The Neutrals

In the Culture War that has been blazing for over 40 years, a troubling, puzzling, significant, and determinative phenomena is the persistence of The Neutrals, those who abstain from the fray, who do not advocate for or against legal abortion, women priests, or gay marriage. This group is the deteminative majority, or at least plurality: since neither side of the war has a decisive plurality, there is a virtual parity with the neutrals determining the outcome. Their passivity has, by default, ennabled the liberal drive for sterile sexuality and abortion and the triumphant, unstoppable parade for gay marriage. Within the Church, it is different: for more than a decade after the Council, the revolutionaries set the tone but the emergence of John Paul, and all his collaborators (present company included),turned the tide and the Church is today, more than ever, dedicated to protect the helpless and the family and is ferociously at war with the hegemonic, liberal, elite culture. Many of the brightest, best Catholic minds I know,especially among the Jesuits and Maryknollers, are neutrals. They sharply separate their personal and social values: privately against abortion, they vote pro-choice, unfailingly; anxious about climate change, they are unable to defend the male priesthood or the normativity of heterosexuality. The logic is: I wouldn't abort my child or grandchild, but I don't care, politically, about the 60% of black NYC pre-borns who are aborted...an attitude that is less than inclusive, Catholic or compassionate! They follow the correct liberal line on war and the enviroment but would not be caught dead praying the rosary in front of an abortion clinic. These culture war issues are all binary in that they require a yes-or-no answer, much like: Will you marry me? Are you alive? Is the electricity turned on? Clearly, if women have a right to become priests, it is a grave injustice to deny them; but if they do not, it is impossible for the Church to contravene the will of God. It is not possible to straddle these issues. A common dodge for such neutrals is to sympathize with the liberals but advocate patience: the Church takes its time, sometimes centuries, to develop its understanding. This doesn't work: the stress, pressure and polarization are all so intense, right now, that a decision is required. The Church is right or the Culture is right: you can't have it both ways. How is it that such fine, bright, good minds persist in abstaining from the fray? I see two major causes of this neutrality: inherited reticence about sex and life; and an inadequate catechesis on the body. First, especially among the Irish with their Jansenist background, there is a deep, traditional Catholic reticence, shyness, and avoidance of sex and the body. Many fine Catholics don't want to talk about abortion and contraception and so they ignore them. This is especially true of the older, "great" generation and those who came of age before the sexual revolution of the late 1960s. A Victiorian propriety and decorum continued to influence these generations so that the bishops, for example, who governmed the Chuch in the 60s and afterwards had no real answer to the Sexual Revolution: they were unarmed, defenseless, inarticulate...and so they largely avoided the topic. They have been ready to pronounce on war, immigration and the federal budget, topics about which they have no competence, but retreat from teaching God's plan for the human, male-female body. The second and primary cause of this neutrality is an inadequate catechesis or understanding of the meaning of the gendered, human body. The ground-breaking, breath-takingly inspiring teaching of John Paul remains a secret due to the indifference of so many. Bereft of such a personalist, Catholic understanding, the neutral remains reactive against what is perceived as a legalistic, negative religion of condemnation. They remain indecisive, split between a private and a public world, confused and ambivalent. It is like being undecided on slavery in 1860 USA, or disinterested in Hitler in 1937 Germany. It would be better if they were hot or cold.