"Human freedom does not legitimate bad moral choices"
Nancy Pelosi’s Bishop, Archbishop Niederauer of San Francisco, has responded to another of Speaker Pelosi’s outrageous statements on her faith. Ms. Pelosi simply doesn’t get it and this time, in a December interview with Newsweek magazine, she pulled out the time-worn argument that our having free will makes choosing to kill a child by abortion permissable. She maintains the Catholic Church teaches that we all have “free will” thus also teaching that choosing abortion is wrong is restricting a woman’s free will.
"I am a practicing Catholic, although they're probably not too happy about that. But it is my faith," said the Speaker, referring to the Catholic Church hierarchy. "I practically mourn this difference of opinion because I feel what I was raised to believe is consistent with what I profess, and that is that we are all endowed with, a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And that women should have that opportunity to exercise their free will."
Responding, Archbishop Neiderauer said
"embodied in that statement are some fundamental misconceptions about Catholic teaching on human freedom" - misconceptions he noted "are widespread both within the Catholic community and beyond."
"Human freedom does not legitimate bad moral choices, nor does it justify a stance that all moral choices are good if they are free: 'The exercise of freedom does not imply a right to say or do everything,'" wrote the archbishop, citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
"It is entirely incompatible with Catholic teaching to conclude that our freedom of will justifies choices that are radically contrary to the Gospel — racism, infidelity, abortion, theft," he continued.
"Freedom of will is the capacity to act with moral responsibility; it is not the ability to determine arbitrarily what constitutes moral right."
"While we deeply respect the freedom of our fellow citizens," Niederauer concluded, "we nevertheless are profoundly convinced that free will cannot be cited as justification for society to allow moral choices that strike at the most fundamental rights of others. Such a choice is abortion, which constitutes the taking of innocent human life, and cannot be justified by any Catholic notion of freedom."
(via Lifesitenews.com )
Indeed, the good Archbishop knows whereof he speaks while Ms. Pelosi apparently knows little of what her Church truly teaches. It isn’t hard to find out what the teachings are – they are plainly described in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and in thousands upon thousands of other writings on the Church teachings done throughout the centuries. What you will find is the consistency the Church has shown in those teachings, thus, the root of Ms. Pelosi’s argument is that “the ends justify the means” while the Church teaches, as it has taught for centuries, “the ends do not justify the means” (CCC #1753).
Even more basic to Pelosi’s argument is the concept of “free will”. Madam Speaker seems to subsribe to a dissenting view of how one’s conscience works in determining the choices you make. If Pelosi is correct then no choice is made from ones “free will” but from ones own will. You decide what is right or wrong and you act upon that decision. In a technical sense I guess you could call that free will but in the truest sense I believe this is an abberant definition of “free will”! If each determines for himself the right or wrong of a choice and takes action on that choice based on their own determination of the morality without consideration for any norms we simply have anarchy and chaos. We do not have anarchy and chaos because we have moral truths upon which our laws are based, which we recognize, and which we obey. These laws, natural and man-made keep society functioning in social and productive ways. The Catholic Church teaches that in every heart the law of God is written – otherwise how do you explain the certainty with which even a toddler will experience knowing what is right or wrong without having had benefit of any teaching?
I make no claim to know what is in someone else’s heart much less what motivates Nancy Pelosi, but generally speaking when one decries the teaching of the Church the reason is simple – you want something you shouldn’t have.