In an important albeit brief essay published at the Washington Post's "On Faith" blog, Charles Camosy looks at the furor over a recent article that sought to justify infanticide. Robert George called the article "madness," and one can sympathize with the reaction. Certainly those who assume that the forces of modernity and progress are entirely benign, need to reconsider their sunny appraisal when such arguments are made.
But, Camosy resists the charge of "madness" and, in so doing, points to the particular genius of the Catholic theological tradition. By engagiong the particulars of any given issue, even one that fills us with horror, interesting possibilities emerge. The burden of Camosy's argument, and one he carries easily, is that if we merely denounce such madness and chalk it off as another aspect of the culture wars, we will actually miss the possibility to point out the logical consistency between the pro-choice position on abortion and this advocacy of infanticide. I think Camosy's argument is even stronger when you consider the fact that most people now, as a matter of course, have a sonogram of their child in the womb, thus eating away at the lie that was always at the core of the pro-choice argument, the idea that the life being terminated was somehow not a human life.
