Punditry

I don’t know whether to call this
liturgical Jekyll and Hyde syndrome,
a liturgically accommodating bishop,  or something else
entirely.  Do a compare and contrast for these
href=”http://slatts.blogspot.com/2008/01/diocese-bishop-opts-for-circus-mass.html”
target=”_blank”>two
href=”http://culbreath.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/how-to-implement-summorum-pontificum/”
target=”_blank”>stories.

Last Sunday, Diocese of Venice Bishop
Frank Dewane celebrated Mass at a Sarasota church accompanied by
priests wearing colorful Ferris wheels, clowns, giraffes, unicycles,
lions and merry-go-rounds on their vestments.

This was the annual circus Mass, Dewane said, honoring the nearly
100-year history of the Ringling family on Floridas west coast and the
importance of itinerant people like circus performers to the Catholic
universal church.

and

Bishop Dewayne of Venice, Florida, requires daily mass in the Extraordinary Form at Ave Maria University:

Due to the demand for the celebration
of
the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, both from Catholics residents
in Ave Maria Town as well as from students, faculty, and staff at Ave
Maria University, and in accordance with Summorum Pontificum, it is
fitting that a Sunday Mass be celebrated on campus in the Extraordinary
Form. In keeping with the same manifest desire, it would seem opportune
that the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite be celebrated on a daily
basis at the University, and at a convenient time. Further, it is noted
that, in accordance with Summorum Pontificum, unscheduled Masses can
also be celebrated by priests on campus, in the Extraordinary Form of
the Roman Rite.

Well I guess priests wearing vestments
like that would be an
extraordinary form of the Mass.  I have never really
understood these circus or clown themed Masses anyway.  For
example for the annual Red Mass they don’t wear vestments with law
books, blind lady justices, bar exams,  or courtrooms.
I am pretty sure Masses celebrated on Navy bases or at sea
don’t have priest’s wearing vestments with various classes of ships,
missiles, carrier aircraft, and various insignia of rank.  So
exactly why is it that a parish closely associated with care of
Catholic working with Ringling Brothers Circus get this kind of
treatment?

I believe the Church involved is
href=”http://www.stmartha.org” target=”_blank”>St.
Martha Catholic Church staffed by the Pallottine Fathers
(shouldn’t that be Pantomine Fathers) which calls itself the
U.S.A. Circus Church. They have a “full-sized, restored and gaily
painted wagon wheels mounted on the wall behind the altar.”  I
do wonder if Catholics involved with the circus like having a liturgy
like this?  It would seem to me that if you worked at the
circus all day the last thing you would want to see is vestments with
clowns and unicycles.  This seems to me something that would
be seen as more fun by the priests involved than the community they are
pastoring.  It does make me wonder if in May they have a
style=”font-style: italic;”>Clowning of Mary.

alt=”Clown Mass Indialantic, Fl Holy Name of Jesus Parish”
src=”http://www.splendoroftruth.com/curtjester/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/clownmass_Indialantic_HolyNameJesus.jpg”>

The picture above is from another Florida parish Holy Name of
Jesus Parish in Indialantic in the Diocese of Orlando.

In a new book of interviews with
celebrities called “Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth?” there is one
by Phillip Pullman that includes:

…”This is a crisis as big as war and
you
couldn’t trade your ration book in the wartime. You were allowed three
ounces of butter a week, or whatever, and that was it. And this is what
it should be like with carbon. None of this carbon trading. We should
have a fixed limit and if you use it all up in October, then tough, you
shiver for the rest of the year.”

…”If the polar bears leapt from the pages of my fiction into reality
and
saw what was happening,” reckons Pullman, “they’d eat us. Eat as many
of us as quickly as they possibly could. And good luck to them.”

Well it looks like Mr. Pulman has found
religion – global climate change.

Karen Hall at Some
Have Hats has started a
cleverly titled new blog covering Jesuits called Some
Wear Clerics.  As fans of Karen know she often posts
on Jesuit subjects and has many friends and acquaintances within the
Society of Jesus. Her co-blogger Joe Garcia   The purpose of
the new blog is in part.

This blog, or at least my posts
thereto,
will require something of the reader if he is to remain sane: two-fold
courage. Courage to admit there are things deeply wrong with the
current Society of Jesus and many of its members, and courage to
believe these problems, with God’s grace, will one day find relief. …

The election of the new Jesuit Father
General seems like business as usual, but as I commented over at
Karen’s blog I doubt if the reform of the Jesuits was going to be a
top-down affair anyway.  More than likely it  could
be bottom-up with the the infusion of younger Jesuits who are much more
inclined to be faithful to the Magisterium of the Church who will in
part help to reform it.

I do wonder if historically if there have
ever been a major reform of a large order that had become worldly
without a split.  Off hand I can think of the Discalced
Carmelites and the Capuchins of examples of splits from the parent
order that resulted when the parent order was losing their charism.
 Historically often these splits helped to also reform the
parent order as a result.  There is often a great animosity
towards those working to reform an order as in the case of St. John of
the Cross that ended up getting locked up for almost a year until he
escaped.  Fr. Groeschel who was once a
Capuchin labored for years for reform within his order before
making what he calls a very difficult decision to leave and co-found
the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.

So it will be interesting to see if reform
does occur what model it follows and I do hope that it can be one
without a split.  As easy as Jesuit bashing is I would love to
see the order as a whole make the contribution to the Church they once
did instead of keeping the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
busy.

Earlier today their was a dip in global
internet bandwidth as thousands
of Catholic bloggers clogged the web googling to find out about the new
Jesuit Father General is Fr. Adolfo Nicolas, SJ.

Karen Hall, lover of all things Jesuit, is cautiously pessimistic.
 Karen had also previously linked to a picture Fr. Z had
posted of a room full of Jesuits at their meeting wearing civies and
referring to the search for the one guy wearing clerics as “Find
Fr.
Waldo S.J.”

Fr. Adolfo Nicolas was wearing clerics
when elected though.  This makes me wonder if men being
nominated as Father General if they wear clerics under their civilian
clothes.  Kind of like Superman wearing his blue tights and
cape under his suit.  This would make sense since for too many
Jesuits their Jesuit identity is in fact a secret identity.  
I knew it was too much to hope for an equivalent of a Fr. Fessio, Fr.
Pacwa or the theological acumen of Cardinal Dulles or any number of
Jesuits around the world who would be recognized as Jesuits by Saint
Ignatius.

Well that is enough Jesuit bashing and
with Karen I am cautiously pessimistic and the new Jesuit General needs
are prayers and we certainly hope he heeds to the message that the Pope
delivered to them.

As is usually the case American Papist has a good roundup.

*I stole “Habemus Papam Nigrum”
from  Zadok
the Roman.

I can’t say that John Allen Jr. report
makes me less pessimistic in his post titled New
Jesuit leader a progressive shaped by Asia.  . In
the article where prophetic is tossed about multiple times, in response
to the Pope’s letter:

While
Nicols will certainly not lead the Jesuits in any direct challenge to
those points, observers say, his election is nevertheless a choice for
a “forward thinking” outlook, as well as for a sensibility to the
realities of Catholicism outside the West.

Does anybody really think that if St.
Francis Xavier had taken to the “sensibility to the
realities of Catholicism outside the West” that they would have found
Japanese Catholics later on who kept to their Catholicism for two
hundred years without a priest?  His missionary work had to be
diminished by a fervent persecution whereas liberal Catholicism can be
wiped out  by a light breeze.  It is traditional
Christianity that is growing by leaps and bounds in China and not
liberal Christianity more concerned with stepping on cultural toes than
preaching the Gospel.  I lived in Japan for a couple of years
and it seems so odd to me that in a culture that seems to adapt to and
mix in so much from western culture (often in quite odd ways) is
impregnable to the Gospel truth without the watering down of most
cultural adaptation (not that sometimes their are not valid cultural
adaptations).

Increasingly over the years anyone who
does not agree that
homosexuality is not perfectly normal are met with denouncements as a
homophobe.  The homophobe tag is now thrown along quite freely
at anyone who dares to accept accept homosexuality or even worse saying
it is sinful.  Say anything negative about homosexuality and
you are instantly branded a homophobe.  This is an annoying
trend, but even worse is the trend to try to litigate if you do not
accept gay orthodoxy.  The misnamed Human Rights Council in
Canada has
been doing just that in regards to commits against homosexuality and
the same types of things are now happening in England.

I think though that we can take a page out
of the homosexual activists play book and defend ourselves against
charges of homophobia.  They are not going to accept natural
law arguments or arguments from scripture so lets use their own
arguments. 

Here is what you do.  If accused
of homophobia simply say that you were born with it and that you did
not choose to be a homophobe and that you find the term itself to be
hateful and judgmental.  If they bring up the fact that
their is no medical evidence of the genetic origin of homophobia, you
say that there is just as much evidence of it than for the genetic
origin of homosexuality.  If they say that twins aren’t always
both homophobes, you remind them the same is true in the cases of twins
and homosexuality.

Now there next line of attack might be
that even if you are born with a genetic preposition towards
homophobia, it does not mean you should act on it.  After all
there might be a genetic preposition towards alcoholism, but that does
not mean the person has to become an alcoholic.  You then
remind them that the same would be true if there was an actual genetic
preposition towards homosexuality.

You could say that even if homophobia has
no genetic origin that you identify yourself as being in opposition to
homosexual acts and that this opposition is just another lifestyle
choice in a pluralistic society.  Why should you give into
their demand for you to change when they should just be tolerant
instead.  Shouldn’t young people in our public schools who
oppose homosexual acts be allowed to express their view in a tolerant
environment instead of being told to shut up and to hide their views in
a closet? 

They might tell you that the
diagnosis of homosexuality as a psychological disorder is no longer
made by the American Psychiatric Association, you can tell them that
there is no diagnosis of homophobia either.   

Tell them not be be a hater or a
homophobepbobe.

Archbishop Chaput is such a wonderful
speaker and First Things posts
his January 11, 2008, presentation in New Orleans, Catholic
Identity in the American Public Arena.  I was going
to post snippets from it, but it is all too good to choose from.

1. George Orwell said that one of the
biggest dangers for modern democratic life is dishonest political
language. Dishonest language leads to dishonest politicswhich then
leads to bad public policy and bad law. So we need to speak and act in
a spirit of truth.

With the presidential election upon us
this year this point is quite appropriate.  “Dishonest
language leads to dishonest politics” is exactly right.  So
often language is used to obfuscate
instead of to communicate.  Whether it is “choice”,
“therapeutic cloning”, “death with dignity”, etc; words are used to
direct us from the reality of what they are talking about.

2. Catholic is a word that has real
meaning. We dont control or invent that meaning as individuals. We
inherit it from the gospel and the experience of the Church over the
centuries. We can choose to be something else, but if we choose to call
ourselves Catholic, then that word has consequences for what we believe
and how we act. We cant truthfully claim to be Catholic and then act
as though were not.

3. Being a Catholic is a bit like being married. We have a relationship
with the Church and with Jesus Christ thats similar to being a spouse.
If a man says he loves his wife, his wife will want to see the evidence
in his love and fidelity. The same applies to our relationship with
God. If we say were Catholic, we need to show that by our love for the
Church and our fidelity to what she teaches and believes. Otherwise
were just fooling ourselves, because God certainly wont be fooled.

Amen.

4. The Church is not a political
organism. She has no interest in partisanship because getting power or
running governments is not what shes about, and the more closely she
identifies herself with any single party, the fewer people she can
effectively reach.

5. Scripture and Catholic teaching, however, do have public
consequences because they guide us in how we should act in relation to
one another. Loving God requires that we also love the people He
created, which means we need to treat them with justice, charity, and
mercy. Being a Catholic involves solidarity with other people. The
Catholic faith has implications for social justiceand that means it
also has cultural, economic and political implications. The Catholic
faith is never primarily about politics; but Catholic social action,
including political action, is a natural byproduct of the Churchs
moral message. We cant call ourselves Catholic, and then simply stand
by while immigrants get mistreated, or the poor get robbed, or unborn
children get killed. The Catholic faith is always personal but never
private. If our faith is real, then it will bear fruit in our public
decisions and behaviors, including our political choices.

This is the same point that Pope Benedict
makes in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est.

6. Each of us needs to follow our own
conscience. But conscience doesnt emerge from a vacuum. Its not a
matter or personal opinion or preference. If our conscience has the
habit of telling us what we want to hear on difficult issues, then its
probably badly formed. A healthy conscience is the voice of Gods truth
in our hearts, and it should usually make us uncomfortable, because
none of us is yet a saint. The way we get a healthy conscience is by
submitting it and shaping it to Gods will; and the way we find Gods
will is by conforming our lives to the counsel and guidance of the
Church that Jesus left us. If we find ourselves disagreeing as
Catholics with the teaching of the Church on a serious matter, its
probably not the Church thats wrong. The problem is much more likely
with us.

Preaching on what conscience actually is
is so important considering how “following your conscience” has become
synonymous with license.

7. But how do we make good political
choices when so many different issues are so important and complex? The
first principle of Christian social thought is: Dont deliberately kill
the innocent, and dont collude in allowing somebody else to do it. The
right to life is the foundation of every other human right. The reason
the abortion issue is so foundational is not because Catholics love
little babiesalthough we certainly dobut because revoking the
personhood of unborn children makes every other definition of
personhood and human rights politically contingent.

8. So can a Catholic in good conscience vote for a pro-choice
candidate? The answer is: I cant, and I wont. But I do know some
serious Catholicspeople whom I admirewho may. I think their reasoning
is mistaken, but at least they sincerely struggle with the abortion
issue, and it causes them real pain. And most important: They dont
keep quiet about it; they dont give up; they keep lobbying their party
and their representatives to change their pro-abortion views and
protect the unborn. Catholics can vote for pro-choice candidates if
they vote for them despitenot because oftheir pro-choice views. And
they also need a proportionate reason to justify it.

9. What is a proportionate reason when it comes to abortion? Its the kind of reason we will
be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when
we meet them in the next lifewhich we certainly will. If
were confident that these victims will accept our motives, then we can
proceed.

10. The heart of truly faithful citizenship is this: Were better
citizens when were more faithful Catholics. The more authentically
Catholic we are in our lives, choices, actions and convictions, the
more truly we will contribute to the moral and political life of our
nation.

His reference to proportionate reason he
has used before, but it is still the purest definition there is.

Damian Thompson reports:

At least two Anglican women priests
have become Roman Catholics because they are fed up with being treated
like dirt in their own Church, according to Fr Michael Seed, the
Franciscan friar who is ecumenical adviser to Cardinal Murphy-OConnor.

Fr Seed a deeply inspiring priest who has received many Anglicans
into communion with Rome reveals this extraordinary detail in an
interview with the Independent, which has buried it away in a feature.
He received two women himself and has now told the Catholic Herald
that other female priests have come over to Rome as a result of
persecution.

This treatment is explained:

Christina Rees of Women and the Church
says: Every woman who is ordained as a priest in the Church of England
knows in one sense there is still a question mark hanging over her
orders in a way which does not hang over the order of her male
colleagues.

Anglican orders for women are just as
valid as Anglican orders for men.  So there is a strange but
unintentional equality within Anglican orders since for the most part
their male priests are not validly ordained in the first place.
There are exceptions since some Anglican
bishops have confused the issue by having Orthodox bishops with valid
orders participate in their ordinations, though of course this doesn’t
matter in the case of attempted ordination of women.

It is rather interesting that in this
environment of doubt that these women would decide to come into the
Catholic Church where there is no doubt on the issue except within
progressive elements who act as their own magisterium.   I bet
though that progressives will see these conversions of Anglican
priestesses the same way Democrats seek black conservatives.

John
Allen Jr. reports on Benedict XVIs appearance at Romes La
Sapienza this coming Thursday and a letter from 63 professors and
students, including the entire physics faculty, demanding that the
invitation be withdrawn.

 …Their charge? That
Benedict XVI is an enemy of science and
reason.

Specifically, the letter points to a speech given on March 15, 1990, by
then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in Parma, Italy, in which he addressed
the notorious Galileo case. On that occasion, Ratzinger quoted Austrian
philosopher Paul Feyerabend that the churchs verdict against Gaileo
was rational and just.

The physics professors described themselves as indignant as scientists
faithful to reason, and as teachers who dedicate our lives to the
advancement and diffusion of knowledge. These words offend and
humiliate us. In the name of the secularity of science, we hope that
this incongruous event can still be cancelled.

In media interviews, the professors have also cited Benedicts recent
encyclical, Spe Salvi, as hostile to modern science.

…The 18-year-old speech cited by the popes critics, for example,
offered a reflection by Ratzinger on what he saw as a change in the
secular intellectual climate, re-evaluating Galileo as part of a
growing awareness of the ambivalence of scientific progress —
especially under the shadow of the bomb. In that context, Benedict
quoted the judgment of Feyerabend, an agnostic and skeptic, on Galileo,
along with similar statements from Ernst Bloch and C.F. Von Weizsacker.

Here’s what Feyerabend wrote, as quoted by Ratzinger: “The church at
the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo
himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social
consequences of Galileos doctrine. Its verdict against Gaileo was
rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for
motives of political opportunism.

Ratzinger actually called the statement drastic” — upon reflection, a
fairly striking term from a figure who, at the time, headed the
historical successor to the Inquisition.

Ratzinger concluded the speech by saying, It would be absurd, on the
basis of these affirmations, to construct a hurried apologetics. The
faith does not grow from resentment and the rejection of rationality,
but from its fundamental affirmation, and from being rooted in a still
greater form of reason.

In a nutshell, therefore, Benedict is being faulted by the physics
professors for quoting somebody elses words, which his full text
suggests he does not completely share. (Readers who remember Regensburg
can be forgiven a sense of dj-vu.)

Mr. Allen nailed that one since once again
the Pope is taken to task
for quoting someone else with much less than full agreement.  
The part in Spe Salvi that they object to is:

Francis Bacon and those who
followed in the intellectual current of modernity that he inspired were
wrong to believe that man would be redeemed through science. Such an
expectation asks too much of science; this kind of hope is deceptive.
Science can contribute greatly to making the world and mankind more
human. Yet it can also destroy mankind and the world unless it is
steered by forces that lie outside it.

The objection to this is hard to fathom
unless they really do see science as replacing redemption.

The reason modern scientists chaff is the
same reason that Galileo did and both display the same arrogance.
 Galileo got in trouble for leaving the sphere of science and
entering the sphere of theology with his interpretation of scripture.
 He also left the sphere of science by teaching as fact what
would not be proven to way over a hundred years after his death.
 Many modern scientists so much of the same by entering the
sphere of theology and trying to define what is ethical and what is
not.  To demand the ability to experiment without moral
restraint is not science, but scientism.  The truth is that it
is the scientist who would define theological truths and not the Church wanting to define scientific truths.

…First, stop thinking about God as a super-scientist or master craftsman, who designs our nervous and circulatory systems and gives us brains by which to read the stars and thus reason to His existence, but as an artist, and writer, like Shakespeare, who wants to come and live with us. Not because He’s lonely or wants to teach us something, but just because He loves us so much he wants to live our lives — and suffer our death.

Well if Shakespeare does want to come and live with me I won’t even charge him rent. Roy Schroth in a article on a new book by George Dennis O’brien says he wishes the above analogy was his own. As an analogy though it isn’t very good and you want to shout BOTH/AND at him. But I did have a pretty large guffaw at the "Not because He’s lonely" line. Does he perhaps think that God submitted a classified ad known to us as the Bible because of his loneliness? EGSE – Eternal GOd Seeking Everybody. TOP (Trinity of Person) seeking companionship.

…The American bishops, he says, have lost their public voice not merely because of the sexual abuse scandal. Even though American Mass attendance surpasses that of de-Christianized Europe, here the younger generation is falling away from Christian belief. One reason is that once the Vatican Council closed, "the spirit of dialogue evaporated." John Paul II and then Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, conducted a teaching papacy, not a learning papacy, as if they feared open discussion.

Yes let is have an open discussion on issues. First off let us all get together and decide if racism is really all that bad in the first place. We can get groups on both sides of the question get together and have a dialogue on racism. There hasn’t been any infallible statements made or encyclicals specifically referencing racism so it must be an open issue. So what if racism as a sin is a consistent teaching of the Church. If Ordinatio Sacerdotalis doesn’t close the door on the discussion of women’s ordination then surely there is nothing to prevent a frank open discussion in support of racism.

While we are at it how about the preferential option for the poor. Isn’t it time that we stop stigmatizing selfish people as greedy? Have we sufficiently walked in a greedy man’s patent leather shoes to understand his desire to ignore the poor. Shouldn’t greedophobia be inspected in light of modern times? Surely the Sensus Fidelium has moved from a individual preferential love of the poor to a "isn’t there a government program to take care of them?" If we have a prophetic and listening heart then no doubt we will come to realize that a individual responsibility towards our neighbors is a tradition that should now be reevaluated.

I only throw these example out since for some strange reasons progressives always want to have dialog on the same predictable subjects. If you don’t want to have a discussion on racism and greed then you are closed minded and dogmatic on these subjects.

…Thanks to modern communication techniques, the Pope has become the public "voice" of the church. The trouble with this, suggests O’Brien, is that of the many "voices" the Pope could use he has chosen those that cannot be heard effectively in the modern world. We have become accustomed to the Pope as "super-professor" or "judge." He writes long encyclicals and delivers homilies in which he tells us definitively — sometimes infallibly — what to think. At one time he said the issue of women’s ordination was settled, and not to be discussed.

But our experience of the professor and judge model is that they are not infallible. Historians, for example, admit there is much they don’t know and invite colleagues to correct them. O’Brien suggests that the Pope play the role of "patriarch," a "father" who has authority in his family based on his love for them, even though good fathers are sometimes wrong.

In our experience not only is the professor and judge model not infallible, but neither are Commonweal writers, critics of the Pope, etc. In fact I will go so far as to say that you can name any profession and say that are not infallible. But then again Vatican I did not look at scripture and Apostolic tradition and decide that professors and judges are infallible.

…O’Brien closes with the suggestion that the Pope every five years should invite the world’s leading intellectuals, including both Catholic theologians and those who opposed the church’s teachings, to a meeting in the Sistine Chapel, where, under Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, they discuss the world’s biggest problems. The Pope’s role is to sit quietly and listen. Then consider all they have said, and publish their papers with his replies.

I don’t know about you but I would pay to see a Sistine Chapel cage match on PPV between faithful and dissident theologians.

The silliness of this whole idea is that it is not the role of the Pope to keep revisiting Church teaching, but to go deeper into the deposit of faith that is the Church’s heritage. When it comes to the deposit of faith progressives keep wanting to make a withdrawal.

This article was titled Can the "Church learn to listen?" and listening was the main brunt of it. I just want to know why progressive who won’t listen to the Pope and the teaching authority of the Church and are tone deaf to the consistent teaching of the Church should be lecturing us on listening anyway?

Carl Olson has also fisked this article and surely there is enough material for multiple fiskings.

“I am going to try to be so persuasive, so that those of you who are still wavering . . . will suddenly come to the conclusion — a light beam will shine through — will light you up — and you will experience an epiphany — ‘I have to vote for Mike Huckabee!’ “

Well actually this explicit religious appeal was made by Barack Obama. But as Deal Hudson referenced this won’t set the theocracy watch types into any kind of frenzy. Well I already had a epiphany with Barack when Gerald Augustinus aptly wrote "That he’s more pro-abortion than Planned Parenthood, …" A nice bright light beam powered by a 100 watt incandescent bulb no less shined through since that it was good true rhetoric does.

I found it rather strange with Hillary’s push calls challenging Obama’s abortion record. Let them get into a who is more pro-abortion fight. While it might help them in the primaries this type of debate would be poison in the General Election since it nulls out all of those references about wanting abortion to be rare, etc. Hillary voted in favor of the Born Alive Infants Act while Obama just voted "present" on a similar bill in the Illinois version of the act.

One thing about the abortion debate in politics today is what candidates can get away with saying. They are allowed to say things that are so incoherent that it would give debate teams strokes and yet interviewers will sit there like they just said something sane and rational.

For example I saw an interview where Obama said that abortion is a moral question, but that we should trust women to make the right decision. Why don’t we trust women when it comes to murder of their spouses or boyfriends? If something is a moral question it is objective instead of being subjective. If in fact if we can just trust women to make the right decision on a issues, then why can’t we just trust men on other issues. This logic leads in fact to the idea that we don’t really need laws in the first place since we should just trust people to do the good.

In a sane world the interviewer would have dropped his jaw in disbelief at such an answer. A rational interviewer would have followed up asking why it was a moral questions and if this moral question is seen as murder why would it be left up to an individual within a gender group to make it?