5B: POLITICIZING THE ABORTION ISSUE: A CONCEPTUAL QUAGMIRE:

  

(When I finished the following reflection over two months ago, I was left with the sense that I had missed the central point at issue.  Since then, I have found a more basic way to formulate the issue.)

Succinctly, only those who lack the power to impose their moral judgments on others can speak with moral authority.  Conversely, once one seeks to impose one’s moral judgments on others, one ceases to speak with moral authority.

Now, I wonder why it has taken me so long to grasp this insight.  For a number of years, I have argued that moral discourse must be grounded in a metaphor of intimacy, not a metaphor of power and judgment.  Here, the point at issue can be succinctly stated.  (1)  The metaphor of intimacy centers moral issues in person-to-person involvements.  The metaphor of power and judgment centers them in relationships between and among detached individuals.  (2)  The metaphor of intimacy calls for passionate, vulnerable, respectful and faithful interactions.  The metaphor of power and judgment calls for a dialogue governed by reason.  To justify the authority of reason, it implies that reason provides a disinterested, dispassionate perspective which detached individuals can occupy interchangeably.  In a political arena framed by a metaphor of power and judgment, however, the use of reason by individuals determined to impose their moral judgments on others generates rationalizations of passionately held prejudices. 

(3) Analyses of the uses made of the language of rights shows the difference between a political discourse framed by a metaphor of intimacy and a political discourse accredited by a metaphor of power and judgment.

Before moving on to an analysis of the uses made of a language of rights, two brief asides.  (1)  Rousseau insisted that individuals were made unique, free and good by nature.  To erase the difference between good and evil, he blamed his own less than noble actions on socialization.  As a result, when he sought to delineate an ideal form of the social contract, he had to allow the state to force individuals to be free.  The absurdity of such a project is obvious.  And, analogously, so is a project designed to force individuals to be moral.  (2)  I do not fault members of the Hierarchy for protesting against abortion.  I do fault them for arguing that this protest trumps all others and for supposing that a political party devoid of interest in issues of social justice could serve as divinely ordained instruments of their determination to criminalize abortion.

The Original Reflection

Rhetorically, Republicans present themselves as stalwart defenders of traditional family values against liberal efforts to undermine those values.  To appeal to their shrinking base, they promise to criminalize abortion and prevent same-sex marriages.  As a sub-text, they insist that government welfare programs undermine the sense of responsibility fostered by traditional families.

The promise is hollow.  Republican politicians have not made concerted efforts to criminalize abortion.  If they did, they would have to face the question: Do you put women who seek abortions as well as those who provide abortions in prison (for murder)?  Few Americans would agree to that sort of law.  Yet, if the women were exempted, abortion providers would surely argue that the women were accomplices to the deed.

From a more detached perspective, I am bemused by a political rhetoric which seeks to eliminate government regulation of the economic system, yet wants the government to regulate what they define as traditional family values.  Power over the everyday life of citizens is so concentrated today in the economic system that only the power of a central government can prevent the sort of catastrophe we are presently experiencing.  But Republicans who insist that their agenda is a matter of principle want government to police actions of the individuals whom they regard as threats to their everyday existence.  Consequently, I cannot understand how people who pretend to speak as arbiters of morality do not see the Machiavellian structure of their rhetoric.

(Regarding same-sex marriage, I am even more bemused by politicians who have nothing to say about divorce, yet insist that same-sex marriages would undermine the natural institution of marriage.  Surely, the prevalence of divorce has already undermined this dubious understanding of marriage.  (I am grieved by divorces, just as by abortions.  In the political arena, however, I favor no fault divorce.)

Consequently, I can find only one reason why so many American Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops were so easily seduced by a rhetoric which threatens to sound the death knell of serious moral dialogue concerning the issue of abortion.  I.e., though they refuse to acknowledge the fact, their response to the sexual abuse crisis has seriously undermined any pretense that they speak with moral authority.  To re-assert their authority, they allow themselves to be ensnared by the obsession with sexual issues that dominates the Roman Curia.  To rally the troops, they adopt the Machiavellian strategy of deflecting attention from their own failings by insisting that abortion trumps all other issues in the political arena.  And they use this strategy again and again to silence prophetic voices who reveal the tangled moral issues which lie, inextricably, at the core of any human action or assertion.

I do not doubt that some believe that they are guarding the only way to live a commitment to Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life.  But a rhetoric which proclaims that a single issue trumps all others clearly legitimates self-deceptive exercises of a will to power.  Sadly, since the focus on a single issue echoes a traditional supposition that attending Mass every Sunday and not eating meat on Friday accredited one’s identity as a faithful Catholic, their one sermon resonates deeply in the souls of traditionalists.  (There is something pharisaical in their assumption that a vehement opposition to abortion places them among the elect.)  And as an added bonus, members of the Hierarchy can pretend that this rhetoric absolves them of any need to work for the implementation of the dictates of the traditional Catholic concern for social justice.

In this context, grounding their determination to insert themselves forcefully into the political process in a privileged access to a purportedly objective moral order fosters a pernicious self-deception.  They can persuade themselves that their commitment to such a moral order frees them from the call to discern their own moral centers by replacing implacable judgments with a willingness to respond to the cries from the depths of women who see abortion as the only option if they are to be able to pursue a longing for a fully human and uniquely personal existence in a culture which marginalizes them.

Whenever I am inclined to regret my disillusionment with members of the Hierarchy, I am confronted by new efforts on their part to insulate themselves from the cries of wounded members of the Body of Christ.  And I cannot help but wonder if this determination is propelled by a fear that a willingness to engage in passionate, vulnerable, respectful and faithful interactions would challenge them to discern their own moral centers.

(Addendum:  The majority of Bishops in the United States avoided the honest recognition of the role they played in the sex-abuse crisis by dealing with victims through their lawyers.  Few were willing to communicate face-to-face with those victims.  Most likely, few would have known how to communicate face-to-face with victims whose cries might force them to acknowledge their complicity in this moral obscenity.  Tragically, they continue to repeat this pattern in their response to almost every dimension of life in the Church today.  Their servile submission to the Roman Curia on liturgical matters is simply one instance of the problem.)