Antiabortion activism among secularized Catholics functions as a commitment device to preserve faith
Evidence
In her society, however, Maria may need to construct her own reinforcements to keep her faith. Suppose that many American Catholics are like Maria—active because they want to be strongly tied to the church rather than because they share all of its politics. Commitment to the antiabortion movement might therefore be much stronger in a less Catholic society, such as the United States, than in a more solidly Catholic society. The difference is, however, not evidence of the greater intrinsic importance of the morality of abortion in the less Catholic society. Rather, abortion is taken on as an issue on the way to something else—namely, maintenance of the personal faith of future selves. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 239
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Parallels the commitment-device logic in Elster’s Ulysses and the Sirens and echoes the reader’s Hardin/Luhmann integration: Maria is constructing external observability to bind her future self, much as the wife’s sight binds the blind.
- SEED: An article angle: political issue intensity as a proxy signal for religious or cultural commitment — why minorities often fight harder than majorities for causes they don’t deeply hold.