Banning “Blawg”? Heck, they’ll be coming for “agita” next…

Banning “Blawg”? Heck, they’ll be coming for “agita” next…

Thankyou for taking the time to offer your perspective, Hyphen.  My quick response: (1) if what the law is were always clear, there would not be such a fuss over who gets on the bench; (2) the Church pronouncements that I have cited in my prior post make it clear that the mere fact that something “is the law” is not an excuse for going along with it — that explicitly includes judicial opinions. (3) many who see themselves as “Serious Catholics” may feel the personal mission/obligation to go beyond avoiding grave sin in fulfilling their roles as public officials, and may thus be moved by their own consciences to always choose Life.

Thankyou for taking the time to offer your perspective, Hyphen.  My quick response: (1) if what the law is were always clear, there would not be such a fuss over who gets on the bench; (2) the Church pronouncements that I have cited in my prior post make it clear that the mere fact that something “is the law” is not an excuse for going along with it — that explicitly includes judicial opinions. (3) many who see themselves as “Serious Catholics” may feel the personal mission/obligation to go beyond avoiding grave sin in fulfilling their roles as public officials, and may thus be moved by their own consciences to always choose Life.

I think you mischaracterize the Catholic understanding of the moral obligations of public officials. Judges, as I understand it, are charged with saying what the law is. That does not make them moral agents in the same way a legislator would be. See, for example, the “Summa Theologica”, Part II-II, Q. 64, Art. VI, ad 3, in which St. Thomas says that a judge incurs no personal guilt even if he sentences an innocent man to death if his “guilt” has been proven according to the law (which the judge, by definition, is bound to apply). In his statement of 2004, it appears that then-Cardinal Ratzinger was simply saying that Catholics have an obligation to oppose dubious judicial pronouncements which falsely declare a “right to die” to be a civil or human right. But if that is what the actual law really required, when properly understood, a Catholic judge making such a pronouncement would incur no guilt. Catholics would then be obliged to work for a (legislative) change in such law.

I think you mischaracterize the Catholic understanding of the moral obligations of public officials. Judges, as I understand it, are charged with saying what the law is. That does not make them moral agents in the same way a legislator would be. See, for example, the “Summa Theologica”, Part II-II, Q. 64, Art. VI, ad 3, in which St. Thomas says that a judge incurs no personal guilt even if he sentences an innocent man to death if his “guilt” has been proven according to the law (which the judge, by definition, is bound to apply). In his statement of 2004, it appears that then-Cardinal Ratzinger was simply saying that Catholics have an obligation to oppose dubious judicial pronouncements which falsely declare a “right to die” to be a civil or human right. But if that is what the actual law really required, when properly understood, a Catholic judge making such a pronouncement would incur no guilt. Catholics would then be obliged to work for a (legislative) change in such law.