What’s Wrong with the World

This is irrelevant but I thought he was the Catholic evolutionist at Brown.

Totally accidental name resemblance. No connection whatsoever.

I applaud of Pastor Miller's actions but I wonder how his actions may be squared with the understanding maintained here that under Catholic principles one may disobey State only when the State is asking one to commit an immoral act.

I'm not a Catholic, but I do not hold that principle. I would say that there is an in-between zone where civil disobedience may be carried out by those who are called of God to protest, peacefully, against a manifestly unjust law even if this means going to jail for it. An example would be members of certain pro-life groups who divest themselves of their assets, have no family ties, and then go and peacefully block abortion clinic entrances even though this will get them sent to federal prison under the FACE act.

This in-between area is rather narrow, in my opinion, but Pastor Miller's actions fall well within it. Not everyone is called to "stick their necks out" in that way, but I think more and more will be as time goes on. Lisa Miller sought help from the Mennonite community. In that sense, she was the opportunity presented to them. Sometimes an opportunity is presented to us that we are clearly challenged to take up, even when it means "losing it all."

For example, one is not generally _required_ to adopt a child not one's own, but one can easily imagine circumstances in wartime or emergency, under the Nazis, and so forth where one would be confronted by a child in dire and immediate need and would obviously have been sent, by God, this opportunity to help someone who was not one's own.

I am inclined to believe that God reveals His will to us in part by what we are confronted with. In these electronic days, that concept of "being confronted" can get blurry and difficult, but I still think the incarnational element is important. Apparently Lisa Miller somehow was put in direct contact with Pastor Miller and he considered himself called upon to help her. He did so, and is paying the price. It looks like others may pay the price as well, though not with Pastor Miller's help. May God protect and strengthen him.

Gian, as a Catholic, can you give a source as to where this is shown to be official teaching? This is not meant to be accusatory, I'm willing to believe what you're saying, but what is your source?

I can't imagine Catholics (and I am one) being against basic civil disobedience.

This is what I understood Tony to mean in a previously when resistance to abortion-legitimizing regimes was being discussed. But perhaps I misunderstood.

According to WND, the daughter would touch herself sexually and act "disturbed" and unhappy after visiting with the lesbian. That sounds to me like Lisa Miller should have slapped her with a criminal complaint to CPS. Bathing nude with the child alone would give most people the heebie jeebies and be probable cause for a criminal investigation of the ex-lover. Even in the most liberal parts of Virginia, that sort of conduct would likely get Miller sole custody without question or cause a commonwealth attorney to not touch the case with a 10 foot pole.

It was ruled that Vermont had jurisdiction over the custody case. That was a big part of the legal battle that went on for years. Eventually Virginia's courts (I believe this is how it went) ruled that the custody rulings of Vermont had to apply and that Vermont had jurisdiction. Lisa Miller appealed the matter to the US Supreme Court, but IIRC they refused to hear the case. One way and another, it ended up that the Vermont courts decided the whole thing, and the Vermont family law judge (who sounds like a real piece of work) was unmoved by the testimony that Isabella was disturbed and harmed by the visits that had occurred.

Soooo why no accusations filed with CPS, the local police or DA in Vermont?

In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.

source: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20030731_homosexual-unions_en.html

Mike T, good question. That was several years ago, and my perception was that since it was an interstate custody case, the main focus was on getting these allegations recognized by the Vermont family court and taken into account in the custody case so that the judge would not keep ordering the visits. One hears of course of many such situations. I don't know for sure that Miller did _not_ make complaints to CPS in Vermont, but Isabella was spending nearly all of her time in Virginia with Miller at the time. I have to be honest and say that I doubt very much that the family court in Vermont would have been more likely to behave sanely if it could have been verified that Miller had made her complaints to the CPS, etc., in Vermont.

I have to be honest and say that I doubt very much that the family court in Vermont would have been more likely to behave sanely if it could have been verified that Miller had made her complaints to the CPS, etc., in Vermont.

Well, when one party to the family law case is in police custody pending criminal prosecution for sexual molestation it's kind of a moot point. A soon-to-be-sex-offender cannot have custody of a child.

Great reminder, Scott. Thanks for posting.

I kind of doubt (hate to say it) that the local Vermont prosecutor would have arrested Janet Jenkins on the basis of the testimony I've heard of.

Thanks, Scott. That clears things up.

Scott, that's a great statement to bring forth. Thanks.

This is what I understood Tony to mean in a previously when resistance to abortion-legitimizing regimes was being discussed. But perhaps I misunderstood.

Gian, we recognize that so-called laws that actually require of you an intrinsically immoral act are not true laws, and you are obliged to disobey them. These are the cases where we know with certainty that we should not obey.

We ought to also recognize at the other end of the spectrum laws that demand of you something that is clearly not inherently wrong, and clearly is a matter under the jurisdiction of the legislature, where your personal opinion is that the law is a bad law because it won't end up fostering the common good. A tax rate of 25% instead of 15%, for example. Normally, in those situations, you are obligated to obey the law, because the very meaning of a legislature having "authority" is that it is THEIR prudential decisions that rule and are to be followed rather than your prudential judgments. To be under the rule of someone in authority is to be obligated to submit to their choices about how to pursue the common good, even when you don't agree they will succeed.

As Lydia says and I agree, there is a middle ground that obtains: matters where the law is defective in one way or another, but not so defective as to be truly no law at all. Or, matters on the very edge of jurisdiction, so that it is unclear whether the legislature has the authority to decide in this matter. And so on, for a number of causes of intermediate status. In these cases, the obligation to obey can either be attenuated, or be missing altogether, without an absolute obligation to disobey. In these cases, a man can be very unsure whether he ought to obey or not, and the conclusion may legitimately vary from individual to individual. For instance, a person may conclude that "this law is not binding on me, but for prudence' sake I will still observe it as if it were binding so that I am not persecuted by law enforcement." Another person may say of the very same law, "it is not binding and I have no fear of being caught so I will disobey it." But because, by the very nature of the case, men usually will be in doubt that they have the right judgment about such a law, they will not be readily able to declare the law to be a "bad law" in the sense that nobody should obey it.

For most laws that touch on one of these middle-areas, the law itself touches other laws that are in themselves good and wholesome. That makes civil disobedience more problematic, but does not make it morally impossible.

I think that in a good country with moral people and wise rulers, the middle ground situations probably occupy an extremely narrow niche, so small as to be vanishing. As a country loses its morals and its rulers become corrupt, the middle ground will expand gradually.

Tony,
Per Vatican document, this case falls in the first category where disobedience is a duty.
Even in the middle ground, the individuals are not obeying- they are at best complying. The sentiment this law is not binding on me, but for prudence' sake I will still observe it as if it were binding so that I am not persecuted by law enforcement. means that the individual does not regard himself as being bound by the law.

That is, when a individual applies his reason to whether his should comply with the law or not, he has then disregarded the law. He has put himself above the legislature.

So the question is, of unjust laws, either
1) To flout is a duty
2) To flout is a matter of prudence

Lydia's intuitive way of putting it seems more suitable to practical action. To disobey is a duty but still it does not fall on everyone to actively seek a given practical action.

I would put it that we may resist the State not only when it is asking us to do immoral acts but also when the State itself is committing immoral acts.
1) Otherwise one has no way to oppose a tyranny that does not call upon individuals to commit immoral acts
2) A citizen is complicit in the acts of the State to which he pays his allegiance.

Just FYI, compare the first quote I gave to Evangelium Vitae on abortion laws:

Laws which authorize and promote abortion and euthanasia are therefore radically opposed not only to the good of the individual but also to the common good; as such they are completely lacking in authentic juridical validity. Disregard for the right to life, precisely because it leads to the killing of the person whom society exists to serve, is what most directly conflicts with the possibility of achieving the common good. Consequently, a civil law authorizing abortion or euthanasia ceases by that very fact to be a true, morally binding civil law.

73. Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection.

Source: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae_en.html

When I referred to "middle ground," I didn't so much mean to refer to the wrongness of the law or of the court ruling but rather to its application to the individual. My own opinion in this case is that Lisa Miller was *obligated* to resist the court ruling to the best of her ability but that people in the Mennonite community were not *obligated* to volunteer to be the ones to drive her to Canada or in some other way to smuggle her out of the country. This is because the primary and natural duty to protect the child fell on Lisa, and she was the one being ordered to do something wrong. They were going out of their way to intervene in a situation that did not previously include them. They were, in my opinion, _permitted_ to help her to resist an evil and unjust law, but no given one of them had that as an obvious and personal obligation, since it did not fall naturally on any one of them.

These two categories (your being obligated and your being permitted to resist an evil law) could come together in extreme cases of "confrontedness," as, for example, if a Jewish child came running into your store in Warsaw hiding from the Nazis. The obligation to protect the child would then have come upon you as an individual not in virtue of a family connection but in virtue of God's having sent this child to you in a very pointed way.

Lydia, I agree. There is room for a law to be a rule that person X must disobey and person Y is permitted to disobey, if they stand in different relations to the law or the facts. As Lisa Miller.

I didn't so much mean to refer to the wrongness of the law or of the court ruling but rather to its application to the individual.

I envision a range of possible causes, of which the wrongness of the law or ruling in itself is just one subdivision.

That is, when a individual applies his reason to whether his should comply with the law or not, he has then disregarded the law. He has put himself above the legislature.

Gian, EVERY rational creature, in EVERY particular situation, must use his reason in application to a concrete situation and determine whether there is a binding law that speaks to his action in this situation. That's what it means to be a rational agent under an authority. He must, using reason, determine the nature of the situation, and the nature of the law, and decide whether the law speaks to this kind of situation, AND ALSO whether in so speaking it binds him or not. He cannot just assume it binds him, as we know, because some written laws (those which directly obligate you to do something intrinsically immoral) are not validly laws and cannot bind (cf. laws in Nazi Germany to turn over Jews). Thus, for every act of obedience by a rational agent, it isn't a truly reasoned, consented act of obedience if he hasn't at least implicitly accepted the conclusion that "this binds me", a rational judgment. Thus, the very nature of law imposed on reasoning creatures allows for this rational judgment. That's the difference between laws applying to intelligent agents and laws of nature on rocks, etc. In order for obedience to be a virtue, it has to be the consented act of a reasoning person.

So, a thinking person may judge a law to be not binding either because it does not speak to THIS specific situation, (though in gross appearance it may seem to - this is what happens when the SC overturns a lower court conviction by narrowly construing a law, for example), or because the legislator never had authority to speak to this kind of situation to make a law about it (like Chinese laws against having a second child), or that are patently made not with any regard whatsoever to the common good but for private gain alone of the ruler (a new tin-pot dictator declaring himself "president for life" in opposition to the constitution) - generally, for rules that in one way or another have some bona fide defect in them that undermines their character as law altogether or with respect to a given situation.

So the question is, of unjust laws, either 1) To flout is a duty 2) To flout is a matter of prudence

Gian, you have to stop smashing together distinct categories as if their distinctions were irrelevant. An "unjust law" can be unjust in different respects, and therefore its effect in terms of how it binds may be different. A law can be unjust because it unjustly obligates you to do something intrinsically immoral. Or, a law can be unjust because the legislator has no just authority to regulate this subject matter. In the first, you must disobey the human "law" because it defies God's law, and you must obey God rather than man. In the second, you are not obliged to obey a so-called "law" that the legislator never had any authority to pass, but if you do comply with it you are not thereby breaking God's law so you are not obliged to disobey it. The meaning of "unjust" in the 2 sorts of unjust law is not univocal, and by treating them as if they were univocal you confuse the truth about them.

I kind of doubt (hate to say it) that the local Vermont prosecutor would have arrested Janet Jenkins on the basis of the testimony I've heard of.

I kind of doubt (hate to say it) that the local Vermont prosecutor would have arrested Janet Jenkins on the basis of the testimony I've heard of.

Based on the media reports, I find it hard to believe that local law enforcement wouldn't take a keen interest in Jenkins' behavior unless I found out that Miller went to them and they turned her away. The reported behavior is consistent with the early stages of child molestation. Children don't typically act disturbed and sexual at that age without being subjected to criminal sexual conduct. Besides, there are other authorities like the state police and attorney general's office who could intervene.

You might find this story very interesting.

Tony,
the legislator has no just authority to regulate this subject matter.

I agree but no hard lines can be drawn. The just authority of the legislator is not a matter of abstract principles but of concrete situations.

I was reading that during Dark Ages, a King of France declared the selling of horses to Norsemen a capital offense.
Now, libertarians would say that the King was exceeding his just authority. But I hope you would not agree with them.