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What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in Education?
Toppling Dominos
Anti-Christians don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of Secularism
"Don't Impose Your Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death Warrant?
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Secular-to-English Dictionary
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Christians Losing America
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Catholic Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay Marriage
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Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
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More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way, Baby
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Things Your Media Never Told You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them.  How Else Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of Nullity?
Dutch Treats
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Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality, and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
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Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
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"You Taught me well, Mommie dearest"
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Neutral on the Wrong Side
"These are the Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few are Married
"...Prepare him for additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a Person?
The Point of a Point of View
Politically Correct, Morally Depraved
Population Controllers out of Control
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Social Progress through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
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Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal if...
Get Rid of that Worthless Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues Prior to Voting

by Monsignor James C. Brunner

Faith Points

We dropped the atomic bomb on innocent civilians in Japan during World War II so that we could save thousands of American lives that might have been lost in an invasion of that country. We destroy embryos to harvest their stem cells to use in research that may cure many diseases. We practice contraception in order to avoid children we think we cannot afford and remove tension from marriage. We abort unborn children we think we cannot afford or who would lower our standard of living or abort our careers. The outcomes are good, or seem to be, but in order to get them we have to do evil.

Many persons in the United States say that all the acts described above are justifiable because of the overall good that they produce. They live according to a moral system that says acts are not good or bad in themselves. Their goodness or evil can be judged only on the basis of their consequences. If they result in overall good they are morally good or at least not morally evil even though the acts themselves may represent a disvalue. These people are called consequentialists and their moral system consequentialism.

It may not be nice to kill innocent women and children but if that shortens the war and reduces overall casualties, consequentialists are willing to let them pay that price. Similarly it may not be nice to destroy human embryos but since they are a fertile source of stem cells for medical research, the overall good outweighs the disvalue. Some consequentialists are called proportionalists because they seek proportionately sufficient reasons for performing an act that would normally be evil. For them every moral norm, do this or avoid that, has an escape clause: "unless there is a proportionate reason for doing the act or it produces a better state of affairs." Even some Catholic theologians support proportionalism.

There are so many things wrong with proportionalism it is hard to know where to begin the criticism. For starters we might call it the Caiphas system of morality. You may recall that Caiphas determined to condemn Jesus because "it was better that one man should die rather than the people" (Jn. 18:14). For him the death of Jesus brought about "a better state of affairs."

The notion that there are no acts that are evil in themselves and every act must await moral determination until it is placed in a set of circumstances is erroneous. Any act that a human may perform has within it independently of any intention of the person an orientation to the moral law. It is either in accord with it or opposed to it. Thus taking property from someone who is reasonably unwilling is theft and is opposed to the moral law even if the intention of the thief is to feed the poor. Robin Hood was not a hero but a hood. Killing an innocent person is evil even if the intention is to save many other lives. A person who commits fornication violates the procreative good and thus the act is disordered and immoral prior to any further intention of the sinner. Persons sin not just by willing an evil end but also by willing an evil act.

The idea that there are no acts in themselves evil cannot be squared with the scriptures. Certain sinners are barred from inheriting the kingdom of God: fornicators, idolaters, boy prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, slanderers, and robbers. See I Cor. 6:9-10. To gain eternal life we must keep the commandments, which command or forbid specific acts. See Matt. 19:16-19. There is no hint in these texts that violations of the commandments are permitted to bring about a better state of affairs.

The comparison of goods proportionalism requires is impossible. It becomes a matter of comparing apples and oranges. Why is it permissible for the good of procreation to be trumped by the good of sociability, which is the justification of proportionalists for permitting contraception? And if the good of sociability can trump the good of procreation, could it also trump the good of life? Thus under the system of proportionalism one might be permitted to kill for love. Any selection among moral goods becomes arbitrary and a moral code that is the result of arbitrary choices is meaningless. Acts then become good or evil according to the whims of the person who wants to commit them. There is no principled way for proportionalism, which allows arbitrary choices among goods, to condemn the arbitrary selections of others with which they disagree.

Proportionalism justifies doing evil for the sake of a better state of affairs. What and whose goods constitute a better state of affairs or the greater good? Which goods become paramount and decisive? My good, my neighbor’s good, society’s good, or the Church’s good? And do we consider only the short-term good or must we take the long-term into account?

It may bring about a better state of affairs for an unwed mother to abort an unborn child but it could scarcely be a better state of affairs for the child. Divorce may bring about a better state of affairs because it ends an acrimonious relationship, but is it better for the children?

Defaulting on a debt may bring me a better state of affairs, but how could breaches of justice be good for society? A society cannot exist without fulfillment of just contracts. We can find the proof of that in the elaborate legal mechanisms to insure that contracts are kept. Aborting an unborn child may bring a better state of affairs for some, but is it good for the society to operate according to the principle that the weak, though innocent, may be eliminated for reasons that seem good to the powerful? Dictators love this principle. It justifies homicide, terrorism, and ethnic cleansing. If proportionalism can justify an abortion because it brings about a better state of affairs, on what basis could it condemn the Chinese government for compelling the abortion of a second child in a family in order to bring about a better state of affairs in population control? If individuals can make judgments about what constitutes the greatest overall good why should not governments have a greater right to do so?

Would not our long-term overall good be better served by the principle that innocent human life must always be preserved? One need only ask the question to know the correct answer.

St. Thomas More could have brought about a better state of affairs by signing Henry VIII’s Oath of Supremacy. He could have prolonged his life and supported his family. But signing would have meant that saving his life was more important than denying Christ. In his martyrdom St. Thomas rejected the notion that he was allowed to do evil to bring on a better state of affairs, as did all other martyrs.

There is one area in which proportionalism is very successful. It inevitably leads to a worse state of affairs. That is why we may never do evil that good may come of it. (Rom. 3:8)