Natural Law and Culture: The 'Explosive Problematic' in Gaudium et spes

THE WEAKNESS OF THE SECOND Vatican Council's treatment of modern culture in Gaudium et spes is perhaps attributable to its generally Maritanian trajectory. If Cardinal Garrone is to be believed, it was Maritain's thinking, of which rapproachement with the Liberal-humanist (modern) tradition (as contained, say, in his work Integral Humanism) is central, that the guided the Conciliar fathers.*  This is unfortunate in Tracey Rowland's view, in that the deeper, more critical analyses of culture found in the works of Erich Przywara, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Romano Guardini, and (even earlier) in John Henry Newman, seem to have been overlooked.

In her book Culture and the Thomist Tradition, Professor Rowland gives a number of examples of the "explosive problematic" contained in Gaudium et spes.  She points to Gaudium et spes, No. 56, where the following question is asked:

What is to be done to prevent the increased exchanges between cultures, which should lead to a true and fruitful dialogue between groups and nations, from disturbing the life of communities, from destroying the wisdom received from ancestors, or from placing in danger the character proper to each people?

This appears to be a reference to Kultur.**  Taken at face value,*** what does this say to Christian missionaries who confront non-Christian cultures, some of which have anti-Christian or even anti-human elements?  Is it disturbing the life of communities and destroying the wisdom of ancestors or placing in danger the character of African tribal communities by insisting in monogamy and in battling polygamy?  Are all parts of all cultures to be preserved so as to avoid insult to "each people"?  This suggests putting manacles on the Gospel, something entirely impossible to comprehend in a Church document.

As another example, Professor Rowland turns to Gaudium et spes, No. 57:

Furthermore, when man gives himself to the various disciplines of philosophy, history and of mathematical and natural science, and when he cultivates the arts, he can do very much to elevate the human family to a more sublime understanding of truth, goodness, and beauty, and to the formation of considered opinions which have universal value. Thus mankind may be more clearly enlightened by that marvelous Wisdom which was with God from all eternity, composing all things with him, rejoicing in the earth, delighting in the sons of men.

This is a reference to culture as Bildung.**  This language, if understood within the "implied Trinitarian framework that draws attention to the relationship between spiritual formation and intellectual formation, and gives a specific Christian content to the concept of truth, beauty, and goodness," it can be construed in a manner perfectly compatible with Church Tradition.  If understood in the sense that this section is promoting Maritain's "theocentric humanism," and not in the sense of "anthropocentric humanism," it can find a home in the Church.

Yet, if it is wrested from this implied context, "the section is more immediately evocative of the works of Wilhelm on Humboldt and Friederich Schiller on the self-development and the 'aesthetic education of man.'"  Rowland, 24.  In other words, this section can appear to advocate an "Arisocratic Liberal" conception of self-development, one that looks as "education" as the means for inculcating "virtue," and thus can appear to be plugging itself into the "subterranean link between the Encyclopaedist and Genealogical traditions."  Surely the Church had no intent to listen to the voices of Voltaire or of Nietzsche?  Did the Church really intend to promote the Kierkegaardian "aesthete"?

To put it bluntly: where is grace?  Is the grace of Christianity irrelevant to culture in the sense of Bildung?

In this criticism, Professor Rowland is not alone.  In what can only be categorized as blunt and strong criticism of this section, Rowland points to Joseph Ratzinger's early (1969) commentary on Gaudium et spes, where he described sections of it as containing "eine geradezu pelagianische Terminlogie," "a downright Pelagian terminology."  As particular examples of this tendency, Ratzinger pointed to Gaudium et spes, Nos. 17, 41, where there seems to be an overemphasis on freedom and autonomy understood in a modern liberal manner, and not in a manner as freedom as "living in the presence of God."  There appears to be a de-emphasis of grace and an over-emphasis of self-development, self-will, self-perfection.

As Rowland summarizes these various sections of Gaudium et spes dealing with Bildung: "The need for the personality to have a Christian form of development might therefore be implied [in Gaudium et spes], but the whole tone of the discourse remains suggestive of the Liberal-humanist tradition with its idea of self-perfection through education and exercise of will-power."  Rowland, 25.

Another defect in Gaudium et spes seems to be in its rather uncritical handling of the problem of "mass culture" (see Gaudium et spes, No. 54).  How does the Kultur in modernity's "mass-culture" affect the ability for authentic Christian Bildung?  This fundamental question is largely overlooked.

As one final example, this time more in the area of Geist or ethos,** Professor Rowland points to Gaudium et spes No. 57, and the invocation of the "expert." The text speaks of the need to obtain "a clearer awareness of the responsibility of experts to aid and even to protect men . . . especially for those who are poor in culture or who are deprived of the opportunity to exercise responsibility."  As Professor Rowland puts it, this section of Gadium et spes

immediately raises the question: What is the basis for the authority of these benevolent 'experts'? . . . . [T]he whole notion of 'government by experts' stands in tension with the tradition of Catholic social thought which emphasises the importance of the principle of subsidiarity, and the tradition of governance in Catholic institutions, which has favoured what in Weberian terms would be classified as 'charismatic authority' over 'bureaucratic authority.'

Rowland, p. 26-27.  Did the Church really intend to baptize the modern bureaucrat?  Did it bless a modern peritocracy?  That is rather dubious, but the text would give support to such a view.

Finally, one might point out that the suggestion that "experts" can solve the problems of the "cultural poor" or the "poor in culture" is rather shallow.  Is the expert really the one that can provide, like a magician pulling a white rabbit out of the hat, technical solutions that will ipso facto aid the "culturally poor"?  There is a little bit of elitism in the air here.

___________________________________
*Although unmentioned by Prof. Rowland, one might mention Maritain's less ebullient and more sober later work, A Peasant of the Garrone, where he appears to re-think some of his earlier optimism.  One might also point out the accommodationism in Fr. John Courtney Murray, which, although focused more on the religious freedom issue, also seemed quite open to the Liberal-humanist tradition.  It should be noted, in any event, that both Maritain and Fr. Murray were and would have been appalled at the "hermeneutic of discontinuity" that followed VII.
**For Rowland's categorization of Kultur, Bildung, and Geist, see the posting "Natural Law and Culture: Towards a Better Definition of Culture."
***The language can be interpreted in a Herderian sense (i.e., in the manner of the German Romantic Johann Gottfried Herder).   It can also be interpreted in other senses.  Hence, in Rowland's view, the language "requires further clarification."  Rowland, 23.  There has to be some to distinguish between "a Christian conception of inculturation," which is entirely legitimate, and a "Herderian promotion of the preservation of all cultures that exhibit the Romantic qualities of individuality and originality," which seems relativistic and suffers from a cultural indifferentism.  

Natural Law and Culture: Towards a Better Definition of Culture

PERHAPS THE MOST important Vatican II document as it relates to the Church's' relationship with the world at large, the Church's relationship ad extra, is Gaudium et spes. Unfortunately, there are some intrinsic weaknesses with the document arising from the fact that it was a compromise document (thereby often suffering from ambiguity or a lack of clarity), that the Conciliar fathers lacked a full understanding of modernity (particularly in its cultural manifestations), that the form of the document was innovative, indeed unprecedented (a "pastoral Constitution" as distinguished from a "dogmatic Constitution," and yet a "Constitution" without legal form, but instead a rather loose, hortatory and pastoral, form), its lack of definition of some essential  and frequently used terms (e.g., "modern man" and "modern world").  Moreover, these problems, which are already present in the Latin text, seem to have been exacerbated in the vernacular translations.  As Tracey Rowland summarizes it in her book Culture and the Thomist Tradition:

When taken together, the fact of compromise, the multiple contrasts, the unprecedented form, the absence of a clearly defined theological framework for its interpretation, the alternation between dogma and pastoral appeals and the terminological looseness all contributed to the complexity of the 'explosive problematic'.

Rowland, 19.

Then, as if to add insult to injury, the problems associated with the text were compounded by "the most commonly applied hermeneutical key to the interpretation of this document," a concept as banal and amorphous as aggiornamento.*  It seems like "openness" became "accommodation" became "capitulation."  It is no wonder the Church's message to the modern world--whatever it was in Gaudium et spes--was further muddled.  Instead of fresh air out, it was foul air in.

The problems with Gaudium et spes generally also find themselves exhibited in its definition of "culture."  The definition of culture in the Conciliar document is found in Paragraph 53.   Culture, it states, "in the general sense refers to all those things which to to the refining and developing of man's diverse mental and physical endowments."  As Rowland critiques it, "this definition is extremely broad in coverage, but shallow in analysis, and not explicitly related to the grace-nature problematic as one would expect in a theological document."  Rowland, 20.

What Rowland suggests would have behooved the Conciliar Fathers is to have adopted a little more rigorous  understanding of culture.  She draws from T.S. Eliot (and the subtleties of the German language as exploited by the German Kulturgeschichte scholars) and the Greek concepts of nomos, ethos, and logos, to expand the notion of "culture" into three separate senses:

1. Culture of the individual (a specific form of Bildung, or self-development; nomos is "the element that gives each conception of self-formation or Bildung its guiding principles or laws");
2. Culture of the group (the Geist or ethos of a specific civilization or institution = ethos)
3. Culture of society as a whole (the Kultur or civilization of a society; logos = "that which give a given civilisation or Kultur its overarching and particular form.")

Rowland, 20-21.**

Taking these concepts and knitting them together within the context of her "Augustinian Thomist conception of culture," Rowland comes up with this definition of culture, which seems superior at once to the rather one dimensional definition found in Gaudium et spes, 53.

[A]n Augustinian Thomist conception of culture can be defined as one in which any given ethos is governed by the Christian virtues, the process of self-formation or Bildung is guided by the precepts of the Decalogue and revealed moral laws of the New Testament, and the logos or form is provided by the 'identities-in-relation' logic of the Trinitarian processions.

Rowland, 21.
________________________________________
*Even the term aggiornamento, the main "hermeneutical key," was ambiguous.  As Rowland notes, instead of mere uncritical accommodation  it probably was originally intended to "mean an updating or development of theological resources to provide a coherent critique of the culture of modernity, rather than a simple accommodation to it."  Rowland, 19.  Against the accomodators, it is this notion of aggiornamento that may be said to have been behind John Paul II and Benedict XVI's efforts to rectify this problem.
**Rowland cites to the classic study of T.S Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture and to R. Geuss, Morality, Culture, and History.

Pope Benedict XVI to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences

On May 4, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the participants in the fifteenth Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences is charged with the mission of advancing the Church's social doctrine in the areas of the economy, politics, law, and other social sciences. The focus of the session was human rights, what the Pope called a "a point of encounter between the doctrine of the Church and contemporary society."

The world’s great religions and philosophies have illuminated some aspects of these human rights, which are concisely expressed in “the golden rule” found in the Gospel: “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Lk 6:31; cf. Mt 7:12). The Church has always affirmed that fundamental rights, above and beyond the different ways in which they are formulated and the different degrees of importance they may have in various cultural contexts, are to be upheld and accorded universal recognition because they are inherent in the very nature of man, who is created in the image and likeness of God. If all human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, then they share a common nature that binds them together and calls for universal respect. The Church, assimilating the teaching of Christ, considers the person as “the worthiest of nature” (St. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, 9, 3) and has taught that the ethical and political order that governs relationships between persons finds its origin in the very structure of man’s being. The discovery of America and the ensuing anthropological debate in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe led to a heightened awareness of human rights as such and of their universality (ius gentium). The modern period helped shape the idea that the message of Christ – because it proclaims that God loves every man and woman and that every human being is called to love God freely – demonstrates that everyone, independently of his or her social and cultural condition, by nature deserves freedom. At the same time, we must always remember that “freedom itself needs to be set free. It is Christ who sets it free” (Veritatis Splendor, 86).

The Pope observed that the tragic suffering called by the world wars and the crimes against humanity spurred the formation of a new system of international law based upon the notion of human rights.

Human rights became the reference point of a shared universal ethos – at least at the level of aspiration – for most of humankind. These rights have been ratified by almost every State in the world. The Second Vatican Council, in the Declaration Dignitatis Humanae, as well as my predecessors Paul VI and John Paul II, forcefully referred to the right to life and the right to freedom of conscience and religion as being at the centre of those rights that spring from human nature itself.

These human rights are predicated on reason, on the natural law which participates in the eternal law. Though based upon reason, and so accessible by reason alone, revelation both confirms and enlightens our knowledge of the natural law.

Strictly speaking, these human rights are not truths of faith, even though they are discoverable – and indeed come to full light – in the message of Christ who “reveals man to man himself” (Gaudium et Spes, 22). They receive further confirmation from faith. Yet it stands to reason that, living and acting in the physical world as spiritual beings, men and women ascertain the pervading presence of a logos which enables them to distinguish not only between true and false, but also good and evil, better and worse, and justice and injustice. This ability to discern – this radical agency – renders every person capable of grasping the “natural law”, which is nothing other than a participation in the eternal law: “unde…lex naturalis nihil aliud est quam participatio legis aeternae in rationali creatura” (St. Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, 91, 2). The natural law is a universal guide recognizable to everyone, on the basis of which all people can reciprocally understand and love each other. Human rights, therefore, are ultimately rooted in a participation of God, who has created each human person with intelligence and freedom. If this solid ethical and political basis is ignored, human rights remain fragile since they are deprived of their sound foundation.

The Church’s action in promoting human rights is therefore supported by rational reflection, in such a way that these rights can be presented to all people of good will, independently of any religious affiliation they may have. Nevertheless, as I have observed in my Encyclicals, on the one hand, human reason must undergo constant purification by faith, insofar as it is always in danger of a certain ethical blindness caused by disordered passions and sin; and, on the other hand, insofar as human rights need to be re-appropriated by every generation and by each individual, and insofar as human freedom – which proceeds by a succession of free choices – is always fragile, the human person needs the unconditional hope and love that can only be found in God and that lead to participation in the justice and generosity of God towards others (cf. Deus Caritas Est, 18, and Spe Salvi, 24).

The Pope pointed to the "flagrant contrast" between the "attribution of rights and the unequal access to the means of attaining those rights." He urged leaders to collaborate in reducing the gap between the theory of human rights and their practice. Recently returned from Africa, the Pope expressed solicitude to that one-fifth of humanity that tragically "still goes hungry."

For Christians who regularly ask God to “give us this day our daily bread”, it is a shameful tragedy that one-fifth of humanity still goes hungry. Assuring an adequate food supply, like the protection of vital resources such as water and energy, requires all international leaders to collaborate in showing a readiness to work in good faith, respecting the natural law and promoting solidarity and subsidiarity with the weakest regions and peoples of the planet as the most effective strategy for eliminating social inequalities between countries and societies and for increasing global security.

He exhorted the participants to continue their efforts, and to be "credible and consistent witnesses to the defense and promotion of these non-negotiable human rights which are founded in divine law."


For a copy of the Pope's address, click here.