"We have a society where it’s open to debate whether Catholics have a right to live their faith"

Georgetown University rightly condemned Limbaugh’s words. But it did more than that: It described them as uncivil, and contrasted them with the “civility” implicit in attempts to conscript Catholics and Catholic institutions to violate their consciences. It described the question of whether Catholics should be conscripted as “a legitimate question of public policy.” An insistence on conscription was deemed “respectful.”

That was consistent with the response from the editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics. JME published an article arguing for the permissibility of infanticide, re-styled helpfully as ‘after birth abortion.’ The editor complained about the response:

“What is disturbing is not the arguments in this paper nor its publication in an ethics journal. It is the hostile, abusive, threatening responses that it has elicited. More than ever, proper academic discussion and freedom are under threat from fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society.”

We have a society where it’s open to debate whether Catholics have a right to live their faith, and open to debate whether infants have a right to life. And yet we continue to pretend that civility and even liberal society survive.