Okay, I’ve been thinking about this, and I just don’t see any way around your habitual failure to address the arguments I actually make.
Instead of addressing what I actually propose, you make a practice of misconstruing my arguments, then “rebutting” your own creations, and, importantly, of assuming that which must be demonstrated.
I don’t know if you are doing this inadvertently or intentionally, and in the final analysis, it doesn’t really matter.
For instance, you asserted that I do not share the belief that “an evil thing (e.g. the slaying of an innocent person) must not be willed or chosen, neither as an end in itself nor as a means to an end...”
What is actually happening there is not that I do not share that belief, but rather that you are unwilling to consider that this principle simply may not apply here. And no matter how many times I say that, your reply is inevitably some variant of “you are advocating the killing of the innocent.” That sort of discussion is as futile as it is useless. It avoids the difficult moral questions by reducing the complexity of human existence to a black and white cartoon caricature.
You try to invalidate Holy Scripture by denigrating it as only my “private interpretation of the Old Testament.” Your reference to the obedience of the Jews to God’s commands as “depraved acts” is simply beyond the pale of reason.
On the basis of nothing whatsoever you conscript “Augustine and Aquinas...the very basic teachings of Natural Law and the Right to Life as the foundation of International Law...” as supporters of your position WRT nuclear weapons.
You misrepresent an assertion that Catholic teachings on acts permissible in *war* were different in the past, as one that “one may kill innocent persons, in a deliberate or objectively indiscriminate fashion, if one has a good reason.”
There, you not only misrepresent my argument, but (a) *assume* again that the concept of “innocent persons” is applicable here, and do so without making the slightest attempt to support your assumption; and (b) *assume* that the decisions that led to H and N were “deliberate or objectively indiscriminate.”
In saying “Show me one of the above, who would define murder in a way that excludes these constitutive elements found in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1917),” you are either accusing me of defining murder in such a way, or *assuming* that the deaths at H and N were “murder.”
If you are accusing me of defining murder in such a way, you are putting words in my mouth. If you are *assuming* murder, I’m throwing a flag on the play. You must first demonstrate that those deaths were murder before you can use that assertion to bludgeon people about the head and shoulders.
In response to my mention of the well-known abuses perpetrated by theological leftists during or around the time of VatII, you say, “This is certainly misdirection. Those of a Modernist tendency deny objectively gravely morally offensive character…”
Modernists and modernism cannot be circumscribed and limited in such a way. Satan is both more intelligent and more subtle than we, and the attacks of modernists on the Church are a veritable kaleidoscope of gambits, strategies, sophistry, and deceit. In short, you have no grounds whatsoever for dismissing so cavalierly a reference to the wisdom of the Saint. You do not offer an argument, but attempt to dismiss an argument without considering it on its merits.
“and the defender of the constant prohibition against murder, traditionally defined.”
Once again, you imply that my position is in conflict with the prohibition against murder, while ignoring the fact that one is allowed to kill the enemy during a just war, and that incidental civilian casualties inflicted in that activity are not—I say again, not—murder. You simply *assume,* again and again, that the entire question is simply the deliberate and indiscriminate killing of innocent people, without ever examining the key subtleties that separate the soldier and the surgeon from the criminal, or acts committed in wartime from those committed in peacetime.
You contradict the most obvious observations, as when I noted that citing “recent popes” is an admission that there is a difference between those “recent popes” and earlier popes. If that were not so, there would be no need for the word, “recent.”
Nonetheless, you insist that “This does not follow. It is not such an admission. This is eisegesis, reading your own meaning into a text in a rather obvious way.”
It is the meaning of the text that is obvious, and when you deny it you might as well be insisting that the sky is red.
You go on to equate the murder of Abel by Cain with every act of military resistance to evil throughout the existence of humanity. I’m sure that every soldier that fought for this country would be grateful for your explanation.
I can’t continue with this exercise in futility. When you ignorantly mock a mention of the well-known and thoroughly documented activities of the enemy and the Enemy during Cold War I, you make it abundantly clear that there is simply no point in attempting to discuss or debate these matters with you.
At such time as you decide to refrain from the offenses against reason that I described above, that might be different.
| ”If I understand you correctly --- and please correct me if I'm wrong---“ |
I have been open, even eager, to be corrected when hampered by my own misunderstanding. I have always assumed you were arguing in good faith, and we would both be wise to continue to assume that of each other. Lacking that, there’s no point to discussion, and we might as well go at each other with pointed sticks (as happens on so many doomed FReeper discussions, alas!)
So I beg you pardon for any transgressions, small or large, advertent or inadvertent, and I offer you the same pardon.
Part of the problem might have been that we both jumped off into lengthy riffs without any prior declaration of our own underlying assumptions, and without even defining key terms.
For instance, it would have helped if we had made it clear from the outset that we both share the belief that “an evil thing (e.g. the slaying of an innocent person) must not be willed or chosen, neither as an end in itself, nor as a means to an end...” but that you consider that this principle simply may not apply here. Then you would have been in a good position to explain why it may not.
Similarly, we ought to have made clear from the outset how we can and ought to resort to the authority of Sacred Scripture. It is shocking to me that you thought I was trying to “invalidate” Holy Scripture (!) or that I thought the obedience of the Jews to God’s commands is a “depraved act” (!!). I can only shake my head in perplexity. It is against God’s nature to command things which are morally depraved; in fact my whole point is that He does not do so.
And on and on. We seem to be misconstruing each other at every turn. We never settle on a definition of “innocent” or “noncombatant,” and then fault each other when, midstream, we get an inkling that we have different definitions. We allude to ius ad bellum or ius in bello or Augustine or Aquinas without having previously set forth what we regard as the criteria for justice in war, and the argument for or derivation of those criteria.
You charge, “You go on to equate the murder of Abel by Cain with every act of military resistance to evil throughout the existence of humanity”--- and this charge is utterly unfounded: I am not a pacifist; I support military resistance to aggression; I specifically back lethal force against our murderous jihadi enemies (and I blessed my Marine son who was on active duty at Al-Asad base in Iraq until earlier this year); in fact I have never once made a pacifist argument in the 12 years I have been posting at FR.
Then this leads to another round of “You misinterpret!” “No, you misinterpret!”
So here we are, all knotted up in a tangled skein of argument. Let’s leave off, but in peace.
I don’t think this particular tangle-patch can be straightened out, but I should like to converse you again somewhere down the line: in good faith, and with a more satisfactory result.
God bless you.