It’s precisely what you write at the end of your comment: that abortion IS, indeed, the heinous taking of life–just as the taking of life in the execution chamber IS heinous, and the taking of life on the battlefield MAY BE heinous, but that it cannot be deemed the “moral equivalent of murder”–that this is an INNOVATION on traditional teaching and traditional morality (albeit perhaps a good and justified one–although that has yet to be convincingly proved), and that it, therefore, cannot be codified against in civil law. It as yet still belongs in the area of “prudential morality.” And not only that, but when the day comes that we’ll be able to more convincingly prove to a society that is, right now, essentialy pagan and neo-Christian, that abortion is a more terrible thing than they presently think, then we shall not have exhausted our credibility with a society we should be seeking to CONVERT rather than to govern, by the WAY WE CONDUCTED THIS CAMPAIGN.

I really can’t see why so-called “Christians” don’t understand why it’s not more prudent and more charitable to “light many candles” against the darkness, rather than rage against it politically.

And I also don’t understand why you anti-abortionists demonize folks (like me) who’d rather be your ally in a SUCCESSFUL campaign against abortion, rather than seeking only to appear “righteous” and “justified”–which it seems to me is all you’ve succeeded in doing in decades.

Placing the posts in the category of “Son of God” does wonders to dispell that notion.

Actually, this post (and MM’s commentary repeatedly) tends to regard them as the same thing. Make fun of Obama’s messianic hype and, abracadabra, you are making fun of Jesus.

I assume Minitrue will release similar press statements when Secular Messianism finally reaches its zenith under the actual Man of Sin. Whenever he turns up, and “exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God”, there will be a whole arm of Ministry of Propaganda devoted to denouncing Christian ridicule of such claims as an insult to the Venerable Name of Jesus and asking why Christians would be making political hay out of their faith. It’s a clever strategy for suckering a certain portion of the population who can’t distinguish between statements like “God made the dog” and “The dog made God.” For the rest of us, it’s just bizarre.

So – in disagreeing with the Cathchism, you are saying that a human being is not a person from the beginning of its existence? When, pray tell, would it begin to be one? You argue that it is difficult to know when this existence begins, but that does not mean that it doens’t have a beginning. For example, for a pregnant woman there was a first moment when she was actually pregnant. True, it is difficult to determine when this actually takes place, but she is never “half pregnant” – it is not a process – she is either pregnant or she is not. Similarly with personhood. There are no “half” people. Personhood is not a process. The Catechism is saying that personhood is coterminous with being human. The fact that it might be difficult to determine this does not invalidate the truth of the statement, nor make it somehow “absolutist.”

OK, so let’s say that we don’t (or can’t?) know the very exact precise moment when life begins. All this means is that we have to err on the side of caution and not terminate whatever has been conceived in the womb. The Church has always condemned as gravely wrong the termination of whatever has been the product of conception (normally known as a child). So even if the entity in the womb is only a “potential person” (whatever that means), it is still wrong to terminate it, even if it was not always held to be the moral equivalent of murder. This is what the Church has always taught. So I’m not quite sure where all your distinctions and arguments are going.

You remind me ever so much of the ultra-super-duper fine tune hair-splitters of the Rubber Hose Right, pulling their chins about what, exactly, technically, precise *is* torture anyway and urging us all to not be so hasty in judging those who tiptoe right up crossing the line from mere enhanced interrogation to, well, you know, torture.

All the pettifogging, all the extreme nuance, all the lawyering: it’s all so familiar. Everybody who wants to avoid the bleedin’ obvious teaching of the Church, apparently, has to resort to this kind of utter bullshit.

One of the most amazing things about dialoguing with “Catholics” at Vox Nova is the basic lack of charity in being unwilling to give one’s interlocutors the benefit of even a scintilla of doubt: I SAID I’d have no problem with the pronouncement if it said “potential for personhood.” Don’t you think that about covers “separate, living and developing…”? I really don’t think most early foetuses are “separate” from their mothers.