Prudential Judgment, Proportionality, and the Danger of Accommodating to Intrinsic Evil

In his posting, Tom Berg thoughtfully suggests that the mere fact that the approach to an issue is left to prudential judgment under Catholic Church teaching should not be understood to mean that the matter at hand is necessarily of lesser importance than would be even a subject on which Church teaching is unequivocal, requires a specific response, and thus is not as susceptible to prudential variation.

For example, Tom hypothesizes, suppose that a candidate for the presidency were (lamentably) pro-choice on abortion, but nonetheless was the only candidate who espoused an effective means of protecting the nation’s borders against the smuggling in of a nuclear weapon that would lead to millions of American deaths at the hands of a terrorist group. (As an aside, Rudy Guiliani appears to be adopting precisely this strategy to appeal to social conservatives who are dismayed by his position on abortion. Guiliani regularly contends that the other candidates, notably the pride of Democratic candidates, frequently downplay or even ignore the terrorist threat in their speeches and debates, whereas he offers himself as a more reliable protector of our national safety.)

In many respects, I do think that Tom Berg is quite right. The mere fact that Catholic teaching does not lead ineluctably to one solution for a particular problem – that is, the methods of economic, political, or social change are left to prudential judgment – is not a perfect measure of the issue’s place in the hierarchy of matters of public concern. Indeed, his point is the only reason that I couldn’t quite say last election that a vote for John Kerry was impossible for a faithful Catholic, although it was very difficult. I do think it unlikely that the contrasts offered on other issues could ever be so stark as to implicate Tom’s hypothetical. Nonetheless, I concede that one could imagine circumstances in which a candidate’s plainly unacceptable views on one issue of unequivocal Church teaching, perhaps even on the central human rights issue of our time (i.e., the continuing holocaust against the unborn), might be out-balanced by his or her commanding attention and brilliant solution to another matter of overriding national importance (at least if the other candidates were so woefully unqualified as to fail to appreciate the urgent need to address the crisis).

Still, I suggest that one ought to very, very hesitant before going down that road. That the means to the end of a problem are left to prudential judgment signifies that persons of good will, fully in communion with the Church, might disagree on an economic, social, or political solution. But those of different perspectives on methods would nonetheless be within the bounds of the community on the basic nature of the problem and the need to seek a proper solution. By contrast, when a matter involves an intrinsic evil, such as the ongoing and casual dealing of death to unborn children, a candidate’s deliberate adoption of a policy of formally cooperating with that evil is of a completely different nature. Here we are not addressing questions of procedure but rather of the greatest substance. Thus, the presumption surely would be strong against a candidate who, whether from mendacity, foolishness, or craven pandering, would knowingly embrace an intrinsic evil or would knowingly facilitate and cooperate with those who do.

Moreover, whenever we seek to balance a candidate’s strengths in addressing matters of public concern open to exercise of prudential judgment against the candidate’s manifest weakness on a subject of clear Church teaching and defined as an intrinsic evil, the temptation of subordination of conscience to convenience is always presented. By accommodating to, or explaining away, the candidate’s stance on the matter of intrinsic evil, even by reference to other qualities of great merit on other matters, we may find ourselves developing a moral blindness.

Those in the blogosphere will recognize “Godwin’s Law,” which says that as a conversation unfolds and continues on-line, the probability that someone will make a reference to Hitler or Nazis approaches 1.0. The “Corollary to Godwin’s Law” has been that the person who so transgresses against norms of courteous discussion is declared the loser of the argument. Nonetheless, sometimes and on some subjects, it is just impossible (or too tempting) to forgo a well-targeted reminder of this historical reality. So here I go, pleading guilty to violating Godwin’s Law.

Among a number of books I am reading simultaneously during my sojourn in Rome, I have been reading Albert Speer’s “Inside the Third Reich.” Unlike most of the street thugs or disoriented and displaced workers associated with the Nazis in their early period, Speer was from a wealthy and prominent family and was well-educated as an architect. Yet Speer joined the Nazi Party and rose to become the architect of public works, and eventually the leader of wartime production, for the Third Reich. In the beginning, Speer was so attracted to Hitler’s vision of a revitalized Germany, so convinced of the need for a new civil order and Hitler's unparalleled ability to achieve it, and so entranced by the opportunities to rebuild a vibrant public sector that he was willing to look away from those parts of the Nazi platform that were not so palatable. In particular, he regarded the anti-Semitic elements of the Nazi ideology as the unseemly, even strange, but temporary flaws of an immature political movement.

However, once having embraced the Nazi movement for other and arguably public-regarding (if unsound) reasons, Speer gradually came to be less and less troubled by the Nazi hostility to the Jews, even to the point of tolerating (although never enthusiastically endorsing) the race laws and forced relocation of Jews. By the time the war came to an end, Speer had submerged all but a residue of his conscience on the "Juden Frage," even accepting the use of Jewish slave labor in building the public works and means of production that promoted his architectural dreams. Although Speer was spared the death penalty at Nuremberg by reason of evidence that he had reasonably well-treated the slave labor, providing them with better food and conditions than others, no one could doubt that his conscience had been seared by his association with the Nazis. As he later confessed, he ultimately had become the worst of criminals, whose guilt could not be expurgated in a thousand years.

Hopefully, few of us will ever face the political choice that Speer encountered or fail to make a better and more conscientious choice if we are so confronted. Nor do I mean to suggest that the issues facing modern day Americans are of the same caliber and moral importance as those facing post-World War I Germany (although the abortion issue may qualify and may be so regarded by future generations). I mean only to say that a willingness to accommodate to a matter of intrinsic evil, however we may think that a greater good may be realized by looking the other way and going along, is a dangerous course for a person of conscience, even at the voting booth.

And on that solemn note, I must prepare to leave Rome for a hopefully uplifting and peaceful journey to Siena for the weekend. This also means that I'll have no internet access for the next two days, so my colleagues on the blog may freely identify my errors of analysis without fearing any prompt response.

Greg Sisk