The Power of The Single Shot

I am not sure if I should be glad Trump is ok, or angry that we have raised a generation of gun owners who do not understand that it is the power of the single shot that allows snipers to be so dangerous.  This is the second attempt where the shooter chose a relatuvely low power weapon with a large magazine over a more accurate higher power hunting rifle that can get the job done from outside the security perimeter.

On the role of human suffering in ends justify the means debates

Question from a DM in Facebook: Kant teaches that the ends never justify the means, that we can't do harm to achieve good. Is this correct under Catholic Thinking?

My answer: I dabble in philosophy and theology, so you can take what I say with a grain of salt, but here is my answer. As far as I'm concerned- if a philosophical or theological point hasn't been debated for at least 10 centuries, we haven't thought about it enough yet.

I would rephrase it as the ends rarely justify the means- usually the means justify the ends.

Additional Question from the DM: Are you Catholic, and could you give me an example?

I consider myself a Zen Catholic. I started out as a cradle Catholic, wandered away in my 20s, after learning the value of paradox all the parables in the Bible suddenly made sense so I returned. Have been married for 25 years.

The ends justify the means in the protection of the common good- the classic is the assassination of a totalitarian dictator, or the original pre-1992 reason why the Church approved of the death penalty- in the protection of innocent life. The other classic example is Augustinian Just Warfare, where you battle on your own land against an invader in direct defense of your family.

[St Thomas Aquinas's rules of Just Warfare are more explicit and nuanced, but for this example, Augustinan Just Warfare's simplified three rules are enough]

The means justify the end is far more common however; for instance, promosting lifelong heterosexual monogamy as the normal way to have a family insures not only will there be a next generation, but that next generation will have the benefit of having their biological mothers and fathers raise them; a process that usually results in a functional human adult.

Audio DM, to the best of my ability to understand, transcribed: When people say that God allowed them suffering, to make them better, is this not an example of God breaking this moral rule [from Kant]?
I understand God can act differently than us. For example we cannot murder. But God can take life because He created life.
So can God act against this idea of the ends justifying the means? For us humans, we cannot cause someone to suffer even if the result will be good.
But for Our Lord, He permits suffering because it can bring about a greater good.
So does this mean for God the ends DO justify the means?

My Answer: The problem here is the problem of suffering. I do not consider suffering to be an automatic evil.

Like I said, there are exceptions and it's not an absolute rule. Having said that, "the ends justify the means" isn't about suffering. There are plenty of good examples of moral behavior that cause suffering.

This avoidance of suffering is the same reason I'm a Zen Catholic and not a Zen Buddhist. Suffering, in Catholic terms, is valueable both to your own salvation and to the salvation of others.

But let's go with something that is absolute. The two Greatest Commandments- Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, soul and strength, Love your Neighbor as you love yourself.

There are many cases of love that require suffering. Many acts of love that require suffering. The commandment is to love anyway- so for Catholics, "the means justify the end" which is the more normal version of what goes on in morality means "Acts done out of love, out of willing the good for others, are never wrong".

In this way you preserve the human dignity of others, because you are acting out of love for them.

Now let's take my two examples of the end justifies the means. I'll take them backwards if you don't mind. The third rule of Augustinian Just warfare is "Use tactics that show love for your enemy by giving them a fighting chance to survive". Not only are you showing love for your family by protecting them from an invader- you're showing love for the invader by using hopefully non-lethal means to neutralize his effect on your home (for this reason, I own a BB machine gun- all the stopping power of a Colt 45 with none of the lethality).

Likewise, as the current revision of the Catechism with respect to killing a mass murderer, paragraph 2267 must be considered: 2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.

Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.

Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,[1] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.

It's been 10 months since I found something ridiculous enough to blog here

 Mainly because I've been struggling with employment and autistic burnout.  Thus the only posts that have been seen here, have been accidental cross posts from my Knights of Columbus Blog.

That changes today- we're about to start Pride month, and I boycott Pride usually, but this is just too crazy to work.

From Not The Bee- the Libertarians just became the Pride Party.

You read that right.  The party that used to get 3-4% of the vote, have decided to go after 1-2% of the population.

I look forward to Biden explaining why he's better for homosexuality than a performance drag queen.

From my pastor, on Catholic Schools

From Fr. Don, in the bulletin for St. Clare's Church in Portland, OR.  The Archdiocese is being attacked in the media for the information in this link. 

I want to re-emphasize what I wrote about last week: the recent media articles about Catholic schools. I was personally at the meeting with the archbishop that got all this media storm started and I don’t expect any changes here at St. Clare School. In spite of what the media is trying to imply, the bishop is NOT asking us to go to a “classical education” model, nor is he asking us to make changes in our gender policy: we have always treated a person in a girl’s body as a girl and a person in a boy’s body as a boy. That’s not new and I don’t think it’s radical. St. Clare School is an outstanding school that loves and supports every student and we will continue our long-standing tradition of nurturing the spiritual and educational development of the whole child.

How to win, politically

 This post was originally written about the Presidential race in the United States, but it could easily be adapted in many of its planks to fighting back against the pornocracy at any level of government.

These are the party planks I want to see in a primary from *any* primary race.  You can easily tailor them to the jurisdiction you are running in.

- Be pro-life to the point of supporting unwed mothers and heterosexual marriage for parents of children between conception and age 21.  

- Eliminate bigotry against the unwanted and disabled in the forms of euthanasia, abortion, and transgender mutilation

- Fund marital counseling services to reduce and eliminate divorce.  

- Bring us a *workable* plan to start rolling back the Imperialistic financial aid and armed forces from the United States that the pornocracy has been using to push homosexuality, abortion, and birth control on the third world.

- God's Children are Not for Sale; repurpose those troops to freeing illegal slaves here in the United States and around the world.  End sex and labor trafficking with strong borders to interrupt the $150 Billion worldwide slave trade.

- Clean up the entertainment industry.  Strongly prosecute any and all producers or directors who use their position for the sexual abuse of women and men.

- End the free trade system that encourages 3rd world slave conditions in factories; use technology to manufacture goods as close to consumers as possible even when slavery would be more efficient.

- Tax retailers that sell slave origin goods to pay for it, this includes entertainment properties that profit off of soft porn created by abusive directors and producers.

- Return the rights of life, free speech, and the pursuit of happiness to the American lower classes, regardless of color of skin

- Make it entirely illegal to discriminate based on color of skin for anybody.

The only third party I see that could accomplish this, is the American Solidarity Party.  But if just ONE Democrat, and just ONE Republican, stood up to run in their respective primaries with eliminating the Pornocrats from their party platforms, 2024 would become a much different race.

What is Love?

Aging hippies claim that the reason the sexual revolution happened was because love got replaced in American culture with righteousness.

I disagree.  Love is an essential part of righteousness, and does not exist in the sexual revolution.

Let us begin with "what is Love?" For the righteous man, there can be only one answer: love is willing what is BEST for other people.

Thus sexual orientation, when not oriented to procreation, can never be love, but rather, abuse. Including heterosexual birth control and divorce, of course.

Abuse is not love.

This is not a reason to hate, it is a reason to mourn- mourn the loss of reason, the loss of the ideal agape love, that wills what is best for the other.

And thus mourn the loss of righteousness itself, in favor of something far less.

Called to Defend Our Faith

 As we were cooking the Knights of Columbus Breakfast at St. Clare's in Portland on June 4th, our pancake flipper Scott Young brought up the Dodgers controversy for First Deadly Sin Month, and I was surprised to hear that many of the men there were unaware of the problem.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published a few opinion pieces about this blatant anti-Catholic group being honored by Major League Baseball.  I must admit, I've been a bit cowardly myself about defending the faith on this topic, as I work for a corporation that is very vocal about First Deadly Sin Month- and rather anti-Catholic about it.

However, there comes a time when as Catholic Knights, we must draw a line in the sand, and this is sufficiently non-partisan, even if some elements on both sides want to make it partisan, that I think we need to stand together as brothers, to stand up and just say NO.

Here is the EWTN interview with the author of one of those opinion pieces published in the Wall Street Journal, that shows why I say it is not a partisan issue.

Should you choose to act, I urge you to sign Catholic Vote's petition at this link and join people such as Archbishop Sample in the boycott of the Dodgers.

Ted Seeber