Brown says Labour MPs can vote against three sections of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology at the report stage but not the Bill as a whole. Cheers Gordon. Some Catholic backbenchers have expressed their determination to vote againts the Bill at every stage. However, alarmingly, it is said that two out of the three Catholic cabinet ministers are happy with this ‘compromise’. If they are satisfied then they are sadly misinformed.
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a) To vote for a Bill which violates the sanctity and inviolability of human life, even if it contains provisions mitigating the present ‘law’, is a grave sin.
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b) MPs are under a positive moral obligation to vote down legislative provisions that violate the Natural Law not merely to abstain and certainly not to vote in favour of them on the grounds ’some regulation is better than nothing’.
March 28, 2008 at 1:02 am
You write, “To vote for a Bill which violates the sanctity and inviolability of human life, even if it contains provisions mitigating the present ‘law’, is a grave sin.”
I thought it was OK to vote for a law that makes an existing law less evil. For example it would be OK to vote for a law that prohibits abortions except in cases of rape and incest, when current law allows all abortions without restriction. That’s wrong?
March 28, 2008 at 6:59 am
A mitigating amendment to a bad law could be voted for but not a substantive law that formally mandated the killing of innocents even if it replaced another law that mandated the killing of more innocents.
March 28, 2008 at 3:22 pm
There you are! I thought you had died.
March 30, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Completely off-topic, folks, but I thought you might like to see this to pass on to interested parties!
God bless,
Mark
March 31, 2008 at 4:09 pm
A few comments:
It is a mystery to me how Ruth Kelly et al can remain a minister in this government.
The current compromise is no compromise at all and would involve Kelly et al voting anti life.
The Times has given publicity to a supposedly Catholic scientist:
“The most senior Roman Catholic scientist in Britain has attacked his Church’s opposition to proposed laws that will allow the creation of human-animal embryos for research.
Sir Leszek Borysiewicz made a passionate defence of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill and the science that it will make possible.”
for full story see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3642906.ece
It would be interesting to here if Sir Leszek will now be refused communion. I doubt it.
Lastly where is Living Scotland at a time like this? Doing nothing apparently. Perhaps Living Scotland is dead!
April 1, 2008 at 7:13 am
Living Scotland – good point. No members left in Scotland?
April 2, 2008 at 12:26 am
Aelianus writes: “A mitigating amendment to a bad law could be voted for but not a substantive law that formally mandated the killing of innocents even if it replaced another law that mandated the killing of more innocents.”
Boy, that sure sounds wrong to me. It seems like if you had a chance to vote for a law that would result in fewer killings of innocents, you would be morally obligated to do so. Because not voting for it might result in more killings. Every child killed under the old law who would not have been killed had the new law been enacted, would be an unnecessary death.
Where am I going wrong?
April 2, 2008 at 2:24 am
One may never do evil that good may come of it. Were it not for this fact the law would not be immoral in the first place.
April 2, 2008 at 7:43 pm
“One may never do evil that good may come of it. Were it not for this fact the law would not be immoral in the first place.”
I understand that. I don’t understand how replacing a more-lethal law with a less-lethal law is evil in the first place. Is it an evil act to replace more evil with less?
If your only choices are the evil status quo, or something less evil than the evil status quo, and you voted for the less evil, your intention would not be a vote in favor of any evil, but rather a vote to reduce evil.
While none is better than less, less is still better than more.
I’m not trying to prove you wrong, I’m trying to understand where I’m wrong.
April 2, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Imagine a terrorist had 100 hostages and he asked you to shoot 40 of them or he would shoot the remaining 60. Would it be ok for you to shoot the 40 if you had a moral certainty he would keep his word and would otherwise shoot the 60?
April 3, 2008 at 12:56 am
No. But if I were a police officer and I was told that taking one action would result in 40 deaths and taking another would result in 60, and those were the only two choices available to me at the present time, though later on other opportunities might present themselves for reducing or eliminating terrorism altogether, I would take the former.
April 3, 2008 at 1:41 am
It is not a question of voting for a morally good or indifferent act with a number of possible consequences for good or ill. The act of voting for the bill is intrinsically evil.
For example, suppose there were a bill (for which there was a large majority in the Commons) which read,
“The killing of blue eyed and green eyed children shall not be punishable by any law.”
And, suppose someone proposed amending the bill to delete the words “and green eyed”. It would be permissible to vote for that amendment.
Let us imagine that this amendment succeeded. When the bill returned to the chamber it would say,
“The killing of blue eyed children shall not be punishable by any law.”
It would not be permissible to vote for this bill. Were one to vote for it one would be responsible for all the deaths which ensued.
Now imagine the original proposal was passed into ‘law’. (It is not a real law because it conflicts with Natural and Divine Law but the courts will treat it as a law.)
Imagine a few years later there is a proposal to amend the law.
If the amending legislation read,
“The words ‘and green eyed’ shall be deleted from s.2 of The Infanticide Act 2008″
It would be permissible to vote for it.
But if it said,
“s.2 of The Infanticide Act 2008 shall now read ‘The killing of blue eyed children shall not be punishable by any law’”
It would be impermissible to vote for it and anyone who did would be responsible for all the deaths which ensued because he would have enacted a law permitting the murder of blue eyed children. The fact that he did it to avoid the killing of green eyed children would not excuse him.
A moral act is composed of three elements:
1. The Species
2. The Circumstances
3. The Intention
If any one of these is bad the whole act is sinful. It doesn’t matter if the other two elements are sound.
If I kill an innocent to save another I sin, even though the intention is good, because the species of the act is sinful.
If I engage in intercourse with my wife on a public bus I sin, even though the species of the act is good, because the circumstances of the act are sinful.
If I give alms to gain favour in the sight of men I sin, even though the circumstances and the species of the act is good, because the intention is evil.
Thus, if an MP votes for an intrinsically evil legislative proposal to avoid a worse one the fact that his intention (to avoid a worse one) is good does not remove his moral responsibility for whatever is evil in the text he has voted for.
Pilate had Jesus scourged because he believed Jesus was innocent but he thought it would be politically impossible to release Him unharmed. He hoped that the scourging would be enough to appease the crowd. He was wrong. But even if it had appeased the crowd that would not have justified the act. He would still have scourged the Son of God.
“Amen, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”
April 3, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Thanks for your thorough explanation, that helps to clarify things for me. I understand now that the intention is irrelevant.
However, if you’re saying that the species of the subject bill is evil, I think maybe I differ in necessarily classifying it as such.
Taking your illustration, a bill making it legal to kill blue- and green-eyed children, would be evil because it creates a situation in which blue- and green-eyed children are liable to be killed.
Later on, if a bill were proposed saying, “The killing of blue eyed children shall not be punishable by any law, but the killing of green-eyed children is henceforth prohibited,” this second law would not create a situation in which blue-eyed children are bound to be killed. That situation would already exist due to the prior law. All the new law would cause is a change in the existing situation such that the lives of green-eyed children are preserved, whereas before they were not. Therefore even though technically it authorizes the killing of blue-eyed children, I would not (I think) consider it evil because that was already authorized, so it has no actual evil effect. And since it has the good effect of preserving the lives of green-eyed children, I might feel bound to vote for it.
The cause of our disagreement may be that I don’t understand the actual situation which is the subject of your original post. I’m not English and have not familiarized myself with the issues addressed in the bill. Perhaps I’m missing something essential.
April 3, 2008 at 8:15 pm
The consequences of the act do not determine its moral status. To vote to add the words “…but the killing of green-eyed children is henceforth prohibited,” would be fine but not the whole passage “The killing of blue eyed children shall not be punishable by any law, but the killing of green-eyed children is henceforth prohibited” because you then woud be enacting a new law which contained that provision. The legitimacy of the law would be derived in part from your vote and you would be one of its authors.
The position which holds that the consequences of an act determine its moral status is called ‘consequentialism’. It was condemned by John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor.
April 5, 2008 at 12:26 am
I think I might have it now. Before I was thinking that what makes a law good or evil is its effects. If not that, then what? If it doesn’t affect people’s behavior, then it’s just words on paper.
It seems maybe what you’re saying is, the mere fact that a law enshrines in some people’s minds the notion that certain evil behavior is acceptable (even though laws such as we have been discussing would be objectively illegitimate), makes it evil.
In the case of the second law I proposed, affirming the killing of blue-eyed children but proscribing the killing of green-eyed children, even though it had the good effect of saving the lives of green-eyed children, and no bad effect that didn’t already exist, it nevertheless would re-affirm the supposed legitimacy of the former law allowing the killing of blue-eyed children.
Therefore, even though the evil of having this false notion enshrined in people’s minds, might be less than the evil of killing green-eyed children, you nevertheless can’t use this means to reduce the latter evil, because the means itself is evil, even though it’s a lesser evil than the one it mitigates. You can’t do good through evil means.
Is that it? If not, I would appreciate you correcting me. Thanks for taking the time.
April 5, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Yes, I think that sounds right, Agellius, but I would add for clarity that, regardless of the effect your voting for the new law had on other people’s minds (which might well be bad), it would still be wrong to affirm the evil part thereof even if no-one else’s mind were led astray thereby.
The giving of your assent (albeit reluctantly) to the evil part of the act would be wrong in itself – regardless of any negative consequences (or indeed any possible “positive” consequences) flowing therefrom. It would be consequentialist to argue otherwise.
But, yeah – it sounds like you’ve got it already, so I’ll shut my trap now.
BA
April 5, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Yes indeed, BA you took the words right out of my keyboard.
April 5, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Bonzer.
April 5, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Thanks BA, I see your point. And thanks again Aelianus. This was really a puzzler for me.