By DONALD DeMARCO
Medicina Pastoralis (Manual of Pastoral Medicine, 1877) is a work judged by scholars to be of sufficient importance to be reprinted again and again, and as recently as 2019. Editor Carl Franz Nicolaus Capellmann makes the claim that by the end of the nineteenth century, Christian civilization had almost eradicated abortion.
A staggering reversal, however, has taken place since Dr. Capellmann offered this statement. In 2019 there were approximately 42 million abortions worldwide. Moreover, many Christians have been ardent proponents of abortion. In North America, many politicians in high places who call themselves Catholic have been in the front lines in the war against the unborn.
This reversal has been brought about by a multitude of factors. Perhaps the most persuasive line of argumentation is that a Catholic should not “impose” his values on those who believe that abortion is a legitimate choice. What for centuries was regarded by Christians as caring, has been unfortunately misinterpreted as an imposition. Language has been egregiously politicized. Certain “Catholic” politicians would improve their moral outlook if they could only be a little more pagan.
A Roman myth, though rising out of a pagan culture, portrays how care for others (and not self-isolation) defines what it means to be a human being. Care was amusing herself one day by molding earth in various shapes. Finding a particular shape that she wanted to have life, she beseeched Jupiter to grant it a soul. Jupiter obliged but objected when Care wanted the new creature to be named after her. Saturn, the god of Time, intervened, ruling that upon death, the creature would return to Earth, its soul to Jupiter, but all the Time it was alive it was to be entrusted to Care.
Our name is Care. We more fully realize our identity when we care for others. The inability or reluctance to care reveals a human being to be less than humane. Caring for others is so fundamental to human nature as to coincide with it. To care is inscribed on our DNA.
This image is in essential agreement with what we find in John 3:14-21: “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.”
If there is a leading spokesperson among pagan thinkers for the notion that man is essentially a caring being, it is Publius Afer (c.195/185-159 BC) better known in English as Terence. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and was so impressed with his abilities that he freed him. All of the six plays of Terence have survived. His most famous statement is “Homo sum, et humani nihil alienum a me puto” (I am a human being and I consider nothing human alien to me).
In stating this, Terence was honoring the profound link that exists between all human beings. This is a link that has been severely compromised in the modern world, even among those who are presumably Christian.
John Donne (1572-1631), a Catholic thinker, would be in accord with his pagan predecessor. “No man is an island, entire of itself,” begins his most celebrated poem. “Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. . . . And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” Death unites us all, but we are also united in life. Morality is not idiosyncratic, but shared universally.
Human beings are united in several ways: ontologically, theologically, humanistically, as well as morally. To this list we may add, genetically, since each human being is an omnibus in which the gene-prints of all his ancestors abide. Piety is the virtue that honors our ancestors. We would not exist except for the contribution of all of them.
The idea that I do not want to impose my values on anyone is defective for additional reasons. In the first place, true moral values do not belong to me alone. Here the Latin distinction between the possessive and the partitive genitive is helpful. If I say, “This is my pen,” I am employing the possessive genitive, indicating that I own the pen, that it belongs to me alone. But if I say, “This is my country,” I am indicating that I am a part of the country. Likewise, we are part of God’s Kingdom, and share in the moral values that unite human beings to each other. The virtue of justice, for example, does not belong to me alone. It is a shared value that is universal in its scope.
Secondly, a “value” cannot be “imposed” since it is not something physical. I can impose my hands. I can impose on my hosts by staying too long. But I cannot impose a value. Values can be taught, inspired, learned, adopted, or cultivated. But they cannot be imposed. If that were the case, education would be a physical transfer of ideas from one person to another, which is certainly not the case. The real imposition is on the unborn and results in their death.
It is a sad commentary on the contemporary world that arguments of no substance whatsoever can mesmerize a large segment of society and lead them in the wrong direction. Emotion trumps education, convenience outweighs cogency, rhetoric displaces reason, and lunacy ousts logic.
If only certain Catholics in high political positions (we need not name them for they are well known) could be a little more pagan (imitating the best of the pagan world), they would be of much greater service to their constituents.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a professor emeritus of St. Jerome’s University and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the St. Austin Review. His latest books, How to Navigate Through Life and Apostles of the Culture of Life, are posted on amazon.com.)
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