An American Catholic blogger criticizes Fr. James Martin after watching him debate EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on CNN. Discussing the Notre Dame nonsense, Fr. Martin lamented that the life issue was being reduced to abortion, ignoring everything else. Arroyo shot back by distinguishing abortion as an intrinsic evil that could never be justified, and other issues. Of course, this blog post (and the majority of the comments) side with Arroyo and denounce Martin.
Here’s the irony– Arroyo is the one on record defending an instrinsically evil act, torture. Recall his recent conversation with Fr. Sirico. Here is what he said, courtesy of Commonweal:
“ARROYO: Many people will then come in and say, “Wait a minute, but they’re against torture, and they’re for immigration…” These are all prudential judgments, as opposed to this abortion question…”
They go on to claim that the Bush-Cheney techniques are not torture. They make jokes about waterboarding. Finally, Sirico argues that torture might be fine if done by a competent authority, if it is proportionate, and the threat is imminent. In words, he takes something the Church defines as intrinsically evil and creates circumstances when it might be licit. Arroyo’s response? “Mm-hmm. Agreed.”
So there we have it. Arroya criticizes Martin’s argument on the grounds that abortion stands apart because it is intrinsically evil. Martin does not dispute this, and in no way defends abortion. And yet, a few weeks earlier, we have Arroyo himself defending an intrinsically evil act. Irony indeed.
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