O'CONNELL,
Timothy E.
Principles
for a Catholic Morality
Harper &
Row, London 1978, 233 pp.
1. GENERAL
COMMENTS
a) This is not a work of moral
theology, in the sense of a study of ethics reasoned out from the basis of
Revelation. The study of received truths is not the main working
reference. Insofar as Revelation enters (which is very little), the emphasis is
on the need "of reconstituting the inner meaning of revelation for
successive audiences". In this sense, one reads on p. 5 that the Church
"must continually restate the Good News". "Restating" is
obviously a different enterprise to simply "preaching".
b) The scope and spirit of the work
is borne out in the following passages where Christian moral teaching is
unambiguously reduced to a human level:
"Christian ethics... is a human
task seeking human wisdom about the human conduct of human affairs" (40)
"Be human! No more and no less:
Christ permits it, and Christ demands it. That is the central conviction of the
Christian faith. And it is the fundamental premise of the following principles
of Christian ethics" (41)
"Christian ethics is human
ethics, no more and no less" (39) (no place is allowed here for treatment
of the supernatural virtues)
c) In Chapter 1, he lists
"resources" or criteria for the pursuit of his study. The Magisterium
is mentioned, in a passing way, as one; but he adds that three — history,
Scripture, and dogmatics — "surely deserve more than passing
attention" and proposes to deal with each, but in reality he attributes to
them little importance[1].
His real criterion is stated clearly enough: "meaning"[2] (though
it turns out that by this he really means "experience"): "the
ultimate test of our discussions will be whether they are meaningful, in the
best sense of the word. Do they seem faithful to our experience of
revelation?... Do they speak in terms which resonate with our human experience?"[3] On
p. 40 he insists that moral theology (which he has just expressly reduced to
moral philosophy) "tests its own conclusions against the experience of
mankind", and adds, "that is what it means to say that our ethics is
human" (41).
d) His ultimate criterion is
"our own experience". Thus, having taken a traditional moral concept
— the human act — he begins "a process of nuancing", above all
through his theory of knowledge. "As a result, we achieved a fair
approximation of our own experience" (57). "We must cultivate and
nurture existence, we must be agents of creation and not of destruction. This
is what it means to be moral" (163).
e) While he says that "it has
been our practice in this book to link our contemporary reflections to the
traditions of Catholic moral theology" (119), he has done so basically in
order to contradict or reject these latter traditions.
f) In the chapter "Conscience
and church authority" (93ss), the Magisterium is reduced to "moral
leadership"[4], no
doubt specially qualified because of its being a "cross-cultured
institution"; and because the Holy Spirit, "at least to some extent,
guides and illuminates its actions". Church authority has no mission
towards what he terms "conscience/3" (which guides the "concrete
judgment of specific persons pertaining to their own immediate action"
(71) and is infallible), but to "conscience/2", i.e. a
person's "perception of values". There one should "take the time
to respectfully listen to the insights of the Church". Fundamentally,
however, "the Church finds itself in the same situation as the individual
moral person", i.e. in search of (not in possession of) true moral values
(96).
g) He claims to present a
"Thomistic" understanding (in contrast with a "Suarezian"
understanding) of human law according to which a person not only may but "must
forsake the letter of the law if it does not actually serve the common good in
a particular case" (190). Since each one interprets the common good
subjectively, it is no wonder that he thrice says on p. 193 that this
"Thomistic" vision "runs the risk of encouraging anarchy".
It is very doubtful that St. Thomas would recognize himself in this
presentation. It completely ignores:
· Thomas' teaching that men are made
good by obeying laws, and that this can be true even in the case of laws given
by tyrants: I-II, q. 92, art. 1
· Thomas' teaching on how human laws
bind in conscience: ibid. q. 96, art. 4
· Thomas' restrictive approach to the
possibility of acting beyond the letter of the law: ibid. art. 6
· Thomas' teaching that the purpose of
human law is the common good more than the good of individuals (I-II, q. 96,
art. 1); and that law would be of no use if it had to bend to every individual
measure (ibid. ad 2).
h) The tendency to reduce moral theology to general ethical principles is evidenced by the fact that, while the author acknowledges (7) that he is not going to deal with "Special Moral Theology (De preceptis)", his work is presented in the Introduction and in the revews on the back cover as a new substitute for the old manuals.
i) The tone of the book is summed up
in a phrase on p. 177: "in this way we grant the weakness and inadequacy
of much religious and ethical language, and at the same time continue to affirm
the reality of moral obligation". The effect of his presentation is to
leave the reader with the impression on the one hand that concrete moral
formulations (for instance, of the Natural Law, as expressed in the Ten
Commandments) are useless as norms, and on the other that one is being
"moral" as long as one follows the norm of sincerly trying to maximize
the good, and minimize the evil, which each action causes to oneself and to
one's neighbor.
j) Chapter 5 on "Human
Action" is confused. However, its conclusion, for catechetics, is clear
enough: "a speculative style of teaching will not satisfy the needs of children,
neither will it satisfy the needs of adults" (55). Moral education must be
taught in a more evaluative (non-scientific, non-objective, more personal and
existential) way.
2. Denial
of the existence of absolute moral norms in Scripture (see also Section 3)
a) Curran, in his Introduction.,
claims that not only is Scripture "historically and culturally
conditioned", but so is the Magisterium (and therefore in need of
interpretation), and so in fact is human nature: "the acceptance of
historicity calls for an evolving and changing understanding of human
existence"
The author's opening pages (3-4)
echo and intensify this. Jesus lived in his own 'historicity', and we live in
ours; hence the duty of giving constantly new interpretation to the truth of
revelation.
b) The "moral
proclamations" of the Bible need to be "translated for our time"
p. 8.
c) Ch. 12: "Moral law in
Scripture". According to what "scholars tells us", the
importance of the Decalogue is "not precisely ethical" (129); and the
individual commands mean much less than hitherto supposed.
He says the contribution of Jesus
was to interiorize the two main commandments of the Old Law. He makes no
mention of the "New Commandment" of Jesus.
d) The historicity of the Gospels is
treated with reserve; there can be "little doubt" that the term 'the
Kingdom' goes back to Jesus himself (21-22); there is a "strong
likelihood" that repentance "really belongs to the message preached
by Jesus himself" (23)
e) While "law" is admitted
to be part of Jesus' message, it is presented as being decidedly
"interior" (24-25). There is no mention of the imperative element
involved in: "whoever listens to you"... "Unless you eat the flesh
of the Son of Man"...; "Do this in memory of me", etc.
f) He appears unconvinced by the
traditional interpretation of Jesus's prohibition of divorce and remarriage;
but leaves the matter to the sacramental and biblical theologians; no mention
is made of the Magisterium (167).
3.
"Subjective" morality, based on the non-absolute nature of
"material" moral norms
a) Moral values are
"being-values" ("be chaste", "be just"). While
often proclaimed in "formal" norms, they are not of much practical
worth as guides since they are "really little more than synonyms for
goodness itself" (159); "they do not tell us precisely what to do...
they tell us nothing we did not already know" (163).
Premoral values are "doing-values" (contained
in "material" norms: "Repay your debts"; "Do not
kill"); "their achievement is not utterly essential to being a good
person" (164).
b) Material moral norms simply point
to (pre-moral) values contained in an action ("aspects of a particular
situation which should be noted and taken into account": 159); but they
are not absolute ("Such norms do not settle personal issues": 164).
One can only be absolute about the type of person we should be ("be
good"), not about the type of actions we should perform.
c) Such norms are
"material", because they "seek to describe concretely the
material from which human situations are made" (157): i.e. the complex
interplay of different values (present in the same moral situation) in view of
which we must make our proportional judgments. "But inasmuch as material
norms point at concrete values that reside in the moral situation, and inasmuch
as those values coexist with others which may sometimes have to take
precedence, such norms must always be open to exceptions" (162).
d) Even if a "Do this"
norm (e.g. "tell the truth") indicates a pre-moral value, it is an
insufficient indication of morality because it ignores other factors (other
pre-moral values) that are sure to be involved in the action contemplated, and
are "in competition with one another" (163). This world is
essentially one of conflicting values, and "morality is constituted by the
humane resolution of their claims" (224, note 8).
e) Material moral norms are not
final criteria for determing the moral action, because there can always be a
proportionate reason for not respecting the material norm ("Do not
kill" = "Do not kill" without a proportionate reason). The end
result (the consequence) becomes the criterion; but in order to judge the value
of that end result, there is no further criterion left except the subjective
view of the agent. The practical effect is to leave the person who absorbs
these ideas with standards such as: "Do not engage in pre-marital sex,
without proportionate reason"; "Do not commit abortion, without
proportionate reason".
f) He claims that the end or the
consequences do justify the means, at least where these consequences "are
predominantly positive and premorally valuable" (172). But this, along
with his rejection of any truly objective standard for judging actions, results
in moral chaos. Any action, he says, "is objectively justified only by the
fact that it really, truly does contribute to the good of the neighbor and the
self" (172). But this remains a matter of purely subjective evaluation.
Everything comes back to the individual; he, with his prudence, is made
central. "The real search is not for values or norms, it is not for
maxims or principles. The real search is for the prudent man or woman"
(173); but his prudence is deprived of the help of any objective or certain
principles.
g) His distinction of conscience/l,
conscience/2 and conscience/3 will be quite confusing for the average reader.
He may or may not grasp the (author's) point that conscience/2 "deals with
the specific perception of values", while conscience/3 is "the
concrete judgment pertaining to our immediate actions", but he will be
left with the clear statement that conscience/3 must be followed, because
it is infallible, and therefore we do not have to worry about having
acted immorally, even if what we have done is (objectively) wrong! "Is it
possible that in following that conscience we may do that which is
(objectively) wrong? Most certainly. Are we thus justified in saying that in
doing so we have acted in a (morally) wrong way? By no means. It is the
quintessence of human morality that we should do what we believe to be
right, and avoid what we believe to be wrong" (92).
h) Few people are going to advert to
the confusion underlying his thought which is to be seen in the statement:
"the judgment of conscience/3 remains infallible. That is to say, it
constitutes the final norm by which a person's actions must be guided"
(91-92). That a certain conscience (i.e. one that commands or prohibits)
must be followed, is classical doctrine. But the classical writers did not lead
their readers (as does our author here) into assuming that the sincerity of
conscience provides a guaranteee that it is "infallible".
i) His distinction between
"agents" and "persons". The scholastics simply studied what
a person does; but since what a person does never really reveals or constitutes
what he is, they thus failed ever to get to grips with the inner reality of the
person (although in his own theory too, the person practically escapes
knowledge, being at most the object of "non-reflex" knowledge (61)).
j) His theory of how the person
exercises freedom: humans-as-agents or as-doers (on whom alone the Scholastics
centered their attention) choose between one category of thing or another, and
so exercise categorical freedom. Humans-as-persons, however (on which the new
theology focuses), exercise transcendental freedom. It is only "through
some perversity" (62) that one can exercise this transcendental freedom
badly, by actually saying No to reality, to oneself, to God. Thus along with
what are simply agent or doer-decisions ("decisions about this or that
action"), there is also the person-decision, the "decision about me
myself" (63); actions "which arise from the very core of ourselves as
persons" (65).
k) To be "true to oneself"
(whatever than can mean as a norm of moral conduct) is presented as a sure
criterion for the Christian. "If we are true to our selves... then we are
true to the law of Christ" (208). "It is impossible, within the
understanding of fundamental option... which we have seen, for us to be
positively related to ourselves and our world while yet alienated from our
God" (70).
l) His defence of "I gotta be
me": "Nothing takes precedence over the moral challenges of my own
unique person and my own particular life" (194). St. Thomas, along with
the whole line of healthy Catholic theology, suggests the opposite: that each
of us is likely to be far wiser, far more fulfilled as a person, and far more
pleasing to God if we learn to put the common good over concern for our own
unique person.
m) It is not correct to say (as he
does on p. 57) that traditional treatment of morals was "flawed"
because it begins with the human act and not with the human person. The
scholastic manuals, along with St. Thomas, tend to begin with man and his call
to blessedness, and then, go on to consider his acts, along with the
personal or individual elements (both internal and external) that modify the
"objective" value of his actions.
n) "Speculative knowledge, like
scientific knowledge, is proveable. And what is more, it ought to be
proved" (52) "Speculative knowledge is... subservient to the
knower... Evaluative knowledge... is not subservient to the knower, but rather
superior... it is in a certain sense the most objective of all knowledge... At
the same time, though, evaluative knowledge is deeply personal... And thus it
cannot be shared, at least in its entirety" (52-53).
o) Great philosophical confusion
characterizes this presentation of knowledge. Knowledge that is scientific or
provable, is subordinated in worth to artistic or 'evaluative' knowledge; and
there is the clear suggestion (especially in view of the example given on p.
54) that love can only be experienced subjectively; that it cannot be proved
"objectively" by external actions.
p) While this chapter is confused,
his conclusion is clear: "When the exercise of liberum arbitrium
brings us to the moment of decision, we are not deciding among facts"
((i.e. on the basis of 'speculative' knowledge)). "We are deciding among
values" ((on the basis of 'evaluative' knowledge)). "We are choosing
good over bad, or good over less good, trying to respond to reality as we find
it" (55). One is struck here not only by the subjectiveness of the
criterion given, but also by the apparent assumption that our choice is always
of 'the good'. The possibility that we might choose "bad over good"
is not mentioned.
q) He rejects the idea that
something can be "wrong because it violates the Ten
Commandments". This he terms "religious legalism" (40).
4. The
denial of the existence of "intrinsically evil" actions
a) Charles Curran's Introduction is
a strong attack on the "act-centered approach" of the pre-Vatican II
manuals, giving the impression that they reduced morality to a question of mere
external conformity to law, and failed to allow for the personal element. It
could also be noted that, in the Introduction, Curran links new moral
approaches with the shift away from confessional practice, coinciding with a
lessened concern about individual acts, about sin and about whether specific
acts are (grievously) sinful (or not).
b) The book avowedly sets out to
"downplay the emphasis on the importance of the individual act" (13).
A constant idea is that concern with individual acts leads to a concern with a minimum;
and that the way to help people set their sights higher is to prescind from the
specificity of acts (16-17).
c) The author cites three types of
acts, traditionally held to be 'intrinsically evil' in all cases.
— no divorce and remarriage. He
holds this is not forbidden absolutely by the natural law, and questions the
traditional interpretation of Jesus' words prohibiting divorce;
— no direct taking of innocent life;
in exemplifying the difficulties he finds, he refers to capital punishment (he
makes no reference here to abortion; but it is interesting to read on p. 170
that something is morally to be judged "murder" when "the deed
and circumstances, taken together, yield a predominance of premoral
disvalue");
— no sexual intercourse, outside
normal intercourse within marriage. It is striking that, while he tries to make
an argument against the 'intrinsece malum' concept as applied to the previous
two instances, here he makes no argument at all. He just denies
that there can be no exceptions to whatever rules may be seen as fitting here:
"that this area of human life should be viewed as involving absolute and
exceptionless standards different from those of the rest of life does not make
sense"; this, he says, would be mere "legalism which does injustice
to both the Creator and his creation" (168).
d) Having said that the distinction
between "human acts" and "acts of man" is "truly
fundamental" (46), he goes on to say that most of our human actions fall
into neither category (47).
e) Mortal sin, identified with
fundamental option, he presents as rare; as being a conscious 'declared choice
for alienation' (from oneself, the world and God) (72-3; 77).
f) He denies that "seriously
wrong" actions, which we quickly do and quickly repent of, can be mortal
sins.
g) He concludes that it is
impossible to distinguish between mortal and venial sins (78).
5.
Intention as the sole criterion of the gravity of sin
a) "Morality... is the mystery
of intention" (28)
b) He rejects "objective"
morality (the categorization of acts as right or wrong) as useless
("morality... is not a quality of deeds but a quality of persons").
Subjective morality is what matters; and then "motive is the only
determinant of the morality" (79). "Understood from the side of
subjective morality, motive is not one of three fonts of morality, it is the
only font of morality" (170).
c) He is emphatic in presenting his
theory of "venial sin with grave matter" (217); if we are not using
our transcendental freedom in an action, and thereby making a fundamental
option, then the "objective" gravity of the act (a concept which he
regards as of little use for subjective morality) has no importance. Since the
"inner core" of our being is not involved, the action is, at most, a
venial sin: "In that case we simply have a person who has committed a
venial sin in the course of doing something which objectively speaking, is
gravely wrong" (80).
d) As long as the "inner
core" of the person is alright, individual flawed acts do not really
matter (75-77).
e) He proposes the
"proportionality" of the natural law (152-154). The rule for moral
behavior is to maximize the good and minimize the evil in each action. BUT the
whole of his approach has left us without any way of knowing what is good, and
what is evil.
f) In the end he makes the concept
of "human act" seem totally unreal, for he demands that it be totally
free from any circumstances or conditioning factors. "habits eliminate
from activity the freedom required for a fully human act" (50).
g) Only "fundamental
options" are "fully human" acts (74).
6. Other
questionable passages
a) Jesus is not presented
unequivocally as God. "the school of love is God himself, and that
Jesus whom he has sent" (26); "we will present an understanding of
Christ which is common in contemporary theology" (31).
Jesus is presented as the (infinite)
Word of the Father, spoken to communicate to us; and therefore this Word
"is both representative of the speaker and proportioned to the
listeners" (33).
"Jesus is God and man made
one" (37): an equivocal christological statement; as is that of next page:
"It is the personhood of Jesus Christ, both God and human..."
b) Ch 4: the way of presenting the
Incarnation tends to make the whole created world (and not principally the
humanity of Christ) the instrument of salvation.
c) His well-expressed but
unjudicious idea that if we attempt to seek God outside this world, "we
will miss him" (39), could have a negative impact on readers who are
following a religious vocation.
d) Careless expressions: the Church
"is not really... an institution" "The Church is human, no less
and no more" (39).
e) He wrongly says that the
"ordinary magisterium" is "susceptible to error and therefore
fallible" (cf. LG 25 & c. 750).
f) The sacraments presented as
"peak moments of the human experience" (39).
g) The book tends to be strongly
anti-law (168), which is presented as a means by which man is burdened by
particularised demands.
It is surprising to find a serious
theologian saying: "The situation emphasized justice, and Luther was
convinced that no one is just" (16). "at least part of Jesus' mission
was to free his followers from its (the law's) curse" (24).
h) In teaching: a) that "mortal
sin is a relatively rare phenomenon"; b) that we cannot really know our
fundamental state before God (72), he deadens the spiritual struggle.
i) "it was often suggested in
the past that one could distinguish venial sin from mortal sin by the
"gravity of the matter"... the older view suggested that every
commission of a seriously wrong act involved a fundamental option" (77).
Having reduced mortal sin to fundamental option, he rejects this.
j) 84-85: there would seem to be an
implicit suggestion that therapeutic abortion is morally alright.
k) His presentation of how a sinner
can obtain grace, before the Sacrament of Reconciliation, by means of personal
repentance, gives no idea that the intention of Confession must be there
(81).
l) Sacrament of Reconciliation:
"past practice focused almost exclusively on sin as an offense against
God. The neighbor was largely overlooked" (217).
m) His thesis that morality is
meaningful only if it is social: "If there is no "other" in my
life... does it really make any difference how I behave?" (111). "It
is worth saying clearly that whatever we hold and teach to be right or wrong,
we so describe only because the action is judged to be harmful to human
persons" (200).
Masturbation or sexual fantasies are
typical examples of behaviour that would fall outside the moral sphere, so
conceived.
n) Central to his theory of
proportionalism is "that every human action involves both good and
bad effects" (171). Throughout his consideration he has assumed
this, giving a few examples (the mother who tires herself to care for her sick
child...). He fails to confront the reader with the fundamental difference
between physical good/bad and moral good/bad (in other words, he compares a
physical good to a moral good, or a physical evil to a moral evil, as if they
could be considered equal). Moreover, he avoids considering whether one can say
that prayer, for instance, always has good and bad effects.
o) He rejects the traditional
teaching about the Principle of Double Effect — which of course uses the
principle of proportionality, but uses it on the basis of purity of
intention and the objective evaluation of actions. He rejects this objective
classification of actions, but would keep proportionality: "Rather than
being one of four conditions, we now see proportion as the condition for moral
behavior" (171).
p) The sentence "The protection
and nurturing of healthy family life, in a modified form if the times truly
demand it, must become a priority" (111) could, in the American context,
be read as a plea for recognition of the "homosexual family".
q) "There is no doubt that the
old formulations (of the natural law) will not satisfy the cravings of today's
thinkers" (143); so he sets out to present a new concept — Ch 14.
r) He concludes that natural law is
open to change, because "human nature is not so much a finished fact as it
is a project and an experiment"; there is therefore no certainty that what
"has been found to be good for human persons" in the past will prove
to be good in the future (151). On pp 180-182 he is more explicit still that
'human nature' is not knowable with certainty, because man and his
nature are changing.
s) "The Christian life is not,
ultimately, a matter of following the law; it is not an exercise in obedience.
Instead the Christian life is a matter of doing the good, an exercise in
love" (145). Law "serves us, we do not serve it" (194).
t) The law is "only a human
construct in the hands of human agents" (194). He nowhere presents the law
as an expression of God's will; or the possibility that response to the law can
be a (loving) response to God's will.
C.B.
(1989)
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[1] Neither Scripture nor the Magisterium offer the Catholic any dependable guidance (201-203).
[2] He denies that there is any such thing as a 'perennial theology (5-6) and says that "the real goal of theology is not truth but meaning" (i.e. experience). The separation of 'truth' from 'meaning' leaves the reader with the idea that all we can achieve is "appropriate incarnations" of the (elusive) inner truth of the faith (6). He appears as clearly rejecting the idea that "truth could be achieved once and for all" (6).
[3] Moral decision making must be rooted in experience, not in law (146).
[4] Pope and Bishops represent the "pastoral leadership in the Church"; the theologians are the teachers (5).