# Cardinal Mahoney: God Grant Me The Grace To Forgive My Accusers **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 27, 2013, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521 "2013-02-27T15:13:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 26
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/501 "2013-03-07T14:59:15Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > In other news, Cardinal Mahoney remains a criminal scumbag who in a just world would be inhabiting a jail cell at the moment. If I were King, and my word were the only law, he’d absolutely be in jail right now. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/502 "2013-03-07T15:01:45Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > For the reasons I’ve been trying to raise, and you’ve been ignoring. If there’s some reason you’ve mentioned that I haven’t replied to, kindly re-direct my attention to it, and I will. There are lots of you and only one of me. ---
**Author:** ![Cyros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a698b9/32.png) [@Cyros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyros)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/503 "2013-03-07T15:07:44Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Yes, I realize that my assumption is not shared by my interlocutors. > > But why is my assumption to be cast aside, and theirs accepted? To be fair, I accept your assumption and you dismiss those arguments with a mix of argumentum ad populum and appeal to emotion instead of the logical examination of the moral differences (if any) between pushing someone to their death and knowingly directing a deadly projectile in their direction and causing their death. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/504 "2013-03-07T17:29:46Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > If there’s some reason you’ve mentioned that I haven’t replied to, kindly re-direct my attention to it, and I will. > > There are lots of you and only one of me. I believe we left things off here, back around post 378: > [@RTFirefly](#): > > [QUOTE=Bricker] > Excuse me, but that’s a circular definition: the brain makes you a person. Why? Because when you lose it, you’re not a person. Only if you ignore the fact that when you lose your brain, you, or rather your body, becomes an inert slab of spoiling meat. And by any reasonable definition, that’s not a person. I really thought that was too obvious to need to say, but how could I forget your willingness to nitpick practically anything? And if you contend that an inert slab of spoiling meat IS a person, then please get help. [/QUOTE] Maybe you _believe_ that the newly fertilized egg is a person, but that’s _all_ it is: _belief_. If there’s a person there already, the presence of that person is not enabled by the physiology of the fertilized egg, but by some divine action gluing what Catholics call a ‘soul’ to that fertilized egg. That sort of belief carries dangerous moral implications, AFAIAC, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s belief. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/505 "2013-03-07T17:39:51Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > I believe we left things off here, back around post 378: > Maybe you _believe_ that the newly fertilized egg is a person, but that’s _all_ it is: _belief_. If there’s a person there already, the presence of that person is not enabled by the physiology of the fertilized egg, but by some divine action gluing what Catholics call a ‘soul’ to that fertilized egg. > > That sort of belief carries dangerous moral implications, AFAIAC, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s belief. Yes, it’s belief. What of it? It’s no more or less compelling than your belief about what should be considered a person. How does a profoundly retarded person fit into your set of definitions? Someone in a coma? Someone in a persistent vegetative state? ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/506 "2013-03-07T17:51:57Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Yes, it’s belief. What of it? > > It’s no more or less compelling than your belief about what should be considered a person. This is the point at which I give up. You’re basically saying belief is no more or less compelling than knowledge. Fuck that shit. > [@](#): > > How does a profoundly retarded person fit into your set of definitions? Someone in a coma? Someone in a persistent vegetative state? What does it matter, given your rejection of the notion that a brain is a necessary prerequisite of personhood? ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/507 "2013-03-07T18:07:02Z")
Easy Peasey to reply. ( Assuming this is still a message board and not a one-on-one private dialogue) Vegetative state? No pain response? Monitor, allow to starve and die. Coma? Same. Look you want to play God with your life and the lives of those in your family? -shrug- I may pity them but this is America. You do as you wish. As soon as you stomp about demanding that all bow before your personal moral code? Well. The rules of the BBQ Pit are extremely clear as to what language is permitted to be used or not used in posts. So indulge your imagination. :dubious: My friend Don was murdered. A pistol was pressed against his left cheek and the bullet passed through his skull and bounced around in his brain for a while. There were random electrical firings for a few weeks afterwards. His neurologists tracked them for any semblance of human response. They got nothing. He was allowed to die naturally as HE would have wished. Fortunately for Don, his family and large coterie of friends, **BrickerGod** was not in control of his destiny. If he was, now- 20 some odd years later- he would still be hooked up to a respirator. His whithered body a crumbled wraith of the bear of a man he was. Fortunately the P Word is not prohibited by **Ed Zotti** ’s rules. You are one sick Puppy, **Bricker**. ---
**Author:** ![Reyemile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@Reyemile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reyemile)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/508 "2013-03-07T18:27:29Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Analogies are suspect, but this one is not bad. So…will you address the analogy if it’s not bad? Would your actions in that hypothetical be consistent with the actions the RCC demands and which you believe are moral? ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/509 "2013-03-07T18:36:52Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > You can continue to assert your opinion is The Truth. > > And I will reply by asserting my opinion is The Truth. > > So: an embryo is a human being, and that’s that. Stop arguing with the truth. It’s not as simple as that. There are qualifiers. John is a human being…who is now brain-dead with no chance of recovery, existing only because of machines. Or maybe he can breathe on his own and his heart can beat, but so what? He has no future. He wisely left directives telling his doc and family to pull the plug. Fetus Susan develops serious defects while in utero and, if born alive, will suffer for a while while her anguished parents watch, and then die. The parents decide to abort F.S. rather than put her and themselves through that hell. Not to mention the massive medical bills, which they may not be able to pay. Whether they regard her as a person or not isn’t the point here. That she has a heartbeat isn’t the point, either. This is why bumper sticker slogans like “It’s a child, not a choice” just don’t cut it in the real world of gray areas, unexpected and unforeseen tragedies, complications and complexities. It just isn’t as simple as some might wish it to be. ---
**Author:** ![BunnyTVS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BunnyTVS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BunnyTVS)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/510 "2013-03-07T18:41:05Z")
A more accurate analogy would be that it was your _wife’s_ finger grafted to the chained prisoners artery. So your three options are: 1. Cut the artery allowing you and your wife to escape, while the other prisoner bleeds out. 2. Cut off your wife’s finger allowing you and your wife (well most of her) to escape. Meanwhile the other prisoner suffocates. 3. Leave your wife to her own devices. Let her chose from the original scenario. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/511 "2013-03-07T19:01:26Z")
With \*that \*not only invented and offered as a working analogy, but actually embraced and discussed, I’m not entirely clear who the sick puppy is supposed to be here. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/512 "2013-03-07T19:19:27Z")
[Here’s your invented and embraced as real analogy](http://articles.philly.com/1994-03-20/news/25847559_1_community-activist-social-work-mentally-retarded-adults), you son of a bitch. This beautiful strong kind loving soul embraced all he met. Profoundly retarded adults with the mental capacity of a 3 month old? He loved them, hugged them, worked with them. I knew him, I worked for him as the camp, I watched him in action for years. I sat with hundreds of others at his Memorial service in Germantown Friends Meetinghouse. Nothing of what I wrote was even slightly ficticious. Damn you to hell for daring to suggest I’d created a fake murder victim who I knew and loved. Read that link. Twice. Then come back in here and accuse me of inventing a situation. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Hamlet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hamlet/32/2818_2.png) [@Hamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamlet)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/513 "2013-03-07T19:20:23Z")
> [@vivalostwages](#): > > This is why bumper sticker slogans like “It’s a child, not a choice” just don’t cut it in the real world of gray areas, unexpected and unforeseen tragedies, complications and complexities. Yeah, I tried to put my “It’s a child, not a choice, but it’s not really a child, but more of a potential child, but before you get all up in my face with the tired, old “well, isn’t sperm a potential child?” nonsense, let me say that it is much, more of a potential child than that sperm, or the unfertilized egg, or the couple bottles of wine with a great dinner, followed by a childless evening and that should be enough, because we are dealing in a grey area, where the question of when something is “human”, when it deserves protection, and how do we balance that protection against a person’s right to self determination and control of her own body and the simplistic belief that all gray areas should be unjudged is silly” bumpersticker didn’t fit on my Toyota. ---
**Author:** ![Cyros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a698b9/32.png) [@Cyros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyros)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/514 "2013-03-07T19:35:40Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#): > > [Here’s your invented and embraced as real analogy](http://articles.philly.com/1994-03-20/news/25847559_1_community-activist-social-work-mentally-retarded-adults), you son of a bitch. > > This beautiful strong kind loving soul embraced all he met. Profoundly retarded adults with the mental capacity of a 3 month old? He loved them, hugged them, worked with them. I knew him, I worked for him as the camp, I watched him in action for years. I sat with hundreds of others at his Memorial service in Germantown Friends Meetinghouse. > > Nothing of what I wrote was even slightly ficticious. > > Damn you to hell for daring to suggest I’d created a fake murder victim who I knew and loved. Read that link. Twice. Then come back in here and accuse me of inventing a situation. > > :mad: Pretty sure he was talking about the **steronz** hypothetical as modified by **BunnyTVS**. Maybe it is time to back away from the thread. ---
**Author:** ![Robb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a183cd/32.png) [@Robb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robb)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/515 "2013-03-07T19:46:38Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > If I were King, and my word were the only law, he’d absolutely be in jail right now. Instead, he’s right where your church wants him - participating in the process to select a new pope. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/516 "2013-03-07T20:01:47Z")
> [@Cyros](#): > > Pretty sure he was talking about the **steronz** hypothetical as modified by **BunnyTVS**. Maybe it is time to back away from the thread. It read as though he were addressing the situation I had cited. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/517 "2013-03-07T20:17:53Z")
Additonally: The reason I read it as a reply to my post was the use of the phrase " not sure who the sick puppy is here". That is a remark I made in my post up there. Hence my interpretation that it was directed at me. ---
**Author:** ![Nancarrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c37758/32.png) [@Nancarrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nancarrow)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/518 "2013-03-07T20:20:58Z")
Dude, seriously, chill. It was very clear he was referring to the previous post (wife’s finger grafted onto criminal’s artery? for realz?). I’m sorry to hear about your friend. Don’t let Bricker’s obstinate ‘it’s all just beliefs’ schtick get to you. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/519 "2013-03-07T20:54:09Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > That’s what he’s talking about, but only superficially. The subtext is that the situation offers those as devoutly smug as he a way to shame the woman, all full of original sin and subservience and all that, as both a murderess AND befouled by sex. Win-win. The real win-win is the “er… what were we talking about… something to do with a systematic pattern of kiddy-diddling cover-ups…” ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521/520 "2013-03-07T22:16:43Z")
> [@Nancarrow](#): > > Dude, seriously, chill. It was very clear he was referring to the previous post (wife’s finger grafted onto criminal’s artery? for realz?). I’m sorry to hear about your friend. Don’t let Bricker’s obstinate ‘it’s all just beliefs’ schtick get to you. Yes, I was referring to the Human CentIPad scenario as being something for sick puppies, and it certainly isn’t that I deny being one myself. 😉 I too am very sorry for the useless destruction of your friend. Perhaps you could mention him in the gun-control threads and see how easily some of the \*real \*sick puppies there can dismiss it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521.md?page=25) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cardinal-mahoney-god-grant-me-the-grace-to-forgive-my-accusers/651521.md?page=27)