I'm Sorry to Play Grinch, But...

Today is the seventh day of Christmas, the day on which my true love gave me seven swans a-swimming. Did you know, however, that those swans represent the seven sacraments?

If you are Catholic, you may well have heard this story before. From the reign of Elizabeth I until the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829, Catholicism was supressed in England. During this time Catholics couldn't practice the faith openly so they couldn't openly teach the faith to their children. As a result of this they developed various coded ways of passing on the faith. This is where "The Twelve Days of Christmas" comes from, a coded way of passing on certain Catholic beliefs. So the true love represents God the Father and His gifts are various gifts of God to humanity, eg. the partridge represents Jesus, the two turtle doves represent and Old and New Testaments, all the way through to the twelve lords a-leapin' who represent the twelve articles of the Apostles' Creed.

So, what you may have thought was just a pretty childrens' song is both a source of rich theological symbolism and a link to our brave brothers and sister in Christ. It is, I think you will agree, a lovely story. There is, I fear, only one small problem; it isn't true.

Perhaps I should modify that last statement. I can't prove the story isn't true any more than I can prove for certain that there are no fairies at the bottom of my garden. What I can say is that the truth of the story and the existence of the fairies have about as much evidence in their favour.

The theory was first put forward in 1979 by Canadian hymnologist Hugh McKellar. McKellar later admitted that he had no evidence for his theory and that it was based on pure conjecture. Consider the following facts that stand against the theory:

* While we have evidence for the popularity of the song going back as far as 1870, almost 50 years prior to Catholic emancipation, we have no evidence of the song ever being more popular among English Catholics than among Protestants.

* There is no mention of the link in any of the many writing by, for, and/or about English Catholics in the decades following Catholic Emancipation. Indeed, nothing to suggest the link in any Catholic literature prior to McKellar putting forward the theory a century and a half afterwards.

* Of the supposed symbolic meaning, eleven of the twelve refer to beliefs which Catholics and Protestants share. The sole exception is the seven swans, which supposedly represent the sacraments. Aside from these, all eleven 'codes' refer to things that there would be no need for Catholics to teach secretly because the Anglican Church agreed with them. There is, for example, no mention of purgatory, Mary, the saints or the Papacy.

Now, I know some will say, as I've already had it said to me, that, even if this is right, I shouldn't be a spoil sport, if people get joy or comfort for believing this, what harm does it do? Well, I think it does do some harm. Don't misunderstand me, no, I don't think the sky is going to fall because people have a mistaken belief about the history of a Christmas carol. I do see, however, two bits of harm being done:

First, we Christians protest, rightly in my view, when myths about history are promoted by our opponents. When atheists, for example, promote rubbish about Jesus being only one of a long line of pagan deities whose mother was a virgin and who was born on December 25th, we object. Well, if we are going to object when our opponents do it, we need to not do it ourselves.

Second, God gave us intellects to follow the evidence and to know the truth. Believing something which goes against the evidence because that something sounds nice or makes us feel good helps to build the bad habit of misusing the intellect. It is a vice. It is, I will grant, a very small vice in the grand scheme of things, but still a vice.
 

Call it What You Want, This is Murder.

As write this, the great State of Texas is making plans to murder a man named Scott Panetti. Of course, if this murder is accomplished, it won't officially be called that; legally it will be an execution. Legal niceties, however, don't effect moral realities and if Scott Panetti dies at the hands of the state, it will be murder, whatever the law calls it.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I'm not of the view that every execution is murder. While I personally hold the opinion that capital punishment should be abolished, I recognise, as does the Catholic Church, that the state has the right to punish sufficiently heinous crimes with the death penalty. In the case of Scott Panetti, however, I fail to see how any person could regard the execution as morally justifiable.

Panetti has been sentenced to die for the 1992 murder of his in laws. There is no real doubt that Panetti did kill them. The reason his execution is so obviously unjust, however, is first, there is good reason to doubt his sanity at the time, and second, because his 1995 trial was a clear travesty.

Scott Panetti is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. In the years leading up to the 1992 killing he had no fewer than three compulsory admissions to mental hospitals, all on the same diagnosis. At his 1995 trial, he chose to represent himself, giving as his reason for doing so that he believed his appointed lawyer was part of a conspiracy against him. At the trial he dressed in a purple cowboy suit, called himself 'Sarge' and attempted to subpoena the then Pope, the late President John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ.

So, this ought to be the end of the matter, there is good reason to doubt his sanity at the time of the killings and he clearly wasn't fit to defend himself at his trial, he should be locked up for his own and others' protection but should not be put to death. Some, however, don't see it that way. Texas' governor, Rick Perry, has repeatedly refused to intervene in the case. Perry was candidate for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 2012 and has flagged the possibility of running again in 2016. He likes to put himself forward as pro-life and a defender of Christian moral values.

In similar manner, one of those defending Panetti's death sentence in the federal courts has been Ted Cruz. Cruz, who defended the sentence in his capacity as the state's attorney general, is now a US Senator and darling of the 'Tea Party'. He also presents himself as a champion of pro-life values.

For anyone with a basic understanding of Christian moral philosophy or even basic humanity, understanding this should not be difficult. For Christians, one of the great glories of humanity is our freedom of the will. Our moral responsibility grows out of that freedom. For this reason, while we generally want humans punished when they do something wrong, we don't demand to see the tools they used or the clothes they wore punished, because we recognise that these things don't have free will. For the same reasons, people are not generally held accountable for what they do accidentally because they did not freely will it. (They are punished for the results of their negligence, but the negligence was freely chosen, even if the consequence wasn't.)

In the case of the mentally ill, however, that free will is impaired. In the case of someone as clearly insane and delusional as Panetti, that freedom is impaired to such a great degree that he can reasonably be deemed no more morally responsible that one of the weapons he used. In such circumstances, the state has no moral right to execute him and, should it do so, his death will morally be a murder, whatever the great State of Texas shall call it.

A (Hopefully) Final Comment on the Tuam Matter

 Yesterday this article was drawn to my attention. The article makes a number of good points placing the tragedy in its proper context and pointing out that there is still much that we don't know. Another good article on the matter can be found here.

As the friend who pointed these articles out to me rightly noted, there has been a rush to judgement on this issue and, as I confessed last week, I too was guilty of that. It's also helpful to note that problems of this kind were by no means peculiar to Catholicism and I think that the author of the Telegraph article makes a good point about the way certain people react to such acts by Catholics versus those committed by Muslims.

Having said all that, there are still hard truths in this matter for Catholics to face up to. There may yet be much that don't know but we know enough to know that a culture existed which allowed serious injustices to happen against unwed mothers and their children.

We can point out that protestants and other institutions were as bad as Catholic ones. We can point to the surrounding culture; that's all useful as context, but, as a defence of the Church it will only go so far. We Catholics claim to have the fullness of the Gospel, we have the guidance of what we believe to be an infallible magisterium and we have grace of the sacraments. We should be doing better than everyone else. If the best we can say is that we were no worse than others, then we need to remember Christ's words that "to whom much is given, from him much will be expected." (Luke 24:18).

 Blaming the surrounding culture will also only go so far. This is 1950s Ireland we're talking about. The Church was very influential in that culture. If aspects of that culture were unjust, what was the Church doing to confront and change the culture? Where were the letters from the Bishops warning that, while fornication is a sin, the culture that treated being an unwed mother as the worst possible sin was closer to the spirit of the Pharisees than to Christ? Where were the priests warning from the pulpit that those who treated illegitimate children as though they were somehow guilty of their parent's sins was to oppress orphans, one of the four sins that cries to Heaven for vengeance?

Further Reflections

This morning, I wrote this post responding to news reports of a horrible discovery in Ireland. I was pleased to read this, by Caroline Farrow which makes the strong case that the picture is nowhere near as bad as first reports might have indicated. For this I am thankful to God and if I, myself, was too quick to believe the worst, I must ask God and my fellow Catholics' pardon for that.

The fact remains, however, as Farrow herself acknowledges, there was a culture, a culture to some degree fostered by the Church, in which real injustice to women who fell pregnant out of wedlock and, even worse, to their children was not merely done but was made to seem virtuous.

In his excellent book, Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton wrote about the way in which individual Christian virtues, stripped of their proper place within the over-all moral life, can become monstrous. As I said a few weeks back the essence of the virtues is that they are those habits which help us to live our life to its fullest. For this to happen, however, each virtue needs to fit within the overall context of a virtuous life, taken outside  of this context, it is easy for a single virtue to become demonic. As the old scholastic maxim put it "corruptio optimi pessima est" - the corruption of the best is the worst.

Catholic blogger, Mark Shea gives, what seems to me to be an excellent discussion of a culture where chastity, which, let me be clear, is a real virtue, was elevated above virtues like justice and charity.

Faced with this, other words of Chesterton seem highly apropos:

O God of earth and altar,
bow down and hear our cry,
our earthly rulers falter,
our people drift and die;
the walls of gold entomb us,
the swords of scorn divide,
take not thy thunder from us,
but take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,
from lies of tongue and pen,
from all the easy speeches
that comfort cruel men,
from sale and profanation
of honor, and the sword,
from sleep and from damnation,
deliver us, good Lord!

Tie in a living tether
the prince and priest and thrall,
bind all our lives together,
smite us and save us all;
in ire and exultation
aflame with faith, and free,
lift up a living nation,
a single sword to thee.

Virtue is Magic

Mild Spoiler Alert

It's a little over a week now since the screening of "Twilight's Kingdom", the two part, season four finale of My Little Pony: Friendship: is Magic. I'm inclined to regard season four as the best season yet and I'll certainly go to the mattresses to defend the view that this was the best season finale so far.

Why do I love MLP;FiM? I could give a great many reasons: I love the witty dialogue, I love the animation, I love the songs. Having said all that, there is one reason, above all that I love this show. I love My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic because it is a show about virtue.

Virtue has, oddly enough, become a little bit of a dirty word in the modern world. For many, the word virtue suggests a world of chastity belts, repressed desires and people walking about looking po-faced and serious and never, ever doing anything fun. The ancient Greek Master, Aristotle, however, and the tradition following, him, took a different view of things. For Aristotle, and the tradition following him, virtue describes those habits which tend to lead to greater human flourishing. For the Aristotelian school, there is a happiness the properly follows from human nature lived to its fullest and the virtues are the habits which promote the best chance of that happiness.

This is, in my judgement at least, what MLP:FiM is all about. Throughout the series, the mane (misspelling deliberate per fan convention) six ponies (and their dragon sidekick) learn a variety of life lessons which lead to them developing those qualities of character which lead to a free, happy and fulfilled life. I have no idea whether any of the writers or producers of the show have actually read Aristotle or not, but, whether consciously or unconsciously, they have produced a profoundly Aristotelian parable for life.

So, what was so great about season four? To back track, at the beginning of the first season, the mane six discovered that harmony is maintained in their kingdom of Equestria through six "Elements of Harmony". Through various trials, each of these six becomes mystically linked to one of the six elements: Apple Jack to honesty, Fluttershy to kindness, Pinky Pie to laughter, Rainbow Dash to loyalty, Rarity to generosity and Twilight Sparkle (my personal favourite) to the element of magic.

At the beginning of season four, each of the ponies, to prevent Equestria being over-run by chaos, the ponies had to sacrifice their connection to the elements. In response to their sacrifice, a magical trunk with six key-holes was revealed. Over the course of the season, each of the six mane ponies faced a situation in which she was tempted to act contrary to the element to which she was formerly linked. In each case, the pony in question overcame the temptation, acted in accord with her element and learnt a valuable lesson about the nature of her element as well as a lesson about life more generally.

In the season finale, Equestria faces a new danger, worse than anything it has faced before. The solution to the crisis turns out to lie in the chest revealed at the beginning of the season and the keys to the chest turn out to be linked to the lessons each pony has learnt about her element.

This is why I love this show. At the end of the day, it's show that send the message that the world can be saved and we can all live happy lives by following the path of virtue. Nothing else compares.

 

Deconversion and Morality

The latest edition of Protestant apologist, James White’s semi-regular webcast The Dividing Line is on-line here. Dr. White devotes a considerable portion of this episode to this article, written by Rachel Slick, daughter of White’s fellow Protestant apologist, Matthew Slick, telling the story of her deconversion from Christianity.

White has quite a lot to say about the article and, in spite of the differences between his and my theology, I was surprised at how much of what he said I agree with and how much there is in what he says that I think Catholics can and should take to heart.

What I want to focus on, however, is this one section of Ms. Slick’s story. According to her, the crucial crisis leading to her renunciation of the faith happened as follows:


This changed one day during a conversation with my friend Alex. I had a habit of bouncing theological questions off him, and one particular day, I asked him this: If God was absolutely moral, because morality was absolute, and if the nature of “right” and “wrong” surpassed space, time, and existence, and if it was as much a fundamental property of reality as math, then why were some things a sin in the Old Testament but not a sin in the New Testament?

Alex had no answer — and I realized I didn’t either. Everyone had always explained this problem away using the principle that Jesus’ sacrifice meant we wouldn’t have to follow those ancient laws. 
But that wasn’t an answer. In fact, by the very nature of the problem, there was no possible answer that would align with Christianity.



On reading this section I was interested to hear White’s response. White begins dealing with this question at around the twenty minute mark of his podcast. I have to admit, I was surprised at how close White sounded to my own position. White, correctly, I think, remarks that Ms. Slick seems to think that morality is something that exists external to God rather than being a result, as White puts it “of God's nature and purpose.” I thought that was a good answer, or at least the beginning of a good answer, although I was a little confused about how exactly Dr. White understands the relationship between God's nature and His purposes. If Dr. White ever reads this, I'd be fascinated to hear his views in more detail and try to work out how closely aligned our views actually are.

Ms. Slick's question is related to an ancient philosophical problem, first raised by Plato in his famous dialogue, The Euthyphro. In that work, Plato asks whether certain acts are pious because the gods approve of them or whether the gods approve of them because they are pious. Applied to a monotheistic God, the question presents a dilemma between either a moral law which is above God and to which he is subject, or of morality simply defined by what God commands, with the implication that God could command whatever He likes.

To the best of my knowledge, no major Christian theologian or philosopher ever embraced the first horn of Plato's dilemma and affirmed a moral law external to God, to which He was subject. Certain theologians have, however, embraced the position known as voluntarism, essentially the second of Plato's options. Taken to its logical conclusion, and some have, indeed, explicitly, taken it that far, voluntarism holds that, while, as it happens, God has commanded humans love Him and love each other, He could equally have commanded us to hate him and hate one another. If he had done so, hate would have been a virtue and love a vice.

St. Thomas, however, and those who have followed him, reject the dilemma as a false dichotomy. For the Thomist, the basis of morality lies neither in something superior to God, or in something He arbitrarily decided but in who He, of necessity is.
 

St. Thomas distinguishes between four types of law: eternal, natural, divine and human. Describing, in detail, the meaning of these different types of laws and the relations between them is a topic for a book, not a blog post. What's relevant to Ms. Slick's question, (the one that supposedly can't be answered within Christianity) can be summarised reasonably easily.
 

The eternal law is an aspect of God. Since Thomists believe God to be absolutely simple, that really means the eternal law is God himself, viewed from a certain perspective. God loves and and commands love of us because that is what His nature requires, a nature that He could no more change than He could choose not to exist.
 

The divine law, refers to specific commands of God. As is well known, and as Ms. Slick notes, Christians believe that these commands have changed over time, at one time, God's commands prohibited His people eating of pork, today they don't.
 

As I said, explaining, in depth the reasons for these changes and the relationship between the eternal and divine law is beyond a blog post, but I believe, something of the relationship can be understood if we consider the rules parents make for their children.

Good parents have certain obvious aims in raising their kids. They want to keep them safe and do their best to ensure that they grow up into happy, healthy, well adjusted people. They probably also want to ensure a level of education and preparation for later life. Now, in furtherance of these goals, the parents will make rules for the kids, and some of these rules will probably be constant as long as the child is under the parents' care. For example, rules against anything unnecessarily dangerous, or against serious law breaking will probably be constant. On the other hand, some rules will very likely change over time: things forbidden a child of one age may well be allowed once the child is older, things not expected of a five year old may well be expected of a ten year old.

None of the above means that the parents are making arbitrary rules or that there is no consistent, objective principles. The objective principles are the goals that I outlined, but how those principles need to be applied will legitimately differ.

This is somewhat analogous (I don't claim the analogy is perfect) to the relationship between eternal and divine laws. The eternal law determines God's purpose in relating to humanity, but there is no contradiction between this and the suggestion that that purpose required different specific commands for different times in history.

On Being Same Sex Attracted and Catholic

I remember, years ago, sitting, minding my own business, but able to overhear a conversation between two fellow Catholic, one male and one female. The female mentioned a guy who regularly attended the same Sunday mass as her to whom she was attracted and from whom she she had thought she was picking up a “vibe” indicating that the attraction was mutual. Over time, however, she thought she had dropped some pretty clear hints which he didn't seem to pick up on or at least he wasn't showing any interest. The one she was talking to replied “maybe he's a fag.” Her response was “he can't be a fag, he's Catholic.”

I'm a practising Catholic. I accept, to the extent I understand them, all the teachings of the Magisterium of the Church, including the currently very unpopular ones on human sexuality. I'm also attracted to people of both genders.

My intention here is not to debate the merits of the Church's teaching on these matters, I've done that in other forums and I'm sure I'll do so again. What I want to talk about here, however, is something different.

The other day, Catholic Apologist, Mark Shea, had a post at the National Catholic Register dealing with certain issues relating to same sex attracted Catholics. I think Shea's article is a good one and I'd recommend everyone read it. I also recommend that you read the discussion underneath in the comment thread. One question that a few people raised could be phrased like this: “Ok, being same sex attracted is not a sin, but why do same sex attracted Catholics need to make a point of identifying themselves.”
 

A number of good reasons were raised in answer to this question, I'd like to raise one more reason, we need, to a certain extent, to identify ourselves and make ourselves visible because of the people I mentioned in the first paragraph. Those people weren't of ill-will, when I made clear to them how offensive I found what they had to say, they were apologetic, sincerely as far as I could tell. But what they said stung, sending the message that same sex attracted people aren't practising Catholics, aren't part of the Church. I've heard this, and worse, from a lot of well meaning Catholics. Other same sex attracted people have even worse stories to tell.
 

I dislike the term “homophobia”, which, as has been pointed out by many before me, literally means fear of the same. I dislike even more the way in which the label “homophobic” is frequently applied to any person who defends the traditional Christian teaching on the immorality of homosexual acts. Having said all that, homophobia is real. Acts of bullying towards people who actually are or are perceived to be same sex attracted are real. Uncharitable speech and behaviour by people, including by Christians, towards same sex attracted people are real. These things are real and they do a lot of damage to our fellow human beings. They also bring disgrace upon the cause of Christ and get in the way of the preaching of the gospel.

I don't advocate same sex attracted Christians announcing our attractions on our t-shirts, but we do need to be willing to talk about it and to identify ourselves when appropriate because we need to bear witness to fellow Christians.

A Few Quick Links

First, last week, I mentioned philosopher, Dan Fincke's appearance on The Atheist Experience. I said that Fincke had mentioned a particular post on his blog as a good starting point to understand his thinking. Here is the post in question and here is a critique of it by Prof. Edward Feser which says essentially what I would have said but he says it a lot better.

Second, I was saddened to hear of the passing of Fr. Andrew Greeley. For a number of years, I read his columns with considerable regularity; it would be an understatement to say that I didn't always agree with him, but I did frequently find him interesting and engaging. I was touched to read this tribute to him by his fellow Chicago priest, Fr. Robert Barron.

Third, having, in my last post, criticised Jimmy Akin, I'd like to recommend this post of his on prayer.

Finally, speaking of theistic evolution, have a read of this.

An Intersting Argument about Ethics.

The latest episode (no. 817) of The Atheist Experience was an interesting one. The show is usually devoted to answering calls from whomever happens to call in. On this occasion, however, about half the program was taken up with a pre-arranged call from an atheist philosopher by the name of Dan Fincke. You can find the relevant section here. I'd never hear of Prof. Fincke before but, after hearing what he had to say on the show, I went over to his blog “Camels with Hammers” and, after reading for a bit, I added his blog to my list of those I plan to read regularly.

The Prof. seems to have a double mission, on the one hand he wants to convince his fellow atheists to embrace objective morality, on the other hand, to convince we theists the objective morality can exist without God. This a subject of no small interest to me and I was interested to here his views. I, of course, will be attacking his arguments from one side, I believe in objective morality but don't think it can be meaningful without God. I suspect, however, that many of my atheist friends who reject objective morality will agree with at least some of my disagreements with him
 

Before commenting on what Prof. Finke had to say, I have to note, at several points during the program I felt a strong desire to throw something at the show's co-host, Martin Wagner. For example, at at 7:40 minute mark, Wagner states that “Christians” not some or many Chrustians but Christians generally, when we argue for objective morality, “always” his word, always, claim that such things can't be gotten to rationally but require divine revelation. Mr. Wagner, if that;s what you think Christians always argue, I'd ask you to do some reading on the natural law tradition in Christian moral thought.

Mr. Wagner then goes on to tell us that many Christian apologists, he explicitly mentions Willaim Lane Craig, openly encourage disdain for reason and argue that reason and evidence have no value in getting to truth. Now, I'm sorry, I'm no fan of Dr. Craig, but Mr. Wagner's characterisation of his views is either shockingly ignorant or an outright lie. Craig is known as an evidentialist apologist, as someone who seeks to show that evidence and reason lead to the Christian faith. I could go on, listing Mr. Wagner's incredible distortions, but this is supposed to be a blog post about Prof. Fincke.
 

The central part of Prof. Fincke's argument, if I understand him correctly, come between about the eleven and sixteen minute marks. His argument stands on two main points. One of these is formal consistency. He argues that, just as we can't believe what we see to be contradictory, so there are certain acts which are contradictory. The argument seems to be that, if we attempt to hold others to a standard but fail to live up to that standard ourselves, we would be aware of an inconsistency. There are any number of arguments I could make to this, but I'll confine myself to this reply: I agree that we would see as inconsistent to hold others to a standard and fail to live up to it ourselves, but that simply begs the question of why we should seek to hold people to such standards in the first place.

The second prong of Prof. Fincke argument has to do with the fulfilment of various powers.
According to the good Prof. We have certain powers, our intelligence, our our capacity for technology, our capacity for enjoyment. He thinks it is self evident or something we would all intuitively recognise that we should seek to maximise these powers in order to flourish. Now, in many ways, this seems very close to the Aristotelian and Thomist position. I certainly agree that developing our human powers is a desirable thing. Having said that, I don't think this is self-evident and it isn't intuitively obvious, nor is it clear to everyone. My belief in the moral desirability of developing these powers is based on certain metaphysical beliefs which I assume Prof. Fincke doesn't share. (If he does share them I'd love to here how he reconciles those with his lack of belief in God.) Absent those metaphysical beliefs, many people will in no way see the desirability of developing such powers as obvious, indeed plenty of people seem quite content to drown those powers in drugs and alcohol.
 

Prof. Fincke ended his call with a recommendation to check out his blog and recommended one particular blog post of his. I had originally planned to include comments on that post in this post. I decided, however, that it deserves a response of it's own. God willing, I should get to that in the next few days.

Parental Rights and Common Good

Apparently, as I type this, the Parliament of NSW is debating changes to public health legislation which will lead to mandatory vaccination of children. This provoked a considerable controversy on the FaceBook wall of a friend of mine (I imagine it provoked controversy in other places too) and, surprisingly enough, I was drawn into the fray.

The debate centered around two separate questions: first, does vaccination actually help or harm public health and, secondly, even assuming vaccination aids public health, is it acceptable for the state to coerce parents on this matter.

I avoided part one; I’m a philosopher, not a doctor and not a public health expert. On the second issue, however, I had a bit more to say. Now, I can imagine that many of my friends who are utilitarians/ consequentialists will find this an easy question. I however, am not a consquentialist; I think parental rights are a real thing and they need to be respected. On this occasion, however, I agree with the consequentialists in their practical conclusion. I think the value of vaccination to the common good is such that the state may legitimately over-ride parental claims in this matter.

I’ve laid out my reasoning on this matter below. Before I give it, however, I need to make a couple of a couple of points: I’m not, at this time, interested in debate on natural law theory versus consquentialism. If you are a consequentialist, or an adherent of any other school than natural law, please view the following as an exercise in “what if”. Second, while the effectiveness of vaccination and the lack of any significant risk thereof are premises of my argument, I’m not much interested in debating those either. Once again, if you are one of those people who disagree with the near universal consensus amoung actual health practitioners who regard vaccination as a good thing, treat the below as a “what if.”

One final point, the views, expressed in this post, are my own and not necessarily the views of any group I may be affiliated with.

1)      Parents have a universal duty to not needlessly endanger the lives or health of their children.

2)      Citizens have a universal duty to not needlessly endanger the lives or health of their fellow citizens.

3)      The state has a legitimate interest in legislating to ensure that people meet their duties under (1) and (2) above.

4)      While the duties under (1) and (2) above are universal, the exact nature of what constitutes “needlessly endangering” may legitimately vary from situation to situation.

5)      If, within a given society, there exists a certain technology such that said technology is easily available, that the use of said technology does not involve any significant cost or risk to the user and such that the use of said technology will lead to greatly reduced risks to the lives or health of others, then failure to make use of such technology violates either (1) or (2) above.

6)      From (1) – (3) above it follows that, if, within a given society, there exists a technology which meets the criteria given in (5), then, the state has a legitimate interest in compelling the use of that technology.

7)      In 21^st century NSW, vaccination does, in fact, meet the criteria given in  (5)

8)      It follows from (6) and (7) above that the state of NSW has a legitimate interest in compelling the use of vaccination.

Back to Blogging

Ok, so, I set up this blog almost a year ago, intending to post regularly and I've let the year go by and posted nothing. I apologise.God willing, it's my hope that I'll be able to get into a routine of at least semi-regular posting, but you never know.

What finally spurred me back into the attempt to blog was reading this article by Ms. Mary Elizabeth Williams. On one level, I have to congratulate Ms. Williams, like Peter Singer, she has at least this to be said for her, she is a lot more consistent than many on her side of the political divide. However much I disagree with her, I have to at least congratulate her for her honesty in facing up to the rather obvious fact that a foetus is a life, indeed a human life.

In attempting to reconcile this acknowledgement with her “pro-choice” position, she argues that all life is not equally valuable and that the life of the mother is more important than the life of the foetus she carries.

My first thought in response to this was that, if you are going to argue for the greater value of one life over another, you should seek to lay out in detail a criterion by which such value will be determined; Ms. Williams never really does this, or even, so far as I can see, attempts to do so. This matters.

Let me offer a hypothetical scenario. Imagine a person who is working in a job of considerable national importance; let's further imagine that this person has a large family to support. Now, let us further suppose this person is in need of a heart transplant and is facing death soon if a compatible donor is not found and that the normal sources have failed to find a match. To add to this, let's imagine that a person with a compatible heart has been identified; he or she is unemployed, no job prospects and no close family.

Would Ms. Williams decide the second persons life was worth less than the first and support putting him or her to death (painlessly of course) so this his or her heart can be harvested? I feel reasonably confident she would not, but, having told us that lives are not of equal value, I doubt she could consistently defend this position.

My second thought was along a different line. Even if we accept that the life of the mother is more valuable than the life she carries, that is still not a justification for abortion in most cases. I can understand (though I would still disagree with) a view that says that the life of the mother is more valuable than that of her child and therefore abortion must be allowed where continuing the pregnancy would threaten the health of the mother. It must be noted, however, that these are a very small minority of pregnancies. If a woman does not feel she can be a mother, there is an alternative open. In any developed country I'm aware of (certainly in Australia) the number of couples wanting to adopt a child is far larger than the number of children available to be adopted. Under such circumstances, even if it could be established that a woman's life is more valuable than the life she carries, that would justify abortion in only a small number of cases. To justify the rest, you would essentially have to show that the life of the foetus is less valuable than nine months of inconvenience to the woman in question.

In short, Ms. Williams is to be congratulated for her willingness to face up to the reality that her “pro-choice” position involves ending human lives. Her attempts to justify this, however, simply will not stand up.