A Classic by Chaput: Attn. CINOP - # 2 of 4

A Classic by Chaput: Attn. CINOP - #2 of 4
In pursuit of the truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Sunday, March 21, 2010

“I’d like to dwell on the issue of science for just another moment, because it will lead us into the rest of our discussion today. I want you to listen to some thoughts from two very different sources. Here is the first one.

“Science, by itself, cannot establish the ends to which it is put. Science can discover vaccines and cures for our diseases, but it can also create infectious agents; it can uncover the physics of semiconductors but also the physics of the hydrogen bomb. Science {as} science is indifferent to whether data are gathered under rules that scrupulously protect the interest of human research subjects… {or by} bending the rules or ignoring them altogether…

“The same source goes on to worry that, today, many of the bioethicists who claim to counsel and guide the moral course of American science “have become nothing more than sophisticated (and sophistic) justifiers of whatever it is the scientific community wants…

“Now listen to these words from my second source:

“What is our contemporary idiocy? What is the enemy within {human} city? If I had to give it a name I would call it “technological secularism.” The idiot today is the technological secularist who knows everything … about the organization of all the instruments and techniques of power that are available in the contemporary world – and who, at the same time, understands nothing about the nature of man or about the nature of true civilization.” The words from my first source appeared in 2002. They come from the author and scholar Francis Fukuyama. …

“The words from my second source were written nearly 50 years ago, in 1961, They come from John Courtney Murray, the great Jesuit priest and Christian scholar. Murray was a thoughtful man and he chose his language very carefully. He used the word “idiot” in the original Greek sense of the term, which is quite different from the meaning in modern slang. For the Greeks, the “idiot” was not a mentally deficient man. Rather, he was a man who does not possess a proper public philosophy; as Murray says, “a man who is not master of the knowledge and skills that underline the life of a civilized city. ‘The idiot, to the Greek, was just one stage removed from the barbarian. He is the man who is ignorant of the meaning of the word “civility.”’…

“Fools with tools are still fools – and the more powerful the tools, the more dangerous the fools. Or to put it another way, neither science nor technology requires a conscience to produce results. The evidence for that is the record of the last century.

“NOW I HAVE TALKED ABOUT THESE THINGS SO FAR FOR A SIMPLE REASON. THE STRUGGLE WE FACE TODAY IN DEFENDING HUMAN DIGNITY IS BECOMING MORE COMPLEX. I’VE BELIEVED FOR MANY YEARS THAT ABORTION IS THE FOUNDATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE OF OUR LIFETIME. WE CAN’T SIMULTANEOUSLY SERVE THE POOR, AND ACCEPT THE LEGAL KILLING OF UNBORN CHILDREN. WE CAN’T BUILD A JUST SOCIETY AND AT THE SAME TIME LEGALLY SANCTIFY THE DESTRUCTION OF GENERATIONS OF UNBORN HUMAN LIFE. THE RIGHTS OF THE POOR AND THE RIGHTS OF THE UNBORN CHILD FLOW FROM EXACTLY THE SAME HUMAN DIGNITY GUARANTEED BY THE GOD WHO CREATED US…
George H. Kubeck, The above is part 2 of Chaput’s speech given to Cleveland Right to Life dinner.