Faithful Citizenship, A Discussion thread

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ShannonMcCatholic

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Here's the USCCB document:

http://www.usccb.org/faithfulcitizenship/FCStatement.pdf


Here are some discussion questions (add discussion points or tangents at will):

1.What is conscience? What is prudence? How does one develop a well-formed conscience and the virtue of prudence? What role should they play in our decisions about who we vote for and how we advocate for change? (For help, see nos. 17-20.)

2.What do the bishops mean when they say, “Both opposing evil and doing good are essential obligations” (no. 24)? Why are both (not just one or the other) important for Catholics? What are examples of intrinsic evils and why must they always be opposed? What are examples of supporting the common good? (For help, see nos. 21-25.) What might your own actions to avoid evil and to do good look like?

3. The bishops describe two “temptations in public life” that voters can fall into: first, “moral equivalence” which “makes no ethical distinctions between different kinds of issues involving human life and dignity,” and second, the misuse of moral distinctions “as a way of dismissing or ignoring other serious threats to human life and dignity.” (See nos. 27-29.) Describe a situation in which you witnessed one or both of these lines of thought. Why are they both distortions of the Church’s teaching?

(taken from: http://www.faithfulcitizenship.org/resources/discussion)

Please add your personal opinions about this document: your objections, where think it might stray from the heart of the matter, whther you think such a document should even exist---or what you really think it's got right, why it is necessary, what challenged you.
 

BillH

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One of my biggest frustrations with Catholic political discourse is the inclination by some (usually, though not always, on the "right" of the political spectrum) to note that something is not intrinsically evil without assessing whether or not it is extrinsically evil. Related to that, there is the tendency to use "intrinsic" as a synonym for "very" and "not intrinsic" as a synonym for "not very".

For example, masturbation is intrinsically evil. There are no circumstances that can change the objective morality of the act. On the other hand, working in a nuclear energy lab is not intrinsically evil. It could be evil if the mission of the lab is to produce nuclear weapons that will be used against innocent civilians. It is not evil (indeed, it may be positively commendable) if the mission of the lab is to produce a safe and steady power supply for economic development.

However, it strains credulity to say that a leader who is weak on the topic of masturbation is as great a threat to common good as a leader who wishes to ramp up nuclear research with the intention of frying innocent people. Of course, something can be both intrinsically evil and very evil. But the more common error seems to be denying that something which is extrinsically evil can be very evil as well.
 
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Fantine

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What a lot to think about. I'll write about question 1. In the US, we have thousands of churches. Thousands of priests. Dozens of Catholic magazines and newspapers. Several Catholic radio and TV stations.

And within that mix, people will generally gravitate to churches where they feel a sense of belonging. If they are somewhat liberal, they will look for a liberal parish, a confessor who shares their views, will read the National Catholic Reporter and US Catholic, will listen, perhaps, to Relevant Radio instead of EWTN. If they go on retreats, they will be focused on spirituality. They will like centering prayer and small church communities and Why Catholic, Marriage Encounters and Beginning Experiences and Cursillos.

All these things will be Catholic, and they will all form their consciences, but their consciences will be formed very differently from someone who attends the TLM and novenas, watches EWTN, reads "Our Sunday Visitor."

The Church is big enough that most people will gravitate to a place they believe nourishes them spiritually. Some may even someday embrace a Protestant denomination.

In terms of conscience and sin, I guess I grew up with "God the Enforcer" and then, after Vatican II, I had a teacher with the improbable name of Sister Dulcissima who replaced that with "God is Love."

Conscience is a matter of replacing external controls with internal controls. Sometimes I think the people who want to bring back "God the Enforcer" most don't believe they have the strength to carry on without him.
 
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ShannonMcCatholic

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One of my biggest frustrations with Catholic political discourse is the inclination by some (usually, though not always, on the "right" of the political spectrum) to note that something is not intrinsically evil without assessing whether or not it is extrinsically evil. Related to that, there is the tendency to use "intrinsic" as a synonym for "very" and "not intrinsic" as a synonym for "not very".

For example, masturbation is intrinsically evil. There are no circumstances that can change the objective morality of the act. On the other hand, working in a nuclear energy lab is not intrinsically evil. It could be evil if the mission of the lab is to produce nuclear weapons that will be used against innocent civilians. It is not evil (indeed, it may be positively commendable) if the mission of the lab is to produce a safe and steady power supply for economic development.

However, it strains credulity to say that a leader who is weak on the topic of masturbation is as great a threat to common good as a leader who wishes to ramp up nuclear research with the intention of frying innocent people. Of course, something can be both intrinsically evil and very evil. But the more common error seems to be denying that something which is extrinsically evil can be very evil as well.

Do you feel comfortable giving a hypothetical example using the fellows we've got running for office right now??

Can you explain "extrinsically evil" to me a little more??
 
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ShannonMcCatholic

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Sorry but I don't vote on what a paper tells me to. Sure I would vote for what's morally right and what I think God would want me to do but that doesn't always mean I will run parallel to the Catholic church.

Did you read the document? What are your thoughts about conscience and prudence in response to what the USCCB writes? How do you think that how you will vote when you're old enough will either coincide with or conflict with what they UCCB is saying??
 
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benedictaoo

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Shannon my opinion is we all want the same things it's just how we go about them, higher taxes, lower taxes etc.

Either choice IMO are not a matter of sin- they both theoretically can work in the right situation with cooperation and all that.

However moral issues, like life and marriage, they are totally objective and our conscious can not forget about that because we think tax increases on the rich will save lives.

So I think it's very basic. We can not vote in one who is for something of this magnitude, gay marriage and abortion because we think higher taxes is the way to go or that it will save lives too- we can very well be wrong about that but we can never be wrong about upholding God's moral law.

So we do have an obligation to vote for the least of the two evils. The least will always be the guy who will not expand these laws and who will at the very least reduce or limit them some.

It's sad that no choice is 100% pro life but man, the Demos are so radical and extreme. No good conscious could support that, IMO.
 
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BillH

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Do you feel comfortable giving a hypothetical example using the fellows we've got running for office right now??

Can you explain "extrinsically evil" to me a little more??

Sure. An act is extrinsically evil if its morality is dependent on the circumstances of the actor. To use a relevant concrete example, war (or more precisely, the decision to wage war) can be morally justifiable if it meets the criteria set forth by Just War Theory. On the other hand, a war waged primarily for the acquisition of power is evil. Indeed, that particular war would be very evil, even if there exist other wars that are not evil. This is opposed to intrinsically evil acts, that are never under any circumstances morally justifiable.

Bringing it back to a non-hypothetical example using the guys that we have running for office right now, I accept that war is not intrinsically evil and that abortion is. However, the wars that John McCain has supported in the past (Kosovo and Iraq, specifically) and would seem to support if he had the chance (Iran and Russia) have caused and would foreseeably cause widespread human suffering without meeting the strict criteria for JWT. However, a lot of people say that it's up to his "prudential judgment" without doing much heavy lifting on whether or not his judgment has been prudential.

This is not to say that Obama's in the clear in my book. I think that a lot of Catholic Democrats are soft-pedalling his support for the Freedom of Choice Act, which really does strike me as a pro-abortion bill (and I don't throw around the term pro-abortion lightly).
 
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ShannonMcCatholic

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Thanks Bill! I think I understand better now.

Do you think that something which is extrinsically evil can be at least as evil as something which is intrinsically evil?? Wait..you already addressed that with masturbation, right? Masturbation is intrinsically evil, war is extrinsically evil--most people would likely say that unjust war is more evil than masturbation...
 
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