Friday, October 2, 2020
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
The Perennial Problem
Did you hear the one about the corrupt bishop, accused of coercively soliciting donations, hiring cronies, and even sexual assault? Where he was removed from his diocese but permitted to remain a bishop if he provided restitution to those he robbed by his actions? (He did so through a loan). Where his superior—who nominated him based on his holiness as a youth—was accused of either being blind or complicit? Where he outright lied to the Pope when the case was heard?
You can stop your speculating over which current bishop I’m talking about, because you’re about 1600 years off. The bishop’s name was Antoninus, his superior was St. Augustine, and the Pope was St. Boniface I. We learn about this sordid affair in St. Augustine’s Letter 20*, written about AD 422.§ Even by today’s standards, the situation is startling, and reminds us that even the saints could be just as tone deaf and get things just as wrong as those shepherds the Church today.
I don’t bring this up to say, “It happened back then too… it can’t be helped.” Of course, it should always be acted on in every age. Rather, I bring this up to remind despairing Catholics that scandals in the Church are not something new, and even the greatest saints mishandled affairs out of attempted compassion to a sinner claiming to repent, of being unsure if the accusations were justified, or ignorance of all the facts.
The fact is, our Popes and bishops have always been human beings in need of salvation, with a finite knowledge of the events around them. Yes, corruption does exist in the Church and needs to be rooted out. Yes, sometimes the response to corruption is misguided. Yes, Canon 212 does give us the right to respectfully make our needs known when we think the response is unjust. But this does not give us the excuse to disobey them when they act as successors to the Apostles. We must not rashly assume evil intention or bad will when a decision turns out to be problematic… as it sometimes will.
We should be praying for the Pope and clergy in communion with him, that they guide the Church wisely and well. We should also be careful to see if we have the proper interpretation of the facts before speaking out on an issue, and we should attempt to see if we can understand why one could have made a decision that went wrong.
This is something true regardless of the times we live in.
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(§) The reason for the asterisk: This letter is part of a 29-letter collection discovered after his previous collection of letters was codified. Originally thought to be forgeries, they are now believed to be authentic after analysis. Catholic University of America labels them as 1*-29* with asterisks to avoid having to renumber the 17th century numbering of the 264 letters—which would disrupt previous citations. So, citations of the Saint’s Letter 20 and Letter 20* would refer to two different things.
Friday, September 4, 2020
Exception Overload: Thoughts on a Variant of Whataboutism
A couple of months ago, I wrote about the “whataboutism” in which people point out the moral faults of others to shift the focus away from the issue where their side comes off as second best (a tu quoque fallacy). There is another version of that behavior that I have seen more frequently as we get closer to election day. That version is to list all kinds of exception clauses (“but what about…?”) that are aimed at escaping the obvious but unpopular conclusion.
When the Church specifically states that X is morally wrong, this tactic tries to argue that: while they don’t support a moral evil, they think the accumulation of hypotheticals and conditions—none of them by themselves as grave or graver than the evil under consideration—do meet the requirements of a proportionate reason to do something that enables an evil act.
This usually comes up after Catholic A points out to Catholic B that Party X is openly championing an an evil. Catholic B recites a litany of hypotheticals and conditions that he claims either outweighs the evil Party X is guilty of or reduces the culpability of Party X. Therefore, they argue, the conditions for a proportionate reason exist and they can morally justify voting for Party X.
Obviously, we do not want to force someone to act against conscience. That would mean pressuring them to do what they think is wrong. Some of the concerns are valid. Sometimes the badly formed conscience is sincere. But, in the spiritual works of mercy, we do have obligations to instruct the ignorant and admonish the sinners so they might not do wrong unknowingly or knowingly. So, if the person has formed his conscience wrongly, we do have an obligation to point out what the Church does teach and how they might have gone wrong.
But at other times, the arguments used are simply dishonest. For example, one argument I’ve seen claims that since it was the Supreme Court that decided Roe v. Wade, voting for a pro-abortion candidate for President is not enabling as much harm as claimed. This is dishonest because the dispute over a pro-abortion candidate in the United States is not over whether a President can overrule the Supreme Court (he can’t). It is over whether the candidate intends to harden the defenses of Roe v. Wade against attempts to overturn it, appoint judges to defend it, permit (or increase) government funding for abortion via executive order, sign laws defending abortion while vetoing laws defending life. Using whataboutism to deny this candidate is responsible for the evil of abortion in a way the Church condemns is dishonest, whether the person is sincere in believing it or just using it as an excuse§.
And, except for the most naïve, they know that this reasoning is dishonest because they do point fingers at Catholics on the other side of this political divide for using this reasoning to vote the way they want. So, we are stuck with the bizarre situation of divided Catholics that accuse the other side of making excuses for not following Church teaching on voting while not following it themselves. A Catholic leaning to support the Democrats downplays the serious nature of abortion in their voting considerations. Whether or not they intend it, the result is to ignore their own failures to oppose evil while condemning the failures of the other side. The consequence is, nothing gets done to reform the evils in our country while never considering their own part in this evil situation.
We can’t make excuses. If we know that the Church condemns a policy as evil, even if we feel we need to vote for his opponent, we have an obligation to challenge our candidate on the issues he is wrong for, not make excuses for inaction. But we seldom see that challenge made
Instead we bury the obligation in an avalanche of exceptions and hypotheticals, saying “but what about…?” And if we will do that, it will come up at the final judgment, when we desperately plead, “Lord, when did we see you….” (see Matthew 25:44).
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(§) Yes, this dishonesty works both ways. If it’s wrong to stack up lesser reasons or hypotheticals to claim a proportionate reason exists over abortion, it is also wrong to use these tactics to justify voting for a candidate guilty of other evils condemned by the Church.
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