Resisting Throwaway Culture (review)

I just finished Charles Camosy’s Resisting Throwaway Culture, a well-thought-out and well-researched but not particularly well-written defense of the Consistent Life Ethic, or CLE. And when I say “just finished” I mean that I finished it ages ago, but I’m just getting around to finishing a post about it. It’s late in the year and I have a ton of half-finished (not to mention half-baked) book reviews to post, and it’s time to get cracking.

Anyway, if you don’t spend much time hanging around with Catholics, then maybe you have never heard of the CLE, which is a philosophy that recognizes the value of all human life, from conception to death; and advocates for pro-life social policies. This means not just opposition to abortion, but actual care for mothers and babies, no matter their social or legal status. Not just opposition to the death penalty but criminal justice reform so that no life is wasted in a prison system that is designed to destroy, not reform.

Camosy’s philosophy and thought are sharp and clear and true. Before I read this book, I was already convinced about the evil of abortion and torture and the death penalty and mass incarceration. But Camosy made me think a great deal more about consumerism and waste and the commercial food supply and how all of those things contribute to the disrespect for life that has come to dominate Western culture. So I agreed with just about every word of this book, but I didn't enjoy reading it at all. And I had to think for a bit to figure out why.

*****
My 18-year-old son is a freshman in college; and like most college freshmen, he has a ton of writing to do. He digs for citations and looks through his reading to find exactly the right quote to illustrate whatever point he's trying to make, and then he goes through his finished essays with a fine-tooth comb, not so much for writing quality, but to make sure that he’s addressed every requirement in the grading rubric. So many points for the correct number of sources, so many points for correctly formatted in-text citations, so many points for a proper MLA bibliography (including hanging indents); and then as what seems like an afterthought, some points for quality of writing and clarity of thought. The end result is usually a solid B piece of work that meets the requirements and answers the questions, but that isn’t much fun to read.

And therein lies my dislike of this book. It’s not the content, of course, because the author is preaching to the proverbial choir. I’m all in. It’s the presentation.

My first issue is with the CLE initialism itself. The constant references to "the CLE" make me feel like I'm reading a proposal or a Statement of Work (that's SOW to you). It's tiresome. I think it would be tiresome for anyone, but it’s especially tiresome for a person who spends her working life in the Federal alphabet soup of initialisms and acronyms, so many that entire publications are dedicated to interpreting them. I also dislike the didactic writing style, in which each argument is followed by possible objections laid out in Q&A format, with questions of a paragraph or more in length, some so sloppily written that you have to read them a second time. I lost my will to live midway through a few of those questions. Ironic, considering the subject.

Clunky writing aside, though, there's quite a bit of original thought in Resisting Throwaway Culture. If you have time for only one pro-life book this year, then read Fiorella Nash’s Abolition of Woman, a much narrower (abortion-focused), but much better written and more interesting defense of the pro-life position. But if you have time for more than one, then this one is worth reading, too.