For the last two weeks I have been talking about the appalling decision by the Franciscan University of Steubenville to honor General Michael Hayden, former Director of the CIA under Bush and torture apologist.
As depressing as that was, it is more depressing to see so little controversy about this. A Franciscan institution bestows honors on a major agent of the Empire. Yawn.
It is not unlike my reaction to the story a couple of weeks ago that an American war college had, for 8 years, featured a class that portrayed Islam as the enemy and proposed genocide- using nuclear weapons on Mecca- as the answer. That story, rather than provoking outrage, disappeared; aside from the Arab and Muslim presses I have seen no follow up report. As I said at the time, I had thought I was cynical about the military but it turned out I was naive. Similarly, I thought I was cynical about American Catholics, but it turned out I was naive.
But the most depressing thing is that people in my comboxes actually argued either that waterboarding and other forms of “enhanced interrogation” are not torture, or that they really are not important compared to abortion. Never mind that people have died at the hands of American torturers, I want to tackle the abortion trump card.
It has always bothered me when antiabortion advocates downplay other moral horrors by citing either the numbers of abortions or the brutality of the act. Granted, the statistics are overwhelming, but when you say that, for example, the deaths caused by our attack and occupation of Iraq are really not significant because there were “only” 100,000 (to cite only one estimate) dead Iraqis you look like a fool. The impression is given that you really don’t care, or that to you it is a waste of time to be concerned about any evil except abortion. Far from being “prolife” you cheapen life by this sort of reasoning.
And in fact you miss the point entirely. Morality is not quantifiable.
Every human being carries within the image of God. When this image is desecrated and attacked, whether by war, abortion, torture, or any other way, it is an infinite tragedy. Every single act against that image is a grave evil, and these acts are all individual ones.
And every such desecration is an immeasurable affront to the Living God.
Which is why the Archdiocese of Portland, OR supports Petition 25 (which would end taxpayer funding of abortion and reduce the number of abortions by 3000 a year) but not Petition 22 (which would grant personhood to the unborn but opens up a loophole for condemened prisoners). Personhood and the right to life should cover everybody from conception to natural death.
This brings to mind my memory of the day of the Oklahoma City Bombing, and how live news coverage began while I was eating lunch at the law school I was attending. I sat there alone, watching, for a couple hours as numerous students came in, glanced at the TV, and walked away as though completely unconcerned. I think I was just as shocked at the reaction as I was at the event itself. Perhaps it takes some sort of relationship to the event to make people interested, or maybe we’re all just numb from too much exposure to gratuitous violence, but when one’s ability to respond or feel horror is blunted we all lose a bit of our humanity.
Daniel, the intent to focus on abortion over, say, torture isn’t intended to say torture, or any other violation of human dignity is unimportant. Every violation is an affront. As protestants often say, “all sin is sin.” I believe all sin is a violation against God. No qualms. I also believe there are different severities of sin. Stealing a piece of bread when hungry is less severe than taking someone’s life, cutting off a finger (horrible and 100% wrong), is less severe than cutting off someone’s head. These actions violate the dignity of both the person committing the action and the person on the receiving end. I think on this following point, faithful Catholics can disagree – what is the best way to address these injustices? I don’t think it’s wrong to prioritize first on the abuses that have the greatest rate of occurrence, and affect the most vulnerable. This isn’t an excuse not to act when possible and speak out against other abuses. I think also God gives different people different degrees of sensitivity to the different abuses out there. I’m happy there are Catholics who are really tuned into important things like food safety, protecting clean air and drinking water, promoting the rights of workers to form unions, etc. It is possible for me to do more in these other areas, and it’s helpful when I’m reminded by my brothers. I work in a big factory. Most everyone has very specialized skills. We wouldn’t be successful or faithful to our mission of making a good product without complementary roles. I believe our work in building the kingdom is similar. If someone believes we’re all called to be generalists – equal priority to all areas – I understand and respect that view. It’s a good call to balance. Good Catholics can disagree on the pragmatics of HOW to be the most effective witness to the culture.
“Daniel, the intent to focus on abortion over, say, torture isn’t intended to say torture, or any other violation of human dignity is unimportant. ”
Of course it is. That has precisely been the purpose of that argument for years. Encountering literally hundreds if not thousands of times, and virtually always deployed in order to deny the importance and often even the sinfulness of torture (invariably called “torture”) was why I was finally moved to say that the working soteriology of a huge number of Catholic “conservatives” is “Opposition to abortion taketh away the sins of the world.”
Yeah, what Mark said. I am thoroughly sick of Catholics who call themselves “prolife” and support the torture of prisoners (oh, I’m sorry, “enhanced interrogation”), preemptive, unjust wars, State-sponsored killing of prisoners, and the rest. If you sincerely think these things are wrong, great, but way too many have no problem with any violation of the image of God except the unborn American kind.
Mark, I prioritize my financial donations. This may mean I don’t fund certain charities – charities that really are good and noble. If I have $100 to allocate – do I think cancer treatment is unimportant if I give all $100 to Catholic Charities instead? Is it better to give 1 penny to 10,000 charities? I believe it’s a matter of prudential judgement. The same for allocation of time (and blogging). Is it better to say a single sentence on 1,000 topics or dive deeply into a single topic? Again, it’s a matter of prudential judgement.
My checkbook shows $0 went to cancer societies, and I spent no time doing fundraisers for cancer societies last year.
I don’t intend to say that cancer is unimportant – though my checkbook might say otherwise. I don’t feel qualified to judge my own heart/motivations. Perhaps I really don’t care about cancer. My mind says it does, but my checkbook says otherwise. I don’t know. Feel free to judge my motivations. Just be careful to pick the spoon you measure with.
Part of the problem here is that we can effectively eliminate torture by making it illegal. The same with capital punishment and any number of other practices that are anti-life.
We cannot so eliminate abortion. If abortion is made illegal, that will indeed reduce the numbers by some degree, but it will not stop the practice and such criminalization will result in a certain number of MOTHERS dying as well as their unborn children.
Thus, if we are serious about ENDING abortion, we must advocate for the kinds of policies, often called ‘welfare”, that will make it less likely that women experiencing a crisis pregnancy will be tempted to seek an abortion. But few, if any “pro-life” Republicans are willing to go there, and many Republicans will tell you, privately, that they really think that all these poor black and Hispanic women who have gotten themselves pregnant should be ENCOURAGED, if not required, to get an abortion.
Thus, the conundrum: do we wish to eliminate abortion, or at least reduce it by up to 95%, or do we wish to simply make it illegal, and thus think that we have washed our hands of responsibility for the back alley and otherwise illegal abortions that continue to occur?
Khouria Frederica Mathewes-Green discusses many of these issues in her book, “Real Choices”.
Real Choices: Listening to Women; Looking for Alternatives to Abortion
It is also important to provide a culture of respect for pregnant women – whether they are old or young or married or unmarried: because each one of them has chosen life, and made sacrifices in order to do so. I regret to say that I have known of a number of cases of abortion at so-called prolife universities, because girls were afraid of the judgment they would be subjected to, were they to walk about with round bellies sans wedding band.
The organization Feminists for Life has checklist for “how prolife is your school”? It is interesting to see all the points they check for. It is also interesting to see how low certain schools score….sure, they have no ads for abortion, and they have lots of anti-abortion rallies, but as far as medical care for pregnant students, childcare for young mothers, nursing and changing stations for babies, parking spots for pregnant mothers and parents of infants, housing for pregnant students….as well as, of course, a culture of awareness of other dimensions of a pro-life ethos (regarding just war, or social justice)….well, some universities out there are really not as pro-life as they think they are.