I must confess: I was tempted to come up with a wiseguy title for this column, something like “Surprise: The Jesuits are Pro-Life.” Or, “What Took You So Long: The Jesuits Come Out Against Abortion.”
But that would be a cheap shot. It would be wrong of me to assume that most Jesuits are in agreement with those prominent Jesuits, such as Robert Drinan, who have made the case for “pro-choice” Catholic politicians. Me culpa. (Yeah, yeah…I doth protest too much.)
My reaction was prompted by a recent (May 26-June 2) article in the Jesuits’ America magazine: “Standing for the Unborn: A Statement of the Society of Jesus in the United States on Abortion.” Published on March 25, 2003, by the Office of Social and International Ministries of the Jesuit Conference, the document states that the “Jesuits in the United States, fervently renew our opposition to abortion and our support for the unborn.” The Jesuits “underscore the correctness of the Catholic Church teaching regarding abortion.” They pledge themselves to join “with many other people of conscience who are working to protect life in the womb, and who are seeking an end to abortion so as to restore our country’s respect for the core human value of the right to life.”
Nothing to object to there, even if a bit later the statement makes its bow to political correctness, linking opposition to abortion to other “direct assaults on human life,” such as “capital punishment…escalating militarism, racism, xenophobia and the skewed accumulation of wealth and life-sustaining resources.”
“Standing for the Unborn” is especially good on the question of whether Catholics who speak out against abortion are violating constitutional principles, specifically the First Amendment’s no-establishment of religion clause: “Attempts to frame the issue as merely a question of personal preference of private choice ignore important features of abortion as public policy. Because the state and society as a whole have an intense interest in promoting respect for life, we may not with a clear conscience relegate such life and death issues to the private realm, no matter how appealing and convenient such arguments may appear on the surface.”
Bull’s eye. It is not as if we are looking for a law to force our fellow citizens to go to confession or attend novenas. That would be the imposition of our sectarian beliefs on the rest of society. Protecting unborn life is not the same; it is not a “Catholic-thing.” Or as the Jesuits phrase it, “In recent years, new evidence about prenatal biology has persuaded numerous people, often without explicit religious commitments, that the fetus is indeed a living, unique human being, worthy of the respect and protection we give to all human beings. When abortion laws are changed, it will not be the imposition of a narrowly confined religious position upon an unwilling majority, but rather the consequence of a new broad-based consensus grounded upon persuasive and reasonable arguments accessible to people of all faith traditions and people of none.”
The Jesuits have it right. Think back to the 1960s and how Americans were scolded for looking the other way on racial inequality in the South. We were told to take a stand, to not be apathetic, to become activist, committed to public action to right a wrong. It was good citizenship to impose progressive views about race relations on those who stood in the way of a just society. But now Catholics who are convinced that the fetus is an unborn child are urged not to impose their views on the rest of society, to be tolerant of those who disagree with us. Let me see if I get the equation: It was immoral back then to stand by while some Americans were forced to go to segregated schools and sit in the back of the bus, but it is good citizenship now to stand by while unborn children are killed.
So I say “two cheers’ for the Jesuits. Their contribution to the pro-life cause can be of great significance. Then why only “two cheers”? Well, if may be quibbling, but consider how “Standing for the Unborn” comes to a close. It makes the point that pro-life efforts should not seek “to dominate situations of pluralism” and that we engage “those who initially disagree with us on some issues, seeking to create an acceptable consensus wherever possible by building upon those truths on which we can reach agreement, while continuing to educate and persuade those who disagree with our convictions.”
Why must we take this stance? Because, the Jesuits say, “In the near future, we cannot realistically expect complete agreement among all participants in the abortion debate. We must listen respectfully to others’ opinions, just as we expect a fair hearing of our own arguments against abortion.”
And what do I object to in this? Nothing. (Unless, of course, the above passages are meant to give cover to liberal Democratic who want to take a “less confrontational” approach to the abortion question.) It is true. We do not want to encourage violence. In a democratic society we cannot get change until a consensus has been formed in its favor, and forming a new consensus on abortion may take quite a while.
Even so, I can’t help but wish the Jesuits had used their theological expertise to deal with the incongruity that bothers so many of us about the idea of “seeking to educate and persuade” those who favor legal abortions. We are talking about waiting for a “consensus” to form until we can save unborn children. Think of how the editors of America would react to the proposition that that Americans should have permitted slavery to continue in the South until plantation owners were “educated and persuaded” to change their ways. How would they react to the argument that the Nazis should have been permitted to continue with the Holocaust until a consensus was formed in the SS about the evils of genocide?
Why is it laudable to bide our time on abortion, but immoral to temporize with evil in these other situations? Are we less convinced that the fetus is human life than in the evils of slavery and genocide? That is not what the authors of “Standing for the Unborn” say. They argue that they want to “underscore the correctness of the Catholic Church teaching regarding abortion.”
Look: I don’t claim to have the answer to this dilemma. If we are not going to resort to violence, we have no choice but to use democratic methods to end abortion. (Protest marches and picketing are forms of democratic expression, by the way.) But I insist that it is too easy to make high-sounding comments about the requirements of consensus building in a pluralistic society and act as if that covers all the bases. If millions of unborn children are going to be killed while we wait for the democratic consensus to form against abortion, Catholic theologians and preachers have some explaining to do about why.
James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, is available from our online store. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
