I think Jim raised a good question about how do we determine what is a pre-eminent evil. I have a totally different framework for discussing this and so I am starting a new thread.
As a social psychologist trained in both psychology and sociology I see analysis of evil at the individual and societal levels to be totally different. As a psychologist trying to understand individual behavior it useful to know that variable A actually effects variable X at the individual level when everything else is held constant or randomized in the laboratory. However in the social world variable A may contribute very little to variable X because it functions in one way at one level of variable B and maybe another way or not at all at some level of variable C. In others words how we change a society can be very different from how we change individuals within that society.
Pre-eminent Moral (individual) Evil
At the individual level, the taking of the life of another
individual is obviously the pre-eminent moral evil. It can only be done when our own life or third party’s life is threatened, and then only as a
last resort.
In the case of abortion, the church automatically
excommunicates an individual who procures an abortion. This is reserved to the
bishop, who in many cases delegates this to any priest with faculties to hear
confession.
If the bishops are so concerned that the faithful clearly understanding that abortion is a pre-eminent moral evil why are they not focusing upon Catholics who actually have abortions.
Why not make the process of getting the abortion excommunication lifted a lengthy, time consuming and very public process as in the early church? Many abortions would not happen if Catholics realized that abortion is more than another form of birth control (which many Catholics practice while going to communion) but rather something that is deeply evil.
Of course many Catholics who have abortions
would decide simply to leave the church rather than go through some repentance program. Other Catholics would
simply say that this proves the Church is against women. The bishops have made a
“prudential” decision that it is better to attack a few usually far distant
politicians than to confront the problem in their own diocese and parishes. But
how is that any different than Catholic politicians who make similar “prudential”
decisions in the political world? Bishops! Remove the beam in your own eyes!
Pre-eminent evil on the societal level is completely different.
NUCLEAR WARFARE. There is no doubt in my mind that in the
period of the cold war, nuclear warfare was THE pre-eminent evil. Vast numbers of
people may have died and vast areas of the world may have been destroyed, and
the consequences might have lasted for centuries even millennia.
Many people voted against Goldwater because the Democrats
raised the specter that he might lead us into nuclear war. That issue has receded into the background
with the breakup of the Soviet Union, but voting against Trump because
of his instability was justified by this pre-eminent life issue alone.
CLIMATE CHANGE. While this will take a longer time to happen,
it results could be just as devastating as nuclear warfare. More importantly
there is no quick fix to prevent it, as there is in the case of nuclear disarmament. People may disagree about the extant and the
timeframe for climate change, but voting against Trump is also justified
on this pre-eminent life issue alone.
PANDEMICS. While a global pandemic once looked like a far off issue, right now it is the pre-eminent life issue. We came very close to a
global health meltdown. In fact with the rate of virus mutation we could still
end up with an even far more devastating pandemic. If not with this virus type then
with the next type. We must organize our country and the world against pandemics. I think Trump lost the election on this pre-eminent life issue.
So we have THREE PRE-EMINENT LIFE ISSUES all of which threaten the world with mass destruction and mass loss of life that could last for decades, maybe even a century. Note I have kept to human life issues. I have said nothing about social and economic issues. They have a clear impact upon quantity as well as the quality of human life. How do we prioritize these three human life issues and relate them to abortion
Francis has FOUR PRINCIPLES for pursuing Peace and the Common Good. The third is Realities are more important than ideas
There also exists a constant tension between ideas and realities. Realities simply are, whereas ideas are worked out. There has to be continuous dialogue between the two, lest ideas become detached from realities. It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone, of images and rhetoric. So a third principle comes into play: realities are greater than ideas
This is a very scientific approach. How we evaluate these three pre-eminent life issues will in fact depend upon a lot of data, analysis and good theories. We are not going to find the answers from theology. Good and wise people are going to disagree about what resources we should devote to each life issue.
How do these three pre-eminent life issues relate to abortion? The answer is simple. Abortion would cease completely if individuals simply stopped choosing abortion. Catholics are not forced to have abortions. All these other social pre-eminent life issues depend heavily upon government action. Abortion is one that could be solved by individuals at the personal and community action level. Why make it the chief priority of government?
Of course as a Democrat I think that raising the minimum wage, supporting unions, free college education, universal health care, universal child care, paid family leave, paid sick leave are all pro-life issues. All of these create an environment in which people are encouraged and supported to have children, and therefore less likely to have an abortion.
Why when I can vote for these three Pre-eminent Life Issues as well as encourage more people to have children would I ever consider voting for someone who might or might not have appointed a Supreme Court Justice, who might or might not overthrow Roe vs. Wade which might or might not end abortions. That sounds more like playing the lottery than being a responsible citizen.
Jack, do you see any possibility that a woman's individual conscience might play a role in seeking abortion? Isn't it possible that many women who get an abortion don't see it as the preeminent individual evil choice? About 78% of abortions occur during the embryonic stage, when the embryo is about the size of a blueberry, has no heart, no brain, no nervous system and only some development of other critical organs. Many people see this stage of embryonic life as representing a potential human being not an actual human being - in reality. We also know that about 75% of women who seek abortion are poor. They may feel it is more wrong to let the embryo develop, and bring another human being into the world that they can't support, as being the greater evil. Some may think this because of the high possibility of one of society's evils coming about. Many young couples say that they do not plan to have children because of the risks of the dangers of nuclear war, climate change, and disease. They think it would be morally wrong to bring a child into this world given the potential evils that hover over us and the failures of government to either mitigate against the individual risks facing a poor, pregnant woman via policies that ensure adequate social safety nets, or to mitigate the societal risks of worldwide catastrophe that lead many young couples to decide against having children.
ReplyDeleteThey may be right - or wrong - about some or all of these things, but their moral decision making in these areas is up to their consciences.
Finally, how is a priest or bishop know if someone in the pews has had an abortion so that they can be excommunicated?
Because of the sanctity of life in the early church, some people entered into the ranks of the penitents if they had committed manslaughter of its equivalent, e.g. had killed someone in self defense, or in the course of military service. Public penance was seen as a means to edify, build up the church not simply as something done for the penitent.
DeleteI do think there are some cases where public voluntary penance might be edifying beyond abortion e.g. divorce, known sexual abuse. We no longer live in a society in which priests and bishops know everything about the community.
In a future post I am preparing I will write about the evolution of penance in relation to this issue.
In regard to a responsibility for an evil, conscience is always primary. But that does mean, "I don't think this is a sin, therefore God does not think it is a sin." Jesus said, "Go and sin no more," he did not say "you had no responsibility for this evil." Of course he did not say "it was all your fault."
"Finally, how is a priest or bishop know if someone in the pews has had an abortion so that they can be excommunicated?"
DeleteThe idea is that the priest or bishop doesn't have to know; the person involved in the abortion has excommunicated him/herself. There is a Latin term for this which I am too lazy to look up.
It used to be that only a bishop could make that excommunication go away. Whatever the intention of that rule, it was perceived as extra-punitive. I believe Francis has relaxed that requirement and priests can do it. I think.
"Why when I can vote for these three Pre-eminent Life Issues as well as encourage more people to have children would I ever consider voting for someone who might or might not have appointed a Supreme Court Justice, who might or might not overthrow Roe vs. Wade which might or might not end abortions. That sounds more like playing the lottery than being a responsible citizen."
ReplyDeleteGood point, Jack.
In the spirit of devil's advocate: if I could spend $2 on a Powerball ticket or a ticket that pays a jackpot if a Republican president nominates a conservative justice to the Supreme Court, I'll buy the latter every time. It's just about the only promise Trump kept.
DeleteI suppose all of us think the court has a pro-life tilt now, although we don't know for certain whether that's really true, nor whether a case would come before the court which would lead it to substantially alter Roe v Wade jurisprudence. If the court really is pro-life, this is the first time in my adult lifetime in which that is the case. I mention this to illustrate that conservatives have spent several decades pursuing this configuration. If this configuration of justices doesn't alter Roe, then I don't think any court ever will.
Hi Jack, very interesting stuff. I've engaged in this sort of thought experiment before, too, although my brain isn't trained in the same way (nor to the same extent) as yours.
ReplyDeleteI think one of Bishop McElroy's - and Cardinal Ladaria's, and probably Francis's - chief points is that we can't get too hung up on which issue is preeminent. "Preeminent" simply means "most important". If we rank issues in descending order of importance, whichever one is at the top of the list is the one we would call "preeminent". But to call that first one preeminent says nothing at all about the importance of the second, third and fourth items on the list. All four of them could be nearly equal to one another in importance. Or the first and second could be nearly equal, and each be several magnitudes larger than the third and fourth. Or any other possible permutations of relative importance.
One very simple, quasi-quantitative way to think about how to weight these issues is to take the gravity of an occurrence X the probability of its happening. Abortion is both grave and frequent - I believe something on the order of one out of every five pregnancies is terminated via abortion. (This site indicates that frequency is declining slightly in recent years, which is very good news! https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2019/09/us-abortion-rate-continues-drop-once-again-state-abortion-restrictions-are-not-main).
A nuclear war could easily kill more people than are killed in abortions each year, but the probability of its happening is much lower (we hope!). I'd need to research to find some numbers to use in a calculation. But I think our intuition is that the chance of a nuclear holocaust, or even a nuclear exchange, is quite low. As a practical matter, most of us live our lives as though the probability is so low that we assume it will never happen - if we thought otherwise, we might all be digging bunkers and stocking them with cans of tuna. Whether our intuition is assessing the probability accurately is an interesting question!
Btw - I agree wholeheartedly that the pandemic is a life issue. I am not sure what it says about the many Trump voters who voted for him because they are pro-life, while disregarding the CDC's mask-wearing advice.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't want to see a reintroduction of the Order of Penitents. There is altogether too much public shaming in our culture already. I'm grateful for the anonymity of the confessional.
ReplyDeleteThe church offers a wonderful ministry, Project Rachel, to help provide healing to those who bear the spiritual scars and wounds of abortion.
https://hopeafterabortion.com/?page_id=88&gclid=CjwKCAjwv_iEBhASEiwARoemvJiL7gI3a89ibwwVKDuyddhvljrEqRj-msetruSS9p9Rl5e1mcpSOBoCUUgQAvD_BwE
Let's imagine a scenario in which pro-life wins the jackpot, and Roe v Wade goes down. Do we suppose that's going to be the end of it? Hardly likely, since something like 80% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances, including about 50% of those who identify as Catholic (not taking into account whether they are active or not). It's predictable that there would be backlash, perhaps to the extent that the push would be on for something like a "reproductive freedom amendment". And meanwhile things would revert to the states, which are all over the map as far as restrictions. Guaranteed there would be abortion tourism. All this, and ecclesial angst, is from treating abortion as a supply problem. As Jack points out in his post, abortion would cease completely if individuals simply stopped choosing it. Looking at the long game, treating it as a demand problem and trying to reduce the reasons why women choose it may be more effective than using the force of law when there is not a coherent public consensus.
ReplyDeleteYes, I assume that the number of abortions has (probably) been declining in the more recent decades, and also the proportion of pregnant women who elect to abort has (probably) been declining, because of the success in addressing the "demand side" of the problem. Still, those declines are pretty marginal.
DeleteThe abortion industry offers a tempting solution to people who are filled with anxiety, perhaps even panicked. Convincing all people in that situation to make a calm, altruistic and sacrificial decision isn't realistic, when the alternative is so easy.
As far as addressing the reasons why people choose abortion, I would include moral formation issues too. When moral formation is mentioned, people's minds automatically jump to chastity. Which of course is a virtue. But I would recommend focusing on the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, and knowledge. Especially prudence.
DeleteHollywood loves to present us with tales of teary-eyed pregnant teen girls being turned out of their homes and tossed onto the street by stern dads and god-fearing moms. Maybe that sort of thing happens these days. But I've never observed it. Over the course of my life, I've known of many instances of awkward and unplanned pregnancies. The families have always accepted the baby and helped the mom in rearing it. Families tend to rally around family members who are in trouble.
DeleteI mention this as the type of moral formation which I think is helpful. Yes, it would be best if people would "wait until marriage", and it's important to continue to set that bar with our own children and grandchildren. But human nature is pretty hard to repeal, and when teens and young adults don't wait until marriage and an unplanned pregnancy results, the obvious moral imperative is to help the baby and the parents.
Jim, yes, I agree with that. In my experience, most families want to be supportive. Sometimes the young people are afraid they will be rejected, but mostly that doesn't happen.
DeleteGoing back to abortion being too easy and too available, even if we believe that is true, we still haven't addressed the issue that a majority of people believe that women should have the right to choose. Which is why having more restrictive laws isn't going to solve the problem.
DeleteKatherine, I agree with you re: a post-Roe world would be "all over the map" in the US, and that abortion tourism would become a reality. It probably already is, as abortion laws already are a patchwork from state to state, even under Roe.
DeleteStill, I would rather have the people and their elected representatives decide than the courts decide for us - even if the people will make the wrong decision. In a sense, our people here in Illinois already have made the wrong decision: they've locked in abortion as a "right" under state law, and that would continue to be the case should Roe be rolled back.
Katherine: Looking at the long game, treating it as a demand problem and trying to reduce the reasons why women choose it may be more effective than using the force of law when there is not a coherent public consensus
ReplyDeleteExactly. As has been noted here more than once, the abortion rate in secular Western European countries is lower than it is the much more religiously active United States. Women facing an unplanned pregnancy there know that they will be able to survive financially, will have healthcare for themselves and their child, will be able to return to work because of subsidized or free ( quality) childcare.
The politicians supported by most in the “ pro-life” movement oppose the policies that would provide the same type of safety net in the US.
Pragmatism might do far more to reduce abortion rates here than overturning Roe v Wade. The talk of constitutional amendments by the extremists on both sides seems absurd.
Sorry, but I don't think this argument is the clincher that many others do.
DeleteIf I am doing the math right, some 200,000 or so abortions are obtained every single year by women who aren't categorized as poor. What are they lacking by way of government or health benefits which, if more widely available, would change their minds about aborting?
Most women who obtain abortions are poor. Aren't there any benefits available to them? No subsidized contraception? No subsidized pre-natal care? No subsidized benefits for giving birth? No public aid for single moms? No subsidized child care? No Head Start programs? No subsidized pre-school? No laws which require fathers to support their children, nor law enforcement agencies to enforce these laws?
I am not claiming there are no holes in the safety net which can be patched up. And I don't argue that we can't borrow good ideas from other nations with better outcomes. But there is a net already. Republicans sometimes talk about reducing its size, but they almost never do so. At the federal level, we hardly even argue about budgets anymore; we just do continuing resolutions to ensure more of the same year over year.
Jim, suggesting that the social safety net in the US in any way compares to that of European countries is beyond belief. I have neither the time nor the characters in the comment box to educate you. Letting go of preconceived ideas is hard. But maybe you need to open your eyes and do a little research on your own. I know where you are coming from - until my 40s, I was as conservative politically and religiously as you are (well, not as conservative religiously). But through my work in intl economics I was constantly exposed to the reality of how we compare to other countries, and it was really hard to accept at first. The more I learned, the more I realized that we Americans aren’t doing well compared to other rich nations. We aren't the "best" at a lot of things, including providing adequate support to parents, children, and families, especially those at the lower income levels. And pregnant women facing whatever obstacles they face - poverty or just seeing no way to raise a child alone because the father has disappeared into the hills - simply don't have the support that European women have.
DeleteIn France, paid maternity and paternity leave is MANDATORY. Employers pay some, but most is paid by the government. The same is true of childcare - it is far higher quality (due to mandatory, extensive training of ALL child care workers - childcare centers are subject to lots of those regulations conservatives so hate) Maternity leave is 8-34 weeks (longer with each birth)- PAID leave for mothers, and 28 days for fathers, seven days of which are mandatory for men and 8 weeks mandatory for mothers.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/23/france-doubles-paid-paternity-leave-to-28-days
BOTH my son and his wife in Silicon Valley could take 3 (her) – 6 (him) months of PAID leave when their children were born and 12 months, without pay for part, but all benefits, including health insurance, intact. They have outstanding medical insurance because the SV companies compete with each other for the local talent and all offer very generous fringe benefits. My kids in LA not only pay about $1300/month in healthcare premiums on a much lower income, they have huge co-pays and deductibles, and had to pay $$ thousands out of pocket for the Caesarean births of their children. The cost of the pre-natal care, and the surgery, and three days hospital to recover from the c-sections was enormous, which is why they are still paying off the birth of their daughter. NO paid maternity leave at all. She not only was not entitled to take any maternity leave she was not allowed to use her sick leave after the births. The company would only let her take 2 weeks of paid vacation and up to 4 weeks of unpaid leave. Since my son freelances, and has a very unreliable income, the 4 weeks of unpaid wasn't doable. Fortunately he is able to help care for the children, and he also does many of the household manager jobs .Many men are too macho to shop for groceries and coo!. Her employer - a national firm - has a workforce that is about 90% women and they don't even offer minimal paid maternity leave. Don't think that everyone - even if not in poverty - enjoys the benefits that you and your wife enjoy. Single women, middle class, very often have no support - from family or the father of their child - if they were to try to raise the child on their own. Republicans and "pro-lifers" need to get their heads out of their rosy, idealized comfortable worlds and try to see the reality. And that means supporting women and children and families to an extent approaching that of the other rich nations of the world. The information is out there, available by google search.
GOP politicians who are supported by the pro-life movement have zero interest in "patching up" the vast holes in the safety net. Even a cursory study of what they actually propose, and vote for, shows that their track record is one of CUTTING the safety nets.
PS-not only is the abortion rate in most European countries lower than in the US, the births/woman are higher in several of these countries, including France and Sweden, among others. Many others have the same births/woman rates as the US. Some are lower - such as that almost all-Catholic country of Italy.
DeleteFair enough, Anne, on the disparities in benefits between Silicon Valley employees and people who don't have those types of benefits. Not entirely clear what your kid (kids?) in LA do, but seems like they are in the gig economy, or working in non-union retail or something similar. Let's agree that the social safety net can be strengthened for them.
DeleteFrance's population is less than a quarter of ours. It reports about 200,000 abortions per year - about a quarter of ours.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/940161/number-abortions-france/
I will agree with you, based on your description of French benefits, that they have better benefits than us. But if you are trying to demonstrate that our adopting benefits comparable to France's would dramatically reduce the number of our abortions - or even reduce them at all - the math doesn't really show that to be the case.
The claim was trumpeted prominently some 12-13 years ago, when Obamacare was first proposed (btw, are your LA kids on Obamacare? If so - then that program sucks) that Obamacare would address the gaps in healthcare that force people to settle for abortions.
A version of that argument was trotted out again when the contraceptive mandate was first rolled out a year or two later: the expense of contraception allegedly deprived many women of it, and subsidizing its expense would surely cause the number of unwanted pregnancies, and therefore abortions, to drop.
But the reality, of course, is that the number of abortions in the US was gradually declining for years before the advent of Obamacare. Now, some 10 or more years later, the number of abortions is still (mostly) declining a little bit year by year. The rate of decline may actually be leveling off in more recent years. Obamacare hasn't really made a difference.
Obamacare's contraceptive mandate has been in effect since 2012 - nearly a decade now. Free(!) birth control, including methods that are so effective as to virtually mistake-proof, hasn't really made a difference, either.
I've never argued that better public health options aren't part of the answer to reducing the number of abortions, although I'm sure I'm more skeptical than everyone else around here is that spending more always = better outcomes; the law of diminishing returns is real, as apparently we'll all learn again about many aspects of life during the Biden administration.
But abortion is a multi-faceted problem, and public health care is just one facet. It may not be a particularly important facet, at least once a certain minimum level of benefits are provided.
Anne, I hope you'll also respond to my first point in our conversation: that hundreds of thousands of women every single year who seemingly don't lack the economic means to support a child, nevertheless choose to abort.
DeleteWell, I'm not Anne, but I'll take an attempt at surmising why women who aren't poor abort. Short answer, pregnancy and childbirth aren't a walk in the park. Sometimes they are hard and painful, and men don't have to go through them. If one doesn't have a belief that all lives are sacred and willed by God, it would be easy to see abortion as a get out of jail card, if the pregnancy was unintended. Of course the farther along the pregnancy goes, the harder it would be to remain in denial about the justice owed to the developing child.
DeleteJack, a brief history of penance would be interesting. I do know a bit about it, ranging from the public punishment (excommunication), public "confession" etc in the early christian communities, to the development of private confession in the Irish monasteries, to the eventual spread of that practice. But I'm sure you can do a complete job.
ReplyDeleteYou might also want to look at the changing christian attitudes towards abortion throughout history. Although fairly consistent in opposing abortion, it is not consistent as to why abortion was seen as evil, nor consistent in ideas about formed and unformed fetuses, ensoulment, etc. However, for much of its history, the church did not consider the "unformed" embryo to be a human person, but a potential human person. Human life, yes, but not a human person. I was surprised when one of my Catholic college professors (a nun) told me this. I had been unaware of changes in abortion thought throughout the church's history.
Of course, even Aquinas's attempt to pinpoint the time of ensoulment was fruitless. Nobody knows the answer to that. But his misogny was apparent - in Aquinas' thinking ensoulment of the male fetus was seen as coming earlier than that of the female.
A couple of non-theological, non-academic articles on this.
https://theoutline.com/post/8536/catholic-history-abortion-brigid
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/catholic-church-teaching-on-abortion-dates-from-1869-1.1449517
"Human life, yes, but not a human person."
DeleteYes, I think that's still a valid distinction.
Jim, I will get back to your comments/questions. Today is just really busy.
DeleteUnrelated; I just got a message on my Kindle; "Attackers on newgathering.blogspot.com may trick you into doing something dangerous like installing software or revealing personal information..." Didn't know y'all were such dangerous company!
ReplyDelete