From Dr M. Asciak MD

Since I am probably not considered a progressive in many quarters, it seems that, according to the latest grouping, I am also a poor moderate character. This is interesting because although theologically I have always tended towards orthodoxy, socially I have always considered myself to be centre-left. I should qualify this statement. My emphasis on the concept of justice has always been placed ahead of the concept of liberty, without this tension in any way detracting from the latter. Other images of Left and Right in politics exist but tend to be tenuous. Let me now come to the main point.

Important issues often come up for discussion in our country. When resolving these issues, different opinions are obviously put forward often with gusto and there is the tendency to ridicule an opponent’s opinion regardless of its objectivity. In any resolution of important public issues of a certain magnitude, the foremost consideration is that of the common good.

The common good is not a quantifiable value and is not a simple exercise of deciding numerically who wants what. That would be the public interest. The common good is a qualifiable value that rests on the determination of what is the good and what is the truth, which value is attained by reason. It could be that the common good is discernible to only one member of the population while the rest loose sight of this beneficial value for the community.

Since we live in a democracy, the final arbiter on what position to take in certain contestable issues of a certain magnitude should be the electorate, whose wish is often mediated through political party platforms.

There may often be the tension I described earlier in that the common good need not be what the public interest chooses. Also, there often is a directed charge that one ought not to tell others how to live their lives by forcing their personal moral opinions on them.

This is often complicated by the fact that the choice made by the “others” also forces personal moral opinions on the “one”. I have often said that the issue is really not so much a matter of who forces whose morality on whom, since some kind of morality has to be enforced at the end of the day, but rather which is the correct objective morality!

What the correct objective morality boils down to need not be arrived at from first Act in Revelation, but rather through the use of common sense, particularly by comparing the effects of the changes that have been brought about in other societies which have introduced them. Have these societies, by and large, been better off for the changes introduced or worse off? Are the societies concerned still recognizable by the values that had defined them and have they changed exponentially? If they have changed, are the current values leading to better social parameters?

If, at the end of the day, some form of morality on important issues is going to be imposed on us anyway, even if it may not be consonant with the common good, I doubt very much if our parliamentarians have a moral right to do so without first consulting the electorate which put them there in the first place.

It would be quite wrong for a relatively small number of representatives to impose on a population a morality that might not be appreciated by the majority of that people! If a highly contentious morality that may greatly affect the common good is to be imposed on a people, then let that people decide, right or wrong, rather than any presumptuous politicians! With the common good involved, I would rather take my chances with the many than with the few, even if those few consider themselves to be enlightened and untouchable, not to mention progressive and moderate.

Michael Asciak