The time since the overturning of the Roe v Wade decision by the Supreme Court of the United States has provided an opportunity for more subtle and nuanced opinions to surface in contrast to the polarized and single focus arguments of culture war politics.
Christopher White reports that theologians and Vatican officials told the National Catholic Reporter that the differences between American and Vatican responses to the high court's June 24 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization reflect different approaches to how Catholic leaders navigate one of the thorniest policy matters in public life today.
Kim Daniels, co-director of Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, and a member of the Vatican's Dicastery for Communications, said the Vatican's response to the Dobbs decision "tracks Pope Francis’ approach throughout his pontificate."
the pope's approach includes "reinforcing that all human beings have an inviolable dignity, including unborn children; resisting ideological blinders by recognizing that issues of life and human dignity are all interconnected; and calling for solidarity with the vulnerable, including public policies that promote social and material support for women and children in need."
"Pope Francis’ approach," "offers a model for how Catholic and other pro-life leaders can rise to the challenge: by moving past politics as usual, witnessing to a consistent ethic of life, and making solidarity with women and children in need a defining priority." (White, 2022)
Therese Lysaught, a professor at the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy at Loyola University Chicago and a corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said that U.S. bishops' conference statement in response to Dobbs reflected the way life issues were approached under Pope John Paul II, rather than Francis. She said that John Paul's 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae "advances a deeply polarized ideology of the 'culture of death' against which Catholics must fight by obeying the moral law or, better, changing the civil law."
"Although John Paul II wrote important social encyclicals, 'life' issues remained siloed from 'social' issues under his pontificate and were reduced to a few topics — almost exclusively abortion, euthanasia, and issues related to sexuality — framed almost entirely in the language of commandments, laws and absolutes,"
"Pope Francis' tone has been very different,"
"He has tried to redirect the church’s attention from an obsessive focus on law," she observed, and "has consistently shown how the distinction between 'life' issues and 'social' issues is a false distinction."(White, 2022)
Similarly, Lysaught said that under Francis, the church is seeking to be a "healing presence amidst the messy realities of the world" rather than engaging polarizing issues as part of a culture war.
In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, Lysaught said, statements coming from Vatican officials "strike a tone of carefulness and prudence regarding the ambiguities and complexities of the issue" of abortion. She said they "reiterate Pope Francis’ clear and consistent statements on the morality of abortion while situating it within a broader spectrum of life issues, emphasizing the need for fundamental socioeconomic changes, and foregrounding the need for dialogue aimed at social healing."
Lysaught characterized the U.S. bishops' statement after the Dobbs decision as treating those wider commitments as an "afterthought … buried in one sentence in the penultimate paragraph."
"The [bishops'] statement triumphs the victory of one side of an ideologically polarized issue, continuing that polarization," she added, saying that after a decade of the Francis papacy, many U.S. church leaders have failed to embrace his vision.(White, 2022)
The attempt to “fight” an argument in the culture wars so often hides opportunities for positive co-operation on addressing the many social issues impacting women, prisoners, immigrants, elderly, and the economically disadvantaged.
References
White, C. (2022, July 12). Reading between the lines of Vatican response to Supreme Court overturning Roe. National Catholic Reporter. Retrieved July 12, 2022, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/reading-between-lines-vatican-response-supreme-court-overturning-roe
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