The Speaker for the dinner was Proffessor Robert P. George. He delivered a thoughtful accessment of the truth about abortion and other sanctity of life issues. He also virtually destroyed all the arguments offered by Catholic Pro-Life politicians and in particular former NY Gov. Mario Cuomo.

 

His speech is is inserted below.

 

Political Obligations, Conscience, and Human Life

 

Robert P. George

 

McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence

 

Princeton University

 

 

 

The Catholic Church proclaims the principle that every human

 

being—without regard to race, sex, or ethnicity, and equally without regard

 

to age, size, stage of development, or condition of dependency—is entitled

 

to the full protection of the laws. The Church teaches that human beings at

 

every stage of development—including those at the embryonic and fetal

 

stages—and those in every condition—including those who are mentally

 

retarded or physically disabled, and those who are suffering from severe

 

dementias or other memory and mind-impairing afflictions—possess

 

fundamental human rights. Above all, each of us possesses the right to life.

 

Now this teaching is disputed by some. There are those, including

 

some Catholics, who deny that human embryos are human beings. They

 

assert that and human embryo is merely "potential" human life, not nascent

 

human life. The trouble with this position is not theological but scientific. It

 

flies in the face of the established facts of human embryology and

 

developmental biology. A human embryo is not something distinct in kind

 

from a human being—the way that, for example, a rock or potato or alligator

 

　

 

　

 

is something different from a human being. A human embryo is a human

 

being at a particular, very early, stage of development. A human embryo,

 

even prior to implantation, is a whole, distinct, living member of the species

 

Homo sapiens. The embryonic human being requires only what any human

 

being at any stage of development requires for his or her survival, namely,

 

adequate nutrition and an environment sufficiently hospitable to sustain life.

 

From the beginning, each human being possesses—actually and not

 

merely potentially—the genetic constitution and active disposition for self-

 

directed development from the embryonic into and through the fetal, infant,

 

child, and adolescent stages and into adulthood with his or her distinctness,

 

unity, determinateness, and identity intact. In this crucial respect, the

 

embryo is quite unlike the gametes—that is, the sperm and ovum—whose

 

union brought a new human being into existence. You and I were never

 

sperm or ova; those were genetically and functionally parts of other human

 

beings. But each of us was once an embryo, just as each of us was once an

 

adolescent, and before that a child, an infant, a fetus. Of course, in the

 

embryonic, fetal, and infant stages we were highly vulnerable and dependent

 

creatures, but we were nevertheless complete, distinct human beings. As the

 

leading textbooks in human embryology and developmental biology

 

unanimously attest, we were not mere "clumps of cells," like moles or

 

　

 

　

 

tumors. So the basic rights people possess simply by virtue of their

 

humanity—including above all the right to life—we possessed even then.

 

Another school of thought concedes that human embryos are human

 

beings; however, it denies that all human beings are persons. There are,

 

according to this school of thought, pre-personal and post-personal human

 

beings, as well as severely retarded or damaged human beings who are not,

 

never will be, and never were, persons. Proponents of this view insist that

 

human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages are not yet persons. Indeed,

 

logically consistent and unsentimental proponents say that even human

 

infants are not yet persons, and therefore do not possess a right to life;

 

hence, the willingness of Peter Singer, Michael Tooley, and others to

 

countenance infanticide as well as abortion. Permanently comatose or

 

severely retarded or demented human beings are also denied the status of

 

persons. So euthanasia is said to be justified for human beings in these

 

conditions. Although some who think along these lines will allow that

 

human individuals whom they regard as "not yet persons" deserve a certain

 

limited respect by virtue of the purely biological fact that they are living

 

members of the human species, they nevertheless insist that "pre-personal"

 

humans do not possess a right to life that precludes them from being killed

 

to benefit others or to advance the interests of society at large. Only those

 

　

 

　

 

human beings who have achieved and retain what are regarded as the

 

defining attributes of personhood—whether those are considered to be

 

detectable brain function, self-awareness, or immediately exercisable

 

capacities for characteristically human mental functioning—possess a right

 

to life.

 

The trouble with this position is that it makes nonsense of our

 

political, philosophical, and, for many of us, theological commitment to the

 

principle that all human beings are equal in fundamental worth and dignity.

 

It generates puzzles that simply cannot be resolved, such as the puzzle as to

 

why this or that accidental quality which most human beings eventually

 

acquire in the course of normal development but others do not, and which

 

some retain and others lose, and which some have to a greater degree than

 

others, should count as the criterion of "personhood." The superior position,

 

surely, is that human beings possess equally an intrinsic dignity that is the

 

moral ground of the equal right to life of all. This is a right possessed by

 

every human being simply by virtue of his or her humanity. It does not

 

depend on an individual’s age, or size, or stage of development; nor can it be

 

erased by an individual’s physical or mental infirmity or condition of

 

dependency. It is what makes the life of even a severely retarded child equal

 

in fundamental worth to the life of a Nobel prize-winning scientist. It

 

　

 

　

 

explains why we may not licitly extract transplantable organs from such a

 

child even to save the life of a brilliant physicist who is afflicted with a life-

 

threatening heart, liver, or kidney ailment.

 

In any event, the position that all human beings equally possess

 

fundamental human rights, including the right to life, is the definitively

 

settled teaching of the Catholic Church. It is on this basis that the Church

 

proclaims that the taking of human life in abortion, infanticide, embryo-

 

destructive research, euthanasia, and terrorism are always and everywhere

 

gravely wrong.

 

And there is more. For the Church also teaches that it is the solemn

 

obligation of legislators and other public officials, as servants of the

 

common good, to honor and protect the rights of all. The principle of

 

equality demands as a matter of strict justice that protection against lethal

 

violence be extended by every political community to all who are within its

 

jurisdiction. Those to whom the care of the community is entrusted—above

 

all those who participate in making the community’s laws—have primary

 

responsibility for ensuring that the right to life is embodied in the laws and

 

effectively protected in practice. Notice, by the way, that the obligation of

 

the public official is not to "enforce the teaching of the Catholic Church," it

 

is, rather, to fulfill the demands of justice and the common good in light of

 

　

 

　

 

the principle of the inherent and equal dignity of every member of the

 

human family.

 

Yet, today many Catholic politicians are staunch supporters of what

 

they describe as a "woman’s right to abortion." Most of these politicians

 

also support the creation and government funding of an industry that would

 

produce tens of thousands of human embryos by cloning for use in

 

biomedical research in which these embryonic human beings would be

 

destroyed.

 

Catholic politicians in the United States and in other nations who

 

support abortion and embryo-destructive research typically claim to be

 

"personally opposed" to these practices but respectful of the rights of others

 

who disagree to act on their own judgments of conscience without legal

 

interference. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo famously

 

articulated and defended this view in a speech at the University of Notre

 

Dame in 1984. Recently, Cuomo revisited the issue, speaking in

 

Washington at a Forum on Politics and Faith in America. He offered an

 

argument which, if successful, not only justifies Catholic politicians in

 

supporting legal abortion and embryo-destructive research, but requires them

 

to respect a right of people to engage in these practices despite their admitted

 

moral wrongfulness.

 

　

 

　

 

Cuomo asserted that holders of public office—including Catholic

 

office-holders—have a responsibility "to create conditions under which all

 

citizens are reasonably free to act according to their own religious beliefs,

 

even when those acts conflict with Roman Catholic dogma regarding

 

divorce, birth control, abortion, stem cell research, and even the existence of

 

God." According to Cuomo, Catholics should support legalized abortion

 

and embryo-destructive research, as he himself does, because in

 

guaranteeing these rights to others, they guarantee their own right "to reject

 

abortions, and to refuse to participate in or contribute to removing stem cells

 

from embryos." But Cuomo’s idea that the right "to reject" abortion and

 

embryo-destructive experimentation entails a right of others, as a matter of

 

religious liberty, to engage in these practices is simply, if spectacularly,

 

fallacious. The fallacy comes into focus immediately if one considers

 

whether the right of a Catholic (or Baptist, or Jew, or member of any other

 

faith) to reject infanticide, slavery, and the exploitation of labor entails a

 

right of others who happen not to share these "religious" convictions to kill,

 

enslave, and exploit.

 

By the expedient of classifying pro-life convictions about abortion

 

and embryo-destructive experimentation as "Roman Catholic dogmas,"

 

Cuomo smuggles into the premises of his argument the controversial

 

　

 

　

 

conclusion he is trying to prove. If pro-life principles were indeed merely

 

dogmatic teachings—such as the teaching that Jesus of Nazareth is the only

 

begotten Son of God—then according to the Church herself (not to mention

 

American constitutional law and the law of many other republics) they could

 

not legitimately be enforced by the coercive power of the State. The trouble

 

for Cuomo is that pro-life principles are not mere matters of "dogma," nor

 

are they understood as such by the Catholic Church, whose beliefs Cuomo

 

claims to affirm, or by pro-life citizens, whether they happen to be Catholics,

 

Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, or atheists.

 

Rather, pro-life citizens understand these principles and propose them to

 

their fellow citizens as fundamental norms of justice and human rights that

 

can be understood and affirmed even apart from claims of revelation and

 

religious authority.

 

It will not do to suggest, as Cuomo seems to suggest, that the sheer

 

fact that the Catholic Church (or some other religious body) has a teaching

 

against these practices, and that some or even many people reject this

 

teaching, means that laws prohibiting the killing of human beings in the

 

embryonic and fetal stages violate the right to freedom of religion of those

 

who do not accept the teaching. If that were anything other than a fallacy,

 

then laws against killing infants, owning slaves, exploiting workers, and

 

　

 

　

 

many other grave forms of injustice really would be violations of religious

 

freedom. Surely Cuomo would not wish to endorse that conclusion.

 

Yet he provides no reason to distinguish those acts and practices

 

putatively falling within the category of religious freedom from those falling

 

outside it. So we must ask: If abortion is immunized against legal

 

restriction on the ground that it is a matter of religious belief, how can it be

 

that slavery is not similarly immunized? If today abortion cannot be

 

prohibited without violating the right to religious freedom of people whose

 

religions do not object to abortion, how can Cuomo say that the prohibition

 

of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in

 

1866 did not violate the right to religious freedom of those in the nineteenth

 

century whose religions did not condemn slaveholding? Cuomo says that

 

the Catholic Church "understands that our public morality depends on a

 

consensus view of right and wrong," but it would be scandalous to argue that

 

Catholics should have opposed a constitutional amendment abolishing

 

slavery in the nineteenth century, or legislation protecting the civil rights of

 

the oppressed descendants of slaves in the mid-twentieth century, on the

 

ground that "prudence" or "realism" requires respect for "moral pluralism"

 

where there is no "consensus" on questions of right and wrong.

 

At one point at the forum on Politics and Faith, Cuomo suggested that

 

　

 

　

 

laws against abortion and embryo-destructive research would force people

 

who do not object to such things to practice the religion of people who do.

 

But this is another fallacy. No one imagines that the constitutional

 

prohibition of slavery forced those who believed in slaveholding to practice

 

the religion of those who did not. Would Cuomo have us suppose that laws

 

protecting workers against what he, in line with the solemn teaching of every

 

pope from Leo XIII to Benedict XVI, considers to be exploitation and abuse

 

have the effect of forcing non-Catholic factory owners to practice

 

Catholicism?

 

[At another point, in denying that there was any inconsistency

 

between his willingness as governor to act on his anti-death penalty

 

views but not on his antiabortion views, Cuomo denied ever having

 

spoken against the death penalty as "a moral issue." He claimed, in fact,

 

that he "seldom talk[s] in terms of moral issues" and that, when he

 

speaks of the death penalty, he never suggests that he considers it a

 

moral issue. Then, in the very next sentence, he condemned the death

 

penalty in the most explicitly, indeed flamboyantly, moralistic terms: "I

 

am against the death penalty because I think it is bad and unfair. It is

 

debasing. It is degenerate. It kills innocent people." He did not pause to

 

consider that these are precisely the claims made by pro-life citizens

 

　

 

　

 

against the policy of legal abortion and its public funding—a policy that

 

Cuomo defends in the name of religious liberty.]

 

The fact is that Catholics and others who oppose abortion and

 

embryo-destructive research oppose these practices for the same reason we

 

oppose postnatal homicide. Pro-life citizens of every faith oppose these

 

practices because they involve the deliberate killing of innocent human

 

beings. Our ground for supporting the legal prohibition of abortion and

 

embryo-destructive research is the same ground on which we support the

 

legal prohibition of infanticide, for example, or the principle of

 

noncombatant immunity even in justified wars. We subscribe to the

 

proposition that all human beings are equal in worth and dignity and cannot

 

be denied the right to protection against killing on the basis of age, size,

 

stage of development, or condition of dependency.

 

One cannot with moral integrity be "personally opposed" to abortion

 

or embryo-destructive research yet support the legal permission of these

 

practices and even, their public funding as so many Catholic politicians do,

 

including most Catholic Democrats and some Catholic Republicans in the

 

United States. For by supporting abortion and embryo-destructive research

 

they unavoidably implicate themselves in the grave injustice of these

 

practices.

 

　

 

　

 

Of course, it is possible for a person wielding public power to use that

 

power to establish or preserve a legal right to abortion, for example, while at

 

the same time hoping that no one will exercise the right. But this does not

 

get such a person off the moral hook. For someone who acts to protect legal

 

abortion necessarily wills that abortion’s unborn victims be denied the

 

elementary legal protections against deliberate homicide that one favors for

 

oneself and those whom one considers to be worthy of the law’s protection.

 

Thus one violates the most basic precept of normative social and political

 

theory, the Golden Rule. One divides humanity into two classes: those

 

whom one is willing to admit to the community of the commonly protected

 

and those whom one wills to be excluded from it. By exposing members of

 

the disfavored class to lethal violence, one deeply implicates oneself in the

 

injustice of killing them—even if one sincerely hopes that no woman will

 

act on her right to choose abortion. The goodness of what one hopes for does

 

not redeem the evil—the grave injustice—of what one wills. To suppose

 

otherwise is to commit yet another fallacy.

 

If my analysis so far is correct, the question arises: What should the

 

leaders of the Church do about people like Cuomo and his successor as New

 

York’s Governor, Republican George Pataki who evidently takes the same

 

position? What should they do about those who claim to be in full

 

　

 

　

 

communion with the Church yet promote gravely unjust and scandalous

 

policies that expose the unborn to the violence and injustice of abortion?

 

In the run up to the last American presidential election, St. Louis

 

Archbishop Raymond Burke offered an answer. He declared that public

 

officials who support abortion and other unjust attacks against innocent

 

human life may not be admitted to Holy Communion, the preeminent

 

sacrament of unity.

 

Pro-life citizens of every religious persuasion applauded the

 

Archbishop’s stand. Critics, however, were quick to condemn Archbishop

 

Burke. They denounced him for "crossing the line" separating church and

 

state.

 

But this is silly. In acting on his authority as a bishop to discipline

 

members of his flock, who commit what the Church teaches are grave

 

injustices against innocent human beings, Archbishop Burke is exercising

 

his own constitutional right to the free exercise of religion; he is not

 

depriving others of their rights. Freedom is a two way street. No one is

 

compelled by law to accept ecclesiastical authority. But Archbishop

 

Burke—and anyone else in the United States of America or other freedom-

 

respecting nations—has every right to exercise spiritual authority over

 

anyone who chooses to accept it. There is a name for people who do accept

 

　

 

　

 

the authority of Catholic bishops. They are called "Catholics."

 

In many cases, the charge that Archbishop Burke and other bishops

 

who adopt the policy of excluding pro-abortion politicians from Communion

 

"are crossing the line separating church and state" is also hypocritical. A

 

good example of this hypocrisy comes from the Bergen Record, a prominent

 

newspaper in my home state of New Jersey. John Smith, the Bishop of

 

Trenton, did not go as far as Raymond Burke had gone in forbidding pro-

 

abortion Catholic politicians from receiving communion. Bishop Smith did,

 

however, in the words of the Bergen Record, "publicly lash" Governor

 

James McGreevey, a pro-abortion Catholic, for his support of abortion and

 

embryo-destructive research. For criticizing the Governor on these grounds,

 

the Record lashed the Bishop in an April 25th editorial. The paper accused

 

him of jeopardizing the delicate "balance" of our constitutional structure,

 

contrasting Bishop Smith’s position unfavorably with President John F.

 

Kennedy’s assurance to a group of Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960

 

that he, as a Catholic, would not govern the nation by appeal to his Catholic

 

religious beliefs. Since the Record had seen fit to take us back to 1960 for

 

guidance, I thought I would invite its editors to consider a case that had

 

arisen only a few years earlier than that. In a letter to the editor, I proposed a

 

question that would enable readers to determine immediately whether the

 

　

 

　

 

editors of the Bergen Record were persons of strict principle or mere

 

hypocrites.

 

I reminded readers that in the 1950s, in the midst of the political

 

conflict over segregation, Archbishop Joseph Rummel of New Orleans

 

publicly informed Catholics that support for racial segregation was

 

incompatible with Catholic teaching on the inherent dignity and equal rights

 

of all human beings. Archbishop Rummel said that "racial segregation is

 

morally wrong and sinful because it is a denial of the unity and solidarity of

 

the human race as conceived by God in the creation of Adam and Eve." He

 

warned Catholic public officials that support for segregation placed their

 

souls in peril. Indeed, Rummel took the step of publicly excommunicating

 

Leander Perez, one of the most powerful political bosses in Louisiana, and

 

two others who promoted legislation designed to impede desegregation of

 

diocesan schools. So I asked the editors of the Bergen Record: Was

 

Archbishop Rummel wrong? Or do Catholic bishops "cross the line" and

 

jeopardize the delicate constitutional balance, only when their rebukes to

 

politicians contradict the views of the editors of the Record? To their credit,

 

the editors published my letter—but I am still waiting for them to reply to

 

my question.

 

Now, some good and sincere people have expressed concern that

 

　

 

　

 

Archbishop Burke and bishops of similar mind are guilty of a double

 

standard when it comes to demanding of politicians fidelity to Catholic

 

teaching on justice and the common good. They point out that the bishops

 

who would deny communion to those who publicly support abortion and

 

embryo-destructive research do not take the same stand against politicians

 

who support the death penalty, which Pope John Paul II condemned in all

 

but the rarest of circumstances, and the U.S. invasions of Iraq, of which the

 

Pope and many other Vatican officials were sharply critical.

 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church indeed teaches that the death

 

penalty should not be used, except in circumstances so rare these days as to

 

be, in words of the late pope, "practically non-existent." However, two

 

points must be borne in mind in considering the obligations of Catholics and

 

the question whether Catholic politicians who support the death penalty have

 

in fact broken faith and communion with the Church. First, neither the Pope

 

nor the Catechism places the death penalty on a par with abortion and other

 

forms of direct killing of the innocent. (Indeed, the Church will probably

 

never equate the death penalty with these forms of homicide, even if it

 

eventually issues a definitive condemnation of the practice.) Second, the

 

status of the teaching differs from the status of the teaching on abortion. As

 

John Paul II made clear in the great encyclical Evangelium Vitae, the

 

　

 

　

 

teaching on abortion (as well as on euthanasia and all forms of direct killing

 

of the innocent) is infallibly proposed by the ordinary and universal

 

magisterium of the Church pursuant to the criteria of Lumen Gentium 25.

 

The same is plainly not true of the developing teaching on the death

 

penalty. Moreover, Cardinal Avery Dulles and others have interpreted the

 

teaching against the death penalty as essentially a prudential judgment about

 

its advisability, not a moral prohibition following from the application of a

 

strict principle. As it happens, I don't agree with their analysis, but no one

 

will be able to say with confidence from a Catholic point of view which side

 

in this debate is right until the magisterium clarifies the teaching. So, it

 

cannot be said that supporters of the death penalty are "obstinately persisting

 

in manifest grave sin," and may or should be denied Holy Communion

 

pursuant to Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law. No one can legitimately

 

claim for opposition to the death penalty the status of a definitively settled

 

moral teaching of the Church. (Nor can one claim that the Church teaches or

 

will ever teach that the death penalty—except in cases where it is applied

 

unjustly—involves the grave intrinsic injustice attaching to any act involving

 

the direct killing of the innocent.)

 

Regarding the question of the U.S. invasions of Iraq, it is important to

 

understand the precise terms of Catholic teaching on just and unjust warfare.

 

　

 

　

 

These terms are set forth with clarity and precision in the Catechism. In line

 

with the Church’s historic teaching on the subject, neither Pope John Paul II

 

nor Pope Benedict XVI has asserted that opposition to the war is binding on

 

the consciences of Catholics. John Paul II’s statements opposing the use of

 

force in the run up to both invasions plainly questioned the prudential

 

judgments of political leaders who, in the end, had and have the right and

 

responsibility (according to the Catechism and the entire tradition of

 

Catholic teaching on war and peace) to make judgments as to whether force

 

is in fact necessary. That is why the Pope and the bishops have not said, and

 

will not say, that Catholic soldiers may not participate in the war. This

 

contrasts with their clear teaching that Catholics may not participate in

 

abortions or other forms of embryo-killing or support the use of taxpayer

 

monies for activities involving the deliberate killing of innocent human

 

beings.

 

I wish to close with a word to those in politics and the media—

 

Catholics and non-Catholics alike—who have expressed anger, even

 

outrage, at the world’s Catholic bishops for teaching that the faithful must

 

never implicate themselves in unjust killing by supporting legal abortion and

 

embryo-destructive research. In scolding the bishops, the editors of the New

 

York Times, for example, have insisted that "separation of church and state"

 

　

 

　

 

means that no religious leader may presume to tell public officials what their

 

positions may and may not be on matters of public policy. But if we shift

 

the focus from abortion to, say, genocide, slavery, the exploitation of labor,

 

or racial segregation we see how implausible such a view is. When

 

Archbishop Rummel excommunicated the segregationist politicians in the

 

1950s, far from condemning the Archbishop, the editors of the New York

 

Times praised him. They were right then; they are wrong now.