Position Papers - November 2016 by Position Papers

A review of Catholic affairs

What Unique Moral Questions Are Raised by Pregnancy? Helen Watt

Science, Philosophy, and Abortion Fr Kevin O’Reilly OP

Number 503 · November 2016 €3 · £2.50 · $4

Film review:

The Accountant John P. McCarthy

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Number 503 · November 2016 Editorial by Rev. Gavan Jennings

Holier than Them by Anthony Esolen

The Trouble with the “You Go Girl” Culture by Bishop Robert Barron

Science, Philosophy, and Abortion by Fr Kevin O’Reilly OP

What Unique Moral Questions Are Raised by Pregnancy? by Helen Watt

Is Islam a Religion of Peace? by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Euthanizing Children by Wesley J. Smith

The Triumph of the Will over the Intellect by George Rutler

Book review: Adam and Eve after the Pill by Rev. John McCloskey

Film review: The Accountant by John P. McCarthy Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:

2 6 10 14 17 22 26 30 32 37

Rev. Gavan Jennings Michael Kirke, Pat Hanratty, Brenda McGann Liam Ó hAlmhain Dick Kearns Víctor Díaz

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Editorial B

y the time you are reading this November issue of Position   Papers it may well be the case that Donald Trump has succeeded in his bid to become the forty-fifth President of the United States of America. If this indeed happens, there will no doubt be something akin to the post-Brexit shock – already comparisons have been drawn between the unprecedented support for Donald Trump in the USA and Britain’s surprise Brexit vote last June 23rd. Trump himself told rallygoers that the results on Election Day will “be like Brexit times five.” The populist filmmaker Michael Moore, while he supports Clinton, is convinced that Trump will be elected by “beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff” Americans in their desire to give the US establishment a collosal thumbs down. Trump for them is, he says, “the human Molotov cocktail that they’ve been waiting for, the human hand grenade that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them.” While Moore interprets the disaffection of Trump supporters as economic in origin, for other commentators the root cause is cultural, not economic. This is the opinion of social commentator Anatole Kaletsky of The Guardian who looks at the studies of the motivation for Trump support on the one hand, and for the support of Brexit on the other, that what is happening here is a continuation of the culture wars which began in the 1960s: It seems, therefore, that the conflicts generally ascribed to economic grievances and globalisation are actually the latest

battles in the culture wars that have split western societies since the late 1960s. The main relevance of economics is that the 2008 financial crisis created conditions for a political backlash by older, more conservative voters, who have been losing the cultural battles over race, gender, and social identity. Trump support and the Brexit vote are, on this reading, “Molotov cocktails” tossed by disgruntled voters into the camp of postSixties multiculturalist politicians, whether of the Hillary Clinton stripe, or that of the European Union. With this in mind, it is interesting to see that, according to a recent report by the Iona Institute, an overwhelming majority of people in Northern Ireland disagree with their Equality Commission’s prosecution of a Christian-run bakery which refused to a bake a cake with a pro same-sex-marriage slogan. A poll undertaken by the UK’s Christian Institute found that 71% of respondents disagreed with the Equality Commission’s proceedings and 90% said that equality laws should be used to protect people from discrimination and not to force people to say something they oppose. The latter of course appears to be so selfevident that it beggars belief that such a case is being taken. A recent piece in Spiked on the Asher’s Bakery case mentioned the important distinction drawn by the German born philosopher Hannah Arendt between obligations placed on public services and those placed on private individuals. Arendt, in her essay, ‘Reflections on Little Rock’, was commenting on the anti-racial discrimination judgement passed down by the US Supreme Court in the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education case, by which junior schools in the southern US states were compelled to racially integrate. The decision sparked civil disruption and violence. The real issue, Arendt wrote, was equality before the law. Racist segregation laws violated equality, and their repeal was a matter of “great and obvious importance”. But, at the same time, citizens

must remain free to discriminate in their private choices, according to Arendt. White southern mothers should not be compelled, she said, to send their children to school with black children. To do so would restrict individuals’ freedom to discriminate – a right that was “only controlled by dictatorships”. Hannah Arendt was also author of the famous 1963 report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil and so was certainly a recognised authority on the question of dictatorship. She must be taken seriously when she designates state restriction on the right of individuals to discriminate as a hallmark of dictatorship. What we are witnessing then, and will no doubt witness more of as long as the freedom to vote remains substantially intact, are visceral reactions against increasingly dictatorial political systems. And yet, as much as one might sympathise with voters in their rejection of proto-dictatorial political hegemonies, voting with “Molotov cocktails” is at best only an emergency measure in the absence of better options. At worst however, reactionary political choices may give rise to situations worse than the problems they seek to address. This appears to be a real danger in the support for a candidate such as Donald Trump in the USA, or of far-right political parties here in Europe. (Though the question of Brexit is a little more complex to be explained simply in terms of a “reactionary” vote). In the long run the only answer is for Catholics to end their “cultural diaspora” and engage fully with politics, bringing with them into the political world the light of the Gospel and the social teaching of the Church. For too long Catholics have abandoned the world of politics to those, whether on the right or on the left, whose political worldviews are significantly flawed. I’d like to finish by quoting a passage from the 2003 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith note on The Participation of

Catholics in Political Life which is a rallying call to Catholics to engage in public life: Faith in Jesus Christ, who is â&#x20AC;&#x153;the way, the truth, and the lifeâ&#x20AC;? (Jn 14:6), calls Christians to exert a greater effort in building a culture which, inspired by the Gospel, will reclaim the values and contents of the Catholic Tradition. The presentation of the fruits of the spiritual, intellectual and moral heritage of Catholicism in terms understandable to modern culture is a task of great urgency today, in order to avoid also a kind of Catholic cultural diaspora. Furthermore, the cultural achievements and mature experience of Catholics in political life in various countries, especially since the Second World War, do not permit any kind of "inferiority complex" in comparison with political programs which recent history has revealed to be weak or totally ruinous. It is insufficient and reductive to think that the commitment of Catholics in society can be limited to a simple transformation of structures, because if at the basic level there is no culture capable of receiving, justifying and putting into practice positions deriving from faith and morals, the changes will always rest on a weak foundation.

Holier than Them by Anthony Esolen y friend, the inestimable Robert George, likes to ask his college students how many of them, if they lived in the South before the Civil War, would have opposed slavery. They all raise their hands. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Bless their hearts,â&#x20AC;? says he, and then he advises them what their opposition would have cost them: ridicule from the most visible political and intellectual leaders of their society; slander of their motives; incomprehension at best from their families; loss of employment; loneliness; and scant gratitude from the people they aimed to help.

must have taken for granted from the time they were born. That too would require something akin to self-surgery without anesthesia: to tear some feature of your errant culture out of your flesh, down to the roots with all their spikes and barbs. Nor will you take up that scalpel on your own initiative alone. You have to embrace an authority over against what everybody knows, what everybody says, what everybody does; and this authority must do more than recommend. It must command, even in the face of suffering, doubt, and failure.

Nor is it clear how they could form a moral position running athwart so much of what they

Ah, the daydreams of selfcongratulating man! What other people would be, no one can tell,

but if we lived in Nazi Germany we would all be an Oskar Schindler or Corrie ten Boom; we’d never have caught the nationalist and socialist disease; we’d have seen through the lies, even when presented in such bland and moderate and scientific and patriotically reasonable terms as you could find in the best newspapers – not the Nazi papers, no, but the tag-alongs, those that a decent man could write for while patronizing his Jewish haberdasher.

Siberia from the library, rejoicing in our hearts that we would soon join the genuine patriots there; looking forward to the gulag, mildewed bread, a mattock for chopping at frozen mud, gloves without fingers, and a two-inch square scrap of paper every day for wiping your posteriors.

Ah, the daydreams of selfcongratulating man! Nor would we have danced to the Bolshoi balalaikas. We’d have seen all those churches confiscated and turned into museums or barns, or razed to the ground, and we’d never have nodded along with twelve years of school teachers slandering the old faith and congratulating us for living in the most progressive land the world had ever seen.

We don’t get to choose the public evil of the society into which we are born. Some of us, if we remain true to Christ, will be called by that public evil to endure the martyrdom of blood. So did the innocent and fiercely loyal Carmelite nuns in Paris, as they ascended to the guillotine during that great secular heaving-up of madness, cruelty, vainglory, blasphemy, and lust.

That’s what we’d have done, and we’d have come to our determination all on our own – self-judging, self-commanding, self-obeying.

Others will be called to make a far less terrible sacrifice. What is the public evil of our time? What single “good” will cost you the most, through public ridicule or

We’d have done what is rarer than to accept reproach: we’d have rejected praise. We would have checked out maps of

persecution, if you reject it and act accordingly?

far greater than that of not cooperating with the abortion regime, so that those who do cooperate with the Sexual Revolution cannot plead for mercy on that score.

That is easy to answer: the Sexual Revolution. “But the Sexual Revolution is nowhere near as cruel and wicked as Nazism was. It's absurd to draw an equivalence between them,” I hear the urbane objection coming. But I don’t say that the two are the same.

In any case, the point is that we are not called to oppose, notionally, comfortably, the characteristic evils of other ages, basking in the glow of a righteousness that costs nothing. We are called to suffer in opposing the characteristic evils of our age. And we will not begin even to conceive of how such a thing is possible, if we do not obey an authority that transcends mankind.

It is actually difficult to claim that, take it all in all, Nazism was responsible for more bloodshed, and for more contemptible reasons, than the Sexual Revolution has been. But I’ll shrug and concede for the sake of argument that it is worse to be a clerk in a Nazi train station than to be a clerk in a Planned Parenthood clinic.

A Catholic pastor in Providence, Rhode Island, recently fired his music director, because the man had “married” another man, as was known to the people in the congregation. Had the priest not fired him, I can tell you what every teenage boy in the pews would have concluded: that the Church doesn’t really believe what she says, and that when it comes to sex, you may do as you please, so long as it isn’t cruel in those more flagrant ways that

In any case, the point is that we are not called to oppose, notionally, comfortably, the characteristic evils of other ages, basking in the glow of a righteousness that costs nothing. My opponent then must also concede that the risk of not cooperating with the Nazis was

offend the sensibilities of the “right’ people. Such would be the snare in that boy’s path.

mass media, and chatting with one another in material comfort, against the judgment of the Church and the express words of the Scriptures. They cut the Scripture to fit their sexual cloth.

But several people in the congregation decided to interrupt the Nicene Creed at the next Sunday Mass, singing “All Are Welcome,” knowing they would be showered with praise by the people who matter, namely reporters for the local television stations and newspapers, and leaders of opinion in the best “progressive” and “inclusive” societies.

That, and not the Church, is to bring them victory and salvation: Sieg, Heil. This column first appeared on the website The Catholic Thing (www.thecatholicthing.org). Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

They float along the river. They choose their judgment, which is only the judgment they have derived from years of imbecilic schooling, mass entertainment,

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR

Anthony Esolen is a professor of English at Providence College. He is the author of works such as Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity, Life Under Compulsion: Ten Ways to Destroy the Humanity of Your Child, The Beauty of the Word: A Running Commentary on the Roman Missal. He is a graduate of Princeton and the University of North Carolina. Anthony Esolen is on the advisory board of the Catholic Education Resource Center.

The Trouble with the “You Go Girl” Culture by Bishop Robert Barron

wo recent films, Deepwater Horizon with Mark Wahlberg and Sully starring Tom Hanks, represent something of a breath of fresh air, for both movies feature men who are intelligent, virtuous, and quietly heroic. If this strikes you as a banal observation, that just means you haven’t been following much of the popular culture for the past twenty years. One of the distinctive marks of films and television programs the last couple of decades has been the Homer Simpsonization of men. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a big fan of the The Simpsons and laugh

at Homer’s antics as much as the next guy. But the father of the Simpson family is stupid, boorish, drunk most of the time, irresponsible, comically incompetent, and childish. In the cartoon world, he is echoed, of course, by Family Guy’s Peter Griffin, who is similarly buffoonish. In both cases, the wives – Marge in The Simpsons and Lois in Family Guy – have the brains, the competence, and the moral responsibility. And in The Simpsons, Homer is imitated by his son Bart, who is sneaky, stupid, and unmotivated, and Marge by daughter Lisa, who is hypersmart, uber-competent, and morally alert. In one

memorable episode, Lisa is worried that she has inherited her father’s terrible qualities but is relieved to discover, by the show’s end, that the “stupid gene” is communicated only to the males in the Simpson line. In another of my favorite Simpsons scenes, Homer is told, at a moment of moral crisis, to consult that “little voice that tells you right from wrong,” and he responds, “You mean Lisa?” If you think this male-bashing is restricted to cartoons, think again. Ray Romano’s character in Everybody Loves Raymond, Ed O’Neill’s hopeless father in Married With Children, and Ty Burrell’s hapless goofball in Modern Family – all are variations on the Homer Simpson theme. Add to all this the presentation of fathers as not just inept, but horrific in Game of Thrones, and the absent, indifferent fathers of Stranger Things. And I wonder whether you’ve noticed a character that can

be found in practically every movie made today? I call her the “all conquering female.” Almost without exception, she is underestimated by men and then proves herself more intelligent, cleverer, more courageous, and more skilled than any man. Whether we’re talking about a romantic comedy, an office-drama, or an adventure movie, the all conquering female will almost inevitably show up. And she has to show her worth in a domineering way, that is to say, over and against the men. For her to appear strong, they have to appear weak. For a particularly good case in point, watch the most recent Star Wars film. Now I perfectly understand the legitimacy of feminist concerns regarding the portrayal of women in the media as consistently demure, retiring, and subservient to men. I grant that, in most of the action/adventure movies that I saw growing up, women would typically twist an ankle or get captured and then require rescuing by the

swashbuckling male hero – and I realize how galling this must have been to generations of women. And therefore, a certain correction was undoubtedly in order. But what is problematic now is the Nietzschean quality of the reaction, by which I mean, the insistence that female power has to be asserted over and against males, that there is an either/or, zero-sum conflict between men and women. It is not enough, in a word, to show women as intelligent, savvy, and good; you have to portray men as stupid, witless, and irresponsible. That this savage contrast is having an effect especially on younger men is becoming increasingly apparent. In the midst of a “you-go-girl” feminist culture, many boys and young men feel adrift, afraid that any expression of their own good qualities will be construed as aggressive or insensitive. If you want concrete proof of this, take a look at the statistics contrasting female and male success at the university level.

And you can see the phenomenon in films such as Fight Club and The Intern. In the former, the Brad Pitt character turns to his friend and laments, “we’re thirty year old boys;” and in the latter, Robert De Niro’s classic male type tries to whip into shape a number of twenty-something male colleagues who are rumpled, unsure of themselves, without ambition – and of course under the dominance of an all conquering female. It might be the case that, in regard to money, power, and honor, a zero-sum dynamic obtains, but it decidedly does not obtain in regard to real virtue. The truly courageous person is not threatened by another person’s courage; the truly temperate man is not intimidated by the temperance of someone else; the truly just person is not put off by the justice of a countryman; and authentic love positively rejoices in the love shown by another. And therefore, it should be altogether possible to hold up

the virtue of a woman without denying virtue to a man. In point of fact, if we consult the “all conquering female” characters in films and TV, we see that they often exemplify the very worst of the traditional male qualities: aggression, suspicion, hypersensitivity, cruelty, etc. This is what happens when a Nietzschean framework has replaced a classical one.

This article first appeared at: www.wordonfire.org. This article has been reprinted with the kind permission of the editors.

My point is that it is altogether possible – and eminently desirable – to say “you go boy” with as much vigor as “you go girl.” And both the boys and the girls will be better for it.

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Bishop-elect Robert Barron is an author, speaker, theologian, and founder of Word on Fire, a global media ministry.

Science, Philosophy, and Abortion by Fr Kevin O’Reilly OP

aura Kennedy in an opinion piece for the Irish Times, “A thought experiment to tease out religious attitudes to abortion,” believes that the notion that life begins at conception “originates in and is inextricable from religious ideology” (Irish Times, 22 August 2016). In the majority of instances the justification of a pro-life attitude, she writes, “lies in religious thinking.” A few years ago, Desmond M. Clarke, emeritus professor of philosophy at UCC wrote an article for the Irish Times, entitled “Moral certainty is not sufficient to shape legislation,” (Irish Times, 27 May 2013). In a similar vein to Kennedy, he wrote: “The history of religions shows that sects have held the most irrational and

misogynistic beliefs, and have attributed them to a god.” Science tells us that at the moment of conception there comes into being a unique organism with its own intrinsic ability for self-development. Genetics provides the basis for affirming that conception and the coming into being of a human being occur at exactly the same time. According to Kennedy, however, those who accept the findings of science with regard to the beginnings of human life are bound by “religious ideology.” In the space of three sentences Clarke mentions Catholics, the idea that “No one can argue with faith,” and sects who have held

“the most irrational” beliefs. It’s difficult not to connect the dots. In what follows, let’s examine a key common supposition that unites the articles penned by these two philosophers – a supposition that underpins, albeit unconsciously, much pro-choice thinking. It will become apparent that the two philosophers I have referred to have reached their conclusions by ignoring the fact that we do in fact have bodies and without taking into consideration the demands of contemporary science. Clarke writes that there are “familiar reasons” for rejecting the idea that “every human life is that of a person from the moment of conception.” In his view it is therefore not possible to ascribe the rights and moral entitlements of persons to “human life from conception.” Just exactly when we can begin to ascribe the rights and entitlements of persons to human beings is not clear from this formulation of the point. Clarke’s philosophical presuppositions do not allow – nor can they allow – any clarity.

Clarke, in his article, explicitly quotes Locke. His views on personhood, moreover, reflect the latter’s philosophy of human consciousness. Clarke of course does not indicate that there are in fact serious objections to a Lockean understanding of consciousness. One fundamental difficulty with the application of this view of consciousness to questions of human personhood is that it requires us to pretend that our bodies are not part of who we are as persons. Personhood, we are led to believe, is simply based on consciousness. A range of other philosophers argue otherwise based on the understanding that we are not only our minds and that we are not only our bodies. We are a unity of both. The analytic philosopher, Lawrence A. Shapiro, ably demonstrates the intimate relationship between body and soul in his book The Mind Incarnate. In this regard he draws upon a variety of sources such as neuroscience, evolutionary theory, and embodied cognition.

If we accept that our bodies – whatever their stage of development – are part of who we are as human persons, then we have absolutely no grounds to exclude any human being from the circle of human persons. From the point of conception every human being is a person. We are therefore morally compelled to attribute rights and moral entitlements to human life from conception onwards. The logic of human rights demands that there cannot be an elite group of people dictating who else will or will not be afforded the status of human persons.

that Catholics tend to be more open to the demands of science and to the rigours of philosophical reason when it comes to the issue of when one becomes a human person. Kennedy is correct that thought experiments are very useful in clarifying issues. Conceptual clarity is however worth its weight in gold. I suggest that secular philosophers who have espoused the pro-choice cause could do no better than to knock humbly at the door of their Catholic confreres in this regard.

Clearly, the fact that human personhood begins at conception is forced on us not by religion but by philosophical reason, supported by contemporary science, with all due respect to Kennedy and Clarke. The reasons I have offered do not rely on faith. They rely rather on science and on philosophical reason. The debate about abortion is absolutely not one about religion. Much less is it about Catholic faith – although it is interesting to ask why it seems

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR

Fr Kevin O’Reilly OP, formerly taught at the Milltown Institute, Dublin, and holds doctorates in both philosophy and theology. In the forthcoming academic year he will teach moral theology at the Angelicum University, Rome.

What Unique Moral Questions Are Raised by Pregnancy? by Helen Watt

n her new book, The Ethics of Pregnancy, Abortion and Childbirth: Exploring Moral Choices in Childbearing, British bioethicist Dr Helen Watt addresses that question from a philosophical angle. In this interview with the Social Trends Institute Dr Watt outlines the unique moral problems raised by pregnancy.

roles, bonds and opportunities as well as rights and duties which we just don’t find elsewhere.

Q. Your book title begins with ‘The ethics of pregnancy’ – what does that mean? A. ‘Ethics of pregnancy’ is a rather unusual term – if you Google it, you won’t find very much – but there’s a rich area to explore here of connections,

Of course, some moral concerns that apply to pregnancy do apply to human beings more generally. However, there are also concerns unique to pregnancy, permitting or restricting decisions of various kinds that might be made by the woman or those around her. The woman is not a mere ‘foetal container’ or even ‘helpful stranger’ or ‘babysitter’ to the foetus: her very specific bodily relationship with the baby gives her very specific rights as well as duties.

Can you give me some examples? Yes – one obvious example would be the right of the woman to keep and raise the baby after birth. That also applies to a woman who is not the genetic mother but a so-called ‘surrogate’ mother who carries the child for the benefit of others. It is wrong to take a child from a surrogate mother who wants to keep it: the law itself recognizes, at least in many parts of the world, her right to keep the baby. Pregnancy makes a woman a mother – even if motherhood has already been fragmented between genetic and gestational motherhood. The birth mother, including a surrogate mother, has rights and also duties to raise the child or otherwise ensure the child’s well-being as best she can. Special rights and duties also exist before birth: I argue in the book that the right and duty to be ‘there’ for the baby – or at least, not to be deliberately separated from it – is

particularly strong while the two bodies are still very closely connected and the baby is too young to live outside the mother. The woman’s unique bodily and familial role very much includes guardianship of the pregnancy more generally: she has the primary right to make judgment calls on things like food and drink and medical treatments for her baby and herself. Again, the woman is not a mere babysitter: she is already a parent and moreover, a parent of a special kind – the ‘bodyparent’ who is therefore the guardian of the baby in a rather strong sense. Many decisions should be left to her ultimately – although there is nothing wrong with respectful offers of help and information which she may need to protect her own health and the baby’s. Do you deal with ‘hard cases’ like medical situations where the woman’s life is at risk? Yes, I think we need to look carefully and honestly at these cases (for example, where the

pregnant woman has a heart condition) and ask what exactly is, and is not, required for everyone’s rights to be respected. All too often, those who really do want to respect the rights of both woman and baby ask only one question when considering some proposal: ‘Is the baby’s death intended?’ The answer may be no – even for interventions which are in fact quite violent and very much focused on the baby and not just the mother. But there are other questions we need to ask, just as with other kinds of ‘vital conflict’ resolution – lethal separation of conjoined twins, for example – where a bodily assault of some kind is involved, even if there is no aim to kill. In the book, I try to show that avoiding the aim to kill is not the only absolute moral principle to respect: bodily respect for both mother and baby goes well beyond that. Of course, treatments that target the woman’s body alone are different again – the classic example here is cancer treatment, where no moral absolute is engaged, even if risks

to the baby should be minimized where possible (in fact many cancer treatments do not harm the baby). What about pregnancy after rape – does the book discuss that too? Once pregnant the woman is already a mother, as many women acknowledge. Women can be courageous in protecting – or at least respecting – their children even in the most adverse circumstances. When writing the book, I read narratives of women who took their role as mother very seriously and welcomed the baby in some extremely fraught situations. And that includes women who became pregnant due to rape: I was surprised (though I should not have been) to see how many women in that situation not only carry their pregnancy to term, but actually keep and raise what they see very much as their own son or daughter and not just ‘the rapist’s child’.

And pregnancy where the baby has a terminal condition like anencephaly? In writing the book, and even more since I finished it, I’ve learnt more and more about how women and men can treasure their time with a child who after birth may have only days or hours to live. I’ve read some beautiful comments from parents, with some saying that the very short time – in some cases, minutes – they had with the baby after birth was the most precious time of their lives. Pregnancy itself can be treasured while the baby is still with the mother and still alive. To be given a very adverse prenatal test result is of course devastating, and parents as well as their medical team and family should be aware of positive help available. The perinatal hospice movement can be a lifeline through pregnancy, as can parent networks such as Be Not Afraid, Every Life Counts and so on.

You mentioned surrogacy earlier; what about reproductive technologies in general – do they affect our view of pregnancy? Yes, they certainly do seem to affect it: the symbolic structure of conception seems to be important in helping to shape parental attitudes of conditional or unconditional acceptance. One woman who found she was pregnant with twins after IVF using donor eggs asked for the twin pregnancy to be ‘reduced’ to one baby, which is not at all unknown; she confessed that the whole process had been so ‘consumerish’ already that the number of babies seemed just one more thing to control. Many IVF embryos are of course discarded before any pregnancy begins, so the ‘products’ of the IVF ‘production process’ do tend to be treated in some ways more like manufactured objects than as human lives with their own moral claim. That is all the more reason to offer couples alternatives to IVF (NaproTechnology would be one example) that may help them

have a baby while still respecting their relationship with each other and with any life conceived. What has been the response to the book so far? The response so far has been positive – I’m particularly pleased to have had good feedback from nonphilosophers, as I’m writing from a philosophical background but not only for those who share that background. I’m very grateful that people are reading the book, which at least keeps the conversation going. The meaning and value of pregnancy and the rights and duties it

carries are worth looking at in greater depth, not just because they are interesting in theory (although they are certainly that) but because they matter so much for people’s lives. This article first appeared on the website www.socialtrendsinstitute. org and is reprinted here with kind permission of the Social Trend Institute.

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Dr Helen Watt is Senior Research Fellow at the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in the UK. This article is republished with permission from the Social Trends Institute.

Is Islam a Religion of Peace? by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

s Islam a religion of peace? Is it compatible with Western liberalism? Or does Islam need a reformation? Somali-born author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains. I was raised a practicing Muslim and remained one for almost half my life. I attended madrassas, that is, Islamic schools, and memorized large parts of the Qur'an. As a child, I lived in Mecca for a time and frequently visited the Grand Mosque. As a teenager, I sympathized with the Muslim Brotherhood. At twenty-two while my family was living in Kenya, my father arranged my marriage to a

member of our family clan, a man that I had never met. I ran away, made my way to Holland, studied there and eventually was elected a member of the Dutch parliament. Now I live in the United States. In short, I have seen Islam from the inside and the outside. I believe that a reform of Islam is necessary and possible. And only Muslims can make that reform a reality. But we in the West cannot remain on the sidelines as though the outcome of this struggle has nothing to do with us. If the jihadists win and the hope for a reformed Islam dies, the rest of the world will pay a terrible price. The terror

attacks in New York, London, Madrid, Paris and many other places are only a preview for what is to come. For this reason, I believe that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s foolish to insist, as Western leaders habitually do, that the violent acts committed in the name of Islam can somehow be divorced from the religion itself. For more than a decade, my message has been simple: Islam is not a religion of peace. When I assert this, I do not mean that Islamic belief makes all Muslims violent. This is

manifestly not the case: There are many millions of peaceful Muslims in the world. What I do say is that the call to violence and the justification for it are explicitly stated in the sacred texts of Islam. Moreover, this theologically sanctioned violence is there to be activated by any number of offenses, including but not limited to adultery, blasphemy, homosexuality and apostasy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that is to leave Islam. Those who tolerate this intolerance do so at their peril.

As someone who has known what it is to live without freedom, I watch in amazement as those who call themselves liberals and progressives – people who claim to believe so fervently in individual liberty and minority rights – make common cause with the forces in the world that manifestly pose the greatest threats to that very freedom and those very minorities. In 2014 I was invited to accept an honorary degree from Brandeis University for the work I have done on behalf of women’s rights in the Muslim world. That invitation was withdrawn after professors and students protested my criticism of Islam. My subsequent “disinvitation,” as it came to be called, was no favor to Muslims – just the opposite. By labeling critical examination of Islam as inherently “racist,” we make the chances of reformation far less likely. There are no limits on criticism of Christianity at American universities or anywhere else, for that matter; why should there be of Islam?

Instead of contorting Western intellectual traditions so as not to offend our Muslim fellow citizens, we need to defend both those traditions and the Muslim dissidents who take great risks to promote them. We should support these brave men and women in every way possible. Imagine a platform for Muslim dissidents that communicated their message through YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. These are the Muslims we should be supporting - for our sake as much for the sake of Islam. In the Cold War, the West celebrated dissidents such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, and Václav Havel, who had the courage to challenge the Soviet system from within. Today, there are many dissidents who challenge Islam, but the West either ignores them or dismisses them as “not representative.” This is a grave mistake. Reformers such as Tawfiq Hamid, Asra Nomani & Zuhdi Jasser and many others must be supported and protected. They should be as

well known as Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, and Havel were in the 1980s.

I'm Ayaan Hirsi Ali of Harvard University for Prager University.

If we do in fact support political, social and religious freedom, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity. We need to say to Muslims living in the West: If you want to live in our societies, to share in their material benefits, then you need to accept that our freedoms are not optional.

Islam is at a cross roads of reformation or self-destruction. But so is the West.

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Senior Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at The Harvard Kennedy School, a Fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Ayaan was named one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” of 2005, one of the Glamour Heroes of 2005 and Reader’s Digest’s European of the Year for 2005. She is the best selling author of Infidel and Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now.

Euthanizing Children by Wesley J. Smith

he death of a terminally ill seventeen-year-old boy made headlines recently, as Belgium’s first case of child euthanasia. I don’t understand the sudden fuss. The Netherlands has long allowed minors to request and receive euthanasia: Dutch children down to age sixteen can receive euthanasia without their parents’ consent, and children can be killed by doctors with parental consent starting at age twelve. Perhaps Belgium’s euthanasia law has received this recent media attention because it has no age limits, instead requiring that a minor demonstrate a capacity to

make autonomous decisions before receiving assisted suicide. Think about this: Children who can’t enter into legal contracts, get tattooed, or be licensed to drive a car may request – and receive – death. The healthcare system doesn’t dole out death only to teens and preteens. In the Netherlands, doctors commit infanticide against babies born with serious disabilities or terminal illnesses with impunity, even though the practice remains technically illegal. Indeed, doctors at the Groningen University Medical Center felt so safe committing

infanticide that they published the Groningen Protocol, a bureaucratic checklist to help determine whether a baby is killable. The protocol permits doctors to administer lethal injections to infants under three scenarios: –the baby has no chance of survival (a circumstance that is sometimes misdiagnosed); –the baby “may survive after a period of intensive treatment but expectations for their future are very grim”; –the baby does “not depend on technology for physiologic stability” but has “suffering [that] is severe, sustained, and cannot be alleviated.” This means that doctors are lethally injecting not only babies who are dying, but also babies with serious disabilities who do not need intensive care – those who are living what is sometimes called an “unlivable life” by Dutch infanticide apologists.The Groningen

Protocol was published without criticism in the New England Journal of Medicine. But babies don’t have decisional capacity. Thus, in order to maintain the pretense that euthanasia is about “choice,” the protocol requires parental consent. That, however, opens the door to all kinds of horrors. One can easily envision parents deciding that they would be better off without a disabled child for whom they would have to provide ongoing care. After all, such decisions are ubiquitous involving laterterm abortions of fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome and other disabilities. Moreover, according to a study published in The Lancet in 1997 – admittedly, before the protocol was crafted – some 21 percent of babies killed by doctors responding to the authors’ questionnaires had been euthanized without parental consent. I guess we should be pleased that the euthanasia death of a

seventeen-year-old remains at least mildly controversial. But it is clear that the culture of death, if allowed to progress further, will eventually consider such deaths routine. That is why I was completely unsurprised that Princeton University’s Peter Singer, who believes it should be acceptable to kill babies because (in his view) they are not “persons,” came to the Belgian law’s defense. Singer assures us that the law “effectively excludes very small children.” But why would the age of the euthanized be of any significance to Singer, given that he supports not only infanticide but also the nonvoluntary euthanasia of adults who have lost decisional capacity? Moreover, Singer believes that children do not attain “full moral status” until “after two years” of age – implying they too could be killed, although he is too politically savvy to support such a public policy.

Singer also grapples – poorly – with the fact that children he thinks should be allowed to choose to die can’t make other adult decisions: Age limits are always to some extent arbitrary. Chronological age and mental age can diverge. For some activities for which a mental age limit may be relevant, the number of people engaging in the activity is very large: voting, obtaining a driving license, and having sex, for example. But it would be very costly to scrutinize whether every person interested in those activities has the capacity to understand what is involved in voting, driving responsibly, or giving informed consent to sex. That is why we rely on chronological age as a rough indication of the relevant mental capacity. This is not true of minors requesting euthanasia. If the number of those who meet the requirements of the law is so small that Belgium has had only one case over the past two years, it is not difficult to carry

out a thorough examination of these patients’ capacities to make such a request.

euthanasia proponents see killing and suicide as acceptable answers to human suffering and acceptable means of reducing costs of care. Publicizing the euthanasia of a seventeenyear-old marks the beginning of a campaign to normalize putting dying (and eventually disabled) children to sleep.

Please. There are plenty of minors who could be shown in court to have the decisionmaking capacity that allows Belgian youngsters to receive death, and yet who are still considered rape victims when they have consensual sex with an adult. The issue isn’t the cost or difficulty of measuring maturity, but the definitional need to protect all minors from harmful choices. Here’s the bottom line. Euthanasia consciousness isn’t really about “choice.” Nor is it about terminal illness. Rather,

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism and a consultant to the Patients Rights Council. His new book Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine was just published by Encounter Books.

The triumph of the will over the intellect by George Rutler

here was a time when debates consisted in measured arguments, logical in syntax and respectful of the opponent. One thinks of the earlier, elevated exchanges between G. K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw, whose differences of belief about almost everything – including the most important things: religion and politics – were imaged in Chesterton’s corpulence and Shaw’s emaciation. When Chesterton said that Shaw looked as if there had been a famine in the land, Shaw said that Chesterton looked like its cause. Then they dined with laughter, for they were bonded by the conviction that there are high ideals that are objective, even if they disagreed about what they were.

When prejudice and sentiment replace love of truth, discourse yields to shouting. Serious conversations have given way to “talking heads” shouting rehearsed slogans at each other, not letting facts stand in the way of opinion. This is why a prominent media figure recently lamented that “journalism is dead.” The irony is that this degeneracy of discourse is in the name of free speech, when it actually disdains such freedom. The power of an argument exists only in the exercise of power itself: might makes right. “But wisdom is justified by her children” (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:35). Every tyrant tries to defeat truth with drums. It is the consequence of ideology usurping

logic. The decay of logic began when men confused the two. The triumph of the will over the intellect was a subtle attitude even among such sophisticated mediaeval theologians as William of Ockham and Duns Scotus. Of course its most violent and vulgar expression was in Islam, but it leaked into modern attitudes through cynical people like Nietzsche and Freud who did not think themselves religious at all. All that may seem obscure, but you meet it daily in the “spin doctors” of TV talk shows and newspapers. Einstein said that National Socialism took over Germany by suborning the media, the universities, and the courts of law. That corruption has free play in our time, when you can tell what a television channel will report simply by which one it is, when college students burst into tears when a lecturer says something that contradicts their conceits, and when judges render decisions according to their political allegiance.

is a corruption of sex, and militarism is a corruption of the military. Our Lady was the opposite of the voluntarist: “Let it be done to me according to thy word.” And her Son, conceived by that selfless surrender to truth, redeemed all creation with the inner dialogue of truth with truth: “Not my will but thine be done.” Jesus was not a talking head. We know all this because the Evangelists were not spin doctors. Copyright © 2016 Father George W. Rutler. This article is reprinted with the kind permission of the author.

This mentality is “Voluntarism.” It is a corruption of voluntas, which means will or desire, just as racism is a corruption of race, and sexism

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR

Father George W. Rutler is the pastor of St. Michael’s church in New York City. He has written many books, including: Hints of Heaven: The Parables of Christ and What They Mean for You, Principalities and Powers: Spiritual Combat 1942-1943, Cloud of Witnesses – Dead People I Knew When They Were Alive.

Book review:   Adam and Eve after the Pill by Rev. John McCloskey

uthor Mary Eberstadt’s timing could not be better for her new book on the painful paradoxes of the sexual revolution. Titled Adam and Eve after the Pill and published by Ignatius Press, it appears at an interesting juncture: during a presidential election season, as the nation suffers from the disappointing Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare. On top of that, we have HHS’s hotly contested attempt to force all enterprises it deems non-religious (including religiously sponsored charities and schools that offer services to people of all faiths) to insure a range of “health” expenses,

Author Mary Eberstadt Publisher Ignatius Press, 2012 Pages 175

such as birth control and sterilization, that violate their beliefs. Eberstadt is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a prolific writer in conservative and Catholic publications with several other books to her credit. Her latest book, though it resonates in the current political atmosphere, is not about politics but rather about the ongoing impact of the Pill, which in Eberstadt’s opinion has changed, well, everything: “A series of Popes, some of the world’s leading scientists, and many other unlikely allies all agree: No single event since Eve took the apple has been as

consequential for relations between the sexes as the arrival of modern contraception. By rendering fertile women infertile with 100% accuracy (sic), the Pill and related devices have transformed the lives and families of the great majority of the people born after their invention. Modern contraception is not only a fact of our time; it may even be the central fact in that it is hard to think of any other whose demographic, social behavior, and personal fall out has been as profound.” Chapter by chapter the author builds her case that the use of the pill has been a disaster, with many undesired side effects that seriously damage the primal institutions of marriage and family whether one sees them as natural or divine in origin. As evidence she cites dozens of welldocumented studies, including demographic studies of vertiginous drops in birthrates throughout the world, from Russia to China to Europe or the Americas, that portend social, economic, and political

turmoil. Just consider a depopulating Israel, for example, surrounded by dozens of millions of procreating Muslims. The separation of sex and procreation has also spawned the deadly plague of America’s largest entertainment industry: pornography. The author refers to surveys reporting that “65% of boys age sixteen and seventeen report having friends who regularly download Internet pornography. and another study relates that “watching sex on television predicts Adolescent Initiation of Sexual behavior,” while a third finds that “men who use pornography have lost the ability to relate or be close to women. They have trouble being turned on by ‘real’ women and their sex lives with their girls or wives, collapse.” In addition, the use of the Pill or other forms of contraception along with alcohol produce what Eberstadt refers to as “the hook-up” culture at ‘Toxic U.” This environment was memorably portrayed in author

Tom Wolfe’s novel I am Charlotte Simmons. One campus psychiatrist has written a book that details the common denominators of his college patients: “drinking to oblivion, drugging, one night sex, sexually transmitted diseases and all the rest of the hook up-culture trappings.” A Washington Post writer reports that hooking up has become the “primary” sexual interaction of the young. Eberstadt points out that one way to push back Toxic U is to bring back early marriage. The most compelling reason for the hookup culture is not a change in human nature. It is not even a caving in to peer pressure. It is, rather, a perverse efficiency. Students who do not expect to marry anyone they meet in college have no reason to “invest” in their romantic partners. The greatest victims are young women, whose nature is being ignored at great peril-to them. They are weaker constitutionally in the sense that the very behaviors that define “Toxic U-binge drinking

and hooking up-are documented and said by all, including remorseful girls themselves, to be more likely to damage girls than boys.” This book, which is relentlessly and understandably grim in its diagnosis of the damage of contraception to society, strangely and happily presents glimmers of hope through countercultural institutions such as the nondenominational Love and Fidelity (begun, of all places, at … Princeton University) and the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), where growth has been particularly dramatic. Founded in 1998, FOCUS has expanded to more than 30 colleges and universities and more than 4000 students. There is also the Evangelical “Christian Union,” formed with the ambitious mission to “reclaim the campus for Christ.” Eberstadt devotes one thoughtprovoking chapter to the connection between food and sex, two normal appetites inevitably linked to survival of

the individual and of the human species. She points out that “up to just about now, for example, the prime brakes on sex outside of marriage have been fear of pregnancy, fear of social stigma and punishment, and fear of disease. The Pill and its cousins have substantially undermined the first two strictures, at least in theory, while modern medicine has largely erased the third.”

secular perspective as she charts the horrors that have been unleashed upon the world and particularly the United States as a result of separating sex activity from procreation. Nonetheless, her book is written largely to vindicate the most controversial Catholic encyclical of modern times: Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, issued at the height of the culture-changing 1960s.

“As for food, one technological revolution after another explains the extraordinary change in availability. One result of this change in food fortune is the unprecedented, ‘disease of civilization’ known as obesity.” The parallels are obvious. In both cases the misuse through technology of natural appetites has turned these basic goods into enormous health problems, not only in terms of disease but also in unexpected and harmful social behaviors.

As Eberstadt puts it, “Forty plus years after Humane Vitae and fifty plus after the approval of the Pill, there are more than enough ironies both secular and religious, to make one swear there is a humorist in Heaven.”

This relatively lean book relies heavily on secular sources. Likewise, Eberstadt analyzes the culture from a primarily

Or as UVA sociologist Brad Wilcox puts it, “The leading scholars who have tackled these topics are not Christians, and most of them aren’t political or social conservatives. They are, rather, honest social scientists willing to follow the data where ever it leads.”

Eberstadt notes that Humanae Vitae “warned of four resulting trends [from widespread contraception]; a general lowering of moral standards throughout society; a rise in infidelity; a lessening of respect for women by men; and the coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments.”

propagates a plague of venereal diseases and poor health conditions such as obesity, and indulges in largely pornographic entertainments. Hmm, sounds like the fall of the Roman Empire to me. This review first appeared on Catholic Online.

Case closed? Suffice it to say that Pope Paul VI will not be receiving a posthumous prize for his vindicated prophecy any time soon. The more important concern now is whether the modern world will survive a populace that kills or abuses its children, enters into sterile and ephemeral marriages,

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Rev C. John McCloskey III is a Catholic priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei and member of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross. He is the former director of the Catholic Information Centre of the Archdiocese of Washington. Website: www.frmccloskey.com.

Director Gavin O'Connor Starring Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons

Film review:   The Accountant

USA

by John P. McCarthy

n effect, the action-drama The Accountant (Warner Bros.) argues that those with autism have a license to kill as well as to abet a litany of other criminal activities. If this summation makes the movie sound preposterous and morally bankrupt, then so be it. After doing the math, it’s the only deduction one can draw. Ben Affleck stars as Christian Wolff, an autistic man with a genius for crunching numbers and the ability to dispatch adversaries with brutal precision. Wolff’s story is relayed via a series of flashbacks to his turbulent

childhood. In the present day, he runs a one-person accounting firm out of a Chicago-area strip mall. Although he lives modestly and takes great pains not to draw attention to himself, he’s amassed a fortune by working as a forensic accountant for drug cartels, mobsters and various despots around the world. His mathematical talent is innate, but owing to rigorous training provided by his father, a military officer, he’s become an expert marksman and lethal fighter – skills that come in handy given the nature of his clientele.

In other respects, Wolff presents as a caricature of someone on the autism spectrum. A slave to order and routine, he’s extremely methodical and thorough. Outwardly stolid, he lacks social skills and is unable to make small talk or pick up on non-literal types of communication. His array of adaptive behaviors enables him to cope day-to-day while safely conducting his dangerous business, which amounts to solving complex puzzles for illicit enterprises. Ultimately, he seems to enjoy the work too much. At the urging of his unidentified handler – a woman’s voice on the telephone – Wolff takes on a

legitimate customer. At a robotics manufacturing firm, a junior staffer, Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick), has spotted irregularities in the company’s books and he’s hired to find out where the money has gone. Meanwhile, Treasury Department official Ray King (J.K. Simmons) assigns a young analyst Marybeth Medina (Cynthia AddaiRobinson) to discover the identity of the mathematical whiz known in criminal circles only as “The Accountant”. A mysterious hit man called Brax (Jon Bernthal) is also stalking him. Director Gavin O’Connor’s presentation of the absurdly

convoluted plot is uneven and sometimes ham-fisted. While the attempt to find levity in Wolff’s condition is a welcome respite from the grim proceedings, it also feels borderline offensive. Generally wooden acting doesn’t make the movie’s conceit any easier to swallow. Despite its high, though not graphic, level of violence and a steady flow of bad language, The Accountant might be chalked up as a fairly intriguing, imperfectly executed twist on a durable entertainment formula. Preventing that from happening is the fact that the film doubles down on its perverse premise by making an explicit plea for greater sensitivity toward those who aren’t NT – neurotypicals. To argue that the autistic should be considered different rather than abnormal or freakish is both plausible and valuable. Yet this message is undercut because Wolff is given a pass morally and is not

accountable for his actions. The movie asks the viewer to show understanding toward Wolff, when, ironically, he shows no mercy or empathy toward his many victims. Indeed, there’s scant indication he is able to discern right from wrong. There are several vague mentions of him operating according his own moral code, though it’s difficult to say what that might be. Surely it’s not the idea that it’s OK to murder and facilitate crime as long as you’re funding research and supporting the humane treatment of the autistic. Philosophically, the movie highlights the danger of lapsing into relativism when the celebration of difference goes too far. Christian Wolff is handicapped in a crucial respect, one that is fundamental to humanity. He is deeply flawed as a moral being and ought to be judged and treated differently than those who experience remorse and, whether or not they are

able express it, change their behavior accordingly.

requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

In this regard, The Accountant does more than merely trivialize its subject matter. One might say it sets the cause of autism awareness back decades or more to a period comparable to a moral Dark Ages.

The film contains frequent intense gun violence and hand-to-hand combat and much rough, crude and profane language. The Catholic News Service classification is O – morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R – restricted. Under 17

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR John McCarthy is a guest reviewer for Catholic News Service.

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RAISING A LARGE FAMILY – with love A public lecture by Chema and Rosa Postigo-Pich

Chema and Rosa who have the most school-age children in Spain, and possibly Europe, were chosen by the European Large Families Confederation (ELFAC) as Europe’s Large Family of the Year. Rosa recently authored a book recounting her experiences: Rosa, What's your secret? Raising a large family with love. In this lecture they discuss the challenges facing a large family: The spouses: keeping romance alive / evenings out / solving arguments / putting spouse first Children: love and individual attention / teaching responsibility / patience / faith in the family / customs and traditions The material things: how to balance the books / organise the day / keep order in the home.

5.00-6.15pm, SUNDAY, 22nd JANUARY 2017 Venue: Rosemont School, Enniskerry Road, Sandyford, Dublin 18 Fee: €20 per person To book contact: familyenrichmentireland.org