Does Working Compassion’s Ground Create a Different Morality than Hierarchical Church Action Based on Abstracted Scripture? — A Catholic Hospital versus the Church

28 January 2011

Sound morality comes from the forced choice between competing goods

Humanitarian-oriented (Catholic) columnist Nicholas Kristof has twice written about a medical case that demonstrates this point in almost parable form.

Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmstead (i) excommunicated a hospital ethics committee nun and (ii) withdrew the hospital’s church affiliation after it performed a life-saving abortion on the mother of four children.

Mr. Kristhof criticized the bishop and sanctified the nun. My take is less certain.

This essay is not really about abortion

This discussion is not about abortion framed the way people generally do.

Instead, it is about how we think in regard to morality.

I pose the question, “Do many morally-cognizant people, who daily confront life and death, think differently about absolutes than others do?”

What follows (a) takes the form a statement about assumed moral premises and (b) adds the illustrating parable.

Morality’s relationship to initial assumptions

People’s, generally un-stated assumptions govern everything that comes argumentatively afterward. Changed assumptions, changed outcomes.

Most of the time moral assumptions are either (a) poorly expressed or (b) or have not been personally tested in situations that regularly slam competing goods against each other.

In instances of moral reasoning — where even expressed assumptions often cannot be proved or disproved by logic or science — rationality applies only to validating or invalidating the quality of the subsequent argument. We can only ask whether the moral argument logically applies its posited premise to the test situation being confronted.

For example, if I say that life is sacrosanct — without any further restriction of the concept’s scope — any argument that I make afterward that requires (or defends) killing a living entity is immediately suspect.

For most people, most of the time, the simple “life is sacrosanct” statement is enough. We seem deliberately to overlook the times when life is demonstrably not sacrosanct, as when that proposition is opposed by competing principles of moral action.

One such competing concept is the idea of just” war. Another is the purported reasonability of executing heinous killers. A third is the argued necessity of state-ordered assassination. The list goes on.

Less obviously, but still a moral proposition by default, we deny the life-sacrosanctity concept by implication, when we tolerate (through acculturated indifference) provably deadly poverty. That list, too, goes on.

Unlike most people, those who regularly confront instances of competing goods, especially in situations that oppose “this life” with “that life,” the need to restrict, modify, or further explain the sacrosanctity concept is clear.

This clarification can be done (simplistically) in the abortion instance by:

(i) elevating fate/God’s Hand to a position of determinative importance,

(i) presumptively elevating the fetus’ life above the mother’s,

(iii) presumptively elevating the mother’s life above the fetus,

(iv) evaluating the subsequent utilitarian effect of whichever course is chosen on the mother’s existing children,

(iv) allowing a physician’s licensed professional role to guide (though not necessarily demand) a given moral outcome.

Cognitive dissonance encourages us to elevate one moral principle to preeminence, despite other principles’ rationally equal claims to the same status

In order to the calm cognitive dissonance that comes from having to take a life (either actively or by refraining from effective action) in order to save another, we tend to elevate only one of our chosen moral assumptions to preeminence.

In the above physician example the physician might reason that, although he/she opposes abortion, performing one in order to save the mother is a required by:

(a) the social expectations his/her medical license carries with it

and/or

(b) his/her personal-professional moral duty to the patient (the mother).

Alternatively, the same physician might reason that his duty to God (whether described by self or church) takes precedence over his/her professional role.

Even here though, with now just one principle selected to guide action, multiple unspoken assumptions come into play. If the fetus-preserving sacrosanctity directive comes from scripture, the physician is, at minimum, assuming five things:

(i) the scripture in question is intended to be the word of God,

(ii) the word of God was accurately rendered,

(iii) he (or the church) is accurately interpreting the scriptural passage,

(iv) the generic circumstances he/she faces actually call for applying the commandment,

and

(v) God would want him/her to act according to the chosen moral imperative in this specific situation.

Institutions, like people, avoid cognitive dissonance by arbitrarily elevating “this” above “that”

To avoid the complexity of considering each of the elements that my hypothetical physician is faced with, religious institutions generally reach a priori conclusions about the first four elements listed (word of God through its application to generically-defined circumstances).

The church then tells parishioners to apply these church-defined understandings.

In providing moral guidance in this form, the church implicitly makes the almost unavoidable teaching assumption that generic situations are (a) equal and (b) equally black and white. Were that not so, parishioners would have to call for spiritual guidance from the hierarchy every time they wondered whether an apparently generic situation was special in some miniscule way.

Also implied in absolutist religions’ approach to moral instruction is the unexpressed assumption that moral actions sort along a spectrum of hierarchical rank — as if Life works itself out in an arena where two competing goods of equal rank cannot be present at the same time.

The point of this essay is that black and white thinking serves a purpose — but whose black and whose white is it going to be?

Black and white display a distinct tendency to blend where medicine, war, and emergency services operate each day.

From one perspective in this parable, Bishop Olmstead arguably pushed an agenda that saints might question

The morality play captured by the Catholic hospital abortion incident in Phoenix comes from the parable-like confrontation between the allegedly bureaucratic bishop and the reportedly saintly nun.

The parable’s facts are that Bishop Olmstead excommunicated Sister Margaret McBride. She sat on St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center’s ethics board. She had approved the decision to abort a 27-year old mother-of-four’s 11-week fetus. The hospital argued that the abortion was necessary to preserve the woman’s life during a case of pregnancy-related pulmonary hypertension. The termination saved the mother and killed the fetus.

Was excommunication a morally proportionate response? — Does that matter?

A physician at St. Joseph’s summed one point-of-view regarding moral disproportion:

After what happened to Sister Margaret, he doesn’t dare be named, but he sent an e-mail to his friends lamenting the excommunication of “a saintly nun”:

“She is a kind, soft-spoken, humble, caring, spiritual woman whose spot in Heaven was reserved years ago,” he said in the e-mail message. “The idea that she could be ex-communicated after decades of service to the Church and humanity literally makes me nauseated.”

“True Christians, like Sister Margaret, understand that real life is full of difficult moral decisions and pray that they make the right decision in the context of Christ’s teachings. Only a group of detached, pampered men in gilded robes on a balcony high above the rest of us could deny these dilemmas.”

Kristof added his perspective:

Let us just note that the Roman Catholic hierarchy suspended priests who abused children and in some cases defrocked them but did not normally excommunicate them, so they remained able to take the sacrament.

So, from one perspective, you have male priests fornicating with children (but retaining the Church’s sacrament) and, on the other, you have a nun extending compassion to a dying woman (and losing her right to the same).

Note:

Admittedly, there may be an objectively provable element of misogyny (or at least male chauvinism) in the Church’s demonstrated position. The fact that women are not “good” enough to become priests probably says something definitive about the Church’s moral position regarding the relationship between men and women in the spiritual realm.

On morality’s other hand, however, attacking Bishop Olmstead for his excommunication decision denies him the same consideration that his opponents would have him extend Sister McBride. In a crass sense, “A rule’s a rule.”

One of the points to having religious moral doctrine is that it be enforced or at least strongly encouraged. There is an arguable difference in moral gravity (for many ethicists) between “murder” and “molestation.”

The Bishop’s action was therefore not air-headed, arbitrary, or morally unjustified. We also do not know, to the degree that Mr. Kristof or the quoted physician might have it matter, how much personal pain it caused the Bishop to reach it.

Parable Step 2 — Bishop Olmstead subsequently severed the Church’s connection to the hospital

Seeing that his excommunication of Sister McBride was apparently not enough to get the hospital’s agreement not to do the same mother-saving thing in the future — the bishop effectively excommunicated the hospital, as entity, from the Church.

As a result, St. Joseph’s can no longer provide mass for its often presumably Catholic patients and their families.

Mr. Kristof’s “modernist” view of the Bishop’s combined actions

Mr. Kristof wrote:

To me, this battle illuminates two rival religious approaches, within the Catholic church and any spiritual tradition.

One approach focuses upon dogma, sanctity, rules and the punishment of sinners.

The other exalts compassion for the needy and mercy for sinners — and, perhaps, above all, inclusiveness.

The thought that keeps nagging at me is this:

If you look at Bishop Olmsted and Sister Margaret as the protagonists in this battle, one of them truly seems to me to have emulated the life of Jesus. And it’s not the bishop, who has spent much of his adult life as a Vatican bureaucrat climbing the career ladder. It’s Sister Margaret, who like so many nuns has toiled for decades on behalf of the neediest and sickest among us.

Then along comes Bishop Olmsted to excommunicate the Christ-like figure in our story.

One could more directly ask whether the Church’s moral high ground is weakened by a history of hierarchical avarice, political power seeking, and self-aggrandizing sin-concealing

From a historian’s perspective, the Catholic Church’s history (as a hierarchical entity) is not a morally or ethically splendiferous thing. What long-lived human institution is or has been?

Mr. Kristof’s position is that the Church’s most admirable moral agents are the priests and nuns who toil lifelong among humanity’s forgotten. He is on record as explicitly praising the Church, as people, in action on the ground.

The possibly false dichotomy between (a) Bishop Olmstead’s allegedly rigid bureaucratic moral sterility and (b) working medicine’s compassionate flow — led to a memorable (but probably unfair) post-incident statement

The National Catholic Reporter newspaper put it best: “Just days before Christians celebrated Christmas, Jesus got evicted.”

We don’t know what Jesus would have said — but we do know something else

Blood, guts, and medical waste often humble our certainty-prone self-righteousness.

Jesus (allegedly) and compassion (certainly) sometimes sneak in through Life’s un-scripted back door.

Spiritual struggles may vary in quality and outcome, based on their proximity to moral fire

Can you imagine:

(a) The immediacy of Sister McBride’s spiritual struggle in reaching her ethics committee decision?

(b) Or that of the physicians confronted with “I’ve the means to save either, but not both”?

The difference between (a) immediately-engaged moral action and (b) contemplative, but abstracted, moral critique — may present a doorway toward better appreciation for nuanced Christian morality.

Grounds of fire versus paper-strewn rooms

On the ground of fire, moral principles compete in uncertainty’s living fog.

My perspective — not that it matters

In the abstract

Generally speaking — and with no lack of respect or appreciation for Bishop Olmstead — I don’t trust the moral credentials of a:

(a) male,

(b) pedophile-protecting,

(d) bureaucratically-divorced Church hierarchy.

I do not think an entity with these credentials can persuasively make binding and spiritually absolute decisions for:

(i) women generally,

(ii) mothers specifically,

(iii) saints.

More specifically, I doubt this Church’s capacity for rational moral persuasion, when it places the alleged welfare of an assemblage of unconcious cells significantly higher than that of Church-molested children.

At some point, a purportedly spiritual entity’s historical record is going to determine its qualifications to say anything persuasive at all.

Less abstractly and in this specific instance

I would not be surprised if Sister McBride is aglow in her God’s eyes. I also don’t see how Bishop Olmstead’s God could be displeased with him.

Their moral assumptions were different and incapable of being disproved. The theaters of their actions were paradigmatically not the same.

Nuance often has no knowns.

Assumptions, mine

Lessons from life’s street-to-street and field-to-field battles, and the compassion that Plain of Competing Goods generates, take moral precedence over bureaucratic absolutism.

There is difference between enforcing a principle and living it.

None of us really know the true measure of our assumed principles, their worth, or priority in the cosmic scheme.

We are not omniscient. Acting as if we were all-knowing is sometimes existentially necessary. Paradoxically, pretended omniscience may almost always be a moral mistake.

Conclusion — assumptions and variable theaters of action can make for competing moralities

I do not fault Bishop Olmstead for doing what religious consistency necessitated he do. But count me on Sister McBride’s side in this “good versus good” clash. Mother-of-four versus an 11-week fetus? Utilitarian and moral proportion save the mother in my operative world.

Choosing is sometimes not a choice

How can I choose Sister McBride, when Bishop Olmstead is also arguably right? I’m not. The point is that role and circumstances often choose our spiritual nuances for us.

Theaters of operations can be morally defining

Theater of operations often define applicable moralities. I was once trained to be a medical professional, after spending years in police work. Both are occupations where one instinctively and actively saves whom one can, when one can, for any reason one can. Patients and injured members of the public deserved absolute, professionally-delivered loyalty directed toward sustaining their autonomously-chosen survival interests.

From my perspective as street cop/supervisor and medical student, it was the Church that presumptively elevated the fetus to a position of personhood/spiritual entity — even in the absence of immediately or historically cognizable (or practically-applicable) status as such.

Change the theater, change the moral perspective

I am emphatically not saying that the Church is wrong. Merely that its proposition is not any more self-evident than mine were, particularly when it is applied so as to let a conscious, immediately obvious “someone” die.

Had I been a priest, non-medical nun, or bishop, my assumptions and my resulting decisions would be different. My perceptual context would be different.

Yours might be, too.

That’s why spiritual sages usually leave judgment and spiritual punishment to God or Mystery.

PeteFree.com

Does Working Compassion’s Ground Create a Different Morality than Hierarchical Church Action Based on Abstracted Scripture? — A Catholic Hospital versus the Church