Evangelicals, Catholics and abortion

I'm late to this -- was in HTML training all afternoon yesterday, and crashed when I got home last night; I've developed insomnia, which is playing havoc with sleeping, which is my hobby -- and I find that Ross Douthat and Steve Waldman have said all that really needs saying on the topic. But when did that ever stop a blogger? Let's jump in.

Ed Kilgore at Progressive Revival raises a fascinating question: Why are Evangelicals generally more pro-life than Catholics? Here's why it's such a mystery to him (I'll come back to this later):

Catholic anti-abortion views, after all, are undergirded by a long series of increasingly emphatic papal encyclicals; a natural law and bioethics tradition stretching back all the way to Aristotle; an overall theological position making church teachings on matters of faith and morals binding on believers; a relatively low level of tolerance for individual dissent; and a teaching and disciplinary system that can be (and in some parts of the country, is being) deployed to influence the views and behavior--personal and political--of the laity.

I really hope you'll read Ross and Steve's posts, which go a long way in clearing up this mystery. But in a nutshell, Ross points out that the difference evaporates when you compare Mass-going Catholics to Evangelicals, instead of lumping in all people who call themselves Catholic, but who might rarely go to church, and disbelieve in much of Catholic teaching (if they even know what it is). Says Ross (who is Catholic):

If you're a member of an evangelical church, chances are your congregation demands more from you - and you demand more from your congregation - than even the minority of Catholics who fulfill their Sunday obligation every week, let alone the lukewarm, once-a-month variety. And if you're born and raised evangelical, you're getting a very different experience of religion than the typical cradle Catholic, since evangelical youth ministries tend to emphasize the necessity for personal conversion - of making an active choice for Jesus, and being "born again" - much more heavily than your average Catholic confirmation class. American Evangelicalism is thus at a deep level a religion of converts and enthusiasts in a way that American Catholicism - which of course includes its share of converts and enthusiasts - simply isn't.

IOW, to identify yourself to a pollster as an Evangelical indicates more religious intensity by definition than to identify as a Catholic as a general matter.

Steve adds another theory:

1) Homilies vs. Sermons -- While the Catholic Church has been articulate in writing about its opposition to abortion, most Catholics don't sit around reading encyclicals. The question is: does their parish priest preach about the evils of abortion as persuasively, emphatically and frequently as as a evangelical minister? Evangelicalism in general emphasizes the sermon more than Catholicism does, so I'm guessing that the typical evangelical simply hears the case against abortion more frequently and persuasively than does the typical Catholic.

I think this is true, from my own experience. Here's what I want to add to this debate:

Most of the Catholics I know, and in whose number I counted myself when I was a Catholic, are religious engaged orthodox Catholics who openly and unapologetically found more in common with most believing Evangelicals than with liberal Catholics (meaning Catholics who were liberal on doctrinal matters). Aside from the matter of agreeing with Evangelicals about the hot-button social issues dividing our politics -- abortion, gay marriage, the usual sexual revolution stuff -- it was at least possible to have a meaningful conversation with Evangelicals about theological matters, because Evangelicals (well, not liberal Evangelicals, but bear with me) at least recognized an authority higher than the Almighty Self. Liberal Catholics reject the Magisterium (the Catholic Church's teaching authority), and pick and choose among the teachings they feel bound by. Of course many conservative Catholics do that too in effect, but they do so in bad faith, against what they profess to believe; liberal Catholics do it without bad faith, in the sense that they genuinely don't believe that their consciences are bound by Rome's authoritative teachings. (Which makes them truly Protestant, but that's another story; I'm talking about their subjective state of mind). Anyway, my point is that though conservative Evangelicals recognize a different standard of objective authority (Sola Scriptura), we at least have a more common basis from which to discuss politics and cultural matters.

A number of Evangelicals I know really admire the Catholic faith, even though they don't share it. They admire it for the same reasons that no small number of converts from Evangelicalism were attracted to it: the consistency and depth of its moral teaching, and the magnificent witness to Christianity of its leaders like Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict. Plus, if you read the right magazines and books, you'll get the idea that the Catholic Church is a bulwark against the kind of cultural decadence that conservative Evangelicals deplore. And it's a more solid theological, historical and philosophical rock on which to stand against modernity, at least in theory.

I was talking recently with an Evangelical friend who is considering both Catholicism and Orthodoxy. I would be pleased if he made either choice, because it would bring him and his family closer to ancient Christianity and to the Sacraments. I hope he chooses Orthodoxy, of course, and will keep making the Orthodox case to him. I did tell him, though, that if he goes into Catholicism, do so with his eyes wide open. The Sacraments will be present no matter where he is, but he will not almost certainly not find the church of Pope Benedict, First Things and EWTN in his local parish.

I'm not making a theological claim here; in a theological sense, of course he certainly will find the same church there. I'm talking about his experience of Catholicism. I can't recall ever hearing a priest -- the awesome Fr. Paul Weinberger excepted -- whose masses I regularly attended, even mentioning a papal encyclical. It is unfortunately true that most priests simply do not preach about abortion, the sanctity of traditional marriage, sexual ethics and the kinds of things that people outside the Catholic Church, but pro-Catholic and anti-Catholic, mistakenly think of as bread-and-butter stuff in Catholic life. It just doesn't happen, in most parishes (when it does, it's such a happy exception that orthodox Catholics can't stop talking about it). Bishops ought to see small-e evangelical priests like Fr. Weinberger as tremendous assets, because they're thoroughly orthodox, and on fire for the faith. But in Dallas, our recently retired bishop saw Fr. Weinberger as a threat to the smooth running of the institution. Fr. Paul was not political in his homilies at Blessed Sacrament church, in the heart of a Dallas barrio, but he taught, well, Catholicism, and that is a divisive thing in this culture. So the bishop sent him away.

The point I'm trying to make is that many priests, perhaps for the sake of maintaining unity (which is a polite way of saying "avoiding trouble") don't talk about abortion or other divisive topics, and don't put the kinds of demands on their congregations that Evangelical pastors put on theirs. This is why you can go to most Catholic parishes with your conservative or liberal convictions, and not be offended by what you hear from the pulpit, because it's likely to be mush. But if you aren't offended, you aren't challenged either. Conservative and liberal Catholics who are engaged with their faith tend to turn to parachurch organizations for activism and formation. A Catholic charismatic leader I know once told me -- this, during John Paul's papacy -- that a Vatican cardinal who'd me with a delegation from his movement told them that the Holy Father knew that parish life was moribund, and that authentic renewal would have to come from the various movements within Catholicism. Take that for what you will.

I know this is a long-winded way of saying what Ross said succinctly -- that Evangelicalism in practice demands more of its adherents than does Catholicism in practice. Again, it's important to distinguish between the Catholics who go to mass faithfully, and those who merely identify as Catholics (IOW, cultural Catholics, in the same sense that not everyone who identifies as a Jew goes to shul or even believes much in the Jewish religion). If you cease to believe in Evangelical Christianity in a meaningful sense, you won't tell a pollster you're an Evangelical. If you cease to believe in Catholic Christianity in a meaningful sense, you'll probably still call yourself a Catholic.

(N.B., I'm sure not going to claim that Orthodox are any better. I don't have the experience to say so, but from what I can tell, the Orthodox experience is the same as the Catholic one. Conservative Evangelicals should not come to either Catholicism or Orthodoxy expecting to find vigorous countercultural witness, except in isolated pockets).

If more people who call themselves Catholics actually believed what the Catholic Church proclaims to be true, we'd be in a different world entirely. Same with the Orthodox. Same with all Christians. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and the glory of His Gospel.