We are divided about the most important things, even life itself. Some folks are appalled by abortion but accept, even if reluctantly, that some pregnant women in a war zone will be killed as part of "collateral damage." Others will be shaken at the death of so many civilians, innocents caught up in war, but not be so shaken when human fetuses are sacrificed for less than innocent reasons. One side risks being defined by war and torture; the other side by making abortion rights in all cases non-negotiable.

I was at a church meeting when one of our leaders who is by office bound to be anti-abortion was reluctant to take on war-and-peace issues. He said the practical application was too difficult to see.

When I was in college, we had a very conservative philosopher dean, Msgr. J.K. Ryan. He lowered a grade of mine when I sneaked off to listen to some liberal German theologians visiting the university. On the subject of war, his conservatism was clear. When the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he publicly condemned it as an act of barbarism and worked hard to get relief to the victims.

Cardinal Ottaviani, later a great opposition leader to changes in the Catholic Church in the turbulent 1960s, was also a traditionalist and an opponent of atomic war. He condemned the atomic bombings with vigor.

Traditional Catholic moral theology has had to take a beating to accommodate the death of civilians caused by weapons of mass destruction. These weapons have not been used much by powers other than the U.S. Catholic moral theology rejects pragmatism as a principle: The ends do not justify the means. That is, pragmatism is rejected theoretically.

The Catholic Church suffers from it, as do all bodies. Witness the cover-ups regarding sex abuse and the sex-abuse settlements that still dominate the news.

More subtle are the Catholics who complain about lack of babies to adopt because of rampant abortion but who at the same time would never adopt babies suffering from their mother's drug addiction or babies with AIDS. The rather clear message there is that abortion might not have been a bad idea. Still there is a persistent if inconsistent gut feeling among Catholics that life should be protected.

But Catholics are not alone in — at least, theoretically — protecting life. Traditional Buddhists, for example, have the same aversion to the loss of life. Japanese Buddhists may get abortions but there is penance to be done. The Buddhist patron saint of children, Jizu, has to take on a lot of guilty consciences in that religion.

Other faiths will also — at least theoretically — try to balance life issues and protect the innocents from the violence of those with the power to destroy them.

But the problem remains that some innocents are considered more innocent than others and so none of the innocent can count on being protected by everyone at every stage of life. If the innocent cannot count on us, who can?

The Rev. Hal Weidner, pastor of Holy Trinity Catholic Church and a member of the Oratorian order, is on sabbatical in the village of St. Benoit-sur-Loire in France.