Credit: Wuttichai Jantarak/Shutterstock / null
San Francisco, Calif., Nov 22, 2021 / 19:19 pm (CNA).
The archbishop of San Francisco has encouraged students at a local Catholic high school to reject the lies of the abortion industry and become … […]
Dorinda Bordlee. / null
Denver Newsroom, Nov 21, 2021 / 18:52 pm (CNA).
Part of a continuing series examining the U.S. Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a direct challenge to the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that … […]
The Catholic University of America, June 1, 2018. / BumbleDee/Shutterstock
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 19, 2021 / 15:00 pm (CNA).
The Catholic University of America has acknowledged that its student health care plan has included coverage for… […]
liseykina/Shutterstock
Baltimore, Md., Nov 18, 2021 / 18:15 pm (CNA).
The Catholic Church must be prepared to act if Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion nationwide, is overturned, says the incoming chair of the United St… […]
Starting December 1, the nine justices of the Supreme Court will begin work in earnest on what already looks to be the court’s most closely watched—and probably most controversial—ruling in nearly half a century. When […]
One would have to have been living on another planet for the last few months to be unaware of the recently rekindled battle looming over the historic Supreme Court decision known as Roe v. Wade […]
Gabriel Vance of Columbus, Ohio, prays the rosary, with his three young sons beside him, during the pro-life Men’s March in Baltimore on Nov. 15, 2021. / Shannon Mullen
Baltimore, Md., Nov 15, 2021 / 17:24 pm (CNA).
When the call went out for men to march and pray for the unborn in Baltimore on Monday, Gabriel Vance and his extended family turned out in droves.
A caravan of 20 of his family members made the seven-hour trek from Columbus, Ohio, including his own three boys, his brothers-in-law, and their sons.
“The greatest social issue we face is the issue of abortion, because it takes the lives of 2,300 human beings every day in America, and 200,000 human beings every day in our world,” said Vance, 26, who co-founded the pro-life group Catholics for Life with his wife Anna earlier this year.
“The Catholic Church,” he said, “needs to be taking a stand against that.” And that means Catholic men — bishops, priests, deacons, and laymen — can’t remain silent, he added.
Approximately 200 men and boys from across the country took part in the pro-life Men’s March on Monday. Held to coincide with the start of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ fall assembly, the march began in front of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic and ended with the recitation of the rosary and speeches outside the Marriott Waterfront hotel, where the bishops are meeting this week.
Some of the youngest participants donned snow suits and mittens, because it was a cold, blustery November day, but the men and older boys marched in suits and ties, as the organizers requested. “We’re not here as protesters,” explained participant Larry Cirignano. “It was a simple message of Catholic men in support of life.”
But there also was a message marchers sought to deliver to the bishops. Signs and speeches called on the leaders of the Catholic Church in the U.S. to enforce Canon 915 of the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law, which says, in part, that those “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin” should not be admitted to Holy Communion.
One of the chief items on the bishops’ agenda this week will be a vote on a proposed new document on the Eucharist. Though the document grew out of discussions over whether adamantly pro-abortion Catholic politicians, such as President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ought to be allowed to receive Communion, the draft text under consideration doesn’t include any reference to politicians, nor any criteria for denying the sacrament in such cases.
“We simply want them to live the faith and fulfill the sacred offices that they hold,” said Jim Havens, a Catholic radio talk show host in Fort Myers, Fla. who co-organized Monday’s march with Father Stephen Imbarrato, a pro-life activist.
“Canon 915 is there. If it applies in any situation, it certainly applies with pro-abortion politicians. They have been talked to many, many times. They’re obstinate. It’s public, manifest grave sin, and then they’re still going forward and receiving the Holy Eucharist,” Havens said.
“We cannot say this is OK. Out of charity, out of love for them, as well as out of love for others, we have to say no, we have to apply Canon 915,” he said.
Havens said he disagrees with those bishops who believe withholding Communion from pro-abortion politicians would politicize or “weaponize” the sacrament.
“This is not about politics. This is about morality. These are real people being murdered. So we have to push to make [abortion] illegal and unthinkable,” he said. “Not because it’s politics, but because it’s moral; it’s the morally right thing to do.”
Alasdair MacIntyre, March 2009. / Sean O’Connor/Flickr via Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0).
Denver Newsroom, Nov 14, 2021 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
Famed ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre called upon academia and other Catholics and intellectuals, to invest in the “expensive conversation” about justice, and to sharpen their understanding of what constitutes human dignity.
MacIntyre, whose teaching career spans 70 years and includes some of the most important books on virtue ethics such as “After Virtue” and “Dependent Rational Animal,” gave a reflection entitled “Human Dignity: A Puzzling and Possibly Dangerous Idea?” at the University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Fall Conference Nov. 12.
During the presentation, he argued that the modern term “human dignity” is doing the work that justice should be doing and that the current definition of human dignity and its implications have puzzling limitations.
He posed the question of whether or not Hitler has human dignity— and if he does, what is he afforded by it? Can human dignity never be lost, MacIntyre asked.
He analyzed the limits of the modern conception of human dignity, which differs starkly from the Thomistic understandings of “dignitas” advanced by the Belgian Thomist Charles De Koninck. According to this view, which MacIntyre asserted was a more accurate understanding of the term, human beings have dignity in virtue of what they can become–not because of the simple fact that they are persons.
Accordingly, this means that human beings can also lose their dignity through sin. “A bad human being is worse than a bad animal,” he said.
It also means that in order to live a dignified life, in addition to having access to basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter, human beings must be given the chance to exercise virtues which ennoble their nature and bring it to its highest level of flourishing, MacIntyre said, adding that this requires a social restoration of the common good.
MacIntyre critiqued pervasive individualist ethics, which often focus on negative prohibitions rather than the common good. He gave the example of a state that outlaws slavery, but does nothing other than allow them to live in “miserable freedom.” The elimination of evil did not ennoble the former slaves in the way it should, he argued, which is a problem of conceptualizing and seeking the common good.
“One cannot have a care for human dignitas if we ascribe to political and social individualism,” he decried.
MacIntyre also argued that a state that outlaws abortion, but then fails to provide basic medical and maternity care as well as economic provisions, exemplifies this same individualist ethos centered on eliminating negative prohibitions but not aimed at achieving the common good.
His remarks come as the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in one of the most significant challenges to Roe v. Wade since its inception— Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Many believe Dobbs will overturn Roe.
During a Q&A Nov. 12, several participants questioned MacIntyre’s assertion that human dignity be recognized in its potential form rather than by virtue of the fact that a human being is a human being, citing concerns for the implications on moral arguments against embryonic stem cell research.
MacIntyre responded that too many are attempting to make the modern term human dignity— widely used in United Nations documents and constitutions in the post-war period because it allowed fighting political, religious, and philosophical factions to bridge unsurmountable gaps because of its lack of definition— to do the work that properly belongs to understanding the virtue of justice.
Justice, which Aristotle defines as rendering to another person his due, is where answers to questions of embryonic stem cell research and torture properly belong, MacIntyre said. He said the dignity of an embryo, or of Hitler, lies in his or her potential and urged the attendees to have “expensive conversations” about the question “what is justice?” so they can better articulate what is owed to human beings.
MacIntyre has often written about the loss of moral vocabulary and vision in today’s world. The philosopher considers this to be one of the biggest obstacles to allowing human beings to flourish, since the path to happiness through virtue is largely unknown.
This was MacIntyre’s 20th contribution to the de Nicola Fall Conference on Ethics.
null / Liudmila Fadzeyeva/Shutterstock
Bratislava, Slovakia, Nov 9, 2021 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
Slovakia’s parliament is debating a bill aiming to increase assistance to pregnant women and reduce the number of abortions in the country. It is the four… […]
The United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland. / Nexus 7/Shutterstock
Washington D.C., Nov 2, 2021 / 05:00 am (CNA).
U.S. senators have celebrated the first anniversary of a declaration affirming that there is “no international right to abort… […]
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