Zippy Catholic Rides Again!

Zippy Catholic Rides Again! July 16, 2010

An equal opportunity defender of Church teaching against the encroachments of consequentialism and the inveterate tendency of American political partisans to make excuses for Their Team’s embrace of grave and intrinsic evil, we find him schooling the gang over at Vox Nova for their reliable excuse-making on behalf of Obama’s transparent lies about funding abortion. Just as “Hey! It was just a few people we tortured” is unlikely to help at the Pearly Gates, so is “Look, it’s just a handful of babies getting killed!” unlikely to be an impressive defense either.

I think Zippy is exactly right.

In the presence of a proportionate reason, it can – if additional double-effect conditions are met – be morally licit to engage in remote material cooperation with evil. But when you elect a guy and engage in years-long public advocacy of his policies, you bring upon yourself certain very grave obligations. One of those grave obligations is to be first in line to criticize the wicked and despicable elements of his policies. Spending every public word attacking criticisms of those wicked elements is just knock-knock-knocking on Hell’s door.

Just as Catholic war advocates assumed grave responsibility and should have been the first, not the last, to criticize our comission of war crimes, so Catholic Obama Excuse-makers should be the first, not the last, to criticize the use of their Beloved Health Care Plan to kill children. That they are making excuses and attacking critics tells me that the concern about abortion is just smoke and mirrors.

Cue Morning’s Minion in my comboxes with some sort of attempt at a tu quoque response!


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