“[T]he teaching of the Catholic Church on any number of so-called life issues — abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, the waging of war — runs counter to the theory and practice that prevails in the political order we call ‘the United States of America,’ but Catholics have nevertheless managed to accomodate themselves all too well to this political order. This becomes disturbingly clear during wartime when the church ceases to be a body in and of itself and becomes, in keeping with [Randolph] Bourne’s description, just one more cell within the body politic of the state. This is why Catholics rarely if ever ask themselves a question that must be asked in the United States in this day and in wartime: Why should Catholics defend a political order that protects by law the so-called right of parents to destroy their unborn sons and daughters?”
(Michael J. Baxter, “Dispelling the ‘We’ Fallacy from the Body of Christ: The Task of Catholics in a Time of War,” Dissent from the Homeland: Essays After September 11, Ed. Stanley Hauerwas and Frank Lentricchia (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2003), 114)
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