Religion & Law

Thanks to Rob and Steve for their thoughtful views. I will have to defer addressing Steve's posting until tomorrow. But I shall attempt to answer Rob's last posting here. I have tried to present arguments that are legal and meta-legal as to why the well-formed conscience, as opposed to the poorly formed conscience, should be protected. With his clarification, Rob is not asking about how the Church should treat the poorly formed conscience. Rather he is asking whether the conformity of one's conscience to Church teaching should be relevant to its treatment under the civil law. As we have seen in the evolution of the draft cases, the highest court of our land has given favorable treatment to the religious arguments for conscientious objection against combat service as well as secular ones. So, we have judicial precedent taking stock of and respecting the religious argument regarding the taking of life in combat. I think the legal argument to protect the person who objects on religious grounds to the taking of early human life by abortion logically follows. If it does not, then there is a problem not in my argument but with the dispensation of the law.

RJA sj