Anderson's Law

Jay Anderson of Pro Ecclesia * Pro Familia * Pro Civitate had a post he wrote featured in the Washington Times.

A Catholic priest who regularly prays outside an abortion clinic wrote of his positions in a newspaper column, to which two letter-writers responded.They dismissed the church’s teaching against abortion on the grounds of the recent sex scandals — in which church officials covered up accusations of sexual abuse, mostly by homosexual priests against teenage boys.

Catholic blogger Jay Anderson reacted by proposing a Catholic equivalent to the Internet rule known as Godwin’s Law "for invocations of ‘the Scandal’ as a rhetorical device."

"It would go something like this: ‘As a debate involving the Catholic Church (either a discussion about the Church specifically, or a discussion in which the Church is taking a position) grows longer, the probability of someone mentioning the sex scandal approaches one.’

"And then there’s its corollary: ‘Once such reference to the Scandal is made, whoever mentioned the Scandal has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress,’ " writes Mr. Anderson, a former mayor of Columbia, Va.

"Perhaps the Scandal is still too recent," he concludes. "But surely, at some point in time, such ad hominem argumentation against the Church and its teachings needs to be consigned to similar status as inappropriate Nazi comparisons."

The author of the article though doesn’t state Godwin’s law very well at the beginning since it as Jay previously noted is "regarding references and analogies to the 3rd Reich." Unfortunately I think we will have too many opportunities to state "Anderson’s Law" since the priestly scandal abuse analogies are all to common in many conversations regarding the Church.