Is MoJ a Waste of Time?

I'd like to offer a couple of brief comments in response to Dave Harris's observation that the Catholic legal theory project seems "confusing and unproductive at best."  I have to acknowledge that, to a certain extent, I agree with Mr. Harris.  As I've expressed before, sometimes I fear that our debates mirror the conservative-liberal policy arguments taking place everywhere else, only we dress up our reasons with labels from Catholic social thought.

In my less jaded moments, though, I think we're engaged in important work.  Gerald Russello articulated some of the reasons why, and I'll just provide a brief supplement.  First, though most liberal theorists participating in our public discourse won't find references to "human dignity" or the "common good" to be especially new or insightful, Catholic legal theory expands the discourse by analyzing our temporal reality through the lens offered by the conviction that our temporal reality is not all that there is.  We do not start from the premise that we exist, we start from the premise that we are created.  That's a key distinction, and though its implications often will correlate with existing positions on the political spectrum, it should give rise to a normative framework that is not easily replicated by any single strand of thought within our public discourse. 

Second, I''m becoming more convinced that CLT's primary value lies not in its revelatory power for the wider world, but in its articulation of the link between faith in Christ and our stance toward the surrounding legal and political cultures.  St. Peter asked, "What kind of people ought you to be?" (2 Peter 3:11)  That's the basic question we're asking ourselves as lawyers, teachers, and citizens.  If my conclusions are entirely unoriginal, so be it.  What matters is not that the lived expression of my faith is meaningfully different from the political prescriptions of libertarians, value pluralists, or communitarians; what matters is the impetus for my expression: devotion to Christ. 

Rob