I began sketching notes for my response to Charles Camosy's Beyond the Abortion Wars at the end of October 2016. I initially planned to build on my earlier review of the book and engage Camosy on some of the finer points of Catholic moral theology he marshals in his analysis of the abortion debate.Footnote ¹² His novel construct of certain prenatal children as “formally innocent but materially non-innocent” (chapter 3) compels further discussion. His use of the standard Catholic reasoning on “direct” and “indirect” abortion in chapter 3 raises (yet again) the important question of whether the category of “indirect abortion” makes sense theologically or theoretically. And this symposium seemed the place to suggest to our broader conversation that, methodologically, the question of “the moral status of the fetus” (chapter 2) is really the wrong place to start—that as moral theologians, our task is to reframe the issue rather than to continue to allow the analysis to be constrained by alien and problematic philosophical constructs.

However, the intervening weeks have changed the context of our conversation, framing this book for me in a new light. With Camosy, I had believed that we stood at a new political and social moment in the United States (132). Heartened by the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell, I believed that we had entered a period of progressive politics, where incremental and imperfect progress made by people willing to work across differences via conversation, compromise, and collaboration toward the building of an infrastructure to support the common good could actually be made.

November 2016 proved that belief, shared by many, to be mistaken. What is more, not only has the prospect for continued progress toward the common good dimmed, but it now seems probable that we stand to witness the massive deconstruction (or, perhaps better put, simply the destruction) of a societal framework that supports the dignity of human persons and the common good on all fronts—climate change; public education; access to health care; the physical and social well-being of immigrants, women, those in the LGBTQ community, and people of color; care for the poor; foundational civil institutions and practices, including the Supreme Court, voting rights, taxation; and more.

This destruction, which has already begun its bullet-time unveiling, was supported by 52 percent of Catholics—and 60 percent of white Catholics.Footnote ¹³ If the analysts are correct, this betrayal of almost the entirety of Catholic social doctrine was rooted, at least in part, in the issue of abortion. Thus, Camosy's book could not be more timely. Granted, the prospects for passage of his proposed Mother and Prenatal Child Protection Act (MPCPA) are still unlikely. And it may be that we are witnessing the last gasps of the politics of abortion and white Christian America (whose demise was perhaps prematurely projected in Robert P. Jones’ otherwise interesting book).Footnote ¹⁴ Yet clearly abortion remains an issue that continues to fragment the country and the church.

This surely came as no surprise to Camosy, who convincingly documents in chapter 1 the ways in which public opinion on abortion has been shifting over recent decades. He charts the significant pro-life commitment among Hispanics, and across party lines, as well as the increasing support for pro-life positions among millennials. He notes how these commitments confound party affiliation and voting patterns among these groups, an observation borne out in the 2016 election. Yet the traditional alliances between abortion platform and voting patterns seem to hold within the white community, including among white Catholic women. Further commentary from Camosy on this divide in light of our current context would be welcome.

In addition to his useful historical and demographic work in chapter 1, Beyond the Abortion Wars stands as particularly timely in two ways. First, Camosy himself models a mode of discourse that challenges the ways in which fragmentation and polarization have become the norm not only within public discourse but within our disciplines as well. He is one of the few Catholic theologians who consistently and relentlessly attempts to enter into dialogue with the least likely of interlocutors in order to try to find common ground and a constructive way forward. Here continues a pattern he established in his previous book, Peter Singer and Christian Ethics: Beyond Polarization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). There Camosy literally and figuratively sat down with one of the most unlikely dialogue partners on Christian ethics—Peter Singer—to try to clarify prima facie opposing positions. In a careful and nuanced way, he elucidated areas of agreement and more clearly defined areas of disagreement, with an eye toward moving ahead.

Beyond the Abortion Wars takes the same approach. In an attempt to cut through the lazy, toxic, and borderline violent rhetoric that generally characterizes the abortion debate, he reaches across two aisles—to equally doctrinaire pro-life and pro-choice advocates, engaging in honest argument and crafting a constructive compromise proposal. In doing so, he distinguishes himself from most theologians who have done little more than engage in enclave ethics, speaking to like-minded interlocutors, and rarely entering into contexts where deep engagements with opposing arguments could take place.

As the past year has unfolded, two main casualties have been truth and public speech. The theological community is faced with a renewed and redoubled call to seek and speak the truth with a new urgency, a new clarity, in new ways. But how will we speak? Recent events have spurred a variety of different responses: prophetic denunciation; further polarization into preferred camps; or public protest that often carries the shadow of protoviolence. Camosy compels each of us to ask: With whom do I—as a theologian—speak? Who are my interlocutors? How do I envisage them? Do I reach across ideological boundaries? If not, why not?

Equally we must ask: What canons discipline our speech? Camosy outlines in his introduction what he calls ground rules for such conversations—humility, solidarity, avoiding dismissive words and phrases that build fences, leading with what one is for rather than what one is against (13). Here he obliquely reminds us that practices that seek the good require the exercise of virtue. For Christians and theologians, practices that seek and speak the truth require (and, we hope, recursively produce) the virtues of patience, presence, courage, hospitality, vulnerability, caritas, and a commitment to the peaceableness of Christ. Camosy thus compels each of us to ask: How do I—as a theologian—speak? What virtues shape my speaking? And, if we choose to add prophecy or protest to our portfolio, is our engagement in these practices infused by the theological virtues? Theologians must bear witness to a cruciform alternative.

Yet there is a substantial difference between “ground rules” and “virtues.” This points to a second takeaway from the book, a twofold weakness that Camosy's approach in Beyond the Abortion Wars shares with the larger theological academy. This was signaled for me at the beginning of his final chapter, where he rightly calls out the Catholic Church for the abyss between its teaching, its political rhetoric and machination, and its actual witness, noting that

This comment, however, is but a brief aside, an oblique observation made before returning to the topic of public policy.

In addition, Camosy makes clear that the argument that he is making here “though it is consistent with Catholic teaching…is capable (at least in principle) of convincing those of any faith or no faith” (7). Thus, although he is a Catholic theologian (at least by training and social location) and frequently draws upon Catholic teaching throughout the book, the book prima facie presents a nontheological argument to a broadly pluralistic audience.

Thus I applaud him for his courage and ingenuity for attempting to outline an actual public policy proposal, rather than simply making hand-wavy gestures in that direction; and I applaud him for his tenacity in trying to bring polarized parties into dialogue. Yet at the same time, I closed the book with a sense of missed opportunity for a robust and nuanced theological argument that aims to address the fractured discourse within the church.

Here, the book shares the misplaced or myopic focus of the theological academy, which generally dismisses local congregations as crucial places of moral discourse. As theologians, our primary social location is necessarily the church. Consequently, especially in our fractured climate, we bear the onus of assisting the church to develop practices for doing the painful, difficult, and time-consuming work of talking across differences: one-on-one, within our families and parishes, and only from there, in the public sphere. How often do Catholic theologians turn their expertise and skill to the parish context? How often do we engage in conversation and dialogue with pastors or bishops? How often do we seek to assist members of congregations to understand the complex meanings of our tradition's theological convictions?

As Joseph Cardinal Bernardin discovered when he attempted to launch the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, many parties within the church refuse to engage in such dialogue. And, as Camosy notes, too many members of the church—from pew to pectoral cross—have pledged their allegiance to political ideology rather than to the gospel (7–8). But that ought not deter us.

Our renewed obligation, as members of the theological community, to seek and speak the truth must necessarily occur in a variety of forums and take a variety of forms. There is rightful place for protest and for prophecy, and even for attempts at crafting public policy. However, as our current context makes clear, critical work remains to be done within the church. Camosy's approach in Beyond the Abortion Wars challenges us to ask the questions of with whom and how of our theological speaking; the lacuna in his approach presses the further question, where do we speak? What is or ought to be the primary locus of the theological voice? Without modeling and crafting a new way forward within the church, we as theologians stand little hope of crafting a way forward for a new generation.