Veritatis Splendor: Part 37--The Witness of Bishops

MODERN MAN SEEMS TO BE AVERSE TO AUTHORITY, thinking erroneously that recognizing authority and being obedient to it is ipso facto a curb on his freedom. But this is a serious mistake because this attitude will blind us to a part of the Gospel: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you." Matt.28:18-20. Christ is the repository of all authentic authority, and if view authority as incompatible with freedom we cannot know Jesus, who is the source of true freedom.

This commission to preach the Gospel and teach all nations has, in a way, been given to the entire Church. And yet it resides in a particular, central, and unique and irreplaceable way in the body of bishops.

Among the principal tasks of Bishops the preaching of the Gospel is pre-eminent. For the Bishops are the heralds of the faith who bring new disciples to Christ. They are authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach to the people entrusted to them the faith to be believed and put into practice; they illustrate this faith in the light of the Holy Spirit, drawing out of the treasury of Revelation things old and new (cf. Mt 13:52); they make it bear fruit and they vigilantly ward off errors that are threatening their flock (cf. 2 Tim 4:1-4).

VS, 114 (quoting Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 25).

Here, the Pope comes full circle, returning back to the meditation on the rich young ruler with which he began his encyclical. The Bishops are to be like Christ and are to reply honestly and fully to the question which is on the lips, and, if not on the lips, in the heart of every man: "What good must I do to have eternal life?:

In the heart of every Christian, in the inmost depths of each person, there is always an echo of the question which the young man in the Gospel once asked Jesus: "Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?" (Mt 19:16).

VS, 117.

The rich young ruler, when he asked this question, turned to Christ:

Replying to the question: "What good must I do to have eternal life?" Jesus referred the young man to God, the Lord of creation and of the Covenant. He reminded him of the moral commandments already revealed in the Old Testament and he indicated their spirit and deepest meaning by inviting the young man to follow him in poverty, humility and love: "Come, follow me!" The truth of this teaching was sealed on the Cross in the Blood of Christ: in the Holy Spirit, it has become the new law of the Church and of every Christian [nova Ecclesiae omniumque Christifidelium lex est facta].

This "answer" to the question about morality has been entrusted by Jesus Christ in a particular way to us, the Pastors of the Church; we have been called to make it the object of our preaching, in the fulfillment of our munus propheticum [prophetic office]. At the same time, our responsibility as Pastors with regard to Christian moral teaching must also be exercised as part of the munus sacerdotale [priestly office]: this happens when we dispense to the faithful the gifts of grace and sanctification as an effective means for obeying God's holy law, and when with our constant and confident prayers we support believers in their efforts to be faithful to the demands of the faith and to live in accordance with the Gospel (cf. Col 1:9-12). Especially today, Christian moral teaching must be one of the chief areas in which we exercise our pastoral vigilance, in carrying out our munus regale [kingly office].

VS, 114.

Therefore, when modern man asks this question, where is the voice of Christ to be found?

When people ask the Church the questions raised by their consciences, when the faithful in the Church turn to their Bishops and Pastors, the Church's reply contains the voice of Jesus Christ, the voice of the truth about good and evil. In the words spoken by the Church there resounds, in people's inmost being, the voice of God who "alone is good" (cf. Mt 19:17), who alone "is love" (1 Jn 4:8, 16).

VS, 117.

The novelty of what confronts Christianity is highlighted by the circumstances which brought forth the Pope's encyclical Veritatis splendor. Other encyclicals have handled the issue of morals, but in the history of the Church, there has been no felt need to have an encyclical which handled the fundamental aspects, the foundation of the Church's moral teaching. It is remarkable that the Church confronts a situation where man's moral makeup is being denied, not only by the occasional libertine, or by those outside her communion, but even by a large cadre of her own theologians. And so the Church, acting through her head, the Pope, finds it necessary to take a step that is novel, unprecedented. "This is the first time, in fact," the Pope tells us, "that the Magisterium of the Church has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this teaching, and presented the principles for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural situations which are complex and even crucial." VS, 115.

What has brought upon the felt need for the encyclical that sought to affirm the basic characteristics of freedom, of its intimate link with moral truth, the natural law, and grace as components of our adoption into Christ? The Pope felt the need to affirm that there are such things as moral absolutes. "Each of us can see the seriousness of what is involved, not only for individuals but also for the whole of society, with the reaffirmation of the universality and immutability of the moral commandments, particularly those which prohibit always and without exception intrinsically evil acts." VS, 115. Acceptance of absolute norms is sort of a litmus test of whether our understanding of moral reasoning is right. Once we abandon the notion of absolute norms we have abandoned the Gospel, at least in its important moral component.

Those who reject the notion of exceptionless norms injure themselves and condemn themselves to a moral regime which is not authentically human. More, they incapacitate themselves to hearing the entire fulness of the Gospel, hamstringing their ability to live, in a manner fully and free, the Gospel, at whose heart is the promise of authentic freedom in truth:

In acknowledging these commandments [including the exceptionless norms, those that prohibit always and without exception], Christian hearts and our pastoral charity listen to the call of the One who "first loved us" (1Jn 4:19). God asks us to be holy as he is holy (cf. Lev 19:2), to be — in Christ — perfect as he is perfect (cf. Mt 5:48). The unwavering demands of that commandment are based upon God's infinitely merciful love (cf. Lk 6:36), and the purpose of that commandment is to lead us, by the grace of Christ, on the path of that fullness of life proper to the children of God.

VS, 115.

The notion that there are exceptionless norms, moral absolutes is not popular. But popular or not, it is part of the Gospel, and it is therefore a duty of the Bishops to see that this truth is preached, faithfully and in its fullness and proper context. This moral truth--that there are certain boundaries of behavior which cannot be breached without violating the truth of what man is and what he is mean to be--is not a message of law for law's sake: it is a message of law for God and for man's sake, for in the area of moral truth, the interests of both God and man align. What God wills is good for man.

Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing!
'Catholic' theologians and institutions in masquerade!

The theologians play a vital supportive component of this episcopal duty; they are vital resource to the bishop. And yet, the theologians do not have, as it were, an office independent of the bishop. In the exercise of their discipline, the moral theologians are not some sort of Übermensch, a man above faith, above rules. Quite the contrary, the theologians, like the most humble layman, remain under the guiding authority of the bishop:

In carrying out this task we [bishops] are all assisted by theologians; even so, theological opinions constitute neither the rule nor the norm of our teaching. Its authority is derived, by the assistance of the Holy Spirit and in communion cum Petro et sub Petro with Peter and under Peter], from our fidelity to the Catholic faith which comes from the Apostles. As Bishops, we have the grave obligation to be personally vigilant that the "sound doctrine" (1 Tim 1:10) of faith and morals is taught in our Dioceses.

VS,116.

What is true of the individual theologian is true of Catholic institutions:

A particular responsibility is incumbent upon Bishops with regard to Catholic institutions. Whether these are agencies for the pastoral care of the family or for social work, or institutions dedicated to teaching or health care, Bishops can canonically erect and recognize these structures and delegate certain responsibilities to them. Nevertheless, Bishops are never relieved of their own personal obligations. It falls to them, in communion with the Holy See, both to grant the title "Catholic" to Church-related schools, universities, health-care facilities and counseling services, and, in cases of a serious failure to live up to that title, to take it away.

VS, 116. The bishops of the Church, then, are to make sure that there are no theologians or Catholic institutions who, like wolves in sheep's clothing, do not hide under the mantle "Catholic" when they reject fundamental aspects of "Catholic" teaching.

The episcopal task is onerous. The three-fold office of the bishop is difficult when confronting a world that has denied moral absolutes. But the Pope asks his bishops to have confidence in the dignity of their office, and in the importance of their task. It is a task for which they have been anointed:

Through the anointing of the Spirit this gentle but challenging word becomes light and life for man. Again the Apostle Paul invites us to have confidence, because "our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit... The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Cor 3:5-6, 17-18).

VS, 117.

The moral life leads to Christ, the "follow me" is the invitation of Christ, and our following him is what leads us to virtue, to happiness, to union with God. One human being followed Christ in a supereminent way, and it is to this person, Mary, to whom the Pope turns in closing his encyclical Veritatis splendor. We will review this Marian coda of the encyclical in our last and final installment of this series on this encyclical.

Veritatis Splendor: Part 18--Created Conscience or Creative Conscience?

IT WOULD SEEM THAT THE "law of the heart," the heart's yearning for freedom, and what Pope John Paul II calls the "'heart of the person," his moral conscience through which the natural moral speaks to man, would have an intimate relationship. And so they do. Unfortunately, it is an intimate relationship that is modernly misunderstood.

In fact, one's understanding of conscience is at the heart of one's understanding of the relationship of freedom and law: and this would suggest that errors in understanding conscience either stem from misunderstandings on the relationship of freedom or law, or that errors in misunderstanding the relationship between freedom and law stem from misunderstandings of the role of conscience. So pivotal is conscience in the moral life.

Modernly, errors between freedom and law, specifically errors which exalt freedom "almost to the point of idolatry," result in man usurping the role of creator, thus leading to a "'creative' understanding of moral conscience," VS, 54, an understanding which "diverges from the teaching of the Church's tradition and her Magisterium," which is to say, it departs from the Words of Christ Jesus, the Word of God. Modern definitions of conscience ascribe to it a creative role to the point where it becomes not so much conscience, but an anti-conscience, something which bedevils conscience, a devil in the mind.

Based upon what seems to be a legion of justifications seemingly pastoral and humane, some modern theologians--unidentified in name by the Pope--enlarge the role of human conscience at the expense of law, of norms, of precepts. In general, these theologians tend to deprecate the role of law, norms, or precepts, and tend to ascribe to conscience a "creative" role, as if conscience ought to be considered the source of norms, precepts, or law, and not the faculty in man by which he recognizes the law, norms, or precepts as extra-consciential. Conscience is thus creative and free from God's law expressed in norms and precepts, and not created and submissive to those norms and precepts. Conscience is accordingly not seen as playing an adjudicatory role (applying pre-existing law to existing exigencies), but rather as a sort of legislative role (creative law to fit existing exigencies). Understanding conscience as the faculty of decision rather than the faculty of judgment, conscience becomes for these theologians the tool by which man in his autonomy crafts for himself laws of his own making rather than a faculty by which man can assess his prior acts or his prospective acts in conformity with those precepts, norms, or laws which may be found already given man either in his created nature, or in Divine revelation.

Clearly, such a notion of "creative conscience" suggests that conscience creates moral norms, and implies an autonomy of conscience from any law. In fact, some of these theologians suggest that only by making moral decisions "'autonomously' would man be able to attain moral maturity," as if venturing on one's own apart from God and his law were in fact acting in accordance with God's desire for mankind.

It follows that these theologians take a dim view of the Church's role in teaching applicable moral norms. They view the Church's teaching role as stifling this individual creative conscience, in limiting authentic autonomy, and in causing conflicts of conscience which ought not exist.

All manner of means are used by these theologians to "soften" the Magisterial role or pronouncements short of rejecting them wholesale. Commonly, these theologians ascribe to the Church's teaching sort of general guiding value, with at best a pastoral but not dogmatic or commanding role, and always subject always to the exceptions of an individual conscience. The situation envisioned by these theologians would be analogous to a situation whereby the legislature passed a law whereby the executory or judicial official enforcing the law retains the absolute discretion to enforce or not enforce the law. It is doubtful in such a case whether that law would be law at all, since it is not ultimately binding upon the official. Thus the Magisterial role in guiding conscience is essentially demoted to an irrelevancy. Conscience's rights are absolute over and against the voice of the teaching Church and, ultimately, given the role willed by God for the Church, over the law of God itself, indeed over God himself (for in God there is no distinction between Him and His Eternal Law). "No one can fail to realize," the Pope states, "that these approaches pose a challenge to the very identity of the moral conscience in relation to human freedom and God's law." VS, 56.

This description of conscience, as the creator of values, as the faculty or source of complete human autonomy, as an internal legislator rather than internal judge, despite the velvety words used by these theologians, is not conscience, but is more like the devil in one's mind.

These theologians, like Milton depicted Satan and his mind, see human conscience as:

. . . [H]e who now is Sovran [Sovereign] [and] can dispose and bind
What shall be right . . .
. . . .
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
. . . .
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.*

This sort of false depiction of conscience tells God and His Church what Manfred said in Lord Byron's poem by that name:

Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel;
Thou never shalt possess me, that I know;
What I have done is done . . .
. . . .
The mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts,
Is its own origin of ill and end,
And its own place and time; its innate sense,
When stripp’d of this mortality, derives
No colour from the fleeting things without,
But is absorb’d in sufferance or in joy,
Born from the knowledge of its own desert.**

What is involved here is a re-definition of man, and a re-definition of God. In fact, it is a revolt. It is a replay of what occurred in the Garden of Eden, where man seeks, shrouded in words like "creative," "pastoral," "feeling," "psychological complexity" and so on, to shrug off the law of God as relevant to his day-to-day activities.

In fine, it is non-serviam redux.

_____________________________________
*John Milton, "Paradise Lost," Book 1.246, 254-55, 261-63.
**Byron, "Manfred," III.iv.146 ff.

The Need for Revelation: "Pis-Aller" by Matthew Arnold

IN HIS POEM "PIS ALLER,"* the poet Matthew Arnold writes about the practical need we have for the natural law to be revealed in the divine positive law. Though in theory the natural law is available to all men, regardless of culture and time and place, most men have impediments--individual, cultural, religious, or intellectual--that may frustrate the ability to discern the natural law. Though Arnold would surely have disclaimed it, this practical difficulty also explains the need for the Magisterium, that is, the teaching Church or ecclesia docens, in teaching all men of the existence and the content of the natural law. It is part of the Church's competency to teach about the natural law, and to do so infallibly through God's own promise.

Man is blind because of sin,
Revelation makes him sure;
Without that, who looks within,
Looks in vain, for all's obscure.

Nay, look closer into man!
Tell me, can you find indeed
Nothing sure, no moral plan
Clear prescribed, without your creed?

No, I nothing can perceive!
Without that, all's dark for men.
That, or nothing, I believe.--
For God's sake, believe it then!

This is in accordance with St. Thomas Aquinas's teaching on the natural moral law and the practical need for revelation. In his Summa Theologiae (IaIIae, q. 91, art. 4), St. Thomas states:

Besides the natural and the human law it was necessary for the directing of human conduct to have a Divine law. And this for four reasons, . . . [the second being] because, on account of the uncertainty of human judgment, especially on contingent and particular matters, different people form different judgments on human acts; whence also different and contrary laws result. In order, therefore, that man may know without any doubt what he ought to do and what he ought to avoid, it was necessary for man to be directed in his proper acts by a law given by God, for it is certain that such a law cannot err. [Ut ergo homo absque omni dubitatione scire possit quid ei sit agendum et quid vitandum, necessarium fuit ut in actibus propriis dirigeretur per legem divinitus datam, de qua constat quod non potest errare.]

Matthew Arnold

*"pis aller" is a French word meaning worse (pis) and to go (aller). It means the final recourse or expedient, the last resort, last device, a dernier ressort, or stop gap measure.

Brownson on Natural Law: The Church as Custodian and the State

THE CHURCH IS THE CUSTODIAN OF THE NATURAL LAW, and so it has a divinely appointed role in helping form, or undergird the secular law. The secular law, though it has its own area of competence, must in all regards be subordinate to the Natural Law. The notion of two separate and independent spheres of activity--one secular, the other sacred--is simply false. There is no bifurcation of the law in moral man and political man, though in the immoral political man there may be. The notion of pure separation of Church and State is, from a Catholic viewpoint, unacceptable. It presents a recipe for a schizophrenic polity, working at odds, much like the body politic with its corpus callosum severed, and so the left hemisphere of the brain is unable to communicate to the right hemisphere of the brain. Such a man, like such a body politic, operates under serious disadvantage or disorder.

A political philosophy of pure secularism, being practically atheist, is sinful and constitutes a state of rebellion against God. Likewise, the modern legal notion that human law need not be subordinate to, or validly deferent to, the natural law is a false, in fact evil, legal philosophy. The notion that positive laws can have authority or validity independent of, or even in conflict with, the content of the natural law is a false doctrine. The modern politician and legislator, not unlike the emperor of old, must acknowledge the teaching Church, the ecclesia docens, that is the priesthood. "For the Emperor," St. Ambrose wrote in his sermon against Auxentius, "is within the Church, not above it." Imperator enim intra ecclesiam non supra ecclesiam est. (Sermo contra Auxentium de basilicis tradendis, No. 36). The politician, the legislator, the judge, the governor or president--replace emperor with any civil or political office you wish--is within the Church, not above her, and, even if outside her, certainly has not right to act against her. Lift up your gates, you rulers and all peoples, and let the King of Glory into the halls where your laws are made and the courts where they are enforced. Anything else is bound to lead to injustice and to tyranny.

Lift up your gates,
O ye princes, and be ye lifted up,
O eternal gates: and the King of Glory shall enter in
Who is the King of Glory?
The Lord of hosts, he is the King of Glory.

Psalm 23 (24): 9-10.

This is Brownson's message in this excerpt taken from his writings.

"The priesthood, as Catholicity teaches, is the sole depository, guardian, and interpreter of the law of God, and therefore represents for us the sole and absolute legislature, not, of course, by virtue of the humanity of its members, but by divine constitution, appointment, and assistance. The authority of the priesthood, then, extends to the whole of practical life, and that practical life is moral, therefore good, only inasmuch as it is submissive or obedient to the law as they promulgate and declare it. There is, then, and can be, no order of life, individual or social, that has or can have any autonomy in the face of the Church, or that is or can be pronounced morally good, save in so far as subject to her and informed by obedience to her as representative of the authority of God as universal, absolute legislator. This, if we understand the author [Gioberti], is what his own dialectics require us to assert. Secular culture, then, in order to be moral, in order to have any right to be, must be the product of sacerdotal culture, receive its law and its informing spirit from the Divinely authorized priesthood, and be in all things dependent on it, and subject to it. Hence, the schism we spoke of in the beginning is not to be healed by a union of secular culture with the sacerdotal, but by the absolute subjection of the former to the latter, because the former, in so far as it does not proceed from the latter and depend on it, proceeds from human activity, not subject to the law of God, and therefore is not moral."

[From Brownson's Works, "Vincenzo Gioberti" (H. F. Brownson: Detroit, 1898), Vol. 2, p. 128.]

Universal Ethic-Convergences 8-The Magisterium of the Church and Natural Law

1.6. The Magisterium of the Church and the natural law

34. Because the distinction between the natural order and the supernatural order was not clearly distinguished prior to the 13th century, the natural law generally was assimilated into Christian morality. Thus the decretals of Gratian, which furnish the canonical foundation of the 12th century, begin with the affirmation: "The natural law is that which is contained in the Law and in the Gospel." It identifies, then, the content of the natural law with the golden rule, and specifies that the divine law corresponds to the natural law.(38) The Fathers of the Church therefore referred back to the natural law and to the Sacred Scriptures as the foundations upon which to base Christian moral behavior, but the magisterium of the Church, during its early period, had little reason to intervene in any disputes over the content of the moral law.

When the magisterium of the Church was compelled not only to address particular moral disputes, but also to justify its actual position before a secularized world, it relied more explicitly upon the notion of the natural law. In the 19th century, especially under the pontificate of Leo XIII, recourse to the natural law may be found in the acts of the magisterium. Its explicit expression is found in the encyclical Libertas praestantissimum (1888). Leo XIII refers to the natural law to identify the source of the civil authority and to fix its limits. The encyclical recalls with vigor that it is necessary to obey God rather that men when the civil authority commands and recognizes something that opposes the divine law or the natural law. But it also turns to the natural law to protect private property against Socialism, or to defend the right of the workers to obtain through their work all that is necessary for the maintenance of their life. Along these same lines, John XXIII referred to the natural law as the basis for the righs and the duties of man (encyclical Pacem in terris [1963]). With Pius XI (encyclical Casti conubii [1930]) and Paul VI (encyclical Humanae vitae [1968]), the natural law is relied upon as the decisive criterion in matters relating to conjugal morality. Certainly, the natural law is made directly accessible to human reason, and is common to both the believer and the nonbeliever. The Church does not have exclusive possession of the natural law, but, since Revelation assumes the requirements of the natural law, the magisterium of the Church constitutes itself to be its guarantor and the interpreter.(39) The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) and the encyclical Veritatis splendor (1993) assign a decisive place to the natural law in the exposition of Christian morality.(40)

35. Today, the Catholic Church invokes the natural law in four main contexts. First, before the cultural flood that limits rationality to the positive sciences and abandons to relativism the moral life, the Church insists on the natural capacity of men to select with reason "the ethical message contained in being,"(41) and to recognize the large threads of fundamental norms of just actions in conformity with their nature and their dignity. The natural law thus answers to the requirement that the rights of man be founded on reason,(42) and renders possible an intercultural and interfaith conversation in a position of favoring universal peace and of avoiding the "breakdown of civilization." Second, before a relative individualism--which maintains that every individual is the source of his own values and that the society is the result of a pure contract contracted between individuals which itself chooses its norms—it recalls the principle that the fundamental norms that regulate social and political life do not have the character of convention, but have a character both natural and objective. In particular, the democratic form of government is intrinsically bound to fixed ethical values. These find their source in the requirements of the natural law, and therefore do not depend on the fluctuations of the consent of an arithmetical majority. Third, before an aggressive laicism which desires to exclude believers from the public debate, the Church the notes that the intervention of Christians in public life based upon arguments that rely upon the natural law (defense of the rights of the oppressed, justice in international relations, defense of life, and of the family, religious liberty, and liberty of education . . . ), are not rights of a confessional nature, but derive of the concern which all citizens ought to have for the common good of society. Fourth, confronting the threats of the abuse of the power as well as totalitarianism, which legal positivism hides and certain ideologies transmit, the Church remembers that civil laws do not bind in conscience if they are in contradiction with the natural law. The Church asks for the recognition of conscientious objection, as also the duty of disobedience in the name of obedience to a higher law.(43) Reference to the natural law not only does not result in conformity, but guarantees personal freedom and defends those marginalized and oppressed by the social structure and carved out of the common good.

(38) Gratian, Concordantia discordantium canonum, pars I, dist. 1 [PL 187, col. 29]: “Humanum genus duobus regitur, naturali videlicet iure et moribus. Ius naturale est quod in lege et Evangelio continetur, quo quisque iubetur alii facere quod sibi vult fieri, et prohibetur alii inferre quod sibi nolit fieri. [...] Omnes leges aut divinae sunt aut humanae. Divinae natura, humanae moribus constant, ideoque hae discrepant, quoniam aliae aliis gentibus placent.”

(39) Cf. Paul VI, Encyclical Humanae vitae, n. 4, in AAS 60 (1968) 483.

(40) Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 1954-1960; John Paul II, Encyclical Veritatis splendor, nn. 40-53.

(41) Benedict XVI, Speech of February 12 2007 to the International Congress on the Natural Moral Law Organized by the Lateran Pontifical University, in AAS 99 (2007) 243.

(42) Cf. Id., Speech of April 18, 2008 before the General Assembly of the United Nations: "They [human rights] are based on the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations. Removing human rights from this context would mean restricting their range and yielding to a relativistic conception, according to which the meaning and interpretation of rights could vary and their universality would be denied in the name of different cultural, political, social and even religious outlooks.”

(43) Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Evangelium vitae, nn. 73-74.