Veritatis Splendor: Part 24--Sins Unto Death

JOHN PAUL II ADDRESSES THE DISTINCTION between mortal and venial sins in his encyclical Veritatis splendor. This is necessary because of some theologians' efforts to revise the Church's traditional teaching regarding sins. Traditionally, the Church distinguished between sins, most basically categorizing them between mortal and venial, in accordance with the gravity of the matter involved and the level of awareness of consent to the act involved. We may best be served by quoting verbatim the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

1854 Sins are rightly evaluated according to their gravity. The distinction between mortal and venial sin, already evident in Scripture,* became part of the tradition of the Church. It is corroborated by human experience.

1855 Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him.

Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it.

1856 Mortal sin, by attacking the vital principle within us - that is, charity - necessitates a new initiative of God's mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished within the setting of the sacrament of reconciliation:

When the will sets itself upon something that is of its nature incompatible with the charity that orients man toward his ultimate end, then the sin is mortal by its very object . . . whether it contradicts the love of God, such as blasphemy or perjury, or the love of neighbor, such as homicide or adultery. . . . But when the sinner's will is set upon something that of its nature involves a disorder, but is not opposed to the love of God and neighbor, such as thoughtless chatter or immoderate laughter and the like, such sins are venial.**

1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: "Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent."†

1858 Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: "Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother."†† The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger.

1859 Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God's law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart‡‡ do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.

1860 Unintentional ignorance can diminish or even remove the imputability of a grave offense. But no one is deemed to be ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are written in the conscience of every man. The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest.

1861 Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself. It results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance and God's forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ's kingdom and the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back. However, although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God.

1862 One commits venial sin when, in a less serious matter, he does not observe the standard prescribed by the moral law, or when he disobeys the moral law in a grave matter, but without full knowledge or without complete consent.

1863 Venial sin weakens charity; it manifests a disordered affection for created goods; it impedes the soul's progress in the exercise of the virtues and the practice of the moral good; it merits temporal punishment. Deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin. However venial sin does not break the covenant with God. With God's grace it is humanly reparable. "Venial sin does not deprive the sinner of sanctifying grace, friendship with God, charity, and consequently eternal happiness."☨

While he is in the flesh, man cannot help but have at least some light sins. But do not despise these sins which we call "light": if you take them for light when you weigh them, tremble when you count them. A number of light objects makes a great mass; a number of drops fills a river; a number of grains makes a heap. What then is our hope? Above all, confession.☨☨

The Pope insists in the validity of the classical theological division, and insists, further, that a mortal sin cannot be limited to some sort of fundamental option against God and neighbor but includes particular acts--given that the particular sinful act meet the traditional requirements of being a grave matter undertaken with full awareness and deliberate consent. John Paul II quotes from the Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et paenitentia:

For mortal sin exists also when a person knowingly and willingly, for whatever reason, chooses something gravely disordered. In fact, such a choice already includes contempt for the divine law, a rejection of God's love for humanity and the whole of creation: the person turns away from God and loses charity. Consequently, the fundamental orientation can be radically changed by particular acts.

VS, 70 (quoting RP, 17)

What appears to be happening with the theologians that seek to tamper with the distinction between mortal and venial sins and who urge that a particular act cannot sever a man's tie to God and merit eternal damnation is that they are confusing psychological spheres with theological spheres. Again, relying on Reconciliatio et paenitentia:

Clearly, situations can occur which are very complex and obscure from a psychological viewpoint, and which influence the sinner's subjective imputability. But from a consideration of the psychological sphere one cannot proceed to create a theological category, which is precisely what the 'fundamental option' is, understanding it in such a way that it objectively changes or casts doubt upon the traditional concept of mortal sin.

VS, 70 (quoting RP, 17).

The Pope thus concludes this section of his encyclical:

The separation of fundamental option from deliberate choices of particular kinds of behavior, disordered in themselves or in their circumstances, which would not engage that option, thus involves a denial of Catholic doctrine on mortal sin: "With the whole tradition of the Church, we call mortal sin the act by which man freely and consciously rejects God, his law, the covenant of love that God offers, preferring to turn in on himself or to some created and finite reality, something contrary to the divine will (conversio ad creaturam).ǂ This can occur in a direct and formal way, in the sins of idolatry, apostasy and atheism; or in an equivalent way, as in every act of disobedience to God's commandments in a grave matter."

VS, 70 (quoting RP, 17).

_________________________________________
*The Catechism references 1 Jn 5:16-17, the Scriptural locus classicus for this distinction, which distinguishes between sins which lead to death (ad mortem / πρὸς θάνατον) and those which do not lead to death (non ad mortem / μὴ πρὸς θάνατον):

He that knoweth his brother to sin a sin which is not to death, let him ask, and life shall be given to him, who sinneth not to death. There is a sin unto death: for that I say not that any man ask.

**St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 88, art. 2, corp.
†Reconciliatio et paenitentia, 17, § 12.
††Mark 10:19
‡Mark 3:5-6; Luke 16:19-31.
☨Reconciliatio et paenitentia, 17 § 9.
☨☨St. Augustine, In Epistolam Ionannis ad Parthos Tractatus Decem 1,6 (PL 35,1982).
ǂThe interjection "conversio ad creaturam" (turning to a creature) is a reference to a classical definition of mortal sin: aversio a Deo, conversio ad creaturam: an aversion towards God, through conversion to a creature. In other words, placing too much importance, a disordered importance, upon a created good at the expense of God, the source of all good. In a way, all mortal sin really involves a sort of idolatry. Cf. Romans 1:25, where St. Paul refers to the Gentiles and their sins: "Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen."

Veritatis Splendor: Part 23--The Fundamental and Concrete are Joined at the Hip

IN ONE SENSE IT IS PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE to talk about fundamental choice, and in another sense that notion is fraught with error. Christ himself is a fundamental choice for mankind. The Scriptures themselves, the entire Christian kerygma, the entire burden of the Gospel acclamation is that Christ presents himself and forces upon his listeners a fundamental, primordial, elementary proposition: "Who do you say that I am?" (Mark 8:29). We are going to have to say that Christ is Elijah, or John, or someone or something else, or we are going to have to respond like the Apostle St. Peter: "You are Christ, Son of the Living God!" or like St. Thomas the Apostle, "My Lord and my God!" (Matthew 16:16; John 20:28)

Tu es Christus Filius Dei vivi!

Dominus meus et Deus meus!

To utter those words with concomitant internal assent is to accept grace upon grace: and it represents a watershed difference in the life of any man: a B.C. and A.D. moment. The history of every man is divided before Christ and after Christ. Nothing is more fundamental than how we answer to the Incarnate Word, Jesus.

The acceptance of Christ as the Son of God, as the Incarnate Word of God, as the "I am" who was before Abraham, and who did not grasp at equality with God, but who became man for our sakes and like us in all things but sin is more than a theoretical or intellectual endeavor. It is equally a practical or moral endeavor. Christ does not only ask, "Who do you say that I am?" Christ also commands, "Come, follow me!" Veni! Sequere me!

Our openness to the invitation of Christ--Veni! "Come!"--and our decision upon that invitation to obey the command in faith--Sequere me! "Follow me!"--is exactly that for which human freedom was designed.

Jesus' call to "come, follow me" marks the greatest possible exaltation of human freedom, yet at the same time it witnesses to the truth and to the obligation of acts of faith and of decisions which can be described as involving a fundamental option.

VS, 66.* There is thus a valid way in which we can say that man is fundamentally free, and that this fundamental freedom is what is most legitimately expressed and in fact confirmed in the decision to follow Christ. But the exercise of this freedom in following Christ is accompanied by warnings regarding specific, concrete, "categorical" behavior:

We find a similar exaltation of human freedom in the words of Saint Paul: "You were called to freedom, brethren" (Gal 5:13). But the Apostle immediately adds a grave warning: "Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh". This warning echoes his earlier words: "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery" (Gal 5:1). Paul encourages us to be watchful, because freedom is always threatened by slavery. And this is precisely the case when an act of faith — in the sense of a fundamental option — becomes separated from the choice of particular acts, as in the tendencies mentioned above.

VS, 66.

Chang and Eng Bunker
Like the Siamese Twins, the fundamental option for Christ
cannot be separated from concrete, particular acts

It is therefore fundamental and egregious error to separate the act of faith--the fundamental option, as it were, of following Christ--from the concrete, particular, day-to-day acts. It is not only part that must follow Christ--that is the lesson of the rich young ruler who turned from Christ in sorrow--it is the entirety of man, inside and outside, body and soul, internal forum and external forum, which follows Christ. "To separate the fundamental option from concrete kinds of behavior means to contradict the substantial integrity or personal unity of the moral agent in his body and in his soul." VS, 67. The fundamental and the concrete are joined at the hip, so to speak.

Indeed, particular, concrete, or "categorical" acts (if they involve morally grave matters) can revoke the fundamental option of following Christ:

It thus needs to be stated that the so-called fundamental option, to the extent that it is distinct from a generic intention and hence one not yet determined in such a way that freedom is obligated, is always brought into play through conscious and free decisions. Precisely for this reason, it is revoked when man engages his freedom in conscious decisions to the contrary, with regard to morally grave matter.

VS, 67.

Not only does the separation of one's "fundamental option" from the "particular acts" divide the unity of man--making him, as we suggested in our prior post, into a sort of "onion" with layers, where the internal core is unaffected by the outer shell. But it does injustice to the reflection behind the acts of man and the significance of his day-to-day affairs. It makes life on earth unimportant in achieving our end.

A fundamental option understood without explicit consideration of the potentialities which it puts into effect and the determinations which express it does not do justice to the rational finality immanent in man's acting and in each of his deliberate decisions.

VS, 67.

Additionally, separating the "fundamental option" from the particular act also misunderstands the entire moral formula, making morality something almost entirely involved with the noumenon, having nothing to do with phenomenon. We have here an incipient, if not flagrant, Gnosticism:

[T]he morality of human acts is not deduced only from one's intention, orientation or fundamental option, understood as an intention devoid of a clearly determined binding content or as an intention with no corresponding positive effort to fulfil the different obligations of the moral life. Judgments about morality cannot be made without taking into consideration whether or not the deliberate choice of a specific kind of behavior is in conformity with the dignity and integral vocation of the human person.

VS, 67.

The Christian tradition has always maintained that both intention and act are important: bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu. For something to be good, it must be good both in intent and in act; a defect either in intent or in the act make an action defective. And the Pope, in this part of the encyclical, in no uncertain terms stresses the traditional understanding that both intention and act are important, essential components for an act to be authentically good. However sincere or noble one's intention, one does not perform authentic moral good if one nevertheless does a bad, concrete act.

Pope John Paul II also insists on the distinction between positive moral precepts (which may or may not bind depending upon prudence) and negative moral precepts which bind without exception:

Every choice always implies a reference by the deliberate will to the goods and evils indicated by the natural law as goods to be pursued and evils to be avoided. In the case of the positive moral precepts, prudence always has the task of verifying that they apply in a specific situation, for example, in view of other duties which may be more important or urgent. But the negative moral precepts, those prohibiting certain concrete actions or kinds of behaviour as intrinsically evil, do not allow for any legitimate exception. They do not leave room, in any morally acceptable way, for the "creativity" of any contrary determination whatsoever. Once the moral species of an action prohibited by a universal rule is concretely recognized, the only morally good act is that of obeying the moral law and of refraining from the action which it forbids.

VS, 67.

Separating the "fundamental option" from particular, specific, concrete or "categorical" acts not only is doctrinally unsound, it has a great effect upon pastoral practice. If what the proponents of this separation is accepted, then it follows that "an individual could, by virtue of a fundamental option, remain faithful to God independently of whether or not certain of his choices and his acts are in conformity with specific moral norms or rules." We are placed in a situation where a doctor who performs abortions, as a result of a supposed "primordial option for charity," could continue to be seen as "morally good," and could be viewed as persevering in God's grace, and "attain salvation," even when his specific kind of behavior is "deliberately and gravely contrary to God's commandments as set forth by the Church."

But this viewpoint is pastorally false:

In point of fact, man does not suffer perdition only by being unfaithful to that fundamental option whereby he has made "a free self-commitment to God".** With every freely committed mortal sin, he offends God as the giver of the law and as a result becomes guilty with regard to the entire law (cf. Jas 2:8-11); even if he perseveres in faith, he loses "sanctifying grace", "charity" and "eternal happiness."*** As the Council of Trent teaches, "the grace of justification once received is lost not only by apostasy, by which faith itself is lost, but also by any other mortal sin."†

VS, 68.
_________________________________________
*The obedience of faith in free response to the invitation of God, the God with us, Jesus, is remarkably different from the obedience of faith in slavish submission to the Allah of Islam and his prophet Muhammad. The watershed difference is even subtly captured in the names of the religions: Islam--which comes from Arabic الإسلام‎ (al-ʾislām) which means essentially "submission"--versus Christianity--which comes from the Greek word Χριστιανός (christianos), which means "follower of Christ." Muslims are known as "slaves of Allah," ( ‏‏عبيد الله , 'abid Allah), whereas Christians are known as the adopted sons of God (Eph. 1:5) and friends of Christ (John 15:15). Indeed, John 15:15 could not be more striking: "I will not now call you servants [عبيد /'abid]: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends [احباء/ ahba']: because all things whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you."
**The encyclical quotes Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum, 5, and refers to the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Certain Questions regarding Sexual Ethics Persona Humana (December 29,1975),10: AAS 68 (1976), 88-90.
***The encyclical cites to Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhoration Reconciliatio et Paenitentia (December 2,1984),17; AAS 77 (1985), 218-223.
†The Pope cites to Sess. VI, Decree on Justification Cum Hoc Tempore, Chap. 15: DS, 1544; Canon 19: DS, 1569.

1544 [808] Adversus etiam hominum quorumdam callida ingenia, qui 'per dulces sermones et benedictiones seducunt corda innocentium' (Rom 16, 18), asserendum est, non modo infidelitate (can. 27), per quam et ipsa fides amittitur, sed etiam quocumque alio mortali peccato, quamvis non amittatur fides (can. 28), acceptam iustificationis gratiam amitti: divinae legis doctrinam defendendo, quae a regno Dei non solum infideles excludit, sed et fideles quoque 'fornicarios, adulteros, molles, masculorum concubitores, fures, avaros, ebriosos, maledicos, rapaces' (cf. 1 Cor 6,9s), ceterosque omnes, qui letalia committunt peccata, a quibus cum divinae gratiae adiumento abstinere possunt et pro quibus a Christi gratia separantur (can. 27).

Against the crafty genius of certain men also, who "by pleasing speeches and good words seduce the hearts of the innocent" [Rom. 16:18], it must be maintained that the grace of justification, although received, is lost not only by infidelity [can. 27], whereby even faith itself is lost, but also by any other mortal sin, although faith be not lost [can. 28], thereby defending the doctrine of the divine law which excludes from the kingdom of God not only the unbelievers, but also the faithful who are "fornicators, adulterers, effeminate, liers with mankind, thieves, covetous, drunkards, railers, extortioners" [1 Cor. 6:9 ff.], and all others who commit deadly sins, from which with the assistance of divine grace they can refrain and for which they are separated from the grace of God [can. 27].

1569 [829] Can 19. Si quis dixerit, nihil praeceptum esse in Evangelio praeter fidem, cetera esse indifferentia, neque praecepta, neque prohibita, sed libera, aut decem praecepta nihil pertinere ad Christianos: an. s.

Can. 19. If anyone shall say that nothing except faith is commanded in the Gospel, that other things are indifferent, neither commanded nor prohibited, but free, or that the ten commandments in no way pertain to Christians: let him be anathema.

Veritatis Splendor: Part 22--Fundamental Option and Pots and Pans, the Drama of Butter, and Minute Particulars

EVERY JUDGMENT MADE BY CONSCIENCE contains within it a universe of its own. The Church has always taught the sacred aspect of conscience in each and every one of its acts. The moral and metaphysical implications of even the smallest pecadillo has greater meaning and moment that the largest of purely physical or pre-moral evils. Hence Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman could scandalize the liberals and secularists and even the religiously insipid Anglicans of his day (and similarly insipid "Catholic" theologians of our day) when he wrote:

She [the Catholic Church] holds that it better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse. She considers the action of this world and the action of the soul simply incommensurate, viewed in their respective spheres; she would rather save the soul of one single wild bandit of Calabria, or whining beggar of Palermo, than draw a hundred lines of railroad through the length of Italy, or carry out a sanitary reform, in its fullest details in every city in Sicily, except so far as these great national words tended to some spiritual good beyond them.*

Every act of conscience behind the least of any moral action is of great moment, of significant weight: The exercise of one's freedom to choose to do a particular act is "not only the choice for one or another particular action." It is, at the same time, "a decision about oneself and a setting of one's own life for or against the Good, for or against the Truth, and ultimately for or against God." VS, 65. In man, the moral world and physical world meet, in each and every instance, even in the most mundane, particular, and concrete act.

It is true that some choices are more significant than others: the choice intentionally to seduce on best friend's wife, or to murder one's father to gain one's inheritance, or to disbelieve in God and to curse him, is more vicious than lying to one's wife about whether the dress she has chosen makes her look fat. Without question there are "certain choices which 'shape' a person's entire moral life, and which serve as bounds within which other particular everyday choices can be situated and allowed to develop." VS, 65. Some choices are obviously life changing.

And yet we must not forget that even small choices, small acts, remain significant. Life is played out for most of us in more humble ways, among the pucheros, the pots and pans of St. Theresa,** in St. Josemaria Escriva's "drama of the butter."*** The moral life is in the main composed of the "Minute Particulars" of William Blake's poem Jerusalem.

You accumulate Particulars, & murder by analyzing, that you
May take the aggregate:& you call the aggregate Moral Law:
And you call that swell'd & bloated Form a Minute Particular.
But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars: & every
Particular is a Man: a Divine Member of the Divine Jesus.

P. 91, ll.26-30 "He who would do good," says the poet William Blake, "must do it in Minute Particulars: general good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer." P.55,ll.60-62 "All broad & general principles belong to benevolence / Who protects Minute Particulars, every one in their own identity." P.43, ll.22-23. "[E]very Minute Particular," Blake therefore insists in the same poem, "is Holy." P.69, l. 42.†

Some moral theologians
--"scoundrel, hypocrites, and flatterers" all--
would make man an onion

The importance of "Minute Particulars" is precisely what John Paul II insists upon against those who would build the moral life of man upon what William Blake called the "general good," and upon what these theologians would call one's "fundamental freedom" or "fundamental option."††

According to these authors, the key role in the moral life is to be attributed to a "fundamental option," brought about by that fundamental freedom whereby the person makes an overall self-determination, not through a specific and conscious decision on the level of reflection, but in a "transcendental" and "athematic" way. Particular acts which flow from this option would constitute only partial and never definitive attempts to give it expression; they would only be its "signs" or symptoms.

VS, 65. These theologians would make man like an onion, composed of a bunch of layers, with the outward layers of one's concrete, particular, "categorical" or occasional activity (his "Minute Particulars") being less significant with respect to man's relationship with God than one's central core, where "fundamental," "transcendental," or "basic" decisions are made. Particular acts, therefore, at best of only partial importance, can never be outcome determinative. There is a difference, then, between choosing (or not choosing) Good, and choosing (or not choosing) any particular concrete good. While there may be some distinction to be made between some decisions and others, the problem results from making this distinction between general and particular into a separation between the general and the particular:

A distinction thus comes to be introduced between the fundamental option and deliberate choices of a concrete kind of behavior. In some authors this division tends to become a separation, when they expressly limit moral "good" and "evil" to the transcendental dimension proper to the fundamental option, and describe as "right" or "wrong" the choices of particular "innerworldly" kinds of behavior: those, in other words, concerning man's relationship with himself, with others and with the material world.

VS, 65.

What happens, of course, when separateness is said to exist between general or fundamental dispositions and one's individualized, concrete and particularized acts, is that we end up with two disjoined spheres: two levels of morality. They have separated man into an innerwordly East and an exterior West, and "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet."‡

There thus appears to be established within human acting a clear disjunction between two levels of morality: on the one hand the order of good and evil, which is dependent on the will, and on the other hand specific kinds of behavior, which are judged to be morally right or wrong only on the basis of a technical calculation of the proportion between the "premoral" or "physical" goods and evils which actually result from the action. This is pushed to the point where a concrete kind of behavior, even one freely chosen, comes to be considered as a merely physical process, and not according to the criteria proper to a human act. The conclusion to which this eventually leads is that the properly moral assessment of the person is reserved to his fundamental option, prescinding in whole or in part from his choice of particular actions, of concrete kinds of behavior.

VS, 65.

What happens as a result of this claimed disjunction, this separation between the basic and the particular, is that the particular, concrete life becomes less significant in the realm of the moral enterprise, and notions of utilitarianism, consequentialism, or proportionalism creep in and govern this outward realm. The significance of any one act is spurned, and the existence of any absolute or exceptionless norms on the concrete or particularized level of activity is, in the main, rejected. At the extreme end of these theories, the particularized, concrete level becomes merely "physical" or "premoral," and thus is not to be assessed in the same manner as the "fundamental" realm, where morality really takes place.

John Paul II rejects this separation of one's fundamental choice from particular acts. While man is called to exercise a fundamental choice, that fundamental choice is expressed, in each and every instance, in particular acts.

_____________________________________
*John Henry Newman, "Lecture VIII," Lectures on Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Submitting to the Catholic Church (London: Burns & Lambert, 1850), 199-200.
**"Entended," said St. Theresa of Avila in her Libro de Fundaciones, 5.8, "que si es en la cocina, entre los pucheros anda el Señor ayudándoos en lo interior y exterior." ("Understand that if one finds oneself in the kitchen, among the pots and pans walks the Lord, helping us in the interior and exterior life.")
***Josemaria Escriva, The Way, No. 205: "We were reading--you and I--the heroically ordinary life of that man of God. And we saw him struggle whole months and years (what an 'accounting' he kept in his particular examination of conscience!); one day at breakfast he would win, the next day he'd lose . . . 'I didn't take butter . . . I did take butter!' he would jot down. May we too--you and I--live our . . . 'drama' of the butter."
†William Blake, Jerusalem (London: A. H.Bullen, 1904) (E. R. D. MacLagan and A. G. B. Russell, eds.)
††In keeping with the encyclical's general nature, the Pope does not identify any specific author, and the theories or notions of "fundamental option," and "fundamental freedom" advanced among the moral theologians in the academic and pastoral worlds are both legion and subtle (or, in some cases, not so subtle). The general thrust of the "fundamental option" theories is to separate particular, occasional acts from one's more intimate being, so that ordinary, day-to-day choices--though they may not accord entirely with the Good--do not of themselves change one's fundamental direction, and thus do not separate the individual from God. Any individual act, even one that involves grave matter and free will, will not serve to separate from God, inasmuch as to separate oneself from God one has to go from individual, particular acts to the level of fundamental, predominant, or central commitment. This theory, of course, deprecates the importance of individual, particularized, concrete acts. Another form of "fundamental option" posits such a thing as "fundamental freedom" or "basic freedom" or "transcendental freedom" and it is the exercise of this "fundamental freedom," and not the day-to-day exercise of free choice, that implicates one's relationship with God. By separating "fundamental freedom" from particularized freedom these theologians also deprecate particular, concrete acts as important in the moral life. Advocates of such theories include Joseph Fuchs, John W. Glaser, Richard A. McCormick, Timothy E. O'Connell, Bernhard Häring, and, less directly perhaps, Karl Rahner.
‡Rudyard Kipling, "The Ballad of East and West."

Veritatis Splendor: Part 10-Libertas et Lex

LIBERTAS ET LEX, freedom and law, not libertas sive lex, freedom or law. It is a great modern error to place freedom and law in opposition. In a nutshell, placing human freedom and law based on an objective moral order in opposition is to set ourselves as fashioners of right, as sole judges of good and evil. It is, at heart and quite ironically, not a very modern way of thinking. It may be said to be the oldest, wrongest theory in the book.

Literally. So it is that John Paul II takes to a brief reflection of the second chapter of Genesis: "You may eat freely of every tree of the garden," God tells man, "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat." Freedom is engaged with restriction, with law; liberty is coupled with obligation; there is a boundary to freedom beyond which one is no longer free. Also tied to law is a sanction: if man violates the law, if he eats of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, "you shall die." VS, 35; Gen.2:16-17. Along with this death, of course, is the death of authentic freedom.

What is the message of this "imagery" of the Book of Genesis which speaks to us in its specific genre so rich with symbolism and theological underpinnings?

With this imagery, Revelation teaches that the power to decide what is good and what is evil does not belong to man, but to God alone. The man is certainly free, inasmuch as he can understand and accept God's commands. And he possesses an extremely far-reaching freedom, since he can eat "of every tree of the garden". But his freedom is not unlimited: it must halt before the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil", for it is called to accept the moral law given by God. In fact, human freedom finds its authentic and complete fulfillment precisely in the acceptance of that law. God, who alone is good, knows perfectly what is good for man, and by virtue of his very love proposes this good to man in the commandments.

VS, 35. It is rank falsehood to suppose that authentic freedom and authentic law are in opposition. To hold freedom and moral law in opposition (or to collapse moral law into freedom) is "[C]ertain moral theologians have introduced a sharp distinction, contrary to Catholic doctrine, between an ethical order, which would be human in origin and of value for this world alone, and an order of salvation, for which only certain intentions and interior attitudes regarding God and neighbor would be significant. . . . No one can fail to see that such an interpretation of the autonomy of human reason involves positions incompatible with Catholic teaching."
--John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 37.nothing less than giving man the power to determine good and evil, which is a false freedom because it is a freedom from truth, and not a freedom in truth. God's law is not reductive of human freedom, but it is the necessary precondition of human freedom. Without God, man is not free. Outside of God, man is not free. If human freedom were able to make truth without reference to God, then such freedom "would enjoy a primacy over truth, to the point that truth itself would be considered a creation of freedom." VS, 35. The result of this is that through freedom man lays claim to "a moral autonomy which would actually amount to absolute sovereignty." VS, 35. It is not freedom, but rebellion; a foolish rebellion, moreover, which leads into slavery. This notion of moral sovereignty is, it goes without saying, also deeply repugnant to Christ's teaching.

John Paul II spent the first part of the encyclical insisting that freedom ought not to be thought as separate or opposed to truth. In this part of the encyclical he opposes himself to a related tendency, and that is the tendency of separating morality from religion or faith. In this related error, one opposes man's "innerwordly" behavior (intent, interior attitudes, subjective states) and his external behavior so that the two sort of travel in separate, uncommunicative planes or dimensions. But John Paul insists strongly that there can be no separation between faith and morality, just like there can be no separation between freedom and truth.

John Paul II
Do not divide the "ethical order" from the "order of salvation"

It is opposed to Catholic doctrine, the Pope says, to entertain the belief that there is an "ethical order, which would be human in origin and of value for this world alone," and another order, and "order of salvation, for which only certain intentions and interior attitudes regarding God and neighbor would be significant." VS, 37.

The separation of morality, a matter relegated to reason alone, from salvation, a matter involving faith alone, is condemned by the Pope as outside the authentic Christian tradition. We have become accustomed to separate and compartmentalize reason from faith, so that each have their own separate chambers, their own separate spheres. Such a notion stems, at least in some of its manifestations, from Luther's false distinction between faith and works. Since for Luther salvation was a matter of faith alone, and works were not pertinent to salvation, the internal disposition of faith was emphasized in his doctrine as preeminent over the external acts of man. As a consequence, morality was minimized and made irrelevant to the matter of salvation. Pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide! Sin boldly, but believe more boldly still! Luther scandalously wrote. Such a man who has said this (Luther) has separated the moral life from the religious life. There is tendency, then, as a result of this line of thinking, to divide the moral world, which is secular, from the world of faith, religious. Morality thus became separate and apart from the religious life, and individual moral acts became less important and a man's "fundamental option" became important, and absolute or exceptionless norms are rejected in the name of "proportionalism," which was a sort of pseudo-consequentialism or pseudo-utilitarianism.

The moral theologian Livio Melina explains how the separation of morality from religion introduced by Luther's novel and erroneous teachings of sola fide and sola gratia crept into the theories of Catholic theologians and threatened the traditional Catholic view of the intimate relationship between faith and morals, between faith and works. Though Melina's analysis is somewhat technical, it encapsulates the error the Pope is referring to, and traces, further, its originating source and its shows what consequences result from adopting this line of thinking.

The separation of faith from morals stems, in Melina's view, from Luther's erroneous theories of justification, which separated faith from works, and made works irrelevant to the issue of salvation.*

Thus, on the level of this secularized morality, it may be necessary and even obligatory, according to Luther, to perform actions against the divine law. Hence these would be only a lesser evil to be entrusted to the divine mercy. In a historical situation marked by sin, the divine law has an elencthicus value in that it refutes the claim that one is just through one's own works. In this sense, the law is absolute but impracticable for sinful man. It also has a secondary value, civilis or politicus, in that it promotes harmonious social intercourse, but then it no longer obligates in an absolute way. The passage from the perspective of personal morality to that of social utility brings with it concurrently a transformation from the prudence of a genetrix virtutum (mother of virtues) stamp to that of the gubernatrix artium (the principle of government by technical calculation). . . . Therefore, in the Lutheran perspective, morality, disjoined from its connection with salvation and from a rootedness in faith, finds two roads open to it: on the one side, it becomes social utilitarianism, on the other philanthropic altruism. . . .

This sort of thinking had crept into the thought of Catholic theologians (such as Joseph Fuchs), who differentiated between a this-worldly ethic (Weltethos) and an order of salvation (Heilsethos). Livio Melina explains the issue and why it is important that the Pope address it. Although the quote is lengthy, it merits being included in full:

The separation of morality from the salvation context therefore represents an important [negative] factor in the development of modern ethics. It has also had repercussions with regard to Catholic moral theology. In fact, the acceptance of the rational autonomy of morality, and consequently of the proportionalist method, was brought about through a theological distinction, in my opinion one strongly inspired by the Lutheran concept described above. This involves a differentiation, of which mention is made in Veritatis splendor at no. 37, between a this-world ethical order (Weltethos) and and "order of salvation" (Heilsethos).**

The order of salvation is linked to the moral goodness of the person and his "transcendental" attitude toward the Good as such. It is in this interior and formal sphere of intention, of his acceptance or not of God and of his brothers, that the eternal destiny and the salvation of man is played out. And this is also the sphere in which moral absolutes may be advanced that are valid without exception, but that may be referred precisely only to general attitudes. At this level a fundamental freedom is operative, one that has reference to the free choice of the subject as a whole and is therefore athematic: the level, in a word, that it is usual to call "fundamental options."

The order of this-worldly ethical action, which moves on a horizontal plane, is linked instead to the area of the rightness of concrete actions. It is found in proportion that actions promote a better state of affairs in this world, and hence it depends on a rational calculation of the advantages and disadvantages deriving from the action. On this level of action, taken in its exteriority, the calculating reason is completely autonomous in establishing particular norms for actions that will have only general and indicative value and which are always to be further evaluated in concrete circumstances. On the level of the "category" of actions, it would not therefore present ethical norms that are "specifically Christian." An error in this area would not have consequences in the order of salvation but only negative consequences on the exterior plane.

There derives from this a cascade of ecclesiological consequences of the greatest seriousness: if the moral area that concerns salvation is the transcendental one of the goodness of the person and not that of the rightness of the acts, then Sacred Scripture has nothing "revealed" to tell us about this-worldly activity but only exhortations about general attitudes. These have only a "paranetic," exhortative, and not instructive character. Consequently also, tradition and the magisterium could not claim any specific authority concerning concrete norms for acting, a task that would belong exclusively to autonomous reason. Salvation would, in fact, be decided in a fundamental transcendental option and not in the concrete choices involved in particular actions.***

The "order of salvation" operates in one plane, the "order of ethics" in another: "good" is separate from "right," and never the twain shall meet. There are no absolute, exceptionless norms in the "order of ethics," where the issues of "right" and "wrong" are governed by autonomous reason. Religion deals only with generalities, and it is a mistake to suggest that Scripture, or the teachings of the Church, or, for that matter, God, ought to be involved with concrete life in the "order of ethics," where man is essentially autonomous. What is important, in terms of salvation, is one's general attitudes, one's "fundamental option," whether one is "good" or "bad," and not whether one is "right" or "wrong" in the area of ethics, and so long as that generally remains open to God and to neighbor, one need not concern oneself with some sort of "legalistic" and "slavish" obedience to individual commandments.

Obviously, this separation of faith and morals is repugnant to the Church's traditional teaching which are based upon those of Jesus, especially as reflected in the Gospel story of the interaction between the rich young ruler and Jesus. This artificial separation between the "ethical order" and the "order of salvation" has the following effect:

This has then led to an actual denial that there exists, in Divine Revelation, a specific and determined moral content, universally valid and permanent. The word of God would be limited to proposing an exhortation, a generic paraenesis, which the autonomous reason alone would then have the task of completing with normative directives which are truly "objective", that is, adapted to the concrete historical situation. Naturally, an autonomy conceived in this way also involves the denial of a specific doctrinal competence on the part of the Church and her Magisterium with regard to particular moral norms which deal with the so-called "human good". Such norms would not be part of the proper content of Revelation, and would not in themselves be relevant for salvation.

No one can fail to see that such an interpretation of the autonomy of human reason involves positions incompatible with Catholic teaching.

VS, 37.

Here, then, is the reason the Pope has issued the encyclical: to address the modern tendencies, particularly among some modern Catholic theologians, which separate freedom from truth, and the order of ethics (morality) from the order of salvation (faith), and rend man into life in two incommunicative orders:

In such a context it is absolutely necessary to clarify, in the light of the word of God and the living Tradition of the Church, the fundamental notions of human freedom and of the moral law, as well as their profound and intimate relationship. Only thus will it be possible to respond to the rightful claims of human reason in a way which accepts the valid elements present in certain currents of contemporary moral theology without compromising the Church's heritage of moral teaching with ideas derived from an erroneous concept of autonomy.

VS,37.

The Pope insists, like Jesus did to the rich young man, that freedom cannot be severed from moral truth, that moral truth is accessible to man, that the moral is an objective, normative order. He insists, further, that the order of ethics, of concrete action in the here-and-now, is not something foreign to or separate from revealed teaching. Faith (and moral theology) and ethics (and reason) are not two separate worlds, but are inextricably intertwined, like body and soul.

Freedom, truth, reason, faith. The Pope would have them all. The Pope will not give short shrift to any, will not oppose one to the other, or will not separate one from the other. They are all conjoined, and what God has joined no man ought to put asunder.

_______________________________________
*The Lutheran view of separating works from salvation, of course, and the erroneous moral theories advanced by certain Catholic theologians that rely on it, are directly opposed to Christ's teaching to the rich young man. That is why John Paul II spent such a significant time meditating on the interaction between Jesus and the young Jew.
**As an example, Melina cites to Joseph Fuchs, "Moral Truths--Truths of Salvation?, chap. 4 of his Christian Ethics in a Secular Arena (Bernard Hoose and Brian McNeil, trans.) (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1984), 48-69.
**Livio Melina, Sharing in Christ's Virtues (William May, trans.) (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 94-96.