I mentioned this project before, but I wanted to alert people to a forthcoming Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought. Here. I am one of 4 co-editors of this volume. My co-editors are Michael Coulter, Steve Krason, and Joe Varacalli. We have been working on this for over 5 years and we just received the page-proofs; publication is due this summer.
The encyclopedia is large (it should be about 1200 pages) and includes approximately 850 entries from over 300 contributors. Most of the contributors are members of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists and/or the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. Father Araujo SJ is one of the contributors along with my Ave Maria colleagues Jane Adolphe, Howard Bromberg, Joe Falvey, Bruce Frohnen, Patrick Quirk, Steve Safranek, and Jim Sonne. Other contributors include Cardinal Pell, Archbishop Michael Miller, Mary Ann Glendon, Father Canavan SJ, Bill May, Mark Latkovic, David Gregory, Father Joe Koterski SJ, and many, many others. I hope that people will take a close look at the volume.
Rob asked about the relationship between religious liberty and truth and wondered why truth doesn't limit the operation of religious liberty. I think Dignitatis Humanae does make it clear that religious liberty must be understood in light of and is limited by the objective moral law. According to Father Brian Harrison, Dignitatis Humanae's reference to the objective moral law was inserted after an intervention by then-Archbishop Karol Wojtyla. This linkage between freedom and truth was a key theme for Pope John Paul II throughout his pontificate, in particular in Vertitatis Splendor.
The Catechism (at 2108-2109) makes this point in this way: "The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error, but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty, i.e., immunity, within just limits, from external constraint in religious matters by political authorities. This natural right ought to be acknowledged in the juridical order of society in such a way that it constitutes a civil right. The right to religious liberty can of itself be neither unlimited nor limited only by a 'public order' conceived in a positivist or naturalist manner. The 'due limits' which are inherent in it must be determined for each social situation by political prudence, according to the requirements of the common good, and ratified by the civil authority in accordance with 'legal principles which are in conformity with the objective moral order.'"
Dignitatis Humanae did not endorse Casey-style reasoning about individual moral autonomy.
On this Solemnity, I thought I'd encourage people to read Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Exhortation on St. Joseph. Here. I think it is unfortunate that this document is so little known. The short section on "work as an expression of love" is valuable for those of us who toil in "secular" occupations.
In large part because I don't think I have a clear idea of the underlying facts, I am not entirely sure how to evaluate the Welby case. I have been concerned by some of the arguments made in defending Welby's actions. For example, the article by John Paris from the Tablet had the subtitle--"A life too burdensome." That seems to me the wrong approach to take. Catholic teaching on this issue has drawn a distinction between burdensome treatments and burdensome lives. To regard some lives, in impaired conditions, as too burdensome gets close to denying the good of human life. In the Terri Schiavo case, for instance, that seems to be precisely the dynamic. To the people who were so eager to have her food and water withdrawn, her life was not worth living and some, her husband, regarded her as already dead. But for Terri, the treatment wasn't burdensome. Her life had a value that ought to have been respected throught he continued administration of ordinary care. That was the point of John Paul II's message on the treatment of PVS patients. But for Terri's husband, her continued existence was obviously too burdensome.
Human life, however valuable, need not be preserved at all costs and there are situations where the treatment may be too burdensome (or extraordinary or disproportionate). Maybe that was the case in the Welby situation. Most commentators think that it was permissible to have removed the respirator in the Karen Ann Quinlan case, although her food and water were not withdrawn and she lived for a number of years. Maybe the Welby case was different, though, because he seemed intent on securing his death (not just avoiding atreatment that had proved too burdensome). The whole use of his case to promote the "right to die" movement in Italy seems to suggest that something more significant was going on then just replaying the Quinlan case. The ideological use of his situation and death certainly weighed into Cardinal Ruini's decision to deny a Church funeral.
On June 6, 2006, the Pontifical Council for the Family announced the publication of "The Family and Human Procreation." (The document is dated May 13, 2006.) I have had a lot of trouble locating the document and recently ran across an English translation here, on the Women for Faith & Family website. The document reflects on the current threats to the family and attempts to "shed light on the anthropological foundations of family life as a place or environment for procreation and will thereby help the many people today who desire to lead a rich and fruitful family life and contribute to the social regeneration of the family in contexts where such regeneration is necessary."
The document is quite wide-ranging. I was particularly struck by its efforts to explore how the family helps to promote solidarity and to avoid the excessive individualism of much of Western culture.
Chris Kaczor (Loyola Marymount) has written a paper entitled "Ectopic Pregnancy and the Catholic Hospital" that he will present at a meeting of the US Bishops in February. I am sure that he'd send a copy to anyone who is interested. He can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].
In this paper, Chris considers the various treatment options and concludes that salpingostomy and methotrexate may both be used by Catholic hospitals since the underlying moral issues have not yet been definitively resolved.
I wanted to mention a new book on double effect. The book is Double-Effect Reasoning: Doing Good and Avoiding Evil by Thomas A. Cavanaugh. It is available in the UK and is scheduled to be published in the US very soon by Oxford University Press. Tom Cavanaugh is the chair of the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco and has written several noteworthy articles on this issue. I haven't yet read the book but I expect that it will make an important contribution to the discussion of double effect.
I very much appreciate the further comments of Karen Stohr and Rob and Julian Velasco. The problem I have with Grisez, Finnis, and Boyle's argument is that it seems too abstract. It seems a much too facile way of just "redescribing" the actions of the doctor. It doesn't focus adequately on the physical act that is being undertaken. So, they justify craniotomy as not involving intentional killing because the surgeon "intends" to save the mother's life and is just rearranging the skull of the fetus. That seems euphemistic. Under this approach to thinking about intention, in the ectopic pregnancy example (and maybe this would apply to justify an abortion too) the doctor doesn't intend to "kill" the embryo he is just "removing" the embryo. I think that is some cases (as Chris Kaczor has pointed out), this "removal" can result in the successful implantation of the embryo and if that is true then the death of the embryo is not essential to accomplish the doctor's goals. Bill May cites a doctor who says that this removal-with-possibility-of-implantation is not the way this procedure is usually employed. I'd agree that the physical description isn't alone decisive, and that it is not decisive that the doctor acts on the embryo. May does distinguish salpingectomy by stating that it is a procedure performed on the body of the mother and not the child and that a salpingostomy is performed on the child's body, securing its death in the very act of removing it. May seems to have in mind something that Kevin Flannery has discussed in trying to distinguish intention/foresight--that we ought to look at the norms of medical practice. As Flannery states in discussing the hysterectomy example, it is to benefit the mother's health that the gravid cancerous uterus is removed. The craniotomy does no good to the patient upon whom the doctor acts although the purpose is good (to save the mother's life).
I am not sure this adequately responds to Karen's arguments, and my colleague Ed Lyons tells me that my account presented here doesn't do the job. I thought I'd post these reflections in order to stimulate some further discussion. I think this excahnge has helped me to clarify my thinking, even if that might not be apparent to anyone else.
Before too much time goes by, I wanted to mention the most recent annual meeting of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. The meeting/conference was at the University of Dallas. The plenary talks were by Ron Rychlak (Mississippi Law) and by J. Budziszewski (Texas Philosophy). The latter talk featured insightful comments by my colleague Kevin Lee and by Frank Beckwith. The banquet address was by Gerry Wegemer (Dallas, English) who spoke with great eloquence about the witness of St. Thomas More.
The SCSS is a good group, and I encourage people to take a look at its activities. Most of the members are not law professors, and so the conferences are usually quite diverse (some law, but more history, political theory, sociology, etc.). I don't mean to slight the law professors--there was a very good session featuring 3 professors from Mississippi Law--Ron Rychlak, John Czarnetzky, and Kyle Duncan.
One important SCSS project is a forthcoming encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought. See this link for information.
I think the basic disagreement here is over a broader question of moral reasoning. The basic point I was trying (albeit not too clearly) was that there are moral absolutes. There are exceptionless moral norms that must be honored even if the actor has a good motive or has some further intention (sometimes described as remote or ulterior) that is good. So, persons have a right not to be killed, even if they are going to die soon and even if their killing would result in some good effects (relieve their suffering and the suffering of their family, save money, etc.). So, in the questions put by Michael Perry, I'd say that the fetus has a right not to be killed (this violates the exceptionless moral norm described by May, and by JP II in Veritatis Spelndor and Evangelium Vitae, that there should be no intentional killing of an innocent human person), even if everything else he says is true. That act is a violation of human dignity, even if the fetus would soon die or might die from other methods (removal of the fallopian tube).
The stakes here are quite high (this broader issue of moral reasoning) even though the ectopic pregnancy instance is a hard case. Kelly Bowring describes this well in his article, where he mentions that his wife was faced with an ectopic pregnancy that was treated by salpingectomy. I think his wife has gone on to have 5-6 children since that time.
