Reason Amid the Ruins, by Michael Pakaluk

By Michael Pakaluk, The Catholic Thing, July 18, 2024

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America
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Let’s get it out of the way at the start.  It is permissible for Catholics to choose the lesser of evils. When they do so, their choice gets accounted for as avoiding the greater evil, not favoring the evil that is lesser.  You are driving a runaway trolley.  Five men are working on the track ahead; one man only is on the track to the left.  You pull the lever to change tracks. In doing so, the effect of your action is that one man perishes.  This you could foresee, but you did not wish it.  The evil is imputable to the circumstances, not to you.  Catholics call this sort of reasoning “double effect.”

An application: If one candidate favors abortion through all nine months, while the other opposes only late-term abortions, so far it would be praiseworthy to favor the latter, on the grounds of avoiding the former.  You would be “rejecting legal abortion through all nine months,” not “favoring legal abortion in first months.” …

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