“Forgiveness”: A non-sequitur?

I’m reading the book Ill-gotten Gains: Evasion, Blackmail, Fraud, and Kindred Puzzles of the Law by Leo Katz, and so far the book has been an interesting exploration of the question of whether and why it may be ok for 2 actions to be functionally equivalent (i.e. producing equivalent outcomes), yet either ethically or legally not equivalent. Lots of quirky and fun ethical and legal scenarios are analyzed (so far it is mostly buildup to what I hope will be a sort of grand unified theory of ethics/law as it relates to this question). I briefly describe the blackmail example at the end of the blog post to satisfy your curiosity.

But the primary purpose of this blog post is to see if anyone can help me understand the section of the book I don’t understand. There is only one such section (so far; I’m only 50 pages in), and fortunately (for you) it is the shortest (less than a page). It seems to me to be a complete non-sequitur. It is here (the relevant section is the one called “Forgiveness”). If someone can argue (to my satisfaction) that this section is not just utter nonsense — in particular, that Katz has shown what he claims to have “show[n]” in the last sentence — I’ll buy that person a beer. And I should emphasize, to encourage you, that I have found no other evidence of nonsensical writing in this book. As further encouragement I estimate that it will take you 90 seconds or less to read the section.

I don’t believe that you’ll be much disadvantaged by lack of context, but I’ll provide one bit: Katz, leading up to the “Forgiveness” section, has been describing cases where Blaise Pascal has found the Jesuits to adhere to an ethical system which seems suspect in that it expressly allows Jesuits to exploit loopholes in the ethical code (e.g. they say it is not o.k. for a Jesuit to willingly take part in a duel, but it is ok to go out into a field with a sword at an appointed time, and defend oneself if attacked). Katz, in “Forgiveness” begins by describing another apparent oddity in the Jesuit ethical code.

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Blackmail example (just for your curiosity, not related to above question other than that it is from the same book): Abigail and Mildred both want to audition for a play at 12p tomorrow. Mildred would prefer that Abigail not show up, thus making it easier for Mildred to get the part. Abigail has been unfaithful to her husband and Mildred knows this. Mildred considers 2 possible courses of action: 1) Call Abigail and tell her that if she shows up to the audition, Mildred will reveal Abigail’s infidelity to her husband. 2) Fed-Ex a letter detailing the infidelity to Abigail’s address, and then call Abigail and tell her that the letter is in the mail and will arrive at 12pm (the implication is that if Abigail goes to the audition her husband will see the letter first). In both cases Mildred effectively causes Abigail to decide between having her infidelity revealed and missing the audition. Yet only case 1 is technically blackmail.