Steven Millies, director of The Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union, describes himself as a political scientist, a theologian, and a public intellectual. In his new book, A Consistent Ethic of Life: Navigating Catholic Engagement with U.S. Politics (Paulist Press, out now) he deploys every aspect of that self-description.
With his eye on the November elections, Millies presents the religious, social, political history and current importance of a "consistent ethic of life" to every Catholic voter. The concept is rooted in findings of the Second Vatican Council, and championed by theologians such as the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. It cites a long list of acts from abortion to genocide to worker exploitation and many more affronts to human health and dignity as "dishonoring God." Millies writes in his book that "the promotion of human life and human welfare that supports a flourishing life must guide our conscience toward ethical and political decisions that reflect the most prudent choices that are available."
PW spoke with Millies two days after an assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump, when partisan flames were flaring on social media.
You present a commitment to a consistent ethic of life as a way of thinking, of sorting through all the moral choices and reaching a decision. But people are so overwhelmed right now. Why not just reach for your church's voter guide?
There's such an overload of information and misinformation and disinformation that it is very hard to sort through and arrive at a good conclusion. So, we depend on trusted intermediaries and this inevitably silos us into partisan camps, whether in the church or in public life.
Some would see the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as one more silo. What happened to their wider moral leadership?
The consistent ethic of life foundered for 40 years because it got stuck in the culture war about abortion and became about that. It remained controversial for that reason. We forgot how to behave politically with one another, which I think is another way of saying that we were forgetting how to behave together like a church, because those two things are very close. They're both about living in a community together in peace. The constant ethic of life was always intended to be a public argument, an appeal to the world, Catholic or not. It was always intended to be political. If we can't have politics, we can't defend life.
What do you mean by "politics."
We often say 'politics' when we are really talking about partisanship. Partisanship is our problem. Politics is what the consistent ethic calls us to. Politics is listening. It's admitting to other perspectives. It's discourse based on a sense of rational self-interest, which is the reason we have the vote in the first place. Before there can even be a discussion about the dignity of the human person and the consistent ethic of life, we have to first have politics. Politics is the resolution of conflicts without violence. So, whatever threatens politics threatens life.
If you believe in the dignity of the human person, if you believe in a consistent ethic of life, which the Roman Catholic Church certainly does, then you have to first support peaceful politics, the rule of law, and that we settle our conflicts without violence.
Can this book help people stop screaming past each other?
The same gospel has been proclaimed by the Catholic Church for 2000 years, and people haven't gotten all that much better across all of those centuries, either. A certain comfort with futility is built into Christian life.
But, being more serious now, I aimed this book at a popular audience because the most properly-speaking "political" thing that we can do is to join a rich discourse together where we listen to one another's points of view. The point of the ethic is to overwhelm and overcome partisanship, really, and to be consistent about what defends the human person. It's political, finally, because it is always inviting a conversation within the church and between the church and the world. Only conversation will save us.
