"You Catholic bishops say that artificial contraception is "intrinsically evil.' But I say that it is not "intrinsically evil.' You Catholic bishops are mistaken about this, as you are mistaken about certain other matters regarding sexual morality."
"You Catholic bishops say that you have figured out the so-called "natural law.' But I say that you have not figured out the "natural law' -- you are just inflating the importance of your claims by referring to the supposed "natural law.' You Catholic bishops do not have a monopoly on figuring out what is good and what is not."
"You Catholic bishops say that life begins at the moment of conception, the moment when sperm fertilizes an egg. But I say that only an infrahuman form of life begins at the moment of conception, whereas distinctively human life begins at the moment of ensoulment, which the U.S. Supreme Court has operationally defined as the moment when the fetus in the mother's womb become viable and is capable of living outside the mother's womb."
And so on.
Now, if the Catholic bishops were to turn to Ong's most thorough discussion of close-systems thinking versus open-systems thinking (see Ong's book INTERFACES OF THE WORD, mentioned above, pages 305-341), they might claim that Ong endorses standing firm about one's principles and that they are simply standing firm about their religious principles. I have no problem with allowing the Catholic bishops to claim that they are standing firm about their theocratic principles. However, their theocratic principles are themselves historically conditioned thought. For this reason, their principles are debatable, especially when the bishops use their principles to discuss political issues.
Now, the Catholic bishops themselves may be too stubborn to change their historically conditioned moral principles. Nevertheless, other people should debate the bishops' claims when the bishops themselves use their moral principles to discuss civic issues publicly.
In summary, the Catholic bishops can be understood as having a bad case of the static sense of life that Ong has perceptively written about, but without ever explicitly referring to the Catholic bishops. Yes, to be sure, the Catholic bishops tend to be authoritarian because they are overly impressed with the authority structure in the Roman Catholic Church and with their place in that authority structure. As a result, they tend to sound theocratic when they enter into public debates about civic issues. But people who are concerned about their theocratic views such as Rob Kall should undertake to debate their theocratic views in the public arena.
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