Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Blogrollin' #109 (I checked)

I found Charming Disarray's traditionalist post on Papa Francis through Pentimento. The great bit is at the end:
But I will say that if we have a pope who will demonstrate through example that appearance matters less than internal disposition, then it stikes me that that is exactly what our current image-obsessed culture needs. And people think God doesn't know what He's doing.
I'm not a traddie myself. I have sympathy for them, and I think they're doing good things for the Church -- the liturgy IS important. I also think that while the Extraordinary Form probably isn't important to Papa Francis the way it is to Papa Ben, he has no history of hostility towards it, and I don't see any reason why he'd approve of any either. I offer the concerned traditionalists some advice from St. Padre Pio: "Pray, hope, and don't worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer." And from myself: be open to how the Spirit will use Papa Francis.

Murder vs. Justifiable Homicide

So libertarian Charles Murray recently said of abortion: "It’s a murder—it’s a homicide—but sometimes homicide is justified." (Salute to Matt Archbold.)

Sometimes homicide IS justified. When the only way to prevent an imminent murder is to slay the imminent perpetrator, that is justifiable homicide. There are other cases. Justifiable homicide is the entire point of Just War Theory -- to delineate the cases where nations may engage in mass, military homicide. But it is ALSO to delineate where such use of force is NOT justified. In fact, it makes the case that it is possible for soldiers fighting a just war to commit murder on the battlefield.

By having sex with a man, a woman voluntarily assumes the risk of pregnancy. The pregnancy is certainly not the fault of the child. Even if she becomes pregnant from rape, bear in mind that the child is neither the perpetrator of the rape, nor his accomplice, nor his co-conspirator. The child is every bit as much a victim of the rapist as the mother; he has denied his child its inherent right to be reared by its own parents in a stable, permanent marriage. I don't see any justification for slaying the child.

Murder is unjustified. The lack of justification is what defines "murder" as a subset of "homicide." Cases of homicide which are murder and cases of homicide which are justifiable have NO overlap. Mr. Murray's statement is profoundly irrational. He needs to either admit that abortion is murder, or make the case that it's justifiable homicide, and not equivocate the two.