Conservative Catholics being honest

May I fairly characterize George Weigel and Deal Hudson as “conservative Catholics”? Whatever you may think, I want to take a moment to praise the two of them for exhibiting in recent publications a degree of honesty in their evaluations of the U.S. and Europe that I appreciate and respect.

While sitting at the ER today, waiting for treatment for a brown recluse spider bite, I worked through a few chapters of Weigel’s The Cube and the Cathedral. While Weigel tends to conflate European politics, state politics, cultural movements, and the opinions of the mass populations of Europe, he reaches a real moment of honesty in the chapter “A Disclaimer” that really impressed me. Instead of setting up a “Europe is a degenerating culture and continent” as a foil for “America is the greatest society in the world,” Weigel dispels any myths that the United States may boast of its moral, cultural and political superiority to Europe:

Moreover, no American aware of the defects of his own country would suggest–and I am emphatically not suggesting–that the United States has achieved a state of social, economic, cultural, and political perfection that can only lead Americans to look with dismay at Europe’s decline and decay. There is plenty to be worried about the United States: a regime of legalized abortion in which an endangered species of birds in a national forest enjoys more legal protection in America than a six-month-old unborn child; too widespread and ready resort to capital punishment; cultural vulgarities of various sorts (including the global export of pornography via the Internet); legislative logjams on crucial issues like the fiscal rescue of Social Security or the regulation of the new biotechnologies; high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births; an inability to debate issues like the meaning of marriage or the ethics of embryo research in terms other than the sentimental or the utilitarian; the continued sway of political correctness (and the consequent stifling of free speech and serious argument) in too many institutions of higher education; courts usurping the prerogatives of legislatures; the enforcement of a soft secularism in public life; and so forth and so on. The list could obviously be expanded.

And while some things in the United States are in fact getting better…there is probably no example of a European problem cited above for which one couldn’t find a parallel example in the United States. (The Cube and the Cathedral, 25-26)

From a political and scholarly viewpoint, there are many things that I think Weigel gets wrong throughout his writings. However, I want to praise the sobriety with which he conducts his comparison between the United States and Europe. Rather than turning a blind eye to the clear and present maladies of American culture, Weigel confronts them in light of instead of against those of Europe.

Last week, Katerina and I were perusing through Hudson’s new book Onward Christian Soldiers at Barnes and Noble. I subsequently ordered it online and do not yet have it in hand in order to quote. Nevertheless, I want to relay a rather balanced comment Hudson makes in his book. In describing the approach of many Catholic voters to the question of abortion, Hudson relates that he feels the Democratic claim that the number of abortions in the U.S. can be reduced through social programs and education is “plausible” though “unproven.” Given Hudson’s leanings, close alliances to members of the GOP, and his promotion of conservative Catholicism in both the religious and political sense, I was pleasantly surprised to find such a candid admission in his book. It seems that Hudson, whose preference for reducing abortion in the U.S. tends to fall away from the Democratic scope, realizes that some liberal initiatives could plausibly–not certainly–pay positive dividends for the pro-life cause.

I am encouraged by the balance and honesty that Weigel and Hudson display. And while this balance may not be evident in all that they write, what I have seen has prompted me to give more credit and respect to two authors toward whom I have been, at times, cantankerous. I hope to see more of this from them, from myself, and from all Catholics who write and comment on political and social issues.