The the majority in the recent Hobby Lobby ruling involved the five male Roman Catholic Justices. The ruling once again calls attention to the disordered moral views of the Roman Catholic bishops about masturbation, artificial contraception and legalized abortion in the first trimester -- views that are the opposite of intelligent, reasonable and responsible -- so they are immoral, as are the bishops who advance these views.

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) July 20, 2014: Are the Roman Catholic bishops immoral? (In their way of speaking, are they "intrinsically evil"?)

Certain moral claims that the bishops advance are immoral (i.e., the opposite of intelligent, reasonable, and responsible moral positions).

It is immoral for the Roman Catholic bishops to advance disordered moral claims about certain practices that are legal in the United States, but that they claim are supposedly "intrinsically evil." (Disclosure: I come from a Roman Catholic background. However, for many years now, I have not been a practicing Catholic. Today I would describe myself as a theistic humanist, as distinct from a secular humanist.)

Of course most adult Americans today still remember how the Roman Catholic bishops contributed to bringing us the priest sex-abuse scandal -- by transferring abusive priests from one parish to another. The complicity of the Roman Catholic bishops in the priest sex-abuse scandal and its cover up shows that the Roman Catholic bishops are not exacty morally upright exemplars.

As a result, all Americans should be wary of their disordered moral claims advanced by the Catholic bishops about certain matters that are legal in the United States such as masturbation and artificial contraception and legalized abortion in the first trimester.

The Roman Catholic bishops to the contrary not withstanding, masturbation and artificial contraception and legalized abortion in the first trimester are not "intrinsically evil" -- as the bishops claim they are.

Basically, the Roman Catholic bishops have disordered views about the human body and about human sexuality -- growing out of centuries of anti-body views in Christianity.

As a result of their disordered thought, the bishops claim that distinctively human life begins at the moment that sperm fertilizes an egg, the moment of conception, as they say. Granted, an infra-human form of life does begin when sperm fertilizes an egg. Arguably this is not the moment when distinctively human life emerges -- the Roman Catholic bishops to the contrary notwithstanding.

Distinctively human life emerges at the moment when ensoulment occurs, because the human soul is the necessary condition for distinctively human life to emerge.

But when exactly does the moment of ensoulment occur?

The Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade (1973) has suggested that distinctively human life emerges when the developing fetus in the mother's womb is capable of living and breathing on its own outside the mother's womb. I would suggest that this standard of viability is indeed when the moment of ensoulment occurs -- when the developing fetus is capable of breathing and living outside of the mother's womb.

However, because of their disordered thinking, based on the anti-body views advanced in Roman Catholic natural-law moral theory, the Roman Catholic bishops object to legalized abortion in the first trimester, because they mistakenly claim that it is "intrinsically evil."

Oddly enough, my suggestion, based on the standard of viability established by the Supreme Court in Woe v. Wade (1973), is consistent with the story of creation in Genesis. In Genesis, God is portrayed as breathing life into matter to create distinctively human life -- get it? -- breathing life represents ensoulment.

When people stop breathing, we tend to say they are dead -- their soul has left their body and only the corpse remains. So if a corpse is no longer breathing, then it is no longer a complete human being -- it is just a corpse.

In a similar way, a developing fetus that is not capable of breathing is not yet a complete human being -- not yet ensouled with the soul that confers distinctively human life -- as a result it is an infra-human life form.

So the Roman Catholic bishops are up to no good -- just as the Republicans today are up to no good.

Now, my former colleague James H. Fetzer (we're both retired now from the University of Minnesota Duluth) has cogently argued recently that the Roman Catholic bishops' objections to artificial contraception and to legalized abortion in the first trimester are themselves immoral positions -- based on the deontological moral theory that he works with. Deontological moral theory derives from Kant's moral theory -- not from Roman Catholic natural-law moral theory.)

Fetzer sets forth his position in a lengthy essay (with helpful illustrations) titled "Hobby Lobby: Can philosophy help solve social problems?" that he published at the Veterans Today website on July 12, 2014.

Because Fetzer is a retired philosophy professor, you may suspect that he will try to answer the question in his title in the affirmative. But I am not going to try to sum up each part of his lengthy essay. Instead, I will quote his own summary statement of his position based on deontological moral theory:

"The crucial issue is whether women should be compelled [by the law or by the misguided moral claims advanced by the Roman Catholic bishops and their allies in other religious traditions] to carry an unwanted fetus to term. The anti-abortion zealots who are promoting ever more restrictions on women's reproductive rights [i.e., legal rights under U.S. law since Roe v. Wade in 1973] are immoral, anti-democratic and un-American.

"They [the anti-abortion zealots] are immoral because slavery is immoral, if any acts are immoral, where these fanatics want to convert women into reproductive slaves. Forcing a woman to bring to term an unwanted fetus is about as immoral as it gets.

"They [the anti-abortion zealots] are anti-democratic because democracy is based on freedom of choice, which has historically been the basis for our democracy. In this case, these [anti-abortion] zealots are imposing articles of [their religious] faith upon others who do not share them [in short, the anti-abortion zealots are theocons].

"They [the anti-abortion zealots] are un-American because, as a Constitutional republic, the nation is supposed to be governed by the rule of law, not the interests of religious fanatics, who are doing everything they can to subvert the law of the land.

"Unwanted children are a major expense to society because they tend to commit more crimes and other offenses, leading to prosecutions and incarcerations at great cost to the taxpayer. Choice compels no one to abort or not abort. It is moral, American and democratic."

In a nutshell, this sums up Fetzer's position. However, I hasten to add that he works out a nuanced position regarding the morality of abortion in the second and third trimesters. However, like the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade (1973), and like me, Fetzer is not troubled morally by legalized abortion in the first trimester.

In closing, I would like to mention that Fetzer has also worked out his position regarding abortion in the first, second and third trimester in his book Render Unto Darwin: Philosophical Aspects of the Christian Right's Crusade Against Science (2007, pages 95-120).

Concerning the threat that anti-abortion theocons pose, see Damon Linker's book The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege (2006).

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview