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June 16, 2009

Workplace Copyright Scruples

(Jimmy Akin)

A reader writes:

I have a dilemma at work. I work in a school. Part of my job is to do photocopies for teachers. I am sometimes asked to make photocopies of worksheets whose legal status - whether they are copyrighted or not - is unknown to me. The teachers, who don't seem to know about the copyright issue, generally intend to distribute the copies at a later time. That gives me the chance to do a little research to check the legal status of the document and get the nerve to refuse to do something which is certainly wrong, if it is the case.

This situation of uncertainty gets thougher to deal with when, out of the blue, one of the teachers asks me to copy a worksheet for a kid who was absent at the time the sheet was distributed, on a previous day. The teacher expects me to come back as soon as possible so that this kid can do his work like the others.

If the copying were clearly a violation of the author's copyright, I could stand up to the teacher and diplomaticly say "I'm sorry but I cannot do this because ...". And if it were okay, I'd go ahead and make the copy.

But in a case of uncertainty, what should I do ? Is it a case of remote material cooperation with evil with a proportionate reason, the proportionate reason being the need for the kid to get an education ? I do not want to infringe copyrights nor make a trouble in class without "sufficient" reasons.

Also, I wonder if making a copy of a collection of images previously copied by the teacher herself would change anything in the remoteness of my cooperation. (Pffeeww! I hope it is clear to you).

First, I'm pleased to say that I think I can cut the Gordian knot on your dilemma by noting that in U.S. copyright law fair use is considered to include significant copying of copyrighted works for classroom distribution. According to the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

So . . . work sheets, collections of pictures, whatever . . . if you're making copies for educational purposes, it looks like the activity is covered by fair use. I thus wouldn't scruple about it.

While this would seem to take care of the reader's issue, not everybody works in a school, so let's look at the moral principles that would apply if one's employer asks one to copy copyrighted material and it is not covered by fair use. What then?

If one is not approving of the act then one is not formally cooperating, which satifies one element of the moral calculus. One's cooperation would be material.

For material cooperation in evil to be justified it is traditionally held that it needs to be remote rather than proximate and that there needs to be a compensating reason of sufficient weight. Also, the act you are doing must not be intrinsically evil.

Making a copy is not intrinsically evil--it's something that can be justified by the circumstances, so that criterion seems satisfied.

What is not satisfied is the traditional remote/proximate distinction. One's action in this case is not remote. If the law one is breaking is against copying and if you are the one doing the copying then your action seems proximate (or more than proximate), violating the traditional requirement that the cooperation be remote.

So I don't think that at least the traditional understanding of the doctrine of cooperation provides a defense.

What I do think provides a defense, morally speaking (the civil law is another matter), is this:

Copyright violation is a species of theft, and the definition of theft is as follows:

CCC 2408 The seventh commandment forbids theft, that is, usurping another's property against the reasonable will of the owner. There is no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods. This is the case in obvious and urgent necessity when the only way to provide for immediate, essential needs (food, shelter, clothing . . .) is to put at one's disposal and use the property of others.

Now, if you're in a situation where the copying your employer is asking you to do will not strongly affect the income of the copyright holder then you could presume the consent of the owner. Few copyright holders would want people to lose their jobs or be denied promotions because they stood up to their bosses and refused to do the copying. I know I wouldn't want someone losing a job or being denied a promotion because they were defying their boss in defense of the copyrights I hold. My problem is with the boss issuing the order, not the employee carrying them out.

But suppose that you know you're dealing with an inflexible, irrationally strict copyright holder, or suppose you're doing something that will substantially impact the copyright holder's income--like making ten thousand illegal copies of the latest Hollywood blockbuster. What about those cases?

The irrational copyright holder situation is taken care of by the "reasonable will of the owner" condition. He's not reasonable, so you can act on what a reasonable owner would say.

That leaves the case of substantially affecting his income. Here you might have to refuse the order even at the cost of a promotion or a job. The decision would be based on the relative harm to you of having to find another employment situation versus the harm being done to the copyright owner. That's something that could go either way. 

I point it out not to encourage people to scruple over this question--quite the opposite. The great majority of the time one will not be morally at fault for complying with an employer's orders, for the reasons specified above. I merely mention it to point out that these considerations would not (apart from extreme circumstances) justify one working for a business whose principle purpose is copyright piracy, like a mass video or software bootlegger.

That, of course, all deals with the moral aspect of the question, apart from considerations of civil law. If you break the civil law you still run the risk of getting nailed by the authorities.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Moral Theology | Permalink | Comments (70)

May 14, 2009

Christopher West

(Jimmy Akin)

Christopher_west This post is going to be about the current dustup in the blogosphere regarding Christopher West and the recent ABC News piece on him.

Before I get to the controversial stuff, though, let me say a few words about the task Chris is undertaking.

Christopher West has a difficult job. As a chastity speaker, he's got to juggle several things at once:

1) He's got a very sensitive subject
2) On which different audiences have different sensibilities
3) The audience that most needs his message is very hard to reach
4) Part of the reason why they're so hard to reach is that they have a pre-existing stereotype of Christian sexual morality that they think gives them a license to tune out anything a Christian says on the subject
5) To reach this group you have to effectively batter your way past this anti-Christian prejudice and get them to take you seriously while simultaneously
6) Not offending the sensibilities of those who already take Christian sexual morality seriously
7) Some of whom have rigorist views on the topic

That's a tall order. It is humanly possible to juggle seven things at once (SEE HERE), but it's not easy.

Sometimes the task is especially treacherous, such as when being interviewed by the mainstream media, which is going to try to sensationalize every subject it deals with, but especially the subject of sex.

They'll also selectively edit the stuffing out of an interview with you and leave the audience with carefully chosen, out-of-context quotations.

That's what happened to Christopher West in this ABC Nightline piece . . . 

I've been interviewed by the press, and misquoted by it, often enough that when I first watched this piece, I employed the only safe rule when dealing with an MSM story of this nature: Ignore everything that doesn't come out of Chris's mouth. Do not rely on summaries of his position offered by the reporter.

The summaries that reporters use to link quotations are key means by which they distort, sensationalize, and just plain get stuff wrong.

And, as one would expect, the most controversial stuff in the piece is not stuff that Chris says but that the reporter attributes to Chris in a summary.

The statement that Hugh Hefner is one of Chris's "heroes" or "muses," for example, is something the reporter says--and it's exactly the kind of erroneous "observation" that a reporter in search of a sensationalistic angle would make.

Similarly the statement that Hefner and John Paul II, each in their own way, "rescued" sexuality is something that the reporter says, not West.

Even when one eliminates reportorial summaries and observations, though, and just sticks to the quotations of an interview subject, there is a significant risk of out-of-context presentation.

I know that firsthand because back during the priestly sex abuse scandal I was interviewed by a news program that took an answer I gave to a question on one subject and juxtaposed it with video that made it appear that I was commenting on something that I had never even been asked about.

I was livid.

And so I've always got in the back of my mind, "What's the context for the quote I'm seeing? Could this be taken out of context?"

An example of that is West's statement "I love Hugh Hefner." 

Jerkily introduced, without seeing the discussion that led to this statement, after the reporter has just been telling you that Hefner is one of West's heroes, the quotation creates the impression that West endorses Hefner.

But . . . c'mon. I'm guessing that Chris West loves Hefner in the same way that Fundamentalists love Catholics--that is, they love them so much they want them to repent of their lifestyle.

And that's hinted at by what West says next: "I really do. Why? Because I think I understand his ache. I think I understand his longing because I feel it myself. There is this yearning, this ache, this longing we all have for love, for union, for intimacy."

So this is not an endorsement of Hefner and what he's doing. It's compassion toward him, a recognition that there is something broken in Hefner--and all of us--that needs to be addressed.

The language about "feeling his ache" doesn't strike me as the best way to say this. I don't really want to get into Hugh Hefner's head in quite that way (though that's what the language invites me to do). 

And there is a danger of spiritualizing away the sexual urges to which Hefner caters if they are presented as just longings for love, union, and intimacy.

But it's clear that West intends to be expressing a sentiment of Christian love towards a broken individual with whom we all share various forms of brokenness.

The response was awkwardly phrased--as likely would be the case when hit by a reporter with a "What do you think of Hugh Hefner?"-type question (you don't want to feed prejudices by coming off as a stereotypical, venom-filled Christian bigot by saying "He's a son of hell," so it's easy to fall back on unnuanced Christian love-type language)--and I think West would be well advised not to make "I love Hefner"-like statements in interviews in the future since we've seen how easily they can be taken out of context or otherwise misunderstood--but it's clear that West is not proclaiming his membership in the Hugh Hefner fan club.

If you want to see what West has to say about Hefner when he's in control of the message, take a look at this video . . . 

So I think folks in the blogosphere should cut West some slack and remember that he's on the side of the angels.

At the same time, I think West should use this as a learning experience and take the occasion to purify his message so that he can be even more effective in the future.

Just as a general matter, it's important to keep in mind that there is more than one audience that needs to be (basically) comfortable with what's being said. 

Getting through to the people who most need the message of chastity is so difficult that it is easy for chastity speakers to spend so much effort focusing on how to get into that audience's head that not enough attention is paid to the already-convinced crowd and to what will--in the classic Catholic phrase--"offend pious sensibilities."

I think that's at the root of what happened here.

In the TV and YouTube age, the pious crowd is going to see the message being presented to the unpious crowd, and if the sensibilities of the message are too oriented toward the unpious folks then one's relationship with the pious ones ("the Base") will be injured.

Injuring one's relationship with the Base is not a good thing, as our recent former president found out.

The trick, the thing that makes the kind of work West is doing so difficult, is not settling for messages that just please the Base or that just please the worldly target audience. What one has to try to do is find ways of reaching the unchaste without simultaneously alienating the chaste.

That's the challenge.

And it can be done!

You can't please everybody every time, but it is possible to craft messages that will reach the unchaste while not unnecessarily offending pious sensibilities.

In that regard, what I'm about to say isn't specifically applicable to Christopher West. In various points it may or may not apply. It just consists of observations that I've made after listening to the tapes of a lot of different chastity speakers as part of my job.

Often it is possible to avoid unnecessarily offending pious sensibilities simply by leaving out things that you don't really need. 

For example, leaving out invitations to get inside the heads of people as they experience sexual temptation or conjuring uncomfortable imagery in the audience's minds.

Every chastity speaker is aware of the importance of modesty in dress and of modesty in relation to sex in general. Indeed, sexual modesty is a human universal, appearing in one form or another in every culture, even very depraved ones.

There is a parallel that chastity speakers need to observe in modesty of word and image and suggestion (and especially in humor).

It can be tempting, to show the audience that you understand where they're coming from, to talk about your own temptations in too demonstrative a fashion, to dwell on them, and end up oversharing in a way that makes people uncomfortable, causes unnecessary offense, or even constitutes an occasion of sin.

I've heard multiple speakers (not West) do precisely this to show the audience that they understand.

And it's really not necessary. One doesn't need to dwell on the details of one's temptations, their history, or their intensity. 

The audience will be convinced if you simply say with conviction, "Believe me. I know where you're at. I'm subject to temptation, too." And leave it at that.

Another potential source of problems is trying to grab the audience's attention by doing something arresting and unexpected.

Sometimes chastity speakers try to push the envelope by violating the audience's preconceptions of what a chastity speaker should be. 

There is a role for this. Chastity speakers do need to challenge the stereotype that the unchaste will want to impose on them. If they don't do something to neutralize that stereotype, they won't be able to reach the people who need to be reached.

And so some arresting, unexpected, envelope-pushing is to be anticipated and even necessary. 

But it's easy to overdo it or to have it misfire.

I think that's what's happening with West's use of Hugh Hefner. In its present form, I don't think that this part of his message is helpful, even when done on his own terms rather than ABC's.

Watch the second video and notice what he's doing: He's using Hefner as a way of getting around the prudish Puritanical/Victorian Christian stereotype. He presents both Hefner and John Paul II as men who proposed alternatives to the stereotype. He then urges people to accept John Paul's solution rather than Hefner's.

The problem is that he does this in such a way that he makes it sound like John Paul II and Hugh Hefner are basically on the same side, struggling against the evil common enemy of sexual Puritanism. Hefner just has a misguided solution.

And that's false.

West is also overselling the potential for Puritanism. He makes it sound as if our natural inclination as Christians is to see sex as bad and shameful and our bodies as evil, and that's not the case. That's the stereotype of what Christians think, but that's not what they really think. 

I don't know any adult Christians who think that way.

And I think it sells Christian culture short to make it sound as if this is the big danger for Christians. 

It would be more effective to give Christian culture its due and challenge the stereotype by saying something like, "C'mon . . . when has anybody ever told you that your body is shameful or that sex is dirty. Have you ever heard a priest say that from the pulpit? How about a bishop? How about a pope? If anybody has told you this, they weren't speaking for the Church. This is a false stereotype of Christians that the media tries to sell you to justify a loose-sex lifestyle."

Whatever one makes of that way of fighting the stereotype, it's not true that John Paul II and Hugh Hefner are on the same side against the common enemy of Puritanism. If we have to say there are two sides here, John Paul II and Puritanism are on the same side against the evil represented by Hefner. 

It's Puritanism, not Hefner and his pornographic lifestyle, that has the well-meaning but misguided solution to the problem posed by the enemy.

So I think West should at least reframe the way he handles this issue. The stereotype needs to be fought, but not by making Hugh Hefner sound like someone who's on our side but just misguided.

It's also dangerous (as the ABC interview shows) to try to express too much sympathy for the most notorious pornographer in human history. 

It can be so easily misunderstood.

I also wouldn't give too much credit to Hefner's rationalizations of his own actions. Human monsters always accuse other people, or the culture at large, of being to blame. They'll also cast themselves in the role of heroic revolutionary as a mask for baser motives (like money and access to naked, sexually-attractive women).

Another thing West does in an attempt to arrest the audience's attention and provoke thought is to refer to Song of Songs as the "centerfold" of the Bible.

He really should not do that.

That's going to offend pious sensibilities in such a way that it more than neutralizes any good that could conceivably come from using the statement to provoke thought.

Particularly problematic, I think, is the defense of this that is offered on his web site:

The Song of Songs is of great importance to a proper understanding of Christianity.  Indeed, the saints and mystics of the Catholic tradition have written more commentaries on the Song of Songs than any other book in the Bible.  It is in the very center of the Bible for a reason.  Calling it the "centerfold" in Scripture, Christopher intends to redeem the common understanding of the word "centerfold," which is usually associated in popular culture with pornography.  In no way is it meant to compare the sacredness of the Song of Songs with the distortions of pornography.

I don't see how to defend this.

Song of Songs is not "of great importance to a proper understanding of Christianity." 

It is of very limited importance, as illustrated by the fact that it is one of the Old Testament books that is not quoted in the New Testament, that the readings of the liturgy only contain one reference to it--seven verses that appear as an optional reading--and by the fact that throughout Christian history more attention has been paid to the spiritual sense of the text (i.e., allegorizing it into a treatise about Christ and his Church) than its literal sense (Hebrew love poetry).

It is almost certainly untrue that the saints and mystics of the Catholic tradition have written more commentaries on the Song of Songs than any other book in the Bible. More than Genesis? More than Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John?

At the very least, this kind of jaw-dropping statement needs some kind of citation to back it up.

The statement that "It is in the very center of the Bible for a reason" is way too glib.

It's not the center book of the Bible if we count by books (that would be Wisdom of Solomon--in the common, contemporary Catholic order of books), and the reason that it's center-ish has nothing to do with its importance for understanding the Christian faith. The books of Scripture are not ordered so that the most important ones are in the center. This is some kind of unfounded cheerleading.

The explanation then says that by "[c]alling it the 'centerfold' in Scripture, Christopher intends to redeem the common understanding of the word 'centerfold' . . ."

You have to admire his moxie. No doubt about that. But there are some windmills that really shouldn't be tilted at.

The chances of Chris being able to change the English language in such a way that the term "centerfold" gets redeemed are vanishingly small, and his time and talents would be far better spent on tasks that have greater chances of success and smaller chances of blowing up in his face.

" . . . which is usually associated in popular culture with pornography."

No.

The term "centerfold" is always associated with pornography in popular culture. 

The statement concludes:

In no way is it meant to compare the sacredness of the Song of Songs with the distortions of pornography.

This can be parsed in more than one way. 

Parsed literally and grammatically, it says that Chris's use of the term "centerfold" is not meant to compare sacredness (which happens to be possessed by the Song of Songs) with distortions (that are possessed by pornography), but if that's how you take it, it's a non sequitur to this discussion.

Nobody would suppose that Chris was positively comparing sacredness in the abstract with sinful distortions. 

Nobody thought he was talking about sacredness properly speaking at all.

People thought he was inappropriately comparing the Song of Songs in the Bible to the centerfold of a Playboy.

And he was.

He was trying, certainly, to do so with antithetic parallelism--that is, to contrast Song of Songs with porn.

But it didn't come across that way.

Referring to Song of Songs as the "centerfold" of the Bible is so offensive to pious sensibilities and so open to misunderstanding that Chris should drop this one and not waste more time defending it.

This one just can't be defended.

It's not worth it trying to redeem this term. It should be dropped, and Chris should issue a statement saying something like, "I was trying to grab people's attention and make them think, but my critics are right on this one. It was dumb. I see that now."

Even if he doesn't, though, let's try to keep a proper perspective on this.

We're talking about a very small part of West's overall message, and his message as a whole is extremely positive.

It may need tweaking (everyone's message does, in one degree or another), but it's fundamentally in the service of good.

West is a man on the side of the angels, and he's an effective speaker who has done a great deal of good. He stands to do much more good in the future, and he should be encouraged in that.

Even the ABC piece, as flawed as it was, should do more good than harm on balance. Despite the Hefner-related flaws and the "centerfold" business, it communicated the ideas that (1) the anti-Christian sex stereotype is wrong, (2) that sex is a good thing, (3) that people should admire and take seriously the Church's teachings on sex, (4) including its teachings on contraception, sex only in marriage, and heterosexual marriage, and (5) it had testimonies from couples and individuals saying how these messages turned their lives and marriages around.

Chris's critics should be honest enough to admit that the piece nudged more audience members in the right direction than the wrong one.

And they should rejoice in that.

Sure, there were things that went wrong--many of them not in West's control--but he can learn from this experience and help even more people in the future.

That's something we should all hope for.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Moral Theology | Permalink | Comments (128)

May 07, 2009

The Moral Use of Nukes

(Jimmy Akin)

Moon I was a bit surprised that some commenters on the recent Harry Truman was a war criminal post thought that I was being vague in some of the things I said. I think a careful reading of the post would take care of the confusion, but I'm also aware that sometimes things need to be explained in more than one way for perfect clarity, so I'm happy to oblige.

In this post let me deal with the issue of the moral use of nukes. 

First, let's look at something the Catechism says:

2314 "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation." A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons - especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons - to commit such crimes.

This passage specifically has in mind the kind of actions that the U.S. committed in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those events are specifically what informs this paragraph.

While this is true, I do think that there are situations in which the moral use of nuclear weapons is morally legitimate, even if it means that a city is destroyed as a result. Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't such cases, but I can imagine scenarios in which this obtains.

How would I square that with the above passage from the Catechism?

They key, I think, is the phrase "indiscriminate destruction." So far as I can tell, this means one of two things.

First, it may refer to an indiscriminate intent on the part of those causing the destruction.That is, those causing the destruction intend to kill everybody in the city or area indiscriminately. They want everybody to die. Everybody is the target. In other words, on the level of intent they do not discriminate between combatants and noncombatants. That's why the destruction is indiscriminate.

In contrast to this there is the attitude of only intending the death of combatants. In this case it is combatants who are the targets, even though it may beforeseen that noncombatants will also die as collateral damage. 

If we take this down from the level of destroying a city or a vast area to just a particular building, the difference in intent will be clear: There is a fundamental difference in intent between a person who wants to destroy a building so that everyone in it dies, combatant or not, and a person who wants to destroy a building in order to take out the combatants in it, even though noncombatants may also die.

In the one case the target is everybody in the building. In the other it is the combatants in the building.

This kind of analysis is what allows the moral legitimacy of bombing combat-related targets in wartime even knowing that a certain number of civilians will die also. The point is: You're not trying to kill the civilians.

How much collateral damage can be tolerated in a particular case will depend on the value of the military target that is being taken out. If the military target is a single, lonely private then less collateral damage can be tolerated than if it's the whole leadership of the opposing war machine.

In any event, on this reading of the text, trying to take out a military target with tolerable collateral damage would not constitute indiscriminate destruction because those carrying out the destruction do discriminate between combatants and noncombatants.

But there is another way in which the phrase can also be taken. Instead of referring to the level of intent, it might refer to the level of result. In this case "indiscriminate destruction" would refer to the killing of everybody in a city or area. Period.

A consequence of this interpretation would be that one could never destroy a city or a vast area as a matter of principle. It would be intrinsically evil to do so.

But this seems wrong because at this point we are dealing with matters of scale. What makes something a city rather than a village or a hamlet or just a shack? The number of people. (Not the buildings; the buildings are not in focus.) 

But if some collateral damage is tolerable--ever--(e.g., you can blow up a shack containing a terrorist mastermind and his chief lieutenants even though there is a single civilian in there, too)--then reason indicates that a greater degree of collateral damage will be tolerable if the target to be taken out is more valuable. 

If some degree of collateral damage is tolerable when the military target has one value then a greater degree of collateral damage will be tolerable when the military target has even greater value. In other words, the amount of collateral damage that can be tolerable is proportionate to the value of the target to be destroyed.

If this kind of situation obtains then it does not seem reasonable to say that, at some arbitrary level, the amount of collateral damage is such that the act suddenly becomes intrinsically immoral. Anyone advocating such a theory would need to say what this level is and why a mere increase in magnitude--leaving everything else the same--makes the act intrinsically evil regardless of the military value of the target. 

Why is a collateral damage amount of X potentially justifiable whereas a collateral damage amount of X+1 is all of a sudden intrinsically unjustifiable?

This being the case, it would seem possible to construct scenarios in which there is a sufficiently high value target to justify the destruction of a whole city, and we will look at such a scenario in a moment.

I therefore would say that the passage from the Catechism and Vatican II that refers to "indiscriminate destruction" either should be taken as referring to an indiscriminate intent (i.e., an intent that does not discriminate between targets; it just wants to kill everybody) or, if it refers to indiscriminate results (i.e., everybody dies, regardless of combatant status) then the passage is simply not envisioning the kind of scenario I am about to postulate.

The latter wouldn't be surprising since the Catechism and Vatican II are pastoral documents that are meant to present Catholic principles in a pastoral manner and they are not always phrased in a rigorously technical fashion designed to cover all imaginable scenarios.

Like the following one (which I am very sure the fathers of Vatican II did not have in mind).

Suppose the following . . . 

1) We have colonized Luna (or "the Moon," as everyone who lives there calls it) and have set up a city in the Sea of Tranquility consisting of five million people. We'll call it Sea of Tranquility City.

2) There is an evil alien race known as the Zergamoids. They are really evil. Even their name sounds evil (in a cheesy, 1930s-sci-fi way).

3) The Zergamoids have dropped a planetkiller in the middle of Sea of Tranquility City. This particular planetkiller converts zero point energy into gamma rays and, if activated, it will irradiate the entire surface of Earth with as much radiation as a moderately-nearby gamma-ray burster, totally killing all life.

4) There is a Zergamoid ship in orbit around Mars, and it sent the activation code to the planetkiller ten minutes ago.

5) We have no way to stop the planetkiller from receiving this transmission and, since Mars is at this hypothetical time only twenty light minutes from Earth (approximately on the other side of the Sun from Earth), we've got ten minutes until the go-code activates the planetkiller.

6) This is far too little time to evacuate either Earth or Sea of Tranquility City.

7) The planetkiller is sufficiently resistant to damage that the only way to take it out is to use a nuke sufficiently powerful to not only destroy the machine but also destroy Sea of Tranquility City.

In these circumstances, it would be morally legitimate to nuke the planetkiller even though it would mean that Sea of Tranquility City, with its five million inhabitants, would also be destroyed.

Therefore, there are at least hypothetical situations in which the use of nukes in urban areas is morally legitimate.

In such cases you aren't targeting the civilian population. You're targeting something else--a military target (in this case, a planetkiller) that has sufficient value to make the huge foreseen collateral damage tolerable.

Now, I can see some hands going up in the audience, and I can hear the objection being formulated: "But wait! Nothing like this is likely to happen in real life . . . anytime soon."

Quite true.

But the point of a thought experiment is to propose a test case which is clear, regardless of how probable it is. While this situation is quite unlikely to happen any time in the foreseeable future, it does reveal the moral principles needed to show that in some imaginable situations the use of nuclear weapons in urban areas is morally permissible.

That's not to say that we're at all likely to encounter such a situation, or that we ever have or even ever will, but it is to show that such use can be legitimate in a specific kind of situation.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Moral Theology | Permalink | Comments (115)

May 06, 2009

Harry Truman Was A War Criminal

(Jimmy Akin)

Harry-Truman As a result of recent discussion of torture (which is not the subject of this post, so don't veer into that topic in the combox; I may do a post on the subject of torture soon), the question arose on The Daily Show of whether Harry Truman was a war criminal.

Jon Stewart initially said yes. Then he said no.

He should have stuck to his guns. He was right the first time.

At least, I'd say that with a few of words of clarification.

First, we have to be clear about what is meant by the term "war criminal." This term could be construed in terms of then-existing or current international law regarding war crimes. That is not my area of expertise, and I am not presently interested in whether Truman's actions violated human law.

I am interested in the question from a viewpoint of moral theology, and in that framework the question of what counts as a war criminal will not depend on whether one has violated human law but whether one has violated the fundamental moral jus in bello, or the moral law as it operates in wartime.

A person is a war criminal, as I am using the term, if he commits acts that objectively speaking violate the moral jus in bello.

2312 The Church and human reason both assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict. "The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties."

One of the things that is never licit is the direct and voluntary taking of innocent human life. John Paul II writes in Evangelium Vitae 57:

[B]y the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. 

For purposes of our present discussion . . .

A person is killed directly if that person is the target or part of the target in the act of killing. That is, the person is not killed as "collateral damage" that results from the attempt to destroy a different target.

A person is killed voluntarily if his death is foreseen as a result of the contemplated action and it is carried out anyway. 

A person is innocent if he is not a combatant or a person engaged in proximate material cooperation with combat activities (e.g., military officers who, while not directly in combat, do support work for the war machine; civilians working in munitions plants).

Remote material cooperation in combat activities (e.g., as in the case of farmers who grow food that soldiers eat) is not sufficient to deprive a person of the status of "innocent civilian," for in time of war virtually everyone in society has--at least through the payment of taxes--remote material cooperation in combat activities, which would obliterate the very distinction that the Church is at pains to draw in its teaching regarding not killing civilians during wartime.

If one accepts these premises then it follows that Harry Truman's bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes--that is, they occurred during time of war and they violated the moral jus in bello.

This is because entire cities were targeted to produce the greatest psychological effect on the Japanese and these cities included innocent civilians who were part of the target.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a prude about the use of lethal force or about the use of atomic weapons. I can envision hypothetical scenarios in which their use would be legitimate, but a set of rigorous conditions would have to be met. Specifically, there would have to be a sufficiently high value combat-related target to justify the collateral damage incurred from the use of the Bomb and there would have to be no cost-effective alternative that would result in less collateral damage.

Such conditions were not met in the case of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The cities themselves were targets, including their innocent civilians.

Harry Truman was thus a war criminal in the sense I am using the term.

In saying this, I don't pass judgment on him. I don't know the state of his soul, and I have no idea whether he has the intellectual formation needed or--given the pressures of wartime--the psychological wherewithal to analyze the issue in the way just presented.

Maybe he did; maybe he didn't. That's between him and his Creator, and I'd be among the first in volunteering to pray for his soul.

But, objectively speaking, he was a war criminal in the sense described.

And I'll go you one better.

The bombings were also acts of terrorism.

While I can't point to an official definition of terrorism endorsed by the Magisterium, it seems to me that sufficient conditions are present for terrorism, morally speaking, if

1) The grave harm of innocents (as defined above) is directly and voluntarily threatened or inflicted and
2) The purpose of (1) is to generate a sense of fear (i.e., terror) in some party and
3) This fear is either an end in itself or a means to accomplishing another goal.

These conditions were present in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Grave harm was inflicted on innocents to generate fear in the Japanese leadership as a means of compelling them to surrender.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Moral Theology | Permalink | Comments (133)

January 06, 2009

Appreciating Beauty vs. Concupiscence

(Jimmy Akin)

A reader writes:

This is regarding "looking at girls".

I am very clear that obviously pornography is a grave matter.

I also am clear that deliberately engaging in lustful thoughts, lustful desires, or trying to arouse yourself (outside marriage) with full knowledge and full consent is also mortal sin.  Of course thoughts without these aspects are either venial or not a sin.

What I still struggle with is the question of "deliberately looking at an attractive or shapely girl".  And liking to do so.

I had understood that one could deliberately look at an attractive girl and admire her beauty -even the beauty of her form- and that the pleasure one finds in seeing her beauty and shape was not sinful to consent to and one could just ignore any "reactions of concupiscence" that happen.

Of course one must take care ..and know yourself ...as well as at times use custody of the eyes --particularly if she is very immodestly dressed.

Also that one could even look at a work of art that is nude etc (that is not lustfully done --that shows the dignity of the person) and admire the form and beauty and ignore any "reactions of concupiscence". 

Is this treating a girl as an object? Am I wrong in doing this? Is it sinful?

In this context, treating someone "as an object" mean improperly treating a person as an instrument of sexual gratification and thus not properly recognizing the dignity of the person.

There are also other ways one can (non-sexually) "object"-ify a person, e.g., treating a spouse as merely a means of getting certain tasks done (breadwinning, household management, whatever).

In general, treating someone merely as a means to an end and not respecting the fundamental dignity of the person results in the objectification of that person. Sexual objectification is just one species in a larger genus.

But you know what doesn't belong to this genus?

Recognizing a person's good points.

If someone is beautiful or handsome or smart or prudent or a good breadwinner or a good household manager or a good square dance caller or has any other good points, it's fine to recognize and appreciate those facts.

If they are manifest, it would even be contrary to reason not to do so.

So recognizing and appreciating the beauty of the human form--in general or in a specific case--is not a sin.

At least you couldn't guess it from the statues and paintings that the folks at the Vatican have all over the place. They sure seem to be on board with this idea.

I mean, just look at the Sistine Chapel!

Just look at the Last Judgment!

And this is where they elect popes!

So it seems to me that one is on pretty safe ground saying that it's okay and not-automatically-objectifying if you recognize and appreciate physical beauty or any other good attribute that a person has.

It becomes objectifying if you reduce the person's worth to just their good or useful qualities.

Of course, in the area of appreciating physical beauty--especially of the opposite sex--we have to be careful.

It's one thing to be looking at a marble statue of a nude woman.

It's another to be looking at a color photograph of a nude woman.

It's another yet to be looking at a real live nude woman.

These represent different levels of moral risk, and the greater the peril, the more stringent efforts must be taken to avoid it or escape from it.

Because people are different and subject to different levels of temptation, they will have to determine based on their own self-knowledge and personal history what situations are too dangerous for them to allow themselves to be in.

For some--particularly males at a particular stage of life--even looking at artistic representations of nudes may be too much.

As normal in risk management--which is what avoiding temptation is, since it's not possible to completely eliminate the risk of temptation (given the mind's ability to produce temptation on its own)--one must avoid two extremes: under-estimating the risk that a situation poses and over-estimating it.

For most people the laxist approach is the greater danger, which is why Jesus told us to seek the narrow path.

For other people, particularly those subject to scrupulous tendencies, the rigorist approach is a danger.

Neither approach is what we are called to.

What one must do is evaluate the risk a particular course of action poses for one and act accordingly.

In some cases temptation will arise despite one's efforts. That's the nature of risk. As long as the risk isn't zero--and it never is in this life--sometimes temptation will arise.

The thing to do when that happens is relax, ignore the temptation, and move on to something else.

The "relax" part is important, because if one allows oneself to become anxious about temptation then it only reinforces the temptation.

Temptation is deprived of its power if you refuse to get anxious about it and simply move on.

Because I'm not the reader, I can't say precisely what courses of action are too risky in his case, but I can say that it's not sinful to simply recognize and appreciate beauty. (As opposed to dwelling on or studiously contemplating the details of a particular person's physical form, which is going to increase risk.)

I can say that it is not sinful to be exposed to any and all levels of non-zero risk. (Zero risk of temptation is impossible in this life.)

And I can say that if he tries to instantly avert his eyes from every single pretty girl he sees then he will foster an anxiety about temptation that will actually feed the temptation he is seeking to minimize.

The better thing to do is avoid situations that are known to be dangerous (i.e., that pose a significant risk of significant temptation) and to otherwise relax and move on when temptation does appear.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Moral Theology | Permalink | Comments (130)

December 16, 2008

Thoughts on sex and marriage – Part 2

(SDG)

Link to Part 1

SDG here with more thoughts on sex and marriage.

Note: This post includes some explicit language regarding lawful and unlawful acts. To spare the sensibilities of those who would prefer not to encounter such language, I'll put the whole post below the fold.

In my first post I began to address the question of what sex is using as a springboard some comments from a non-Catholic friend who proposed that "we have moved above the biological/procreative aspect of sex" and "can treat it as something other than procreative … because we are using sex for another purpose that need not include procreation."

In my earlier post I acknowledged that human sexuality certainly includes dimensions beyond the procreative -- that there are multiple aspects or goods in sex as it is ideally experienced by human beings. In fact, the list of such levels/goods is rather extensive. Among them might be included (without being limited to) the following:

  1. biological (sex is attempted procreation)

  2. instinctive (sex is the gratification of a primal impulse)

  3. visceral or sensible, i.e., with respect to the senses (sex is greatly pleasurable)

  4. recreational (sex is fun)

  5. volitional (sex is freely given and received)

  6. emotional/interpersonal (sex expresses intimacy and love)

  7. relational/marital (sex embodies the lifelong commitment of husband and wife)

Of course I don't mean to say that couples ought to have all of these things consciously in mind -- that would be ridiculous. Sometimes couples will be motivated more by one aspect or good, sometimes by another. Sometimes one partner might be more motivated by one good, and the other by another. None of this is necessarily problematic.

Nor do I mean to say that all of these goods must always be actually fully present in every sex act. It's an imperfect world; things go wrong, often through no fault of our own.

For example, some couples may at times experience difficulty in achieving the visceral or sensible pleasure of sex for both partners, usually (not always) for the woman. Other times, for whatever reason, the recreational or even emotional aspects of sex may be lacking.

Where this happens through no one's fault, that is one thing. However, where such privations come about deliberately, either through the fault of one of the parties or through the fault of another, great wrong is done.

For example, a selfish husband may gratify his own desires without doing everything he can and should for his wife's pleasure. Far worse, female genital mutilation may impair the woman's sexual satisfaction.

In the same way, other aspects of the sex act are deliberately excluded only with grave harm and wrongdoing. Deliberately exclude the volitional aspect, and you have rape. Deliberately exclude the relational aspect, and you have fornication or adultery.

However it may work out in practice, sex must always be done in a way that is at least open to the multifaceted goodness of sex in all its levels and aspects. Whatever aspect of sex is a couple's motivation tonight, either they take the occasion to accept the mystery of sex in its fullness, insofar as it is available to them, or they seek to reject and exclude some or another aspect, to the detriment of the act itself and their own being.

The loving and generous coital union of a husband and wife who give themselves in this act to one another completely and without reservation embodies openness to the mystery of sex in all its fullness.

Acts by which the parties are less than fully united diminish and falsify the mystery of sex. This occurs, for instance, when the partners are not married; or when they are not loving or generous; or when barriers are employed; or when sex culminates in acts other than coital union (which includes completed acts of oral or anal sex, whether between partners of the same sex or opposite sexes); or when chemicals or surgery are employed to suppress and withhold the gift of one's procreative powers.

Such chemically or surgically induced infertility is very much analogous to the surgical impairing of the body's ability to take pleasure in sex: Healthy and properly functioning organs and systems have been compromised for the specific purpose of inducing a dysfunctional state. Again, non-deliberate instances are another matter. Premature ejaculation is one thing; deliberate withdrawal is another. Nocturnal emissions are one thing; masturbation is another.

Even though procreation is not the only purpose of conjugal union, even though conjugal union is not always fruitful, on many occasions or for some persons cannot be fruitful, and indeed is sometimes deliberately rendered unfruitful, true conjugal union always includes a procreative dimension.

In fact, every act of coital union, physiologically speaking, is an act of attempted procreation. For a man to make love to a woman is always to say, not necessarily with his mind or heart (and potentially contrary to his actual intention), but nevertheless with his body, in a word made flesh, "Conceive if you can!" — and for a woman to make love to a man is always to say with her body "Impregnate me if you can!" Together, the two enacted wishes ideally form a perfect harmony, a single, shared bodily wish: "Let's have a baby if we can!"

Of course that conditional "if we can" points to what is possible at most for a few days each month, for a few decades of a woman's life. Yet the physiology of the act and the biological meaning of that act doesn't change during the infertile periods or after menopause. There is a union of complementary reproductive systems, of body parts and functions designed for precisely this union, for this purpose.

More to come.

Link to Part 1

Posted by SDG in Moral Theology | Permalink | Comments (21)

December 11, 2008

Thoughts on sex and marriage – Part 1

(SDG)

SDG here with some initial thoughts on sex and the marriage debate.

Same-sex "marriage," many urge today, is a matter of civil rights. Two men or two women have the same "right" as a man and a woman to enjoy the legal recognition and privileges that come with civil marriage.

One obvious question raised by this contention is: What is marriage? Why have societies conferred legal recognition and the privileges pertaining thereto to a man and a woman? What is it about this type of relationship that calls for some sort of social recognition? Why is marriage, socio-anthropologically speaking, an essentially universal human institution?

So far, I haven't seen a particularly lucid answer on these questions from advocates of same-sex "marriage." Here is what I take to be some fairly typical thoughts regarding marriage from a non-Catholic friend of mine who advocates same-sex marriage:

"The institution of marriage is always in flux. At times it has been about property, or about forming alliances, or about respectability and appearances (as often is behind when LGBT people enter heterosexual marriages). Currently, I think, society sees it more in terms of companionship, love, mutual attraction, mutual care for one another, and, yes, often procreation."

What is wrong with this accounting? To begin with, it doesn't say what marriage is — only how society "currently" sees it.

For another thing, it doesn't say what business of civil society's it is from whom we seek companionship, love, mutual attraction, mutual care for one another or even procreation.

Thirdly, it doesn't account for the socio-anthropological consistency of marriage as the enduring union of a man and a woman. (Incidentally, marriage is always the union of one man and one woman — even in polygamous societies. Polygamy means multiple marriages, not singular marriage with multiple partners. For instance, Jacob was married to Leah and Jacob was married to Rachel; they were not all three of them married to one another.)

At any rate, I can't see that anything like a sufficient explanation or basis for marriage as a human universal can be found in causes like companionship, love, mutual attraction and mutual care. In fact, it isn't even immediately clear to me that companionship or mutual care have historically been the special provenance of marriage. Husbands and wives as well as the unmarried have always sought these out in larger social contexts, often (not exclusively) men in the context of male society and women in the context of female society. In some societies, husbands and wives haven't particularly looked to one another for companionship at all. And of course mutual attraction neither needs, nor is limited to, marriage — which, again, raises the question why we have marriage, why it takes the shape it does, and what it is for.

Part and parcel with this question of what marriage is is the larger question of what sex is.

You might think that the nature of an activity so universal, not only among humans but throughout the animal kingdom, would seem to be too obvious to require much complicated expounding. On the other hand, we humans are different from other animals, and in our case sex isn't merely about biology or procreation.

However, it is one thing to say that sex isn't merely procreative, and another to say that it need not be in any way about procreation at all, as much modern thought does today. Again, I think my non-Catholic friend is pretty typical in this regard:

"You may not like this phrasing, but we have moved above the biological/procreative aspect of sex. As such we can treat it as something other than procreative … because we are using sex for another purpose that need not include procreation."

What shall we say to this? 

Here is one answer: Eating isn't "limited to" nourishment; we can eat food because it tastes good, for various social reasons, out of habit, for comfort, or perhaps in the context of some ritual, such as a seder or the Eucharist, among other possible reasons. In that sense, one might possibly say that we have "moved above the biological/nutritive aspect of eating."

Even so, it remains the case that that, any time one puts nutritive material in one's mouth and chew it up and swallow it, whatever else one may be doing, one are engaging your body's digestive powers. To interfere with the integrity of that process by bingeing and purging is an abuse of the body and of the act of eating. You can't say "Eating isn't limited to the biological — we have moved above the nutritive — so there's no harm actually excluding the nutritive by bingeing and purging." There is.

Something similar can be said about sex.

It is true that sex isn't limited to procreation; people engage in sex because it is pleasurable or fun, out of physical or emotional passion, to express or renew intimacy, to celebrate their marital union, among other possible reasons. In that sense, one might possibly say that we have "moved above the biological/procreative aspect of sex."

Even so, it remains the case that that any time a man engages in behavior that results in emitting seed, whatever else he may be doing, he is engaging his body's procreative powers. No amount of high-minded (or gnostic-verging) emphasis on other factors can justify bracketing and excluding that aspect.

To put it another way: It is true that sex isn't "limited to" procreation in the sense that it can and should be about other things in addition to procreation — but not in the sense that it can be about these other things rather than procreation, and therefore we can deliberately exclude procreation through contraceptive or homoerotic acts.

In that sense, we have "moved above" the biological/procreative aspect only in the sense that a skyscraper building crew "moves above" the foundation as they proceed to build each floor upon the previous one. Each floor nevertheless builds upon and relies directly upon the foundation. The view from the observation deck may be glorious; the foundation remains foundational. Sex is what it is.

More to come.

Posted by SDG in Moral Theology | Permalink | Comments (24)

October 24, 2008

Voters Guide for Serious Catholics

(Jimmy Akin)

I hope Catholic bloggers will take note of the following video edition of the Voters Guide for Serious Catholics, which is now YouTubed and available for embedding.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Moral Theology | Permalink | Comments (2)

August 19, 2008

Advertising Your Competitors?

(Jimmy Akin)

A reader writes:

As a recent businessman in the buying and selling of items on eBay, I have taken interest in the practice of buying low, selling high, and making profits. 

Okay, well, as a reseller, you wouldn't be much of a businessman if you didn't make a profit by selling higher than what you bought an item for. So far so good. You're providing a service to your customers by finding out and then purchasing things at a lower price so that they don't have to do this themselves. The profit you take is your compensation for being willing to go to this effort.

A recent debate began on a forum when a person was wondering whether it was morally acceptable to buy an item for Price X at the store, then resell it for Price Y on eBay..

I believe it is okay as buyers accept the price (either as a pre-set Price Y or a bid up to Price Y) without force and it is their choice if they want to order it online or get it in stores.  People may know how much it sells in stores, but they like the convienence of online shopping or they don't want to wait in line or for the stores to get it back in stock.  Likewise, they may not know how much it sells in stores and think that Price Y is the "normal" price.

I would think it depends on an individual purchaser. In some cases, they might not know how much it sells for in their local stores, but maybe they do. I may know that a particular DVD sells for $14 on Amazon but I could get the same thing a the BestBuy across town for $12. Which is the better deal for me?

The answer will depend on questions like (1) how much disposable income do I have? (2) how keen am I on seeing this DVD as soon as possible? (3) how much time do I have on my hands, given that I would have to invest more in driving across town, finding it in the store, standing in line for who knows how long, and driving back rather than clicking a few buttons, and (4) how much is the gas it would take to drive there and back?

Though the copy at the local BestBuy is somewhat cheaper in terms of its sticker price, I might very well conclude that it is worth the $2 to me to order it on Amazon with just a few clicks, save myself the time and gas of going across town and back, and just waiting an extra week or so to get it in the mail.

What's more, if I know that Amazon and the local BestBuy are generally within an acceptable range of each other, it may be worth my while to simply buy it on Amazon without even spending the time to call BestBuy, wade through their voicemail system to talk to a human, and find out if they have it in stock and--if so--how much it costs. It may just be easier (i.e., worth it to me) for me to buy online without even checking the local BestBuy.

In the current market, it will almost always be possible for me to find something at a cheaper price--if I'm willing to keep researching, or haggling, or taking a risk with a shady seller. But at some point it just isn't worth it to me to keep trying to find a better deal, and it's better for me to just go ahead and buy somewhere.

(NOTE: The latter is a technological limitation that I suspect will be cleared up in a few years. We're already seeing technological convergence of information on this through price comparison sites and local "in stock"/price services. Soon I'll be able to find out if the local BestBuy has it in stock and, if so, for how much--given no more clicks than it takes me to find out what Amazon wants for it, because both my local store and Amazon will be listed on the same site.)

So far I'm not seeing anything that raises alarm bells. You're not in a position to know why a particular eBay bidder is bidding the way he is, and it's reasonable for you to find things at Price X and then sell them for a markup so that the bidder doesn't have to go to the trouble of finding them for Price X himself.

The reader goes on to write:

The debate however enters Catholic territory from this sections of the CCC:

"2409 Even if it does not contradict the provisions of civil law, any form of unjustly taking and keeping the property of others is against the seventh commandment: thus, deliberate retention of goods lent or of objects lost; business fraud; paying unjust wages; forcing up prices by taking advantage of the ignorance or hardship of another.191

The following are also morally illicit: speculation in which one contrives to manipulate the price of goods artificially in order to gain an advantage to the detriment of others; corruption in which one influences the judgment of those who must make decisions according to law; appropriation and use for private purposes of the common goods of an enterprise; work poorly done; tax evasion; forgery of checks and invoices; excessive expenses and waste. Willfully damaging private or public property is contrary to the moral law and requires reparation."

This raised the question of whether the seller was obligated to inform people of the fact that it can be purchased for a lower price elsewhere (in stores) so as to not take advantage of potential ignorance.  This too me seems a bit of a stretch.  That to me would seem like one business that sells something for Price A being forced to tell constumers another store sells the same item for Price B (or likewise lower their own price accordingly).   This to me would seem to force sellers to do research that consumers should do themself, but it was argued that regardless of what research is required of buyers, it is never o.k. to take advantage as a seller of a buyers ignorance.

The arguement is not whether buyers should do research themselves as that was agreed upon, but about what steps if any the sellers need to take to prevent "taking advantage of ignorance."  To sum it up, would a good Catholic be morally required to list how much an item can be purchased for elsewhere?  Likewise, as a good Catholic buyer, if they are purchasing something they know is worth a lot more (at a garage sale for instance) then asking price, are they required to inform, not barter for lower prices, or pay the seller a higher price due to this knowledge to prevent taking advantage of the sellers potential ignorance?  I think this assumes ignorance when there may be none, but still to error on the side of doing good what does the Catholic Church teach?

Ultimately what is most desirable is an clear explanation of what the CCC means with regards to those paragraphs.

I'd like to provide such an explanation, but I don't know that I can. The CCC contains a substantial amount of material on economic matters that is not easy to cash out (pardon the pun) in concrete terms.

Part of the reason for this is that we are at an intersection between basic moral principles and how they are to be applied to real world situations in a way that requires the use of discernment. Part of the problem also is that the Church does not presently have a detailed theology of economics; it has a piecemeal system in which some matters are clearer than others, which has been developed over the course of time to address particular economic situations.

A fundamental problem, though, is that the folks in the hierarchy are not economists and are doing their best, based on real economic concerns, to provide pastoral guidance in an area that they don't have extensive familiarity with. The result is that they often write in an unclear manner.

It would be helpful if they provided examples to illustrate what they are talking about in passages like this, but either due to the concision with which the Catechism needed to be written or due to the fact that they had trouble thinking up clear and indisputable examples, we don't have any.

Neither does turning to parallel texts, like the Bible verses cited in the footnote or the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church or the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, help.

As far as I can tell, the clause in blue is simply de novo to the Catechism. It's a first-pass attempt at expressing this, without clear parallels (at least ones that I've been able to find) in other relevant documents. (There may be some in papal encyclicals, but since these aren't cited in the footnote, I don't know where to look them up, and I am under an economy of time in composing blog posts, so I can't just go read all the economic-related encyclicals and addresses.)

Taken in its most sweeping sense, the statement in blue could mean that the seller must either lower his asking price to that of his lowest competitor or must inform potential customers of what the lowest competitor sells for.

But this seems problematic for several reasons, among them the fact that this would put a burden on the seller to do research on what all of his competitors are selling for. While knowing what your competitors' asking prices are is--to an extent--just good business practice, this is not where the burden of doing research fundamentally falls. It ultimately falls on the consumer to try to find the best price so that he can use his money wisely. It isn't the seller's job to do that for him.

Second, taking there may be reasons why a particular seller can't lower his price to that of his lowest competitor. His lowest competitor may be much larger than him and able to buy in bulk and thus at even cheaper prices. Further, the competitor may even be taking a loss on the product (i.e., using it as a loss leader) in hopes of making more money on other things. Insisting that all sellers match their lowest competitor's price thus would be destructive to the free market as it would tend to lead to market centralization and even monopolies, as the small sellers are unable to match the savings offered by the big ones.

The Church certainly doesn't intend that.

What about informing customers of the cheapest competitor's prices?

Again, this does not seem to be what the Church intends, and it would have the same effects of driving sales away from the smaller sellers to their larger competitors, again leading to market centralization and even monopolies. It would thus be anticompetitive.

It seems to me, therefore, that the statement in blue must be intended with some narrower sense than this.

On its face, it looks like it is a statement directed not toward typical business conditions but to atypical ones.

It includes, for example, reference to not just the buyer's ignorance but to his hardship. That makes it sound like it is directed to the so-called "price gouging" that occurs when commodity prices rise in response to natural disasters.

It is also easier (for me, at the moment) to think of atypical situations in which one could gain a higher price by "taking advantage of the ignorance" of a buyer--or seller.

For example, if I am at a yard sale and discover that the impoverished people holding the yard sale are in possession of a Stradivarius violin that they want $5 for. If I am well of and I buy it for $5 from impoverished people who are in great need of money, this would seem to be contrary to the virtue of charity. Instead of buying it myself, I should tell them what it's worth since they need the money more than I do (or at least I should set up some kind of profit-sharing thing with them).

I could set up a similar instance in which it is the seller who has the information about the truth worth (or worth-less-than-the-impoverished-buyer-thinks-ness) of a item, but the same principle would apply.

These situations--natural disasters, finding a Stradivarius at a yard sale, knowing for a fact that something will not do for your customer what he thinks it will--are exceptional cases and not normal business activity.

Hopefully at some point we'll get some further doctrinal development on the matter at issue, but for the moment the clause in blue is unclear as to meaning and its plausible constructions are open to challenge.

For example, if we take the reference to the hardship of another as a statement regarding raising prices on particular commodities in times of natural disaster then the law of unintended consequences is likely to kick in.

For example, if hotel owners cannot raise their prices when a hurricane forces an evacuation then even bigger problems will result.

Why?

Because the hurricane--not the hotel owners--has caused a spike in demand for hotel rooms, and if that increased demand is not managed by price then it will be managed by something else, like who gets to the hotel first.

If I'm one of the first people to flee the hurricane and I bring my family with me then, if the hotel owner can't raise his prices to anticipate increased demand, then I can rent one room for me and the wife and another room or two for the kids (depending on how many kids we have) and we will not be forced to economize by staying in a single room or stay with relatives or drive an extra few miles to find a cheaper hotel further from where the hurricane is going to hit.

The same applies to all of the other early arrivers.

So when the late arrivers get there, the hotel will be sold out and there will be "no room at the inn."

Whereas, if the hotel owner started raising his prices to meet anticipated demand then the finite resource of hotel rooms will be distributed more justly as those fortunate enough to be able to leave early won't hog all the rooms with no restraint on this hoarding behavior. Instead, they may choose to rent fewer rooms or to stay with nearby relatives or to drive further.

I could discuss this further, and might in future posts, but ultimately it seems to me that the passage in the Catechism is unclear and needs further development to be cashed out in concrete terms.

It does not strike me that it is intended to apply to normal market conditions and that it is of potentially limited usefulness in atypical ones.

I also agree that whatever ethical constraints apply to the seller apply also to the buyer.

Ultimately, it does not strike me that a seller should scruple over a buyer's motives or level of knowledge. If it is blatantly obvious that someone wants to buy a weapon to commit murder or if it is blatantly obvious that a poor person is using his money unwisely because he doesn't know of a better deal, fine. Those are atypical situations in which the law of charity would suggest acting in an unbusinesslike manner. But as long as this kind of thing does not apply then the seller does not have a duty to advertise his competitors' prices. Instead, he should assume that the customer knows what he's doing, not try to second guess him, and let the market work out what the appropriate price range is for an item.

After all, we have no better method of determining the current "best price" for something than what it will fetch in a free and competitive market.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Moral Theology | Permalink | Comments (24)

September 28, 2007

Bad News In Connecticut--Part II

(Jimmy Akin)

In my prior post, I mentioned that I've received multiple requests for comment on the Connecticut Plan B situation. The following reader expresses the sentiments of many when he writes:

Jimmy,

What is going on in Connecticut right now?  The Bishops there have released a statement, explaining that they will now allow Plan B to be administered in their hospitals...where they previously stated (or implied) otherwise.  Curt Jester & American Papist have coverage on this, but I just don't understand the issue.

Specifically, why is contraception allowed after rape (since it's sex without the proper intent etc etc) but is NOT permitted after casual, recreational sex that also lacks the proper intent?

It's understandable, given the Church's strong stand against contraception and abortion, why this issue would be so confusing. In order to make sense of it, we need to look at several things, but first

THE BIG RED DISCLAIMER: What I am about to write is not indicative of my own view. I'm trying to explain the apparent reasoning of the Connecticut bishops. I'm not saying that they are correct or incorrect. Rome could rule either way on this, and it may well get involved. What I'm trying to do is explain a position, not defend it.

The starting point to understanding the apparent reasoning behind the Connecticut bishops' statement is a close reading of Pope Paul VI's encyclical, Humanae Vitae. Here's the key line in Latin:

Item quivis respuendus est actus, qui, cum coniugale commercium vel praevidetur vel efficitur vel ad suos naturales exitus ducit, id tamquam finem obtinendum aut viam adhibendam intendat, ut procreatio impediatur.

Now, I've given this in Latin so that you can see the key term coniugale commercium. Coniugale means "conjugal/marital/pertaining to or proper to marriage." Commercium means "commerce/traffic/relations/intercourse/sexual intercourse."

You could translate this literally as "conjugal intercourse," "conjugal relations," "marital intercourse," "marital relations"--things of that nature.

Which is how this passage is translated when it's quoted in the Catechism:

2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil

Unfortunately, some translators are sloppy in how they handle this text (which is particularly unfortunate, since it's a key text in a sensitive document). For example, the English translation of HV on the Vatican web site renders this:

Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means.

That's a loosey-goosey translation, and if you go with that one, what the Connecticut bishops said will be absolutely inexplicable, since the use of Plan B to prevent ovulation or fertilization clearly would be "specifically intended to prevent procreation . . . as an end . . . after sexual intercourse" (rearranging the elements of the quote a bit).

But that's not what the Latin original says. It doesn't say "sexual intercourse," it says "conjugal intercourse" and "conjugal" means "marital."

Paul VI phrased himself very carefully in this area, and what he did was say that you can't use contraception to thwart the procreative aspect of marital intercourse. His language does not explicitly address the issue of the procreative aspect of intercourse outside of marriage.

Of course, intercourse outside of marriage always involves grave sin to begin with, and it seems reasonable to conclude that if contraception in marriage is an evil, contraception outside of marriage only compounds the evil of non-marital sex. One day the pope or the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith may clarify that this is indeed the case.

But this goes beyond what can be shown from the language of HV. The way HV is phrased in the original Latin (and in the literal translation of the passage given in the Catechism), all you can say with certainty is that Paul VI condemned all use of contraception within marriage.

He did not address--or cannot be ascertained certainly as addressing--the situation of sexual relations outside of marriage.

Thus, some have held that at least some forms of contraception (ones that aren't abortifacient, for example) might not compound the evil of non-marital sex. Some might argue that, although non-marital sexual acts are gravely wrong, contraceptive non-marital sex might be less gravely wrong than non-contraceptive non-marital sex since it has a lesser risk of bringing a child into the world outside of wedlock.

By divine law, children have a right to be conceived only within a family that has a father and a mother who are married to each other. To the extent that they may cause children to be conceived outside of wedlock, non-marital sexual acts can be viewed as grave sins against charity regarding the child that may be conceived, as well as other affected parties (such as innocent spouses).

In case of rape, one pursuing this line of argument might maintain, there is no sin in the victim using at least certain forms of contraception since the victim is not married to the rapist (apart from cases of marital rape) and did not consent to the sexual act.

Thus the U. S. bishops Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (4th ed.) states:

Compassionate and understanding care should be given to a person who is the victim of sexual assault. Health care providers should cooperate with law enforcement officials and offer the person psychological and spiritual support as well as accurate medical information. A female who has been raped should be able to defend herself against a potential conception from the sexual assault. If, after appropriate testing, there is no evidence that conception has occurred already, she may be treated with medications that would prevent ovulation, sperm capacitation, or fertilization. It is not permissible, however, to initiate or to recommend treatments that have as their purpose or direct effect the removal, destruction, or interference with the implantation of a fertilized ovum [n. 36].

The issue of non-marital contraception is a theological hot potato that the Holy See will eventually have to sort out, because this issue is not going to go away, as the situation of the Connecticut state law illustrates.

But if--and note the "if"--the Church ended up endorsing the view that contraception is impermissible within marriage but potentially permissible outside it then it would allow for a variety of situations, such as:

  • Nuns in dangerous situations where they may be raped could use at least some forms of contraception

  • Women who have been raped could be given at least some forms of contraception

I'm not defending these views. I'm just pointing out that they are not expressly precluded by the language used in Humanae Vitae or, to my knowledge, by subsequent Magisterial documents.

You might find the above line of reasoning entirely implausible, but I'm not advocating it. I'm merely trying to help with the "What on earth are they thinking?" factor of this situation.

If you are of the opinion that the above views are wrong, you might well conclude that the Holy Spirit will prevent the Church from ever endorsing such views and that he may guide the Church into a clear-cut rejection of those views.

But that has not yet occurred, at least in Magisterial documents that I am aware of.

In fact--and this is pure speculation and should not be taken as anything other than the pointing out of a possibility--the Connecticut bishops may even have consulted with the CDF for advice about how to handle this issue.

That leaves the question of whether the policy they announced is a good one, and, speaking only for myself, I can only say that I find the announced policy to be troubling.

There are disputed claims about whether Plan B will prevent the implantation of a newly-conceived child. The manufacturer's own label for the product (see links to American Papist and Curt Jester) say that it may have this effect. Legal disclaimers of this nature are notoriously broad--in order to prevent future lawsuits--and they frequently list potential outcomes for the use of drugs that are either not possible with the drug in question or which are very unlikely. Because of this kind of language in medical disclaimers, as well as a lack of knowledge about how Plan B actually works, there is ambiguity about whether or not it is abortifacient.

That ambiguity is what generates a lot of the tension within the Connecticut bishops' statement, and it is one of the things that I find troubling about the whole situation.

I'm far from being an expert on Plan B, but any time there is a possibility that something is abortifacient, I want to apply the Deerhunter Principle: If you're out in the woods hunting, you cannot open fire if the result is reasonably foreseen to involve the possible death of a human.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Moral Theology | Permalink | Comments (252)

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