YOU ALWAYS SAY MORE THAN YOU INTEND TO REVEAL

There is a saying that goes, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”  When a person is not careful about their speech they can end up revealing much more than they intend.  It is part of the “why” behind the Gospel injunction to always be truthful and speak that which is Good, True and Beautiful.

Take today’s Gospel for example.  Jesus drives out a mute demon and his detractors say, “It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons.”  In their carelessness in denouncing Jesus, they inadvertently bring Him some credence.  Notice that they didn’t say, “Nothing happened.”  Clearly something happened and they needed a way to discount it and so ascribed the miraculous thing they witnessed as being evil.

So first they inadvertently give great testimony to something that they themselves witnessed.  Then they reveal something about themselves in turn.  Jesus explains the weak logic of their argument and then says, “Those who are not with me are against me.”  Who is He?  God.  If one are not with God, with whom else can one be?  There is a lot of things being revealed here though an attempted deception.

Something similar happened in the local newspaper recently.  In a letter to the editor this week entitled, “Stop the Hatred,” the author rallied against what she saw as growing division in the United States.  She wrote, “If you are an anti-Semite, racist or whatever else, bigotry is an equal opportunity killer.”  What is interesting here is that she takes a group of people (who by and large are clearly in the wrong from a Christian point of view) and separates them from the rest of the “good people” (My words, not hers) and then sort of sets up this “we good people” pointing that the “bad people” and berating them.  “What these bigots don’t realize . . .”  (To whom is she speaking?  People who who are not bigots?  Wouldn’t they already know this?)  While I agree with her premise that if we allow hatred of any group, we may, one day, find ourselves on the wrong end of the stick, her method for getting there is not to engage those whom she may desire to convert to a more loving stance, but to put them in a group and denounce them and inadvertently becomes, at least somewhat, what she hates.

In another interesting article in the Beacon Journal this past Saturday entitled, “Planned Parenthood funding cut.”  The subtitle was, “Federal Appeals Court upholds laws ending flow of state dollars to abortion providers.”  The title and much of the writing is an enormous reversal of language normally used in the public media.  There was no mention of “abortion foes” (as opposed “Pro-Life Advocates” that those who promote life would prefer to be called) or the masking of abortion by the writer as “women’s health care” and in describing an abortion procedure the baby is referred to as a fetus not a mass of cells.   

Is this, too, starting to reveal a change in popular culture?  Only time will tell.  It was only one article.  But it was published and makes one wonder what truths it may be revealing.

IF SOMETHING YOU READ SEEMS OFF - INVESTIGATE!

Don’t take everything that you read at face value even if it appears in the newspaper and is authored by someone who we are told, “is a professor of history emeritus at Northwestern University” and “is the author of ‘Why I Am a Catholic.”  Intelligence, wisdom and understanding are all separate gifts and simply because someone has a “high education” does not mean that they have a grasp on all three of these gifts or that all of their arguments are altruistic.

Such is the case with the editorial in Monday’s Beacon Journal by Garry Wills.  Even if someone might agree with his conclusion, his path to it was a strained one at best.  There are so many problems with this article that one post would not be enough to point them all out.  At least for today two will be pointed out.

The first is an unneeded exaggeration to help make his point.  It is dishonest.  Remember when God said to Adam, “From that tree you shall not eat; for from the moment you eat from it, you are surely doomed to die.”  Gen 2:17.  Later, when speaking with Satan, Eve reports, “it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘you shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die!’"  This is an exaggeration of what God said and makes God appear less reasonable and maybe even a little vengeful.  So when Mr. Wills says that the Church says, “You can be gay so long as you don’t do anything about it,” one must ask the question if this is really what the Church (and as Catholics we would ask is that really what Christ) says?  What it does say is that one may not have a sexual relationship with someone who is not your opposite gender spouse.  Is there far more compassion and room for living in that than the rather sterile and cold, “you can’t do anything about it”?  If a person really believes in the truth of their argument, then they should not need to rely on exaggeration or slights in order to make it.  It should stand on its own.  This is the first sign that Mr. Wills is not exactly confident of his theological position.

The second big area of difficulty is his understanding and use of natural law (which he labels as a “quaint theory.”)  Again, if you need to make light of something in order to make your point, you’ve already begun to weaken your position.  

But here is where I am stuck.  I am not sure if Mr. Wills understands Natural Law so poorly that if he had a similar application in a term paper he might flunk the course, or if he understands it so brilliantly that he is attempting to misapply it so ingeniously in order to lead people astray.  He makes the misleading statement that, “the first biological use of an activity is the only permissible use of that activity.”  (Again, see the Eve problem above.)  This would mean then, that a married couple is not permitted to enjoy sexual relations, that they must only engage in it for procreative purposes.  This is “absurd” he says.  As proof, he says that if we truly follow Natural Law then eating should only be for fuel and we would no longer be able to eat wedding cake or drink champagne.  I would agree with him if this actually had anything to do with Natural Law or actual Church teaching.  Yet he uses this example to say, in essence, if you see that as absurd, then one could logically see the ban on sexual relations outside of traditional marriage as absurd.  But here, once again, he hurts his case.

A married couple can enjoy sex.  There is a broad spectrum of activities in which they may engage.  They may, so to speak, eat cake and drink champagne.  What they may not do is eat things that are not good for them.  We are not permitted by Natural Law to eat road tar for the same reason a person should not put sugar in the gas tank of their car.  Neither should a person eat far more than they need for sustenance (that is called gluttony.)  Except in cases of emergency, we should not try ingesting food through orifices that are not designed for the intake of nutrition.  This is Natural Law, not the banning of champagne toasts.  

Mr. Wills did have some good points not the least of which is the unhealthy keeping of secrets that should not be kept.  But his arguments are so poorly concocted as to do more harm to his point than good - at least for those who are will not to just accept whatever it is that they are reading but to think well for themselves.

RANT - COUNTER RANT: CHANGE VS EFFECTIVE CHANGE

When I was in the seminary there were guys who dreamed (with the best of intentions) of one day being a bishop.  My biggest dream was one day becoming a pastor of (what is now becoming extinct) a tiny, ethnic parish off in the corner of the diocese that most of the rest of the diocese forgot about.  Things didn’t exactly turn out that way (for which I am grateful) but I am more glad than ever not to be a bishop.  

Of course we never get the whole story, but in the paper today a bishop was accused of not removing a priest from ministry because of an accusation.  According to the diocese the cases were immediately reported to the Child Protection Service (who would not, for purposes of confidentiality, respond).  Apparently they did not substantiate the claims though.  So what is the bishop to do?  Remove the priest from service because of what the government considers a non-substantiated claim?  Or should he get in the practice of remove anybody from any position because of any report?  He will lose either way.

Maybe it is a situation that the Church brought on herself.  And undoubtedly we still have a lot of change to bring about before things become better.

However, that a does not mean that every change is always good or warranted.  Algirdas G. Nastvytis wrote in his Letter to the Editor in the August 25th Pain Dealer that “the main problem is priestly celibacy.  It’s been a festering wound for 1,000 years since it was required.”  He does not offer any clue as to what the problem is.  Does celibacy lead to pedophilia?  Really?  All we have to do is allow marriage in the Church and there will be no more cheating on vows, no more abuse of pornography, no more child abuse?  Clearly he is correct because we see none of these things in marriage (he said with a hint of irony.)

And, as a long time reader pointed out, does Mr. Nasvytis want to be the first to offer one of his daughters in marriage to man who has a tendency toward these problems to see if that would stem his desires?  I am willing to bet not.  This is not a solution and it was not well thought out - if at all.

“We also need to do away with professional clergy living in ivory towers.  A reasonably intelligent male member of the Church . . . who can read and memorize, ‘This is my body; this is my blood,’ should be ordained as a priest.”  Mr. Nasvytis has not done much work in history to find out why we make priests go to school - because of the dangerous things that can come of a man saying, proclaiming and teaching thing that cause harm and division within the Body of Christ.

“Why can’t Joe the plumber, Al the carpenter or Ed the lawyer say Mass?”  He can.  He does.  Many of the men going through the seminary are second career men.  In our diocese alone they have been accountants, artists, retailers, sportsmen, owners of businesses, teachers and in one case a widowed father and from many other backgrounds.  They didn’t come from the planet Mars or were birthed from a university.  The mystique is largely blows once someone makes a friend of a priest.  My sister just last week said she used to put priests on a pedestal until she understood that they could be baby brothers.  

We have a mess on our hands and much has been done to correct it. More can and should be done and quickly.  But it must also be well thought out and effective or it just adds to the problem. 

THE DANGER OF SAFE SPACES

Years ago there was a Biosphere experiment.  Scientists constructed a completely sealed and very large ecosystem whose purpose was to see if we could maintain life on another planet that does not have the same atmosphere as we do here.  There were a number of problems with the experiment but in particular that is a fitting analogy for our culture today.

One of the obvious ways to create oxygen in the sealed ecosystem was to have a tree.  There was a very large tree that grew unencumbered inside the biosphere.  It grew very large.  Then a strange thing began to happen.  It began to drop branches.  Very large branches.  Dangerous branches.  The problem was that the tree never experienced any stress particularly from forces such as wind.

Normally wind would sway a tree back and forth.  As a tree is forced to bend back and forth, it makes the whole tree stronger (not much unlike stressing our muscles make them stronger.)  The tree in the biosphere, never having been exposed to such forces, grew to the point where it was unable to hold up its own branches and they would break off and crash to the ground.

So now we have universities constructing “safe spaces.”  These are places where you can go and not experience any stresses outside of your comfort zone.  I am all for such places.  In past ages we called these spaces Mom, or friends, or ministers, or councilors, or any other number of people.  Universities and colleges (and seminaries for that matter) were places to challenge your ideas and concepts and to have them tested against the cultural storm that rages.  It was intended to make you stronger whether that means it makes you reaffirm your conviction or change - not to be a cultural ghetto were one could wallow safely in myopic self absorption.  

Early in my seminary years I had a professor that I respected greatly.  One day he taught a class in which he stated that “the Church” is moving away from understanding the Eucharist as Jesus fully present.  This struck me hard.  I was passionate in asking questions and after had a major meltdown. 

Embarrassingly enough I ran to the chapel and threw my books and notes across the pews, fell prostrate on the floor of the sanctuary and balled my eyes out - not something I am prone to do - and questioned my faith and my vocation.  Apparently someone witnessed this because when I was done I found all of my things neatly stacked at the back of the chapel.

Oh . . . it goes on from there but I will spare you all of that.  The point is, I was given the opportunity to deal with this (not be protected from it.)  I found my "safe space” in the solace of friends, in doing research, speaking with other professors, clarifying, sharpening my understanding, and developing constructive ways of speaking with someone who hold opposing views about this topic.  All of this serves me to this day.

Do we need better safety for some of our young persons?  Most likely.  Thus it always is and always will be in a fallen world.  But to create a biosphere where people can “grow” unencumbered by any challenges leaves us vulnerable to stresses that can tear us apart once we are no longer surrounded by those who can help make us stronger.

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THIS POST IS COMPLETELY IMMORAL?

I was making a Google search for some information for a homily I gave last weekend.  I needed, “Examples of things that are legal but immoral.”  The last entry on one site said this:

“That depends on your definition of ‘immoral’.  Defined as such in some book?  Then almost anything can be immoral, including things that are legal.

“But if you're talking about actual morality (which is relative, not absolute), not the fake stuff religions claim, almost anything that's legal can, in some instances, be immoral.  Legality is orthogonal to morality (IOW, one has nothing to do with the other)”

There is a lot of rich, fertile soil to dig in here.  Probably because the cows have been standing over it too long. 

So what is “actual morality?”  Morality is the extend that one (or a group) can say something is right or wrong.  If it is completely subjective, than I cannot say that something is right or wrong for someone else, only myself and those who either agree with me or that I can force to be obedient.  Therefore, it may be illegal for me to let my dog do his business on you lawn, but I may think it moral.  After all, dogs have rights, he enjoys the freedom, his gift to you is good for your lawn.  And prevents filling up landfills.  

The owner of the lawn however thinks it is completely immoral.  He does not want my dog’s gift on his lawn, does not want my dog trespassing, does not think it is good for the environment, and is upset he is going to have to go outside and pick it up.

There is something we can do legally here of course, but is there anything we can say morally of morality is relative or subjective?

If morals are subjective then no.  I think brown is horrid and you think it is the best color ever.  I think something is immoral and you see nothing wrong with it.  If this is true, then there is no such thing as morality.  There are preferences and all we have left is legality and with it “might that makes right.”  Legality is no longer orthogonal to morality, it is morality.  

The paragraph would be better written:

“But if you're talking about actual morality (which is absolute, not relative), not the fake stuff relativists claim, many things that are legal may be immoral.  Legality is orthogonal to morality only insofar as there is a basis for absolute morality.”

RANT - COUNTER RANT: INCOHERENCY IS NO DETERENT

From the case file of "Why We Need to Teach Our Children Logic" comes this letter from Nancy Dollard in the Akron Beacon Journal.  It combines banning guns and abortion rights.  Put aside, for a moment, whether you thing guns should be legal or not and just take in the letter.

"I was horrified," she writes," to see a mass shooting at Planned Parenthood, a wonderful organization that helps women and men and is progressive about abortion rights."

Unless one is already opposed to abortions, this sentence seems logical.  Good people are shot by bad people.  However, if you see abortion as the taking of an innocent life, then this is a story of people taking the lives of people who take lives.  Only one of them profits by it though.

"Women have the right to have an abortion at any stage and to be free from gun violence."

This is true in our country.  Women have a right to take the life of the human being in their womb but they are themselves protected from any violence.

"Unfortunately, mass shootings are too common now because of the radical-right, National Rifle Association gun mentality which won't give up any rights."

So, you want someone to freely give up their rights, rights being something two sentences ago you held so dear, because somebody tangentially associated with them (albeit in a violent, and by the way, illegal way) wants someone else to give up their rights.  

"I'm sick of guns and mass shootings, and it's time to tell the NRA and hunting groups that we need every gun and round of ammunition in a registered federal database so we can prevent the next mass shooting."

I might use the same argument against abortion.  I am sick of so many human beings being slaughtered in their mother's womb.  I am tired of hearing that human body parts are being sold by Planned Parenthood for profit.  It horrifies me that humans are now being found dumped in local trash yards, not only morally disgusting but illegal.  It sickens me that men can treat women like objects because there is no longer a consequence to their actions.

(I'm skipping a little here) ". . . and get a required yearly mental health exam for anyone who works with a gun or owns multiple guns and rounds."

The writer wants everyone who works with a gun to undergo yearly mental health exams.  I wonder if she would be equally open to women being fully informed about her abortion before it takes place along with a similar waiting period before the abortion as there is with the purchase of a gun?

"It is time to put the safety of normal people first."  That is, people who take human lives but not the many people who own guns and do not.  " They (normal people) abhor guns and gun violence."

Yes, they do.  They certainly do.

RANT - COUNTER RANT : WHEN WE NO LONGER FEEL

This is probably one of the more disturbing things I've read recently on abortion.  It was printed in "First Things" and is a recounting of Solveig Gold's class trip to Sparta, Greece and specifically to the Apothetai, the cliff over which Spartans would toss their unwanted newborns to their death:

The students laughed and posed for photos.  Less than a week later, Gold saw the Center for Medical Progress's videos of Planned Parenthood executives talking about organ harvesting from aborted children.  It put that visit to that ancient site into perspective. or, more accurately, that ancient site put our society into perspective.

"I shouldn't have laughed at the Spartan's barbarism that day at the Apothetai.  We may have hospitals and obstetricians, but we have not advanced from the cliff or the well; of anything, we have taken a step backwards by becoming so desensitized that we do to even realize or acknowledge that what we do is wrong.  Barbarism isn't throwing unwanted babies of cliffs.  Barbarism is throwing unwanted babies off metaphorical cliffs, and then laughing about it over lunch and a glass of red wine.  This is blasphemy.  This is madness.  But it is not Sparta - this is 21st century America."

A letter to the editor in the Akron Beacon Journal last week spoke about how denying people the "right" to an abortion was tantamount to trampling on their religious beliefs.  Siting a number of mainstream Protestant Churches he showed how they believed that abortion was perfectly Okay and said that since we cannot determine when a soul enters the body, our faith should be able to determine when it is too late to have an abortion and to do otherwise is interfering with matters of faith.

Sooooo . . . Now we understand why we NEED to start teaching our youth how to think logically.

But I don't have time or space to go into that.  Still . . . 

Are we really concerned about ensoulment - which, by the way, if you DO NOT know when it takes place, one should err on the side of caution which would mean no abortions. 

But what we are concerned about is being advanced and civil human beings.  This is something people of faith and atheists should agree.  When conception takes place, everything there is present for a complete, unique, human individual.  The question is not whether I believe the person has a soul (though I do) but whether it is a human being and are we Spartans that throw our unwanted human beings away.

You might make the argument that they are dependent, they don't look like humans yet, that conception was not intended, that they are too small, or that just plain nobody will know the difference, but thoughts like this have a sneaky way of making out of the womb into how we treat other human beings in general and that is a dangerous road to follow.

If you think this is an exaggeration, re-read the beginning of this post.  If you make the connection, you've got.  If you don't make the connection, you've proven the point.

RANT - COUNTER RANT: WHAT EVERYBODY NEEDS IS A GOOD HOBBY

So I am driving yesterday and hear a story on NPR about how some investigative effort uncovered the fact that Hobby Lobby’s pension fund has a small investment in a company that owns a company that makes some of the drugs and devices that are the cause of Hobby Lobby wanting an exemption from paying for through the government health care plan.  My first thought was, “Ooooooh!  That’s not good.” 

 

Now, the thing about NPR is that they always brag (here I am going to do the same thing that I am accusing them of doing) about how they just report the news, they have no agenda.  They like to drag this statement out particularly during fund raising time.  It may even be that they believe it.  But I do not believe it; this segment being one example of why.  The questions being asked by the interviewer were so incredibly leading as to be humorous.  “So do you think that Hobby Lobby is being hypocritical?  Do you think they know and don’t care?”  The idea is to place Hobby Lobby in as negative a light as possible.  If this were a court of law I would think some wise lawyer would stand up and say, “Objection your Honor.  Leading the witness!”  If they were really interested in just reporting facts, a better question for the interviewee who can have any opinion they want would be, “What do you think this means about Hobby Lobby?” or some such thing.  There were a few more underhanded and double standard tactics that they took that really made me steam the inside of my windshield, but that’s for another day. 

 

An interesting questions that keeps coming up however is can a corporation have religion?  NPR would say, “Of course they can’t.”  Adam’s Ale and its staff, contributors, executive board, foundation, and chaplain (all of whom are me) say, “Of COURSE the can and do.”  Our government has religion and right now it wants to pass on that new part of its religion that it holds most dear.  (I know I’ve said this before, please put up with me.)  There is no such thing as a neutral position.  There is no natural state that includes everybody.  If you actively remove God from the government, from schools, from business, from public life, from everything outside the four walls of a church, synagogue, or temple, that too constitutes a set of beliefs with its own vision of what man is, his purpose and meaning, what the foundational rules are, its own set of presuppositions, beliefs, and rules that creates its own world view and way of living.  That is not some vacuum in which tolerance reigns and we can all get along.  If we say, “Okay, Hobby Lobby, as a business you cannot have religion,” what we are really saying is, “You cannot have your religion.  You must have ours.”

 

Everything and everyone has a religion cleverly disguised as a set of beliefs and standards to be imposed in areas they find very important.  Right now we are asking the question, “May I exercise my strongly held beliefs in my own house, or does the government have the right to come in and establish its religion.”

RANT - COUNTER RANT: DON'T MESS WITH MY LITTLE SISTERS

Today I was poised (poised I tell you) to write a scathing article about reporters and editorialists who never took (or have completely forgotten or ignore) a theology class, a philosophy class, or an ethics class that dealt with the Catholic faith (which is a significant part of the population – more than half of all Christians are Catholic after all so this is no small matter) and then imagine they can think over an issue in the shower and come up with a sensible solution with which the Catholic Church, if it were in its right mind, should agree.  The problem being is that their level of competence is rarely up to the task.  This is not to say that they may not be extremely knowledgeable people in other fields, but sometimes I despair that it is obvious that a reporter has failed to even ask what an orthodox, faithful, and knowledgeable Catholic might have to say on a topic.

 

But then, Kevin O’Brien wrote an editorial in today’s Plain Dealer, E3 (January 8, 2014) concerning the health care mandate and the Little Sisters of the Poor entitled “Even the Little Sisters of the Poor are subject to Big Brother’s bullying.”  (On a side note, I am not sure why capitalization for titles is no longer in use in newspapers, but perhaps the rules have changed.)  I will grant that the article is a tinsy wincy bit acidic, but of course I like it because I agree with him.  But he nailed the issues that so many other news sources have not grasped, cared about, or have ignored for other motivations.  Read the article here.

 

It’s sad to see how much money the government is wasting defending desire to provide every man, woman, and child with contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilizations.  It is interesting to note that many of these very things have been offered for free from clinics for decades and others at very minimal cost.  Considering the vast amount of extremely expensive exemptions that have already been granted (government, you don’t have to participate – unions, you don’t have to participate) why is there such an effort to have the Catholic Church submit to this comparatively inexpensive item?  We are not opting out like the government itself is doing or unions, we just want this one exception.  (Not that I am recommending it, but it would be interesting to see how many decades the government could have supplied these services for free through clinics with the money they would have saved by just granting the exemption instead of having these expensive court battles that seem will continue well into the future.)

 

Of course, maybe it isn’t really about contraception or (an already very un-) level playing field.  Could it be that Catholics are not as worthy citizens as those who work for unions or in the government?  Is there another agenda at work here?  (Okay, maybe I am becoming jaded.)  But this seemingly little crack in religious freedom could be a hole in the damn.  Unless the Little Sisters stick their thumb in the hole, what will happen when another issue comes up effecting another matter or another faith and we look at precedent and decide, “Well, it was constitutional, for government interests, to force the Catholic Church to act against its core beliefs, therefore we may turn on you next.”

 

In this light, this is no small matter.

RANT - COUNTER RANT: WHAT'S IT REALLY ALL ABOUT MR. & MRS. JOHN Q. SMITH FROM ANYTOWN USA?

I can’t tell you how relieved I am.

 

Last week in the Letters to the Editor of the Akron Beacon Journal, Mr. Thomas Fann, while pointing out that many people feel that certain provisions of HHS mandate impedes their freedom of religion, he assures us, “It does not.”

 

I was worried.  I am so glad he cleared that up for me.

 

Of course, he goes on to say that there really are limits to freedom of religion so even if it does really impinge on your faith: too bad.

 

Back to feeling bad again.

 

“We are all free to believe what we want, conduct our lives according to our beliefs and worship as we please.”

 

Okay, I’m with you again.

 

“However, our religious freedom does not give us the right to force others to change their behavior to fit our beliefs.” 

 

Of course it does.  Mr. Fann demostrates this himself.  His system of beliefs says that it may force another individual to violate his belief system by making him become directly culpable in what amounts to an intrinsic evil to him.  You can’t have it both ways.  Either we can force others people to behave according to a belief system or you can’t. 

 

“Attempting to prevent or impede what many employees feel are valid (and legal) health-care choices is not a religious freedom protected by the Constitution.”

 

Here again Mr. Fann plays the game of denouncing a behavior for those he’s against, and then shows how perfectly logical it is for him to do it.  None of the people against the HHS mandate are forcing anybody to do anything.  Nobody is protesting that such items should be taken out of the store; nobody is protesting clinics because they are handing out free birth control, but Mr. Fann places the desire of one person to have birth control paid for by a person who finds it morally repugnant over and above the religious freedom of the provider.  One can still have the freedom to act according to his conscience (and have it paid for), the other may not.

 

And “legal” does not mean moral.

 

And since when is it not protected by the Constitution?  Of course it is.  On what planet is protection of religious liberty not a part of the Constitution?  It is a handy argument to make up with absolutely no citations or references.  “It just isn’t” is not an argument.

 

“Employers are free to reject contraception for themselves, but religious freedom does not give them the right to make that decision for their employees.”

 

First, I am thankful that Mr. Fann has given me permission to reject contraception.  But I have not read a single article anywhere of an employee of any company has been fired because they used contraception even though his employer finds it to be morally abhorrent.  Or maybe there has been a rash of front page articles that I missed. 

 

The only person making demands on anybody’s behavior (and tapping their resources) is Mr. Fann and backers of this portion of the HHS mandate.  (This reminds me of 2 Maccabees chapter 7).

 

“Where are the employees going to get the money?  From their paychecks, from the same employer who refuses to pay for contraception coverage on the grounds of ‘religious freedom.’ I don’t see the difference.”

 

And that is the problem.  You don't see the problem.  First of all, I highly recommend that you do not take a job writing an etiquette column.  If I give you a gift, it is yours.  I no longer have control over it.  If I give you twenty dollars and you use it on cigarettes, there is really not much I can do about it.  A paycheck is the same thing.  Once I give you the money it is yours.  What you do with it is your business.

 

Secondly, I recommend that you do not take a job writing an ethics column.  There is a huge difference between indirect and direct culpability.  It is one thing for me to give twenty dollars to a teenager who then goes out and buys smokes, it is another thing to make available smokes for the teenager “because he is going to smoke anyway.”

 

There is one thing Mr. Fann and I do agree upon.  It is this sentence: “This issue really isn’t about religious freedom; it is about control.”

I couldn't have said it better.

RANT - COUNTER RANT: WHY WE STILL NEED TO THINK

It is time to return to the ancient craft of thinking.  We have handed over so much of our thinking to remembering devices and calculating devices, and instead of freeing up our brains for more lofty endeavors, have mindlessly given over that time to other devices that whittle away life for us while we put thinking on hold aside from wondering who might get kicked off of the island next.

 

As a counter to this a book was recently suggested to me: Peter Kreeft’s, “Socratic Logic; A Logic Text Using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions, and Aristotelian Principles.”

 

There’s a winning title.

 

And I will admit, as admirably as Mr. Kreeft tries to make it a fun exercise, it is a lot of work learning how to think.  But the pay offs are magnificent.  Like learning another language, if you can put up with the long fuse, the boom at the end is well worth it.

 

I would love have a course like this taught in our parish school and even open it up to the rest of the parish.  (We shall see.)  This is for two reasons: first, it would prevent people from embarrassing themselves writing mindless drivel as Mr. Richard Kunkel did in his letter to the editor in the Akron Beacon Journal on Wednesday, August 14^th concerning abortion, and second, it would help students to see mindless drivel when it appears before them.

 

There is so much to write about in this letter I doubt I can do it in one post but here are some high – er – lowlights.  After stating that a recent letter to the editor really made him think, he wrote, “Suppose Honda had a bad model, and it was recalled.  Should we make a law forcing Honda to close?  Or how about a law that would close every automaker in the state?”  Is this a fair comparison?

 

To begin with, Honda does not design anything that is intended to kill anybody.  Their products are supposed to be convenient and safe.  Therefore, if something goes wrong, we make them fix their product and make them safe once again.  Abortion is not designed to keep a person safe but to kill them.  If we don’t want people killed, then yes, we do shut them down.

 

Further, the product that Honda makes does not affect the morality of a nation, the family structure, religious freedom, or health care.  It is a false example.  A better one would be independent brain surgery clinics (if such a thing existed.)  If they were in violation should we keep letting them perform brain surgeries and work with them in eventually coming around to being a safer clinic?  No.  I would say stop all surgeries now.

 

Mr. Kunkel also states that the only problem here is that one group doesn’t want abortion so therefore it should be legal.  Really?  There are (essentially) three groups out there: those who want abortion, those who don’t, and those somewhere in between.  In a democracy such as ours that is always the case and we vote to see what we should do.  For example, there are a great number of people out there who enjoy smoking.  There are those who think it should not be done in public, and the somewhere in between group.  I could use his same argument to say that only one group wants there to be no smoking in our country – therefore the rest of us should be able to smoke next to him at his favorite restaurant.  Bet he doesn’t buy it.  (All of a sudden his call for tolerance disappears.)

 

Ah!  See?  I’m already going too long.  But I can’t stop.  “If you don’t want abortion, don’t have one,” is another tired and silly diatribe.  He likens it to, “If you don’t like alcohol, don’t drink,” as if it were an equal case.  How about this better one: If you don’t like racial prejudice, don’t use racial slurs, but don’t trample on the rights of those who want to use them or burn crosses on public property as long as they have a permit.  But that hardly solves the problem.  (And really, there is only one group that wants us to get rid of racial inequality – right???)

And he calls this a “war on women.”  Switching the conversation to women’s health and rights is a clever way of covering over what is at the center of this debate: another innocent human being.  It is a war on humanity and the rights of the weakest and least politically connected among us.  And as we become a nation that takes the throwing away of human life more and more easily, we become less human, appreciate all human life less, and take another step backward in the advancement of human dignity, worth, and love.

 

Last point and then I will try to stop.  Mr. Kunkel states that we should be able to do whatever is legal and not be unfettered “by my or anyone else’s dislike.”  The tyranny of tolerance.  Of course what I want to do may be in direct contradiction to what you want to do.  Who gets to win?  My Aunt had a neighbor who put in a chimney that met code but only caused smoke to be trapped between the houses and forcing smoke into her house, leaving an odor and making a mess.  Yet it was legal.  Was the neighbor therefore morally in the right because the city said they had their hands tied because he was up to code? 

 

And once again (I know, I said I would stop) we forget the idea that there is a human person in the womb.  He was a human person at conception, as he develops he is a human person, and he will only ever be a human person as he develops.  He struggles for life and will be born and grow if we let him.  I would say these are signs of what this human person wants.  But we silence him so that he does not have a say and we can do away with him without giving him any real consideration.  It is legal after all and therefore must be morally right and good for us as a nation.  Right?