Give me liberty or give me...

On this day in 1775, Patrick Henry gave his famous speech in which he said, "Give me liberty, or give me death." I thought with the 150 or so protests for religious liberty that it might be fitting to post the text of Henry's speech. Here it is. One of my favorite lines: "Mr. President, it is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope."

No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope that it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen, if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve.

This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty towards the majesty of heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings. 

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?

For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth -- to know the worst and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House?

Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with these warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation -- the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motives for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies?

No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer on the subject? Nothing.

We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer.

Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament.

Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope.

If we wish to be free -- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending -- if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak -- unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?

Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable -- and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, "Peace! Peace!" -- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Genocide is on its way

This post might seem a bit disjointed, but so be it. I've been brooding about the coming dark days in bioethics, indeed, they are upon us already. And it's not just about people believing that words create rather than reflect reality, although that is a significant part of it.

Genocide. It is leading to genocide.

In the words-create-reality department, people are are defining "person" however they wish, and are exceedingly bold in asserting that it is perfectly permissible to kill non-persons. Non-persons do not have rights. Non-persons have no capacity to assess value or experience pain or pleasure. Non-persons' value to the rest of us is determined by others. If there is no value to the non-person, the non-person can be killed.  Right now, persons are defined in terms of cognitive ability. Unborn and recently born babies, and persons -- ahem, I mean human individuals -- in a persistent coma, for instance, are non-persons. And we can kill them if we want to. Well, laws against that sort of thing might persist, but it's not unethical (in this view).

This was all outlined in a recent article under the term "after-birth abortion." Termination of a pregnancy, after the pregnancy is over by giving birth. Talk about denial of reality.

But note: It's about two things: The right to define person as one wishes. And the right to kill those defined to be non-persons. If yesterday a person was any living individual of the species Human, and today we say a person is an individual of the species human having the capacity to think, then it is only a matter of time before people like me are defined as not being able to think.

Meanwhile, the influential Muslim religious leaders in Saudi Arabia are advocating the destruction of Christian churches. The desecration and destruction of churches. You see, in that mentality, if you do not belong to their religion, you are not thinking clearly. You therefore do not have rights. You are a non-person.

I have wondered why the media are reluctant to publish stories on the slaughter of Christians at the hands of Muslims in Africa. They give some lip service to the plight of Egyptian Christians, but not the details. Why does the denial of a building permit for a mosque near Ground Zero in NYC cause an uproar, and the genocide of Christians in sub-Sarahan Africa get nothing?

Call me cynical, but I believe the media and the people behind the media are jealous. The media can only use ridicule and spin to eliminate Christians, especially Catholics, and have to look with green-eyed envy on those who just go out and bomb churches with families inside worshipping God.

I am telling you: It is only a matter of time before Christianity is considered a mental disease, one indicating the loss of person-defining mental faculties. OK, we're quite a ways from that, I admit. But we are without a doubt heading in that direction. Just fill out the table below, and notice just who is pro-killing and who isn't.

	Mainstream Media	Liberals	Conservatives
Pro-abortion
Pro-euthanasia
Pro-assisted suicide
Pro-embryonic stem cell research
Pro-atheism
Pro-moral relativism
Pro-enemies of Christianity

So, you can't tell me that godless people preoccupied with having the right to kill others to better society are kindly souls looking out for the little guy.

Nobody who has a godless preoccupation with the right to kill others is a kindly soul. They might be nice to the people they like, just as Sister What's-her-name of the (so-called) Catholic Health Association is well-liked by the media. Because she's a "good" Catholic, the kind that rolls over when asked, barfs up the party line on cue, and undermines Catholic doctrine reflexively. Everyone else is a just a few words away from being redefined as a non-person. And what do we know about non-persons? That's right children! It's OK to kill non-persons!

Genocide is on its way. Can't happen here? We'll see.

Dark days are coming

Man, I can't tell you how disheartening I find things these days. 


First of all, people really seem to think that words create realities. That is to say, if we assert something, we define things the way they really are. So if we make it illegal for insurance companies not to cover unethical products and procedures, we can "say" that people who buy that insurance are not buying coverage for those products and procedures. And honestly believe it to be true, that people are not buying that kind of coverage when in fact they are. If we define "marriage" to include same-sex pairs, then marriage itself includes them, even though the life-long commitment of one man to one woman with the prospect of raising a family who are the biological or adopted children of both of them, which is not the same any any same-sex relationship no matter how committed, etc.


And people who think like that grow up to become president.


At SecondhandSmoke, Wesley Smith has a post about human exceptionalism. I made the mistake of omitting the word "other" as in "other animals," to distinguish humans from animals. I said, "When animals can write novels about empathizing with humans and philosophizing about rights, then I think we can deny human exceptionalism." And people got on my case over there with comments like, "Animals CAN do the same, last I checked human beings are animals. You should have learned this in 5th grade." It's stupidity like that, that could make me doubt human exceptionality. Except for the fact that only humans can be THAT exceptionally... well... stupid.


And then there's moral relativism. There was a post last month at KevinMD about abortion, written by a student of medical ethics who was all gung-ho for moral relativism as if he had just discovered the first antibiotics. My first comment there was about the moral relativism itself, not about abortion. I mean, people really do believe that "It's wrong to force your morality on others." But in preventing people from forcing their morality on others, you force your morality on them. The principle is violated in enforcing it. Therefore, it's self-contradictory and therefore a false principle of ethics. Yet, people say it, and in saying it think that it becomes a reality.


Bioethics is fast becoming an exercise in crafting plausible rationales. That is to say, SPIN. It is becoming a matter of controlling the dialog, of speaking the loudest, of repeating your view until people believe it, and of shutting up the opposition.


And the forces of darkness are very active. And very powerful, at least in terms of politics.


Authentic Bioethics, however, remains committed to an authentic anthropology and the rule of Charity as the form of all ethical reasoning.


I hang in there because I know how it all ends. It's getting through the darkness that's hard.

Playing with Fire

Seven-year-old kids lighting fires in church. Under the watchful gaze of parents, but sometimes all on their own. 

No, this isn't arson. It's piety.

I'm talking, of course, about votive candles. I especially love to watch children light the candles, although I do believe I see the kid inside of the adults come out when they light candles, too. Imagine it: What would get kids into big trouble at home, they are encouraged to do at church, so it's a moment of great joy for them.

They grab the wooden stick and hold it into the flame of one of the lit candles. They hold it there not just long enough to get the stick lit, but good and long, to get it good and lit. Their eyes light up almost as much as the stick. 

Then they pick a candle to light and make sure it's good and lit too. Then they pull away the stick and watch the flame slowly crawl up its length. Not real long, but long enough to stoke their fascination with fire, and as long as they can get away with before they get scolded for fooling around.

Now comes the part with style: The extinguishing of the stick.

Some blow it out, risking of course putting out some of the candles in the process. The risk is all the greater for those who intentionally blow gingerly, to make the fire dance a bit before it goes out.

Others simply put the stick into the tray of sand and ashes. These are typically adults, inhibited as we are from externalizing what goes on inside our heads.

But the boys, they externalize. And what exactly goes on inside their heads? Some thrust the flaming stick into the sand like they were skewering an Orc. Others torture the flame (or the Orc for all I know), using several smaller thrusts until it goes out.

And then they turn, kneel at the rail, and offer a prayer. Perhaps part of their mind is saying a Hail Mary. And the other part is planning the next Orc-skewering.

I don't like my kids to handle fire, but this is one exception, and they know it. They save their quarters and dollars, and if they don't have any money, they ask me for some, just so they can play with fire at church. And if I have small bills or quarters, I give it to them. At first I would go with them to make sure they didn't fool around (too much). But now I just watch from the pew.

Playing with fire without getting hurt is part of growing up. Risking pain for piety is also a good lesson to learn.

But there is more to learn than that from a real flame. Every time I watch one of my kids or anyone else light a real candle at church, I am reminded of the cheesiness of the electric votive candles. Seriously: Playing with fire, or pushing a button to make fake fire. What lessons are learned in each case?

I hate electric votive lights, of course. They are just plain stupid. I used to think they were ok, and and that they were probably installed because of insurance issues involving open fires inside a public building. Now I am convinced they were installed to diminish piety. To all you pastors out there with electric votive candles: I am NEVER going to pay MONEY to you for the privilege of turning on a cheesy LED light. Sorry. Our God and our Saints don't need the light, and I can pray without using excess electricity. For FREE. Those who don't light candles don't care. And those who do are discouraged by the artificiality and cheesiness of it. It makes the devotion itself cheesy, and makes us not want to do it. I truly believe that this is the intended effect of replacing real votive candles with electric ones, so that they can get rid of them altogether. ("We modernized with electric candles. And practically no one lit any. Since no one is interested in votive candles anymore, we put the rack into the basement." Get it? People are interested in votive candles. Switch to electric. People lose interest because they're cheesy. Claim the lack of interest is in votive candles.)

But a real candle, now that's worth a buck. Even a little tea light will burn for a couple of hours anyway, and the flame is real. The flame first of all symbolizes many things, such as the Holy Spirit, and the light of Christ. It reminds us of the (hopefully real) candles on the altar, the Easter candle, and the candles used at the vigil Masses of Christmas and Easter. And the latter Mass includes the blessing of fire. Most people at home light candles only on special occasions, such as birthdays and festive, formal dinners. Whoever heard of electric birthday candles? An electric light, by virtue of its light and not what it is, may symbolize the light of Christ, but we are so inundated with electric lights that the associations are more toward commerce and garishness than they are toward piety.

A real flame also interacts with the air around it, the natural flow of air caused by Divine providence in the organization of the world, and the gusts caused by passersby. Human and divine activity cause the flickering of the flame of other people's prayers. We're all involved. Electric lights flicker artificially and technologically on their own without any reference or reaction to the world around them. It is fake flickering, an initiation of involvement and interaction.

A real flame generates both light and heat. Along with a little smoke. As with incense, the heat and smoke of the candle rise up, symbolizing our prayers. LED lights especially generate little heat, and so nothing symbolizes our prayers except the artificial light.

We light our votive candles from those already lit. Our individual prayers pick up where the prayers of others leave off, and others light their candles from ours.  Our prayers are united in a single shared flame. Electric lights are wholly individual in this regard, too. "My" button turns on "my" light.

Candles consume real matter--they are burnt offerings. Moreover, ideally, they are made of minimally artificial components, namely, natural wax and cotton wick, elements that God provides through HIs providence. Electric lights consume electricity. Perhaps somewhere, miles and miles away at the power plant, some bit of uranium or coal (also provided by God) is being consumed to generate the electricity that electric lights use. But it is not "my" uranium. When a person puts money in the slot to buy a candle, that candle is his. The wax and the wick belong to him. He could, in theory, take it home. But instead he burns it up, serving no practical purpose of light or heat, but as an offering to God, a sacrifice. I suppose one could say there is a kind of sacrifice to light an electric light, but the light itself is not a sacrificial offering, it is merely light. It costs a buck, a person might as well put an extra dollar into the collection. Or not.

Finally, there is no fun in electric lights. We constantly flip switches to turn lights on and off. There is no danger and no room for imagination. There is no responsibility to be careful, no possibility of error. Perhaps electric lights limit the possibility of mischief, too, since kids if left unattended could wreak havoc at a rack full of votive candles. But the problem in that case is not the candles, its the discipline that those kids need. While I would scold any kids misusing votive candles, I would not for the world deprive them of the opportunity to get into trouble because doing so deprives us of the reality of a votive flame lifting our prayer to God.

Does any of this have anything to do with bioethics? I suppose there are lessons to be learned, but I don't want to stretch things too far. Suffice it to say that we are easily seduced by technology. We often do things because we can, and not because they are the best or most right things to do. Technology simply is not always the answer when it comes to the most important things in life. We seem to enjoy substituting reality with artificiality, the natural with the man-made.


And when we try to do things our way, we also play with fire. I'm not talking about little candles though. Think brimstone.

Bioethics and a Tale of Two Sermons

I have to admit, sometimes I rue going to church on Ash Wednesday. More often than not because of my work schedule, I have to go to a parish not my own and end up with a defective homily. My own parish is devoted to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite and the homilies are usually excellent. If anything, the (minor) defects I encounter -- in my opinion, which is to say I could be wrong -- tend toward excessive rigor, but even then I would rather have the homilist set the bar too high than too low. Because when it's set too low, I (and I would think most people) tend to take advantage of the low mark.

I began this post on Thursday after Ash Wednesday, to whine a bit about the homily I heard then at a "mainstream" parish, but didn't get a chance to put it up until now, after Sunday Mass and the homily at my own parish.

By Divine Providence, these two homilies exemplify the point I originally wanted to make. Let me start with Ash Wednesday. The general thinness of the Ordinary Form aside, the homily basically gave everyone permission to forego penance this Lent. The key sentence was this: "Rather than 'giving up' this Lent, give of yourself to others."

(What follows, I promise, was written before I heard the homily on Sunday.) Now, the discipline of Lent consists in three things: Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. All three. Not one, not two, but three. 

The Lenten discipline of prayer means we should pray more, and more fervently, to renew our personal prayer life, to let prayer cover more and more of our lives, our thoughts, and our actions throughout the whole day. And to draw closer to God.

Fasting pertains first of all to food, but also to other earthly goods in which we tend to indulge too much. This is where the tradition of "giving up" for Lent fits in. We fast simply speaking, but also from candy, from in-between meal snacks, from TV and electronic diversions of all sorts, from good things that are not really necessary and that tend to distract us from the pursuit of holiness and to impede virtue. We "give up" (in the sense of stop doing and not in the sense of surrender) to give more room to the effects and goals of our renewed discipline of prayer.

Almsgiving likewise pertains first to material giving, to money, to making sacrifices of the goods we possess to help those who have less. But it also pertains to what the Ash Wednesday homilist meant by giving of yourself to others. Time. Attention. Help. Comfort. What in the old days were called corporal works of mercy. I have no contention with the value of giving of yourself.

The problem with the homily is this. The homilist basically gave everyone permission to forego fasting for almsgiving. In so doing, he gave everyone a dispensation from one third of Lenten discipline and diluted the meaning of another third. As a mere priest, he overstepped his authority. As a homilist, he stumbled in his duty. (As a liturgist, he also left a lot to be desired, but the relationship of the Mass to bioethics is a topic for another entry.) He gave us permission to be wimps.

The time has long come and gone to abandon wimpy spirituality in the Catholic Church. (Along with wimpy music and wimpy liturgies… but that's another story.)

Even the bishops, as wonderful and miraculous as it is to see them stand together against the Obama Edict, seem to miss the point in terms of bioethics. This really is not only about religious freedom. It's also about how the US Government has made it illegal to avoid complicity in products and procedures that are themselves inherently unethical. Contraception and abortion are not really religious issues. We need the bishops also to take the next step, and be much stronger in proclaiming the evils of the things the Obama Edict mandates for everyone, not just for Catholics. This is not about religion. This is about right and wrong. Doing the right thing is not for wimps.

I want to emphasize that I put these thoughts in writing for this post before Sunday. On Sunday, the homilist said almost the exact same thing as I said above. He didn't talk about the Obama Edict (he did that two weeks earlier in no uncertain terms), but he did say that the value of the disciplines of Lent consist in all three things, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and not in just one or two of them.

As I said in my Ash Wednesday post, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are also the heart of authentic bioethics. Without them, we cannot hope to reason well on bioethical issues. We form ourselves and our ability to know right from wrong and to choose what is right through what we do. If what we do is prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, then we are much better equipped to make right decisions on every aspect of our lives, including issues in bioethics.

Bioethics is not the realm of so-called (and self-proclaimed) "experts": health professionals, academicians, lawyers, and politicians, and their surrogates in think tanks and lobbying groups. It's for real people, and it's not really all that complex. Who is the final decision maker with respect to contraception? The government? A committee of health professionals and lawyers? No. It's the person who uses it, and next is the person who prescribes it. That is where the decision is made. Same with abortion. IVF. Euthanasia. Private people, people who go to church on Ash Wednesday and hear lame homilies, who go from there to their doctor's appointment -- they are the ones making the decisions in bioethics. Say that decision pertains to contraception. Contraception is easy and reliable. NFP on the other hand, is equally reliable but requires periodic abstinence, a little effort and self-control. So if the patient is in the habit of foregoing "giving up" because of homilies like the one I heard on Ash Wednesday, what will be her decision do you think?

While we need to resist the Obama Edict, by the same token we can cut it off at the knees by reaching out to these final decision makers and equipping them to know right from wrong in the moment they make their decisions. By strengthening them. What if your personal trainer said, "Rather than working out, take a walk now and then during the day and be more active"? What kind of shape will you be in? The defect is setting the two in opposition instead of in sync. "In addition to working out, be more active." That is, be in the habit of being fit, as a way of life. Fitness isn't only for the gym. What good is it if you work out a few times a week and then are an indulgent, lazy couch potato the rest of the time? It makes it easy to slack off, and those who work out know that every now and then you need to renew your resolve because you do slack off.

Spiritual fitness is a lot like physical fitness. It is a way of life, not an occasional thing. Lent is one of those times to renew one's resolve spiritually. Ash Wednesday comes once a year. It's a great day for a great homily.

My wife and kids went to our parish for Mass on Ash Wednesday, after spending some time outside of an abortion clinic. She said there was no homily at all. Sometimes the EF Mass can be like that. They were lucky. 

With all due respect to the homilist I had, I am not taking his advice. I appreciate his consecrated hands and his priestly ordination for the Sacraments, and I thank God for him. But he has given me permission to not listen to him. What a shame.

I'll listen to the priest in my parish though.

Ash Wednesday and Authentic Bioethics

Prayer. Fasting. Almsgiving. What on earth do such thing have to do with the principles of bioethics and bioethical issues? Catholics especially might see that these activities could be ways of combatting the evils of abortion, euthanasia, and other controversial issues, as a general way of combatting evil. But are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving in themselves a concern of bioethics?

I say they are, if bioethics is to be authentic.

There are many who want to cut bioethics out of its larger context, to limit its scope, and thereby have an easier time justifying the things they want to do. So, they limit the concern of bioethics to technologies and procedures that pertain to human bodily life and well being. Spiritual concerns are beyond the scope of bioethics in their mind.

They also tend to stack the deck in their favor, using our pluralistic society as an excuse. They maintain that bioethical issues have to be deliberated on non-religious terms to be valid. But this begins the deliberations on a false foundation. Anthropology drives ethics, and if reality and therefore man are godless, the ethics one employs will be rather different from those who understand man to be spiritual.

Man is created by God in His image. I cannot prove this to an atheist, but then again neither can atheists prove their position to me since it is equally unprovable. So I will not try. I hold that man is the image of God because man has a higher degree of life, a more complete goodness of being, because of his Godlike powers of intellect and will, which are absent from all other earthly creatures. If God exists, He can only be perfectly and purely intellectual and powerful in His designs, perfectly good, attributes setting Him infinitely apart from all other beings. These traits set man apart from other creatures. These traits are how man resembles God.

These traits are manifested bodily. Man is the image of God with his body, not because his body looks like God, but because his Godlike traits are manifested bodily. What man does to and in the body reflect on how well he images God. Either he will do things in a way that resembles what God would do, or he will do things in a way that resemble something (or perhaps someone) else.

Two things need to be said here. First is that if God exists, man’s ultimate and highest good is God Himself. This does not mean that we do nothing to combat suffering and disease and so forth. Indeed, we must use our intellect and will to combat these things as best we can out of charity for our neighbors who are suffering. But we must also keep things in proper order. Suffering needs to be combatted—but it is not the greatest evil because it does not threaten man’s greatest good. In fact, suffering can be a path toward God, Who is man’s greatest good. I will get more into that in a minute, because it is sort of the point of this post. Secular bioethics, however, considers man’s greatest good to be his bodily life.  If that is true, then suffering is a threat to man’s greatest good, and looms as man’s greatest enemy, to be combatted with any means. Pleasure and bodily happiness of various kinds become things to be obtained at any cost and it becomes impolite reprimand anyone for doing what makes him putatively happy. Indeed, you become an inflictor of suffering if you stand in the way of pleasure or relief of suffering. You ask, “What good comes from abortion?” And you get the response, “Who are you to stand in the way of women’s autonomy and happiness and impose your morality on others? You want women barefoot, pregnant, and going in the back alley for coat-hanger abortions that will leave many dead. And it’s all your fault!”

You can see already that secular bioethics depends greatly on relativism. Relativism of course is inherently self-contradictory.  “It's wrong to tell other people what’s right and wrong. You have to let others do what they want. I can tell you what’s right and wrong, but you can’t tell others.” The principle is violated in speaking it. And, usually, it boils down to “I” don’t want “you” telling me what to do. It’s a way of getting you to shut up.

Secondly, if God is man’s greatest good, then bioethics must have concern for this fact in deliberating bioethical issues. Indeed, the very first principle of authentic bioethics is not to harm the image of God, neither in the patient nor the agent. Does IVF aid or impede attainment of man’s greatest good? Does man—the IVF technicians, the prospective parents, the donors of ova or sperm—align his actions and desires with godly principles or with other kinds of principles in using IVF?

Prayer, fasting, almsgiving. These things form man more and more as an image of God. They reveal and refine him. They bring wayward bodily desires into better control of the intellect and will. They order man to his neighbors. They equip us with the capacity to reason well in bioethical issues. To want what is better to want. They are absolutely necessary for bioethics to be authentic, and thus are (or ought to be) a direct concern of bioethics.

Take IVF and contraception. These two stand as extremes against the middle. The main problem with both is a distortion of the proper love people should have for their offspring, not to mention each other, and the proper regard of the physician for the patients. IVF and contraception are both egotistical determinations as to what is a good outcome of sexual intimacy. And they are both means toward ends that have other, more ethical options. 

With contraception, let me say that sometimes it is reasonable to postpone pregnancy. It is a question of mean. This particular means, however, is a deficiency of love for future children, who are seen as an evil to be avoided rather than a gift to be cherished, a wondrous outcome of physical love. People who use contraception believe they know better than God what is a good outcome of sexual intimacy. Instead, people could use natural family planning, which as a method of postponing pregnancy is highly effective. But it does nothing to sexual intimacy to rob it of its intrinsic power of procreation. It requires periodic abstinence and some self-control, but these are virtues and worth having. The world does not revolve around the ability to gratify one’s sexual urges, as vehement as they may be, believe or not. At any rate, contraception puts the ability to gratify that urge ahead of all else, and sees the natural outcome of sexual intimacy—one’s own child—not as a gift, but as a burden, as a suffering, as an evil to be combatted. If God is not part of the equation, then perhaps that is so. Children are just objects, part of the paraphernalia of our lives, and not images of God themselves, a suffering one day, a status symbol the next, a thing to be resented or loved for the value one gets from it.

With IVF, it is just the opposite. (I am speaking here of IVF generally and used by married couples. IVF used by unmarried and especially same-sex couples raises additional ethical issues.) The child is desired to excess, and the prospective parents have a stop-at-nothing attitude to obtain one. In the process, the child becomes less and less a gift and a thing more and more made, acquired, achieved by one’s own efforts. If God does not exist and is not part of the equation, then why should a child not be manufactured? The child is not an image of God, not a gift, but an object, part of our trappings. It’s all about us and our desires. With IVF, lack of a child is an evil to be combatted, but the child is loved inordinately, not for who he is, but for the value we get from him, and that value—status, self-fulfillment, whatever, but not the child himself—is raised above all else. Moreover, IVF leaves the underlying infertility untreated, and the infertility is the real medical issue. By the way, NaPro Technology has a much higher success rate than IVF, because it treats the underlying infertility and helps the couple achieve a pregnancy naturally.

In between contraception and IVF lies virtue. Loving children the right way. Having recourse to sexual intimacy, not without rational concerns for one’s lot, but with trust in God. Working with the way the human body works and healing its diseases rather than working against the body or superseding its needs. Relying on God. Having self-control. Being giving of oneself to one’s spouse and future children.

Prayer. Fasting. Almsgiving.

The heart of authentic bioethics.

Liberalism and the lack of ethical reasoning ability

This is breaking news: A group of religious leaders is providing a united front on how President/Emperor Obama has violated religious rights with his mandate that health insurance must provide coverage for free products and procedures related to birth control, including those that abort pregnancies.

Democrats are saying "they had been denied the ability to present witnesses who might support the government stance or speak for the rights of women to reproductive health coverage. They asked why not one of the 10 witnesses at the hearing was a woman."


OK, so if one of the 10 witnesses was a woman, would the Obama Dictate suddenly become constitutional? Would it suddenly become ethical?


Now, I know what the concern is. It seems like it's all one-sided. And perhaps that's not fair. On the other hand, having this rule crammed down everyone's throat by presidential edict is not really fair either. AND, the Obama administration did not seek fair and balanced input when they crafted the the rule. NOW the Democrats are worried about fairness? Where was fairness when the rule was written? Where was fairness when Obama formulated his Dictate last week?


Furthermore, ethics isn't about sides, nor is it about rationales to support an action, nor is it about majorities or numbers.


It's about right and wrong. 


Even if 150 million American women DEMANDED free birth control....
Even if every guru or pundit the Democrats could find to the tune of a majority of voting age citizens of this country supported Obama...
Even if there were a billion reason that society would benefit from trampling on the conscience rights of others...


NONE of that would:
a) make it ethical or constitutional to illegalize health insurance that did not cover these products and services
b) make it ethical or constitutional to force religious organizations to violate their conscience 
c) make it ethical or constitutional to intrude upon what should be a free commercial exchange
d) make the products and services in question ethical in themselves.


The majority does not rule absolutely. That is WHY we have a Constitution. Democracy is majority rule, on the things open to the majority deciding. The majority cannot decide to trample the rights of the minority, or else there would be no argument against slavery, for instance, or discrimination based on age, race, gender, or any other parameter. All aspects of civil rights are a defense of the minority against a possibly dominating majority. 


Declaring a thing to be ethical does not make it so. Not even a majority can make an evil thing to be good simply by declaring it so. We do live in a society of positive ethics. And by "positive" I do not mean the opposite of negative, but something related to the act of positing. In other words, things become good because I declare that they are good. In the area of marriage, we are positing that cats are the same as dogs because of the similarities between them. Define the word "dog" to include meowing mouse-chasers if you wish, but that does not make a cat to become a dog.


The end does not justify the means. First of all, if women have a right to regulate their fertility, that's fine. That does not mean the have a right to any means whatsoever to do it. That right means that the government cannot interfere with the exercise of that right, but it does not mean that women should have free access to any product or service they desire, nor to force others to provide them. The right to free speech does not give me the right to any space in the New York Times. It does not give me the right to prime-time TV slots on major networks. It does not give me the right to an audience. It does not give the right to any venue. It gives me the right to speak my mind wherever I happen to be. The right to regulate her own fertility does not mean free products and services that in themselves are unethical, paid for by someone who does not want to pay for them.


Plausible rationales are not the same as sound reasoning. Plausible rationales are a sign of cleverness, not ethical thinking. If you plan a murder and make it look like self-defense and the claim holds up in court, you still committed murder and you have deceived the court at the same time. It doesn't BECOME self-defense because you can make others believe it is. It remains in truth murder, made even worse by lies. So, Democrats can line up as many as they please who support Field Marshal for Life Obama, it simply does not add up to changing the nature of the thing he's doing. 


It's not a matter of perspective or opinion. Opinion about what the sun is does not change what it is. You can believe it to be this or that, but it is a star powered by atomic fusion. There is no opinion about that. The Obama Dictate is not ethical and constitutional for those who believe it is, but not for the rest of us. And even if it were so, those who like the Obama Dictate have no right to force their opinion on the rest of us.


All laws are forcing someone's morality on the rest of society. One of the things about this Obama Dictate is that it is posited as a defense of the morality of women against having the morality of their employers forced upon them. But you can see that it amounts to Obama forcing his morality on religious organizations, in the name of "It's wrong to force your morality on others." The adage is violated in saying it: You force your morality on others by demanding they not force their morality on others. What people who say this really mean is "YOU cannot force your morality on ME." It is NOT "It's wrong to for people to force their morality on others." The latter is a lie. The former is what it's really about: ME forcing my morality on YOU, so that YOU let ME do what I want, while I make YOU feel like you're being mean and totalitarian against ME -- BUT it's really just the other way around.


At any rate, these SIX ethical fallacies -- ALL of them -- are at work in the brief quotes above. And they are at work in Democrat ethical reasoning in general.


By illegalizing health insurance that does not cover objectionable and elective products and procedures, by fiat and not by any democratic process, without gaining input from concerned parties, Obama has demonstrated his ethical abilities.


Or lack thereof.