The Catholic Church and Politics

In recent times the Catholic Church has made a manifest effort to get as far away from politics as possible. The last few Popes have publicly stated that the Church advocates no political positions and have condemned priests or bishops who engage in any sort of political lobbying. In Poland priests or other Church officials who endorse politicians are severely criticized and treated as if they are people who do something wrong. But to me, this seems pretty shallow. The separation of Church and State does not imply that people involved in the Church cannot have any say in the State, nor does it mean that people who work for the State can't be members of the Church. Back in Communist days, this was indeed the case. If someone went to Church or declared themselves a Catholic, there was no way he (or she) would ever be allowed to work for the State. The separation of Church and State simply means that Church officials have no political administrative power and are not State officials (and vice versa - State officials are not Church officials). In England, for example, the Queen is both head of State and head of the Church of England. And nobody seems to have a problem with it, since the Queen no longer has any political power anyway...
But let's get back to the Catholic question: why can't the Church advise its followers (who are members of the Church) on how they should vote? For example, I think it is admirable when Church officials praise pro-life candidates and denounce pro-death candidates on the abortion question. I see nothing wrong with the Church endorsing such candidates ('pro-lifers')! In fact, I think it's very strange that the Church takes no position on political issues directly. I also think it is shameful for any Catholic to vote against the Church commandments. In the United States, for example, most Catholics vote for Democrats - why, I will never know...
I also don't know why the Church shouldn't be allowed to mandate its members to vote for someone or other. It's all purely voluntary! Labour unions regularly endorse candidates, and many labour unions are compulsory bodies. Now that is real vote extortion! Why do labour unions have more power and privilege than Churches do?
I recognize, of course, that even Catholicism itself is rather 'shaky' when someone tries to approach it systematically. For instance, St. Thomas Aquinas, who was probably the greatest Catholic theologian, believed that the soul only enters the foetus 6 weeks into the pregnancy for boys, and 8 weeks for girls. Clearly this would mean that abortion up to that time is allowed. There are also many other strains of Catholicism. I attend an Augustinian University and it is visibly very different traditionally from the Catholicism I was raised in as a child.

St. Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest Catholic theologians and one of the most important philosophers in Western thought. He brought Aristotle back into the Western world. He recreated the logic of that great Greek - he dispelled the accursed Platonic mist which held down all Western philosophy. And it was he who said that "reason in man is rather like God in the world". That's right, REASON is our primary guide in this world. We have nothing else to support us, or back us.

Another lecture about abortions...

Today I was once again "lectured" about abortions (by a person of very inferior intellect, I might add). I have already previously written an absolutely huge blog entry on this subject (here), so I will not go into details about my viewpoint. On the subject of abortions - as with any subject concerning the rights of life, liberty, or property - there can be no grey area. Something is either wrong or right, not partially right and partially wrong. In a choice between two evils we are obliged to choose no evil, i.e. not make a choice. There can only be two viewpoints (good/evil or right/wrong, whichever you prefer) in the case of abortion. They are pro-abortion (against right to life) and pro-life (defending the right to life). Today, however, I was told repeatedly that there is some mysterious third option known as "pro-choice". As far as I'm concerned, "pro-choice" is really in the category of pro-abortion, since it allows abortions to take place. I just think people use it as a euphemism; after all "choice" sounds better than "abortion", it is a positive, not a negative. We must not fall into this language trap. The "choice" here is the choice between life and death and if death is chosen, the right to life is broken.

On another, less serious note: today Finland became the first country in the world where access to the Internet is a right! But more on this tomorrow.

A True Human Rights Approach to Abortion

Abortion would not really be a contentious issue if only people used common sense and logic in their evaluation of its ethicality. And yet there have been volumes of published works pertaining to it, and supporting some argument or another over "abortion rights". Logic is dead - Aristotle would be devastated. But let me shorty explain what is in my opinion the only truly justifiable position in the abortion debate. There are a couple of basic premises on which I base my conclusions:
1. Everyone has the right of self-defense against any unprovoked aggression.
2. Everyone has a right to life unless he/she infringes the equal right of any other person (this is a paraphrased version of Spencer's Law of Equal Liberty of which I am a strong supporter)
Now let's apply these principles (which are definitions of basic human rights) to a few of the usually controversial cases in abortion debates. (If someone does not believe in human rights, then I assume everything that follows in this discussion is irrelevant.)
A. Abortion on request - the woman simply wants to "get rid of" the baby, giving no coherent reason other than her being willing to have the abortion performed. This case clearly violates statement number 2. The baby is not infringing the right to life of the mother, therefore she has no way to justify attacking the baby. Killing members of species homo sapiens simply because they exist or you don't like them is clearly wrong.
B. Abortion for "socioeconomic reasons" - here the mother offers certain dubious and very subjective arguments to prove her case; she can, for example, state that she doesn't know who the father is (and the baby will be worse off once it's born) or that she is unable to financially cope with taking care of a child (and the baby will be worse off once it's born). This once again violates statement number 2. Just because someone may be an inconvenience to you, does not mean you have the right to kill them (or otherwise get rid of them).
C. Abortion due to fetal defects - the baby has some genetic or developmental disorder which will impair it in later life after birth. Again (as stated in number 2), just because someone is quote "not normal" and may at some stage be a burden to you or other people, does not give anyone the right to kill that person.

These three cases were very straightforward, let's now move on to more complicated matters.

D. "Medically justified" abortion - the mother can prove with testable results that the pregnancy will harm her health (this can be anything from loss of eye-sight or hearing to death of the mother). This is a more complicated issue, I approach it from the angle of the existence of a mother-child implied contract*. Thus, when a woman willingly engages in any activity which can lead to pregnancy, she willingly creates a scenario where she says (implicitly) "this activity may result in me becoming pregnant". Therefore, once she says this, she cannot classify the possible pregnancy as something that was forced on her, but rather has to acknowledge that she now has a responsibility for the baby in her womb (I am explaining it here, but this also applies to cases A,B, and C discussed above). The woman understands the possible consequences of her pregnancy, and one of those is physical harm to her own body. Therefore strictly speaking even if she is in mortal danger she cannot kill the baby, she can only get rid of it if, for instance, the fetus is already dead. It could be said that here the woman can invoke the right given her by statement 1 (self-defense), however, it is not so. By accepting the consequences of the possible pregnancy, she has also accepted the possibility of danger! There is another solution to this problem, which I will discuss below with reference to case E (look for "evictionism").

E. Abortion after rape - the pregnancy was caused by rape. In this case, can the woman simply kill the baby because she had no implicit contract with it? I say - she cannot. As long as the baby does not pose any threat to her, she cannot kill it - it has a right to life as stated in statement 2 (even though it "entered her body" without her consent). Let me explain this with an analogous situation. If a person walks onto your property unaware that he/she is trespassing, it does not give you the right to automatically shoot or otherwise kill that person. You may only evict them from your property. Now, the baby is certainly not aware that it is trespassing inside the mother's body - it cannot yet at its low developmental stage comprehend the concept of property rights. Therefore the mother can only evict the fetus, but may not kill it. This is called evictionism (a marvelous approach developed by Dr. Walter Block). Evictionism gives the mother the right to protect her rights while also not violating the rights of the baby. It is, of course, not possible with current medical technology to evict a fetus early on in the pregnancy, but with the passage of time it will be. (Now that I have introduced evictionism, let me also say that it is a option in case D, above. It does not violate the mother-child implicit contract because it does not harm the child's rights in any way. It simply saves the mother's health). There is, however, in the case of rape, one example of abortion (killing the unborn baby) that can be justified. For this, two circumstances must exist: a) she has been raped and therefore has no implicit contract with the child (she did not agree to the risks before becoming pregnant) and b) the pregnancy is as such that it threatens her life if continued. Thus the baby (althought mentally incapable of understanding its own actions) is attacking the woman and she can invoke her right of self-defense against an unprovoked attack (as stated in premise 1 at the beginning of this discussion). In an analogous situation: if someone suddenly attacks you in the street and it is clear he/she will harm you, you have the right to strike that person down by any means possible and, if they do not stop the attack, kill them if necessary to save yourself.

*An implied contract is a contractual agreement which is not stated out loud or written down, but is still binding. An example of an implied contract is: "If I take a gun and shoot a bullet up into the sky at random, I am responsible for the damage it causes once it lands back on the ground." or "If I put a pen in my pocket and the ink leaks out, I am responsible for the damage to my trousers."