Maureen Dowd pointed out this gem from the NYT letter pages:
To the Editor:
So the new pope thinks that the Western world is afflicted by relativism. When conservatives object to certain moral views, the fashion these days is to call those views relativist. But that is a misnomer.
Moral relativism is the idea that the truth of moral views is relative to what a particular person or group thinks is right. If one group thinks that something is right and another thinks it is wrong, it is right for the first group and wrong for the second.
Those who hold “liberal” views are not relativists. They simply disagree with the conservatives about what is right and wrong.
There is nothing new about moral disagreement. It is part of moral thought and can lead to progress. Nothing is gained by obscuring the disagreement with rhetorical labels.
Bruce M. Landesman
Salt Lake City, April 19, 2005
The writer is a philosophy professor at the University of Utah.