“There is certainly the possibility of prejudicial factors affecting licensing. What if the licensing board didn’t like us Catholics. What if the examiners were anti-black or anti-white or anti-poor or anti-Semitic? If Hitler’s Germany were licensing do you think any Jews or gypsies would have been given licenses? If bin Laden were the examiner would Christian Germans get licenses? But Hitler might have given a license to any blond beast, no matter how abusive he might become and bin Laden would happily have given licenses to any potential terrorist. So I think there are more objections to licensing parents than just going against the Scriptures.”
“I’m not sure that the Scriptures would prevent reducing population or making certain that parents were fit to have children. In fact a number of Protestant denominations have come out for population reduction. Some Muslim groups too. But go on, Ray.”
“There’s nothing more personal than having a family. I’d say it is more of a basic right than is freedom of speech. People who want children are going to do their best for them. It just amazes me that you, my old buddy, have taken the same kind of path that Hitler might have taken—and in fact did in some cases.”
“Wait a minute padre. I know you’ve studied more philosophy than I have, but you know that bringing in Hitler is a logical fallacy. You have to stick to arguing the issues, not bringing in some extraneous issue. You know that logical fallacies have been postulated and explained since the time of Aristotle. And saying that an idea is bad because a bad person also holds that idea is one of the logical fallacies we must avoid.
“Hitler did some good things and some bad things according to historians. Pope John Paul did some good things and some bad things according to some. So stick to the issues.
What if Hitler ate fish and apples. Those are both good nutritional habits. Would you stop eating apples because Hitler ate them? You know as well as I do that logical fallacies have been used to convince people to follow certain courses of action even though any truly rational thinker can see through the holes in the logic.”