Report # 17 onh David Carlin's Book "Can a Cath. be a Democrat?"

Report # 17 on David Carlin’s Book “Can a Catholic be a Democrat?”
wwwcinops.begone.blogspot.com/ Tuesday, March 11, 2008

David Carlin will compare the Secularist view and the Catholic view on the issues of abortion and euthanasia. The author will also deal with future topics: Suffering, Catholic Excuses, American Secularism and its History, Liberal Christianity, Fellow-Travelers of Secularism, and finally my name for the Father of the Catholic Useful Idiots, Mario Cuomo.

“Secularists aren’t moved (or at lest, if they’re logically consistent, shouldn’t be moved) by the idea that the life of a fetus or a terminally ill person has intrinsic, objective value. From their empiricist-naturalist point of view, such a life can have only whatever “value” might be assigned to it by us humans. If a pregnant woman, decides that the fetus in her uterus has no value – or, at any rate, a significantly lesser value than other values she’s concerned with – it becomes thus. If, on the other hand, she ‘wants’ the child enough, it takes on a completely different value.

“Of course, in the case of abortion, the fetus itself has no vote, since it’s incapable of having or expressing an opinion. But in the case of euthanasia, the patient ideally has the decisive vote. If, from a secularist viewpoint (i.e., a naturalist-empiricist view-point), he decides that his life no longer has value, or at least not enough value to warrant going on, when his life has indeed no value ( or relatively no value), and thus, it’s morally allowable – even laudable – to terminate it. In cases where the patient’s condition has deteriorated to a point at which he’s no longer competent to determine the value of his life, then a delegated agent ( a close relative or perhaps the doctor) would – presumably in accordance with the patient’s own last wishes or his best interests – make the crucial judgment.


“The Catholic view is totally different. According to it, the fetus has its own value, intrinsic, objective, irrevocable: the value of every human person/ Hence, it doesn’t matter what subjective value or disvalue anybody – including the mother in whose womb it temporarily resides – might wish to assign to it. Therefore abortion can’t be morally permitted. Neither can euthanasia whether voluntary or involuntary. It makes no difference whether the person to be killed expresses a clear wish to be killed, since, according to the Catholic view, even if a man expressly wished to destroy his own life, his objective value as a living human being doesn’t vanish thereby. Thus, he may not be killed even at his own request...

“That’s because, according to the Catholic view, the individual human person is created ‘in the image and likeness of God’ (Gen. 2:26) and thus carries a special dignity that sets him apart from the rest of nature. His human soul is immaterial, not by any biological process but created directly by God, and so it won’t cease to exist with the death of the material body. According to the doctrine of the Incarnation, so high was the value of this body-soul composite made in God’s image that it wasn’t unworthy of the Second Person of the Trinity to become human; and by taking human nature to himself, God in turn elevated it even further. Finally, Christ’s death in the flesh freed humanity from sin and made it possible for all of us to be eternal partakers of God’s divine glory”…. 95-96

George H. Kubeck, Duplicate and or translate into Spanish and Vietnamese.
P.S. During Holy Week, March 17-23, 2008 no articles will be posted on the blog.