Sometimes, people will say, "Unless you do/have/experience X, you don't get to have an opinion." It's a radical subjectivism, from one angle, and a pragmatism, from another. Quite honestly, it's a move people usually make to shut down debate--especially with regard to abortion, for example--most likely because the moral justification for such an act is dubious, and they know it. Funnily enough though, when they are wronged, many people conveniently rediscover their notion of objective truth!
The pragmatism is almost centered on the body, as if the actions we take with our bodies are by definition morally neutral. Then again, when someone isn't trying to justify themselves, they are able to see how foolish this would be, applied to all situations. I have never committed adultery in the strict sense, but I can give you all sorts of reasons and examples of its harm. Again, when you're not implicating someone you're talking to, you're a trenchant social critic; when you do, you're a judgmental zealot, with too much time on his hands.
Anybody remember the "Sister Act" movies? Quite frankly, I think they give a more positive picture of the Catholic Church than the Vatican press office. Anyway, Kathy Najimy quite brilliantly played "Sister Mary Patrick," the most optimistic, joyous nun you've ever seen. In one scene, she's teaching these kids at St. Francis School in San Francisco about sex. One of the teens asked her how a celibate nun could teach them about sex. She said, "You don't have to taste the doughnut to know it's sweet." That's got layers: 1. She compared sex to another good thing; 2. She hinted that her vocation involved giving up a good thing for a better thing; and 3. She rejected the premise that a person has to know something personally to know the truth about it. Particularly with vice, it is never necessary to do vice to understand that it is vice. In fact, saying that one must experience something to know its moral qualities likely implies that only the practical and pragmatic reasons to do or not do an act are relevant to the decision.
It may be prudent to give a particularly vicious person the pragmatic reasons not to do an evil act, but if we want to form people in the virtues, it would be harmful to stop at the practical. Maybe that's a big part of the trouble we've had lately in the Catholic Church: we haven't given people the truest and best reasons to do or believe the things we do and believe.
The pragmatism is almost centered on the body, as if the actions we take with our bodies are by definition morally neutral. Then again, when someone isn't trying to justify themselves, they are able to see how foolish this would be, applied to all situations. I have never committed adultery in the strict sense, but I can give you all sorts of reasons and examples of its harm. Again, when you're not implicating someone you're talking to, you're a trenchant social critic; when you do, you're a judgmental zealot, with too much time on his hands.
Anybody remember the "Sister Act" movies? Quite frankly, I think they give a more positive picture of the Catholic Church than the Vatican press office. Anyway, Kathy Najimy quite brilliantly played "Sister Mary Patrick," the most optimistic, joyous nun you've ever seen. In one scene, she's teaching these kids at St. Francis School in San Francisco about sex. One of the teens asked her how a celibate nun could teach them about sex. She said, "You don't have to taste the doughnut to know it's sweet." That's got layers: 1. She compared sex to another good thing; 2. She hinted that her vocation involved giving up a good thing for a better thing; and 3. She rejected the premise that a person has to know something personally to know the truth about it. Particularly with vice, it is never necessary to do vice to understand that it is vice. In fact, saying that one must experience something to know its moral qualities likely implies that only the practical and pragmatic reasons to do or not do an act are relevant to the decision.
It may be prudent to give a particularly vicious person the pragmatic reasons not to do an evil act, but if we want to form people in the virtues, it would be harmful to stop at the practical. Maybe that's a big part of the trouble we've had lately in the Catholic Church: we haven't given people the truest and best reasons to do or believe the things we do and believe.
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