Beware of Catholic doctors then
The European Federation of Catholic Medical Associations issued a statement
at the conclusion of its 11th annual congress expressing its firm commitment to the defense of life in response to the threats of abortion, euthanasia, genetic manipulation, the creation of human embryos, and others…[T]hey stressed that ethical norms and principles precede civil laws, which should be influenced by natural law and the teaching of the Church. They went on to state that decisions about “the medical treatment for patients who put their trust in us should be guided above all by our conscience. Moral evaluation of medical practice should not be based on superficial opinions or the latest tendencies, but rather on the sensibleness of a conscience formed according to the objective ethical norms common to all people and constantly defended by the Church.”
What is the difference? What is the difference between ‘superficial opinions’ and ‘the latest tendencies’ on the one hand and objective ethical norms on the other? And how do the Catholic doctors know what the difference is? And how do they tell? How, exactly, do they distinguish between the two? What exactly is that silly line-up of bollocks supposed to mean?
What it appears to mean, to an outsider at least, is simply ‘norms that we don’t like’ on the one hand and ‘norms that we do like’ on the other hand, dressed up as something detectable with fine Catholic instruments.
After emphasizing the spotless moral character that a doctor should have, they noted that “the source and foundation of ethical norms is the inalienable dignity of the human person throughout his or her life, from conception to natural death.”
Natural death? So they’re putting their imprimatur on natural death now? So we are to take it that Catholic doctors from now on will refuse to treat any illness that could, if left untreated, cause natural death? That’s a little off-putting.
“civil laws, which should be influenced by […] the teaching of the Church”
Where do they get the audacity to make such outrageous claims?
You’d think they’d be trying to keep a low profile after what happened the last time civil laws were based on the teaching on the Church.
OB: “Natural death? So they’re putting their imprimatur on natural death now? So we are to take it that Catholic doctors from now on will refuse to treat any illness that could, if left untreated, cause natural death?”
Of course not.
In fact, they will strongly object to “natural death” by arguing against the removal of life support.
I never expect the Catholic position on such things to be consistent.
Only flaw is that ‘objective ethical norms’ as we would understand them are grounded in… shared public ideas of what they sould be, which translates to ‘superficial opinions’ and ‘the latest tendencies’ in many key issues.
Slippery-slope arguments are not necessarily untrue, though they are often shallowly argued.
How do you define ‘objective ehtical norms’? The UN Declaration on Human Rights? Mill On Freedom? Das Kapital? I have been around B&W a while and seen a lot of indignation, most of it justified, at oppression and violence, but I am not sure I have seen an article explaining how to objectively derive an ethical norm, or listing what the objective ethical norms are, or what mechanism allows us to tell if said norm is subject to moving goalposts.
::-( ethical. Not ehtical. sorry.
OK, ChrisPer, so what’s your preference? Do you think that declarations about the interpretations made by old men in silly hats of ancient texts holy to desert tribes should be considered as valid and worthwhile and on equal footing in every way as honest attempts to arrive at plausible ethical principles through reasoned argumentation and open discussion grounded in our individual and collective moral intuitions (shared and unshared)? The topic at hand is that the Catholic Church brings NOTHING to any moral debate other than their naked assertion of authority based on… nothing whatsoever. Unless you believe that God does indeed exist and did in fact appoint the Pope the sole legitimate arbiter of moral truth – which you are welcome to argue, I could use a good belly laugh – then what exactly is your objection?
This is hardly your first spectacular display of landing firmly beside the point. Whenever any ethical discussion is raised, you consistently pop up and say something entirely non-constructive about the lack of absolutes in ethics or some such, but you never seem to consider the merit (or complete lack of merit) of the authoritarian, dogmatic, religious alternative to engaging in the hard work of moral reasoning – even though the alternative is *always* in fact what OB is objecting to in the post you are theoretically writing in response to. Is the problem that you can’t see your computer properly to read what OB is actually talking about from your position on your hobby horse?
Heeheeheehee.
That’s a good one, G.
ChrisPer, of course you haven’t seen ‘an article explaining how to objectively derive an ethical norm,’ because I don’t think it can be done. You have however (unless G is right that you can’t see them from up there) seen plenty of defenses of ‘honest attempts to arrive at plausible ethical principles through reasoned argumentation and open discussion grounded in our individual and collective moral intuitions,’ which I think is all we can do.
Yes, OB, I have. Its true G; I missed the point spectacularly and thought that the contrast was being made against non-catholic objective ethical norms. Pathetic, but there I am.
I have seen since the 1970s how debates shift ground as people get used to each stage of a particular change in values, and agree with the old farts that moral standards should not be fast-moving goalposts.
The church’s attempt to defend an unchanging moral reference point is IMHO a worthwhile project – except that they seem to have failed to coherently articulate one.
The attempt to defend a universalizable (rather than unchanging – if only because human history shows so many examples of moral blindness lasting for centuries) core of moral norms is (I think) a highly useful, indeed necessary, project, but the Catholic church is one of the last institutions I would turn to for such a project. I think the Catholic church itself has a desperate case of moral blindness. (If that seems too strong just recall to mind their advice on condoms in the midst of the HIV pandemic.)
“The church’s attempt to defend an unchanging moral reference point is IMHO a worthwhile project – except that they seem to have failed to coherently articulate one.”
Bullshit. Such a position nearly always results in the sanctification of old moral principles, for no other reasons that they have been around for a long time. “We have always been doing so” is hardly a proper justification for your ethical choices…
Morals change with the times, get used to it. Old biblical commandments about food and sexual hygiene may even have been useful once, several thousands years ago…
This is intellectual cowardice: ChrisPer acknowledge the difficulty of the challenge (“How do you define ‘objective ethical norms’?”) but his answer is to retreat from it – essentially “let the Church do it, they have more experience and it will all be arbitrary anyway” – rather than finding a solution.
Spot on, Arnaud. This is such a common pseudo-argument that it has a name: “the fallacy of arguing from tradition.”
“Because we’ve always thought so” or “because it’s always been done that way” does not provide any sort of rational support for any sort of claim, but it has been used in defense of everything from geocentrism to slavery.
“Objectively derive” in the sense of “objective” like a mathematical proof? Can’t be done. Morality isn’t math.
“Objective” as in “arrived at through reasoning based on instincts common to all humans, barring the odd psychopath or two” can be done.
No it can’t. If it could, ‘honour’ killing wouldn’t be so widely approved. If it could, genocides and ethnic cleansing and war crimes wouldn’t be so commonplace. If it could, the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam wouldn’t exist.
It’s way too easy and optimistic to say that it’s only the occasional psychopath who doesn’t sign up to what we take to be objective morality.
On the radio the other day I heard that Ireland was the only country in the European Union who has no legislation on abortion. I believe, on reading wiki, that “provision exists in the Irish constitution to allow Dáil Éireann to legislate on Abortion, however no political party has risked it, and in the meantime, while it is legal in theory, the body that holds medical licences in Ireland considers it malpractice for any doctor to perform an abortion.”
The Irish Medical Council stated “The deliberate and intentional destruction of the unborn child is professional misconduct.”
Politicans in Ireland are so fearful of the wrath of the Catholic Church, that they will not go down that dark road.
It’s way too easy and optimistic to say that it’s only the occasional psychopath who doesn’t sign up to what we take to be objective morality.
I don’t think it’s either. Signing up to morality doesn’t equal behaving morally. Studies in moral psychology show that perpetrators of heinous acts do believe in most tenets of this objective morality–they just find ways to rationalize their behavior within it.
The Cairo Declaration of Human Rights isn’t, to my mind, a rejection of the principles we take to be objective morality. It’s an inconsistent application of those self-same principles.
Who’s we? I don’t take them to be ‘objective morality’; I don’t think there is such a thing.
If your claim is that the Cairo Declaration is not a rejection of the principles of the Universal Declaration, you’re just wrong; the whole point of the CD is to reject the principles (as well as some of the details) of the UD. There is a claim that the CD is ‘complementary’ to the UD rather than a contradiction of it, but that’s a bullshit deceptive claim made by apologists for the CD.
The ‘what we take to be objective morality’ was meant to be a disclaimer of your own claim – ‘we take to be’ was a substitute for scare-quotes. Since I’d already explicitly disavowed ‘objective morality’ in replying to ChrisPer I didn’t think I needed to do so again (and I thought it was odd to go on talking about objective morality as if it were self-evident, hence the need for scare-quotes or a politer substitute).
How I know the claim made by defenders of the CD is deceptive – by reading the CD. It’s tellingly careful not to spell out what it means by all the clauses saying ‘except as allowed by Sharia’ and similar. The whole enterprise is fundamentally deceptive.
What defense of the CD have you seen that appeals to ‘the same principles behind the UD’? Unless you just mean the square-the-circle ones – there are some of those, to be sure – UN officials simply saying that the CD enriches the UD or some such nonsense. But the more genuine defenders simply dismiss ‘the same principles behind the UD’ as Western and Judeo-Christian.
How we know about the large swathes – because we hear about it all the time – the friends and neighbours who cheer when fathers and brothers murder a rebellious daughter or wife – the cops who stand around watching while a woman is stoned to death – the people in the hospital corridor who whispered that Leila Hussein deserved to be murdered (for the crime of leaving the husband who murdered their daughter for the crime of having a crush on a British soldier) – the police and taxi drivers in Northern cities in the UK who take fleeing girls back to their families. Opinion surveys that find very high percentages agreeing that ‘honour’ killing is sometimes justified.
I don’t quite understand why you think we don’t know this – unless you just haven’t been paying attention.
And, by the way, why do you think disagreement over morality implies that there can’t be objective morality? There’s plenty of disagreement over science, after all, even basic concepts like evolution. Of course much of the dissent is terribly argued, but the same can be said of morality.