Catholic Senator Joe Biden appeared on Meet The Press this morning. Revisiting the same topic he discussed with Nancy Pelosi, Tom Brokaw inquired Biden's view on the beginning of human life and the matter of abortion and what he would do if Obama sought his counsel on the subject:SEN. BIDEN: I'd say, "Look, I know when it begins for me." It's a personal and private issue. For me, as a Roman Catholic, I'm prepared to accept the teachings of my church. But let me tell you. There are an awful lot of people of great confessional faiths--Protestants, Jews, Muslims and others--who have a different view. They believe in God as strongly as I do. They're intensely as religious as I am religious. They believe in their faith and they believe in human life, and they have differing views as to when life--I'm prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment. For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society. And I know you get the push back, "Well, what about fascism?" Everybody, you know, you going to say fascism's all right? Fascism isn't a matter of faith. No decent religious person thinks fascism is a good idea.Senator Biden can be commended for his opposition to public-funding for abortions (incidentally, a view which his Presidential running mate supports), but to characterize opposition to abortion as the "imposition of a religious judgement on everybone else" is absolutely false. As George Weigel noted in response to Senator Kerry's use of the same "reluctance to impose my religious opinion" defense in the 2004 election:MR. BROKAW: But if you, you believe that life begins at conception, and you've also voted for abortion rights...
SEN. BIDEN: No, what a voted against curtailing the right, criminalizing abortion. I voted against telling everyone else in the country that they have to accept my religiously based view that it's a moment of conception. There is a debate in our church, as Cardinal Egan would acknowledge, that's existed. Back in "Summa Theologia," when Thomas Aquinas wrote "Summa Theologia," he said there was no--it didn't occur until quickening, 40 days after conception. How am I going out and tell you, if you or anyone else that you must insist upon my view that is based on a matter of faith? And that's the reason I haven't. But then again, I also don't support a lot of other things. I don't support public, public funding. I don't, because that flips the burden. That's then telling me I have to accept a different view. This is a matter between a person's God, however they believe in God, their doctor and themselves in what is always a--and what we're going to be spending our time doing is making sure that we reduce considerably the amount of abortions that take place by providing the care, the assistance and the encouragement for people to be able to carry to term and to raise their children.
... suggesting that this is something analogous to the Catholic Church trying to force everyone in the United States to abstain from eating hot dogs on Fridays during Lent is simpy false. ... You don't even have to believe in God to engage [the pro-life position] because it's a position rooted in basic embryology and in basic logic, and anybody can engage that."Once again, we are greeted with the curious spectacle of a defiant "pro-choice" Catholic politician appealing to 13th century comprehensions of human development (or rather fourth century BC, since Aquinas's views were based on Aristotle) -- in opposition to the Catholic Bishops' appeal to advancements in human embryology by modern science! While it may be a "matter of faith" for Biden, recognizing that human life begins at "conception" is surely no great obstacle for scientists -- nor American citizens in general.
Curiously, as Princeton professor Robert P. George noted on the role of religious authority in debates on public policy, it is pro-choice advocates who typically want to transform the question into a “metaphysical” or “religious” one:
It was Justice Harry Blackmun who claimed in his opinion for the Court legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973) that “at this point in man’s knowledge” the scientific evidence was inconclusive and therefore cold not determine the outcome of the case. And twenty years later, the influential pro-choice writer Ronald Dworkin went on record claiming that the question of abortion is inherently “religious.” (See Ronald Dworkin, Life’s Dominion (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993).) It is pro-choice advocates, such as Dworkin, who want to distinguish between when a human being comes into existence “in the biological sense” and when a human being comes into existence “in the moral sense.” It is they who want to distinguish a class of human beings “with rights” from pre-(or post-) conscious human beings who “don’t have rights.” And the reason for this, I submit, is that, short of defending abortion as “justifiable homicide,” the pro-choice position collapses if the issue is to be settled purely on the basis of scientific inquiry into the question of when a new member of homo sapiens comes into existence as a self-integrating organism whose unity, distinctiveness, and identity remain intact as it develops without substantial change from the point of its beginning through the various stages of its development and into adulthood.As Catholics we believe in the sanctity of human life -- but this is not to say that the pro-life position can be seriously engaged by anybody.
In "Christian Conviction and Democratic Etiquette (First Things March 1994), Weigel explains:
How are we to make our case to those who do not share that prior religious commitment, or to those Christians whose churches do not provide clear moral counsel on this issue? And how do we do this in a political-cultural-legal climate in which individual autonomy has been virtually absolutized?And to think that the Democrats were hoping the abortion debate would somehow "fade away" this election? -- Thank you, Senator Biden, for providing a clear illustration of why Catholics cannot be silent.The answer is, we best make our case by insisting that our defense of the right to life of the unborn is a defense of civil rights and of a generous, hospitable American democracy. We best make our case by insisting that abortion-on-demand gravely damages the American democratic experiment by drastically constricting the community of the commonly protected. We best make our case by arguing that the private use of lethal violence against an innocent is an assault on the moral foundations of any just society. In short, we best make our case for maximum feasible legal protection of the unborn by deploying natural law arguments that translate our Christian moral convictions into a public idiom more powerful than the idiom of autonomy.
Related
- "Abortion poisions everything including reason", by Jeff Miller (Curt Jester).
- Ongoing coverage by Thomas Peters @ American Papist
- "Dumb and Dumber" Creative Minority Report
6 comments:
The real analogy is not with “fascism” but with slavery: The same arguments the Democrats today use to justify legalized abortion they once used to justify legalized slavery.
In the 1850s, Democratic politicians, like Stephen Douglas, claimed that some people are morally opposed to slavery, but many people are not: therefore, they said, slavery must remain legal because northern abolitionists did not have a right to “impose their morality” on nice, churchgoing southern slave owners who did not share their moral views. Here is what Stephen Douglas said during the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858:
"Mr. Lincoln, following the example and lead of all the little Abolition orators, who go around and lecture in the basements of schools and churches, reads from the Declaration of Independence, that all men were created equal, and then asks, how can you deprive a negro of that equality which God and the Declaration of Independence awards to him? … Now, I hold that Illinois had a right to abolish and prohibit slavery as she did, and I hold that Kentucky has the same right to continue and protect slavery that Illinois had to abolish it."
The infamous Dred Scot decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared that blacks are not human beings in the eyes of the Constitution – a precise parallel with Roe v. Wade – in effect codified that logic.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, before he sold his soul to the Democratic Party and ran for president, said precisely this: that arguments for abortion were the same as arguments for slavery.
"There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of [a] higher order than the right to life … that was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside your right to be concerned."
There are numerous logical holes in Biden’s argument. First, opposition to abortion is not a "religious" view but an ethical one, one shared by atheists such as Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice. Calling opposition to abortion a "religious" position or one stemming from “faith” is a deliberate rhetorical tactic to avoid taking moral responsibility for a public, political issue.
Second and more importantly, taking moral stands is precisely what we ask of a politician, not a cowardly dodging of an issue.
Democratic politicians like Russ Feingold and Mario Cuomo are more than willing to “impose their morality” on the rest of the country when it comes to something like capital punishment, even though polls show that 69% of the country (according to the Gallup Poll) remain in support of it. Yet only when it comes to abortion do Catholic Democrats demonstrate such remarkable respect for “pluralism.”
The truth is, pro-abortion Catholic Democrats like Joe Biden, Teddy Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi and Mario Cuomo are nothing more than political prostitutes, selling out what few principles they have in order to garner votes in liberal states where many voters support legalized abortion.
They came up with the “personalized opposed but…” dodge so they could avoid taking a principled stand on one of the most serious issues of public morality since slavery.
And just as today civilized people look back in horror at the moral cowardice of Democratic politicians who supported “slavery on demand,” so, too, in the future civilized people will look back at the mass slaughter of unborn children since Roe v. Wade — 40 million and counting — and only marvel that Catholic politicians like Biden, who knew what was the moral thing to do, could be so weak.
When it came time to take a principled stand that might jeopardize their cushy careers, sell-out politicians like Biden chose their careers.
I've often thought of abortion as the "civil rights" issue of our time -- Hadley Arkes made the same observation about the "incompatibility between the logic of morals and the claims of personal preference" with relation to the Lincoln-Douglas debates in First Things: An Inquiry into the first principles of morals and justice.
Substitute "torture" or "slavery" or any other moral evil for abortion and it becomes transparent just how irrational and flawed the "personally opposed" argument is. And to think this comes from a man who boasts a law degree.
thanks for that post. Illuminating.
The thing is he said what he was supposed to say in the first minute of his answer. He's supposed to give the "personally opposed" mantra but then he went further. Joe can't stop himself. He fell into the same thing Pelosi just did. Keep talkin' Joe. Keep talkin'.
And Robert, it was REPUBLICANS who abolished slavery. The bottom line is that Pelosi, Biden, et al. are risking their own immortal souls with this mealy-mouthed and evasive language. BUT, it is for the BISHOPS to tell them so and we need to encourage them to do so in order to protect OTHER Catholics from veering into liturgical error!
The problem with Joe Biden is that his order is in chaos and he cannot comprehend the logic of Catholic doctrine and teaching. He is exposed to the argument of a secular progressive instead of moving to a higher realm of knowledge and moving towards a theocratic state. Biden cannot and will not understand life and the unborn with the type of priorities that he is running on, merely pleasing the masses.
If he were truely a candidate for President, Biden would speak on the truth about life and convince the American people that life is important and it should be protected. He's ready to accept the conception argument, but he'll never be ready to accept it until he's out of politics.
He pretty much stuck in molasses right now. Pray for his soul, because I really don't believe what he is saying he believe's in his heart to be true. Pray he might be a marytr for Christ.
Post a Comment