Tuesday, November 23, 2010
How long before some cleric says that contraception is "OK" – or even "a first assumption of responsibility" – in those cases where the woman is likely to have an abortion or the man is likely to insist on one? So, every instance of prostitution and the hook-up culture. Nay, every instance of non-marital sex. Heck, why stop there? Why not every instance of marital sex fraught with economic insecurity? Wait, is "likely" a strong enough criterion to prevent the "greater evil"? We need to do some "hard philosophical work" to calculate possibility. It's the only responsible thing to do.
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2 comments:
To call an action "OK" would be a stronger and essentially different kind of approval than to call it "a first assumption of responsibility." Even though an act may indicate an awakening moral sensibility, it is not *therefore* OK. Even where an action is decidedly not OK, though, it's worth crediting the possibility that there may, in some cases, be some aspect of the action to approve. Such "crediting the possibility" seems to me to indicate the moral imagination of a pastor and fisher of souls--someone who might "know how to speak to the weary a word that would comfort them."
Perhaps, though, I'm mistaking the nature of your concern.
Sorry for the late response. I was living it up out of town. I wouldn't call it a mistake because I wasn't clear that I did not mean to criticize the Pope. I meant to anticipate the joy with which some priests will reduce the "moral imagination" to a thin thread of moralistic logic with which they will weave another seamless garment. Part of the problem is that there is a further distinction between what a "first assumption of responsibility" is and what it can sound like, which is indicated in the Pope's comment that condoms are not "a real or moral solution."
I am a little bit surprised at what some of my favorite bloggers (though not, of course, the New York Times) have heard in the comments. Laura Wood and Damian Thompson, for example. I suppose I understand in Mrs. Wood's case, in light of her concern that the Church has become "anti-heroic."
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