There\u2019s nothing like circumcision to spark a conversation. I once did a radio show with Rabbi Daniel Lapin in which one of the guests was a mohel (rabbi who performed circumcisions) from Argentina (I\u2019ve led a rich and varied life). Rabbi Lapin had all sorts of stuff he wanted to talk about, but the only thing callers wanted to discuss was the endlessly fascinating topic of circumcision. It got numbing after a while, but one remark stood out: the mohel remarked, \u201cI don\u2019t take tips.\u201d Gotta love Jewish humor.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I don\u2019t have a lot to add to the whole circumcision thing. Some people argue it\u2019s a little better for boys in the long run, based on STD stats and such like. Other, like me, don\u2019t see much point to it and figure a better prophylactic is to raise your boys so that they aren\u2019t like to catch STDs. My only caveat to that is to add, \u201cIf your zeal against circumcision is such that you start calling it \u201cmutilation\u201d and demanding that it be outlawed, you should bear in mind that you are calling for persecution of Jews, since their religion *demands* circumcision and I, for one, am not going to back you up on your fanaticism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Naturally, this calls forth a standard response from a certain sort of reader, namely, the kind of guy who will take anything you say on any subject from oriental shrubbery to trout fishing in America and try to turn it into a \u201cgotcha\u201d in justification of torture:<\/p>\n
\u201cCatholics Against Circumcision\u201d argue that male circumcision is not medically necessary and therefore is \u201cmutilation.\u201d The Church\u2019s teaching on bodily integrity and its prohibition on mutilation is set out in the catechism, right next to the prohibition on torture.<\/p>\n
Unlike the case with torture, however, Mark suggests that \u201cmutilation\u201d is somehow not clear. Is he playing definitional games? Shouldn\u2019t he just adopt the broadest possible reading of \u201cmutilation\u201d so that no infant boy would ever be mutilated?<\/p>\n
The suggestion that Catholics should avoid calling mutilation by its right name so as to avoid giving offense to Jews sounds suspiciously like a consequentialist argument. Of course we should have interfaith conversations with our Jewish brothers and sisters, but we needn\u2019t shrink from the Church\u2019s teaching on mutilation to do so.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is what is known as \u201ca reach\u201d.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the deal. The fact that Catholics Against Circumcision call circumcision \u201cmutilation\u201d is as significant as the fact that Catholic Vegans call meat \u201cmurder\u201d. Their sayin\u2019 so don\u2019t make it so.<\/p>\n
Of course, torture defenders make exactly the same argument in reverse\u2013preposterously\u2013about techniques which have actually resulted in the *death* of detainees: they claim that every specific instance of bleedin\u2019 obvious torture is render completely ambiguous by the fact that *some* \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d techniques are difficult to unambigously define. In short, they say that since \u201csleep deprivation\u201d may or may not be torture, it\u2019s impossible to know if cold cells, waterboarding, or strappado are torture, even if prisoner die from them. That\u2019s the little clue which gives away the game. For contrary to what is stated above, I do not claim that what constitutes torture is \u201calways clear\u201d. Instead I have virtually always confined my discussion to examples of torture which nobody in his five wits (except a dedicated torture apologist) could deny are torture.<\/p>\n
So the real analogy is this: If somebody were to say, \u201cHey! Jews circumcise their sons! And that\u2019s not mutilation. So if I castrate a detainee, I\u2019m just not convinced that\u2019s really \u201cmutilation\u201d either! Golly! It\u2019s sooooooo confusing!\u201d you would have something that resembles the arguments of torture defenders\u2013arguments I regard as contemptible sophistry.<\/p>\n
As has already been ably demonstrated (by yet another torture defender), a mere physical evil is not necessarily a moral evil. So sticking knives into somebody may or may not be intrinsically immoral depending on whether you mean to murder them or cure them of appendicitis. Circumcision is likewise not obviously and unambiguously \u201cmutilation\u201d if done for medical reasons or out of perceived obedience to God and love of one\u2019s son. That, by the way, is also why SERE training (to endure the torture of waterboarding) is not torture. It does not have, as its goal, the reduction of the person to an object and his deliberate dehumanization.<\/p>\n
Weird how hard people will struggle to defend the indefensible.<\/p>\n