How’s that workin’ out for ya?
Which is exactly why it’s more than reasonable to conclude that he had the specific intent to prevent their prosecution, and thereby committed a crime (absent the statute of limitations issue).
Are you really so batshit insane as to argue that my decision to save my own fucking life by ending an ectopic pregnancy was an act of murder?
:eek:
Do you really think my decision to follow my doctor’s advice and have the thing removed properly was similiar to the Sandy Hook shooter’s actions in deliberately murdering small children?
Your assertion is not an opinion. Your assertion evidence of someone truly not in touch with reality. A tubal pregnancy is a medical emergency not a person. Your willful refusal to admit this, worse to unequate the thing with a full blown person is borderline psychopathy. Can you really not understand that a fertilized egg that is incapable of implanting in the right place is only a fertilized egg and not now nor ever will be a person? Or are you so blinded by the crazed Catholic doctrine that puts fertilized eggs above the medical needs of actual women that you are simply incapable of understanding science?
Thanks for reminding me of the many reasons I hate the fucking Catholic church. Sometimes the only thing worse than the stupid old men who run the church are their even more lunatic supporters.
Here’s the problem, though.
It’s well known in the area of tort law that it’s better to sue not the one that’s most at fault, but the one that has the most money.
So the Church has a dilemma. As a business, it needs to act in the defensive ways that any business would act in order to limit exposure to civil liability… not admitting any fault, for example, and requiring that a plaintiff prove each and every claim. But that hard-nosed, cold attitude runs directly counter to the kind of behavior the Church teaches as a moral guide.
For those people people who deride the Church as but one example of believing in Invisible Pink Unicorns or Flying Spaghetti Monsters, there is little sympathy for this trap.
But it remains a problem, and one with no easy solution. In Les Miserables, Victor Hugo paints the amazingly admirable Bishop of Digne, who welcomes Jean Valjean into his home; Valjean repays him by stealing the Bishop’s possessions and absconding into the night. When the gendarmes return with Valjean in tow, amused at his pathetic claims that the Bishop “gave him” all that finery, the Bishop saves him by affirming that not only did he give him all that stuff, but that he forgot to take the best items: silver candlesticks that the Bishop also “gave.” The police are convinced only then of Valjean’s innocence.
It’s a beautiful, and very Christian, story.
But the problem is that extending the model outwards, hundreds of people will arrive at the Bishop’s house with outstretched hands and he will shortly have no more candlesticks.
How to balance the self-abasing but impoverishing attitude that many of Christ’s teachings seem to demand with the reality of a world that would, in short order, suck you dry and spit out the husk, is not an easy task.
Unfortunately, there are good ways, fair ways, and poor ways to approach balancing those competing imperatives. Mahoney seems to have started with the poorest way and then discovered ways to get even worse. “Balancing” means just that – Mahoney seems to have blinded himself to any thoughts but protecting the Church’s reputation no matter what other evil he had to turn a blind eye to.
I type all this to say I’m not that in agreement that it’s always the right answer for the Church to immediately admit fault in any dispute of any kind, even when at fault, because such admissions have legal consequences that resonate far beyond their seeming scope. Your car insurer tells you, no doubt, to never admit liability after a car accident – not because they want you to descend into a path of immorality, but because they want you to have a fair chance of defending yourself against claims that may well exceed your actual fault.
But Mahoney took that principle and used it to deny evil, and let evil flourish. We can never do this.
But that doesn’t mean we must ignore the realities of civil law, either.
Do you believe that if you repeat a claim a lot, it gets truer?
And do you believe that what is, or is not, a person is a matter of science?
The Church is under no obligation to “limit exposure to civil liability.” It is perfectly acceptable to state “we screwed up and we will take responsibility for the harm we caused.” Some organizations actually do this. Why not the church, which is in a better position financially than most? If it costs a lot of money, that’s simply because they caused a lot of harm. Stop the behavior, pay for the damage you did, learn from it, and help heal those you have harmed. Is that really so hard for the Church to understand?
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I really don’t buy that that’s how the law works. Occasionally a criminal gets off on a technicality; this would be a case of a criminal getting off on a sophistry.
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In particular, I don’t think the legal system can exculpate someone from the knowing commission of a horrific crime on the basis that their intent was to do some comparatively trivial good, even assuming that if they could have accomplished the trivial good in a way that didn’t involve committing the horrific crime, they would have. The idea that people can avoid legal responsibility for the totality of the reasonably expected consequences of their choices on the grounds that they really only intended one minor consequence, despite being fully aware of the others in advance, is morally abhorrent.
And if this was really a valid defense, people would have been using it. And the loophole would have been closed, in the same way that the laws were changed in the wake of public outcry after a number of “not guilty by reason of insanity” pleas in the 1960s and 1970s.
- So I don’t really care if Mahony would have sent all the molesting priests to prison if only the Church would have escaped any consequences, in public opinion or otherwise. I don’t think it’s germane. I think you’ve got both law and morality all wrong.
Ok, let me pose a more directly tailored question:
If you believe that Mahoney’s intent was solely and only to protect the Church, then he’s not guilty.
Agree?
Sorry. It was a little early for me. :o <—embarrassed smiley
Because, like the Bishop in Hugo’s story would be if ten Jean Valjeans showed up at his house, the Church would very quickly stop being in better financial position than most – not because of reparation for the harm they caused, but for damages that would be awarded BEYOND the harm they caused.
Certainly at least in part.
If you remove someone’s brain, there is no person present in their body. That’s pretty low-level science, but it’s science nonetheless. The brain, not the heart or liver or intestines or thyroid gland, is the site of personhood.
No brain ==> no person.
And it should be noted that for several weeks after conception, the developing fetus has no brain.
Now, one for you, counselor: is a cow a person?
I know you’re being technical here, sir, so I shall not insult you in this answer. (ETA: Or any other, for that matter.) I’ll grant that Mahoney may not have broken any of man’s laws. But if one believes in the Dominion of Christ, I think it’s inarguable that he broke GOD’S laws. Jesus, were he on Earth at this time rather than 2000 years ago, would surely not have behaved as Mahoney did, as the Son of Mary was not an asshole.
Perhaps this is changing the subject, but the Church’s reputation is not only at stake among those who will never find out about the deception, should it be forever successful. It’s also at stake with the Deity with whom the Church purports to be the intercessor for humanity. I bring this up so as to point out two things:
Firstly, the Deity will presumably NOT be forever in the dark about the deception.
Secondly, if there’s so much concern about running out of candlesticks, it doesn’t speak well for the officials’ faith in the principle that “the Lord will provide.”
Why is that, exactly?
Who decided that the brain was the center of personhood?
I agree it’s the center of much of what makes people people. I don’t agree it’s presence is the definition of a person.
I was really hoping you’d take our earlier discussion to heart and stop misusing the term “intent” to be both motive and specific intent in the criminal sense.
Please stop equating Mahoney’s motive to protect the Church and his specific intent that that motive be met by having the priests escape arrest or prosecution. Mahoney can, and likely did, have the motive to protect the Church, but in doing so, he clearly had the specific intent that priests escape the criminal justice system.
No, take responsibility for what you did. Fight like Hell if you didn’t do anything wrong. You’re not giving anything away. You’re taking responsibility for the harm you caused. Not like the Bishop at all, who *was *giving things away.
I suppose it is changing the subject, but this debate is not new.
When Jesus and the apostles are in Bethany, Mary (not Jesus’ mother, but the confusingly similarly-named sister of Lazarus) uses an extremely expensive jar of perfumed oil to anoint Jesus. The apostles rebuke her, noting that the jar could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Jesus rises to her defense, saying that the poor will always be with us.
Jesus did not, in that instance, dismiss concerns about resources by saying, “The Lord will provide,” nor did he advocate impoverishing oneself in the mission of helping the poor.
I’m sure Mahoney knows that God is not for a moment deceived… assuming Mahoney still believes in God. But if he believes in God, then he must have felt, wrongly, that God would countenance this evil in the name of the greater good of saving the Church.
I’m not Rufus T, but speaking for myself, I can’t agree with it.
At least until you clear something up for me. It’s my understanding that you’re not allowed to do something illegal in order to accomplish something that’s legal. Is this not correct?
Where, in the Bible, does God ever countenance the performing of evil in the name of a greater God?
Consider the story Nathan told to David to convict the King in the matter of Uriah’s murder.
I’m not a Christian anymore. But whatever faults I may find with the hypothetical God of Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob, I cannot believe that he would countenance corruption on this scale. He was intolerant of ANY corruption. He’d be far, far more likely to exact disproportionate punishment on Mahoney and the priests in his hierarchy than he would be to allow them to sweep the matter under the rug.
The thing is, though… that’s not really how trials work.
It’s the same principal car dealers know all too well: they have no real hope of getting someone to pay the MSRP, but they set it high, knowing a negotiation will being it down to something more reasonable. A car dealer who tries to set the price at his real, rock-bottom price will do fine as long as he doesn’t have to negotiate. But you cannot, as a matter of strategy, start negotiations at what you believe the endpoint is, because there’s no where to move but into territory you regard as unfair.