Lessons of Catholic Civic Engagement

The project American Catholics in the Public Square has produced a new collection of essays, American Catholics, American Culture: Tradition and Resistance. The opening essay by John McGreevey concludes with two lessons drawn from Catholicism's history of civic engagement in the United States:

The first lesson bears directly on the question Steve asked as to whether "any theory of constitutional interpretation that validates Roe v. Wade constitutes material cooperation with evil." McGreevey cautions that "Catholics eager to engage the issues of the day must not reflexively dismiss reforms or programs that seem to spring from suspicious sources. The anti-Catholicism of many American abolitionists, precisely because they held views about individual autonomy antithetical to powerful Catholic traditions, was real. But those same abolitionists also understood the inhumanity of slavery more profoundly than all but a few Catholics." Where possible, our criticism of the validity of political or legal theories must be a separate endeavor from our responses to the particular problematic (or noble) practices the theories are used to justify.

The second lesson highlights a primary source of the discomfort that many of us have with the bishops' pronouncements on pro-choice politicians and communion. McGreevey argues that "[t]he most effective Catholic witness to Christian values in the public sphere has come through placing single issues in a more systematic framework. In this regard I find Cardinal Bernadin's 'consistent ethic of life' compelling, and not, as is frequently alleged, a way for liberal Catholics to dodge the wrenching issue of abortion. Instead, such a framework -- and again the contrast with discussion about birth control is stark -- may ultimately persuade a vast, skeptical and largely non-Catholic public that the Catholic social and sexual ethic does not rest upon opposition to women's equality."

By appearing to elevate abortion as the singular determinant of an individual's standing within the faith community, the bishops leave themselves wide open to charges of crass election-year politics. I realize that the issue has in many ways been forced upon them given the religious identity and public positions of the election-year candidates, but the middle way alluded to by Michael may have been more within reach if the bishops had responded to the predicament with a broader acknowledgment and invocation of relevant Church teaching; this may have minimized the rampant cynicism that has greeted the bishops' narrowly focused and admittedly GOP-friendly pronouncements.

Rob