Friday, August 06, 2010

More on Hiroshima

One of the strangest things about conservative talk radio, to me, is how utilitarian they can be. For instance, I was listening to Michael Medved today. He was a guest on a local Chicago talk show. They were talking about Hiroshima. Medved and Big John Cody, the host of the show, bought into the argument that the killing of innocents was justified because of the proportionate good that was achieved. "Many more lives were saved." As Tollefson's essay that I linked to in my previous post said, this is the same kind of reasoning people use to justify abortion.

I know a Catholic moral theologian who do not believe there are any absolute moral norms. I heard him say so in a public gathering. I really, really don't get this, especially after Ven. John Paul II taught in Veritatis splendor that consequentialism and proportionalism are not acceptable Catholic modes of moral reasoning.

Although I know that many people abuse the idea of a consistent life ethic to justify not doing anything about abortion, there is a real sense in which there has to be a consistent life ethic. If a principle holds in abortion, it also holds in act of war: It is always wrong to intentionally take innocent human life, no matter what good is achieved by doing so.

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