An interesting report over at Mirror of Justice about a recent conference on the subject of prudential judgment.

In his keynote address, Chris Wolfe (Political Science, Marquette) emphasized that although the magisterium has power to make particular political judgments, it should exercise caution and do so only sparingly.  Chris argued that because (among other things) policy issues are factually complex, the bishops have limited competence in many areas, and the laity should be energized (through taking responsibility in their fields of expertise) rather than enervated, the bishops should usually place much more emphasis on forming the laity spiritually and morally than on taking policy positions.  On a later plenary panel, Michael Baxter (Theology, Notre Dame) gave a paper called "The Trouble With Prudence":  the trouble, in his view, is that treating issues as "prudential" easily degenerates into a device for setting some moral problems aside (whether abortion or unjust war) in order to achieve one’s overall preferred moral-policy goals (whether left or right).  He called on Catholics to be plain speaking in naming evil, to be more disciplined in avoiding cooperation with evil, and to renounce political utopianism that leads one to justify evil in the name of promoting an ideal such as democracy or freedom.