Oh, goody, we're now at the stage of the debate where Traditionalist Catholic pundits are attempting to press Catholic moral principles of double effect and just war theory into service to justify their agenda of throwing the vulnerable to COVID-19 so they can get a haircut.
*puts on professional Catholic apologist name tag, takes deep breath*
Double effect: According to Catholic moral law, in order for a surgeon to be morally justified in performing an operation to save a pregnant woman's life, there are certain conditions that must be met. One, he must have proportionate reason to risk the unintended side effect of the child's death. Saving the mother's life does constitute proportionate reason. And, he cannot directly harm the child. For example, he can remove a Fallopian tube in which the child is implanted, but he cannot inject chemicals into that tube to "dissolve" the child in hopes of saving the tube.
So, you don't get to claim "double effect" unless you have proportionate reason to take a risk and you're not causing direct harm to the lives of others.
Just war: Honestly, if this wasn't so serious, I might have laughed at the pretzel twisting this guy does to just war theory. He says:
Every effort must be undertaken to ensure the fewest possible number of casualties, of course, but that lives will be lost is a given.
What he doesn't bother to mention is that it's never morally justified to target vulnerable populations during a war. You don't get to firebomb a city filled with innocent civilians in hopes of terrorizing its government into surrender. You can only target enemy combatants (knowing there might be civilian casualties, but not because those civilians were directly targeted).
Does this writer for The Remnant really want to suggest that Annie Glenn, who died this week at the age of 100 from complications of COVID-19, should have been considered an enemy combatant whose death should be considered a "given"? Not to mention the tens of thousands of other souls lost to this deadly pandemic?
*hands the wannabe apologist a dunce cap and points him to the corner to think about what he's done*
(Image: Coronavirus and crowd of people, Pixabay.)
