Safe Haven

The US Catholic Bishops note , "Catholics often face difficult choices about how to vote. This is why it is so important to vote according to a well-formed conscience that perceives the proper relationship among moral goods. A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who favors a policy promoting an intrinsically evil act, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, deliberately subjecting workers or the poor to subhuman living conditions, redefining marriage in ways that violate its essential meaning, or racist behavior, if the voter's intent is to support that position. In such cases, a Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil. At the same time, a voter should not use a candidate's opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity."

I was going to post about the paragraphs in the universal Catechism about murder and abortion. Those paragraphs (say, 2268-2275) will never be a waste of your time. Yet it seemed more important to say this: One cannot actually reason if one's attempts to do so are nothing more than expressions of disdain for someone else's hypocrisy. It may be startlingly satisfying to make broad statements about one's opponents, and their alleged moral inferiority, but that's not an argument. Let's get practical: It is either always morally acceptable to obtain an abortion, or it is never morally acceptable to obtain an abortion. Nuance--for the moment--is for sissies, and sophists. I'll grant you that hard cases exist; that's why they're hard. "Abortion" for this discussion means the deliberate killing, by any means, of a human being in his or her mother's body. Make a choice. If it had to be one or the other, and all the squeamish hem-hawers and ...