Either/Or? Catholicism is more complex.

We Americans are attracted to dualistic views of the world. Our most popular entertainment features White Hats and Black Hats, the Star Wars saga pits Jedi knights, the Light Side of the Force, against the Sith warriors, who represent the Dark Side. Our politicians repeatedly and successfully invoke dualistic themes: In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan portrayed the United States in a battle against the "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union, while two decades later, George W. Bush denounced Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the "Axis of Evil."

We like our religion dualistic too. In recent years, some American Catholics have adopted a black-and-white attitude toward the broader culture, reducing our nation's moral controversies to a battle between the "culture of life" and the "culture of death." Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, is always good for a caustic riposte from the front lines of the culture wars: "Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism. We have nothing in common."

Many American Catholics are sympathetic with Donohue's stance, if not always with his style. The Web site of Catholic screenwriter and media expert Barbara Nicolosi prominently features quotations describing her as "a modern-day anti-Jonah, passionately crashing the gates of today's Ninevehs--New York and Los Angeles." She wants to use her media savvy "to encourage and help a new generation of Catholic culture warriors in their mission." Not surprisingly, then, Nicolosi's speech to the annual meeting of the Catholic Press Association this May (posted on her blog) sounded dualistic themes. Nicolosi summarizes her assessment of the current state of the film industry with the reflection: "The dividing line between the life with God and the life without him will be more and more clear in culture. It's kind of a relief."

It's not at all a relief, at least to me. No one denies there are morally problematic forces at work in American society and culture. But dualism is not the answer. Why not? First, it occludes our awareness of our own sin and shortcomings. If we see ourselves as fully committed warriors on behalf of the culture of life, we are not likely to be receptive to the scrutiny of our own agenda, motives, and means. After all, we know that we are on the side of the angels--God himself is supplying our virtue (our strength and goodness). Even if we do have flaws, they pale in comparison to those of our enemies.

Second, a dualistic worldview inevitably corrodes charity. If those who disagree with us are the enemies of the culture of life, they are worthy of nothing but our enmity. We don't need to understand their perspective, or ask ourselves hard questions about whether and how persons acting in good faith might reach the position they have reached. By definition, they are not acting in good faith--they are minions of the culture of death.

Third, a dualistic worldview ultimately distorts our perception of reality by forcing everything we see into two diametrically opposed categories. The Passion of the Christ is "good" because it carries the banner for a Christian worldview, while Million Dollar Baby is "evil" because it threatens to undermine that worldview. But life (and art) can't always be divided up so neatly. Take Million Dollar Baby, which won the 2004 Academy Award for Best Picture. The controversy in a nutshell: Frank, the gruff old trainer, has come to love Maggie, the female boxer he coaches, like a daughter. After a fight leaves her paralyzed, he cares for her devotedly through her increasing tribulations, including gruesome bedsores and the amputation of a gangrenous limb. In the end, he accedes to her repeated requests to help her die, even though he fully believes that doing so will cost him his own soul.

It's easy, and safe, for Christians to dismiss Million Dollar Baby as propaganda for the culture of death. It's harder to ponder the challenge it poses to our own worldview. These challenges aren't external salvos from anti-Christian Hollywood; they are internal tensions with which Christian thinkers have long wrestled. How should we think about situations where the demands of the moral law seem to conflict with our paramount obligation to love our neighbor? What sort of self-sacrifice do love of God and love of neighbor require? Is it selfish to protect our own moral purity rather than do what's necessary to help someone in desperate need? Should a good father accept eternal damnation as a consequence of relieving his daughter's suffering the only way he can? Should a pious mother beg God to let her take her unrepentant child's place in hell? Should a saint be willing to be damned ad majorem Dei gloriam? Million Dollar Baby isn't opposed to Christianity per se; it is opposed to a sanitized version of Christianity in which there are no questions, only answers.

It is ironic that so many self-described "orthodox" Catholics have adopted the culture-war mindset, since such thinking is far more at home in Protestant Christianity than in Roman Catholicism. But things may change now that we have a new, Augustinian pope. Maybe more Catholics will begin interpreting John Paul II's descriptions of the "culture of life" and the "culture of death" less dualistically, with a view toward Augustine's categories of the "City of God" and the "City of Man." None of us can say for sure in which city we ourselves will reside, much less anyone else. The citizens of the two cities will live together intermingled until the end of time, when God will finally separate the wheat from the chaff. Until then, Augustine's hats are not black and white, but various shades of gray.