Pop Morality Question
May 24, 2010
Is it ever moral to use the law to require someone to sacrifice his or her own life? Asked more generally, may we morally use the law to compel heroism?
29 Comments
Comments are closed.
Catholic perspectives on culture, society, and politics
Blog Associations
Site Counter
Ad Free
Yes, in war for example.
No. God has given us free will, and when we don’t have use of it, any action that results, whether good or bad, cannot be rendered morally complete. For example, if someone is forced to do something objectively sinful by threat of physical violence (e.g., being held at knife or gunpoint), then any action that person commits may not necessarily be even a venial sin, let alone a mortal sin. By the same token, any good deed done by force ought not be considered “heroic” automatically, for the person has done it without the benefit of free will as a motivating factor.
However, I sense that this post may be in reference to the recent abortion at a Catholic hospital that was OK’d by a Catholic nun on its ethics committee. If that’s the case, then that particular instance doesn’t fit the category described in this post. No doctor can know with certainty whether a patient will die if they carry a baby to term, and I don’t think anyone in the public has enough info about that case to make an informed judgment on the issue. In my uninformed opinion, there seem to be loads of contrary cases and real-life medical examples where doctors have been in error in their judgments on cases dealing with abortion, euthanasia, etc. How many miraculous recoveries from “irrecoverable brain injuries” do we have to see to know that God’s ways are far beyond our human ways, and as Catholic faithful, we should never favor something like direct abortion if there is any doubt at all about whether a mother will survive or not if she gives birth.
No.
Perhaps this is precisely what you’re going for..
Of course, we know the usual suspects will say “yes,” that it’s fine to compel “self-sacrifice,” “heroism,” etc. in war. But the same people object when law is used to compel “charity” or “economic justice.” One more example showing how full of it these folks are.
“No doctor can know with certainty whether a patient will die if they carry a baby to term, and I don’t think anyone in the public has enough info about that case to make an informed judgment on the issue. ”
Is certain knowledge required here? I may not know that I will die if I run into a burning building to save someone, but the high probability of death is what makes the action heroic, no? And If I survive, am I less heroic?
To answer the question of this post: No, as a matter of pure logic. Any action that is taken because it is legally required is for that very reason not heroic.
Any action that is taken because it is legally required is for that very reason not heroic.
Correct.
We do not require soldiers to give their lives in battle. We require them to take the lives of others, which is odious (if sometimes necessary) enough.
The question “is it moral” demands an absolute “OK” or “not OK” response, while reality is shaded and nuanced. The problem with the question is that the someone who can’t perceive the shades and nuances may (or should I say: “probably will”) draw inappropriate conclusions.
In the present case, there are unusual circumstances where it can be moral to demand someone give up his life or at least to give up 90 percent of his expectation to see tomorrow’s sunrise. The problem rises when this is interpreted to mean a commander can send as many soldiers “as needed” into harm’s way, in support of a short-term tactic, or a parent must retrieve a baby from a burning building regardless of how futile and dangerous the effort is.
Pop Morality Question follow-up: “Is it moral to pose dualistic questions which mislead and inflame those yet insufficiently formed to answer with humility?”
First in reference to the abortion case, which I did not take this post to be about; my wife and I found ourselves in a similar place 22 years ago. Her cancer was in remission and the doctors feared her pregnancy would cause it to become active. They recommended an abortion, before I had a chance to comment or think clearly she declined without question. Her cancer did not return for 18 years and she did get to see our daughter enter her senior year in high school. I have always considered her a hero for that. Had abortion not been a legal option, she still could have faced the pregnancy heroically, but that would have been because of her attitude and not merely because she chose to.
When remembering the writings of the church fathers on this topic, it is interesting the debates that arose during and after the persecutions were how to handle the Christians who had denied the faith to avoid persecution. There were many who felt they should not be allowed to return to the Church. The bishops eventually provided them a path back to the church. There were significant numbers, even among the bishops, who felt the Christians should have been compelled to choose between martyrdom and the faith, and once the choice against the faith was made, it could not be rescinded.
To compare that to the compelling of one to be a soldier, there are no writings from the early church where they felt violence aimed at the persecutors was justified! I cannot find any passage from a father of the church in the first 300 years that justifies the taking of another life for any reason. God can take a life, as in the example of the couple that hid some of the profits from the sell of their house from St. Peter, but man can not. This may not be on the mark to the post, but seems to comment to where some of the string was heading.
I summary, no, I do not think someone is a hero it they risk their life to save another because they were forced to. I do think someone who is forced to do this can be a hero if they accept the responsibility the love and charity that bring to mind Simeon of Cyrene carrying the Lord’s cross.
We do not require soldiers to give their lives in battle. We require them to take the lives of others, which is odious (if sometimes necessary) enough.
Mark,
We do not require soldiers to kill if it is against their conscience.
““Is it moral to pose dualistic questions which mislead and inflame those yet insufficiently formed to answer with humility?””
Yes, since it reminds all concerned that we are fallen creatures who should forbear to judge.
My aim in this post was to explore whether there are situations in which it is immoral to outlaw immoral behaviors or actions. Specifically, is it moral to put a person in a situation in which the only option he has to save his life will result in him suffering a legal sanction? Generally speaking, I’m inclined to say “No.” However, some situations come to mind where I think we can morally put someone in that situation. For example, I think torture should be illegal even if it were known to be the only way to prevent death. A reason I’m willing to make this exception is that the interrogator freely chooses a line of work that requires him to navigate very difficult moral situations and that may present him with choices between what is right and what is necessary.
The question “is it moral” demands an absolute “OK” or “not OK” response, while reality is shaded and nuanced.
Frank M.,
Actually, there are many questions of morality where the answer is, “Some experts say yes, and others say no.”
To speak to Kyle’s general point:
Assuming we want to separate the moral from the legal. . . I certainly do, but my understanding is that many conservatives do not. . . then the question becomes “where, exactly, do we draw the line?”
Anti-Paternalism has always been one place to mark the distinction: the law has no right to prevent actions that harm only the actor. Suicide might be a sin, but it shouldn’t be a crime. (This is Mill’s argument).
I think supererogation is another place to draw the line: we are not legally required to perform supererogatory acts (that is, an act that it is “praiseworthy to commit, but not blameworthy to omit.”) We cannot be legally required to be heroes, or to risk our life, or to give money to the poor.
(I suppose the supererogatory is the general case of anti-paternalism: we might have a moral obligation of self-respect, but we should be legally permitted to harm ourselves.)
Kyle,
Your question is tautologous: If an action is “compelled” it is redundant to say that it is “not heroic.” The real question then is whether human laws can really “compel” anyone to do anything.
The freedom people have to break laws makes obedience or disobedience of the law a moral activity. If one obeys a good law despite the advantages of breaking it, his obedience is virtuous. Depanding on the nature and extent of the advantages in breaking the law (e.g. the woman who needs an abortion to save her life), obedience to the law can be profoundly virtuous (“heroic”).
The legitimacy of laws depends not on the nature or extent of virtuous action that the law requires. A law is not rendered illegitimate simply for requiring profound virtue. Rather, the legitimacy of human laws depend on their connection to the common good. But what is the common good?
In western civilization, it tends to be viewed through a materialistic lens, which is why I like the definition used by the Second Vatican Council: “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily” (Gaudium et Spes 26, CCC 1906).
From this it is pretty clear that law can require heroism, but what makes it heroic is not the fact the law requires it, but that citizens choose to obey.
Carl
Kyle,
There are plenty of case in which it would be immoral to outlaw immoral behavior. Believing in a false religion, for instance, is immoral, but unless the just requirements of public order somehow required it, to outlaw such belief would constitute a grave infaction against human dignity.
Law that seek to outlaw “hate” or more severely punish crimes motivated by “hate,” are perhaps a more relevant and contemporary example of this principle. Setting aside for a moment whether such laws could be equitably enforced, it is not at all clear that the legitimate public interests justify our civil authorities’ adventure into regulating inner dispositions such as love and hate.
Sorry for the grammatical and spelling errors of tht last post.
My brother was in military intelligence in Vietnam and was ordered to participate in interrogation of a prisioner. He walked out and said he would not do it. Stated to them it was wrong. They did nothing to him.
He is my younger brother and a hero. He just does not know it.
It takes a lot of courage to do what he did. He refused to do what was against his conscience. At the time and since then he has not be a practicing catholic but has a morality that has been formed through a lot of pain over the years.
I think that the collateral damage of “hate crimes” is significantly more harmful to the loved ones against whom such crimes have been committed than are is the damage inflicted by “ordinary” crimes.
I think it has a worse effect on a child to be told that his father was murdered because he was Black, than that he was murdered in a robbery. Likewise, it is more hurtful to have your place of worship vandalized with spray-painted swastikas than with “John loves Mary” or “Yankees Suck.” The increased hurt warrants more severe punishment. It doesn’t do to say that there are already laws against murder, assault, or destruction of property on the books to cover such acts. The existing laws do not adequately address the clearly expressed intent of the perpetrator, which is to hurt not only the victim, but also every other member of his group.
Rodak,
I don’t disagree with you in principle but in practice. Evaluating intent in such cases becomes so murky that I don’t see how equal justice can be applied.
I don’t have a problem with certain objective practices carrying more severe penalties (e.g. the burning of a church carrying more severe penalties than the burning of a business), but rather I object to ambiguous laws entrusting courts with tasks that require omniscience.
I don’t understand where you’re coming from. It’s the nature of the crime that discloses intent. “By their fruits you shall know them.” What are the non-anti-Semitic reasons for painting a swatiska on a synagogue? This requires no “omniscience” on the part of a jury, or a judge.
If you have a murder or a beating across racial or gender lines, it is possible to call witnesses to testify to the character and predilictions of the accused. It is not necessary to read his mind. If he is a racist, or any other kind of hater, people will know it. Or he will have a website that discloses it, etc. Isn’t a dealer in child porn the perpetrator of a kind of hate crime? Must we read his mind to convict him?
Rodak,
Again, I have no problem with the more rigorous prohibition or punishment of CONCRETE ACTS. I would absolutely support a law that more vigorously punished vandalism of a place of worship than vandalism of a bus stop. I would support a law that more vigorously punished specific forms of vandalism that incite greater violence and disorder, such as swastikas on synagogues or confederate flags on African American churches.
My problem with hate crime is that the definition is to ambiguous to be equitably enforced: “a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person” (H.R. 3355, Sect. 280003).
The law gives no criteria for how a court is supposed to evaluate this “intentional selection.” If someone uses “fag” as a generic insult during a crime, the ambiguity of the law would allow it to be prosecuted as a hate crime!
The problem with “hate crimes” is that they are always so ambiguously defined that one would have to be God to carry them out by the letter.
I’ll worry about it when I see people being unfairly prosecuted under hate crime laws. I don’t doubt that this occasionally happens, because injustices occur under any set of laws. But I haven’t yet seen it being systematically employed to target anybody, while on the other side of the scale many groups of people have been either routinely, or systematically, targeted for abuse. Which is, of course, why “hate crime” laws came into being in the first place.
Fair enough, Rodak. For my part, I will concede that the injustices that result from the current application of these laws are not worth mentioning in consideration of the many greater injustices in our society and legal system. That being said, these laws could be enacted in ways that reduce both the potential and occurence of injustice. It’s a cop out to say, “injustices are inevitable under any set of laws.”
My biggest concern is that the United States will follow Canadian and European precedents in casting a wider net to include as “hate speech” such things as professing one’s belief that homosexuality is sinful. I’m not a defender of the French Enlightenment idea of “free speech for the sake of free speech,” but I do think one must have extremely weighty, direct, and concrete reasons to bar even false and offensive speech (including racist speech).
My primary and most serious objection to hate crime laws is precisely how it sets the table and pours the wine for hate speech laws. I hope and even suspect you that you will agree with this.
Wouldn’t it be a terrible thing if the government were to prevent me from humbly and generously informing you that your Protestantism is leading you straight to hell or if it were to prevent you from viciously and flagrantly comparing me to blind kittens? I must admit you’re growing on me, old man.
I do think one must have extremely weighty, direct, and concrete reasons to bar even false and offensive speech (including racist speech).
The First Amendment has served us quite well in this regard so far. I’m not worried about what goes in in Europe. Or in the jokes of Irish Catholic bartenders, for that matter.
Btw, you once again demonstrate for me why I would not consider becoming a Catholic. Your religion leads you to condemn me to hell for persisting in my faith. My religion prompts me only to suggest, in a rather gentle, humorous way, that you might not be seeing the whole truth.
Rodak,
Whether the fact that one cannot be saved outside the Catholic Church attracts or repells you is not up to me. If I tell you the truth as clearly as I can and pray for you, my conscience will rest secure. The rest is between you and God.
I’m not sure which part of the truth you think I’m not seeing. It seems that if you are correct, I see the whole truth and a bunch of extra stuff that is at best irrelevant and at worst potentially dangerous to my salvation. If, however, I am correct, you are not seeing the whole truth and this is at best gravely endangering your salvation and at worst, well, we don’t need to go there.
Carl
The part you’re not seeing is the part illustrated, for instance, by the tale of the Good Samaritan.
Catholics seem to think that it’s “who you know.” I think that it’s “what you know.”