Thoughts on Catholic Moral Teaching and Law

When people attack the Catholic Church and her teaching on morality, they point to laws in past eras that were brutal by our standards. They argue that these past laws show that the teaching that "X is a sin” caused brutal punishments. That presumes law and morality are the same, which is false. Not all sins are against the law, and sometimes law interferes with moral behavior. St. Thomas Aquinas makes this distinction:

Now human law is framed for a number of human beings, the majority of whom are not perfect in virtue. Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices, from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained: thus human law prohibits murder, theft and suchlike.

 

 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, STh., I-II q.96 a.2 resp. trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne,).

In other words, Not every sin was against the law in Christian societies. Morality distinguishes between right and wrong behavior. Morality tells what we must do or must not do regardless of what the law says. If theft is wrong, then we must not steal even if the law allows it. But while morality deals with what we must or must not do, law deals with what penalty we give when people violate morality in such a way that harms human society. Morality does not change over time, but laws can change over time.

Morality does not change from saying “X is good” to “X is wrong.” Theft was wrong a thousand years ago, is wrong today, and will be wrong a thousand years from now. Even so, law from a thousand years ago based on the morality that theft is wrong was different than the law today and the law based on that morality a thousand years from now will be different from the law today. We can and must adjust law when situations merit a gentler response, provided that gentler response is just.

For example, the use of the Death Penalty is not unjust by nature. But when society and technology advances to the point that the criminal can be safely contained without using it, then we can adjust the law so the death penalty is not easily applied. The change of the law does not mean Church teaching on the death penalty is wrong. It means we can adjust the law when the death penalty is not needed to protect the innocent from the criminal.

That’s assuming that the law is based on morality. Sometimes it comes from the vicious customs of a society. For example, slavery, lynching and segregation in the United States, Even though America began as a Christian nation, they adopted vicious customs which had been already condemned by the Church. For example, the Church condemned the reemergence of slavery in 1435—long before the Europeans encountered the New World. Despite this fact, unjust laws continued to treat blacks as property and even some Catholics in the United States owned slaves (just as how some Catholics support abortion today).

Often times, laws stayed in place from before a nation became Christian. Burning at the stake was a pagan Germanic practice. So were trials by ordeal. Catholics did not invent them. Should Christians have changed them? Yes. Do they show that some high ranking Catholics did wrong things? Yes. Do these things show that Catholics were worse than others? They absolutely do not! What they tell us is Christians can be as blind to cultural vices as everyone else.

When it comes to crafting or reforming law, we need to remember three things:

1. We must be aware of objective right and wrong. 
2. We must know which wrongs harm society.
3. We must assess the proportionate penalty for doing wrongs that harm society.

The Church does these things. She teaches us what right and wrong are. She warns us of wrongs harming society. She also speaks out against laws that are unjustly harsh or lenient. Unfortunately today, just as in the past, some Catholics have not kept these things in mind and instead passed laws which fail one or more of these criteria. But what people overlook is that the Church also expands our moral knowledge. In applying it to new situations, the Church brings us to deeper understandings we did not have in past centuries.

We cannot create just laws by eliminating our Christian moral roots. We can only create them by being vigilant, studying why things are right or wrong and finding just ways of protecting society from harm.

Pope Francis, Mercy, and Misrepresentation

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The Surreal World of Radical Traditionalism

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Seeking Truth: The Foolishness of "That's Just YOUR Opinion"

I find myself shaking my head in disbelief when I come across people who write off Catholic teaching with some variant of “that’s just your opinion.” I shake my head because rationally that means we can write off their views of right and wrong on the same grounds. If one rejects a Christian’s arguments on these grounds, one can reject the arguments of an atheist on the same grounds. Under those assumptions, we can’t find truth about anything and we can only use legal or physical force to compel anyone to accept something. It’s ironic that people who claim to champion reason and enlightenment should promote a throwback to “Do what I say or I will bash you with my club!"

It’s not surprising that people believe this tripe. I recall a teacher in High School once give us a couplet: "Opinions are never right or wrong. Opinions are only weak or strong.“ The couplet confuses “opinion” with “preference” or “feeling,” leading to people thinking that a religious view on abortion is no different than a preference for a flavor of ice cream. Many dictionaries give that interpretation to opinion as well. But that is only one of the meanings.

An opinion on matters of right and wrong, as Merriam-Webster describes it, “implies a conclusion thought out yet open to dispute.” This means that the value of the opinion depends on how it matches reality. A person may dispute what another says about right and wrong, but the value of the dispute also depends on how it fits reality. This means when people disagree on moral obligation, we have an obligation to investigate what is right, not simply dismissing what we dislike.

The problem is, the modern rejection of Christian morality is not based on truth or facts. Opponents distort Christian teaching and opponents accuse us of bad will (bigotry, etc.). Since opponents misrepresent our teachings and motives, they do not refute us. Nor do they prove we hate people belonging to certain groups popular with political and cultural elites. What they do is slander us, whether they do so out of ignorance or out of hostility.

To avoid slander or misrepresentation, people must investigate claims to see if a claim is true. If it is not true, we must stop repeating it. If it is true, we must act in accord with it. For example, when a culture learns that human beings are equal regardless of ethnicity, it can no longer treat some ethnicities as less than human. That means we must abandon slavery, segregation and racial hatred.

Those are obvious examples. Few people support those evils any longer. But people forget that today’s elites defend today’s evils in the same way that elites in past centuries defended slavery and segregation. For example, abortion denies the humanity of a fetus in the same way that slavery denied the humanity of a certain ethnicity. On the other hand, people assume moral objections against behaviors are the same thing as racism in the past. For example, some people see the Church opposing “same sex marriage” as the modern version of racism and segregation. But the Church does not see people with same sex attraction as less than human, nor justify mistreatment (legal, physical or in other ways) against them. 

What the Church does do is deny that de facto unions are the same thing as marriage, so we should not treat them like marriage. In making this denial, the Church offers definitions about the purpose of marriage and family. A person might disagree with how the Church defines these things, but one has to show that the Church speaks falsely in order to refute her. But proving that is not done by shouting words like “homophobe” or “bigot” (the common response).

Reason demands we examine the truth of claims and not shout down things we dislike hearing. If Catholics oppose abortion on the grounds that the unborn child is a human person, then accusing Catholics of being “anti-woman” is speaking falsely. If Catholics oppose “same sex marriage” on the grounds that marriage between one man and one woman open to the possibility of raising children is the basis of the family, it is wrong to use epithets like “homophobe” and “hateful."

Before anyone asks, yes, this means Christians must also use reason and examine truth, not shouting down opponents. Yes, some Christians do make the rest look bad by rashly judging motives and misrepresenting arguments. That is not how God calls us to behave. We must refute falsehood with truth, not with the tactics of those who hate us. An educated Catholic, faithful to the teachings of his Church will deplore the tactics of the Westboro Baptist Church as being unjust. If a Catholic should embrace those tactics, he does wrong.

But because the Church does oblige us to behave rightly, blaming the Church for those who behave wrongly is unjust. There is a difference between Catholics behaving hypocritically by ignoring Church teaching and Catholics behaving badly because they follow Church teaching. Assessing where blame lies calls for us to discover the truth in a situation, not merely assuming an unpopular opinion caused bad behavior.

But, doing that will force people to recognize that their accusations against the Church are false. That’s why people will continue to treat Catholic teaching as odious opinions instead of seeking the truth about us.

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Misreading Amoris Lætitia: When Catholics Don't Know that they Don't Know

Imagine this scenario. A doctor heading a prestigious medical association produces an official document involving health and dealing with helping people afflicted by difficult situations. In response, a group of people show up on the internet, denouncing this document, accusing him of incompetence, and claiming his article goes against all medical knowledge that preceded it. Would you accept the opinions of these people on their say so? Or would you look into their qualifications to comment on the matter before accepting their views over the head of the medical association?

What if you found out that these critics have been hostile to this doctor from the start, had no medical background, and constantly took his words out of context? What if you discovered these critics based their criticisms on the belief that they knew more about medicine than the head of this medical association? Could any sane person accept the words of these critics over the words of this doctor?

I believe we are witnessing this scenario in the Catholic Church today. A certain faction of Catholics are attacking the Holy Father (who has much more authority than the head of a medical association) on account of his efforts to explore the meaning of Christian marriage and his seeking solutions aimed at helping people who are in irregular marriages find reconciliation or, at the least, encourage them to take part in the life of the Church in ways they licitly can. This faction loves to pull out certain mined quotes from older Church documents, contrast them with Pope Francis, and argue the Pope is a heretic.

The problem with their tactic is, it displays lack of knowledge about the Church applying norms of moral theology to specific cases. The Pope is not introducing something new here. He is not calling for the change of moral norms. He is reminding pastors of the need to investigate each person or couple to see how their situations line up with the moral norms.

Catholic moral theology tells us that for a sin to be mortal, we need three things: Grave matter, full knowledge that it is sinful, and freely choosing to do it anyway. If one of those things is missing, then the sin is not mortal. That doesn’t mean there is no sin or there is no reason to change, and the Pope never claims there is no sin and does call on people to change! I think we have forgotten what a mortal sin is. If we remembered, his words would not shock us.

The Church does teach that sexual sins involve grave matter, and the Pope recognizes this. What he calls pastors to do is discover if the knowledge and will is present. If a couple in an irregular marriage was ignorant of Church teaching or their obligations, then they are not willfully choosing to do what is wrong. Yes, the wrong exists. But the Church is not a proctor only tasked with giving a pass/fail grade to couples’ marriage situations. The Church is obeying a call to go out, find the lost sheep, and bring them back to the fold. That’s not always easy [*]. But Pope Francis hasn’t just made something up. In fact, he brings up the Summa Theologica where St. Thomas Aquinas looks at the lack of knowledge in some people or cultures. I’ll quote a larger section of the article [†] he cites because I think it helps make the Holy Father’s point

The speculative reason, however, is differently situated in this matter, from the practical reason. For, since the speculative reason is busied chiefly with necessary things, which cannot be otherwise than they are, its proper conclusions, like the universal principles, contain the truth without fail. The practical reason, on the other hand, is busied with contingent matters, about which human actions are concerned: and consequently, although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects. Accordingly then in speculative matters truth is the same in all men, both as to principles and as to conclusions: although the truth is not known to all as regards the conclusions, but only as regards the principles which are called common notions. But in matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not the same for all, as to matters of detail, but only as to the general principles: and where there is the same rectitude in matters of detail, it is not equally known to all.

 

 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, n.d.).  I-II q.94 a.4 resp.

Applied to the Apostolic Exhortation, the fact that a marriage is irregular is not disputed. But defects in the knowledge of the people or culture involved may change the level of culpability, and the means of helping them may be different from other cases. Not because the Church is changing her rules, but because society has grown so ignorant of right and wrong that people enter morally wrong situations without knowing they are wrong. The result is, people who do not know this are accusing the Pope of inventing something which was, in fact, long known in the 13th century.

The whole thing is a case of Catholics not only not knowing the answer, but not knowing that they don’t know the answer. The problem is, people who do not know an answer but think they do are less wise than those who do not know and know that they do not know. Socrates put it this way:

“I am wiser than this man; for neither of us really knows anything fine and good, but this man thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not think I do either. I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either.” (Apologia 21d)

 

 Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes Translated by Harold North Fowler; Introduction by W.R.M. Lamb., vol. 1 (Medford, MA: Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1966).

The person seeking the truth can find it, but only if they search for it. In this case, when we find something unfamiliar in the Pope’s words, we should strive to understand how the Pope means his words. We should not just assume that our preconceived notions as Americans match how the rest of the world thinks. We should not assume our degrees earned as laity qualifies us to match wits with the confessor trained to assess individual cases. I have personally watched pastors give insights into moral theology which went beyond what I learned to earn a Masters in the subject.

We cannot assume that our education or personal reading is adequate in any subject lets us interpret the new information we discover without study. When there are experts in a field, we should learn from them. In the case of the Catholic Church, these experts are the magisterium who decide how to best apply the timeless truths to today’s problems. Magisterium is a key word here. Yes, there are theologians, bloggers, and secular news agencies who distort Church teaching. Their false interpretations do not make the actual teachings of the Pope or bishops false. Our personal reading of Church documents from before Vatican II does not trump the magisterial authority to interpret these documents. In fact, when there is a conflict with official Church documents, we ought to assume our interpretation is wrong. Even in unofficial things like interviews and press conferences where our assent is not required, we ought to recognize the difference of language and culture can be a stumbling block.

I would sum up by saying we must not be overconfident in our own knowledge and skill in interpreting. We should know our limitations and know when we do not know something. When we learn of our ignorance, we must strive to learn from reliable teachers, not those we happen to agree with. In the case of the Catholic Church, the ultimate judges of what is in keeping with our faith are our Pope and the bishops in communion with him. Those who reject the magisterium are not qualified judges and cannot pass judgment on the magisterium.

If we do not know that, we cannot consider ourselves wise as Catholics.

___________________________

[*] For example, Priest-blogger Fr. Dwight Longenecker recently wrote an article (found HERE), giving us three pastoral cases of people in an irregular marriage. He tells us he knows the answers to these questions (I think they may be textbook cases) but does not tell us the answers. Why? Because he wants us to recognize how difficult cases can be, especially when we do not have the training to make these assessments.

[†] My translation is older and so slightly different than it appears in Amoris Lætitia ¶304, but the meaning is the same as what the Holy Father cites.