Catholic morality and social concerns

Pope Leo recently said, in response to a question about the effect of Cardinal Marx’s promotion of blessings for same-sex couples on church unity,

The unity or division of the Church should not revolve around sexual matters. We tend to think that when the Church is talking about morality, that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are much greater, more important issues, such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion …

I won’t comment on the true significance of Leo’s response within his pontificate—it was, after all, an unstudied comment made in a particular situation, and I haven’t followed his doings as closely as many others. But it reflects a tendency of thought among many Catholics, so it seems worthwhile to think about its implications when viewed from that perspective.

It evidently supports the “progressive” or “social justice” wing of Catholicism in opposition to the “conservative” or “culture war” wing. The opposition lacks nuance, but is real. Some Catholics believe that the Church should emphasize social reform in the interest of a more free, equal, and compassionate society; others that she should emphasize personal transformation that enables believers to turn toward God and away from sin, and her social involvement should emphasize ways of propagating that.

Each side says that its approach is the best way to further the other’s goals. “Social justice” Catholics note that personal holiness includes avoidance of injustice and active love of neighbor. They also say that support by social authorities for religion and personal morality leads to cynicism and hypocrisy, since it leads people to pretend concern for such things for the sake of personal advantage, while tolerance and progressive social policies free people from pressures that tempt them to do things they shouldn’t.

“Culture war” Catholics are more likely to view changing the heart as the leaven that ultimately transforms the world. They note that socialism has led to poverty, and progressive policies—refusal to prosecute shoplifters is a current example—often facilitate bad conduct by minimizing its consequences. They further note that personal moral conduct has to do with how each of us orients and carries on his life, and undercutting its importance undercuts human dignity, a basic concern of Catholic teaching.

They also note that most of Catholic morality, especially the part that coincides with natural law, has to do with fundamental features of human life, such as sex, property, and language. Standards forbidding sexual and financial misconduct, along with lying and other forms of dishonesty, are therefore basic to good social relations, even though they count as “personal morality.” Sex in particular has to do with our most basic personal and social connections, so it obviously matters a great deal, not only to individuals but to the whole society.

So the personal and social aspects of morality cannot be separated. What then does it mean to say that sexual matters are much less important moral concerns than freedom, justice, and equality, to the point that even fundamental disputes over the former shouldn’t affect the unity of the Church?

When a Catholic official says “we” tend to identify Catholic and sexual morality, he doesn’t mean Catholic officials. Sermons on the latter topic are rare, and popes and bishops don’t emphasize it much in their public statements. He means ordinary laymen; I am sure it gets mentioned much more often in the confessional than from the pulpit.

A man trying to make a good life for himself, his family, and others around him focuses on his personal situation and how he should act in it. Sex is an area in which ordinary people often struggle with the temptation to violate clear standards in ways that deeply affect their lives and the lives of others. So it looms large among their everyday moral concerns, and they evidently need the pastoral support of the Church in their efforts to act as they should. The contentiousness of current discussions makes it all the more important that the Church speak clearly when it has something clear and relevant to say.

There are instances in which justice, equality, and freedom are grossly violated, and settings—extreme tyranny, for example—in which public evils overwhelm people’s everyday dealings with each other as a moral concern even for ordinary people.

But aggressive war and the like are not practical temptations for anyone who’s not a high government official. Participation in state crimes can present more of a practical problem—for example, when soldiers are ordered to commit atrocities. But such occasions are rare for most people, so their own conduct in everyday life is normally their primary moral concern.

Catholics are also citizens, voters, and sometimes public officials. The Church does them a service when she reminds them of the basic principles that should guide them in their public involvement. To the extent those principles are a matter of natural law, that service extends to non-Catholics as well. We should all take those principles seriously, but their application depends on the situation, and in most cases the Church has no special competence to advise people on what the situation and its implications are. It also depends on complex and often debatable considerations: the Pope favors equality, but I am far from his equal in the Church or society generally, and I doubt he or any other Catholic wants to make me so.

With that in mind, the deep subordination of sex to grand concerns regarding overall institutional structures looks very much like the clergy seeing themselves more as public figures taking part in general social governance than as pastors of a particular society oriented toward the blessedness of its members and their struggles to attain it. They do have both roles, but the one-sidedness suggested by the Pope’s offhand comment seems a misstep.

The extreme emphasis on general social concerns in some parts of the Church presents other problems as well.

Most people who say they are deeply concerned about social justice are comfortably situated. Even so, they idealize democracy, and want to present their projects—which are based on a top-down view that emphasizes overall social structures rather than the everyday doings of ordinary people—as the popular will. Within the Church, this desire has supported initiatives like synodality, and—with respect to social engagement—the convening of the World Meeting of Popular Movements (WMPM).

It has also led to a great deal of fraudulence. The popular will mostly exists at the grassroots level. But a participatory process to define it in a way that is concrete and coherent enough to be usable by an organization like a government or universal church will be complex and multilayered, and its results will be determined far away. It seems inevitable that such a process will end up controlled by organized activists, with strong views of their own, who resemble in character other people who maneuver themselves into dominant positions in complex situations.

Recent news regarding the success of well-placed activists, like Fr. James Martin, SJ, promoting their goals through the synodal process, confirms such concerns. As to popular movements, I don’t doubt that the people the Holy Father worked with during his years in Peru were good local people trying to do good local things. But the official pronouncements of the WMPM, and the public comments of its leaders, sound like standard leftist jargon more than the voice of ordinary people. And a recent report from the Lepanto Institute, whatever flaws it may have, presents persuasive evidence that its steering committee is dominated by organizations with troubling Marxist and socially radical connections.

With such things in mind, it is not surprising that there tends to be something hollow about such efforts. Official voices talk them up, but ordinary people don’t listen, and the more the Church emphasizes them, the more people lose interest in her. That has especially been true in Latin America, where the proportion of the people who are Catholic has been declining steeply since the late 1960s, when the Church there began emphasizing social and political causes, and the decline accelerated after Francis became pope.

Numbers aren’t everything, but they suggest something about the pastoral effectiveness of post-Vatican II initiatives. The indispensable role of the Church is to help people deal with ultimate human concerns as they enter into their everyday lives. These concerns matter to everyone, including—even especially—people in difficult situations. Does it appear from the popular reception of her recent initiatives that the Church has chosen the route people find most helpful?