When the Church speaks definitively on morality—says that without exception something is wrong—is it declaring a truth or laying down a law? Confusion about that is rampant today.
Recently I came across this statement by a writer in a Catholic periodical: “The Pope has not changed the Church’s teaching that sexual activity outside the marriage of a man and a woman is sinful.” The implication is that the Pope could change the teaching if he wanted to, since it’s only a matter of law and therefore subject to change.
I’m not going to name the writer or the publication because, given how widely this confusion is spread, it would be unfair to single out one writer and one periodical for correction.
The name of the error, for those who like to name things correctly, is legalism, and it has plagued moral reasoning for a long, long time.
Returning to the example, its underlying assumption is that moral truth comes from being taught with authority (or, equivalently, enacted as law): change the teaching or the law, and the truth changes. But in reality it’s the other way around: if teaching or law is sound, that’s because it expresses moral truth—in the example, that sexual activity is morally good only in man-woman marriage.
This isn’t to say Church teaching on morals can’t undergo development. But in saying development is possible, we need to understand what “development” means. In short, then, development in the realm of morals is the recognition that a moral truth covers more cases than was previously recognized.
For example: development has been underway in the Church’s thinking about capital punishment for some years as it has been increasingly understood that the inviolability of human life applies even to persons guilty of horrendous crimes. Thanks largely to legalism, the huge difference between “change” and “development” may not always be easy to discern, but it’s crucial.
Pope Saint John Paul II discusses the reality of moral truth in his 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth). Speaking of “certain currents of modern thought” which hold that people are free to adopt whatever values they like, he writes that this makes individual conscience the arbiter of morality: “The inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to…sincerity, authenticity and ‘being at peace with oneself.’” (VS 32)
Veritatis Splendor is a landmark—the first papal encyclical to lay out the fundamental principles of Catholic morality. It stands now as a carefully argued, highly sophisticated treatise that dissenters from the Church’s moral tradition rightly view as an obstacle to the program of change visible, for instance, in the unhappy “Synodal Path” underway in Germany.
But not just in Germany. Part of the attraction of departures from authentic moral reasoning lies in their appeal to the permissive, nonjudgmental style in favor today, especially in regard to sex. Yet, strange to say, the ideologues of permissiveness and non-judgmentalism are fanatical in their zeal to silence and cancel proponents of an older, ultimately more humane view of human freedom and its right use.
In the introduction of Veritatis Splendor, John Paul speaks of a “new situation…within the Christian community itself” amounting to “an overall and systematic calling into question” of traditional morality. At its root, he cautions, are ways of thinking “which end by detaching human freedom from its essential and constitutive relationship to truth.” (VS 4)
Far from being a textbook exercise, what’s at stake here could hardly be more timely than it is today.
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Thanks for a wonderful, succinct article.
Where is JPII when we need him?
As a saint in heaven, JPII perhaps helps us more than we realize. I believe his encyclicals will live longer than the other more modern language which swirls today around his old chair.
Departing from the use of Scripture the author contributes to the fog he is attempting to pierce….in our maturation as a Christian we are refined, purified (removal of dross) with our adherence to the virtues (not values nor developments nor legalism) to abide in God and God abiding in us. No creature is free of dross, 100% purified until their Day of Judgement.
God holds no values that are not 100% virtuous (by Revelation, He is All Good, by Reason the Unmoved Mover). As we respond to the call to “reason together” among ourselves with God only then can we converge on the objective Truth. Simple root cause analysis establishes that how you define the problem, contention or issue defines the means and effectiveness to address and mitigate. Only then can our “values” be refined virtuously to abide in God and God in us.
No creature is free of dross, 100% purified until their Day of Judgement (AFCz). That’s true, although God’s wisdom in realizing our tendency to rationalize truth to our liking did not reveal his truth, pronounced as perennial and unvarnished to be subject to endless discussion among ourselves.
If you’re referring to the need for synodality and endless discussion [If I’m incorrect forgive me] to receive new revelation to refine the gold of dross, to discover “objective truth”, I advise that you consider where that will take us. The Terrible example is Germany’s Synodal Way. We have to contend with the appointment by Pope Francis of homosexual advocate Cardinal John Claude Hollerich as relator [added to this Francis’ tolerance if not tacit agreement of the German Synod], the person who sets the agenda in a universal think tank apparently is moving in the direction of embracing same sex adult relationships.
Yes, a synodality that is open ended (so to speak!), versus the Second Vatican Council: “The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away, and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ (cf 1 Tim 6:14, Tit. 2:13)” (Dei Verbum, n. 4).
There is a strange belief in today’s world that legality and morality are the same. Clearly this is not true. Unless and until the distinctions are recognized and taught by our educational systems, error will triumph. Then again, education hasn’t been about truth for decades.
I agree that teaching can develop over time, but we should understand that Pope Francis’ teaching on capital punishment is not a further development of the teaching of John Paul and Benedict, but rather a flat contradiction of it ( as well as being a contradiction of all previous Catholic teaching on the subject ). We can’t just teach anything we want and call it a “development”. That would be dishonest.
When a news anchor asked a woman who lost her family in a car wreck, How do you feel? she [the anchor] unwittingly or not defined the principle of ethical judgment for the modern world. Shaw’s essay explains that by examples, sources especially Veritatis Splendor, and insight.
Feelings around the sixties became the psychotherapeutic principle for mental health. In tandem the sexual revolution, if it feels good what’s wrong? Within a few decades our idiosyncratic inner sense undergirded by personal feelings of right and wrong became enshrined in Liberty [famously better infamously by Justice A Kennedy] and its religious veneration of individualistic conscience. Its precedent is found in Dignitatis Humanae [one of the issues I agree with Archbishop Lefebvre except for his canonical break with the Church].
A golden calf, sacred, meant to be worshiped, protected by the Judiciary [rather than the Legislature where such rules should be enacted, as explained in Justice Alito’s yet to be ratified alleged Opinion].
If it feels good, why not do it? extends to a multiplicity of inferences. if it doesn’t feel good, why do it? the logic. So euthanasia, physician [medical] assisted suicide [that goes way back to Compassion in Dying v Christine Gregoire AG State of Washington 1994] individual suicide itself [historically censured by society in the Common Law of England the basis for much of American jurisprudence]. What’s changed the moral equation radically is the transition from intellect as the axiom for reasoned judgment – to sensualism. Sensuality, the all embracing once moral pariah now inviolable to the ruination of Mankind. Yes, having a baby is painful, requires courage and toil, responsibility and the willingness to sacrifice ‘feelings’ for an infinitely greater good.
Our only solution apart from divine intervening chastisement is hard nosed, unequivocal address of Apostolic truth. Not the sensualist rationalism that seeks to validate everything hierarchy may say when this has no verifiable, magisterial definition. It must be Gospel sourced in Christ’s revelation.
Truth and moral reasoning…the struggle for their prominence will continue to free-fall as long as the word Bible fails to surface when these things are discussed.
We read: “….The implication is that the Pope could change the teaching if he wanted to, since it’s only a matter of law and therefore subject to change.”
But, might we interpret the “implication” differently, as with an extra twist?
Not implying that the Pope might sometime or ever change moral teaching….but rather that he will (a) instead affirm formal teaching on the one hand, while also (b) signaling and enabling the position that some actions are altogether EXEMPT from intact and consistent moral teaching. Exempt in cases where the teaching is not ever denied or replaced, but simply set aside…
Put on hold so as to leave space for what is then blandly admissible (as capital punishment is “inadmissible”). This “new paradigm” twist of fully mutant legalism is the strategy. Faith and morals are simply severed or amputated one from the other. Counterfeit mercy without truth. Yes?