Catholics love to split hairs to avoid true responsibility for their actions---always have and always will. Such is the nature of the sex paranoid and body negative puritannical double-mindedness that (mis)-informs the church altogether---especially the twisted "fathers".

Meanwhile I stumbled across this website the other day.

1. http://www.jesusneverexisted.com

If you go through the well researched contents of the entire site you will see just how rotten (and pervaded with outright lies) the church has been from day one---even before day one. And right up till now---it features a critique of present time "christian" America.

Truly sickening.

Both anger and tears would be appropriate responses. Especially tears.

Ho hum, Brian could learn alot from your succinct style of expression if nothing else.

Brian, your piece comes across as verbose twaddle (sorry, it really does) and ends with an extremely unsatisfying "so what" sort of conclusion.

It must have been a slow day in the OLO newsroom.

Look, whatever the Pope wishes to "pontificate" about is obviously his business but I would have thought a little intellectual honesty would have been more useful, especially to the people who have suffered at the hands of his employees over the years.

I'm going to check Ho Hum's suggested site but would also recommend Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great) for a lucidly written response to the sort of mumbo jumbo we regularly see wheeled out by our moral guardians on the hill.

Here's something I keep close that I took from Hitchens' book, quoting the philosopher Epicurus on the BIG question:

"Is he willing to prevent evil but not able? Then is he impotent.
Is he able but not willing? Then is he malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

Over to you Brian.

The theory of Proportionalism is possibly the only way the catholic church can see to get out of its conundrum, (edicts laid down by infallible popes in ages past on contraception etc).

Using proportionalism, past judgements on right and wrong rather than being fixed in stone can be reviewed relative to other misdeeds and circumstances.

This gives Ratsinger the chance to change the church without admitting that the old popes were out of touch old fogeys.

Maybe there is a ray of light at the end of the dark tunnel for the Vatican.

Brian, I have not read the moral theologians you refer to. (No one can read everything.) As you expound their position, they appear to be consequentialists, with a view of the logic of action sentences akin to that of Donald Davidson. I suggest they might mean that you cannot give a description of an action that is morally significant (on which moral judgements can be made) unless that description already includes consequences.

Alternative descriptions of an action often refer to different consequences. Killing for example is doing something which causes a death. Killing by poisoning is doing something which poisons a person and thereby causes his/her death. The killing is the poisoning.

If all that is right, then actions can only be judged by their consequences. Motivation is relevant to a judgment of the agent, but it is not itself part of the action. For catholics, a major consequnce of the position would be that the principle of double effect needs major revision.

Is that more or less what you mean?

Gee, if we have to make our own moral decisions based on experience and reason, then what do we have a Church for? I look to the Bible and the Holy Father to give me rules that are definitive, no matter how daft they are, and now he wants to pass the buck back to me and force me to make choices for myself! What do I pay tithes for, anyway?

Seriously, though: can someone explain to me how a 'moral' decision is different from any other kind of decision? So much has been written here lately about moral decisions that I feel I must be missing something, but as far as I can see ALL decisions should be made with the intention of preserving and increasing your own happiness and that of other people. Just what is it that is supposed to make some of them 'moral' and others not?

Brian,
what an interesting explanation of proportionalism to a non-ethicist like myself. I am just not sure to what extent is the Church a priori against proportionalism as you describe it. Benedict in the plane seems to have only said that the Church never applied a proportonalist approach to sexual abuse of minors, but sees/saw it as inherently evil. Also JPII’s “Evangelium Vitae” often quoted as the Church’s teaching against proportionalism, contains only one mention of “proportionalist”, and it is not cleat to me to what extent can this encyclical be seen as a general condemnation of a proportionalist THEORY, (as opposed to its application in various concrete situations). But then, as said, I am not an ethicist.

I am inclined to agree with Shadow Minister that this theory might offer the Church a way out of a too hasty condemnation of two many actions as “inherently” (i.e. irrespective of the context) evil, though sexual abuse of minors should certainly remain one of them.

Sorry, “intrinsically (not inherently) evil” !

1. Whether the author intends this or no, this article shows up the woolly thinking that proportionalism embodies:

Statement A:

“It may well be that a percentage of seminary teaching at the time led
to misunderstanding on the part of some students and the conclusion that some actions, including child abuse, were not inherently wrong and could in some situations be justified. However, Proportionalism rightly understood does not lead to such a conclusion.”

So: Proportionalism does not lead to the conclusion that child abuse could be justified.

Statement B:

“However, it is admitted that some moral rules may be “virtual” absolutes, in the sense that it is hard to envisage the possibility of there ever being a proportionate reason for going against them.”

So: Using proportionalist methodology, it is hard to envisage how child abuse could be justified.

But there is a huge and significant logical difference between saying “ I do not conclude that P” and “It is hard to envisage P”.

Moreover, it is simply not true to say that proportionalism comes to the same conclusion as Benedict XVI on child abuse.

Benedict says child abuse is intrinsically wrong. Not just that it is “hard” to envisage that it could be justified, but that, it being always wrong, it is “impossible” to envisage that it could be justified. Radically different positions.

2.The article also shows that proportionalism is inconsistent. If killing an innocent person is justified where one is certain that many more lives will be saved, then why wouldn’t the less invasive act of child abuse be more than justified in the same circumstances?

3. Catholic theology rules out deliberate killing of the innocent in ANY circumstance whatsoever. Proportionalism’s attempt to justify killing in some circumstances – or, alternatively, to explain why killing the innocent can never be justified, is hopelessly muddled. If one tries to follow McCormick, the leading proportionalist, in his reasoning, one ends up in an intellectual mire.

A refutation of McCormick is available in J.M Finnis: “Fundamentals of Ethics” and in his “Moral Absolutes: Tradition and Revision”. See also Germain Grisez: “Against Consequentialism”.

Ho Hum, I don't think it is fair to make broad sweeping generalisations about Catholics liking to 'split hairs'. That's a billion people united by this common characteristic - quite unlikely. Such generalisations detract substantially from the credibility of your post.

I really don't get how so much anger can be derived from an old man sitting on a plane and saying that there is no justification for abusing children and that, if there are people out there who see some justification, they have been misinformed. Surely this is an example of the Pope acknowledging a problem and looking for its source? Surely that, in turn, is a step towards solving the problem? Maybe I am missing something.