The dangerous error buried in the “Study Group #9” Synod Report

In their recent CWR article, titled “The Scandalous Synod Report: a Betrayal of Trust,” Theresa Farnan and Mary Hasson did us all a great service in shedding a spotlight on the dangerous thrust of the recent final report from Synod Study Group #9. Their analysis illuminates the implications of this “working document,” a report with no ecclesial authority, but one that they argue will probably have an impact on pastoral practices throughout the Church. That is no doubt absolutely true.

The authors tell us that the Synod report proposes a “paradigm shift” in the Church’s approach to “the most difficult doctrinal, pastoral and ethical questions,” a change that is needed, say the Synod Fathers, given the seemingly intractable moral questions plaguing the Church. Farnan and Hasson provide an excellent analysis, leading to the indisputable conclusion that the main concern of the report is an “appalling effort to normalize same-sex sexual relationships,” and to settle the other “emerging” issues that seem to challenge the moral framework within which the Church has operated for centuries.

Study Group #9 wants us to believe that the old ways simply don’t work anymore–not if we are going to respond adequately to the demands of the times.

Paradigm shifts and emotivism

Thus, the most troubling and truly dangerous issue identified by these two expert scholars (and our focus here) is the Synod’s proposal concerning the method by which the Church’s theologians and pastoral ministers are to go about achieving this “paradigm shift.” Our authors quote the report itself: ‘“What is at stake,” it declares, is the “overcoming of the theoretical model that derives praxis from a ‘pre-packaged’ doctrine, ‘applying’ general and abstract principles to the concrete and personal situations of life.”’

The Synod Study Group suggests we set aside established doctrine and instead rely on “a process of continuous theorization and implementation” that permits the Church to set “the discernment process in motion, and accompanying it to reach the expression of a consensus – even one that is differentiated – when this contributes to furthering the common good.”

Translation? As our authors aptly put it: “Doctrine is out, Experiences are in.”

The “paradigm shift” proposed by Study Group #9 presents us with a manufactured “either/or” proposition, a false choice between two loci of wisdom that are meant to inform one another in the search for what is so: human experience and reasoned judgment informed by both faith and reason. As such, the proposals in the Report reflect a woefully inadequate understanding of how the Church arrives at her teachings in the first place. In fact, they represent an attack on human reason itself. It is this that we must ferret out and be on guard against, for its implications go well beyond the Report from the Synod’s Study Group #9.¹

In his classic work, After Virtue, Alistair MacIntyre argues persuasively that all contemporary moral disputes are driven by a kind of “emotivism,” the conviction that at the heart of our seemingly interminable debates is the assumption that personal preference–and not self-evident first principles–is the starting place of all moral discourse.² The truth is now what “I” say it is, or at least what I prefer it to be, and anyone who disputes my right to hold to “my truth,” no matter how ill-considered or arbitrary, can only be a bigot or an ideologue.

MacIntyre’s analysis sheds light on a critically important feature of the current state of public discourse. We now face a situation in which personal, subjective experience trumps reasoned argument of any kind; the language of lived experience has become the linguistic currency of our era.

The signs are all around us. They are reported in the media, signaled by both students and faculty on college campuses, invoked by politicians, family members, friends, and co-workers. They reveal the manifestly evident fact that the language of subjective personal experience has displaced rational argument in both private and public discourse. Indeed, personal experience has become the lexicon of our era; it is now considered the only valid touchstone of truth. Claims about the existence of universal truth or an objective moral order often cannot find a foothold when confronted with the argument that such realities do not resonate with a particular individual’s personal “experience.”

Rather than a starting place in self-evident first principles, the arbiter of what constitutes right thinking and moral human behavior, assuming that question is even asked, has become a matter of personal preference.³ This is a reality confronted daily by persons in all circumstances, no matter what their philosophical persuasion or worldview. It is a position advanced by our culture and encountered in the media, in education, in academia, and in our political discourse. And now, it seems even to have entered into the deliberations within the Catholic Church.

This is a dangerous development, for to traffic in this conversation is to accept the terms established by those under the sway of a faulty premise: that there is an unbridgeable gap between one’s subjective experience and the exercise of reason. This is a false dichotomy, one that we have allowed to permeate our discourse for far too long. Like a poisonous mist, it has seeped silently into the common sense of the culture almost without notice–and without any overt exercise of power or coercion. It actually has confused the human community literally for centuries, but particularly in this one, preventing a full-throated search for the truth and truncating the quest for self-knowledge and wholeness.

The proper place of personal experience

Our aim here is to confront this false dichotomy. Faithful Catholics must make an effort to reclaim the language of lived experience from those who would have us believe that it supplies a complete and adequate guide to achieving the fullness of human happiness.

For while attending to one’s own experience is certainly one step in coming to understand oneself, it provides but a glimpse–a partial clue–into the mystery of who one is and is meant to be. Indeed, experience is not alienated from human cognition, but integral to it. Wisdom is the fruit of both experience and reason. But contrary to the claims of those who would give primacy to subjective personal experience over and against the conclusions of right reason, it is only possible to arrive at the full truth about oneself if the intellect is allowed to pursue its proper end, not mere knowledge but understanding. A grasp of the whole of who one is: a creature, brought into being by a loving God, and meant for holiness and for greatness.

As anyone familiar with the Church’s own methods should know, experience is not a separate category in the search for truth; it is the starting place of the search for truth. The Catholic intellectual tradition does not base its investigation on the methods of Cartesian rationalism; nor does it reduce knowledge to its twin, the deadly “sensism” of David Hume. The Church’s proposals regarding the path to human happiness are not derived from thin air, nor do they reflect a radical reduction of the person to merely his material existence.

Rather, they are derived from both faith and reason, both Scripture and the evidence of the senses, as well as centuries of reflection on their significance for man’s life and his actions in the world. The Church—and those who seek to further her vision—subscribe to a particular form of realism: the conviction that truth is arrived at through contact with reality itself. She upholds the view that it is the direct experience of the real that prompts the questions that then drive us all to pursue knowledge of the truth and an understanding of God’s word. And further, that this more comprehensive understanding of man and of his place in the world is the only sure road to human happiness.

In arguing that subjective human experience should take priority over and against reasoned argument, proponents of this view–be they in the Church or in the wider culture–are rejecting not only the possibility of objective moral norms but the very possibility of ever arriving at them. Lived experience is not a separate, distinct realm that operates in isolation from human cognitional acts; it is integral to them. Knowledge begins in the senses, which prompts the intellect to seek the meaning of the world and of our experience of it.⁴ Experience might be the launching pad and, when properly integrated into the whole of who one is, may lead one to grasp the truths embedded in the natural law or the Church’s own doctrine.

But it cannot be confused with the truth itself. As Father Bernard Lonergan used to say, “insights are a dime a dozen.” Their true value is discerned through a deliberate, reasoned inquiry and the scrutiny of judgment. The same can be said of experience. Sometimes it leads to a dead end.

The path to authentic human flourishing

Now, having said that, one is justified in being sympathetic to the deeper concerns reflected in this new paradigm. Surely, we can all acknowledge the kernel of truth at the heart of the shift under consideration in this new approach: the argument that abstract ideas, however carefully reasoned, are not enough to live the Christian life. With this, we can all agree. Further, it is essential to recognize that the starting place of any pastoral encounter is not likely to be a reiteration of doctrinal statements, no matter how carefully articulated. Clearly, abstract ideas must be translated, often in real time, into the lexicon of the pastoral minister, the psychologist, the parent, the friend.

The starting place of such interactions–which are, after all, not with man per se but with concretely existing persons–will surely not be abstractions but their personal lived experience. The question that remains is how to properly integrate that experience–which can only ever be partial–into the whole of who one is.

It seems clear that those who seek to give priority to experience over truths arrived at through reason are proceeding without an adequate theory or understanding of the place that “lived experience” really does hold in a coherent account of the person. It is not enough merely to assert its place; one needs a full account of the person, one that includes the recognition that he is distinguished from all of creation by his power of reason, so that we can grasp the principles that govern our use of it in pastoral encounters.

Perhaps they are unaware of Pope St. John Paul II’s own proposition that the category of lived experience is an essential element in a full account of the moral life and the search for the whole truth about oneself.⁵ Perhaps if they could be alerted to it, they would find a way to address the pastoral needs of their flock without appearing to subordinate doctrine to lived experience. Perhaps they would find it helpful in their fervent wish to assist those they encounter to arrive at the wholeness all persons seek. Perhaps this could be the basis of the “paradigm shift” that Pope Francis himself suggested in the course of his papacy.⁶

Indeed, the fact is that the “experience” that generally grounds the arguments that Catholic teaching is too hard, too rigid, too strict for human persons, is primarily that of women and men who dissent a priori from the Church’s teaching on the meaning and telos of human sexuality, Humanae Vitae in particular. Overlooked in this calculus is the lived experience of those who are faithful to it. For there are many whose own experience has led them instead to the opposite conclusion–that the Catholic understanding of the human person and the meaning of human sexuality lead, in fact, to authentic human flourishing.⁷

Though it must never be allowed to replace reasoned discourse, we cannot ignore the place of lived experience in arriving at the full truth about the human person. Above all, we must prevent any further advance of the idea that experience and reason do not share a common root in the mind of man. It is time to explode the myth that “lived experience” contradicts the foundational understanding of the Church on these matters.

Indeed, it has been demonstrated that “lived experience,” once integrated into a more coherent account of the wholeness that is the birth-right of every person, actually illuminates the validity of the teaching proposed by the Magisterium, a framework that has been articulated by a wide swath of philosophers and theologians, demonstrated by scientists, and relied on by the clergy and pastoral ministers, literally for centuries.

We all know people whose discovery of the beauty of Catholic teaching has led them to transform their lives. They provide living evidence of the results that come to those who come to accept it and live by it. This is so not because the teaching imposed unnecessary limits but because it illuminated the reality and telos of an authentically human existence. Moreover, it helped them to arrive at the wholeness of their personhood and brought coherence to their lives.

The “new paradigm” suggested by the Synod is a cul-de-sac, a trap that would lead those who subscribe to it inevitably into an ever-deepening darkness. We must help our contemporaries resist its pull.

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