Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Miller on cooperation and culpability
At Public Discourse, Robert Miller makes well a point I've been trying to figure out how to make, and does so better than I would have. (So, check it out.) Nutshell version: Assuming that a Catholic institution could, given all the givens, non-culpably comply with the mandate (whether what Brother Hockett calls "Mandate 1.0" or the floated-but-not-yet-existing "Mandate 2.0"), it does not follow that the mandate is unobjectionable, or not inconsistent with a commitment to religious freedom. As Miller puts it:
. . . The fundamental problem with the contraception mandate is not that complying with it involves objecting employers in moral wrongdoing. At least for some employers, it may well do that, and this certainly makes the mandate morally objectionable, but this is not the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem with the mandate is that it coerces some people into doing what they think is wrong, and this problem remains regardless of whether the coercion excuses the actions of the people being coerced.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/02/miller-on-cooperation-and-culpability.html
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Yes, but what is the consequence of the observation that from a Catholic perspective, some people are coerced into doing what they think is wrong? In what way is this not a problem shared by any and all government mandates? Some folks think that everything done by a government is wrong, while most folks do not. I would guess that most people believe that at least some government action is morally wrong and find themselves in a minority. So?