Thursday, July 10, 2025

Aquinas and prudential judgment

In contemporary debates in Catholic moral theology, a distinction is often drawn between actions that are flatly ruled out in principle and those whose permissibility or impermissibility is a matter of prudential judgment.  For example, it is often noted that abortion is wrong always and in principle, whereas how many immigrants a country ought to allow in and under what conditions are matters of prudential judgment.  But exactly what does this mean, and how do we tell the difference between the cases?

It is important at the outset to put aside some common misunderstandings.  The difference between matters of principle and matters of prudential judgment is not a difference between moral questions and merely pragmatic ones.  Morality is at issue in both cases.  Prudence is, after all, one of the cardinal moral virtues.  One can be mistaken in one’s prudential judgments, and when one is, one is guilty of imprudence, which is a kind of moral failure (whether or not one is culpable for the failure).

Contrary to another misunderstanding (which I recently had occasion to rebut), to say that something is a matter of prudential judgment and then go on to note that reasonable people can differ in their prudential judgments is not to commit oneself to any kind of moral relativism.  Prudential judgments can indeed simply be mistaken.  To say that reasonable people can disagree is merely to note that a person might have made such a judgment in good faith on the basis of the evidence available to him, even if the evidence later turns out to be misleading or his reasoning turns out to have been flawed.  He is still objectively wrong all the same.  Or there may in some cases be more than one reasonable way to apply a certain objective and universal moral principle, so that reasonable people might opt to apply it in any of these different ways.

As always, illumination can be found in St. Thomas Aquinas.  In several places, he makes remarks that are relevant to understanding the difference between straightforward matters of principle and matters of prudential judgment.  For example, in On Evil, Aquinas notes:

The will of a rational creature is obliged to be subject to God, but this is achieved by affirmative and negative precepts, of which the negative precepts oblige always and on all occasions, and the affirmative precepts oblige always but not on every occasion… One sins mortally who dishonors God by transgressing a negative precept or not fulfilling an affirmative precept on an occasion when it obliges. (Question VI, Regan translation)

Though the distinction between matters of principle and matters of prudence is somewhat loose, it seems largely (though perhaps not always) to correspond to Aquinas’s distinction between negative precepts, which oblige on every occasion, and affirmative precepts, which do not.  What this distinction amounts to is made clearer in some remarks St. Thomas makes when commenting on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans:

He lists the negative precepts, which forbid a person to do evil to his neighbor.  And this for two reasons.  First, because the negative precepts are more universal both as to time and as to persons.  As to time, because the negative precepts oblige always and at every moment.  For there is no time when one may steal or commit adultery.  Affirmative precepts, on the other hand, oblige always but not at every moment, but at certain times and places: for a man is not obliged to honor his parents every minute of the day, but at certain times and places.  Negative precepts are more universal as to persons, because no man may be harmed.  Second, because they are more obviously observed by love of neighbor than are the affirmative.  For a person who loves another, rather refrains from harming him than gives him benefits, which he is sometimes unable to give. (Commentary on the Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans, Chapter 13, Lecture 2)

Aquinas’s examples hopefully make his meaning clear.  Consider the negative precept “Do not commit adultery.”  Because adultery is intrinsically evil, we must never commit it, period, regardless of the circumstances.  And because we therefore needn’t consider circumstances, no judgment of prudence is required in order to apply the precept to circumstances.  Whatever the circumstances happen to be, we simply refrain from committing adultery, and that’s that.

By contrast, applying the affirmative precept “Honor your father and mother” does require attention to circumstances.  To be sure, the precept never fails to be binding on us (which is what Aquinas means by saying that it “obliges always”) but exactly what obeying it amounts to depends crucially on circumstances (which is why he says that “times and places” are relevant).  For example, suppose your father commands you to bring him a bottle of wine.  Does honoring him oblige you to do so?  It depends.  Suppose he has had a hard day, finds it relaxing to drink in moderation, and is infirm and has trouble walking.  Then it would certainly dishonor your father to ignore him and make him get up and fetch the bottle himself.  But suppose instead that he has a serious drinking problem, has already had too much wine, and will likely beat you or your mother if he gets any drunker.  Then it would not dishonor him to refuse to bring the bottle.

As Aquinas suggests in the Romans commentary, affirmative precepts involve providing someone with a benefit of some kind, which one is “sometimes unable to give.”  Consider the affirmative precept to give alms.  Even more obviously than in the case of the precept to honor one’s parents, what following this precept entails concretely is highly dependent on circumstances.  Obviously one cannot always be giving alms, for even if one tried to do so, one would quickly run out of money and not only be unable to give any further alms, but would be in need of alms oneself.  How to follow this affirmative precept clearly requires making a judgment of prudence.  How much money do I need for my own family?  How much might I be able to spare for others, and how frequently?  Exactly who, among all the people who need alms, should I give to?  Should I give by donating money, or instead by giving food and the like?  The answers to these questions are highly dependent on circumstances and will vary from person to person, place to place, and time to time.

The more complicated and variable the circumstances, the more difficult it can be to decide on a single correct answer and thus the greater the scope for reasonable disagreement.  The disagreement can be reasonable in either of two ways.  First, what might be obligatory for one person given the details of his circumstances may not be obligatory for another person given the details of his own very different circumstances.  For example, a rich man is bound to be obligated to give more in the way of alms than a poor man is.  Second, disagreement can be reasonable insofar as the complexity of the situation might make it uncertain which course of action is best even for people in the same personal circumstances.  Aquinas makes such points in the Summa Theologiae:

The practical reason… is busied with contingent matters, about which human actions are concerned: and consequently, although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects.  Accordingly then… in matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not the same for all, as to matters of detail, but only as to the general principles: and where there is the same rectitude in matters of detail, it is not equally known to all.

It is therefore evident that… as to the proper conclusions of the practical reason, neither is the truth or rectitude the same for all, nor, where it is the same, is it equally known by all.  Thus it is right and true for all to act according to reason: and from this principle it follows as a proper conclusion, that goods entrusted to another should be restored to their owner.  Now this is true for the majority of cases: but it may happen in a particular case that it would be injurious, and therefore unreasonable, to restore goods held in trust; for instance, if they are claimed for the purpose of fighting against one's country.  And this principle will be found to fail the more, according as we descend further into detail, e.g. if one were to say that goods held in trust should be restored with such and such a guarantee, or in such and such a way; because the greater the number of conditions added, the greater the number of ways in which the principle may fail, so that it be not right to restore or not to restore.  (Summa Theologiae I-II.94.4)

Points like these are ignored when, for example, it is alleged that Catholics who favor enforcing immigration laws are somehow no less at odds with the Church’s teaching than Catholics who favor legalized abortion.  For one thing, as I’ve shown elsewhere, the Church herself acknowledges the legitimacy of restrictions on immigration.  For another, the principles involved in the two cases are crucially different in exactly the ways Aquinas describes.  “Do not murder” is a negative precept that flatly rules out a certain kind of action, regardless of the circumstances.  And since abortion is a kind of murder, it flatly rules out abortion regardless of the circumstances.  There is no question of prudential judgment here.

By contrast, “Welcome the stranger” is an affirmative precept, whose application is highly dependent on circumstances.  Moreover, these circumstances involve millions of people, and complex matters of culture, law, economics, and national security.  Here, even more than in the case of almsgiving, there is much room for reasonable disagreement about how best to apply the precept.  That would be obvious even if the Church had not explicitly acknowledged that immigration can be restricted for various reasons (as, again, in fact she has).

It is thus sheer sophistry to pretend that by appealing to the notion of prudential judgment, Catholics who support immigration restrictions are somehow trying to rationalize dissent from Catholic teaching.  On the contrary, they are (whether one agrees with them or not) fully within the bounds of what Catholic moral theology has always acknowledged to be a legitimate range of opinion among Catholics.

Similar sophistry is committed by those who speak as if supporting a living wage or government provision of health care ought to be no less a matter of “pro-life” concern than abortion and euthanasia.  Here too the comparison is specious.  Abortion and euthanasia are flatly prohibited in all circumstances because they violate the negative precept “Do not murder.”  But principles like “Pay a living wage” or “Ensure health care for all” are affirmative precepts, and how best to apply them to concrete circumstances is highly dependent on various complex and contingent economic considerations.  There can be no reasonable disagreement among Catholics about whether abortion and euthanasia should be illegal.  But there can be reasonable disagreement among them about whether a certain specific minimum wage law is a good idea, or which sort of economic arrangements provide the best way to secure health coverage for all. 

The same point can be made about other contemporary controversies, mutatis mutandis.  And it applies across the political spectrum (e.g. to those who, during the most recent presidential election, pretended that there could be no reasonable doubt that any loyal Catholic must vote for their favored candidate).

53 comments:

  1. Perhaps chess would provide a good analogy?

    In chess there could be three kinds of situations:

    1. It could be that we can calculate the variations precisely and make a choice among candidate moves based on those calculations. Then we are supposed to calculate and make the best move.
    2. It could be that it is mathematically possible to calculate the variations, but not humanly possible to do so. In such case we are supposed to use heuristics, basic principles (like "a knight on the rim is dim").
    3. It could be that calculations are not even mathematically possible (for example, we can choose several moves which all keep the draw, but some of them lead to position that our opponent likes, and some of them lead to position that our opponent is likely to misplay). Then we have to base our choice on something else, like psychology.

    So, I would expect that there would be three types of moral situations:

    1. Situations where we can "calculate" the decision (like "to steal or not to steal").
    2. Situations where we use "heuristics", as "calculations" become too hard. I suppose that the matters concerned with usury ended up here to some extent?
    3. Situations where we can't base the decisions on "calculations" alone, but have to take some (probably uncertain) propositions from somewhere else (natural sciences, military science etc.).

    So, "prudential judgement" would concern cases 2 (choosing the heuristic) and 3 (dealing with uncertain propositions from some other science).

    Would that be accurate?

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    1. Just like in chess, sounds like a job for AI! :^)

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    2. To continue your chess analogy, I think the Spanish exchange would be prudential.

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    3. This analogy would be more useful if there were, in some cases, moves whose character is so repugnant to the game that you knew beforehand that calculation is irrelevant, you still shouldn't consider them, regardless of the calculated benefits. Without such a subset of possible acts, the analogy is only applicable as to the subset of possible moral acts whose intrinsic (from the object of the act) is already known to be good or neutral, it simply fails to apply to the subset of acts whose object is bad from their very nature.

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    4. Could we say the moves in chess "whose character is so repugnant to the game" are simply those moves which are never allowed? e.g. moving a pawn backwards. It's not perfect, of course, but interesting: in chess as in life, it's easy to identify the illegal move which can never be played and hard to find the right move, or the best move, which should be played. But, if we want to restrict the analogy to legal moves, a legal move in chess which would be "repugnant to the game" would have to be something like making a losing move on purpose: Inherently destructive to the game itself.

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    5. In Patrick Rothfuss's Name of the Wind series he describes a (fictional) game something like Go, and later a character waxes philosophic about the game, proclaiming that the mere mechanics of the game - and winning - are not the real point of it, the point is to win elegantly, winning by an ugly set of moves would be repugnant. He would have said that while it is possible to calculate the overt "benefits" of each element of that ugly set of moves, such a calculation is beside the point, as it remains ugly no matter how "successful" it is, and the point is more the elegance than the (technical) win.

      In baseball, (a "gentleman's game") there are unwritten "rules" that forbid certain kinds of undesired behavior, and the old pros pass them down to the youngsters by word and (in theory) by action. One of the biggest being "don't bunt to break up a no-hitter". The idea is that winning (i.e. "outcomes") can at times take a backseat to how you play the game, and a move made to win might be the wrong thing to do even if not technically against the rule book. So, some things are out of bounds even if they would get you the outcome you're aiming at, because they undermine the field of action itself. I don't know if chess has any analogue.

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    6. I like that, Tony. Some ways of winning certainly are prettier than others and some ways of winning are simply "not done by gentlemen." Is this a sign that the written rules are always incomplete; imperfect?

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  2. I like the "negative" vs "affirmative" precept idea, but I wonder if it really synchronizes with the principle of double effect. For example, even those adhering to a just war framework state bombing a military target even knowing innocent people might be killed could be permissible, as the innocents are not the target. Yet on this affirmative/negative precept framework, I think it would not be allowed as the negative precept (not killing innocents) would be the controlling factor. How can we justify ignoring the negative precept in such a case? would we not be still obliged?

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    1. The negative precepts prohibit, not an outcome, but acts with a particular object. But it is not your object (literally not your objective) to kill the innocent on base. Murder would require that you intend to kill some innocent person or persons. But in such a scenario, you do not intend it and rather seek to avoid it as much as practically possible, even while permitting some proportionate measure of collateral damage as a secondary (i.e. double-) effect.

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    2. Anon, please see my comment below as preface. The principle of double effect presumes first that you are dealing with a (proposed, possible) action that is either good or neutral in the object of the act. If it's an action that is intrinsically evil, so that the object of the act is bad, then it doesn't even get in the door to be considered under double effect.

      As applied to war: it is (or at least, it is typically assumed to be true) that directly targeting innocent civilians is an intrinsically evil, so if the action being considered includes that, then the object of the act is bad and the act is immoral. But if the act has as its object some militarily sensible and good objective - say, targeting the munitions dump of an army base - and it does NOT include within the object of the act that civilians die - then the added circumstance that some civilians might also die when you take out the munitions dump does not make the act evil in its species, and then the motive and circumstances are to be considered to determine whether the act as a whole is morally good: it will be morally good if the good intended and prudentially considered likely outweigh the evil consequences also anticipated as likely but not intended.

      So, if you know that on an average day the base with 10,000 soldiers also has 50 civilians, and if you bomb the munitions dump to make it explode, 5,000 soldiers and 25 civilians are likely to be killed or injured, the good intention (to get rid of the munitions, make the base unusable, and put 5,000 soldiers out of action) is eminently worthwhile as a military goal and proportionately justifies the UNintended 25 civilians killed or injured. Your knowledge THAT 25 civilians will be hurt doesn't get included in the object" of the act, or the motive, if you would have decided to take out the munitions equally well if on a given day it so happened there were no civilians present to be harmed (and in fact you would prefer to select such a day if one was available).

      If, on the other hand, you delay the bombing a day to wait until they have a parade and 5,000 civilians will also be present, now it appears that your intentional delay makes it clear that under this new proposed act, the death of the additional civilians is part of the object of the act, and that object vitiates the act itself, making it immoral. Because under this 2nd scenario the deaths of civilians makes the act a different species of act than the earlier proposed act, the circumstance that "only" 2500 civilians are likely to be killed or wounded (compared to 5,000 soldiers), doesn't matter to proportionality, because you don't GET to the question of proportionality until after you get INTO the structure of "double effect" analysis by first making sure the object of the act is good or neutral.

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    3. You have explained the principle of double effect, but my point is this. In the above article, room for prudential judgement is explained by drawing a distinction between negative precepts ( that oblige always and everywhere) anandd positive precepts, which do not. Yet the principle of double effect seems to say that negative precepts do not always oblige. The way it does this is in fact by looking at other circumstances that obtain...I.e. it makes a prudential judgement about negative precepts. Example: taking innocent life (bombing an arms factory in wartime) is justified by the circumstances

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    4. This is precisely why we must distinguish between the act as such and the outcome. The killing of innocents is, as it were, parasitic upon the act of bombing the factory. So bombing the factory is the act you are doing; your proximate intention is to bomb the factory, and this proximate intention determines the object of the act.

      You realize an outcome of this is that some innocent people will (probably) die. So while it can be said you are killing innocent people , you are doing so such that it is an unintended outcome of the act rather than the act itself (i.e. bombing the factory).

      But negative precepts apply to acts, not outcomes. So if one acts with the intention of killing the innocent, then that is taken up into the object of the act, rendering it intrinsically evil and contrary to the relevant negative precepts. But if one does not intend to kill innocents, then the act as such is not one of killing innocents, even if that is an outcome.

      In short, intentions specify acts, not outcomes. Negative moral precepts apply only to acts, not to outcomes. Hence if one kills an innocent person as an outcome but not as intended in the relevant act, then the negative moral precept regarding the impressibility of taking innocent life doesn't apply. Not because it is a prudential judgment, but because it is literally a category error to try to apply negative moral precepts to outcomes rather than to the intentional act of the individual.

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    5. ccmnxc, you are correct in saying that "intentions specify acts, not outcomes", but there's a nuance in that, which JPII illuminated in Veritatis Splendor: That sort of intention that stands as the proximate intention of the act, is the intention that determines the species of the act. The intention "to have sex with this woman who that man's wife" is an intention of the act of adultery. Whatever OTHER motives also drive the act, the species is already determined by that proximate end.

      JPII helps to distinguish this by naming it the proximate end, which is the end that WILL be present if the act is completed as intended - which separates it from the other ends because those might or might not come about just because the act was completed. If I intend to fire a gun with the goal of killing an armed intruder, the ACT is "to fire the gun" and it is complete when I pull the trigger and the gun fires. That act's object is specified by the intention wrapped up in "firing the gun", not in "killing the intruder", the latter is the "motive" or ultimate goal of the act, the second font of morality. My achievement of firing the gun might or might not result in killing or wounding the intruder: maybe my aim is off, maybe he jumps out of the way, maybe he lifts a shield strong enough to stop a bullet - there might be any number of causes that could impede the goal which is the motive that is extrinsic from the very nature of the act, to "fire the gun". The proximate intention is intrinsic to the nature of the act, it is (characteristically) present at the end of the (successfully) performed act, if the act is specified properly.

      Properly understanding the object of the act, given by the proximate end, which determines the nature of the act itself, allows us to distinguish it from the circumstances and the consequences, which are extrinsic to the act.

      Sometimes a doctor and pregnant woman may say that "the act" is merely "to remove the blob of tissue from the uterus", but typically they would be horrified and feel that "the act" was unsuccessful if the doctor "removed the tissue" and God miraculously made the fetus survive and grow into a completed baby. The mother would likely declaim "but I didn't WANT to be a mother". That horror and feeling that "the act" failed belies their claim that the object of the act wasn't "to kill the baby" but "to remove the tissue".

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    6. Tony,

      Yes, thanks for clarifying that. You elaborated on that nuance very well.

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  3. It seems like even in cases where prudential judgment is allowed, the range of prudential judgment is restricted such that beyond a certain boundary you might as well be violating a negative precept. Some obvious examples: 1. I’m worth a billion dollars but never give alms at all. 2. Refusing Jewish refugees and leaving them to be murdered by Nazis in 1939.

    Moreover I’m not sure the negative precepts don’t also have some play in the joints. Murder is prohibited, but killing a criminal who is trying to kill me is not murder. Same when a ectopic pregnancy is surgically removed to save a mother’s life. Of course one can say there isn’t a range because these are “not murder,” but at some level that seems to be getting into a game of definitions.

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    1. Murder and abortion refer to the intentional killing of an innocent human being. Self defense and ectopic pregnancy are not cases of intending to kill an innocent human being.

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    2. Murder is prohibited, but killing a criminal who is trying to kill me is not murder.

      Interestingly, St. Augustine noted that under the Gospel ("turn the other cheek") it MIGHT NOT be the case that you ought to defend your life if it takes killing the other. He argued that charity was the overriding rule of action, and it MIGHT be the case (in some circumstance) where charity for the aggressor (and for yourself) required you to lay down your life for the aggressor's, by not defending yourself. St. Thomas approved this argument, but narrowed the realm of plausible cases this might be required, by noting that charity not only for yourself but also for the others affected by the imminent death(s) normally would weigh on the side of defending the innocent person and - if necessary - killing the guilty aggressor, as that would usually be more for the common good. But there are indeed rare situations where charity does imply allowing the murder to kill you without defense: Christ did exactly that from the cross. Some martyrs had similar situations, and they exhibited that their act came from charity for the murderer by forgiving them even in the middle of the act of murder.

      But in any case, the negative precept - which is universal in scope - is against murder, not against killing.

      The ectopic pregnancy is similar (though not identical) to the case of a mother having uterine cancer while in early pregnancy, and the doctors strongly concur that neither the baby nor the mother can survive long enough to deliver the baby (even by premature birth) if the don't remove the uterus. There, the cause of the illness is the cancer, and the proximate intention is to "remove the cancerous uterus", not to "kill the baby". If (again using the above hypothetical) God miraculously made the baby survive the operation, nobody would be dismayed and say that the operation failed. Since the object of the act is good (remove a cancerous uterus killing the mother), the nature of the act is good in its species and THEN you go on to consider the circumstances and anticipated outcomes to weigh them: a living mother and dead baby is a better outcome than a dead mother and baby.

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    3. "But in any case, the negative precept - which is *universal* in scope - is against *murder*, not against killing."

      The negative precept is much better expressed as the exceptionless 'you shall not kill' rather than 'you shall not murder'. That's because the second form (while correct) too easily reads as 'you shall not kill unless it's in the list of allowable exceptions', and this does not provide a way of accurately discovering all the exceptions.

      Whereas, the exceptionless 'you shall not kill' can be combined with the principle of double effect to achieve exactly the same results as 'you shall not murder', but with the difference that we can work out the list of allowable exceptions by using double effect.

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    4. Paul, perhaps you are right, and what we are describing differently is more a difference in semantics than in substance. But forgive me if I don't yet see that.

      but with the difference that we can work out the list of allowable exceptions by using double effect.

      It is my understanding of JPII's teaching in Veritatis Splendor that many negative precepts (and the 5th commandment came up) don't have exceptions, and part of the point of his thesis was to show how the Christian teaching differs from consequentialism. Well, the reason many Catholics have been led astray by consequentialism is precisely the business of it seemingly being "OK" to justify ANY kind of act as long as the proportions (of anticipated good and ill effects) work out, and thus negative precepts are more like guidelines that expressed maybe the more usual proportions, but if your circumstances were more unusual, the guidelines wouldn't really pertain and you could have "an exception". JPII was trying to show that such an approach isn't compatible with Christian teaching. He did so in part by saying that foundational negative precepts cannot have exceptions, and (it is my impression) he did so precisely by distinguishing between the object of the act and the other morally-significant aspects of the act: the object can make it objectively wrong for any and ALL possible circumstances and consequences.

      Traditionally, the virtue of prudence says that while rules are worthy expressions of right behavior, it is fundamentally impossible for there to be explicit rules to cover EVERY situation and action before you that tell you which way you must act. Prudence comes in when you have to apply general rules that DON'T quite resolve down as fine as DO A, and Don't Do B, so that you can work out what is better to do in this specific case. In the case of lower-level rules (say, for etiquette or courtesy, ones that are not as binding) that do tend to get very picky, they ALSO tend to have more situations where the specific rule was not intended to cover the matter, and then you have to judge whether to make an exception to the rule because the rule doesn't actually address the good in this case.

      But in the case deeper principles that are more general, you would expect fewer possible cases come up where you could say "obeying the letter of this rule actually defeats a more important rule". When it comes to the absolute rules that are the universal negative precepts, they effectively outline the very essence of human nature itself, and for that reason there can't be exceptions that "attend to a higher-level good" than what this rule attends to. So, "you shall adore the Lord your God alone, and no other" cannot possibly have exceptions, by the very nature of the case. Even though consequentialists have argued along the lines that "well, if you're a missionary, and if you don't bow down and worship this false god here, they'll kill you and you won't be able to go on doing your missionary work...", that argument is inadequate according to what JPII laid out: even if you can convincingly lay out some set of outcomes that looks better by violating the rule, the act itself is vitiated in its very core and no number of good outcomes can overcome that defect.

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    5. "It is my understanding of JPII's teaching in Veritatis Splendor that many negative precepts (and the 5th commandment came up) *don't have exceptions*, and part of the point of his thesis was to show how the Christian teaching differs from consequentialism."

      That's my understanding, too. I've read the various things you've written several times, and there's a precision I'm trying to express in response:

      The exact same physical action can potentially be explained by more than one proximate intention. Which proximate intention a particular actor had in mind can only be determined by looking at the circumstances (amongst which, the prior knowledge and planning of the actor is very important).

      An example: I am attacked by someone and, because of that, decide to apply fatal force with a gun to the attacker, killing him. One explanation for firing the gun is "because I judged that if I did not apply the fatal force, he was going to kill me" -- in which case the proximate intention is to save my life. Another possible explanation is "because I hate him, and it gave me a nice excuse to kill him, and I quite deliberately spent no time at all looking at any of my other options" -- in which case the proximate intention is to kill (thus contravening the 5th commandment).

      (Essentially, this example comes out of Aquinas' reasoning for why killing in self-defense could be permissible.)

      Then the 5th commandment can be taken as the exceptionless "you shall not have the proximate intention of killing". But there may be occasions in which killing can take place provided the proximate intention is something permissible. (And these can be called 'exceptions', provided it is understood properly.)

      This is part of double effect.

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  4. If we are able to somehow emphasis this distinction to Pope Leo XIV, we might be able to get him to issue a simple sentence like how Pope Benedict XVI when he was the prefect with respect to the death penalty.

    All he would have to say is that reasonable people can disagree on the matter of the death penalty without thereby being in "dissent" but merely differing on a matter of prudence.

    This need not even be in a document but could be a response to a query.

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  5. Yes, people should be free to argue for the just wage and universal access to medical care without being called Communists. Edmund Burke's assertion that all contracts agreed upon by employer and employee are necessarily ethical (regardless of whether the agreed wage allows to worker to eat), is in complete disagreement with Church teaching. People should also be able to debate (and demonstrate against) the morality of deporting ten million hardworking Catholics without being accused of being traitors to the country.

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  6. About the (negative) principles that bind always and in all circumstances: It is at least the case that the following is a subset of that general class, and may constitute the general class: In respect of the 3 fonts of morality for the moral human act, the first is the "object of the act", which determines its species, and which is, in a sense, the essence of it. The general meta-principle is that a good moral act must have either a good or neutral object of the act. If the object of the act is intrinsically evil, then the act is an immoral act (regardless of the end intended or the circumstances surrounding the act). The object, giving the act its species, is a general principle, and as such it means that where the object is intrinsically evil, this MAKES the act immoral in principle, i.e. applicable always and everywhere. That is to say, this EXPLAINS WHY such acts are always and everywhere prohibited.

    It is only when the object is neutral or good can the other two fonts then control the determination of whether the act is good morally. Naturally, then, circumstances will be necessary to address the final moral judgment of the act.

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  7. One sins mortally who dishonors God by transgressing a negative precept or not fulfilling an affirmative precept on an occasion when it obliges.

    I question whether Regan correctly translated St. Thomas here, or whether this represents Thomas's final position. Aquinas (famously) represents that ALL lies are intrinsically evil, as they constitute an intent to use speech (meant to convey truth) in order to convey a position contrary to truth. As such, they inherently "dishonor God", who is Truth itself. However, I think that he admits that some lies are venial sins, not mortal sins, e.g. if the matter is not grave and the motive is not malice but some intermediate good (e.g. the desire that the recipient of the lie not suffer needlessly by knowing some truth that will hurt emotionally but is not information she needs).

    It is, I think, not necessary to St. Thomas's point here, that the sin be mortal in order to carry his thesis. It is sufficient that it be immoral always and everywhere.

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  8. The more complicated and variable the circumstances, the more difficult it can be to decide on a single correct answer and thus the greater the scope for reasonable disagreement. The disagreement can be reasonable in either of two ways. First, what might be obligatory for one person given the details of his circumstances may not be obligatory for another person given the details of his own very different circumstances.

    I highlighted "a single" above to make another point about the prudential analysis: As Prof. Feser (and all Christian moral theologians until Modernism reared its ugly head) agree, some acts don't need to be submitted to prudential analysis because their object is evil and the act is immoral under all motives and all circumstances. But once you have cleared that hurdle by having an act whose object is either good or neutral in its own right, THEN you have a prudential analysis of the remaining possible acts.

    My additional point is that the prudential work may be though of, here, as much a matter of creative production than as a analytical computation: your task is to constitute a wholesome act, with the tools available to you, wherein the motive is good and the circumstances and consequences are, in the net, positive. But there may be MANY such acts available that are wholesome in this sense, or at least more than one such, and in that case the act is not "imprudent" if the person selects the best out of the group of possible acts that he considered. It may be that his act has lesser goods and more negatives than some other act that some other agent might have selected because he has either more knowledge, or better analytical tools in his toolkit to estimate the consequences. But if the first actor chooses the best of the acts that HE could come up with to address the problem, his act is morally good, simply. That it is not the most productive of the possible acts, absolutely speaking, does not afflict the morality of his act to make it morally defective. We do in fact have morally good acts which are morally less perfect than other morally good acts (which happens e.g. when we select good acts from less than perfect but still acceptable motives). But in the case where the agent selected the best act HE could discover, with the best motive he could figure on achieving, with the highest proportion of good vs. undesired effects, and selected it principally on account its alignment with Godliness, that act is not defective as to its moral quality.

    Take, for example, when Christ was confronted by the scribes and pharisees with the woman caught in adultery. Someone else, (other than God), stuck in that quandary, might say something less omniscient than Christ did to unravel the (apparent) paradox between "following the law" and "being charitable" - they might have tried some other pathway forward that was fully upright but not as successful as Christ's brilliant ploy. The fact that Christ could come up with a pathway that unraveled his own danger AND led toward the woman's salvation AND gave the scribes motive to examine their own moral condition (and maybe led to their salvation) doesn't mean no other pathway was morally acceptable.

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  9. This bears on when Feser says

    Second, disagreement can be reasonable insofar as the complexity of the situation might make it uncertain which course of action is best even for people in the same personal circumstances.

    Among other things, if two upright people consider the same act, but bring different backgrounds to the analysis of its probable consequences, they will (generally) arrive at different estimations of those consequences. For one thing, a more experienced person can simply extend the analysis to more steps than an inexperienced person (the chess master will project farther into the future than the neophyte). For another, someone with more training might have better tools for thinking about the probabilities involved (e.g. he might have studied the disciplines of probability and statistics and know how to apply them without (as many) mistakes).

    But even more significantly, one person might simply CONSIDER MORE ACTS as possible than the other person does, simply because he has a more flexible imagination or better grasp on principles of action. This is (in part) where we get "thinking outside the box" where someone comes up with a solution that nobody else even considered.

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  10. Tony,
    I commend you on your long, thoughtful posts. You should get a simple Wordpress Account and blog away. Google will pick it up eventually and you will get more readers than you get here.

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    1. Thank you very much. I will consider this. My other duties are expanding somewhat, so I have to consider time available.

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  11. First, though not necessarily foremost, A hat-tip to MP and, later, Tony. Good thinking, folks! Churches are powerless to end the division and dissent which is ripping the world apart. Wannabe politicians, who don't know what the f---THEY are doing, don't understand they cannot bend the will of the world to their ends. Arthur Schopenhauer said a bit about will in one work of his I read when I was thirty or so. Thomas Aquinas wrote, in his time, about things he knew of, then. That does not mean all of that applies now, IMO.

    Much of it means nothing, religious and philosophical platitudes, notwithstanding. I'm still figuring out what all of this DOES mean. I have posited contextual reality and interests, motives and preferences (IMPs, for the uninitiated). My preliminary conclusion? Time is not on our side. But, neither are we.

    We can't wave a magic wand and erase animosities that have become traditions. No mas... And, just so.

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  12. So, is banking, as it is currently practiced, intrinsically immoral? It certainly amounts to theft.

    One group of people is allowed to counterfeit, printing money out of thin air (the banksters), and the rest of us are prohibited from doing so.

    Counterfeiting is clearly immoral, which is why it is illegal for most of us.

    But the banksters are allowed to do it.

    Isn't this intrinsically immoral, because it is intrinsically immoral to steal?

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    1. Banking is not theft. The Vatican has its own bank

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    2. You think the sinful bishops in the Catholic Church are incapable of stealing??

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    3. There is nothing in Catholic moral theology manuals stating that banking is intrinsically immoral.
      What I think is that you are incapable of rational thought.

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    4. I don’t think they’re printing money but rather engaged in a complex system of loans.

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    5. So, is banking, as it is currently practiced, intrinsically immoral? It certainly amounts to theft.

      One group of people is allowed to counterfeit, printing money out of thin air (the banksters), and the rest of us are prohibited from doing so.


      You clearly don't understand how banking in the modern era evolved. Private banks issued private notes testifying to deposits and guaranteeing repayment when called for, and those notes began to be traded in place of gold and silver coin as a medium of exchange. In the past 100 years, the Federal Reserve is responsible for the notes, and that entity is a public/private entity distinct from "the government" though chartered by Congress.

      The fractional reserve lending aspect of bank practices (i.e. the "thin air" that you allude to) that evolved from early deposit systems taints their notes only because the practice makes sense on the basis of interest to be paid on loans, and in some cases that interest can be usurious. The usury would be morally problematic, of course, but the matter is complicated by many factors, which the Church recognized by a multitude of decisions over the course of 400 years (during the late medieval period) of allowing some kinds of contracts (that had some aspects similar to usurious loans and other aspects not) and disapproving others. It is not clear that the lending practice necessarily vitiates the bank notes created (as they have wider scope than merely lending), and I have not been able to find a single authoritative Church document that condemns the bank note system or fractional reserve banking; similar silence has obtained about usury since roughly 1850 - probably in part because of the complexity of the moral issues.

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    6. > There is nothing in Catholic moral theology manuals stating that banking is intrinsically immoral.

      I am trying to change that.

      > I don’t think they’re printing money but rather engaged in a complex system of loans.

      Usury used to be a grave mortal sin.

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    7. You are correct OP anon,
      Banks like the "Federal" Reserve, are private entity's printing money out of thin air and charging the public to use that currency. They (F.R.) both profit from this by usurious interest payments and have a lot of control of government and economic policy.
      The government should "mint" it's own money for public use at no interest, following it's own policies as per te constitution.

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    8. In case it didn't post the first time,


      You are correct OP anon,
      Banks like the "Federal" Reserve, are private entity's printing money out of thin air and charging the public to use that currency. They (F.R.) both profit from this by usurious interest payments and have a lot of control of government and economic policy.
      The government should "mint" it's own money for public use at no interest, following it's own policies as per te constitution.

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    9. Tony:

      > and that entity is a public/private entity

      The Federal Reserve is no more federal than Federal Express. It is a privately owned company.

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    10. > The government should "mint" it's own money

      Our Constitution requires that ONLY gold and silver be money.

      Article 1, Section 10

      https://www.UsConstitution.net/xconst_a1sec10-html/

      ... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts ...

      Paper money is unConstitutional!

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  13. The Church nowhere teaches that there is an obligation to always obey laws enacted by nations. So, it has never taught that legislated immigration restrictions must always be obeyed.

    “Obey the laws of the nation” is an affirmative precept whose application is highly dependent on circumstances. Prudence is therefore required to decide if particular laws are just or not.

    The Catechism says: "The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin."

    Any law enacted by a nation that negated that obligation could not be a just law, and thus it could not be a law at all. In fact, it would not be a law, but "a kind of violence".

    Even legalized abortion can legitimately be enacted in legislation, in some kinds of circumstances. Pope John Paul II gave an example where this was permissible. These kinds of circumstances are rare, but far from impossible.

    Prudence is always required.

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    1. I don't think "legalized abortion" can be legitimately encated in legalisation in any kinds of circumstances; abortion is by definition evil, and therefore cannot be permitted by law. What example of St. John Paul II are you referring to ?

      Of course there are medical procedures which result inevitably in the death of an unborn child which can be morally licit and therefore should not be criminalised. And it also might not be prudent to penalise abortion in every circumstance, even if it is illegal; sometimes mercy is the prudent option, especially if circumstances reduce the culpability of the parties.

      It also seems obviously better to have a legal system where doctors can act according to their consciences in complicated situations where prudent ethical advisors might diagree without fearing criminal sanctions.

      If it is debatable whether some particular medical treatment of a pregnant woman, which will harm her unborn child, is morally licit, doctors who think they might be criminally prosecuted for carrying out the treatment might become relucant to do it even if they truly believe it is the right thing to do. And that does not seem a good state of affairs.

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    2. In Evangelium Vitae #73, JPII points out that, in appropriate circumstances, it can be permissible to vote for legislation that permits some abortions, if the alternative is legislation that permits even more abortions.

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    3. The Catechism says: "The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood ...Any law enacted by a nation that negated that obligation could not be a just law, and thus it could not be a law at all. In fact, it would not be a law, but "a kind of violence".

      If you note the qualifier in that passage, "to the extent they are able", you will realize that this quite directly gives the nation's government a place for judgment about how far they are able, and to do things about it: to erect borders that forbid entry without direct permission, to put conditions on entry, and to limit numbers granted entry by various criteria. A nation that has granted and continues to grant entry to vast numbers every year but limits entry based on rational criteria is to be granted the presumption that such criteria in fact represent a plausible estimate of "to the extent they are able", and that such laws do not violate the obligation to welcome the foreigner. Which in turn means that violating such laws about controlled/restricted entry is presumptively immoral on the part of immigrants.

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    4. "'to the extent they are able', you will realize that this quite directly gives the nation's government a place for judgment about how far they are able ..."

      And that would mean that a judgement must be made.

      Let's not lose sight of the fact that it's a judgement about an obligation. It's not a judgement about what immigration you would prefer to take. A country couldn't glibly say: "We've decided to spend some amounts on A, B, and C," (none of these being obligations), "so unfortunately there is only a limited amount of money or effort left for immigration" (though it is an obligation).

      There is currently (for the past few US administrations, at least) no real discussion about what level of immigration can be accepted. Essentially 99.99% of discussion is about what is in accord with legislation about foreigner presence and what is not. Any discussion about what levels of immigration would match the obligation is highly muted -- that's not remotely in accord with something that is an obligation

      " ... and to do things about it: to erect borders that forbid entry without direct permission, to put conditions on entry, and to limit numbers granted entry by various criteria."

      And nothing there is anything about how to welcome immigrants -- it's part of the 99.99%.

      "A nation that has granted and continues to grant entry to vast numbers every year..."

      About 1 million legal immigrants were admitted in 2022, into a population of 342 million. Most of those were admitted for family-related reasons. Only a small portion matched people "in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin".

      " ... is to be granted the presumption that such criteria in fact represent a plausible estimate of "to the extent they are able'' "

      Should a presumption be given when there has in fact been no real discussion about what levels would meet the obligation? I see no particular reason why.

      (I do notice that the very next entry in the Catechism says: "The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel.")




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    5. About 1 million legal immigrants were admitted in 2022, into a population of 342 million. Most of those were admitted for family-related reasons. Only a small portion matched people "in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin".

      Approximately 14% of the total population here are foreign-born immigrants. This is about as high as it was even in the intense immigration period of 1900 to 1910. It is impossible to state a specific number, as a percentage, that is the highest # that the US can take, for many reasons.

      Should a presumption be given when there has in fact been no real discussion about what levels would meet the obligation?

      Anyone who has actually dealt with immigrants on a large scale knows that there are social costs in addition to $ costs, and those social costs can be characterized as diminution of the common good. 99% of the public "discussion" of immigration as policy in the last 3 decades has taken place with the manifest social fact that the diminution now happening is high, along with the general principle that higher numbers of immigrants will result in more diminution, lower immigration in less. How much diminution is "OK" and how much is "too much" is not something the Church has ever spoken to, much less resolved in clear terms. The Church has not set forth a model by which to measure the degrees involved, or even a principle by which governments would recognize the "right" balance between the competing goods. It is not surprising, then, that little of the public discussion has focused explicitly on "how much is the right amount", but you missed the fact a great deal of the discussion implicitly has addressed that in various ways. When you read the subtext, it's there.

      For example, a large part of the population is notionally OK with the idea of granting some portion of the illegal immigrants some form of permission to be here, (e.g. the ones that have been here a long time, and have had jobs for a long time, and have not committed other crimes), but implicitly recognize that (a) their presence here without legal authorization, without papers, has been causing unacceptable levels of problems, many of which problems are unacceptable precisely because of a number of behaviors that come about precisely because they are don't have papers with legal permission (to work, to drive, etc): accepting jobs below minimum wage CAUSES many economic problems to the system. Getting them "into the system" would unravel some of the ills caused by their lack of legal status, thus decreasing the damage their presence is causing. But equally, (b) people know implicitly (and many say, explicitly) that just giving them legal status, outright, causes damage to ANY kind of legal apparatus for admitting legal immigrants, so that's a bad idea: they want to give the immigrants legal status with conditions that gives preferential weight to the LEGAL apparatus for admitting new immigrants. This is all part of the discussion, and it implicitly recognizes the nature of the various goods and evils present in "immigration" and (separately) illegal immigration.

      A very large share of Trump's victory in November was effectively a referendum vote by the people affected that, whatever the right number of annual legal immigrants should be, the annual number of illegal immigrants was in fact too damaging to the common good. They didn't see a need to resolve "what's the right number for legal admission" while there was an administration (and a party) bent on admitting illegally numbers that were clearly known to be too many. When you have a severed artery is not the time to have a scholarly debate on "what rate of blood loss per minute is long-term sustainable".

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    6. The Catechism says: "The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin."

      That's not a general statement about immigrants as a whole, but is specifically aimed at a particular class. You didn't say much that applied just to that class.

      "those social costs can be characterized as diminution of the common good"

      You've simply asserted that, but it is not obvious why, because you don't provide any basis for the estimation.

      In the case of the class of immigrants that the Church is talking about, there would be two ways that the common good could be modified:

      (1) The arrival of the foreigner would increase the common good, because their security would be increased, and because their means of livelihood would be increased.

      (2) There would be some effect on the common good of the accepting country, and that would be difficult to calculate, since it involves very much more than money.

      ("Common good" shouldn't be taken as referring only to the accepting country.)

      "When you have a severed artery is not the time to have a scholarly debate on "what rate of blood loss per minute is long-term sustainable."

      If a surgeon fixates on the drama of a severed artery and neglects to take into account that the patient needs a blood transfusion to stay alive, they are not meeting their obligation.

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    7. Gemini:
      At what percentage of foreign born have nations historically started to limit immigration?

      Historically, nations have started to limit immigration when the foreign-born population reaches a certain threshold, often around 10-15%, but the specific percentage varies by country and historical context.

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    8. The Catechism says: "The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin.

      There are adjacent obligations that this fails to also mention: in some cases, the prospective emigre who is looking to leave to find "a better life" is actually obliged even more to FIX the reasons he can't make a better life where he is already. In some cases, the biggest reasons that he cannot do it are because the government of his country is fouling things up, and it's is duty - the reason God placed him there - to do something about that fouled up government. There are countries that complained that the US has accepted TOO MANY immigrants from their countries, in respect to persons who would have been well-situated to make a difference had they stayed. In a lot of cases, someone who wants a better life in the US is someone who wont' have a better life without there being a very large helping hand in the US (using up lots of resources) helping them get over several years of hurdles before they have a stab at making a better life: the obligation to "accept" immigrants isn't co-equal to an obligation to provide that very large helping hand of many resources until that person is on their feet and self-sustaining.

      In some cases, the emigre wants "a better life" which he defines as getting more material goods than he can get where he is, but he doesn't want to conform to the culture of the country he wants to move into, he wants to keep the country he's from. Or, he may be willing to change to accept of the culture of the US, but not others that he doesn't like (or doesn't see as good). But what he's doing is creating friction, shoving grit into the smooth functioning of the very system that does the making of the goods he wants, but he doesn't understand the system and can't tell when his non-conforming is grit and when it isn't. In some cases, the emigre wants a better life but has no better reason to think he will get it in the US than "it isn't here, and they're wealthy", but he would actually be better off in some other country that, say, already speaks his language, or shares his religion.

      The Church has never even TRIED to enunciate when a country has reached "enough" for accepting new immigrants. In that absence, American people have a right to suggest their own ideas about it. A simple one would be this: the US, throughout her history, was known around the world as a welcoming country, (in many places, they can tell you're American because you have an open expression to strangers around you - everyone else closes their face off against strangers) and was known for many decades as the haven for refugees and pilgrims. During all that time, the highest immigrant percentage ran to about 13% or 14%. That, arguably, is plausibly an upper limit of what the country can take and sustain itself against the problems immigration causes. (This is not a "from the cause" depiction of the limit - which nobody has ever tried to enunciate clearly - but a historical argument about what HAS occurred as plausibly indicating de facto equilibrium conditions through a probably-related indicator.)

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    9. The Catechism says: "The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin."

      "the prospective emigre who is looking to leave to find "a better life" is actually obliged *even more* to FIX the reasons he can't make a better life where he is already"

      The Catechism carefully uses the word cannot.

      "in some cases, the emigre wants "a better life" which he defines as getting more material goods than he can get where he is"

      The Catechism talks of means of livelihood that can't be found.

      "but he doesn't want to conform to the *culture* of the country he wants to move into, he wants to keep the country he's from"

      For example, perhaps he wants to keep his culture of being anti-abortion? Perhaps he wants to keep a part of his culture that is better?

      "In a lot of cases, someone who wants a better life in the US is someone who *wont' have* a better life without there being a very large helping hand"

      Which is no doubt the reason that the Catechism puts the obligation on prosperous countries.

      "The Church has never even TRIED to enunciate when a country has reached "enough" for accepting new immigrants."

      Because it's not the job of the teaching part of the Church.

      "the highest immigrant percentage ran to about 13% or 14%. That, arguably, is plausibly an upper limit of what the country can take"

      The first four countries I looked for comparison had higher percentages; sometimes much higher. (Also, the Catechism's teaching given above is still not about immigrants in general.)

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    10. Oh, gee, I didn't notice that there are countries in the world like Bahrain with much higher rates! Or, not.

      I was talking about a sustained, long-term rate, over many decades, not just a recent turn of events. In any event, one can predict with near-certainty that the immigration being permitted by such countries like Bahrain is being driven by unique circumstances (their oil wealth is enabling them to import vast numbers of household servants and the like and to pay for vast amounts of building of infrastructure by hiring foreigners to come in who have the background for it), and will undoubtedly produce great changes to their social fabric - changes that in about 1 generation they will come regret.

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  14. Almost nobody ever clarifies what they mean when they are proposing "healthcare for all". Single-payer like Canada? Multi-payer like Switzerland? Why is the latter almost always assumed to be inferior by most progressives? By what standard?

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