No to legalized abortion in the first trimester, the conservative Catholic bishops say, even though the Supreme Court legalized abortion in the first trimester in its 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade. Why not? Because this prohibition has long been traditional natural-law theory, except in cases of incest or rape. (Non-Catholic ethicists such as James H. Fetzer in his fine book RENDER UNTO DARWIN: PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT'S CRUSADE AGAINST SCIENCE [2007, pages 95-120] have noted that abortion in the second trimester is a different matter that deserves to be considered differently, as is the possibility of abortion in the third trimester.)
No to legalized CIVIL marriages between gay men or lesbians, the conservative Catholic bishops say. Why not? Because natural-law theory traditionally considers homosexual tendencies to be disordered tendencies, which is to say not tendencies properly ordered according to natural-law theory. (Nobody is proposing that the Catholic Church or any other religious body should conduct religious marriage ceremonies for gay men or lesbians.)
In the Catholic tradition of so-called natural-law reasoning, these five positions regarding sexual morality are interconnected, because they are all based on the so-called natural law as understood in the Catholic tradition of thought.
We should pause here and note that Catholics seem to have a virtual monopoly on the Catholic understanding of so-called natural law. In other words, non-Catholics have not been rushing to adopt the Catholic understanding of so-called natural law. For this reason, we might wonder why not. Why haven't non-Catholic ethicists, for example, embraced the Catholic understanding of the so-called natural law?
Conversely, we might pause and wonder why the conservative Catholic bishops, including the bishop of Rome (also known as the pope), have not abandoned the Catholic natural-law tradition of thought and adopted deontological moral theory such as the deontological moral theory that Fetzer works with. Is there something inherently conservative about the Catholic tradition?
However, these five positions do not encompass other matters that the conservative Catholic bishops say "No" to.
No, there cannot be married diocesan priests, the conservative Catholic bishops say, except for certain defector priests who defected from a Protestant church and converted to Catholicism recently.
No, there cannot be women priests, the conservative Catholic bishops say. Jesus was a man, so priests should be men. End of discussion.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
