A Message from Cathy Kaveny, Prompted by Michael Scaperlanda's Post

[Michael S's post here.  Now, Cathy's message:]

Dear Michael,

I heard you posted my Commonweal blog contribution on Mirror of Justice, and I just learned of Michael Scaperlanda’s quite negative reaction to it.  And I wanted to take a minute to respond to him.  He is quite right to point out that my response to Robby George and Gerry Bradley two years ago was heated.   I was hurt and angered by their response to Dean Roche'’s op-ed, which strongly implied that Roche, and by implication, other hold-your-nose -and-vote-for-Kerry types ­like me, were either stupid ­ dupes of the NY Times, or else in bad faith about being pro-life.   Remember, at the time, prominent conservative Catholics were saying that it was a mortal sin to vote for Kerry-- a sin, if done with full consent of the will and sufficient reflection, would deprive one of eternity with God.  It saddens me that Catholics like Professor Scaperlanda can't see how deeply hurtful this way of framing the debate is to their fellow believers. I thought then, and continue to think now, that the rhetorical strategy Bradley and George used was not a helpful way to conduct a discussion of complicated issues involving prudential judgment. It shuts down conversation, it doesn’'t open it up. Professor Scaperlanda suggests that I continued the tone in protesting it.  Perhaps.  But then, I didn'’t know ­ and still don'’t know -- how one can effectively protest what one believes is an attack on one'’s fundamental integrity as a Catholic.

I took this dust-up very seriously, though.  After the election, I started to think more systematically, and academically, about how moral conversation should take place;  ­ more specifically, I started to think about the relationship of rhetoric and morality.  I came to recognize that there were two types of moral discourse dominating the religious discourse around the 204 election: 1) practical reason or casuistry and 2) prophetic discourse.  I looked at these issues in light of abortion and torture in the 2004 election, and examined when and how both the religious right and the religious left employed both rhetorical forms.  I came to the conclusion that 1) practical moral reasoning or casuistry is our normal form of discourse; 2) prophetic discourse rightly comes in when the conditions for the possibility of  sound moral discourse have broken down.  But it has its dangers.  Prophecy is best viewed as a moral chemotherapy.  It aims at destroying a cancer within the moral conversation, in order to reconstruct on a sound basis.  But like actual chemotherapy, sometimes it destroys too much good along with the bad and ends up seriously harming the polity it purports to be saving. The full-blown 80 page analysis (Latin footnotes and all) is in “Prophecy and Casuistry: Abortion, Torture, and Moral Reasoning,” Villanova Law Review, 2006.  I hope to turn it into a book.

My bottom -line position, right now is this: the culture of death v. the culture of life rhetoric is prophetic in the way it functions in our moral discourse.  It has real destructive consequences for our common conversation, even if those who deploy it do so for a constructive end.  Once someone tells you you’re part of the culture of death, or voting for the contemporary equivalent of Nazis, or slaveowners, there’s just nowhere for the conversation to go.

My take on the 2006 election:  Most Americans now believe the country needs a reasonable conversation; they want practical reason, not prophecy. The culture wars rhetoric has to fade into the background for that conversation to occur.

Best,

Cathy