Reply to Eduardo

I don't believe what I wrote "certainly (sic) suggests" that "Professor Kaveny's writing" on the subject of abortion merits excommunication.  But, just to dispel any doubt, I did not then, nor do I now, know of any ground that would justify the Church's declaring Professor Kaveny excommunicated.  No, we're all in this together, at least for now.  I've long held Cathy Kaveny in very high regard, something she, but perhaps not Eduardo, would have every reason to know.  I just disagree with her from time to time, and she with me, and there's no surprise or evil in that.  Concocting a reading of my post according to which I am so presumptuous as to suggest that our partner in dialogue should be excommunicated is pure silliness.   

In what I wrote I linked to Pope Benedict's recent comments on the possible declaration by Mexican bishops of the latae sententiae excommunication of Mexico's elected officials who had voted to decriminalize first-trimester abortions.  I did so in order to provide a cutting-edge context in which to evaluate the principle Kaveny had recently advanced in her editorial in Commonweal, and I quoted that principle (I did not give a "summary" of the editorial to which I also linked) according to which the Court "would highlight the humanity of unborn life while recognizing that secular law should not require a woman to sacrife her fundamental integrity to carry her baby to term."  The part of that principle that I've now italicized is really very far from anything the Church is saying about the principles that should guide decision-making and political choices that bear on abortion.  Professor Caveny seeks with the principle to acknowledge and serve simultaneously two sets of "core values."  But again, "core values" is a not-so-subtle way of taking one's attention of the Church's principle, indeed that of the natural moral law, according to which it is a grave moral evil intentionally to take innocent human life.  Eduardo says Kaveny "is talking about abortion to protect the health or life of the mother."  Is that really all she is talking about with her concept of "secular law" that treats as "fundamental" something other than the basic principle that good is to be done and pursued and evil avoided?  Kaveny suggests that her principle would be a step toward a "workable compromise."  I understand the de facto need for incrementalism in undoing Roe in the immediate future, but I don't think the Church bids us have our eye on a "compromise" premised in part on the "fundamental" advanced by Kaveny.

Since I don't have any reason to believe Professor Kaveny should be excommunicated, I don't need to reach Eduardo's question about whether I'm not edging toward endangering "academic freedom."  But, just to be clear about this too, let me say that I adhere to the Church's norms regarding who is fit to teach in Catholic colleges and universities.  It's not really about whether "[I] would stop there."  There are norms, and putatively Catholic colleges and universities should adhere to them, and they should do so in a spirit of unity and charity.  Those norms, for their part, are deeply infused with and shaped by the Church's perennial judgment of the importance of scholars seeking the truth in freedom.  I'm sure, though, that there are some conceptions of "academic freedom" that are out of place in Catholic places of higher learning.  I suppose one might even under some circumstances have to choose between "Catholic" and "academic freedom."