"If Catholic clergy feel it is appropriate to preach against federal health legislation that the church believes allows birth control and abortion, then it should also have the courage to preach against 300 million guns that Americans, including many Catholics, currently own."
Legislation is an act of the human will. Therefore, it has a moral character. Guns are inanimate objects. Generally, things have no inhernet moral character.
To over-simplify a bit, it is as if the author said that if the Catholc clergy feel it is appropriate to preach against murder and adultery, then it should also have the courage to preach against hammers.
Then a bit of sophistry: "the church believes allows birth control and abortion"... Actually, it mandates it. Its a feature, not a percieved flaw, according to the Catholic empowered with implementing it. And the Church, if not the National Catholic Fishwrap, recognize the inherently evil nature of abortion and birth control.
So, the author and his publication question the validity of Catholic clergy preaching against human actions that are inherently sinful and the human action that mandates their public support while demanding that the clergy preach against an inanimate object.
Insofar as they are machines built by men, the purpose for which they were built has a moral character. If they have no other purpose, that character, good or evil, may inure to them, I suppose. But even IBCMs are not that easy to classify. Ronald Reagan deployed Pershing missiles to Europe with the intent of forcing the USSR to remove intermediate range nuclear missiles from Eastern Europe, ending the missile race and the Soviet empire with it. He succeeded. Were those immoral ends? Were the means inherently immoral?
Legislation is an act of the human will. Therefore, it has a moral character. Guns are inanimate objects. Generally, things have no inhernet moral character.
To over-simplify a bit, it is as if the author said that if the Catholc clergy feel it is appropriate to preach against murder and adultery, then it should also have the courage to preach against hammers.
Then a bit of sophistry: "the church believes allows birth control and abortion"... Actually, it mandates it. Its a feature, not a percieved flaw, according to the Catholic empowered with implementing it. And the Church, if not the National Catholic Fishwrap, recognize the inherently evil nature of abortion and birth control.
So, the author and his publication question the validity of Catholic clergy preaching against human actions that are inherently sinful and the human action that mandates their public support while demanding that the clergy preach against an inanimate object.
Insofar as they are machines built by men, the purpose for which they were built has a moral character. If they have no other purpose, that character, good or evil, may inure to them, I suppose. But even IBCMs are not that easy to classify. Ronald Reagan deployed Pershing missiles to Europe with the intent of forcing the USSR to remove intermediate range nuclear missiles from Eastern Europe, ending the missile race and the Soviet empire with it. He succeeded. Were those immoral ends? Were the means inherently immoral?
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