might seem to be avoided thereby.
There are, to be sure, principles by which a good or neutral action that
has two effects, one good and one evil, might be licitly
engaged in under certain circumstances despite the evil effects; and
there are principles by which “lesser evils” may be tolerated (not chosen)....
...Abortion (assuming we are talking about doing
an action intended to kill a human being prior to birth, and not just
suffering ‘abortion’, i.e., miscarriage) is, Francis observed, always
evil. Abortion is not, however, “evil” because it is a “crime”.
Not all criminal acts are by nature evil and not all evil acts are
crimes. Other factors must be considered lest moral principles and legal
principles become confused....
...It is important (though some might say it is too late) to distinguish between a Catholic’s stance toward “same-sex unions” and that toward “same-sex marriage”. These are not equivalent terms. Legal recognition of “same-sex unions” might be a good idea, a tolerable idea, or a bad idea, but, per se, “same-sex unions”
are things over which reasonable minds (including Catholic minds) may
differ; in contrast, Catholics may never approve or support “same-sex marriage”,...
Yes, that was more than "fair use," and there's more at the link. But this is stuff that must be known.
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3 comments:
...There is no legitimate “principle” by which a “lesser of two evils” may ever be licitly engaged in.
Hm, I'm not sure about that. Let me run through the argument as I understand it.
According to Augustine, in a position endorsed by Aquinas, evil is a kind of privation. This has to be the right way to think about evil because goodness and existence end up being the same thing. God's essence is to exist. Goodness is what all things desire, and the end of action is the desired; so if we look at what all living things do, even plants, it is to strive for continued existence (both as individuals and through reproduction). So, goodness ultimately equals existence, which is to say that God is essentially good (because God exists essentially).
Now, there's a problem about all created things not being able to 'be good' in the same way that God is good (nor to 'exist' in the same way). But that just means that all things fail to exist as perfectly as God, i.e., they don't exist essentially. Yet since all created things -- even evil things -- exist in some sense, they must all be good to some degree.
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1048.htm
It sounds to me like the philosophical argument needs to turn that principle around. The 'lesser of two evils' is the best we can ever do, because evil is a privation of the fullness of goodness. Since we can never be fully good, we can only strive to be as good as possible -- which means that we will always be doing the lesser of evils. That's just the inverse of saying that evil is a privation of good, and even our best act cannot attain the fullness of good that is possible only in the divine nature.
The problem as I understand it comes when you get an act that is so inherently disordered that it can't be described as anywhere near good. But even a good mortal action is going to involve some privation from the good per se, right?
No.
That line of thinking is akin to that of the Bogomil/Cathar heresy.
To take a somewhat extreme example, self-sacrifice is an unalloyed good when taken in defense of another.
What you're missing there is the element of sanctifying (and actual) grace.
Sanctifying grace is an act of God, though, is it not? It is a justification of man's act, which is to say (or at least, Aquinas says) it is a remission of sin. But then the sin to be remitted is in the act of the man, or in the man.
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2111.htm
Indeed, justification of the ungodly is supposed to be God's greatest work (or at least maybe so -- Augustine is less convinced than Aquinas):
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2113.htm#article9
I don't have a good warrant for the particular example of self-sacrifice. Clearly the saints are often saints just because of self-sacrifice in the cause of faith, but I'm not sure how the philosophy treats the act. Metaphysically, I had understood the sense of these passages to be that only God can act in a way that is good in the fullest sense -- the equivocal sense in which 'good' is applied to God, as opposed to everything else. The rest of us, so I had thought, are just doing the best we can.
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