Stop Noticing

"We begin with clear, perhaps absolute, principles and, as we honestly confront a hugely complex world, we recognise that clear principles don't let you off the hook. There is no escaping the tough decisions where no answer will feel completely right and no option is without cost. But when do we get to the point where accepting the inevitability of tough decisions that may hurt the conscience has become so routine that we stop noticing that there ever was a strain on the conscience, let alone why that strain should be there at all?"

― Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury

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Dear Kate,

When I talked about questioning the assumptions we have about humanity, ideas we find necessarily faultless in our worldview and for it to stay true, we are unearthing the idolatries in our culture, our vision of human flourishing.

Good enough if we want to do that on behalf of our fathers and mothers and condemn them for their backward morality, better still if we are honest enough to admit not only we wouldn't have done a better job if we were in their position back then (remember Residential School was operated right under the nose of all Canadians), the way we see the world today carries assumptions of its own that are not as beyond reflection or even reproach as our conviction suggests.

I am quite sure many would find the association distasteful, but when I thought about the remains of 215 children in the unmarked burial site, I couldn't help but consider our stance on abortion.  This old, weak mind, you must excuse it, for seeing children buried as buried children.

Yes, more nuance is needed, and it was this much needed nuance, compassionate intentions for the sanctity of life that the provision of abortion was first proposed by courageous visionaries.  However, by now we have by and large lost sight of the debate's initial moral dimension.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams observes, "Recent discussion on making it simpler for women to administer abortion-inducing drugs at home underlines the growing belief that abortion is essentially a matter of individual decision and not the kind of major moral choice that should involve a sharing of perspective and judgment. And that necessarily means that certain presumptions have changed. Not only has there been an obvious weakening of the feeling that abortion is a last resort; the development of embryo research has brought with it the hint of a more instrumental approach to the human organism in its earliest days."

Yet, contradiction abounds in our moral universe.  Williams continues, "Paradoxically, the language of 'foetal rights' has strengthened over the last few decades, leading to a real tension with this growing normalisation of abortion. The pregnant woman who smokes or drinks heavily is widely regarded as guilty of infringing the rights of her unborn child; yet at the same time, with no apparent sense of incongruity, there is discussion of the possibility of the liberty of the pregnant woman herself to perform the actions that will terminate a pregnancy."

I have no intention to open up the debate here, when our focus currently should be on other issues more urgent and immediate.  All I am asking is for us to examine the presumptions in our moral stance, and maybe, just maybe, we will see no child's life should ever cease to be an urgent and immediate concern of ours.

Do we feel the tension in our own equivocations, brazen contradictions, the strain on our conscience?  Or are we so arrogant to deem ourselves, like God, all-of-one-piece in our thoughts and actions, that any suggestion to reconsider our own presumptions must necessarily be a call to go backward, to slide sideway, to concede control?

Yours, Alex