A reader writes:<\/p>\n
Suppose one day the devil came to you, and offered to completely and permanently destroy the entire abortion industry, all for the low, low price of your immortal soul. The Catholic answer is, and must be, \u201cAbsolutely not!\u201d<\/p>\n
Ergo, \u201cnon-negotiables\u201d aren\u2019t actually \u201cnon-negotiable.\u201d It\u2019s *not* a categorical imperative to stop abortion, as there are higher priorities (namely, the potential eternal damnation of your own soul.)<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not saying that Trump is the devil, just pointing out the flaw in the concept of non-negotiables.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I see what my reader is trying to do and he\u2019s right as far as it goes. \u00a0You can\u2019t take a good thing and absolutize it to allow evil: (\u201cI\u2019ll kill every man, woman and child to outlaw abortion\u201d betrays a certain failure to grasp the concept.) \u00a0And indeed, the great failure of the prolife movement has, indeed, been it\u2019s willingness to make the Faustian Bargain of prostituting itself to those grave intrinsic evils the GOP approves in order to chase after the fantasy of overturning Roe v. Wade. \u00a0That\u2019s what the endless rationalization for unjust war and torture from Christians were all about.<\/p>\n
But one can hold to certain non-negotiable moral values just so long as they are rightly ordered. \u00a0One can for instance, demand love of neighbor as oneself absolutely, just so long as one does not pit that imperative *against* the love of God with one\u2019s heart, soul, mind, and strength.<\/p>\n
Another fun thought experiment is this: If you could outlaw abortion at the cost of getting rid of guns\u00a0or, conversely, if you could get rid of guns\u00a0at the cost of outlawing abortion, would you do it?<\/p>\n
For myself, I see no downside to either and would see it as a win\/win. \u00a0Both abortion and our gun culture are expressions of our deeply diseased culture of death. But for most Americans, it a huge dilemma.<\/p>\n
Feel free to argue about it in the comboxes.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A reader writes: Suppose one day the devil came to you, and offered to completely and permanently destroy the entire abortion industry, all for the low, low price of your immortal soul. The Catholic answer is, and must be, \u201cAbsolutely not!\u201d Ergo, \u201cnon-negotiables\u201d aren\u2019t actually \u201cnon-negotiable.\u201d It\u2019s *not* a categorical imperative to stop abortion, as […]<\/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":[662],"class_list":["post-95924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-thought-experiment"],"yoast_head":"\n
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