the myth of neutrality

James Hitchcock, writing in 1979:

The myth that, on questions like abortion and sterilization, the state is merely neutral, neither forbidding nor denying particular human actions, has understandable appeal for those Christians who face the problem of becoming good citizens of the secular city. However, it has little basis in reality. The modern liberal state is, for better or worse, an active organ which is never neutral, constantly employing its power, its money, its influence, and its personnel for or against particular social policies. Avant-garde Catholics are caught in a mesh of hopeless contradictions, simultaneously urging that politics partakes of a moral and religious significance but deploring attempts to "intrude" religion into politics, and insisting that Christians must "witness" to justice and truth but that they must also not "impose" their values on other people. 

The result is to deny any distinctively Christian influence over the political process at the very time that important moral decisions are made through that process. The moral tone of society for the next quarter-century is being set largely as a result of certain judicial and legislative decisions towards which progressive Catholics are either benignly favorable or naively indifferent. There is no more striking contrast in contemporary society than that between the confident and aggressive social reformer and the diffident Christian afraid to be thought fanatical. (Catholicism and Modernity, 173)