Should we argue about Live Action?

John McNichol, whose opinions I respect immensely, says lay off the criticism.  Peter Kreeft, not exactly a lightweight in the catholic moral thinking department, says you have to be pretty stupid not to recognize that what Live Action did was okay.  Francis Beckwith argues that while all lying is wrong, not all falsehoods are lies, as not all killing is murder.  Rahab is becoming a household name in the process.

I think Beckwith is on to the pivotal question.  But I don’t think the answer is obvious, and I think the firestorm in the catholic blogosphere is Exhibit A in proving my point.  When a whole host of professional catholics — intelligent, educated people who are in the business of explaining the catholic faith in their various ways —  cannot agree on a question, that tells me the answer is not yet clearly defined by the church.  And for that reason, it deserves debate.

Exhibit B is the stunning silence of the Catechism.  The church has managed to figure out two things for certain:

1) Lying is wrong.

2) You don’t have to tell everybody everything.

And that’s it.  Take a look at, say, murder or contraception, and you get lots of in’s and out’s.  This _____ is sinful, this ______ is not.   This ______ is horribly tempting but you mustn’t do it no matter what, even though you really really want to and we understand that it isn’t easy to resist.  The church is quite good about knowing all the crazy stuff we’ll think up, and heading off at the pass as many scenarios as possible.

–> It is no secret that people wonder how to handle all the situations where you might reasonably think lying is a legitimate solution.  And yet the church provides astonishingly little guidance.  The 8th commandment is apparently just not that well understood.

Which is par for the course.   Our understanding of the moral life develops over time.   Meanwhile, we argue.

***

There are a few arguments being thrown around though, that I think are a distraction.

You just know what the right thing to do is. This is Kreeft’s argugment, and an awful lot of people were no doubt thrilled to hear him say it.  I don’t think it holds.   In the face of tremendous danger in extreme situations (literally: the Nazi scenario), sincere Christians have followed their intuition and come to different answers.  Intuition is helpful, yes.  But firm moral principles are developed by starting with intuition, and seeing where it leads.  Not by sitting in the starting gate.

Lying is the only workable solution in certain situations. This is an argument about tactics.   Well, we can have a debate about tactics, but only after we know which are admissible and which are not.  If we know that lying is acceptable in ______ situation, we can proceed to the discussion of whether or not to use that particular tool.  Should I run or stand and fight?  It’s a discussion I can only have once I know that both running and fighting are legitimate choices.

Bible Heroes and Great Saints did it. People who don’t read the Bible talk about what a great collection of moral tales it contains.  So when I first started reading it, I was very confused.  Here’s what: Biography is not morality.  Biography tells me who did what.  It does not tell me whether everything my heroes ever did was in fact morally sound. Including the way they foiled the enemy this time or that.  We canonize saints without thereby proclaiming that their every action was objectively sinless.

But if you didn’t lie, horrible things would happen. I think this is where Beckwith and Tollefsen (who disagree with one another) are on the right track.  There are situations in the moral life where the only moral choice is the “no-win” — the one with disastrous consequences.  Is lying like apostasy?  Must we tell the truth at all cost, the way we must be willing to witness to Christ at all cost?  Or is lying like killing, where there are situations where it is an acceptable option?

–> The fact that horrible things will likely happen if you don’t lie, does not prove that lying is permitted.  (It does drastically lessen any potential culpability.)

[Kreeft agrees, by the way, that there are certain situations in which you must permit horrible things to happen to the people you ought to be protecting, because apostasy is worse than allowing that horrible suffering.  He doesn’t think lying ranks with apostasy.]

***

I was pretty happy with the Live Action videos when I saw them.  Horrified by what they uncovered, and thrilled that Live Action had the courage and cleverness to bring to light the evil going on.  It did not occur to me to question the methods — seemed, as many are saying, like a variation on the police tactics that catholics have not been questioning.  (Again, the silence of the Catechism is deafening.  And for my own part, in the ‘legitimate authority’ debate, when in doubt I tend to err on the side of giving rights to private citizens.)

And I agree with John McNichol that Lila Rose certainly doesn’t deserve to be singled out.  But I think this not only because, as JDM observes, she has more guts than all the internet critics combined, but also because it isn’t obvious that she’s doing anything wrong at all.  The church, it appears to me, is still way up in the air on this one.

And for that reason, I think we should argue.

Safety & Christianity

Nice essay here, thanks to the Rollings in Haiti.  Not long, either.  Nice pre-lenten warm-up.

History Repeats – Forced Sterilization

Chelsea at Reflections of a Paralytic reports on a UK case considering forced sterilization for a mentally-disabled woman.

The US has been there done that, and you can read all about it in this entirely secular book:  Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity By Harry Bruinius (Vintage, 2007).

Thought I had a review for you, but I can’t seem to find it.  But this blurb from a New Yorker review gives you the gist:

In 1927, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of sterilizing a twenty-one-year-old woman thought to be “feebleminded,” and Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the majority, “It is better for all the world, if . . . society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” This precedent led to the escalation of eugenics in the United States, and the coercive sterilization of more than sixty-five thousand people (many of whom were poor women). Bruinius deftly combines analysis of how the American quest for moral and social purity prepared people to accept pseudo-science as a basis for national policy with an account of the personal and intellectual development of eugenics’ most influential American advocates . . .

Highly recommend.  Really: Forced sterilization is a super bad idea.

 

Zombie Book Head’s Up

I suppose nearly everyone who reads here also reads at Happy Catholic, but if not, there’s a favorable review just posted for Karina Fabian’s new zombie-killer book.  In addition to being a friendly person who goes above and beyond to promote Catholic writers, Karina has a great sense of humor.  I’ve read one of her Dragoneye PI books, and found it very entertaining.  So there you go – Mardi Gras reading recommendations.

PS: Zombie book is not explicitly catholic, so suitable for general audiences who might not be comfortable with a super-catholic-y book.

 

Lying – A Quick Tutorial on 2 Topics

Yesterday I read through a good bit of the great debate over the morality of Live Action’s Planned Parenthood stings.   I wanted to address two errors I’m seeing in the comboxes that deal with just the basics on lying and telling the truth.  One is the question of social lies (“Do you like my haircut?”), and I’ll answer that one second.  The other is this:

“No one is bound to reveal the truth to someone who does not have the right to know it.” (CCC 2489)

Now there’s quite a lot of noise about how the catechism was revised back in paragraph 2483 to clarify the definition of lying, specifically to remove the qualifer “to those who have a right to the truth”.  But 2489 stands as written.  Because here’s what: Withholding the truth from someone does not require lying!

–> What the catechism is saying, is that we don’t have to live in a talk-show tell-all universe.  Everybody doesn’t have a right to know everyone else’s private business.  Scrupulous followers of the 10 Commandments might have thought otherwise, thinking that the commandment to tell the truth means we have to tell the whole truth to anyone who asks and a lot of people who don’t.  Not so.

***

This is an everyday practical topic, and if you have grown up in a culture that considers lying AOK, you might want some tips on ways to legitimately withhold the truth from someone who has no right to know.  So here are some choices for you:

• Say nothing at all.  My husband has a right to know how our income taxes are coming along.  I have an obligation to discuss the situation truthfully and completely.  In contrast, if a friend of mine shares some private detail of her personal life, and asks me to keep it strictly confidential, (we are assuming it has no bearing on anything to do with my husband), my job is to just keep my mouth shut.   I probably shouldn’t even mention the conversation at all, if I can help it.
• Refuse to answer. SuperHusband was interviewing a contractor, and inquired what kind of wages the guy’s workers earned.  (The concern: Are they earning a fair wage?  It was a field where workers are often not paid decent wages.)  The contractor answered very simply, “That is none of your business.”  Fair enough.  Takes guts to say that sometimes, so go ahead and practice.  Gentler options are, “I’m not at liberty to say”, “that is a private matter”, “I’m afraid I cannot answer that”, “that is not something I can discuss with you”.  No further explanation required.
• Answer the underlying question. My son comes to me demanding to know whether his little sister got a piece of Halloween candy.  What he really wants to know? Did I get cheated, mom?  Are you favoring her? So I’m entirely within my right to simply answer, “Everyone will get a fair amount of candy.”
• Answer a more relevant question. Same child comes to me asking, “Where is my Halloween candy?”  I reply with the more pertinent topic: “Where is your math homework?”
• Provide a suitably general answer. A student needs to be excused from class to attend to an embarrassing situation.  Everyone of course wants to know where she’s going.  (Keep in mind in the classroom, usually students raise their hand and give a reason they want to be excused — bathroom visit, drink of water, etc.).  It may be more considerate to the embarrassed student to provide a true but vague answer.  “She needed to go to the restroom”, not “she was about to throw up all over the place”.  “I needed her to tell something to the DRE for me”, not “She was about to burst out crying about a family situation”.  “She needed to leave early tonight”, not “She has really bad cramps and wants to go home”.  It’s nobody’s business why she needs to go the ladies’ room, speak to the DRE, or call her mom to pick her up early.   There is nothing dishonest about keeping private situations private, and no lie is required.  The 8th commandment does not require us to tell every detail.

There you go.  Five ways you can legitimately withhold the truth from people who have no right to know.

***

Social Lying.  This is the other one people have been tossing about as a way to somehow prove that it’s fine to lie under this or that circumstance.  Now we can debate all day whether undercover operations or visits from the Gestapo are situations where lying is acceptable.  But there is no sting operation involved when your co-worker asks “Do you like my new shoes?”  And I don’t care what time of the month it is, your wife is not a Nazi when she asks what you think of her outfit.

So don’t lie.  Just don’t.  It’s a bad habit, and it builds unhealthy relationships.

If the relationship is insecure, you need to work on the underlying problem. A woman who feels loved, is confident of your respect for her, and has a strong sense of her own style, doesn’t get all paranoid about her looks.  If the person you are married to is constantly going berserk because you don’t recite long poems in honor of her new shade of lipstick, maybe you need to work on the relationship a little?  Maybe you need to back off on the unsolicited “constructive criticism”, ratchet the genuine compliments up a notch, and reassure her in word and action that you are absolutely hers.

Answer the underlying question. For the most part, women who show you a new outfit just want to share their joy.  She is beautiful, so tell her so.  She has a sense of style all her own, just go with it. She’s not asking you to wear the fuchsia shoes for goodness sakes, how hard is it to enjoy them on someone else?  That’s not lying.  “I wish I had a hat just like that,” is lying.  “It’s totally you,” that’s the truth.

–> This is confusing for men, because they ask for help getting dressed because they really don’t know what to wear.  Like, they really don’t even know if their jacket and slacks have the same color brown in them.  This is why men dress exactly the same as each other.   Your wife is generally not asking for a technical inspection.  If she is, she’ll ask a very specific question, such as “does this blouse clash?” or “do you think the long skirt or the short one works better?”  So the rule is this: Specific question = specific answer.  General question = general answer.  Your wife is beautiful.  It isn’t lying to tell her so.

Pleasantries. Pleasantries aren’t lying.  It is understood they are social conventions that have contextual meaning.  When the secret police come to your door and ask if you are hiding any refugees, it goes like this:

“Good morning, Mrs. Fitz.  How are you today?”

“Fine thank you.” <– Nobody is under the illusion I am fine.  The secret police are at my door.  I am not fine.  But it isn’t a lie because we all know this is a social convention.

“You don’t happen to have this man hiding in your attic?” (Shows picture of the man who is hiding in my attic.)

“________________” <– That’s where I’m supposed to answer something.  If I lie, it is likely at most a venial sin.  (Assuming I am hiding an innocent man, etc etc.)  But I shouldn’t kid myself that it’s a social convention. He didn’t ask if I liked his uniform or what I thought of the weather.  He’s looking for a clear answer.  Now he doesn’t have the right to know the truth, so I can choose to use one of the options above.  But lying would be lying, and in our moral analysis we shouldn’t confuse it with some other thing.

Someone invent this, please: Leaf Net

Here’s the situation:

• I have trees in my yard.
• I like to use the fallen leaves for mulch.
• I do not like to hassle with elaborate procedures for shredding leaves.
• (No, I do not own a bag for my lawn mower.)
• But dried up leaves blow away — into the neighbors’ yards — if I just put them out unshredded and un-composted.

So what I want: Inexpensive biodegradable netting I can put over a layer of leaves to keep them in place, right there in the flower bed on the front lawn, until they compost all on their own.

And it needs to be a color that blends with the leaves so it doesn’t make my yard look really super ridiculous.  My yard looks ridiculous enough as is.

Go to it, inventors.

Thank you.

3 more quick takes for today

Finishing up all I’m going to manage in the Sts. C&M lovefest:

Entropy reminds me to post this, which she wrote last week and I really really liked:

. . . When you’re mired in mortal sin because you’re a weak little weakling and yet you believe that what the Church teaches us is true, even though you seem unable to follow it (hypocrite!), you might latch onto another teaching of the Church that is more doable for you. Something you can follow and hope that by following that you can make up a little bit for being such a total and utter failure at being good. You might think that you’re at least not adding more sins on top of the ones you’ve already got and why haven’t I gone to confession yet? . . .

It’s an important distinction: You can insist that sin is not sin.  Understandable if you haven’t heard of forgiveness.  Who wants to be condemmned?  I remember shortly before I returned to the church, desperately justifying myself to the office secretary one morning, because I couldn’t accept the reality that *I* had done something wrong, even so small as forgetting to give her whatever form it was I owed her.  And she kept saying “I forgive you, I forgive you . . .”, and I had *no idea* what she was talking about.  The idea that you could do something bad, and someone would just . . . let it go?  Incomprehensible to me then.

Entropy uncovers something more beautiful:  Sinning and knowing you’re sinning, and trying to at least hold onto what moral territory you can, even though it feels like complete holiness is beyond your ability.

Well it is.  That’s why we have forgiveness.  A God who isn’t out to condemn us.  He lets us know we’re in the mire, because He’s there to give us a hand out of it.

***

On the topic of forgiveness and people who know how to forgive, here is my friend Charity’s blog.  It’s  a normal-person blog, kind of like Paris Daily Photo only it’s western Kansas captured by phone-camera.  Just normal life.  4-H, kids playing basketball, cats on the couch.

***

Which is why this post by Eric Sammons is perfect for today:

I was recently reading an account of Game Six and I was struck by a quote from Fisk regarding this home run:

Other than being the father of two children, this was the greatest thrill of my life.

Think about what Fisk said for a moment. He just compared something that only 14 men have ever done – end a World Series game with a home run – with something that millions of men throughout history have done. Hitting a walk-off World Series home run takes a unique combination of skill, hard work and luck; having a child takes no special skill or ability. Just about every boy dreams about hitting a home run to win a World Series game – and Fisk did it in one of the most thrilling situations – yet the Red Sox catcher said that one of the most common activities known to man – having children – was more thrilling. So what does that tell us about parenthood?

 

 

Tollefsen on Live Action, part II

Full disclosure: I am an unabashed fan of both the professors Tollefsen.

So I was very happy when the Pulp.It pointed me towards Chris Tollefsen’s stomping grounds.  Where you can read a series of essays debating the morality of Live Action’s undercover Planned Parenthood sting, including Tollefsen’s latest response this morning.

 

 

 

Because he loves me . . .

This weekend, the SuperHusband, so-named for a reason, asks me if he’s expected to buy me chocolate for Valentine’s day.  No, I tell him, and I actually mean it.  What I do want is to have dinner (at home) together per our longstanding tradition, but that won’t happen this year, because I’ve got to be at church at 6:30 tonight to a sponsor a confirmee.  I couldn’t think of a more auspicious date for such an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, so no complaints here.

Well , SuperHusband says, since you won’t be able to enjoy it on the 14th, how about I give you these now:

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s love.

New blog I like

Desdemona’s Rabbit.Written by an internet friend (non-catholic, for those who worry about these things).  What I really love: the rating system at the bottom of each review. And no, I have not read the same books Sy has read, so if she happens to like really really awful books, um, I can’t help that.  I’m the one trying to read less this year, remember?  You just go visit your local library and do your own due diligence.

There are some other good blogs I’ve added to the sidebar lately, and I know I have a handful I mean to add but keep forgetting.  If yours is that site, give me a good swift kick.  Thursday.  Wednesday is packed.