Mirror of Justice

Richard Neuhaus, writing in December's First Things, did not like the recent University of St. Thomas Law Journal symposium (papers here) on "the future of pro-life progressivism."  (His written squib did not appear in the online archives for several weeks, so I'm just reacting to it now.)  I'm not surprised that he'd criticize the concept of progressivism reflected in several of the papers on war, economics, poverty, etc.  There are of course legitimate debates over all those issues.  But his critical characterization includes at least one flatly false statement, one puzzling one, and what seems to me an unfair assumption.

The false statement comes in this complaint about the symposium :

As for the poor of the world, John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus is rich in proposals for helping the poor enter into the circle of productivity of exchange. But Centesimus Annus rates barely a mention, and then only to complain about the way it has been hijacked by conservatives.

Well ... no.  Even a glance at the issue's table of contents shows the article by the Acton Institute's Kevin Schmiesing, "Another Social Justice Tradition: Catholic Conservatives," which highlights and quotes what I expect is one of Fr. Neuhaus's favorite passages from Centesimus Annus (CA): "The pope approves of that capitalism 'which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property, and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector.'"  (Schmiesing's article recently got recognition from a market-oriented think tank, even if not from Fr. Neuhaus.)  Then there's Helen Alvare's paper quoting CA's passages on the importance of "know how" and education, which surely rank among those empowerment proposals to which Fr. Neuhaus refers.  Alvare argues that the traditional family structure bolsters education and achievement, an argument that I expect Fr. Neuhaus would have endorsed had he happened upon it while flipping through the symposium pages.

Fr. Neuhaus's false suggestion that the symposium participants all sounded one note seems to reveal the assumptions he brings to these issues.  His squib makes many assertions about how the liberal participants all believe they "care more about other people" than conservatives do, that they all claim "moral superiority," display "moral smugness."  He quotes nothing to support applying these familiar complaints about liberals to this case; and that, combined with his tenuous grasp of the actual content of the articles (see above), leaves me the impression that he's operating mostly on a priori assumptions about how we know liberals always act.  I don't deny for a minute that people on the left can be morally smug, as can we all.  But asserting that in a specific case without specific evidence -- asserting it simply, it appears, because somebody argues for left-ish positions on war or the economy -- is no better than being a morally smug liberal.  Either position simply shuts down legitimate argument about, e.g., when war is moral or what steps, by civil society and the state, are needed to empower the poor.  The line between moral smugness and admirable moral energy is not a bright one -- haven't traditionalists often had their moral energy tarred as smugness? -- and so the charge of smugness shouldn't be thrown around too casually.

The puzzling statement is Fr. Neuhaus's complaint that examining this issue "assum[es]that 'Pro-Life Progressivism' will strike most people as something of an oxymoron" when in fact "few things, if anything, are so clearly required by social justice than that a society not kill its babies."  I'm not clear why this is a criticism, since the very claim of the pro-life progressive or consistent-life position is that it is not oxymoronic, but entirely consistent, to see abortion as a fundamental issue  of justice for the most vulnerable.  That combining such opposition to abortion with an emphasis on protecting the vulnerable in other circumstances strikes a significant number of people as an oxymoron seems to me a simple fact of public opinion.  One can and should criticize the belief, but I don't see the point in denying its existence.

The unstated issue here, I suspect, is the continuing debate about whether locating abortion in the context of other issues of life and vulnerability -- like war, the death penalty, or poverty -- is more likely to submerge it in those issues or instead, as the consistent-life people claim, increase the long-term credibility of the pro-life movement.  Participants in the symposium took varying positions on those questions (compare, e.g., the papers by the USCCB's John Carr, Notre Dame's John O'Callaghan, and our own Mark Sargent at the symposium link above).  That debate is important, as is the debate about what policies will serve to protect and empower the vulnerable in various contexts.  But it's unhelpful to dismiss the issue or shut down the debate with pronouncements that the other side is morally smug.

Tom B.