A CASE OF DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT — John T. Noonan: jurist, historian, author, sage

Commonweal, Nov 17, 2000 by John T. McGreevy

Ultimately, the commission voted 52-4 to alter the traditional teaching. Pope Paul VI's rejection of this recommendation in Humanae vitae, three years later, was devastating. Noonan himself offered only a brief lament for the "internal inconsistency" and "inadequate preparation" of the encyclical. Only years later, in an argument that even some admirers found unconvincing, did Noonan argue that the encyclical actually permitted the use of contraceptives during all but the few days that a woman was fertile during each month. Reading this essay, one senses an intense loyalty to the church--"the teaching of Humanae vitae is a given of Catholic doctrine"--combined with a tactician's desire to keep open the possibility of future development.

By this time the abortion issue had moved to center stage in American life. For Noonan and many other Catholics, the intense debate over contraception required a rare facility in the vocabulary of sexual and medical ethics, and consequent leadership in the debate over abortion and other "life" issues. Noonan had emphasized in Contraception that a shift in Catholic teaching on birth control might strengthen--not repudiate--the core Catholic principles of sexual ethics. Legalized abortion, by contrast, struck at a central (and increasingly important) tenet of Catholic thought, the value of each individual human life.

That many Americans disagreed soon became evident, most obviously in California which witnessed an early battle over the liberalization of abortion laws in 1967. Newly married to art historian Mary Lee Bennett, Noonan moved to Berkeley the same year, lured by climate and a new position at the law school of the University of California.

He quickly enlisted in the anti-abortion ranks, testifying before both the California State Legislature and the U.S. Congress. "I would like to speak on 'Abortion in the History of the Church and Civil Law,'" he told one Cleveland priest in 1968, "because I think there is now a large organized campaign to promote abortion in this country, and I think it is important for Catholics to be informed about the roots of the church's opposition." In 1970 he edited one of the first scholarly volumes on abortion. In 1971 he predicted that the "tide may even have turned."

Roe v. Wade (1973) demonstrated the opposite. Noonan quickly wrote a blistering attack on "raw, judicial power" and the "most radical decision ever issued by the Supreme Court." Like many anti-abortion activists, he took to comparing the Right to Life Movement, "few in numbers," to the abolitionists. In 1979, his ironically titled A Private Choice became perhaps the most powerful scholarly analysis of the way abortion might cheapen respect for all life, and how seemingly individual decisions reverberated in society.

This most activist phase of Noonan's career slowly faded. Three children, John, Becky, and Susannah, provided a new center to the household, and he and Mary Lee developed friendships in San Francisco and Berkeley. The Noonans' home, perched in the hills above the University of California campus, became the setting for dinner parties and birthday celebrations. He joined the Chit-Chat Club, a venerable San Francisco discussion group, and began a reading group for Catholic academics.