Thomas Fleming, Clueless Catholic

Dr. Fleming does not have a high opinion of certain aspects of neo-Thomist moral philosophy/theology:

Mr. Weigel is one of many victims of modern Catholic education and the Neo-Thomist ideology that has more to do with Hegelian rationalism than with the traditional teachings of the Church. Obviously, the pre-Christian world included large numbers of morally serious people who believed in god or gods but did not entirely condemn either abortion or infanticide. The argument, then, that all seriously moral people would oppose abortion cannot be true. It is a little like saying anyone remotely interested in science would agree with Newton or Einstein. Obviously, something happened to change the discourse: the Incarnation. A self-described Catholic is supposed to know these things.

What is it to be "seriously moral"? To inquire about ethics and right human action? Is that enough? Or should one possess some degree of virtue? Was Aristotle virtuous? Cicero? Or that some were ignorant of certain precepts of the Natural Law, but were not culpable for this ignorance? Or certain precepts are more difficult for natural reason to discover than others? And how did the Incarnation change the discourse? That the fullness of Divine Revelation was given to mankind in Christ?

Now, there is an element of truth in the argument, which is that just as we do not wish to be killed unjustly, we should not kill unjustly. But what if abortion is not unjust? What if we regard it as, in some cases, a necessity or at least a preferable option? After all, just because we do not wish to be executed does not mean that we necessarily oppose the death penalty. We might even say that were we to commit a cold-blooded murder, we should deserve killing. Thus, if we think life is not worth living without an IQ above 75 or without a reasonably healthy body or without loving parents, we might say that abortion in such cases is reasonable and just and might even, honestly or not, say that we would apply the same criteria to ourselves.

Is abortion unjust? That depends on the status of the conceptum--is it a individual human being, a person, and therefore has a claim to equality? Capital punishment is not the same as euthanasia or some other form of "mercy killing" is it? Justice is the rationale for the former, but not for the latter. Is 'passive' suicide (in which one wills to die, but by the hand of another) unjust? It is unjust towards society and God. It is also counter to charity. Being resigned to death as the result of certain natural processes is not the same as actively bringing it about.

From the beginning Christian women did not kill their babies. This is one of the things we can learn from the early Apostolic Fathers. Christians did not practice either infanticide or sodomy. For both prohibitions, there is ample justification in natural law, as that phrase was understood by Aristotle, Cicero, and St. Thomas. We were not made sexual beings to violate each others’ anuses or to enjoy ourselves while disposing of the fruits of our coition. Mothers, in this tradition, do not have a universal obligation to prevent abortion but a specific obligation not just not to kill their children but to nurture and cherish them. This is not like some corollary deduced from a basic logic axiom: It is a specific duty that arises both from the nature that God created and from God’s love for us.

Actually, would not St. Thomas say that the obligation to not kill children is derived some way for the first principle of practical reason? And from the commandment to love God and neighbor? Is Dr. Fleming displaying a skepticism that we can have a knowledge of certain precepts of the natural law? It seems not. But to say that "it is a specific duty that arises both from the nature that God created and from God's love for us"... can we not say that the duty is derived by reason from these principles? Is reasoning not involved? Could not neo-Thomists agree with what he says here? It would appear that he mistakenly attributes to neo-Thomists and proponents of the New Natural Law Theory a faulty understanding of the Natural Law and how its precepts are derived--they attempt to derive said precepts from a "from a basic logic axiom" in the same way that certain modern philosophers attempted to build up a systematic ethics (Spinoza? Kant?). How would Dr. Fleming account for the derivation of Natural Law precepts? (And what is his understanding of the Natural Law?)

The most basic error is to cover Christian truth with the tinsel trappings of Enlightenment universalism that makes everyone owe everyone else the same duties. Thus, we hear sweeping claims, expressed in a Kantian idiom, that it is everyone’s duty to prevent a nonChristian female from killing her child, whether she lives in China or Peru. Their arguments frequently rely on misused or misunderstood Scriptural citations, which, if refuted, might unsettle the convictions of a poor Fundamentalist. Among the worst are the utilitarian arguments that tell us we may be losing countless Beethovens and Shakespeares, to say nothing of millions of taxpayers who will pay my Social Security. But what if if turns out that in economic terms, abortion is a net gain, in preventing the birth of millions of welfare-dependent blacks and Mexicans? Would that make abortion a civic duty? Live by bad arguments, die by bad arguments. The cumulative effect of much of the professional pro-life ideology is to distort and deflect the question, away from the really important thing, which is how to convert nonbelievers, who will then be far less likely to kill their babies, toward comparatively trivial legislative policies and judicial agendas.

If everyone is rational enough to understand that abortion is wrong, why is it that so few defenders of the unborn are capable either of entering into a rational discourse or studying history?

Dr. Fleming takes the opportunity to criticize the Theocons for their support of the Iraq War,
authority to pontiifcate on such moral issues. But he is also opposed to certain Enlightenment conceptions of morality and ethical reasoning, and a form of "busibodiness" that leads one to ignore one's own primary duties in favor of advocacy. Are the proponents of the New Natural Law Theory or neo-Thomists wrong in thinking that the prohibition against abortion cannot be discovered by natural reason? But this is not the same as saying that everyone owes the same duties to everyone else, no more, no less.

Another point that could be made in response is this: advocacy, pushing for political and legal reform, praying for the conversion of others, helping unborn children and their parents through almsgiving, adoption and so on is not necessarily wrong -- Dr. Fleming is correct if these actions are done to the neglect of more fundamental duties. But determining what is to be done involves prudence, and a broad condemnation of all such actions in the concrete cannot be made.

In a comment, he elaborates a bit more:

It is not that there is no rational or scientific basis for opposing abortion. From a sociobiological point of view, the purpose of existence–though they would not like the word purpose–is reproductive success, which makes abortion and contraception undesirable. But this would not justify a prohibition, for example, on destroying a child who could not reproduce or was certain to be homosexual, or would be feeble-minded and thus be a drag on the family’s resources. There is a convergence of science and moral theology, but, as my friend Sam Francis warned me years ago after reading my first book, a gap remains between is and ought. (I might add that Hume’s argument has been distorted and misrepresented, as Stephen R.L.Clark argued some years ago in an excellent article)

While it is true, as St. Alphonsus says, summing up a long tradition, that people who perform or procure abortions should be regarded as excommunicate, this in no way relieves the Church of the responsibility of publicly denouncing such people and their advocates. I should add that, while students of theology are free to make general statements on what the Church teaches, it is not up to a layman to make these judgments in any particular case; indeed, it is a grave error to do so.

Not being a fan of Leon Kass and having failed to learn from him anything I did not know already, I do not see that he has a great deal to contribute to this discussion. Aristotle, who is a formidable figure, regarded abortion as a reasonable way of limiting family size. If the creator of systematic logic did not see a problem–though he too would have deplored the abortions for frivolous causes that are the overwhelming majority of American abortions– as unnatural and counter-productive, we can hardly say that acceptance of abortion is inconsistent with reason.

But Dr. Fleming should know that the acquisition of moral science and right practical reasoning is not dependent upon correct reasoning (the use of logic) alone. There is also the question of right appetite. Aristotle may have thought that 'abortion' was no different from contraception, because of an error in his natural science. Did he think that all forms of contraception were morally permissible? How could he differentiate between contracepting for the sake of pleasure and contracepting for the sake of not having children? It seems impossible that both the man and the woman have sex for the sake of duty alone, while believing that they could not raise a child that might result from sex--one must be seeking pleasure in order for the other to consent to the act out of duty.

Begun on February 22.

A response from Maximos at WWWTW: Liberalism, Abortion, and Community - a Note