Morality: Is it a many-splendored thing?

I don't think you're asking the right question. Sister Joan has opened the window so that we can all take a look. I think the appropriate question after contemplating her column is "What do we believe?" She could easily tell us what she believes and then we wouldn't even have to think.

jayne

Jayne, you're great! Thanks for making my day.

Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1

"Catholics do not impose the faith, but propose it." First said by St. Augustine and then, again, by Pope John Paul II. The Church does not force us to repeat virtuous actions, the Holy Spirit prompts us to by virture of our Baptism and Confirmation.

Blueroyal, do I detect an animus against Sr. Joan?

You say that "she focusses on travel laws in Ireland as a way of showing her support for such issues as abortion and gay marriage, both the things that the church has made very clear are absolutely evil."

What Sr. Joan actually writes is this:

"Nothing is simple. Unfortunately, almost nothing is one-dimensional either. It's precisely the complexity and multiple levels of any social question that threaten both the moral and the social consensus of societies. There's a lot of truth on most sides of every question....

To many people, for instance, abortion is about taking human life and so is clearly murder. Capital punishment is the application of justice and is, therefore, moral. Homosexuality is simply 'natural' and therefore not immoral."

In what way does the preceding statement endorse gay marriage? It actually seems to say that the discussion of homosexuality is being reduced to a simplicity that betrays its complexity by those who say that homosexuality is simply natural and not immoral.

It seems merely decent--not to say, ethical--to respect the words people speak and write, when we disagree with them.

I hear Sr. Joan simply defending long-standing Catholic tradition, which has always insisted that an act cannot be evaluated on the basis of the act alone, but that all moral evaluation of an act must also comprise evaluation of the situation in which the act occurred and the intent of the one doing the act.

The fundamentalism of acts-centered analysis of morality (driven by political considerations) betrays Catholic tradition.

William D. Lindsey

"'Obviously, the moral and the legal take on a different hue in different environments.'

From where I stand, lacking the moral clarity to identify the absolute (such as abortion) is sad."

What you say here echoes a conversation we had on my Advent posting thread, SaintandSinner.

There, you asked me, "Does your opinion of the common good require accepting gravely sinful acts by members of the community?"

I replied to your question, but you seem to have let the dialogue drop when I did so.

Perhaps you could re-read my reply on that other thread, since it seems very pertinent to what Sr. Joan is discussing here. I point out that

"It would violate the common good to impose on the public sphere any one religious body's view of what is 'gravely sinful' and require everyone to accept that definition, without public dialogue that permits the contributions of all. To my way of thinking, a society seeking the common good would ask how the 'gravely sinful act' affects society as a whole. If it can be shown that this act diminishes or undermines the common good, then society might consider banning the act. But it would come to that conclusion not because the act is gravely sinful, but because it harms or undermines the common good."

The case I offered for your consideration is Catholic teaching on masturbation. The magisterium teaches--as a moral absolute--that masturbation is always and everywhere a gravely sinful act, because it thwarts the purpose of human sexuality, which is to conceive new life.

I asked you if you think there is anything to be gained by imposing this moral absolute on our whole society , through laws banning and punishing masturbation. Would the imposition of that moral absolute serve the common good, or not?

We may hold our moral absolutes. If we are Catholic and accept all magisterial teaching, that means holding the position on masturbation above.

It's another thing altogether to ask whether we should seek to impose those moral absolutes on all of society, through control of the legal system. The real question here, it seems to me, is whether coercion or invitation is the more appropriate path for the church to take, in dealing with moral absolutes and civil society.

Would you agree?

Was much gained on behalf of Catholic values, do you think, when many Catholics, including, I recall, members of your own community, kept vigil outside Terri Schiavo's care facility as she died? Did that behavior, in the final analysis, convince our society that it is never allowable to remove nutrition from a person whose brain has decayed and who is being kept "alive" by artificial means?

These are important questions, it seems to me. The course the church will chart in transmitting its core moral values to civil society depends on how we answer them. Coercion? Invitation?

Despite many attempts to enforce the coercive path, including attempts of bishops to use the Eucharist as a political weapon to make people vote right, the coercive option doesn't seem to have been conspicuously successful.

People will go on thinking and talking. And that thinking and discussion will also inevitably involve critical questions about the moral absolutes themselves, no matter how much coercion is applied. That is, such thinking and talking will go on in societies in which the church doesn't have the power to torture people for heresy or burn them at the stake for raising critical questions about the church's teaching....

William D. Lindsey

I was watching a Mo'nique comedy special filmed at a women's prison. They said the most frequent violations of prison codes were masturbating and fighting. A perfect example of moralism vs. the common good. If they withdrew the ban on masturbation, I bet dollars to doughnuts the incidents of fighting (and harming each other) would go way down.

RE: This issue of moral absolutes...

The Church is set up to accomodate the failure to live up to moral absolutes via the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The secular legal system has no comparable mechanism within it. Furthermore, it is very difficult to legislate morality because violations are difficult to detect. For example, were abortion illegal, how could illegal abortions be identified and punished in such a way that it would have any beneficial effect on society? It seems to me that the cure for immorality would be worse for society than the immoral act itself.

HopingvsHope said:
"It's another thing altogether to ask whether we should seek to impose those moral absolutes on all of society, through control of the legal system. The real question here, it seems to me, is whether coercion or invitation is the more appropriate path for the church to take, in dealing with moral absolutes and civil society.

Would you agree?"

I would agree, in principal. There has to be some resonable support in the society or chaos will ensure upon any forced measures. This does not however allow us to be lax in proclaining the truth to all who will listen and if possible to do all within our power to reduce serious sin in the world. Do you believe, short of a police state, there is any resonable means to enforce a ban on masturbation? This would seem a classic indication to teach society about the integral nature of the marital act. If laws are needed, strengthening the family would seem the best route.

All laws are by nature somewhat coersive. Would you propose that during the time that slavery was legal that we should do nothing other than educate those who would continue that practice. During WWII should we have looked the other way while the Holocaust was occuring. When the law directly opposes the moral order what should the Christian do?

HopingvsHope also said:
"That is, such thinking and talking will go on in societies in which the church doesn't have the power to torture people for heresy or burn them at the stake for raising critical questions about the church's teaching.... "

This sort of ad hominem attack on the Church is beneath you. If you wish to be taken seriously please refrain from this sort of poor behaviour.

God Bless our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI.
Peace and Good,
Your Brother in Christ (Franciscan Tertiary of Mary, Mother of the Most Blessed Sacrament)

Thanks for your reply, SaintandSinner.

You ask, "Do you believe, short of a police state, there is any resonable means to enforce a ban on masturbation?"

Actually, I don't think it would be advisable for any society to try to enforce a ban on masturbation. The fact is that people masturbate--unless scientific studies are entirely awry, most people do at some point or other in their lives.

And, even if this act is to be regarded as always and everywhere sinful, unless we would agree as a society that it would serve the common good to make masturbation illegal, I'd be inclined to leave the behavior alone. As Frannie points out, there are situations in which one may even imagine that it actually serves the common good....

Mind you, I'm aware that there have been eras in history in which attempts were made to shame or even coerce people who practiced onanism. Scientists and popular lore attributed mental illness to this practice. My own mother's idea of sex education, when her three sons reached puberty, was to have a great-aunt tell us about a man she knew who had ended up in the state mental institution for masturbating. The conversation was, of course, much more allusive than that, since sex was never mentioned in our family--but I was astute enough, as a pubescent boy, to decipher the code, and knew what the warning meant.

You say that all laws are by nature somewhat coercive. I'm not sure I agree that this is the case. And to the extent that the thrust of a legal system is to coerce people, I wonder if it's an effective legal system. The church's teaching about the common good seems to point us in another direction: building societies in which people of all walks of life and classes and races can agree on rules and regulations that serve all of our interests as well as humanly possible.

You object to my stating that the church has torture people for heresy and burn them at the stake. You call this an ad hominem attack on the Church that is beneath me.

I think we come at this point from very different angles. I am not attacking the church. I am simply noting what the church has done. It's a matter of historical record.

And I would argue that we have no business thinking or behaving today in any way that raises the ghosts of the Inquisition (or the conquest of the Americas, or the slave period). Better, it seems to me, to admit that we went down a wrong road with such behavior, and in whatever way possible, to build alliances with social groups that work, along with us, to make God's reign present in the world.

William D. Lindsey

God Bless our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI.

HopingvsHope said:
"You object to my stating that the church has torture people for heresy and burn them at the stake. You call this an ad hominem attack on the Church that is beneath me.

I think we come at this point from very different angles. I am not attacking the church. I am simply noting what the church has done. It's a matter of historical record."

Maybe I misunderstood your comment. When you said:

"People will go on thinking and talking. And that thinking and discussion will also inevitably involve critical questions about the moral absolutes themselves, no matter how much coercion is applied. That is, such thinking and talking will go on in societies in which the church doesn't have the power to torture people for heresy or burn them at the stake for raising critical questions about the church's teaching...."

I took it that you were saying whenever the Church had power over society that the 'Church' herself and not just some of her members would be doing these things. This sort of set me off I guess. I think that in every age there have been members of the Church who have abused their position. This as a very different thing than the 'Church' herself doing these things. The 'Church' is holy, the Bride of Christ and as such Jesus will santify her to present her to himself 'without spot or wrinkle'. The parable of the wheat and tares is a good example of Jesus' teachings on this.

If you meant the members of the Church have done wrong even terrible things I wholeheartedly agree and I appologize for misunderstanding you. If I understood you correctly the first time we may have to agree to disagree.

Peace and Good,
Your Brother in Christ (Franciscan Tertiary of Mary, Mother of the Most Blessed Sacrament)

God Bless our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI.

How do you propose we "make God's reign present in the world"? Jesus said (all are paraphrased) 'he who hears you hears me', 'if you love me follow my commandments', 'what you bind on earth is bound in heaven what you loose on earth is loosed in heaven'...are you listening to the heirs of the apostles?

Peace and Good,
Your Brother in Christ (Franciscan Tertiary of Mary, Mother of the Most Blessed Sacrament)

SaintandSinner, thank you for your responses. In the interest of not multiplying threads, I'll reply to your two postings in one response. I hope that's okay with you.

You ask how we make God's reign present in the world?

To my way of thinking, the answer is quite simple: by following Jesus. His preaching centers on proclaiming that the reign of God is breaking into the world through his life and ministry. It constantly invites people to repent--that is, to turn their lives around so that they can give up what keeps them from walking in discipleship.

He constantly invites us to walk in his footsteps, to do as he did.

If I understand the gospels correctly, when we do this, we make God's reign present in the world, as he did.

I read scripture and tradition to say that the church itself exists for the sake of God's reign--not vice versa. This says to me that the church really lives to put itself out of business: it lives to point to something beyond itself, to God's salvific presence in the world and to the reign of God. Its structures exist to serve its mission. When they impede its mission, they have to be changed, because they obscure the reign of God. When the church's structures and the behavior of any of its members--including its pastoral leaders--belie those core values of the reign of God, they impede the church's ability to be a sacramental sign of God's salvation in the world.

These comments link to what you say in your first posting. You say, "I took it that you were saying whenever the Church had power over society that the 'Church' herself and not just some of her members would be doing these things." You rightly note that when the church has done atrocious things, not all members of the church endorsed that behavior. I agree, of course. There have always been prophetic figures who resisted when the "institutional church" (to use a glib phrase that is not always very precise) abused its power and made life horrible for some people.

But your observation does accurately reflect a point I was implying. Personally, I think it is all to the good when the church does NOT have the kind of coercive power over society that tempts the pastoral leaders of the church or many church members to abuse power. I agree with the English Catholic historian Lord Acton when he says that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The more power we vest in anyone--or anything--the more likelihood that this anyone or anything will abuse that power.

I also should note that, in my reading of the gospels and tradition, the church is not the sole locus of God's salvific presence in the world, and therefore not the only means by which the reign of God is made present in the world. I believe that the Spirit and the activity of Spirit vastly exceed the boundaries of the church. Sometimes secular movements to end oppression of others may point the way to the reign of God more convincingly than the church itself does. In some cases, the church itself brings up the rear in seeing how the reign of God is breaking into the world. In these cases, it eventually accepts Spirit-inspired movements that have originated outside the church, either in other churches or religions, or in society itself.

I think that one can find a very traditional support for this theology in Augustine's City of God, as well as in the documents of Vatican II--which are in so many respects an attempt to retrieve scriptural and patristic images of the church as the sacramental sign of God's salvific presence in the world.

William D. Lindsey

God Bless our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI.

I agree with much of what you said. I would just make a distinction between the Petrine and Marian aspects of the Church. The Petrine is passing and prone to weakness (although still authoritative). The Marian is eternal and reflects our ultimate destiny with God. They are cooperative and not opposed.

Peace and Good,
Your Brother in Christ (Franciscan Tertiary of Mary, Mother of the Most Blessed Sacrament)

Well put, Deb. That's exactly what I gleaned from the column as well. It isn't moral relativism just to listen to someone who has an opposite viewpoint on issues, as some might think. Maybe that's something women are willing to do more often than men, I don't know... Compassionate listening is perhaps also the best way to begin to win over those who have taken positions we don't agree with.

Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1

Yes, I agree, also. Compassion and deferred judgemnt is necessary if the listener is to be a loving listener.

Sr. Joan writes: “Nothing is simple. Unfortunately, almost nothing is one-dimensional either. It's precisely the complexity and multiple levels of any social question that threaten both the moral and the social consensus of societies. There's a lot of truth on most sides of every question.”

Yes, and there are a lot of circumstances that lead to a person’s truth. It would be true for me to say that abortion is absolutely wrong, unacceptable, and immoral. But if I were a 15 year old girl who had been raped, lived in the bowery, and had no parents and only drug dealers for peers, then my belief and my perspective might be profoundly different. I may say that homosexuality is wrong under all circumstances. But the man or woman born with a whole different genetic makeup and inborn predilection for the same sex may argue differently, and I would be hastened to listen if I would be non judgmental, which is what Christ would ask of me. Of course, this does “threaten the moral consensus.” In other words, it’s easier to “go by the book” and swim along with the status quo rather than cause a ripple in the stream. But, is that which appears to be harmonious always that which creates peace? If for example, I am so opposed to homosexuality that I let it be a reason to hate a person or cause them scandal and hurt, have I not also been immoral? If I hate the person who has had an abortion or do violence to an abortion clinic, then haven’t I also been immoral? Are violence and hatred and prejudice immoral?

If we really think something or someone is immoral in their behavior, are we subject to the spiritual work of “chastising the sinner?” In this age, are any of us really innocent enough to do this? If I have seen the world today and have not done a kindness or even uttered a prayer for the poor, the lonely, the homeless, the unwanted, have I really been moral? If I have hedonistically glutted myself today but have not picked up a phone to call someone who I know will benefit from my voice, can I really put anyone else to the test? These are small examples of what can be done.

jayne

“So looking at that, and knowing that even religious interpretation of morality has changed over time, what else can morality be but societal agreement that some behaviors are acceptable and some are not.”

I see what you’re saying here, Zack . And this has always been precisely my dilemma. I question how morals can change. I wonder if cultures of people are really the one’s who decide this. That would be to say that popular opinion dictates what is right or wrong. And that would also be to say that cultures of people ultimately have authority over religious authority. On the other hand, could it be that a culture of people is able over time to accept what was once deemed scandalous and immoral, and therefore render it moral by appearances and argument. This is possible, but does it really change the morality of the act? Is it possible for a national conscience to erode? Is it possible that a people can abdicate their own decision making process to the point that only what is popular becomes right or moral?

jayne