AmericanPapist Comments
Thomas
Several years ago I was depressed to find Lisa S. Cahill in "Theological Studies" proposing that we look into marriages that have died and are dead as to the possibility of there being a Catholic divorce in such cases. That was the new moral theology error equivalent to the occasional modern biblical critic's error in seeing the Lazarus rising as fictive and not empirical.
It is precisely we who see the dead as rising...be it a man called Lazarus then...Christ later....and ourselves in the future...and a dead marriage rising with prayer and faith.
Cahill wanted a way out...a legal mechanism of the Church.... a way out of that dead marriage crisis... in case faith didn't work. To use a figure of speech from Sartre, Cahill wanted people to be able to do their trapeze act in life...but with a net below.
What if the politician favored slavery? . . . ethnic cleansing? . . . smoking in restaurants?
What if the Bishops' or Priests' own consciences preclude them from giving Communion to such a politician? . . . Is it only the liberal politician whose conscience must be respected?
I must be too simple minded . . . I can't seem to accept the notion of "civility" being used in connection with a practice that involves the torturous dismemberment of a human child moments before his or her birth.
You need to separate giving communion and entering political debate. The church should do both but we can't get the two confused. She doesn't really deal with Abp Burke's canon law argument. Should the bishops ignore canon 915? Can they ignore the entire law and just act on their own opinions? That does not seem like something liberals would support.
Yes, the whole canon 915 and the Church's approach to publicly dissenting Catholic politicians is distinct from, albeit related to, Cahill's take on how Catholics should approach the election.
Lisa Cahill, whatever her good intentions might be, is a known public dissenter who should not be allowed to teach in an institution that is called Catholic, and who certainly shouldn't be instructing Catholic bishops as to how Catholic voters should form their consciences.
I think Diogenes does better when he lets Cahill's own words convict her. When he uses the over-simplistic, overused expression "seamless garment," his comments lack precision and it smacks of name-calling.
As Fr. Pavone has noted, there is a sense in which we can and should see the connectedness (or seamlessness) of all life issues, even as we prioritize "non-negotiables" like abortion. The problem with Cahill's view is her her willingness to compromise and spin Church teaching (not to mention good morals, the life of the most vulnerable, and the common good) so as to justify supporting more liberal political candidates and positions.
"poverty in the world's richest country" oh you mean the USA - the same USA that spent more real dollars on 'redistribution of wealth' from one citizen to another than any other country spends 'on the poor'?: The only 'blind eye' being turned to the poor in the USA is that one belonging to the Federal bureaucracy-leftwing church 'complex' that refuses to see their role in the perpetuation of poverty of our inner cities.
"justify torture in the name of national security" torture is not a definition-less word. But many insist on using it like they do "racist" or "fascist" - not as a descriptive as much as a swear word.
But since we're talking policies, torture, like "marriage" has boundaries. And one boundary involves permanent bodily harm: burning, crushing, cutting off body parts.
Scaring someone is not torture. Making someone think they're going to die is not torture. It's not "nice" but it simply does not fall into the classic definition of torture. Neither is beating someone up, making them uncomfortable, or using impolite language.
"or vote against health insurance for poor children" Please. SCHIP is not the be-all and end-all solution to "children without health care". Indeed the proposed plan wasn't even about children - unless 25 year olds are now "children".
Being against MORE federal spending when we're already in a huge deficit is not to be FOR poverty, torture, and the intentional killing of innocents.
Words mean things people. But much of the Leftist political and theological movement is about re-defining words to suit their goals, not winning arguments or solving problems.
Now if we are going to expand the definition of something - be it marriage or torture, let's have the honesty to acknowledge that we're expanding the definition.
We've gone from defining conception as the beginning of life to "the vague mystery of when human life begins" thanks to the need to allow for Plan B and other abortion 'options'.
We've gone from clear understandings of where rights come from to a positivist idea that it's all the creation of judges reading tea leaves of the Constitution's "penumbras".
I'm not in favor of waterboarding....but neither can I see it as torture as classically defined. Not all assaults are homicidal and not all abuse is lasting. To explode crucial definitions to mean ANYTHING is dangerous and actually will lead to more real torture than less...because once a boundary can be willy nilly moved in one direction, it can just as easily be moved IN THE OTHER.
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