Social justice Catholics should reclaim rhetoric of objective truth, goodness

“Many of our ethical discussions involved snappy refutations of imaginary relativists. I say "imaginary" because while soft relativism is common among non-academics, moral relativism is not widely upheld in academic philosophical communities. We students were being prepped to fight straw philosophers.”

“The right-wing Catholics who were primed to defend unyielding truths back in 2005 are the same who now, if not overtly touting moral relativism, are certainly practicing it. And their readiness to excuse immoral and even violent behavior from any on their "side" is not exclusive to Catholics: White evangelicals have a similar moral relativism problem.”

“In the United States, the attack on truth and goodness that Benedict warned of is coming from self-proclaimed faithful Christians. This is a political and ideological movement that prefers QAnon conspiracy theories over factual evidence. Members of this faction routinely defend the murder of Black persons by police officers, and mock children who survived school shootings.” “They have repeatedly laughed off assault as "boys will be boys" and implied that rape victims were somehow asking for it. And now, the pro-life champions of truth and morality adopt an attitude of "my body, my choice" to justify violating public health requirements during a pandemic.”

“We need to be able to distinguish truth from falsehood, and we should not treat false propositions as somehow as valuable as true ones, simply because they are someone's deeply held beliefs.”

Read the whole article here: https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/social-justice-catholics-should-reclaim-rhetoric-objective-truth-goodness