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).