THEOLOGICAL TAUTOLOGIES
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH’S
FLAWED LOGIC REGARDING ABORTION
I am
more than just a fan of John Henry Cardinal Newman. Why? Do you remember taking the Miller's Analogies: "A is to B”
as “C is to D"?
Here is an analogy to consider:
A) Newman is
to conscience; as B) The Roman Catholic hierarchy is to obedience
The reason the Roman Catholic hierarchy beginning
with Pope John Paul II has so much of a problem with Newman, and has erased him from Catholic higher education, is Newman's
insistence of the central role conscience plays in Catholic moral theology that informs the primacy of conscience as the final
arbiter of one's moral decision making and action that trumps obedience. Thus, they find the primacy of conscience a pesky
impediment to their agenda to follow in the footsteps of Vincent of Lerins and Pope Leo XIII in making the pope and Magisterium
the sole dictator of moral decision making and behavior of individual Catholics.
In
fact, Pope Benedict XVI in a recent interview stated that those Catholics who place their conscience above the teaching of
the Magisterium do not have a fully formed conscience as a fully formed conscience must conform to Magisterial teaching. So,
we have the following:
A) A fully formed conscience must conform to Magisterial teaching;
THEREFORE
B) Magisterial teaching is the embodiment of a fully formed conscience
Whoa! Wait a minute! Does anyone remember
taking Logic 101? If so, what is the first type of logical fallacy taught? It is a tautology defined as a circular argument
that purports: "A proves B;” THEREFORE, “B proves A."
This is precisely what Pope Benedict did in his
statement regarding the relationship between an informed conscience and the teaching of the Magisterium. Thus his statement
- his circular argument - is illogical, irrational, and carries no value.
One might take the position, "So what?" What
difference does it make that Pope Benedict would stoop to such a low, erroneous, illogical, and irrational statement to deny
the validity of an informed conscience to bolster the position of obedience to Magisterial teaching? The difference it makes
is that the world's Catholic bishops take their cue from Pope Benedict. That this is obvious is that a few weeks after Pope
Benedict’s statement the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops produced Forming
Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the Untied States.
Of the 90 Articles of this document, fully 25% refer to or comment on abortion although abortion is only one moral issue among
the many moral issues considered by the bishops in each of four categories: Human Life, Family Life, Social Justice, and Global
Solidarity. Just as is Natural Law (the belief that God given and therefore immutable truths, especially in the area of moral
behavior, are easily known by observation of the natural world via the use of reason) to the Roman Catholic Church, it is
easily observed via reason that devoting 25% of the final report, to say nothing of the time and energy it took to reduce
the totality of abortion related discussion to 25% of the final document, that abortion took a greatly disproportionate amount
of time and energy of the bishops compared to the multitudinous other moral issues addressed that of necessity were given
short shrift due to time constraints.
Perhaps this is because the bishops relied on Pope Benedict’s flawed logic
cited above. That must be the case because the bishops came to the conclusion that abortion is "always an intrinsically moral
evil" and placed it above all other moral evils in a hierarchy of evils that includes but is not limited to war, terrorism,
torture, murder, and capital punishment all of which equally end human life. As such the bishops placed abortion in a category
of moral evil, a singular category, beyond the scope of one's informed conscience that can never conclude abortion is the
correct moral choice predicated on the weighted “goods” and “evils” each moral decision contains.
Thus, in one fell swoop the bishops predicated on Pope Benedict’s flawed logic erased 1,500 years of Catholic moral
theology beginning with Augustine that requires moral decision making and the behavior that stems from such decision making
to be within the requirements of the principle of proportionality, the principle of probabilism, and not fall into the utilitarian
trap.
So, here we have another tautology, another logical fallacy of circular reasoning, this time perpetrated by the
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:
A) Abortion is always an intrinsically evil moral act;
THEREFORE,
B) To have an abortion is always an intrinsically evil moral act.
It is more than unfortunate that a scholar
such as Pope Benedict has become such an ideologue that he has forgotten, or perhaps simply chooses to ignore, the seminal
teaching on conscience from Augustine through all the Scholastics to Thomas Aquinas to say nothing of Newman. It is more than
unfortunate: it is unethical, immoral, and against the greater body of Catholic moral theology regarding conscience that the
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops would frame a document that codifies that one's informed conscience is inferior
to and subject to obedience to Megisterial teaching in all cases concerning abortion.
As such, Pope Benedict and the
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have fallen into the trap cited by the Catholic ethicist Harmon L. Smith:
"There
is a Catholic strength, and its name is order. There is a Catholic sickness, and its name is tyranny."
It is a cliché
that a house of cards cannot stand. Likewise, a tautological argument of circular reasoning cannot stand. It cannot stand
when the rules of logic and the discipline of critical analysis is applied via reason as understood from the time of the ancient
Greeks.
While
Natural Law as discerned by the Roman Catholic Church is perceived to be a body of a
priori “truths” of God’s creation and intent, it cannot be denied that such discernment is not a complete,
accurate, or true understanding of God’s creation and intent as the body of Natural Law is nuanced by humanity’s
subjectivity and separation from God. Thus, although the Roman Catholic Church contends that Natural Law is immutable and
thus is binding on all human beings whether they are adherents to Roman Catholicism or not, that is not the case. Given the
subjective nature of humanity and the human person, Natural Law by that criterion alone is necessarily flawed, mutable, and
should not be construed as binding on any person regardless of their faith including Roman Catholics.
It is
certain from the writings of the Church Fathers to Augustine, from Augustine through the Scholastics to Thomas Aquinas, from
Thomas Aquinas to John Henry Newman, and from John Henry Newman through the documents of Vatican Council II, that the Church
was aware that Natural Law was not absolute and could not be applied absolutely to all aspects of human behavior especially
in the broad area of those acts of human interaction and behavior lumped under the heading of “morality.” That
is why from its earliest beginnings the Church has championed one’s informed conscience as the final arbiter of human
moral decision making and behavior and insisted that one act in accordance with their informed conscience even when to do
so was directly disobedient to the teaching of popes and the Magisterium.
Consequently,
the statements of Pope Benedict and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops when juxtaposed against the entirety
and propensity of the historic teaching of the Catholic Church can be understood as nothing less than an aberration predicated
on a religious and political agenda regarding abortion that denies the entire history of church teaching begun by Pope John
Paul II. Moreover, they seek to justify and legitimate this apostasy by resorting to the flawed reasoning of a tautological
argument obvious to anyone who understands the disciple of logic.
How sad!
How arrogant! How Un-Christian! How Un-Catholic!
