Weigel, Prudence, and Proportionality

The exchange among Eduardo, Rick, and Edward Highberger about George Weigel's article is very interesting and valuable.  FWIW, I agree with what seems to be the consensus that whatever we think about the necessity of having abortion laws in the first place, it is unjust to have a constitutional ruling that prevents the passage of those laws.

I think Eduardo is entirely right, though, in criticizing Weigel's argument that "questions of war and peace, social-welfare policy, environmental policy and economic policy" are "contingent prudential judgments that, by definition, cannot bear th[e] weight" of countering a "grave," "intrinsic" evil such as abortion.  As Eduardo points out, it's fallacious because an issue's prudential status and its gravity are two different things.  I blogged about this last year, making the same point and predicting that "the argument 'X can't be proportionate because it's only prudential' will appear in upcoming discussion about the 2008 elections."  Now it has appeared, in Weigel's article.

As I also wrote then, this obviously does not counter the claim that abortion is extremely grave and therefore disproportionate to other issues.  But in making the determination about this election, we need to get the arguments right as well as the conclusions.  The "prudential by definition can't be proportionate" argument may, among other things, lead to unconvincing conclusions in other situations where something that is an "intrinsic evil" under Church teaching is -- or a voter could in well-formed conscience think it is -- less grave in its consequences than widespread abortion.  (Gay marriage, for example: in the future there probably will be pro-life candidates who support gay marriage and who a conscientious voter might find superior to their opponents on many other issues.)

FInally, the "prudential can't be proportionate" argument undercuts the important role of laypeople that Weigel himself, along with others, has emphasized over the years.  They have correctly argued that the Church itself shouldn't speak definitively on every issue, even every important one, because laypeople with knowledge in different disciplines are better equipped to make and articulate many of those judgments.  It follows that the fact that the Church refrains from speaking definitively doesn't show that an issue is less important, certainly not "by definition."