A Meditation on Scrupulosity

 I admire those who walk away from Omelas.

I admire those who refuse to co-operate, however remotely, with some evil so that good might result. Those who because of one distant crime, committed against one unknown innocent, are willing to forfeit their livelihoods, leave their homes, be abandoned by their friends and reviled by their enemies.

I admire those who are not willing to do nothing, who are prepared to draw a line in the sand and say, thus far, and no further. 

I admire those who walk away from Omelas. But I have not followed their example. I have told myself instead that their refusal is only a quixotic scrupulosity, and sometimes believed it.

I know that if we do nothing, the ghoulish use of fetal cell lines in medicine will continue. But I have gone along with everyone else and gotten vaccinated, as a condition of entering my workplace, as a condition of travelling on domestic aircraft. I have justified this decision to myself in two ways:

The first and greatest rationalisation (and O, how Dr Clam of years past would be disgusted with me) is obedience to authority. For I have come back to the Church of my ancestors precisely to put myself under authority, to put a bridle on my reason, to muzzle my logical and self-consistent consequentialist morality, since I needed some reason other than cowardice not to kill abortionists. So I have therefore to listen to the voice of the hierarchical Church. The Pope, and a fortiori to me the Pope Emeritus, have been vaccinated and encourage me to do the same. So I comply, following St. Loyola's principle, 'What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines'.

The second rationalisation follows the principle of William S. Burroughs, 'to live is to collaborate'. I do not see how we can get away with remote co-operation with evil so that good may result. My logical and self-consistent consequentialist morality is still there, ticking away. It seems to me that there are more serious ways in which most people in most Western countries co-operate remotely with the evil of abortion.

Leaving aside the obvious abomination and far from remote co-operation of voting in the monstrous fiends who advocate such things: most people in the West pay taxes, and most people in the West lend legitimacy through participation in the electoral process to governments that allow abortion. 

Civilised countries have government-funded healthcare, and civilised countries that are shot through with Satanic barbarism fund abortion. Money is fungible; so we pay for it. If I were to lose my job, I would have to go back to Australia and pay taxes.

Then there is that hard saying in Romans 13:1-2 about obeying the government. I can accept this without too much trouble if the government is an authoritarian one, since sovereignty is given by God. But a representative government makes the heretical claim that sovereignty derives from the people. In doing so, it claims to be acting in my name, and thus pollutes me with its crimes - with what it has done, and with what it has failed to do. Maybe this seems an insane scrupulosity to you. A brief anecdote: I voted for the more conservative candidate in a New South Wales state election, and a more conservative government was formed. Hooray. The more conservative premier proceeded to ram through legislation decriminalising abortion and bringing New South Wales into line with enlightened states like North Korea and the Renegade Mainland Provinces. Ffffff.... I mean, thank you, Gladys Berejiklian. I gave you a mandate and you used it to act diametrically opposite to everything I believe in. (Note to self: pray for soul of Gladys Berejiklian). If I were to lose my job, I would have to go back to Australia and participate in an electoral process that legitimised an abortion-allowing government.

So, those are my justifications.

A ninety-something German I have never met said it was a good idea; and if it is a bad idea, then there are other things  that seem bad to me that I would have to do if I didn't do it. 

Feeble justifications, or not? 

Is it a quixotic scrupulosity, to walk away from Omelas?

Pray for us, Blessed Johanna Vera Alderliesten.