The Splendour Of The Truth In Season And Out Of Season
A FAITH Magazine Editorial by Fr Tim Finigan
One "silly season" assessment of the likely effect of Veritatis Splendor, was that it would "assume papal powers over the lives of Catholic worshippers greater than have ever been claimed". This victorian sounding reprimand demonstrates how far the subtle propaganda of dissent has permeated public consciousness in England. The most important aspect of it to note is the assumption that something fundamentally new is afoot. So we are also told that when the encyclical allows for the authority of the magisterium in matters of moral behaviour, it is extending that authority. Predictably enough, we are then treated to a gloomy prophecy of consequent disaster. The encyclical would "thunderously proscribe dissent", it would be "an intolerable burden" of "imposed uniformity", a "return to the inquisition minus the thumbscrews" binding Catholics to an "absolute open-ended obedience". Ultimately, this rigorous, restrictive, uncompromising, exaggerated centralisation will prompt "great numbers" to reject the authority of "an infallible and ultra-conservative Pope". The suggestion that hordes of disaffected Catholics will then rush to join the Church of England leaves one feeling that reality is fading into the middle distance.
In fact, the Church has always claimed the authority to teach on matters of morality. There is nothing essentially new if the Holy Father reasserts this authority. The Church could not claim otherwise and at the same time profess to make Christ her founder present in any real sense. Much of Christ's teaching was explicitly moral and he received exactly the same reaction as the Holy Father is receiving. The disciple is not greater than his master and so the successor of St Peter must expect the same from the leaders of this world. Christ claimed a power over the lives of believers greater than ever before: nobody ever spoke like this man. Christ was thunderous when he proscribed the dissent of the Pharisees. He called to obedience and he was regarded as restrictive and rigorist, especially in his teaching concerning marriage. If Christ teaches now in his Church, we must expect the same reaction and the same opposition, particularly in relation to the Church's teaching on marriage.
Difficulties of conscience
To remember the teaching of Christ will also dispose of many false difficulties raised concerning conscience and authority. Jesus Christ clearly claimed a divine authority to teach the truth, You have heard it said of old …but I say to you. The ten commandments and the teaching of Christ were given precisely to assist us in the formation of our moral conscience so that our conscience could form judgments based on the truth. The point missed by the Times along with Gladstone a century ago was made clear by Newman in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk; namely that conscience, as the aboriginal vicar of Christ, has the same source as the teaching of the Church. It is the same Christ teaching both in conscience and in the Church's magisterium. It is the same truth which Christ teaches and which conscience seeks to use as the foundation of its judgment. A true conscience will therefore be in accord with the teaching of the magisterium of the Church. Catholics believe the magisterium to be infallible in teaching "the rules of moral behaviour", because Jesus Christ is infallible in teaching such matters. If a person's conscience is wrong and it commands here and now with a perceived certainty, the person is obliged to follow it. Nevertheless, such a conscience is still objectively wrong. It has always been referred to as an erroneous or false conscience.
The conscience popularised by those who campaign against the Church's moral teaching is quite a different thing. It might more accurately be described as "conscientiousness" and as such, to call it "wrong" or "untrue" would not even make sense. This so-called "conscience" is a sincerity in belief, perhaps in accord with, perhaps contrary to the teaching of the Church. The sincerity is reckoned to be of greater importance than the magisterium (cue: quotation from Newman about toasting conscience first and the Pope second). This conscientiousness would be shown by the person who goes to confession and asks the priest whether it is wrong to use contraception. The priest says "follow your conscience" and the person takes it to mean "you decide for yourself what you sincerely believe to be right for you". Nobody could say that this sort of conscience was erroneous or false because it does not refer itself to the truth, only to the depth of conviction. Newman's "aboriginal vicar of Christ" something entirely different. It is a conscience which peremptorily commands us to do the good and shun evil regardless of what we feel; it is eager for wisdom and the confirming authority of revealed teaching. Its latter-day replacement is a subjective feeling which only serves to justify the transient wisdom of the world and resists the authority which alone would guide it in the truth.
Compassion on human loving
It is no accident that the focus of much organised dissent from the Church's moral teaching is on her teaching concerning love and chastity. It has recently become acceptable in Hollywood to seek treatment for addiction to sexual pleasure. There could be a welcome honesty here that Christ might commend in contrast to the pharisaical attack upon his teaching on chastity. Certainly, there will be very many who find the teaching of Christ to be a heavy burden. At least to begin with, it may seem intolerable to be asked to live chastely. Whether it is the rich seeking passing comfort from the uncertainty or spiritual emptiness of a hedonistic life, or the poor looking for cheap relief in the misery of struggling to make ends meet, the pleasure will be hard to relinquish and it may be angrily protected.
In such circumstances, the Church can find herself in the position of the man who refuses to give money to an alcoholic for a drink. She also refuses, and similarly for the sake of a much greater and deeper good, to give a temporary comfort in matters of sexual behaviour. She is abused and attacked and subjected to skilful and desperate manipulation. At its crudest, this will comprise accusations of returning to "an inquisition minus the thumbscrews". At other times, it may be the accusation of "lacking compassion" in comparison to those kind and caring dissenting theologians who only want to allow people to love each other. In fact, when the ravages of the permissive society are viewed with hindsight, it may be uncomfortably clear who was more kinder and more compassionate to the poor of Yahweh in the long run.
Natural law
At the heart of the debate is the question of the natural law and the relationship between being and the good. In speaking of natural law, it cannot be stressed too strongly that this is a positive law of life and being. Natural law is not primarily a series of prohibitions. They come about only because of sin and the over-development of the pleasure principle. The natural law finds its origin at the origin of creation. From the very beginning, there is a law of control and direction, a law of the ascent of being in an ordered and harmonious development which tends to fulfilment. When, at the peak of material evolution, the direct creation of the soul is called for within the same ascent of being, the natural law as we know it comes into play as the law of our own life and being. It is not now a law of physical good order but a law of life which finds its environment in the living God.
As a law written into creation itself, the natural law is not subject to the caprices of the fallen human mind. It is the expression of the wisdom of God shining out in what he has created. In creation below man it cries out in witness to the existence of the all-wise God. In man it prompts us to seek our natural milk without guile and leads to seek God in accordance with our human nature.
As a law written into creation itself, the natural law is not subject to the caprices of the fallen human mind. It is the expression of the wisdom of God shining out in what he has created. In creation below man it cries out in witness to the existence of the all-wise God. In man it prompts us to seek our natural milk without guile and leads to seek God in accordance with our human nature.
This understanding of the natural law can avoid the problems of the static scholastic conception of nature in matter and in man without falling away into the uncertainty of an ever-changing nature which can never be subject to objective moral norms. There is indeed an ascent of being from the simpler and less intelligible to the more complex and more intelligible. Nevertheless, the individual organisms within this ascent still have a definite law of life determined by their make-up and in particular, in the higher organisms, by their brain. In the case of man, this life law is determined not only by the brain but also by the spiritual soul in relationship to its own environment, the living God himself.
Within this perspective, it is entirely to be expected that God will reveal himself and will confirm explicitly in his revelation the fullness of the natural law of life and being for man. We are familiar with the negative aspects of this in the ten commandments but even after the fall and the need for redemption from sin, God gave a positive statement of the natural law and confirmed it in Christ the Word made flesh You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength …and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.
The teaching of the magisterium is also wholly in accord with this understanding of the natural law. God who implanted this law in our hearts, who "made us for himself", continues to speak in his Church to confirm and clarify that law of life and being by which we grow in his likeness. We need the same divine authority because there will always be new circumstances which require a new application of the natural law. The furore over Humanae Vitae is very much to the point. If the development of the natural law were easy and obvious to all, it would have been clear that the development of the contraceptive pill did not add any substantially new moral question. Its effects, whether contraceptive, temporarily sterilising or abortifacient, could all be considered according to the teaching of the Church given previously. Nevertheless, a state of uncertainty developed in which many Catholics became genuinely uncertain about what was right or wrong. Much of this uncertainty was brought about by theologians determined to force Pope Paul to compromise. It was necessary to teach clearly for the sake of the people and he explicitly referred the teaching to his Petrine office when he declared We, by virtue of the mandate entrusted to us by Christ, intend to give our reply to this series of grave questions.
Who is obsessed?
One writer, enlisted in the media campaign against Veritatis Splendor, has written that "like Augustine, the Pope sees salvation and virtue entirely in sexual terms; six of the deadly sins might as well not exist." It is not the Pope who is obsessed with sex. Whatever he writes, even if it is a lengthy document on general Catholic moral principles, the media will only be interested in what he has to say about sex. Augustine's magnificent contribution to the culture of the Christian world is seen entirely in terms of a popularised misunderstanding of what he had to say about sex. If the Pope cannot ignore this obsession, it is not because he sees salvation and virtue entirely in sexual terms. It is because he has the duty to call to salvation in season and out of season.
Unfortunately, there has been something of a loss of nerve in the Church over sexual morality. Far from an obsession with sex, many Catholics in the pew will testify to a conspiracy of silence in the pulpit on the matter. Particularly in England, there is an entirely false notion abroad that it is better not to rock the boat and it will cause too much trouble to speak too openly. Certainly the Pope's encyclical speaks of much wider issues than sexual morality alone but if that is the particular application that is most in demand, why are we so frightened? Examples from other parts of the world show that where the truth is preached with confidence and conviction, it attracts, especially among the young. This is no great surprise since Christ will always attract if we do not get in the way with our worries and reservations.
Dissenting theologians
In some quarters it is more than worries and reservations. One influential writer has gone on record to say that Veritatis Splendor takes its place "in a long line of dogmatic statements: loud, confident and wrong." He then goes on to say that the doctrine of original sin was also a mistake "invented by St Augustine of Hippo in the early fifth century out of an incorrect translation in the fifth chapter of St Paul to the Romans." This "mistake" is then compared to the condemnation of Galileo, the decisions of Pius X's Biblical Commission and the Syllabus of Errors.
It is not really to the purpose here to untangle the confusion which attributes the same status to a doctrine of the Church de fide definita and a disciplinary decree. The important point is that when the Pope speaks of taking measures against dissident theologians, it is perfectly reasonable and long overdue. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has already explained that it is entitled to withdraw a canonical mission or teaching mandate from a theologian who departs from the doctrine of the faith or that it can declare that some writings do not conform to this doctrine. Such reasonable steps are scarcely the terrible crackdown that they are made out to be.
The real "inquisition minus the thumbscrews" has been reserved for those students who dare to support the Church's magisterium. Even worse if they happened to give a wholehearted religious submission of mind and will to all of the non-infallible teaching. They are the ones who have had the minutiae of their personal lives examined for signs of a lack of necessary openness. They are the ones who have had their character assassinated by being described as rigorist and uncaring. They are the ones who have been sought out in some places as the wrong sort of people for the ministry and pounced on for any trivial defect. Thank God, the tide seems to be turning in many places but as in the former communist bloc, the apparatchiks still occupy many positions of influence even when official policy is softening and there are still some nasty surprises for the vulnerable.
The measures suggested by the Holy Father are nothing like as draconian as this. They simply state the truth. Where a theologian does not believe the teaching of the Church, it makes no sense for him to be teaching on behalf of the Church. If such a theologian wishes to pass off his theology as being in accord with the Church's doctrine, it is open to the Church to clarify the matter.
High profile Catholicism
What is needed is a clear affirmation of Catholic morality. We do not need to be embarrassed about our teaching on sexual ethics. If that is what is most of interest in the world then we need to explain it clearly and with confidence. The teaching of Humanae Vitae has not been preached and rejected; it has scarcely been preached. It is a part of the treasure of the Church because it is a part of the teaching of Christ through the ages and offers a vision true to our essential nature and worthy of the spirit of man.
To the young especially, a Christian view of love and friendship will be a challenge worth taking up. It will make sense of their thirst for something deeper and truer in human loving than the cynical and exploitative trash that they are so often given. To explain that sex is for family in a state of loving will help them to avoid the confusions that they see in so many of their peers. To give a full vision of chastity and its beauty is a gift that we should not deny to another generation of the Church. If we apologise for the Church's teaching, He does not need us to.
A FAITH Magazine Editorial by Fr Tim Finigan
One "silly season" assessment of the likely effect of Veritatis Splendor, was that it would "assume papal powers over the lives of Catholic worshippers greater than have ever been claimed". This victorian sounding reprimand demonstrates how far the subtle propaganda of dissent has permeated public consciousness in England. The most important aspect of it to note is the assumption that something fundamentally new is afoot. So we are also told that when the encyclical allows for the authority of the magisterium in matters of moral behaviour, it is extending that authority. Predictably enough, we are then treated to a gloomy prophecy of consequent disaster. The encyclical would "thunderously proscribe dissent", it would be "an intolerable burden" of "imposed uniformity", a "return to the inquisition minus the thumbscrews" binding Catholics to an "absolute open-ended obedience". Ultimately, this rigorous, restrictive, uncompromising, exaggerated centralisation will prompt "great numbers" to reject the authority of "an infallible and ultra-conservative Pope". The suggestion that hordes of disaffected Catholics will then rush to join the Church of England leaves one feeling that reality is fading into the middle distance.
In fact, the Church has always claimed the authority to teach on matters of morality. There is nothing essentially new if the Holy Father reasserts this authority. The Church could not claim otherwise and at the same time profess to make Christ her founder present in any real sense. Much of Christ's teaching was explicitly moral and he received exactly the same reaction as the Holy Father is receiving. The disciple is not greater than his master and so the successor of St Peter must expect the same from the leaders of this world. Christ claimed a power over the lives of believers greater than ever before: nobody ever spoke like this man. Christ was thunderous when he proscribed the dissent of the Pharisees. He called to obedience and he was regarded as restrictive and rigorist, especially in his teaching concerning marriage. If Christ teaches now in his Church, we must expect the same reaction and the same opposition, particularly in relation to the Church's teaching on marriage.
Difficulties of conscience
To remember the teaching of Christ will also dispose of many false difficulties raised concerning conscience and authority. Jesus Christ clearly claimed a divine authority to teach the truth, You have heard it said of old …but I say to you. The ten commandments and the teaching of Christ were given precisely to assist us in the formation of our moral conscience so that our conscience could form judgments based on the truth. The point missed by the Times along with Gladstone a century ago was made clear by Newman in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk; namely that conscience, as the aboriginal vicar of Christ, has the same source as the teaching of the Church. It is the same Christ teaching both in conscience and in the Church's magisterium. It is the same truth which Christ teaches and which conscience seeks to use as the foundation of its judgment. A true conscience will therefore be in accord with the teaching of the magisterium of the Church. Catholics believe the magisterium to be infallible in teaching "the rules of moral behaviour", because Jesus Christ is infallible in teaching such matters. If a person's conscience is wrong and it commands here and now with a perceived certainty, the person is obliged to follow it. Nevertheless, such a conscience is still objectively wrong. It has always been referred to as an erroneous or false conscience.
The conscience popularised by those who campaign against the Church's moral teaching is quite a different thing. It might more accurately be described as "conscientiousness" and as such, to call it "wrong" or "untrue" would not even make sense. This so-called "conscience" is a sincerity in belief, perhaps in accord with, perhaps contrary to the teaching of the Church. The sincerity is reckoned to be of greater importance than the magisterium (cue: quotation from Newman about toasting conscience first and the Pope second). This conscientiousness would be shown by the person who goes to confession and asks the priest whether it is wrong to use contraception. The priest says "follow your conscience" and the person takes it to mean "you decide for yourself what you sincerely believe to be right for you". Nobody could say that this sort of conscience was erroneous or false because it does not refer itself to the truth, only to the depth of conviction. Newman's "aboriginal vicar of Christ" something entirely different. It is a conscience which peremptorily commands us to do the good and shun evil regardless of what we feel; it is eager for wisdom and the confirming authority of revealed teaching. Its latter-day replacement is a subjective feeling which only serves to justify the transient wisdom of the world and resists the authority which alone would guide it in the truth.
Compassion on human loving
It is no accident that the focus of much organised dissent from the Church's moral teaching is on her teaching concerning love and chastity. It has recently become acceptable in Hollywood to seek treatment for addiction to sexual pleasure. There could be a welcome honesty here that Christ might commend in contrast to the pharisaical attack upon his teaching on chastity. Certainly, there will be very many who find the teaching of Christ to be a heavy burden. At least to begin with, it may seem intolerable to be asked to live chastely. Whether it is the rich seeking passing comfort from the uncertainty or spiritual emptiness of a hedonistic life, or the poor looking for cheap relief in the misery of struggling to make ends meet, the pleasure will be hard to relinquish and it may be angrily protected.
In such circumstances, the Church can find herself in the position of the man who refuses to give money to an alcoholic for a drink. She also refuses, and similarly for the sake of a much greater and deeper good, to give a temporary comfort in matters of sexual behaviour. She is abused and attacked and subjected to skilful and desperate manipulation. At its crudest, this will comprise accusations of returning to "an inquisition minus the thumbscrews". At other times, it may be the accusation of "lacking compassion" in comparison to those kind and caring dissenting theologians who only want to allow people to love each other. In fact, when the ravages of the permissive society are viewed with hindsight, it may be uncomfortably clear who was more kinder and more compassionate to the poor of Yahweh in the long run.
Natural law
At the heart of the debate is the question of the natural law and the relationship between being and the good. In speaking of natural law, it cannot be stressed too strongly that this is a positive law of life and being. Natural law is not primarily a series of prohibitions. They come about only because of sin and the over-development of the pleasure principle. The natural law finds its origin at the origin of creation. From the very beginning, there is a law of control and direction, a law of the ascent of being in an ordered and harmonious development which tends to fulfilment. When, at the peak of material evolution, the direct creation of the soul is called for within the same ascent of being, the natural law as we know it comes into play as the law of our own life and being. It is not now a law of physical good order but a law of life which finds its environment in the living God.
As a law written into creation itself, the natural law is not subject to the caprices of the fallen human mind. It is the expression of the wisdom of God shining out in what he has created. In creation below man it cries out in witness to the existence of the all-wise God. In man it prompts us to seek our natural milk without guile and leads to seek God in accordance with our human nature.
As a law written into creation itself, the natural law is not subject to the caprices of the fallen human mind. It is the expression of the wisdom of God shining out in what he has created. In creation below man it cries out in witness to the existence of the all-wise God. In man it prompts us to seek our natural milk without guile and leads to seek God in accordance with our human nature.
This understanding of the natural law can avoid the problems of the static scholastic conception of nature in matter and in man without falling away into the uncertainty of an ever-changing nature which can never be subject to objective moral norms. There is indeed an ascent of being from the simpler and less intelligible to the more complex and more intelligible. Nevertheless, the individual organisms within this ascent still have a definite law of life determined by their make-up and in particular, in the higher organisms, by their brain. In the case of man, this life law is determined not only by the brain but also by the spiritual soul in relationship to its own environment, the living God himself.
Within this perspective, it is entirely to be expected that God will reveal himself and will confirm explicitly in his revelation the fullness of the natural law of life and being for man. We are familiar with the negative aspects of this in the ten commandments but even after the fall and the need for redemption from sin, God gave a positive statement of the natural law and confirmed it in Christ the Word made flesh You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength …and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.
The teaching of the magisterium is also wholly in accord with this understanding of the natural law. God who implanted this law in our hearts, who "made us for himself", continues to speak in his Church to confirm and clarify that law of life and being by which we grow in his likeness. We need the same divine authority because there will always be new circumstances which require a new application of the natural law. The furore over Humanae Vitae is very much to the point. If the development of the natural law were easy and obvious to all, it would have been clear that the development of the contraceptive pill did not add any substantially new moral question. Its effects, whether contraceptive, temporarily sterilising or abortifacient, could all be considered according to the teaching of the Church given previously. Nevertheless, a state of uncertainty developed in which many Catholics became genuinely uncertain about what was right or wrong. Much of this uncertainty was brought about by theologians determined to force Pope Paul to compromise. It was necessary to teach clearly for the sake of the people and he explicitly referred the teaching to his Petrine office when he declared We, by virtue of the mandate entrusted to us by Christ, intend to give our reply to this series of grave questions.
Who is obsessed?
One writer, enlisted in the media campaign against Veritatis Splendor, has written that "like Augustine, the Pope sees salvation and virtue entirely in sexual terms; six of the deadly sins might as well not exist." It is not the Pope who is obsessed with sex. Whatever he writes, even if it is a lengthy document on general Catholic moral principles, the media will only be interested in what he has to say about sex. Augustine's magnificent contribution to the culture of the Christian world is seen entirely in terms of a popularised misunderstanding of what he had to say about sex. If the Pope cannot ignore this obsession, it is not because he sees salvation and virtue entirely in sexual terms. It is because he has the duty to call to salvation in season and out of season.
Unfortunately, there has been something of a loss of nerve in the Church over sexual morality. Far from an obsession with sex, many Catholics in the pew will testify to a conspiracy of silence in the pulpit on the matter. Particularly in England, there is an entirely false notion abroad that it is better not to rock the boat and it will cause too much trouble to speak too openly. Certainly the Pope's encyclical speaks of much wider issues than sexual morality alone but if that is the particular application that is most in demand, why are we so frightened? Examples from other parts of the world show that where the truth is preached with confidence and conviction, it attracts, especially among the young. This is no great surprise since Christ will always attract if we do not get in the way with our worries and reservations.
Dissenting theologians
In some quarters it is more than worries and reservations. One influential writer has gone on record to say that Veritatis Splendor takes its place "in a long line of dogmatic statements: loud, confident and wrong." He then goes on to say that the doctrine of original sin was also a mistake "invented by St Augustine of Hippo in the early fifth century out of an incorrect translation in the fifth chapter of St Paul to the Romans." This "mistake" is then compared to the condemnation of Galileo, the decisions of Pius X's Biblical Commission and the Syllabus of Errors.
It is not really to the purpose here to untangle the confusion which attributes the same status to a doctrine of the Church de fide definita and a disciplinary decree. The important point is that when the Pope speaks of taking measures against dissident theologians, it is perfectly reasonable and long overdue. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has already explained that it is entitled to withdraw a canonical mission or teaching mandate from a theologian who departs from the doctrine of the faith or that it can declare that some writings do not conform to this doctrine. Such reasonable steps are scarcely the terrible crackdown that they are made out to be.
The real "inquisition minus the thumbscrews" has been reserved for those students who dare to support the Church's magisterium. Even worse if they happened to give a wholehearted religious submission of mind and will to all of the non-infallible teaching. They are the ones who have had the minutiae of their personal lives examined for signs of a lack of necessary openness. They are the ones who have had their character assassinated by being described as rigorist and uncaring. They are the ones who have been sought out in some places as the wrong sort of people for the ministry and pounced on for any trivial defect. Thank God, the tide seems to be turning in many places but as in the former communist bloc, the apparatchiks still occupy many positions of influence even when official policy is softening and there are still some nasty surprises for the vulnerable.
The measures suggested by the Holy Father are nothing like as draconian as this. They simply state the truth. Where a theologian does not believe the teaching of the Church, it makes no sense for him to be teaching on behalf of the Church. If such a theologian wishes to pass off his theology as being in accord with the Church's doctrine, it is open to the Church to clarify the matter.
High profile Catholicism
What is needed is a clear affirmation of Catholic morality. We do not need to be embarrassed about our teaching on sexual ethics. If that is what is most of interest in the world then we need to explain it clearly and with confidence. The teaching of Humanae Vitae has not been preached and rejected; it has scarcely been preached. It is a part of the treasure of the Church because it is a part of the teaching of Christ through the ages and offers a vision true to our essential nature and worthy of the spirit of man.
To the young especially, a Christian view of love and friendship will be a challenge worth taking up. It will make sense of their thirst for something deeper and truer in human loving than the cynical and exploitative trash that they are so often given. To explain that sex is for family in a state of loving will help them to avoid the confusions that they see in so many of their peers. To give a full vision of chastity and its beauty is a gift that we should not deny to another generation of the Church. If we apologise for the Church's teaching, He does not need us to.