Philadelphia, Pa., Sep 12, 2017 / 02:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- This week, First Things published “The Splendor of Truth in 2017”, an essay by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia on St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical on fundamental questions regarding the Church’s moral teaching, Veritatis splendor.
In an interview with Catholic News Agency’s editor in chief JD Flynn, Archbishop Chaput discussed the enduring importance of Veritatis splendor:
You’ve written that “the wisdom of Veritatis splendor is more urgently needed than ever.” Why? What problems have compounded since its release?
We live in a liquid time. That’s how the late philosopher Zygmunt Bauman described it: “liquid modernity.” Changes in technology, science and culture now happen very rapidly. It’s hard to find firm ground where we can stand and make sense of things. The resulting confusion can undermine our beliefs about the meaning of our lives. It becomes easy to think that the basic character of the world, the nature of good and evil, the moral standards for human behavior, have somehow changed and become more ambiguous, more dependent on circumstances. But they haven’t.
Permanent truths about right and wrong govern our lives. The genius of Veritatis splendor is how persuasively it reminds us of that fact, and calls us back to what Augustine called the “tranquility of order” in our souls.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Reformation lately because we mark its 500th anniversary next month. It’s striking how closely the moods of then and now resemble each other – not in the specific details, but the general spirit of unrest and anticipation. Something’s coming. People can feel it, some sort of “second Reformation” or deep realignment in the way we engage each other and the world. That’s a great opportunity for Christian hope and witness. Of course it also comes with some perils. This makes a strong grasp of truth all the more vital.
Nearly 25 years later, how has Veritatis splendor been received in the Church in the United States?
People have a natural thirst for solid ground and clarity. Among faithful young Catholic scholars, it’s been received very well. Actually, like water in a desert.
Has it had its intended effect? What fruit has it borne in the Church and in the world?
There’s been a long civil war in the Church over the meaning of Vatican II. It’s still with us. It probably won’t end until my generation – the boomers – moves on, because persons who actually lived through the council years tend to have a deep investment in their particular version of what the council did and meant.
Veritatis splendor is very much a fruit of the [Second Vatican] Council. Its immense value is its reaffirmation of the existence of permanent truths, its rejection of moral ambiguity, and the beauty of its presentation of truth as a source of Christian freedom and joy. So I don’t have any doubt that it will be remembered as one of the great papal contributions to Catholic life and thought.
Pope Francis has often warned against “moral pharisaism.” Is he criticizing the kind of moralistic legalism that John Paul II addressed in Veritatis splendor and elsewhere?
Pope Francis is exactly right that a religion which exhausts itself in moral rules and intellectual doctrines is dead and deadening. The heart of our faith is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and then living out Christ’s love in the way we treat others. If we don’t do that, then our faith is really just an empty shell.
But Jesus also clearly said that he didn’t come to abolish the commandments or absolve anyone from the obligations of God’s law. That’s because God’s law is an expression of God’s love, even when it makes us uncomfortable. The laws of right and wrong are guide-rails meant to lead us to self-mastery, freedom and joy.
How should ordinary Catholics understand the relationship between truth, freedom, and happiness? How should this impact the way the Church “accompanies” those impacted by moral relativism?
Jesus said it himself: The truth will make us free. He also said that he himself is the way, the truth and the life – the source of lasting happiness. If we don’t know and walk with Jesus, everything else in our religious life is just noise. But note that Jesus accompanies us with a specific purpose: to love us, teach us and lead us home to heaven. Likewise, that’s our privilege and task with others. We need to listen to and understand the burdens of others, and treat them with prudence and respect. But there’s no real love, no authentic mercy, in remaining silent with those we accompany when they need to hear the truth.
What does Veritatis splendor have to say to the most visible moral issues of our time: especially abortion, the redefinition of marriage, and confusion about gender identity?
Issues like the redefinition of marriage and turmoil over gender identity were much less prominent 25 years ago. John Paul did speak frequently against abortion and eloquently in defense of the sanctity of life, especially in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae. Veritatis splendor is really about the framework, the basic architecture, of Catholic moral reasoning rather than specific issues. So it serves as a foundation for those other crucial matters, and it’s doubly important for that reason.
You write about totalitarianism caused by “casuistry, poisonous political thought, and systematic intellectual deceit” in other parts of the world. Can the United States stave that off? How do Catholics undertake their political responsibilities in a dramatically changing political and cultural landscape?
Democracy has a built-in capacity for tyranny. Tocqueville saw that clearly and said so in Democracy in America. In the United States, that natural drift toward tyranny has always been checked by the widespread practice of religious faith. As faith declines, the totalitarian current in democracy grows. Progressive political thought — or more accurately, thought that styles itself as “progressive” – can have a deeply intolerant streak. And that’s what we’re seeing now in the public discourse around sexual behavior and identity, marriage and the family, and religious liberty.
When a nation loses a firm sense of truth and its obligations, what remains, all that remains, is power and the struggle to get it. That’s reality, and democracies have no magic immunity to reality.
[…]
““As a founding principle of our country, we have always welcomed immigrant and refugee populations, and through the social services and good works of the Church, we have accompanied our brothers and sisters in integrating to daily American life,” Bishop Mario Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chair of the US bishops’ Comittee on Migration, said Jan. 2.”
Someone needs to take a remedial US history class.
SOL,
Which part of US history did you think they need a remedial class on?
Who are most Americans originally if not immigrants?
I’d agree it’s not correct to say that we have always, at all times welcomed immigrants and refugees but we certainly have done that selectively. And Catholics have for the greater part been among the groups of immigrants not warmly welcomed.
We need immigration to counteract the current birth dearth but we don’t have to have open borders or risk our national security. There should be a reasonable and humane approach to immigration.
Has it occurred to you that mass immigration is a cause of the drop in birthrates? By driving up the cost of living (housing, heath care, taxes, etc.), while depressing wages, it makes family formation so much more difficult.
Tony,
Birthrates are plummeting globally with or without immigration. Even government incentives to have a replacement level birthrate have failed.
Hungary is offering tax incentives for families and hopefully they’ll have some success.
Mrscracker,
The founding American people were not immigrants but colonists/settlers. They didn’t enter into a pre-existing polity and receive citizenship or some other form of membership from another people. The whole “America is a land of immigrants” myth was created by leftist subversives even if used by 20th ce nationalists for their own purposes after the fact, more than 3 centuries after the first British colonists started settling this country. Many of the founding fathers after the revolution even explicitly wrote on the question of whether anyone non-British should be allowed to immigrate to the US.
This original Anglo-American (and Protestant Christian) heritage and identity is what the left is trying to erase and unfortunately too many Catholic bishops are assisting in this, even if the bishops seek to replace it with some vague “Catholic” identity.
This system is currently in a stage of collapse, and continued immigration will further destabilization and increase the likelihood of wide-scale violence, regardless of how necessary believers in infinite economic growth say immigrants are for that.
SOL,
Good morning!
My daddy’s side of the family has been here for 400 years. I went to the UK a few years ago and visited the parish church of a 17th century colonial ancestor. In his memorial he’s referred to as “Henry the Immigrant” because he migrated to the American Colonies.
🙂
You know, the longer your ancestors have lived in North America the more likely you are to find non Anglo Saxon ancestry or ancestors who came as convicts. The American colonies were a dumping ground for thousands of British convicts until the Revolutionary War. After that, the British had to turn to Australia and Tasmania to dump their unwanted.
Beyond chattel slavery, folks of African ancestry have been here for 400 plus years. Many were free people of color and many intermarried with white colonists.
And of course, our American Indians have their own perspectives on immigration.
History is complicated and the more you look at it, the more humble you feel. Most of us have very modest beginnings and sometimes, we find very surprising narratives along the way.
Your argument seems to be that, since we are all the descendants of immigrants (in the broadest sense of the word), there is no justification for this nation (or really, any nation) to have a restrictive immigration policy. Apparently, this Ellis Island sentimentalism must override all other political, social, cultural and economic considerations. Does a country have a right to try to maintain its ethnic and cultural balance by limiting who is allowed in?
More mindless, liberal rubbish from bishops who seem utterly incapable of, not to mention unwilling to, speak in anything other than left wing cliches. Will they ever declare solidarity with the American people?
Looked up the bishop in question.
Wikipedia: Mario Eduardo Dorsonville-Rodríguez (born October 31, 1960) is a Colombian-born bishop of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Like Jose Gomez, another immigrant who is presumptuous enough to lecture Americans about American history and identity.
Thanks for the information. I suppose the good bishop has admonished the elites in Colombia on the need to clean up the corruption and to improve the nation’s economy that has apparently created such intolerable conditions.
Wish the bishops (and the nuns!!) would show a little solidarity with the dyslexic/dyscalculaic/etc community.
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Just because dyslexics frequently have high intelligence does not mean they all go to MIT and walk out with $75,000 starting income.
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Many suffer socially as well as educationally and the job situation upon adulthood can look bleak. As many prisoners are dyslexic, I think it is a good bet if it was caught early in school, we’d have fewer children in trouble and fewer adults in prison.
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I mean no ill will toward those looking for a better life, but we have plenty of hurting children/adults who were born here. Don’t they deserve the same concern?
Tony,
North Americans, with the exception of those descended from our Indian tribes, are all the product of quite diverse immigrant populations from the past 400-500 years. I dislike the term “diverse ” because it’s become a cliche, but it really does describe our immigrant history.
I don’t think race or ethnicity should even enter into a Catholic conversation regarding what to conserve in America. Color and ethnicity simply don’t signify but culture does.
A Judeo Christian culture is what conservative Christians and others should be concerned about preserving. Not Anglo Saxonism. Culture, not color is what’s critical.
And yes, I strongly believe that sovereign nations have a right to secure their borders and enforce immigration laws. And preserve their unique cultures. But you have to have enough population to ensure a functioning society to pass that culture down to. Societies that are ageing and not reproducing themselves won’t be capable of that and will eventually be replaced.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Immigrants – they are ambassadors of the Good News.
All of them? How so? In what way?