At a White House meeting to find “common ground” on the abortion issue, an excruciatingly precise use of language has revealed the White House policy on reducing the number of abortions:

It’s YES to Obama’s “..let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions”.

But NO to the goal of reducing the number of abortions.

Confused? Aren’t they the same? No, those two goals drive very different sets of actions. The YES from the White House means that there will be no effort to change the minds of those who have chosen to seek an abortion. They will instead rely mainly on contraception, and some funding for pregnant women, to reduce the number of women who choose to seek an abortion. But once a woman has decided on abortion, nothing will be done to persuade them otherwise. The most obvious and direct method of reducing abortions — seeking out those who are, or who might, consider an abortion, and offering information and sources of concrete help — is ruled out.

But that difference is carefully hidden in the language. Change “abortion” to something else to see how it should sound: “Our goal is not to reduce the number of rapes, but to reduce the need for rape.” ugh.

At Obama’s Notre Dame talk, he at one point refers to the value of conscience:

Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women.

What does it mean? Like many political speeches, it commits to as little specific detail as possible. First there’s a call for a “sensible” conscience clause. Sensible? Could mean anything. But rather than stopping at that point, the sentence carries right on, with a call for “sound science” (who could disagree?) and “clear ethics” (yes, again), and … “respect for the equality of women”. What is the intention behind that? It refers to the desire of some to have guaranteed access to particular medical procedures, such as abortion or birth control — i.e. exactly the procedures that a conscience clause would protect.

So, all in all, one side wants a conscience clause, and the other side wants access despite the conscience clause. Obama says that this will be resolved by a sensible conscience clause. It’s a rhetoric of fog. Inside that fog anything might be conjured up.

Over at Catholic and Enjoying It!, Mark Shea has again insisted that he has indeed defined what torture is — though once again indicating that anyone wanting a definition of torture is somehow being deliberately obtuse, or worse.

One of the funnier falsehood current is the claim that I “refuse to define” what torture is and that I claim that “to ask that question is to sin”.

So, let’s look at his suggestions (in bold):

A) Check the dictionary;

Dictionaries are very useful for giving several ideas as to how words may be used. They simply don’t aim to give the definition which is consistent with Catholic teaching. Thus, they give definitions that are sometimes relevant, and sometimes not. Without a way of already knowing which is which, dictionaries don’t help. (E.g. “extreme anguish of body or mind” is not the appropriate definition, whereas “the act of inflicting excruciating pain as a means of getting information” is in the right area. But if I didn’t already have a good idea of what torture referred to in the Catholic context, how could I determine this from the dictionary?)

B) Check the Army Field Manual or some reference book for police interrogators on proper treatment of prisoners.

I looked at the US Army Field Manual, and all I could find amounted to “don’t torture”. So, no definition.

C) The Interrogator’s Golden Rule seems reasonable: “Don’t do it to a prisoner if you’d consider it abuse when done to a buddy or yourself.”

I can think of lots of things that I would call abuse if applied to a buddy, which wouldn’t necessarily amount to torture. A wider set of actions can be described as abuse. So, this gets us not much closer to a definition.

D) If you are still utterly baffled, you could try paying attention to Policratus’ handy delineation of the question, which is, of course, just a regurgitation of the Church’s basic teaching:

[T]he Church defines torture formally (i.e., what makes an action torture):
1. violation of human dignity in the form of
2. intentional mental and/or physical harm in order to
3. use a human person as a means (or instrument) for some producible end
4. against that person’s will.
These are the essential features of torture, and any material action with this form is torture. And it does not take any meticulous reasoning to figure out which material acts bear this essential form.
Church sources: Veritatis Splendor 80, Gaudium et spes 27.

Clearly Policraticus is much more helpful. But the difficulty is that Policraticus has, in trying to summarize Church teaching, partly used his own wording to Church teaching, and left out some things. So we end up with something that is not precise, and thus vague in application.

For example, Policraticus says that torture is a “violation of human dignity”. In fact, when we look at Veritatis Splendor and Gaudium et Spes, it is described as a violation of “the integrity of the human person”. This certainly does not mean that torture is not also a violation of human dignity, but some of the careful wording chosen by Vatican II is lost, and this loses some help in figuring out the definition of torture.

Or, also: to use a human person as a means for some producible end is not, by itself, a problem. Looking at Veritatis Splendor, one of the things that it says are offensive to human dignity is the use of laborers as “mere instruments of profit”. The word mere is there for a reason: to make a profit from someone’s work is acceptable, but when humans are used only as a means of profit, then dignity has been lost.

So, for these and other reasons, Policraticus’ definition falls short. As written, arguably, a parent putting a child in timeout could be a form of torture, or putting someone in prison could be torture. Someone pointed out this problem to Mark Shea as: “I guess if I give my kid a swat on the bottom in order to tell me where he hid his sister’s toy, that’s torture…”, to which Mark gave the reply: “And people wonder why I think some folks are insincere in their professed bafflement.”

So, note again that Mark Shea starts his whole post by saying:

One of the funnier falsehood current is the claim that I “refuse to define” what torture is and that I claim that “to ask that question is to sin”.

Mark insists that he has defined torture. He proposes a definition. When his proposed definition in fact falls short, does he offer to tighten it up? No, he attacks the sincerity of those pointing out the problem. Hasn’t he proved the truth of what he claimed was a falsehood?

The proposed definition can be tightened up. It would be very profitable to tighten it up, because it would point out more exactly what is wrong with torture, and also make it much easier to identify forms of torture that are currently going unrecognized.

When Tony Blair — ex-Prime-Minister of Britain — converted to Catholicism, I wanted to ask him: “So, what do you think about abortion now?” It did not seem possible that he could convert without being reconciled on that issue to Catholic teaching. And, since Tony Blair had been involved in much support for abortion in Britain, conversion must surely have been an incredible wrenching experience. On that issue, and a host of other issues.

But it seems it may have been conversion-lite. On homosexuality, Blair has shown evident opposition to consistent Catholic teaching. He described the difference between the Pope’s position, and Blair’s own, as a “huge generational difference”. Blair evidently thinks that as time goes by, teachings will change, and old thinking will fade, to be replaced by new stuff. Blair has all the key phrases for this: “rethinking is good”, “evolve over time”, “evolving attitudes becomes part of the discipline”, etc, etc. The thought that the Church may have the right position, a solid position, which can built on (and sometimes in unexpected ways) seems not to have crossed his mind. Or, it has never been made to cross his mind by those responsible for teaching him. And the Church has noticed this.

And so, like so many, he believes in the Church of Shangri La; a nice comfortable parish run by a gently wizened old priest where happiness abounds, isolated from hardship, and where the soft winds of the changes of time bring only the breath of delights.

It is certainly true that Scripture instructs us to honor the emperor (1Pe 2:17) — which is to say, all those who derive their authority from God, being entrusted with power to serve the common good. But honor is to be granted for the good that is done, not the evil. So if a ruler should promote manifestly unjust laws, causing great harm, then that ruler should not be honored for that support.

The issue causing such thought is, of course, the honorary degree given to Obama by Notre Dame. That honorary degree is in law, which is exactly the area which he should not be honored in. Perhaps a case might be made for a honorary degree in humane letters (Obama did write a popular book). But not in law. To honor the President in law is, paradoxically, to dishonor him, by highlighting what he should not be doing. (Father Jenkins — the president of Notre Dame — recent letter avoids such reasoning.

We are also called to honor the bishops. So when they called for Catholics to avoid giving such honors, their request has not been honored. So the secular President has overtly been honored, but not our spiritual fathers. But both must be honored.

So, a long chain of missing-the-points: on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart first comes out against the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, then later backs out of that point, and then at Instapundit they point to a claimed evisceration of even the slightest idea that Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have been big mistakes.

But, a quick three-step argument that the choice to use the bomb was a big mistake:

1) The atomic bombs cause a big explosion, indiscriminately destroying a wide area. (I guess that part is not so controversial?)

2) There were lots of civilians in that area. (Agreed?)

3) The military shouldn’t aim to win by indiscriminately killing civilians. (I wish that wasn’t controversial. But it’s the way it should be.)

Ergo, the decision to drop was wrong.

The year before Barack Obama declared his intention to seek the office of US President, he gave a keynote speech at a conference sponsored by the progressive religious organization, Sojourners. It described Obama’s view of the relationship between politics and religion. To look at such a delicate subject in anything more than a cursory or summary way of one or two sentences is quite unusual for holders of major political office. Hence it’s worth examining the speech in some detail.

Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here at the Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America conference. I’ve had the opportunity to take a look at your Covenant for a New America. It is filled with outstanding policies and prescriptions for much of what ails this country. So I’d like to congratulate you all on the thoughtful presentations you’ve given so far about poverty and justice in America, and for putting fire under the feet of the political leadership here in Washington.

The Sojourners’ manifesto is a good one, focusing on a Biblically-based call to reduce poverty, both in the US and the internationally.

But today I’d like to talk about the connection between religion and politics and perhaps offer some thoughts about how we can sort through some of the often bitter arguments that we’ve been seeing over the last several years.

Actually, it will take a while before Obama gets around to saying what the bitter arguments are surely about — abortion and gay marriage. Since there is no real disagreement over the need to reduce poverty it seems probable — Sojourners being a progressive organization — that Obama was talking to an audience that was friendly to his concerns, and hence personally not very bitter towards him. Continue reading Obama and the Bible

With Mary Ann Glendon having declined to receive the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame —  because of the way she was being used as a way of balancing the university’s controversial and Bishop-defying decision to honor President Obama — one has to wonder exactly who Notre Dame will pick as their second choice. They will risk stepping in to the middle of a firestorm.

Lila Rose, a 20-year-old UCLA student, poses as only 13 years old to Planned Parenthood operatives, to see if they will obey all applicable state laws — like reporting statutory rape when Lila claims to have a 31-year-old boyfriend. Sometimes they seek to evade legal requirements, and their evasions get recorded on a hidden camera. Story here.

Given that John Allen is a senior correspondent for the dubiously-based National Catholic Register, one might guess along what lines his articles might run. Until you read him. His writings are generally quite fair, and always illuminating. At some point he made an extremely emphatic turn away from things like his awful 2000 book on Cardinal Ratzinger (I am curious as to what led to such a switch). Diane Korzeniewski over at Te Deum laudamus! has some things to say about John Allen’s latest column on the Pope.

Pope Benedict XVI canonized five new saints for the Catholic Church in an outdoor ceremony today. Included was a 14th century monk who left his monastery to tend to plague victims, and succumbed himself. (And maybe an opportunity coming up for other martyrs of charity, given the latest news today.)

The outbreak of swine flu originating in Mexico has caused public Sunday mass celebrations in Mexico City to be canceled. Spanish announcment here, and more news here and here. (H/T Laurence England).

Today is World Malaria Day (I suspect a better name would be World Anti-Malaria Day). Go over here to read about what Catholic Relief Services is doing about malaria (they need money both for anti-mosquito nets and the education to use them properly), and then over here to send a donation. Remember what Archbishop Chaput keeps saying: “If we ignore the poor, we will go to hell”.

It seems to me clear that authoritative Catholic teaching forbids the use of torture under any circumstances. However, some hold that torture might occasionally permissible in extreme situations. As emerged recently, Deal Hudson is one of those who do not see why torture might be occasionally permitted, and he has written on this. The real meat of the discussion is in the comments that follow. Henry Karlson is particularly good. At one point in the comments, Hudson says: “this [Veritatis Splendor] is example of how, in my opinion, Catholic social teaching gets itself in a jam”. A rather unfortunate thing to say about a papal encyclical. But this occurs right after Hudson has been misinterpreting the intentions of the teaching (as Karlson later points out).

So the root cause seems to be Hudson’s misunderstanding of the teaching, rather than any real ambiguity in the teaching. Is a blog posting, and a set of comments a good way to resolve this? Not particularly. It needs an extended dialog to resolve such issues, and a threadful of comments doesn’t produce that. Rather, it produces even more poorly founded questions and answers. Somehow, the web  has to come up with a better technique for promoting real dialog.