Diving Right In

It’s the holiday season. Thanksgiving is coming up, and December is right around the corner. It’s a time to pause, reflect, have fun…..and in my case have my first big post to the blog. And I figure why not just dive right into discussion over a couple of the hot button issues?

First, I would like to give a little background. Coming from a not particularly religious background, I became more active religiously when I was 13. At that time, I was, well for lack of a better term, a liberal Protestant. When I came to college I was introduced to Catholicism, and decided it was right for me. After hearing from both sides on the issues below, I feel that I have come to a point where I can try and make an argument for the conservative Catholic perspective. All right, here we go:

First off, I would like to talk about….

Separation of Church and State: I would say that it is completely and utterly evil for a state to persecute its citizens for their religious beliefs. Everyone should be free to have their own faith, preach that faith, and associate with like-minded people. And I absolutely feel that given the scientific evidence, our schools should teach evolution. But a point I think a point that many conservative Catholics would make is that when you get down to individual issues, the line between church and state blurs. For example, a person might believe that it is right that the state provides a safety net for its poor because of that person’s interpretation of their religious tradition. Should that person vote the opposite of their beliefs? Obviously I cannot speak for everyone facing the dilemma of how to vote and why they are voting a certain way. But I’m just not sure how one completely separates the two or has their voting habits not be affected by whatever that person’s beliefs regarding morality are.

And now with that particular primer having warmed us up, lets talk about….

Abortion: Apart of that particular debate I feel I have heard a lot regards the issue of when life begins. Does it begin at conception? At a certain number of weeks or months? How do we define when its human? Here is the thing…even if we define life as beginning at x number of weeks, if we destroy the fetus before that, then that future human being has been denied life. We have denied that future human being the ability to experience life because of factors outside of that fetus’s control.

Some might bring up situations where mothers might be unable to raise said baby. For example, having a baby and raising it might force a young mother to drop out of school. Or perhaps a family cannot afford to feed another child. The point that many of us Catholics would make is that the option is not solely between raising a child in these circumstances and having an abortion. A child born into a situation like the ones described above can be put up for adoption or given over to the foster care system. This is NOT by any means an attempt to trivialize the tremendous physical and emotional trails of carrying a child for nine months, nor of the emotions a family might go through when giving up said child. The point we would make is that we in such a case dealing with a lesser of two evils dilemma, with denying that human child/future human child life being worse.

Finally, there is the issue of the mother’s health. I would like to state categorically that I and my fellow Catholics DO NOT believe you should just let the mother die if her life is endangered during the pregnancy. In Catholicism there is a concept called The Principle of Double Effect. It is a general philosophical belief, but what this means in the case of abortion is that if a pregnant woman’s life is in danger the doctors should attempt to save her life by operating on the relevant part of her body. They should preform life saving operations on those parts of her body even if it will/probably will destroy the fetus. The difference in this case lies in the fact that the operation was not indented to destroy the baby, nor did the doctors go and directly kill it with their instruments.

That was fun. Please give me your thoughts in the comment section. Happy Thanksgiving!