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F r o n t i s p i e c e
Moral Calculus of an Inferno
By Karl Keating
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This Rock
Volume x, Number x
 January 2004 
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As I write this, fire still rages in parts of San Diego County. From a nearby highway I can see miles and miles of denuded hills. Wisps of smoke rise from skeletal remains of bushes and trees. Not a leaf, not a blade of grass, remains. To the east the mountains send up torrents of smoke.
As you read this, months later, the fires are long out, the rains have cleansed roadways and buildings of the ash that covered them, and the first signs of new growth appear on blackened earth. People who lost their homes already are rebuilding.
One thing that will not be rebuilt—or at least not returned to what it was—is the life of the man who is thought to have started the main fire. What is his culpability for what happened? It is a good question for Catholic moralists.
The man went hunting in scrubland not far from a large town. He never was more than a few miles from a road. The sky was clear, and visibility was good. He should have had no problem telling compass directions. If he became lost, he need only have turned north or west, followed the compass, and in an hour been safe—no need to set a signal fire, and how imprudent to do so in bone-dry brush on a day with desiccating Santa Ana winds!
It seems an open-and-shut case: The hunter must have known that setting a fire, even a small one, was highly dangerous. His negligence was gross, so unreasonable that he was as culpable as though he had been an arsonist.
But things may not have been that simple. Consider the following hypothetical scenario.
The day was blisteringly hot, made hotter by the camouflage clothing the hunter wore. He thought he had taken enough water but underestimated how much he needed. In a few hours the water was gone, he was dehydrated, and his judgment deteriorated. He tried to walk out but forgot about the compass in his pack. He ended up going in circles, and then he panicked. Too tired to walk further and afraid he would perish, he lit a small fire, the only way he could attract attention. He tended the fire while it smoldered, but he unwittingly fell asleep. He was awakened by the sound of the helicopter that saved him, but his small fire was becoming an inferno.
See how the moral calculus changes? Poor judgment, yes, but not the gross negligence of the first scenario. It came down to too little water or too much time in the heat. With more of the one or less of the other, the hunter would have had no problem. He tried to use his wits to extricate himself, but his exhausted wits failed him. He made a tremendous blunder in starting the signal fire, but he made it in extremis.
Two scenarios, two different degrees of culpability—something like the difference between mortal and venial sins. Catholicism is "complex" morally because it thinks such distinctions are important. This gives our faith an advantage over competitors.
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