Religion & Law

William Junker writes:

David Gibson's misrepresentation of the encyclical resides chiefly in

his claim that ?what is clear, whether one reads every word or just

excerpts, is that the pope is a liberal, at least in American

political terms.? This is the mistake that Reese also makes. It is

true, of course, that the specific economic policies preferred by the

Pope and articulated in CV are more progressive and redistributive

than any of those on offer in America. But it is also true that the

specific social views outlined by the encyclical?pertaining to

abortion, marriage, contraception, euthanasia, and reproductive health

technology?are much more ?conservative??I place this in quotes to note

that these are really positions demanded by the natural law?than any

on offer in America.



I am aware that Gibson chose to focus on the economic aspects of the

encyclical, and it is true that if these are taken in isolation from

the anthropology that subtends them, the Pope looks something like

what in America we call a liberal. My point is simply that they cannot

be so taken, that the Christocentric anthropology on offer from the

Pope extends from conception, through the activities and structures

constituting social life, till natural death, and consequently that

the principles and policy prescriptions that follow from this

anthropology cannot be reduced--as they are reduced in Gibson, Reese,

and Weigel--to the conceptual categories of liberalism.



The ideological liberalism of these  authors disintegrates what in

reality is a seamless whole: Weigel sees the "real" Benedict in those

portions of the encyclical that seem to align with conservative

liberalism, while Gibson and Reese see the "real" Benedict in those

portions that seem to align with liberal liberalism.  What they all

miss, of course, is precisely the fact that the thought of Benedict--

the thought of the Church--cannot be so parsed: not because it

constitutes a reconciliation of these forms of liberalism but because

it refuses to be bound by the dictates of liberalism itself.  It is

therefore quite possible that what commentators are beginning to

describe as the encyclical's disunity, its apparent inconsistency in

tone, language, and argumentation, is less a reflection on the

encyclical itself than on the interpretive assumptions of its readers.