Principle, conscience, beliefs
Well, it’s difficult for nice Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, clearly, but – but he does fall back on a lot of emotive but undefined terms, doesn’t he. As do Sentamu and Williams. They all do – because they have to, because they have nothing else to say. What else are they going to do? Just say ‘we hate poofters, they’re icky!’? Say they just can’t stand the thought of men humping each other, it makes them come over all trembly, so they have to dig their little episcopal heels in and say No? Apparently not. So instead of that they just say resounding nothings, that don’t mean anything until the meaning is specified, which it never is. It’s all conscience, and principle, and church teachings, and beliefs, and sensitivities, and morality, and the family, and a man and a woman.
We don’t believe in discrimination – homosexuals should be treated with respect and sensitivity – but the best way of bringing up a child, and the government says so, too, is having a mother and a father.
That’s as concrete as the Cardinal gets. But even if it’s true, it doesn’t cover the subject, because 1) there are more children needing adoption than there are mother-father couples wanting to adopt them and 2) there is more than one thing to compare with the mother-father option: there are gay couples but there are also single gays (which the church does allow, making the cardinal’s remark irrelevant), single straights, potentially (I would suggest) other adult groups, and – last but decidedly not least – institutions. Even if mother and father is the best option, what the cardinal fails to address is the question whether institutions are better than gay couples – and everybody who’s not stark raving mad agrees that responsible loving couples of any kind are better than institutions. So the cardinal’s comment there is beside the point on at least two counts. And that’s his best effort.
Moral views may be changing but our view is rational and has been held for many, many years in this country as the normality. Shall we leave it there?
No. Here’s why. Your view is not rational, for the reasons cited above among others, and the fact that it has been held for many years does not make it so, as you and anyone who pays attention ought to know perfectly well. All sorts of hateful views get held for many many years as normality; it happens all the time; that doesn’t magically make the hateful views nice or okay or acceptable or moral.
We’re not talking about huge numbers. It’s a principle…This is about the rights of the government to legislate, but is also about the rights of conscience – the rights of large numbers of citizens to live according to their beliefs.
But what kind of principle? What kind of conscience? What kind of beliefs? They’re only as good as they are, Cardinal.
Catholics are obliged to obey the law, just like any citizen, but I believe there is such a thing as conscientious objection. On adoption, our beliefs in the primacy and the foundations of family life are a matter of conscience to us.
One that justifies you in a priori excluding gays from being considered for adoption? My conscience says no. It’s a principle.
I know it’s a bit of a recurring theme for me, but old cormac murpy o’conman really is one of the last people in the uk who should be allowed to talk about “morality” , no matter how “rational” he wants to claim his invisible chum’s historic viewpoint might be…
let’s not forget folks, this is the guy who took the “moral” decision to quietly shift a paedophile into another parish rather than protect the rights of children.
shame it isn’t mentioned on tv every time he’s asserting his right to tell others what to do, just to remind the viewing public what it takes to get to the top in the catholic church.
ho hum
maybe i should get some t-shirts made up…any suggestions? :-)
apologies for typing – son no.2 is busy teething all over my shoulder.
:-)
Hey, no problem that it’s a recurring theme, because it hasn’t really sunk in with me – which it would have if the dratted media did mention it every time he sounds off. Thus we see how public knowledge is shaped. Mustn’t be excessively rude about the nice cardinal, so mustn’t drag up old business.
If I’d remembered it I would have mentioned it in the damn post, but I didn’t. It’s an outrage.
Typing elegant considering circumstances!
“Catholics are obliged to obey the law, just like any citizen, but I believe there is such a thing as conscientious objection. On adoption, our beliefs in the primacy and the foundations of family life are a matter of conscience to us.”
If he were being more honest he should just say “I don’t think Catholics are obliged to obey the law like any other citizen”. This principle of the ‘rights of conscience’ is total nonsense, and is recognised as such by most intelligent, critical people. On the Moral Maze discussion show about gay adoption (which incidentally re-affirmed my love of Johann Hari), Michael Buerk’s starting point was that even if Williams and Sentamu protested that the “rights of conscience can’t be made subject to legislation”, that is an absurd thing to say, and in fact they emphatically can. The idea that conscience is a get-out-of-legislation-free card can potentially rule out any legislation, or justify any action (for example the attacks of September 11th).
Yet on Question Time, the right to act according to your conscience was repeatedly put forward with no specific challenge. There were whines about “deeply held faith” by a particularly irritating audience member, and Geoff Hoon predictably failed to offer a robust defence of the legislation. I despaired.
“What about the rights of conscience of those of us who will point-blank refuse to have anything at all to do with our wonderful government’s ID card scheme?”
Because ‘rights of conscience’ can excuse anything, I find it difficult to see why you should have a right of conscience not to abide by the law. And if you do, then why don’t the Catholics? ‘Rights of conscience’ are invariably the last refuge of someone who has failed to account for their actions rationally.
You could conceivably use other rights to challenge ID cards, but I don’t know exactly what those would be.
The difference between rights of conscience apropos the ID cards and same apropos the Catholics is that in the latter case they’re in cahoots with public authorities to provide a service, taking public dosh (and I’m sure that, notwithstanding our current reservations, they do a conscientious job). If I choose not to have one of Blair’s abominable ID cards, that’s one person’s protest. If I’m taking local-authority money and have set myself up to provide a service that the public rightly have expectations of, that’s a different matter.
It’s also a different matter because the Catholic church sets itself up as a teacher and source of morality, so if they have a crappy morality, that will make itself felt. That’s not a legal issue, but it certainly is a moral one.
“If I choose not to have one of Blair’s abominable ID cards, that’s one person’s protest.”
I’m not at all convinced that you have a right to this (and I am talking specifically about legal right here). Why would you? And if you do, why doesn’t the same right to ignore the law apply to Islamist terrorists? Why wouldn’t it apply to a Muslim who wanted to ignore laws against forced marriage (if they existed)? I would have thought that this was stating the obvious.
Even in a moral sense, I think it is dodgy at best, although it’s obviously more complicated. If you say ‘I have a right to conscience’, you are not making any points about what the content of your morality is. You have to argue your point, and demonstrate that your morality isn’t crappy – actions based on your morality (which I presume is what we are talking about) can hurt people even if you don’t teach it. Actions in defiance of law may be right, they may be wrong, but you can’t make them ok just by invoking vague and ill-defined rights of conscience.
“Had to get into my glad rags for a service with the Pope and then a small banchetto (banquet) to celebrate the 50th anniversary of my becoming a priest.”
When the going gets tough the tough get going.
His own priestly celebrations are of more importance, they always have the propensity to rush over to ROME when difficulties arise.
I suppose so, but even still, if it is synonymous with matter of principle then I don’t think it is the best way of putting it. ‘Matter of principle’ would, in fact, be a good clear way of putting it. I suppose you will generally assume that if you follow your conscience, it is right, and you have a right to do just that. But I don’t like the term, because if you excuse yourself then you implicitly excuse everyone else. Unless, that is, you have a good reason why you should be able to break the law that others don’t, in which case you don’t need to appeal to rights of conscience anymore. I tend to think it is just a sneaky phrase, for use only if you can’t think of anything better.
The ‘conscience’ thing is tricky because it often refers specifically and exclusively to religion. ‘Freedom of conscience’ is a much-used phrase and in many contexts it means religion and not anything else. This usage may be more common in the US than elsewhere, I’m not sure, but I think it has its origins in Puritanism, or Dissent, or both. I think it’s a very unfortunate usage, for obvious reasons: it implies that religion and conscience are one and the same and that there is no such thing as secular or atheist conscience.
‘Conscience’ makes me think primarily of religion, but when not explicitly in that context it makes me think of a morality which is strongly linked to guilt, prejudices, disgust and a bunch of other emotions which are not necessarily good indicators of what is right and wrong. So that’s another reason that I personally don’t like the phrase, even if that is only my personal reaction to it.