Context...

I've been thinking a lot lately about context and intent. The other morning I heard a report about "The Drivers" in Saudi Arabia. Basically a group of Saudi women drove vehicles until they were arrested as a form of protest. The periodically re-unite and note that the ongoing prohibition on women driving creates fiscal hardship and other problems.

An interesting story in its own right, with plenty of food for thought. For example, Rome has identified "religious freedom" as a non negotiable moral principle in voting, but what about when religious practices start to collide with social justice? It is easy to think of the Saudi situation for woman and driving as very backward and alien, but we have a similar moral conflict ourselves. We have an obligation to uphold and protect the Family, but gay unions do raise some issues of legitimate social justice.

But what really caught my attention was a statement near the end of the report:

A handful of women caught driving this year were only briefly detained, according to press reports, and a university student was called a heroine after she drove her badly burned father to the hospital.

In the right context, serious sin became a virtue. This is hardly a novel concept. If I was robbed and then hunted down the thief and killed him, I would be acting immorally, even by Old Testament standards. But if I tried to protect an elderly woman from armed robbery and the thief was accidentally killed in the struggle I would seem to be on sounder moral ground.

It appears that, even with very serious outcomes, our intent matters. In VERITATIS SPLENDOR, Pope John Paul II explains, convincingly, that we cannot, as Catholics, accept morality as a purely relative matter. Some acts are intrinsically evil, because they are never licit. I can accept this, there is no reason, not even my own life or the lives of the people I love most, for, say, genocide. But it it is still very difficult to escape context and intent.

For example, in EVANGELIUM VITAE, the pope makes it clear that direct abortion is always a grave moral disorder. Yet, when Catholics combine this seemingly infallible proclamation with the concepts of VERITATIS SPLENDOR in political discourse, we often end up with some seemingly very incoherent chains of thought.

'You cannot vote for Obama, abortion is intrinsically evil, an absolute!'

'But McCain supports abortion in some cases, so why can you vote for him?'

'That's different, I am trying to limit the harm, which is licit!'

'Yes, in the same Encyclical that the pope declared direct abortion to always be a grave moral disorder, he introduced the concept of "limiting the harm", the direct abortion is intrinsically evil, but abortion voting may or may not be licit depending on one's intent and sincere belief.'

'You're just rationalizing what you want to do! It's INTRINSICALLY EVIL, an ABSOLUTE!'

If you are patient and thick skinned, you can repeat this conversation in circular fashion until someones head explodes. I think that the core problem is that we can convince ourselves that we have good intentions, but our typical political discourse is currently one of divisiveness and demonization. People don't just disagree, They hate America, They hate Our good values...

But the point I am really trying to make is that, even with a moral absolute, it is very hard to eliminate context and intent from the equation. Even if we move from voting about abortion to actually procuring them, or tendency is still towards moral relativism. If you ask a 'pro-life political militant' about ectopic, or tubal pregnancy, the vast majority will state, in absolute terms, that such abortions are licit because of double effect. But that is hardly clear. The USCCB's Directives for Health Care Providers specifically prohibits direct abortion for ectopic pregnancies. And the 1902 decision from the Tribunal of the Holy Office seems to have prohibited indirect abortion, that is, removing the fetus unharmed and letting 'nature take its course', in the same situation.

The double effect argument concerning salpingectomy vs. salpingostomy has always been a bit dubious, and it appears that most modern Catholic Bioethicists have abandoned it. Now if you search the National Catholic Bioethics Center for "ectopic" you will find papers purporting the licit use of Methotrexate (MTX), a chemical abortificant. The argument is that some of these are not pregnancies at all, but interrupted miscarriages, so the fetus is "dead or dying". The distinction would seem important, but the issue of direct euthanasia, another absolute teaching, is not addressed...

The Church has not taken a formal position on these specific applications. But it is worth noting that in countries with Catholic majorities, such applications are generally prohibited by law and the local bishops seem wholly supportive of such laws.

In light of all this, it seems fair to say that the issue is at least morally grey, yet many of the same people who view voting for abortion as unarguably evil (at least if the voting differs from their own) will be quite adamant that abortion itself is absolutely licit in some cases. The difference, of course, is again context and intent. Could the Church really expect me, or someone I love, to risk sterility or even possible death for a pregnancy that cannot possibly reach term?

While I do not purport to have the definitive answer to that question, I would again reiterate that the only principles we truly hold dear are the ones that we are willing to stand by in a context that costs us dearly.