I\u2019ve always though they were well-intended, but that they have backfired in a way their coiners never envisioned.<\/p>\n
They have mutated into the Five Only Things That Matter (and, really, the One Only Thing that Matters\u2013Abortion) whenever you attempt to get Catholic conservatives to consider looking at the rest of our common life in light of the Tradition. Marc notes:<\/p>\n
\nNow I agree (with apologies to all you hip-ass Catholic Reporter readers). There are acts that are always evil. Voting for people who support and promote acts that are always evil makes one indirectly responsible for the continued existence of those acts. But the perverse flip-side that has sprung into Catholic conscience is this: We tend to think that because it is\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0okay to vote in favor of an intrinsic evil it must\u00a0be<\/em>\u00a0okay to vote\u00a0in favor of\u00a0non<\/em>-intrinsic evil.<\/p>\nBut this does not follow at all. For what is a non-intrinsically evil action? It is an action that is evil, but that, under other circumstances,\u00a0may<\/em>\u00a0not be evil. Capital punishment is the typical example here. Pope John Paul II made it clear that execution is\u00a0justified if the nation has no other way in which to protect its citizenry from the offender.<\/p>\nBut this does not mean, and indeed, it cannot mean, that one is not morally responsible for supporting this evil simply because it is not\u00a0intrinsically<\/em>\u00a0evil. If I vote for a man who wants to execute youths for marijuana possession, sure, I am not supporting an intrinsic evil. There are, after all, circumstances in which capital punishment may be allowed. Nevertheless, I\u00a0am<\/em>\u00a0supporting\u00a0the horrendous, non-intrinsic evil of way-too-liberally-applied capital punishment. That this issue is negotiable \u2014 in the sense that there are circumstances that may justify it and legitimate arguments concerning these circumstances \u2014 does not mean that I am\u00a0de facto<\/em>\u00a0justified in supporting it with my vote. That this\u00a0issue is negotiable means that I am morally obliged to determine whether it is being applied in a way and in a circumstance that makes it evil. If it is being applied in a way and in a circumstance that makes it evil, and I am aware of the fact, then my support of it damns me. If it is determined to be an evil, then the negotiation is over \u2014 I cannot support an evil, intrinsic or non-intrinsic.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI agree \u00a0with all this and would add the following: another trouble with the Five Non-Negotiables is that, for the Right, they are in fact, highly negotiable while a number of so-called \u201cprudential\u201d judgments are the *real* non-negotiables.<\/p>\n
Abortion, for instance, is highly negotiable when the baby you want to kill is living in a a civilian city Americans want to justify nuking\u2013or when Donald Trump is on the ballot. \u00a0Mercy killing is fine when it\u2019s a prisoner you want to put out of your misery. \u00a0The sanctity of marriage is not all that big a deal when its Donald Trump\u2019s fourth wife. \u00a0ESCR is just ducky when Bush 43 or McCain okay.<\/p>\n
But on the supposedly \u201cprudential issues\u201d of war, torture, gun violence, a living wage, desperate poor people at the border? \u00a0It often turns out there is only one dogmatic position to be taken on these. \u00a0The Iraq War was good. \u00a0Torture was good. \u00a0Change absolutely nothing about our current gun regime. \u00a0The minimum wage must never raised because even though it works in reality, it will ever work in conservative theory. \u00a0And Amnesty Equals Abortion.<\/p>\n
But tying together the argument about all of these amazingly dogmatic \u201cprudential\u201d issues is this: \u00a0Again and again, when you suggest that there are perhaps other approach to explore that are more in keeping with actual Catholic teaching, you are told, \u201cWhy are you discussing this when The Babies[TM] are dying?\u201d \u00a0Over and over, The Babies[TM] are invoked as The Reason for not questioning the American Movement Conservative Playbook. \u00a0I can\u2019t tell you how many times I was told to stop discussing Conservative orgasmic love for torture because it distracted from The Babies[TM]. \u00a0Our gun slaughter rate that vastly outstrips the rest of the civilized world? \u00a0Don\u2019t discuss it. \u00a0It distracts from The Babies[TM]. \u00a0The need for a liviing wage for struggling families pressured to abort by poverty? \u00a0Forget it. \u00a0It distracts from The Babies[TM].<\/p>\n
The paradoxical result was that the people who were supposed Focusing on The Babies[TM] were, in fact, devoting the vast bulk of their energy to defending obviously and massively wrong-headed GOP policies that are clearly contrary to both Catholic social teaching and elementary common sense. \u00a0The non-negotiable was not abortion. \u00a0The unborn were, at best, human shields, for the *real* non-negotiables of (in this example) torture, the gun lobby, and corporate interests.<\/p>\n
I would have no problem with people who said abortion was their number one priority and then went off to work against abortion. \u00a0But the reality is that huge numbers of people who say this have massive amounts of time and energy to devote to fighting with both the Church and common sense on any number of issue ranging from torture to the death penalty to a living wage to unjust war. \u00a0People who purport to focus on the unborn and then spend all their actual energy on fighting Pope Francis as Public Enemy #1 or battling to make sure as many people are executed as possible or shouting down Laudato Si are not defending the five non-negotiables. \u00a0They are defending their *real* non-negotiables and using the five non-negotiables as fig leaves for their real\u2013and often anti-magisterial\u2013agendas.<\/p>\n
The solution is simple: Embrace all of Catholic teaching as a whole and do not pit parts of it against the whole.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don\u2019t know that I\u2019d go that far, but I think he definitely has a point. I\u2019ve always though they were well-intended, but that they have backfired in a way their coiners never envisioned. They have mutated into the Five Only Things That Matter (and, really, the One Only Thing that Matters\u2013Abortion) whenever you attempt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,7],"class_list":["post-93613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-catholic-social-teaching","tag-doings-on-other-blogs"],"yoast_head":"\n
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