Here is a response by Fr. Walsh to a recent Washington Post editorial piece, When an Embryo Isn't an Embryo, by William Raspberry.

Dear Mr. Raspberry,

I am a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington and also a professor of moral theology at the seminary of the Archdiocese of Agaña, Guam.  I happen to be in Washington and caught you column of August 6, the 60^th anniversary of Hiroshima.

I have been fan of yours for many years because it seems to me that you always opposed the use of a double norm in our society.  However, reading your column today, it seems that what constitutes a double norm can be something in the eye of the beholder.

I believe that when good people disagree, it is not because one is smarter or better than the other.  I believe it is because they are starting from different premises.  Thus the real issue remains too often hidden while they argue about their conclusions.  They are like ships passing in the night.

Your position on stem-cell research leads you to defend the inconsistency of Sen. Frist.  Yet the real reason why you disagree from the detractors of Sen. Frist is that you start from a different metaphysical position than they do.  At least, this is what Aristotle would seem to say.  His great contribution of human ethical thought was the insight that ethics is shaped by metaphysics.  If you want to know what it means “to be good,” he said you have to begin by explaining what it means “to be.”  Aristotle distinguished the act of being (first metaphysical act) from all other acts (second metaphysical act).  If you want to do something, you first have to be.  Non-beings cannot do anything.

Aristotle posed the question: “Does being have finality?”  Is the world in which we live already arranged in such a way that we already have an end?  If the answer is “yes,” then an ethical methodology is already implied.  Using the principle that he who has an end, has a claim on the means to that end, Aristotle reasoned that such being have a right to the means to the end rooted in first metaphysical act.  They do not have to “do” anything except to “be” to have such a right.  Thus was born the concept of human rights, rights that I have, not because the state gave it to me, but, as Jefferson was to say later, because my Creator endowed with an end and a claim on the mean to achieve that end.

The subject of a right is a person.  This is a philosophical category.  It is NOT a biological category.  You cannot have a being that “grows” into being or not being a person.  Mix the two categories of thought and you will end up with the confusion of your column and our society as a whole (witness Roe vs. Wade).  You cannot ask when a human being becomes a person.  You are mixing apples and oranges.

Aristotle points out that if being has finality (and the right claims that go with it) others have the duty to respect those rights.  This is the methodology.  You go from rights to consequences.  Rights dictate consequences.  We may find that the rights of others get in the way of what I want to do, but too bad.  My rights are my rights, and you have the duty to respect them.

Now, however, if being does not have finality, everything changes.  There being no end, there cannot be a claim on the means to non-existing end.  Poof! The concept of human rights disappears.  All we are left with is civil rights, the claims we have to those things that the state says it is good for us to have.  How do we determine what is good for us?  Look to your column.  We look to the consequences of stem-cell research (or you name it).  When being does not have finality, the ethical methodology becomes “consequences dictate rights.”  We adjust the rights in order to achieve the right mix of desirable outcomes.  We legalize certain things and we outlaw other things.  The end (understood now as the consequences that I want to accomplish) justifies the means because there is no other end other than the one we choose).

The principle that there can be only one norm for our society means that the same norm that is used on Monday to determine cases is the same norm that is used on Tuesday.  This is the Golden Rule.  However, if you have power, the Golden Rule easily becomes (and not necessarily with a bad intention) “Heads I win; tails you lose.”  “My rights determine your consequences and my consequences determine your rights.”  When you are a senator with cancer and think that stem-cell research offers the possibility of a cure, it is very easy to slip into this kind of thinking, - and all with a good intention, mind you.

Is this the kind of thinking that gave us the horrors of Hiroshima?  They did it to save American lives!

Mr. Raspberry, there is not such thing as a “little inconsistency.”  You have helped to open the eyes of many in the past regarding the injustices within a racial context.  Why not do the same today for those who have not had the benefit of Aristotle’s critique of the principle that the end justifies the means.  This is the same principle that all the terrorists are using to justify themselves.  “I’m going it for a good reason, therefore it must be okay.”

I am open to a dialogue with you.  I hope that you have not passed the point of no return, because that means having a closed mind.

With every best wish, I am sincerely yours,

(Rev.) Francis Michael Walsh