"Catholic Legal Theory": What is it good for?

In this post, a blogger and college student named Dave Harris reacts to a recent MOJ post, and to the "Catholic Legal Theory" enterprise more generally.  He is, to put it mildly, unimpressed.  Here is a bit:

  CLT definitely seems preferable to the legal theories of the radical evangelical right, but I'm not seeing any brilliant insights, either. Based on my (very limited) research, the key element of CLT seems to be "the dignity of the human person and respect for the common good." I'm all for that, as I've written before. I think it should be fairly uncontroversial that "community [i]s indispensable for human flourishing" and that "authentic freedom" is a good thing. " And I'm an atheist. Thus, I'm not sure what CLT has to add. . . .

Basically, it seems like the good elements of CLT can be found elsewhere, and forcing a distinctively Catholic element onto the ideas I've seen so far has seemed confusing and unproductive at best. That's not to say that they won't have anything interesting or useful to say as a result of their Catholicism. With a few exceptions like the Talmudic tradition and perhaps law itself, there aren't many systems of thought that have struggled more intensely or for a longer period of time with the nature of the law than the Church. In fact, I'd be surprised if Catholicism didn't have something useful to say on the subject, just as I'd be surprised if Buddhism's introspective tradition didn't have anything useful to say about psychology. Still, I'm confident that there are issues on which Catholic teachings are worthless and even dangerous, and people are going to have an extremely difficult time convincing me to adopt a particular position simply because a Catholic theologian or scholar supports it. . . .

And it's a conceit to believe that others--particularly experts and others that believe that they have access to a capital-T Truth that flatly contradicts Catholic teachings--don't understand their own affiars. Like I said earlier, it's quite likely that over the last 1500 years some Catholics have produced tremendously useful ideas that should be given more thought. I'm not going to reject an idea just because it's rooted in Catholic doctrine. But I don't think that people should accept them for that reason, either. And if the posts I looked through are any indication, there's a danger of that with CLT.

I'd be happy if someone can prove me wrong, though. I'm certainly not going to pretend to be an expert on something I hadn't heard of until several hours ago. Am I missing something?

So . . . is Harris missing something?   Or, are we ("arrogant[ly]) wasting our time on "confusing and unproductive" repackaging?  I'd welcome others' thoughts.

UPDATE:  Another sharp critique of the MOJ project -- or, at least -- its execution, is here (scroll down).

UPDATE:  Here is a response -- defending the CLT enterprise -- to Harris's post, by David Schraub.