What Shourld Religious Moderates/Progressives Do Now?
Here’s the question I’ve been pondering. It seems that religious moderates/progressives have been left out in the cold politically in recent years in the US. The secular left has no use for them, the religious right disdains them as unorthodox” and “unsound” and “unreliable.” It seems as if religious conservatives could be left out in the cold as well, if the Republicans recoil from their demands.
So, in this very religious nation, it could seem as if religious voices and perspectives will be marginalized in the next election and its aftermath (if Rudy or Hilary wins). At the same time, I think that it is unlikely for religious moderates/progressives to enter into any kind of alliance with religous conservatives. They already proved their goal was to beat the religious moderates, not to cooperate with them. So. . . what role is there for religous voices, and moderate or progressive religious voices in particular, in the next ten years?
Moderates and progressives can be “salt of the earth.”
Can’t speak for the religious right.
Joseph, what do you mean? I like the idea, but need more help with it.
It seems to me there are two basic functions for us: first, to try to mediate between left and right, to make each side see that there is some truth, even wisdom on both sides, and, second, to persuade the extremes that compromise is often advisable.
What direct political function can we have? I fear there is none, and there won’t be any until we are the majority and have political passion, organization and money we’re willing to put into the process of getting elected.
Comment: I think that “religious moderate” is a preferable term because “religious progressive” implies more of a leftish orientation than a good number of us might be comfortable with. “Religious moderate” has room for both the left of center and the right of center.
Perhaps the terms religious moderate have to be defined. In the sense that I believe that one cannot impose one’s views and make them law I am a moderate. Yet in observing the Christian message I am a radical in the sense that I believe that mainstream and conservative Christianity has watered down the message. So the terms can change depending how they are used.
Garry Wills has some provocative thoughts in his new book.
Here is the url for a review of Wills’ book.
http://verbumlogos.blogspot.com/
I used to think sort of like Ann Olivier in that our mission was “to try to mediate between left and right, to make each side see that there is some truth, even wisdom on both sides, and, second, to persuade the extremes that compromise is often advisable.”
However, “mediate” indicates there are two sides willingly working toward common ground, which, having blogged on this site for about a year, I don’t see.
We can continue, in the next 10 years, to try to bring up the practical “what ifs” of the positions of absolutists on various issues.
But I think that where we might suggest that it is not necessary or practical to expect politicians to push for laws enforcing Catholic doctrine we can expect the absolutists on the right to accuse us of being waffling Cafeteria Catholics.
And where we suggest that there might not be inalienable rights to abortion, euthanasia, withholding of nutrition to people in PVS, divorce (especially where children are concerned), we can expect the left to accuse us of trying to impose our religious views on others.
I admire those in the middle who love the Church enough not to leave it to those who want a smaller, purer church on the one hand, or those who want an “anything goes” church on the other.
But I find it increasingly harder to care, really.
While agreeing with the comments to this post, I do have a problem with the basic formulation of the question, i.e. that religious people should have strong POLITICAL power and influence. Karl Rahner said that “the gospel is not conservative or liberal but totally compassionate.” Our parish has: sent two large groups of people to help in the Gulf Coast area, has a huge local social service ministry, etc., etc.. We also live in an affluent, generally conservative Republican county in New Jersey. So political affinity seems not to be the criteria for living the gospel, here at least.. All polls show that US citizens have a very low opinion of politicians. I think this is because they see them as part of the problem, not the solution. Possibly a better question is: How much are (highly) conservative and (very) progressive religious people Both part of the problem with their endless debate over which group is right, while the other (majority of) religious people are busy working for the common good, for bringing the Kingdom here, on earth? Maybe it’s time for all of us to live as much in ours hearts as our heads, and for me to stop preaching.
To begin to discern where the Spirit is moving.
To eschew the desire to be players in big p politics.
To understand clearly that politics is local and to assist people who are currently marginalized and not part of the political process to have a voice and work for change on both a local level and broader systemic level.
To do so requires clarity around exactly what kind of policy initiatives need to be advanced.
In fact this is precisely what the religous right did focussing on various right to life issues as well as educational reform, etc.
It is demcracy and it requires effort to engage with real people in the real world around real issues.
I consider myself as far to the left as you can go when it comes to economic matters but quite socially conservative when it comes to moral issues.
How that translates into public policy is another matter. However, I am disillusioned with big P politics and in the US in particular there seems to be a quasi ruling class emerging (the usual supsects on both sides).
But policy is moved on the ground and that is where moderates can make the most difference.
Enough of limousine liberals driving the progressive movement!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YUCK
More grass roots activists!!!!!!!!
Come on people (to quote Bill Cosby)
Has anybody considered that the generation of those born after 1975 (or so) are far less religious than their parents, across the board, and that their views on religion were forged during exactly that time period when so-called religious leaders began vying for a frenzied power grab?
Coincidence?
If religious affiliation is simply an alter ego of political affiliation, you can kiss the enterprise goodbye.
I think Barbara is on the right track.
We need better leadership at the top, but the coming George led USCCB would seem to offer little hope of that ( with probably a more intellectualizef more of the same.)
We need greter support for the vision of NPLC, despite the wide support it gets from hierarchical members.
We need more support for VOTF, asthe curren Commonweal article argues – perhaps the Editors should hav eendorsed it.
We need to stop all the argumentation based on spin (per impossible.)
In short, we’ve got to start acting like the Church Christ intended …
Barbara, it’s not just younger people. It’s a lot of older people, and middle aged people, lifelong Catholics who used to give to Right-to-Life but who are now sick of the culture wars–and frankly, sick of the politicized religious right. (Are they sick of the secular left; well, not as much, since it’s been the religious right that’s been running things recently.)
They’re burned out on the moral issues–they don’t want to hear any more about voting, abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, or Catholic identity.
They already know all the arguments–and they’re sick of them, on both sides.
And they see the Church as just one more corrupt power player in the political system (the pope’s latest defense of the superiority of the Catholic Church didn’t go down well in the Boston area, given the memories of Cardinal Law and the sex abuse crisis.
They’re more afraid of living in the world of the religious right than in that of the the secular left.
So, in a word, they are really cynical about the Church and the religion they grew up with (I personally think some of this was behind the decision of the Mass. legislators not to grant Catholic Charities an exemption to the ant-discrimination requirements).
Has anybody considered that the generation of those born after 1975 (or so) are far less religious than their parents, across the board, and that their views on religion were forged during exactly that time period when so-called religious leaders began vying for a frenzied power grab?
Or, to take an alternative view, they failed to lie down without a fight in the face of secular and/or “progressive” trends. (Take abortion, for example: If you look at the 200+ year history of abortion regulation in this country, it’s quite Orwellian to say that religious conservatives have been the ones making a “power grab” since the early 1970s).
Sure, I get that there are different views as to what is happening. Certainly, the religious conservatives I talk to see the fight as trying to preserve what they see as bedrock traditional values (and I’m not going to talk about abortion because that just usually gets the debate off track) and reaffirming the primacy of Christian thought and practice in the United States.
The problem for them is that, however they see it, they are trying to use the state to impose moral imperatives to which they are unable to gain adherence by the force of moral arguments alone. Moreover, and in my view very unfortunately, they have defined their arguments in terms of what they are against as much as what they are for. And strikingly, the real issue of force for those who are younger isn’t abortion, but the treatment of homosexuality and the battle over the definition of marriage. And so, the leitmotif is: these people want to impose an exacting view of morality that would punish lots of people I know and respect.
I don’t think I am inventing this narrative. I see it at work all around me.
“And strikingly, the real issue of force for those who are younger isn’t abortion, but the treatment of homosexuality and the battle over the definition of marriage”
More so than even abortion, that issue doesn’t fit well with this supposed “narrative” of religious right-wingers engaging in a “frenzied power grab” for the past 30 years.
A few thoughts. First, on the question of how religious moderates and/or progressives might be, I think it is very difficult to sidestep the question of a Christian identity crisis. Much of the spirituality on the left was co-opted by “I’m O.K., your O.K.” and it has not recovered. There is a trend now toward the language of the common good, which is an important move, but I think the phrase right now is more political slogan that worldview and motivation. More substantially, I think that non-orthodox Christians (like me) are having a harder time avoiding being seen as obviously non-orthodox. This makes for some difficulty when seeking to cultivate deep religious commitment within a wider group. It’s not clear what people believe, so it is difficult to know what to offer as wellsprings of faith. Mind you, I think such folk have always existed, but the challenge of historical critical analysis of scripture and tradition has created some major fault lines, and I think we are done with the earthquakes that these fault lines will cause, nor with the impact of such quakes on the foundations of Christian faith.
Now, for what Cathleen spoke of initially, namely, politics. I really think that the role of faith-based nonprofit organizations and maybe even think tanks of a moderate/progressive perspective needs to grow exponentially in order to provide a means of organizing and focusing conversations and actions. However, I also think they should probably not be exclusively Catholic or Protestant. This, again, raises some identity questions. Making this claim should also make clear that I do not think that the existing organizations that are doing this (e.g. Sojourners, Interfaith Alliance) are doing it well enough.
One of the most important things that could come out of the growth of such organizations is a few bonafide leaders. While I recognize the dangers of moving beyond local organizing, I think that the issues are simply too big and too important to avoid risking national/international efforts.
Somehow there needs to be focus on what real change would look like and a real effort to avoid feeling the need to speak out on every issue. Too many political folk like to hear themselves talk WAY more than they like to make change happen. These organizations tend to get spread far too thin far too fast.
I should have written that we are NOT done with the earthquakes and subsequent damage to foundations that will be caused by fault lines created by the historical critical analysis of scripture and tradition.
Joe, but how do you deal with the religious ennui–and cynicism? Do you leave law and policy alone for a while?
Cathleen: I wouldn’t, because I think you have to draw a bright line connection between deep faith and deep public commitment. Now, this need not be political public commitment for some, but it can/must be for others. Perhaps Merton is someone to return to on this connection, but also someone like Heschel. Heschel marched arm in arm with King, and was one of the most profound religious voices to come along in some time.
I think the Great Commandment forces us to confront political realities as a part of our love of God. But I also think it requires us to love our neighbor as we do so, and I think that few religious political leaders have learned how to do this. The Dalai Lama comes to mind as a role model for how this could be done.
Also, apoligies for the many other typos in the previous post. Long night last night.
As far as the public policy issues, and the battle with some theo-cons, I think that the basic Thomistic and even more so Augustininan idea that you cannot criminalize every vice nor legislate every virtue is valuable in contextaulizing issues.
Not every issue because the conservatives can advance that kind of libertarianism into their basic economic worldview.
But I do think that relgions can provide a moral compass for people in political life and just as it is important to think about pro-life more broadly than pro-birth, it is important to think about the environment in the context of its living, human inhabitants. And so ecology needs to be fitted into a broader category that includes human ecology and development.
And we do need to call a spade a spade when it comes to multi-national corporations, when it comes to them being able to find tax shelters and all manner of tax evaisions. We need to think about FAIR trade and ensure that this is discussed substantively.
We can form consciences and allow a space for politics to be politics. While I am not sure that I agree entirely with the sentiment the quote from Machiavelli that the proper place for saints is a monastery isn’t entirely far from the truth.
As far as the public policy issues, and the battle with some theo-cons, I think that the basic Thomistic and even more so Augustininan idea that you cannot criminalize every vice nor legislate every virtue is valuable in contextaulizing issues.
Not every issue because the conservatives can advance that kind of libertarianism into their basic economic worldview.
But I do think that relgions can provide a moral compass for people in political life and just as it is important to think about pro-life more broadly than pro-birth, it is important to think about the environment in the context of its living, human inhabitants. And so ecology needs to be fitted into a broader category that includes human ecology and development.
And we do need to call a spade a spade when it comes to multi-national corporations, when it comes to them being able to find tax shelters and all manner of tax evaisions. We need to think about FAIR trade and ensure that this is discussed substantively.
We can form consciences and allow a space for politics to be politics. While I am not sure that I agree entirely with the sentiment the quote from Machiavelli that the proper place for saints is a monastery isn’t entirely far from the truth.
“Religion that loses its soul to the ambitions of either the Right of the Left finally has little of interest to contribute. Such religion becomes no more than a chaplaincy to one political camp or the other. Such religion is almost inevitably conformed to the camp to which it sells its doubtful blessing.
——-Richard John Neuhaus, Two Civil Religions (article), “The Religion & Society Report”, February 1989.
What moderates and progressives should do, and it will be tough and frustrating because this will be preaching to the deaf, is to constantly point out the doubtful blessing of being conformed to a political camp rather than to the Gospel of Christ.
Easy to say; hard to do.
If law and public policy were the issue why didn’t Jesus do that? The hierarchal church has done a terrible job in conducting public policy. We have to stop longing for the Middle Ages. In fact Jesus was killed by the lawful authorities. He was killed because he demanded justice for the lowly. Jesus did not support the overthrow of government, but he did constantly call for justice and fair treatment for the downtrodden, women and widows. Why can’t we begin there? We belong to a church which denigrates women yet we just sigh and say someday. The sexual trafficking of women continues and we still sigh. Five million children do not reach the age of five because they lack basic food and medicine.
We do not call the Muslims our brothers and sisters.
We do not call immigrants our brothers and sisters.
We do not allow immigrants in many our churches.
We allow church officials, who say the church only has the full means of salvation, to rape our children.
We allow our bishops to lie about finances and do not demand a full accounting.
We are afraid to challenge the bishops to proclaim the gospel.
It is not our action but the action of the courts that is beginning to bring justice to the abused children.
Jesus was crucified but we insist that we are greater than the Master and will not take risks but allow corruption in the church to continue.
We are in a gilded age, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/magazine/14wallstreet-t.html?pagewanted=1
The rich man still prevails over Lazarus.
These matters are in the gospel, in the Magnificat. What is the problem with discussing them?
Cathy, I question one of the initial premises of your remarks: that the secular left wants nothing to do with us. As someone who’s been a socialist for quite a while, and who’s worked with sociaists, Greens, and others on the left, I can tell you, with all due respect, that that’s preposterous. I’ve had many a disagreement and argument with my secular left friends about abortion, but that hasn’t prevented our working together on anti-war, pro-labor, and other activities.
And besides, why are you — and many others on this thread — assuming that the only form of political effectiveness available to us is party politics? Face it: we have, in effect, a one-party system in the U.S., monopolized by the Republocrats, a pro-corporate party with left and right wings. Folks, give it up. When the “Democrats” (i.e., the junior varsity Republicans) can’t end the war, and show little interest in even trying; when all “Democrats” except Kucinich demonstrate little imagination about how to bridle corporate power; and when Hillary Clinton, the vaunted savior, declares that she’s basically OK with bombing Iran, why should the religious left bother with the left wing of the military-industrial complex?
And let’s please stop using the “moderate” and “progressive” vocabulary. Moderates are people who think you can make capitalism kinder and gentler. You can’t. “Progressives” are people who either don’t want to use the word “liberal” or who can’t decide if they’re liberals or socialists. “Left” is better: it means favoring greater democratic supervision over property, while “right” has always meant the resistance to or revocation of such democratic control.
While the religious left should certainly fight within the system for single-payer health care, abolishing the legal fiction of corporate personhood, etc., they should put more energy into mobilizing citizens of all faiths or none outside the “political process.” They should work for and think for the labor movement, the anti-corporate globalization movement, experiments with worker-owned and managed businesses, etc.
Cathleen, when I mentioned yesterday that religious moderates and progressives can be “salt of the earth,” I was thinking of the positive influence we can have on society as well as in the church. I was thinking of the grip that conservatives and reactionaries have on church and government (more on my “take” on labels later here).
This topic got me thinking about my experience aboard the tall ship EAGLE in 1972. In Kiel, we took on board box after box of frozen compressed turkey meat, which would turn out to be our main entree from departure to arrival in the U.S. six weeks later after stops in Lisbon and Funchal. As much as I like turkey (white meat, anyway), nightly servings can become a bit much :)
I see both the Federal Government and the Catholic Church as two giant frozen compressed turkey loafs, and the taste has been quite bland, reminding me of my time at sea 35 years ago. Both institutions are run by conservatives and reactionaries bent on stale notions of civil and ecclesial polity.
Taking my cues from the gospels, I think moderates and progressives can try to use their minority influence (salt) to preserve what is still good and noble in church and society and improve the “taste” of bland turkey loafs. We can be “salt of the earth.”
Regarding labels, I use the term ‘moderate’ to identify people just to the right and left of center — in other words, folks who see both sides of the same coin and are willing to engage in dialogue over differences in values and perspectives. However, we must not overlook those folks at polar extremes, the radicals and reactionaries, with their hard-and-fast agendas that admit of no compromise. Between the moderates and radicals, I see the liberals. Between the moderates and reactionaries, I see the conservatives. While I have yet to see a description or definition for ‘progressive,’ I tend to apply this label to liberals striving for renewal in the church. I think labels are issue-sensitive: A person can wear more than one label depending on the matter under consideration. Someone who is a progressive on liturgy can be a radical with respect to women’s ordination.
What was Jesus? I think he was a radical of his time and place on matters of religion. He created scandals. He focused on the raw and nitty-gritty. He condemned the religious authorities. He challenged. He told his disciples to be “salt of the earth.”
I guess I pursposefully left the question vague, and the definitions vague. “Religion in the Public Square” has been defined by Focus on the Family and the First Things editorial board under the Bush administration. I meant by moderate and progressive religious believers people who didn’t think that those organizations represented their own viewpoints.
But that era, it seems, is coming to an end. What now? We might be, by choice or by necessity, in a post-Constantinian world. Maybe the best bet is a secular liberal frame of law, and renewed efforts on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. At the same time, given our natural law tradition, it’s hard to give up the idea that we should protect the common good by working in and through law and policy opportunities.
I think this is a new moment–brainstorming is necessity.
Maybe it is the spatial metaphor of “centrist position” that seems to present the center primarily as an area for conversation and negotiation with those whose views are more extreme.
But the very difficulty people in this discussion have been experiencing in fitting their own personal positions into the pattern offered suggests that center/left is itself ly a deliberately chosen (though variously configured) position, and one not lightly to be negotiated away.
As to Cathy’s last suggestion, what is wrong with choosing to work for the common good within a secular liberal frame of law?
Perhaps working in and through law can still work as long as we add ‘through the Spirit” and know that it is an uphill battle as Gene points out. Ghandi manipulated the law pretty well in fighting for Indian independence. One might say a lawyer with Ghandi’s persistence et alii is what is needed. Amnesty International comes to mind. There are others.
Cathy, your mention of the post-Constantinian world should be matter for a separate thread. What does that term mean? George Weigel writes that John Paul II was a post -Constantinian pope because he stressed culture over politics and economics. While we may say he was for sure a Constantinian pope in that he renewed stress on the dominance of the papacy.
I look upon the term to mean that the Church is reverting to its diversified roots where Christian communities were known by their Way of life rather than orthodoxy. Is it worth a separate thread?
Why does religion need to get the credit even if it’s the motivation for your definition of the common good and your willingness to work towards it?
What I see is the inability to eliminate hortatory or conversion techniques from the public conversation. Obviously, if someone says, why do you think food stamps are a good idea, and you quote some verse from the Bible, you might enable him to see the issue in terms of a common religious understanding and “convert” him on the issue. It is my personal experience that biblical quotes are usually too simplistic to provide a reasoned basis for most policy positions, but in any event, too often, the resort to Biblical underpinning of notions of the common good is wielded like a stick not simply to explain where one is coming from, but to define the common good in terms of individual conformity. That is what I object to.
Is there a coherent identity for religious moderates? Are there issues that unite and energize religious moderates? Are there well-accepted principles that inform their positions on those issues?
I don’t see it. What is the “moderate manifesto”?
This is an interesting conversation, but very puzzling for someone like me.
The underlying premise seems to be that religious “conservatives” have somehow been dominent and religious “moderates” and “liberals” have been out in the cold. What evidence is there for this?
Is it the great success the “conservatives” conservatives have had at influencing the abortion debate, same sex marriage, or myriad other issues? Has it been their thriving presence in Catholic higher education?
Aren’t the very people and parties with who religious progressives have sided with been on the ascendency in art, entertainment, education, law, and increasingly government at large?
Seriously, I am trying to understand what all the angst is about.
Let me help you, Sean. First, all sectors, conservatives also, need to have angst. Unless you think the Iraq war is heaven sent or even necessary. Or if you think being non-white is not still a problem in this country. Or that justice is still not a fact for many and that money still can buy justice.
Etc.
Sean,
I think what conservatives have been very successful in doing (and many others have made this point) is creating the impression that they are on the side of God (and he is on theirs), whether they have gotten their way in any particular issue or not. Take prayer in the public schools, where they lost. There are plenty of religious people (many of them liberals) and religious organizations opposed to prayer in the public schools for religious reasons. It also seems to me to be a fairly clear-cut constitutional issue. But conservatives have portrayed it as liberals against God, and an awful lot of people buy that.
Conservatives like to potrary liberals as anti-God. Here’s something I just lifted from the publisher’s description on Amazon of Ann Coulter’s book: Godless: The Church of Liberalism. “Though liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, it bears all the attributes of a religion. In Godless, Coulter throws open the doors of the Church of Liberalism, showing us its sacraments (abortion), its holy writ (Roe v. Wade), its martyrs (from Soviet spy Alger Hiss to cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal), its clergy (public school teachers), its churches (government schools, where prayer is prohibited but condoms are free), its doctrine of infallibility (as manifest in the “absolute moral authority” of spokesmen from Cindy Sheehan to Max Cleland), and its cosmology (in which mankind is an inconsequential accident).”
I just did a Google search using only two words “liberals” and “God,” and these are the first two sites I got:
Why Liberals Hate God – Doug Hagin – Aug 20, 03
Liberals seem to have a tough time deciphering certain portions of the writings of our Founding Fathers. Specifically, the Bill of Rights really seems to …
americandaily.com/article/2197 – 45k – Cached – Similar pages
Liberals hate God
So what have been the Liberals’ consistent attitudes and actions toward God? Frankly, for at least the past half a century or so, they have been pretty …
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/tabor/050831 – 37k
The third site (actually a page within a site) that comes up is a “Catholic” site that has a cartoon on it with the devil saying to Stalin, Lenin, and Hitler, “I don’t need you amateurs any more. Now I have my comrades, The Communists, Marxists, Socialists, Liberals, and Terrorists. They are true professionals.”
The last site on the first Google page is liberalsmustdie.com.
Of course, not all conservatives spout this kind of hate speech, but it seems to me that a great many of them play on these kinds of sentiments in a manner sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle.
So I think partly what this thread is about is that wanting to help the disadvantaged, wanting to limit or abolish the death penalty, wanting to make sure children have health insurance, wanting to end unjust wars, wanting to end racial discrimination, and so on, are things that many religious people who are moderate or liberal (both politically and religiously) may care about, but it is conservatives who claim to have a monopoly on “values”
Sean, I think it’s fair to say that religious conservatives–and Catholic ones in particular–won the election for Bush in 2004, and very probably in 2000 as well.
Four out of nine justices on the Supreme Court are very conservative Catholics, by my reckoning. That’s almost one half of one branch of government for the next thirty years. A pretty significant victory, in my book. I think it will portend the end of Roe, not now, and maybe not by overruling, but by erosion. 26 states have anti-gay marriage amendments in their constitutions. On Catholic higher education, well yes and no. People without any connection to many Catholic colleges are always writing in to complain about what’s going on–witness Holy Cross. The Vagina Monologues debate here was close–it could easily gone the other way.
Catholic moderates –a category into which I would put myself–aren’t secularists. We see more nuance about the relationship of law and morality –and we want more humility in policy analysis. We see ourselves as having a great deal in common with religious conservatives; but we also recognize that those very same conservatives consider our advocacy of nuance to be part of the problem–if you don’t think abortion should be illegal in the case of rape or life of the mother, you’re a toehold for the culture of death.
So, as I’ve argued extensively in more academic settings, it’s hard to cooperate with people who consider you the culture of death. There’s just nowhere for the relationship to go from there.
Nobody *is* the culture of death. We are all influenced by it though. Most people, I’ve noticed, more readily believe in Jesus’ Sitz im Leben than in their own.
(Sorry, Jean, about those pronouns.)
And I’m pretty sure it’s a red herring to bring in special-case abortions (that hyphen’s for you, Fr. K.) when Catholics are legislating and ethicizing for partial-birth [elided noun].
I’m sure Bill will say, “Where’s the outcry about xyz.” And he’s right, where is the outcry? There are victims on the left and right. But I have a lot of trouble feeling sorry for people who think they are victimized centrists who abet in any way, including with legal arguments in academic settings, late-stage abortions.
Unlike our less distinct perceptions of human life in the embryonic stages, and unlike special cases (although it would be somewhat strange to hear a mother say to a fireman, “Don’t save my child; save me instead!”) there is no question of what is going on with late-stage abortion-on-demand. There is no “center.” It’s right or wrong. That is, it is, prima facie, wrong.
And for some reason it’s legal. Here and now, and we’re the electorate.
(Pardon. I get so grumpy in the afternoon when there is bloodshed in the suburbs.)
Culture is made out of people. It’s people.
Ralph Nader won it for Bush in 2000 just as Perot won it for Clinton 92. The extreme left and extreme right are only good in swing votes. Reagan and Clinton won their second terms because they were fairly centrist and had very likable personalities.
I would not worry about the right, Cathy. The public is voting them out with a vengence now that they have had a good look at them. Secondly, a professor at Fordham gave a great paper a few years ago in which he showed that Roe Vs Wade will never overturned. Nor do the Republicans want it. But they love it politically. Pretty soon Rick Santorum will be a trivia question.
Late to the thread, I would nevertheless like to offer a few comments:
First to the combination of ¨moderate¨ and ¨progressive¨ in Cathy’s original post. I think there may well be significant differences between those who self-identify with each of these categories. These differences are in some respects…many moderates, while estranged from the conservative agenda, also harbor real doubts about the progressive alternative. But even more than substance, there are major differences. Conservatives and progressives alike, well convinced of the obviousness of their respective projects, can seem to be dismissive, even contemptuous of those who take different position than their own. Like Ann, I see the moderate project as focused as much on process as on content.
Next, to Jean’s response to Ann’s comments about reconciliation and mediation. Per Jean, “´mediate´ indicates there are two sides willingly working toward common ground, which, having blogged on this site for about a year, I don’t see.¨ Is it absolutely evident to all that the ¨failure to communicate¨ observed here when conservative voices present themselves here is entirely a function of their truculance and not also our incapacity to appreciate their views?
Finally, to the issue of woundedness which materialized in other words in several comments. It seems to me that it is impossible to read dotCommonweal…and the blog comments of equally intelligent and passionate correspondents on certain conservative Catholic blogs…without noting the pain we Catholics have inflicted on each other, specifically in recent years.
If we were to ¨follow the pain,¨ I think we would note many similarities in wounds even if the sources of the pain diverge. Perhaps my personal experience is quirky…surely it must seem so at dotCommonweal…but as a moderate I have felt equally marginalized by hard-core Catholic progressives as by their conservative counterparts. Both camps can seem resistant to dissent to their respective ¨orthodoxies,¨ quite eager to enforce a set of incontrovertible essentials, and remarkably intolerant of ambiguity.
It seems to me that as progressive gain ascendance in many non-episcopal settings we may find a constituency of Catholic moderates estranged from the binary (conservative-progressive) construction of our social space.
Grant, I don’t think it’s that simple. Cultures are made out of peoples and the narratives they tell. Wow, I’m suddenly over my head because I’m pretty sure that people talk about “narratives” all the time and I have no idea what they’ve said. But what I mean is that public discourse takes on a life of its own. In a pluralistic republic with HD radio and a history of campaigning in the op-eds, discourse doesn’t precisely represent people.
Discourse, institutionalized, is a big part of culture. Our discourse (collectively, as Americans) defends such things as greed, torture, immaturity, shallow glamour, and decadent chocolate overload. And death.
Kathy, have you read Mary Ann Glendon’s book on Abortion and Divorce in Western Law? If not, why don’t you take a look at it, and tell the blog what you think. My own position on abortion and the law pretty much coincides with the perspective in that book.
Kathy,
Hasn’t the battle against partial-birth abortion been won? Legislation against it was passed, and it was upheld by the Supreme Court. There is an exception for the life (but not the health) of the mother. It seems like a victory to me–although one that everyone, including the Supreme Court, agrees will not prevent one abortion.
I was surfing the web on the issue of late-term abortions and came across this from the National Right to Life Committee about reasons for late-term abortions.
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/pbafact9.html
I won’t quote any of it here, but it seems to me that in their efforts to demonstrate that only a small percentage of late-term abortions involve danger to the life of the mother or fetal abnormalities (and I don’t think that’s debatable), they are rather cold-bloodedly scoffing at young teenagers who were not knowledgeable enought to recognize they were pregnant, teens who were frightened to tell anyone, and people without financial resources.
In spending so much time reading things to inform myself on these issues so I don’t say something completely stupid here, I have to admit that I am becoming more and more disturbed by the number of abortions performed and more sympathetic to at least some in the “pro-life” cause. But reading something like that makes me again feel like there’s so much compassion for the unborn and so little for women with unwanted or problem pregnancies.
Kathy writes: … although it would be somewhat strange to hear a mother say to a fireman, “Don’t save my child; save me instead!”
Jean says: Yes, I realize I’m taking this out of context, but I weary of this rhetoric that the only good mother is a dead mother.
Of course I would ask the fireman to save my child first. Hell, I’d ask the fireman to save my stupid cat first.
However, a problem pregnancy is not exactly analagous to saving a baby in a burning building.
A diabetic pregnant woman may become so ill that she will die before she brings a baby to term. A pregnant woman with uterine cancer may die because she delays treatment. Mothers in these and other high-risk situations often tough it out and hope for the best.
But medical emergencies can arise in high-risk situations, and in the midst of a medical crisis, it is sometimes unclear to what extent the mother’s sacrifice of health or life will save the baby. Decisions will be made under duress, and those left behind will always wonder whether they made the right one.
I understand that the vast majority of abortions are not performed because of a life-and-death medical emergency.
Moreover, the Church’s bias is clearly in favor of the baby’s life over the mother’s.
However, characterizing women in difficult pregnancies as selfishly pushing their kids out of the way so they can leave the burning building goes well beyond a bias in favor of babies and veers into something that sounds callous and insulting.
I don’t think Kathy is either of those things. But I do think that pro-life outrage against the very small number of women who elect for emergency treatment that effectively results in an abortion is misplaced.
I would like to put this conversation into a real-life context. It will take a few lines to develop the story.
Two weeks ago my parish invited San Francisco’s Archbishop to visit us for the very first time. We put our very best feet forward and it was truly a spectacular occasion. We advertised this event on our website and posters on the building itself, and, because we are who we are (www.mhr.org) and the fact that we are located in the heart of the Castrol District, we knew that there might be some “special visitors.” Well there were: 2 faux Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence attended the entire mass and went to Communion. The Abp attended to them as any other parishioner and they went back to their seats. We are used to characters attending our liturgies at times and most of us thought nothing of it. They were quiet, non-disruptive and participated fully in the liturgy. We also had a couple of folks with camcorders taking it all in.
Well, the “wing nuts” had and continue to have a ball:
http://www.calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=21bffc71-d3b4-4099-b6a5-b7faf61ffbce , http://www.calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=82a3103a-b6c0-4d95-904e-845d94ee6dde , and http://www.calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=46d023cc-6fe8-4197-aa31-e060476d5ea0.
The Archbishop decided that he has to “apologize to the Catholics of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and to Catholics at large for doing so.” http://www.calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=539c6e14-5a30-491e-9d2d-ef4351486eb8 .
There is a wide variety of opinions in the parish about this. Some want to let the Abp know that he is no longer welcome. Ditto for others’ feelings for SPI.
As a parish we are quite liturgically mainstream (no radical departures from rubrics, etc.) and progressive socially. I categorize us as being moderate to progressive in the main.
How will we deal with this mess and the internal sturm und drang that currently exists? This is, in effect, a very practical situation that represents a quandary in which we must wrestle with this question: “what role is there for religious voices and moderate or progressive religious voices in particular?”
I think that most of agree that we best serve our particular communities as well as the Church by continuing to minister to all of them as we always have. Many of us want to lash out, particularly at our Abp who we feel has let us down. I admit to having strong feelings in that direction. Condemnations, disinvitations, etc. will serve no immediate or long-term good, nor our little attempt to advance the Kingdom here in the City of St. Francis. So we will continue on as we have done for the past 20+ years and know that ultimately moderation is the only answer when dealing with strongly competing factions.
Furthermore, not every procedure defined at law as an “abortion” counts as the procedure prohibited by the Church, some are indirected abortions, counted as foreseeing but not intending the death of the baby. Germain Grisez makes an argument that a crainiotomy (very analogous to a partial birth abortion) should be considered an indirect abortion under some circumstances. I think his argument on intention is correct.
Cathy, thanks for the recommendation; I’ll look at the book as soon as I have a chance.
Jean, you said, “Moreover, the Church’s bias is clearly in favor of the baby’s life over the mother’s.” I understand that some of the rhetoric is disturbing and actually sometimes apparently sadistic, certainly out of touch with what dying in childbirth is all about. And I really get that there can be a lot of pride among pro-lifers.
I volunteered at Catholic U/ National Shrine’s hosting of the March for Life overnighters for a couple of years in grad school. My shift was 5:30-8 am; basically my job was to go in the ladies rooms after the lights went on at 6 and ask people to please not wash their hair because it would slow the flow, and to move crowds from one restroom to the other, whichever got crowded. So I was walking from one end of the Shrine downstairs to the other, and there was this girl, maybe 13 years old. She just woke up. She was leaning against a pillar in her pajamas and sleeping bag, peeling an orange. Whatever pride is, she was sort of the opposite of that, sleeping on a marble floor so she could eat her breakfast and go march.
Btw, Cathy, have you seen Fr. Basil Cole OP’s article against Grisez on this point? They don’t oppose one another very often. It’s in Nova et Vetera, I think it’s in Spring 2007. Might be Fall 2006. I think what he basically says is that Grisez loses sight of what the action, directly, is.
Abstract:
Basil Cole, OP, “Is the Moral Species of Craniotomy a Direct Killing or the Saving of Life?” Nova et Vetera 3:4 (Fall 2005): 689-702. Cole enters an ongoing debate on the moral species of craniotomy, arguing against Grisez, Finnis, and Boyle that it is the direct killing of an innocent person and a moral evil. He first reviews the previous Church teaching on craniotomy and the impossibility of any form of homicide enjoying the status of moral neutrality. By appealing to the distinction between efficient and occasional (per accidens) causality and noting that craniotomy efficiently causes a substantial change (death) by the intrinsic teleology of the act, he argues that the immediate intention of the act and agent is the direct killing of the child and not a mere side-effect. Such a willed immediate intention of violence is not only wrong in itself but also violates the very raison d’être of the physician.
Cathy-
I am a little late to the conversation, so I apologize if this seems incongruent. That said, could you clarify your statement saying: “…I think it’s fair to say that religious conservatives–and Catholic ones in particular–won the election for Bush in 2004, and very probably in 2000 as well.” Are you suggesting that these voters voted for Bill Clinton in 1994 and 1996 and changed their voting patterns in 2000 and 2004, or that they did not vote at all in 1994 and 1996? If the former, that would seem contrary to my understanding of both Whig and Augustinian Thomists voting patterns, but I would be interested to see if there has been any research to the contrary.
Also, could you please provide us with more color on your statement that four of the current Supreme Court Justices are “very conservative Catholics.” Are you saying the justices you are referring to are very conservative in their Catholicism or are they very conservative politically?
Yes, Kathy, I did. Bottom line: I don’t think Cole’s analysis, particular his theory of action is coherent.
My question to you: You said, “But I have a lot of trouble feeling sorry for people who think they are victimized centrists who abet in any way, including with legal arguments in academic settings, late-stage abortions.”
Does your ire encompass Germain Grisez and John Finnis and Joseph Boyle too for “abetting late-stage abortions”?
And if even Germain Grisez and Basil Cole disagree about the moral status of this class of late term abortions, how do you hope to persuade the rest of American Catholics let alone the rest of the populace?
Mat, poke around at the Pew Forum sites for data on the 2004 election and religion. The Republicans courted conservative Christians, who got out the vote in key states like Ohio. Belief net has a few articles too.
On the justices’ religious views, I have no inside information. (I haven’t read Thomas’s book yet). My point was more judicial and social/moral: I think it’s safe to predict that they are all opposed to Roe (unlike, say Brennan, who was a devout Catholic who supported Roe).
Four Catholic anti-Roe judges is a big victory for the religious conservatives–1/2 branch of the federal government will likely see things their way for quite a while yet, no matter who wins in 2008.
Cathy,
Fr. Cole is a lot more neo-scholastic than I am. I wouldn’t have put it quite as he did, except when he said that Grisez wasn’t taking seriously enough the actual direct thing that was being done. I think he’s correct in naming that blind spot in Grisez’s argument. We all know that for double effect to apply, the direct action must be at least morally neutral. Grisez speciously divides the act of collapsing the skull from the act of causing the death of the unborn. But it’s one and the same act: the baby dies immediately and directly because of the damage the doctor does to its head. No matter what the situation, even if it is desperately sad, directly, willfully collapsing the skull of an innocent living human being and causing its death is never morally neutral.
But once again I think that special-case abortions are red herrings. Maybe first of all Catholics can begin to think, speak and act coherently about late-term abortion on demand.
Marching is good too. It will be just like every year. At least a couple of hundred thousand peaceful, mostly young marchers will be all freezing cold and cheerful, and the next day the WaPo will say “Tens of thousands of anti-abortion demonstrators gathered on the mall yesterday.” On the front page of Metro they’ll show 4 preppy young ladies with NOW buttons. I’ve marched several times and I’ve never seen a NOW button personally, but there they’ll be on the front of the Metro section, patiently trying to reason With. These. People. Then on page 3 they’ll show 2 old guys and maybe an angry lady with a bloody fetus sign, instead of the teenagers and young families who make up almost the entire march. Then there’s a twenty year old guy walking alone in a mohawk and Army surplus. Strollers all over the place, those little hats with the tassels.
Actually in an election year the coverage is bound to be even worse. That’s our narrative talking.
Cathy-
Returning to your original premise, I personally would disagree with your statement that religious conservatives, moderates, and progressives cannot form alliances. In particular I point to the height of power for Whig Thomists in the Bush administration – the Sudan Peace Act and the ending of the Sudanese civil war. I would argue that without the assistance of interfaith groups across the political spectrum, this singular moment of triumph for the Whig crowd would never have been possible. While I realize this was a unique situation where no ideological economic system prevented the groups from working together, I see Darfur (and perhaps Burma, although I am uncertain if they are still considered socialist) as an area where similar alliances could produce results to end bloodshed.
On the domestic front, I acknowledge that the religious conservatives and progressives are much too far apart on the natural law issues, but I still see areas for cooperation, in particular on the state and local level where Augustinian Thomists such as myself are not precluded from participation by subsidiarity principals. One such area is prison reform – both advancing “restorative justice,” to use Chuck Colson’s phrase, and eliminating prison rape.
Wouldn’t it be fair to ask whether Jesus was a moderate, conservative, radical or liberal. ?
I understand the abuse of scripture as everyone fits Jesus into their scheme of things. For some he certainly would have at least a ten million condo, or servants, For others he had no home, and concentrated on the lame walking, the blind healing and the poor having the Good News preached to them.
It seems he died in deep disgrace abandoned by most and held in contempt by many.
Do we abandon him the most? We talk about Plato, Aristotle, Thomas and Augustine more than him. Seems Jesus missed the boat. He should have written the Summa or the City of God.
Kathy, you miss my point entirely.
I’m not asking you to tell me how you stayed up all night to save the sinks of the shrine from overflowing hair.
I’m asking you how the rhetoric you use helps a mother in an emergency understand that God wants her to die instead of her baby. Would you use the burning building analogy? Would you tell her how selfish she is to want to choose to live and take care of her other children?
No, I don’t think you would. I think you are better than that. I wish more of your posts would reflect that kindness.
Matt, help me out. I live in a cornfied. Far from the corridors of power. Could you please define and give some examples of the people you count as Whig Thomists?
Jean,
You miss my point entirely. I wasn’t talking about the plumbing but of the overcrowding of restrooms and the traffic flow in and out of them. And it was a lot of fun, and I’m an early riser anyway.
A mother in a burning building is not focused on the future. She is focused on saving lives. Of course she would prefer to live. But if there is a choice between her and her child she chooses the life of her child.
(This blog is not a pastoral situation but a rhetorical one.)
Kathy, you’re right that many mothers would decide to save the life of her child in this circumstance. But the law would not require it, and she would not be prosecuted for murder for failing to do it.
Would you prosecute such a mother, who ran out of a building on fire rather than saving her child, for murder?
My sense is you wouldn’t. But you would prosecute a woman in the other circumstance–who had an abortion to save her life.
Here’ s the problem. I think the pro-life movement turned off more people than you know with the public wailing and gnashing of teeth about the failure in SD to pass a law that banned abortion even to save the life of the mother.
And that exemplifies the point of this thread.
As far as polemical language that claims that liberals “hate God” – a few points.
First, many do. To deny this is to deny reality. Just as I do not deny that many conservatives are materialistic and Godless as well. For liberals, however, the difference is that there is an important, some would say dominant, strand that is openly hostile to and dismissive of religious people. For all the web links David can find, you can find more that demonstrate this. Does anyone here read the Moveon site, the Daily Kos or the Huffington Post? These people make it easy for people like Anne Coulter to make her claims when every liberal politician pays obeisance to them.
Also, religious liberals/moderates use exactly the same sort of rhetoric from a different angle. I can’t count the number of times that I have been accused of “not being true to the Gospel” for my general approval of free market solutions over government social engineering. If you can show me where Christ says, “Whatsoever you do to take money from other people and give it to the least of my brothers, that you do to Me,” I would love to see it. Did you ever think that people might oppose some social welfare programs not because they “think being non-white is not still a problem in this country,” but because they don’t work – or more likely cause many of the problems these same people suffer?
As for the idea that conservatives, and Catholic conservatives in particular are “taking over,” I take a long view. The very fact that that 26 states had to put same sex marriage amendments in their constitutions isn’t evidence of some conservative ascendancy – it was a reaction. If Conservative Catholics had all this power, there would never have been amendments in the first place. A million infants are aborted every year in this country. Does that sound like a conservative Catholic juggernaut? Again, I take the long view, and I have faith that the Lord will sort it all out.
Cathy-
The Whig Thomists you are probably most familiar with are that famous trio of Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and George Weigel.
Cathy,
The mother in the burning building isn’t legally allowed to sign a consent form telling the fireman to directly kill the baby. So yes, my analogy fails.
I don’t know how many times I can say this, but imho the real questions aren’t found in these exceptional cases. Whether or not this is the intended effect, these difficult cases deflect our moral attention from matters where judgments are not complicated and the moral road, though sometimes challenging, is readily apparent and is not being acted upon.
Why don’t we deal with the easy cases first.
Catholic voters and Catholic legislators should be leading the charge against late-term abortion on demand. At least. And they’re not.
“Here’ s the problem. I think the pro-life movement turned off more people than you know with the public wailing and gnashing of teeth about the failure in SD to pass a law that banned abortion even to save the life of the mother.”
Remember that we live in a country where three times as many people can name two of the Seven Dwarfs (from Snow White) as can name two Supreme Court Justices. http://www.zogby.com/Soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=13498
“More people than you know” don’t have a clue as to what abortion law might be like in South Dakota, let alone how a few prolifers reacted. Beware of thinking that a few of your friends represent a broad societal trend.
Of course Stuart, I might be wrong. I never pretended to have done a survey–I’d like to see one, actually, if anyone knows. On the other hand, look at the statistics of the number of people who want abortion legal in the so-called hard cases.
Naming the Supreme Court justices is different from seeing, and reacting with shock, to 1) the idea that a substantial group of people want to make abortion illegal to save the life of the mother; and 2) they almost succeeded in passing a law to that effect.
So it really seems as if it’s a choice between extremists: Where do you think moderates will go if forced into a choice between a regime of abortion on demand and a regime that doesn’t support abortion to save the life of the mother?
Mat, thanks.
I don’t actually see them as Thomists–I in fact see Neuhaus as much more influenced a characteristically Lutheran and dialectical approach to ethics.
And Whgs? Why Whigs?
Here’s the ultimate authority (wikipedia) on the Whig Party. I’ts kind of funny to think of it applied to the First Things crowd, actually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_Party_(United_States)
“Naming the Supreme Court justices is different from seeing, and reacting with shock, to 1) the idea that a substantial group of people want to make abortion illegal to save the life of the mother; and 2) they almost succeeded in passing a law to that effect.”
Again, I suspect that most American just aren’t aware of either one.
Actually, if you’re that worried about the legal status of abortion, the South Dakota situation should give you a great deal of comfort, rather than shock. In one of the most conservative and least populous states in the entire nation, pro-lifers still couldn’t manage to get a total abortion ban passed, even for purely symbolic effect (which is all it would have been). So what’s there to worry about?
It’s the symbolic effect that worries me, Stuart. I hold, with Grisez in this point, that abortion to save the life of the mother does not constitute intentional killing–the baby’s death is praeter intentionem.
Furthermore, I think you can, under American law, treat the baby as an innocent aggressor in this circumstance, with no moral culpability, it’s location (e.g. ectopic pregnancy) is threatening the life of the mother. I don’t believe secular law requires this sort of sacrifice of people under other circumstances, and I don’t see why it should here.
So the “symbolic” message of this law says to me that women don’t count as much as babies.
I’m not disagreeing with you on the merits, but there’s no such thing as “this law,” because it wasn’t passed, even in such a conservative state as South Dakota. So again, why should there be any worry that such a bill would be more successful in less conservative states (that is to say, just about everywhere else)? I don’t get it.
All roads lead to abortion.
But that’s not where this road started. It started with the reflection that religious believers, although a super-majority in this country, may be marginalized in the next election. And it started with my skepticism about the possibility of a broad coalition of religious believers in the years to come.
It’s true most people probably think Perry Mason is on the Supreme Court. But these aren’t the leaders, because they’re watching too much tv.
If you look at the leaders, I think there has been an erosion of trust part of the religious moderates and liberals toward religious conservatives. Part of it is reaction: “My God, they can’t even see how Schiavo is a hard case, it”s all fed into the culture wars rhetoric. ” “My God–they even want to ban abortion to save the life of the mother!” You increasingly see yourself as having less and less in common.
Religious conservatives, when they were winning, had no time at all for religious moderates and liberals. It was pulling teeth to get them to come to events like Common Ground.
So now that they may be losing, the bridges that are left are in bad repair.
Stuart, the law was passed. It was overturned by referendum. Not all states have a similar process that so easily unwinds unpopular legislation. I simply go back to my original post. These largely “symbolic” efforts aimed at using politics as an instrument of enforcing a moral code are having the long-term effect of turning young people off the Christian religion.
Barbara — fair point, although again, I’d suggest that the chances of such a law being passed elsewhere are very low.
“All roads lead to abortion.”
There are times and places for single-issue thinking. Here and now is one of them. There is a daily deadly injustice that for some reason (the Kennedys?) we countenance.
How did the Democratic Party become so indebted to NARAL?
“All roads lead to abortion.” And Carl Rove took it for two victories, laughing all the way. Pure politics. The right to life movement was taken for a long ride by people who don’t give a rap about the issue.
When it is put to a vote, I will give credence to the issue.
Perhaps I’ve been assuming too much. Am I mistaken in thinking that the wrongness of late-term (fully viable fetus) abortion (without an exceptional medical reason) is self-evident?
Maybe things are a changing.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/lisa_miller/2007/10/love_thy_gay_neighbor.html
Kathy, more than 40 states outlaw post viability abortions. Several of the others that don’t have that kind of ban have other kinds of laws that restrict its availability. Colorado, Alaska, Hawaii, and Vermont are the only states where I couldn’t find any post viability restrictions.
It’s extremely easy to find this kind of information.
Kathy–
>>How did the Democratic Party become so indebted to NARAL?<<
Do you have an hour?
The short of it is $$$ and a steady stream of activists who became involved in DP grass roots and upper level events in the wake of Roe v. Wade. And did I mention $$$, tens and tens of millions of dollars from pro-choice organizations such as PP, Naral, and Emily’s List?
I know it’s hard to imagine that $$$ could influence a politician’s vote (yes, here is the appropriate place to roll your eyes), but here’s just a partial list of the DP
politicians who magically transformed from pro-life to pro-choice in the face of the $$$ onslaught from pro-choice organizations:
Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Carol Mosley Braun, and Dick Gephardt.
And here’s another sobering thought, at least to me. In the 1977-1978 Congress, i.e., four years post-Roe, Democrats had a majority of 292 seats in the House of Representatives that included 125 pro-life representatives. Today, Democrats have a slight majority of the 435 seats, but there are only about 28 pro-lifers among the Democrats in the House of Representatives.
If you haven’t read it already, you may want to read Cynthia Gorney’s book, “Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars.” Unlike almost any other book I’ve read about abortion, it gives a balanced portrait of both the pro-choice and pro-life sides of this divisive issue, and it explains in some detail how pro-choice organizations embedded themselves in the policymaking organs of the DP.
Cathy-
It is my understanding that Michael Novak actually coined the phrase “Whig Thomist” but it is used pretty frequently in First Things and similar publications so I just assumed everyone used the term. The “Whig” component actually refers to the Scottish (later British) political party, not really the United States version. The British Whig party later became the Liberal party. The Scottish element is important as Novak would argue that the Whigs are a product of the Scottish Enlightenment, which many know was the precursor to Classical Liberalism – abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, free trade, etc. It really was Lord Acton who postulated, based on his reading, that Aquinas was “the first Whig”, hence the “Thomism”. I happen to personally disagree with the later, but that is another discussion altogether.
Given the choice between abortion policy that enacts Catholic doctrine and abortion policy that codifies Roe v. Wade, which do you think would prevail in a popular vote?
I could take hours talking about how religious conservatives embedded themselves in the Republican party, but don’t we all have to own up to the fact that there are very few people, even Catholics themselves, who would be happy with a legislative version of what the Church teaches?
Where does that take us?
Isn’t what it means, in part, to be a religious moderate, to acknowledge that an awful lot of people don’t share your theology?
Isn’t that part of what we object to with various conservative religious voices, not that they feel this way or that, but that you are 100% wrong and immoral if you don’t feel the same way, except on some narrow doctrinal stuff that, for the most part, they don’t much care about even if you or your church does?
Isn’t that how politicians such as Mitt Romney are positioning themselves (don’t sweat the details of my theology, I share your social views 100%)?
And doesn’t that, in the end, debase the whole concept of a religious ordering of thought and principle?
A very interesting (or I will assume so, as I have not had the opportunity to read it yet) op-ed today in the WSJ which is quite on topic titled “The Rise of the Religious Left” by Steven Malanga.
“You increasingly see yourself as having less and less in common. ”
I understand the “My God” reaction, although I’m confused as to why it’s directed only at pro-lifers. Within any political movement, the most extreme 5% or 10% of the people are going to look, well, extreme.
Unless I’m missing something, there’s been a lot of Iraq war opposition on this blog without the same degree of hand-wringing (or any hand-wringing at all) over the fact that you’re making common cause with a few unapologetic Stalinists who opposed the Iraq war as well.
Kathy,
You say that “special-case abortions are red herrings,” but I think there are a couple of reasons why they are not.
First, in Catholic teaching, since the ban on abortion is absolute, a late-term abortion performed because the life of the mother is at risk or because of even the most severe genetic abnormalities detected in the fetus is just as serious and “intrinsically evil” as an abortion procured for even the most trivial reasons.
Second, everyone knows it is the strategy of the “pro-life” movement to attempt to chip away at abortion rights–and they are rights at the moment, no matter how distressing that is to some people–bit by bit. So I think from a political standpoint, many pro-choice politicians vote against every “pro-life” attempt to put restrictions on abortion because they are looking at the overall “pro-life” plan of eventually restricting ALL abortions as something to be resisted simply by resisting ALL “pro-life” measures, even if in their hearts they believe some restrictions would be acceptable or good.
Stuart, from my point of view, there are two differences. I think the Stalinists have had less success politically than religious conservatives. Look at Schiavo–we’ve been around this before,but there was a special federal law passed regarding her, and the President came back to sign it. An enormous exercise of political power on the part of the religious right, which took a specific and heavily litigated hard case out of its natural home in state court..
Second, I don’t think religious moderates ever thought of themselves as having much in common with the Stalinist Party. I had always thought of myself as having a great deal in common with the religious right–the whole “religious” part. I saw the disagreement as localized. So the shock is greater, because there was a tacit expectation of more convergence.
Thanks for clearing up my mystery, Mat.
David,
I agree with you on both counts.
Okay. One of my favorite doctrines is original sin.
One of my other favorites is the semina verbi–the seeds of the Word–especially as they relate to conscience.
I believe that it is already redemptive for us to begin acting according to conscience. Particularly when it costs us something. Setting aside slippery slope arguments (which really don’t hold in Christianity, I’ll explain why I think that) to help fix the most evident injustice, here, now, in which I am to some degree involved, is already to make progress along the road which leads to joyful acceptance of more difficult matters.
Of course all this involves creative social programs that support people in impossible situations–which is where Democrats come in. And believers.
I think the Lord outlawed slippery-slope arguments in the Sermon on the Mount. “Give to whoever asks,” he said. For myself, if someone asks I immediately begin calculating what is left for me, and very quickly the idea occurs to me, “What if even more people ask? What then? Soon I’ll be on the slippery slope to the poorhouse.” But he just said “give.”
And then he fed them with 5 loaves and a few fish. So I’m pretty sure there’s money in the bank, so to speak.
Barbara, thanks for the encouraging statistics.
Barbara–
I guess I’m confused by your reference to “abortion policy that enacts Catholic doctrine.” I wasn’t advocating that. However, to the extent Catholic doctrine were to square with a person’s secular moral position on abortion, the enactments would look similar, sans any theological terminology. While theology may inform my moral reasoning, I don’t support the legislative enactment of Catholic doctrine, or Mormon doctrine, or any kind of religious doctrine. Pro-life advocates have to be able to articulate their arguments in secular language if they hope to influence legislative changes.
Frankly, however, while I am not opposed to legislative change, I take the long view on the abortion issue. The issue is so divisive that real change, IMO, will occur only with a change in hearts and minds. One reason I say this is that there have already been hundreds of millions of abortions in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. While some women may have regretted having an abortion, I’m hazarding a guess that the great majority among them found nothing immoral in what they did. In fact, a significant number likely have had multiple abortions. That’s a lot of voters. And add to the voting bloc family and friends who may have supported the decisions to abort.
You’re probably correct that if the abortion issue were to come to a vote, a secular law predicated on Catholic doctrine as it now stands would likely lose, even among Catholics. However, I’ve seen polls where the majority of Catholics would support anti-abortion legislation that includes exceptions for the life of the mother and for rape.
Cathleen Kaveny noted earlier in this thread the book on abortion and divorce by Mary Ann Glendon, and Cathleen stated that her personal views on abortion are pretty much the same as those expressed by Glendon in her book. I’m pretty much of the same thought, too, on the abortion issue. And Mary Ann Glendon is no slouch. I don’t know if it is a correct characterization, but I’ve seen her described as a pro-life feminist. Not only is she a Harvard Law prof, but she is also the JPII-appointed president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. All of that is not to say that she is necessarily correct, but she has both the secular and religious credentials to at least be considered seriously.
Kathy asks: Perhaps I’ve been assuming too much. Am I mistaken in thinking that the wrongness of late-term (fully viable fetus) abortion (without an exceptional medical reason) is self-evident?
Jean replies: Yes, it is self-evident to me. I can’t speak for anybody else.
And I think the “special cases” that you dismiss are as self-evident as the late-term abortions are.
It is one thing for a mother to “give” everything to her child, including her life.
It is a whole different thing for a third party to stand over that mother and say, “Now let’s not have anymore whining and struggling, dear! If you were any kind of mother, you’d be glad to die for this baby. Shame on you!”
I don’t think you’d do that if you were faced with a woman bleeding to death and out of reach of a hospital that could detect fetal life.
I really don’t.
Barbara can speak for herself, but I understood her to mean by law ” enacting Catholic doctrine” a law that would closely track, with criminal prohibitions, Catholic teaching on the morality of abortion–even the hard cases.
I think Catholic teaching recognizes a difference between law and morality,even though they are related. Read Aquinas’s treatise on law. I think Glendon’s book offers an approach to law that conforms with Thomistic insights.
No, Jean, I wouldn’t. That’s not how I talk in pastoral situations. But I’ve been known to say things people don’t want to hear in pastoral situations. I find it very difficult but I do it.
I haven’t seen anything along these lines (although I suspect I just don’t know where to look), but I assume in the not-too-distant future, medical science will come up with safer, cheaper, relatively foolproof methods of contraception, and that unplanned and unwanted pregnancies will become largely a thing of the past.
At that point, abortion will become an internal debate within Catholicism, since (to the best of my knowledge–and someone please correct me if I am wrong) it is only the Catholic Church that opposes contraception. I know that Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews do not.
Sorry, I should have said “tens of millions of abortions in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.” Though there is a substantial quantitative difference between tens and hundreds of millions, the reality of the 30+ million abortions is staggering, to my sensibilities at least.
The reference to “special cases” as red herrings is, I think, completely appropriate. There have been, on average, nearly 1 million abortion performed in the US every year for the last 30 plus years. How many of them fit into the “special case” category? Every law or social norm has special cases. The law can be a blunt instrument, and even the best written and executed will have difficult and even unfair outcomes. Do you sacrifice the millions for the handful of special cases?
More of a red herring is the idea that there is some illegitimate attempt to impose “Catholic doctrine” by the pro-life movement. In point of fact, the history of this issue has been the exact opposite. In 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided, most states that prohibited abortions did so following the Model Penal Code formulation that both contained exceptions for the life of (and frequently for grave injury to) the mother. Moreover, punishment focused on the abortionist with much less serious sanctions for the mother in early term abortions – in fact, in some cases it was a misdemeanor.
From everything I have read on the issue, the Church was not involved at all when most of these laws were being written – in the 50’s and 60’s. There was no imposition of “Catholic Doctrine.” The reality of what happened after 1973 is what caused the pro-life reaction in the Church. Despite the insistence by the Guttmacher Institute and NARAL, the legalization of abortion on demand had a profound effect on its incidence – more than doubling the numbers in less than ten years in the US.
The point is that pro-abortion advocates use the “camel’s nose in the tent” argument against even the most reasonable restrictions – like not dismembering 30 week term infants – while describing the camel as the imposition of a theocracy. The reality is far less frightening, and they know it.
So, Sean, what’s a few dead mothers compared to millions of abortions? Is that about right?
Call me stupid, but if this is about the sanctity of ALL life–and I don’t know how you separate abortion from that overarching teaching–then isn’t putting “innocent” (i.e., unborn) life above–what? “guilty” (i.e., born) life, the same thing that the pro-choice bunch does in reverse?
Does Church teaching require us to embrace a let a few die so a lot can live thinking?
Is there no room to say that there are some situations that have no ideal outcome and that we leave those to God and a woman’s informed conscience?
Does Church teaching require us to embrace a let a few die so a lot can live thinking?
Yes, I am stupid!
That should be: Does Church teaching require us to embrace the notion that a few should do so a lot can live?
If NRLC is correct that 48,589,993 have been performed in the United States since 1973–and who would not admit that’s staggering–then assuming one percent fell into the special-cases category, that’s 485,900, which is not a small number.
Also, if NRLC is correct, “After reaching a high of over 1.6 million in 1990, the number of abortions annually performed in the U.S. has dropped back to levels not seen since the late 1970s.” Does anybody know why?
When the camel TELLS you he intends to come all the way into the tent, you have reason to be worried.
I consider Ted Hesburgh a radical tho others may not. He ceaselessly advocated for civil rights in the South. He pleaded the case for the environment before it became fashionable. He negotiated the Land of Lakes agreement for Catholic colleges which improved quality of Catholic colleges immeasurably.
So what’s this moderate stuff??
David,
The Culture of Death isn’t a person.
Neither is the Culture of Life. (Unless you mean Jesus.)
Neither is the camel.
The camel is the truth. Once its nose gets under the tent everyboy is naturally worried. But, in fact he’s brought a case of beer and plenty of lounge furniture and he makes the tent bigger. So it turns out everyone is glad he came.
Before I pack up my LaZBoy and brewski, leave the tent to you and your Camel of Truth, lemme ask you this.
Is The Truth ratios, percentages and statistics? Is it marching in anti-abortion parades? Does it lie in making saints of women like Gianna Molla? Is it in the words of the Catechism?
Those things are all signposts to The Truth.
But in my view The Truth isn’t any of those things. The Truth comes down to the gray areas and red herrings: One pregnant woman lying on a gurney, two lives in the balance.
Sit by that gurney. Find a way throught that woman’s suffering to tell her what God wants her to do. Stay with her and hold her hand until the consequences of your advice play out. For years, if need be.
Then I’ll believe you know The Truth, and you won’t have to ask me to leave the tent, because I’ll humbly ask your advice about how to be a better Catholic.
William Collier, I wanted to respond but I’m too busy at work. I leave you with a quote that I read just today from Andrew Sullivan’s blog:
“What’s lacking among today’s conservatives on the question is a sense of prudence and restraint that stems from doubt. And a general refusal to allow government to boss human beings around in their most intimate and difficult decisions.”
You might not be in doubt, but lots of people are, through what they say and do, and sometimes, what they fail to say. It’s a long way from life begins at conception to endorsing abortion in cases of rape and incest. The chasm in between is as much a result of the unspoken doubt about the rightness of the principle itself, not simply a prudential form of compromise.
Jean,
I admit that there are cases with no ideal outcome. In fact, I suspect every case of abortion involves circumstances with no ideal outcome, but does that mean you punt?
Most laws and most social norms are designed to handle the 99% of normal cases. Abortion is one of the few instances where we have allowed the exception to drive the rule, and what makes it all the more galling is that, for the most part, the exceptional case is a fiction.
For a number of legal and availability reasons, the State of Kansas has led the nation in late term abortions for years. Starting in the late 90′s the legislature tried to implement measures to gather statistical data on these abortions. Needless to say, NARAL, PP et al fought this tooth and nail, but ultimately lost. What were they hiding?
For years the pro-abortion crowd has sold us the myth that late-term abortion must be an option or women will die – according to their claims – in the thousands. What did the real data show?
Between 1998 and 2000, in Kansas there were 3,421late term abortions (of those, the abortionists themselves reported that 60% were clearly viable infants). How many of these abortions were for the protection of the mother’s life? Precisely 0. Even more shocking, how many were to prevent the substantial impairment of the mother’s physical health? Again, exactly 0.
I don’t point out these facts and “ratios” to say that what is right is the result of a statistical analysis. It is just that we must make decisions in light of the facts not fiction. Is your scenario of the woman dying on a gurney possible? Yes. Does it present fundamental challenges to our faith? Absolutely. Is there an ideal outcome from our perspective? No, but there never is.
I accept that my postition will result in difficult and tragic situations – no doubt it will. What I don’t accept is that I or other pro-life advocates must have pain-free and unambiguous, and univerally acceptable solutions to every potential moral dillema, because there aren’t any.
The Truth is Jesus Christ, and Christ is Life.
Jean,
???
Typo in the last post – it was between 1998 and 2004
Sean: Is your scenario of the woman dying on a gurney possible? Yes. Does it present fundamental challenges to our faith? Absolutely. Is there an ideal outcome from our perspective? No, but there never is.
I accept that my postition will result in difficult and tragic situations – no doubt it will. What I don’t accept is that I or other pro-life advocates must have pain-free and unambiguous, and univerally acceptable solutions to every potential moral dillema, because there aren’t any.
Jean: Thank you for your candor, and I mean that most sincerely and gratefully.
I don’t ask for pain-free, EZ answers. I don’t ask for Catholic Lite. I don’t ask that the Church change its rules so they’re more palatable to me. Nor do I feel I have the right to receive if I’m at odds with the Truth.
I simply ask that pro-life advocates look at the consequences of their position, in ALL its aspects, including the exceptions to the rules, the red herrings and the gray areas.
And that they make it clear that they understand exactly what they are asking women to do when women find themselves in those gray areas in an abortion-free world.
Because that’s part of the Truth, too, no?
You can’t expect crusty old bags like me who’ve seen those gray areas first-hand to be easily side-tracked by weepy stories about 13-year-olds sleeping in bathrooms so they can march in pro-life parades (I realize that wasn’t your story).
We know that the Truth isn’t always pretty, and you better get the ugly stuff on the table front and center, or you look like a fraud. Lord! Isn’t that why we have crucifixes in Church instead of pretty pictures like the Protestants? Because we don’t hide the truth, even when it’s ugly?.
And now I have something to think about for several more years and will bow out.
Israel has an approach to abortion that I find quite interesting. A short summary can be found here:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Health/abort1.html
Don’t believe I have ever some out and said this bluntly, but as far as I have been able to determine, the Catholic position on abortion is extreme. No other major religion forbids it absolutely. All allow for abortion in the “hard cases.” If you read the link above, Israel has fairly stringent restrictions on abortion, and nevertheless, a considerable number of abortions are performed legally.
Although a number of people here resent the accusation that Catholics are trying to “impose Catholic morality” by law in America, an absolute prohibition on morality (now, in the 21st century) really is “Catholic morality.” Some may want to argue that it is not “Catholic morality,” it is what God has revealed, and the Church is only pointing that out. However, in the United States, no one religious group gets to decide what is God’s will, and even if it did, we don’t make laws in the United States based on what God has revealed.
Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews may show their respect for life in different ways, but it would be outrageous to say they don’t respect life.
Barbara–
Thanks for your comment.
Though I’m not particularly fond of labels, I don’t consider myself a conservative. If I were to attach a label to myself, however, the one I think I’d choose is “pro-life progressive” as defined by Villanova Law School Dean Mark Sargent in the article he linked in a post on dotCommonweal some time ago.
And you say I might not be in doubt. That’s not exactly true. I can’t think of a social issue I’ve thought more about, read more about, discussed more about, and been conflicted more about for the past 25 years than abortion. I’ve reached certain conclusions after all that time, but one of the best things about dotCommonweal is that all of us, on many different issues, are forced to reconsider our positions in light of well-reasoned arguments to the contrary, and even if one’s position doesn’t change, I think we’re all much better off for having had to rethink our positions and to articulate them again in light of such reconsideration.
Correction:
Although a number of people here resent the accusation that Catholics are trying to “impose Catholic morality” by law in America, an absolute prohibition on ABORTION [not morality, as said above] (now, in the 21st century) really is “Catholic morality.
I’m sorry, David, but as your favorite political commentator and mine has made clear,anti-Semitically or not, Judaism is an imperfect religion. :)
You’re right that we don’t make laws based on what a particular religious group believes is God’s revelation, but there are anti-abortion atheists, too. Nat Hentoff comes quickly to mind, and many of his anti-abortion writings–completely devoid of religious underpinnings–can be found on the internet.
Much as I dislike responding when I’m being actively baited, belittled and willfully misunderstood, Jean, I didn’t mean that exceptional cases aren’t worth discussing. I didn’t say that and I DON”T not care. Why do you attack me on those grounds (this is not the first time).
What I mean is that dialogue can usually productively begin with what is evident. So let’s consider what is evident.
William,
I used to read Nat Hentoff frequently, and I admired him (particularly on his take on freedom of speech). I will have to take a look at his columns on abortion. Isn’t he also opposed to the death penalty and somewhat an adherent of the “seamless garment” approach?
What I would say is that the belief that human life (and by that I mean personhood) begins at conception is a religious (and specifically, Catholic) belief. There are plenty of non-religious reasons to oppose abortion. I think everyone would agree that a fertilized egg or an embryo is alive and is at least a *potential* human life, and it would not seem at all strange to me to make a completely non-religious argument against abortion based on that.
However, there is no moral consensus anywhere that I can discover (and I am more than happy to be corrected) that the life of a fetus is always to be held to be equally valuable to any other human life (including the life of the pregnant woman carrying the fetus).
Again, if this is incorrect, I ask somebody to let me know, but I believe the only three countries that have absolute bans on abortion are Malta (where Catholicism is the state religion), El Salvador (where the Catholic Church played a major part in shaping the law), and Vatican City.
So I still maintain that the Catholic Church has an extreme (and almost certainly the most extreme) view on this issue. Of course, I am sure that a great many Catholics would be proud of that, and that’s fine with me.
This thread lives on and on… so. I’ll try one more time on the theme.
NPLC, which i think most consider centrist, has a mission derived from the late Msgr. Phil Murnion (as was mentioned in his eulogy) of a Church im which Fr. Nieuhaus and Sister Chitister can worship comfortably together,
The difficulty of that is evident in the posts here which generally tend to deolve into the one issue discussion on abortion.
The possibility of it happening is marred by many things, however, including:–very different views on the natiure of dialogue and its ethic;
-varying views on the simplicity or complexity of truth (see Jean above on “gray areas”)
–different views on the nature of religious voice in the public square: I think Stephen L. Carter was first a major voice on this, but in his book “Civility” and his call for genuine listening and not just shaping one’s views by following only media they agreed with, he alienated lots of folks.
Too bad. The name of the game still seems to be to bamboozle others to one’s point of view. preferably by using labels – which is the issue here to some degree.
What’s sad (as I think Barbara cogently pointed out earlier) is that many faithful Catholics are turned off by these culture games – though they remain sacramentally faithful.
Poor St. Benedict, who wanted us to listen with the ear of the heart – I think of one of my old psych professors who said that when one tried to solve a problem by using philosophical notions without really hearing the person’s problem. it was a sign they had not yet reached adulthood.
If we want adult Catholics, I think we had better get after Msgr. Murnion’s mission.
I just wanted to say that I think some of the central premises of the original post were a bit off. Namely, that religious progressives have been inactive or are ignored (they have not yet matched the religious right but the past two years have seen an explosion of activity and influence, just look at the Democratic presidential candidates). Also, I see the future being new coalitions around “common good” issues such as the environment and poverty. These issues are really taking hold in the Evangelical community (and of course, are not at all foreign to Catholics).
SIGH. says the original poster!
There has to be a way to have a discussion about broader issues that doesn’t turn into a discussion of abortion. (Of course, I contributed to the problem too).
I’ll keep trying to find a way around it.
But this is part of my reason for pessimism. After reviewing these posts, I don’t see any way for those who think single issue focus is the way to go to work with people who want a broader focus. And vice versa.
True confession:: I’m a big fan of the West Wing. A neighbor with whom I swap Netflixes (but not when I’m in a West Wing mode) calls it The Left Wing.
So they took this copout in their last season election schtick and just took abortion out of the picture. Both candidates were pro-choice. And see, how they got down to the “real issues” once that old cranky uncle was escorted from the table!!
Some eras there is a single overwhelming issue. It happens. (I’m trying to avoid Nazi allusions.) Okay, here’s one. Can you imagine discussing any issue but the economy in 1932 America?
Kathy, you prove my point.
Cathy,
Are you saying that you can’t imagine a single-issue situation?
That’s not what I said.
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