Thursday, May 25, 2006

Pope Paul VI was (supposedly) terrified that the Church, by "changing its mind," would undermine the authority of its magisterium? Please. Paul VI presided over a Church that "changed its mind" — better, developed its thought, practice, and doctrine — on many once hotly-disputed questions: the validity of concelebrated Masses; the use of the vernacular in the liturgy; the relationship of the Bible and the Church’s tradition as sources of divine revelation; the diaconate; religious freedom and the juridical, limited state. The Tablet’s take on the bottom-line rationale for Humanae Vitae is a myth. But it’s a myth of a piece with the journal’s longstanding misconception of the Church’s teachings on marital chastity and family planning: a misconception which holds that these teachings are "policies" or "positions" that can be changed, rather like governments can change the income tax rate or the speed limit.

In 1967, the Tablet (and the National Catholic Reporter) printed a leaked memorandum to Paul VI from members of the papal commission studying the morality of family planning. According to that memorandum, a majority of the commissioners had been persuaded that the morality of conjugal life should be judged by the overall pattern of a couple’s sexual conduct, rather than by the openness of each act of marital love to conception. A close reading of this so-called "Majority Report" suggests, however, that the proponents of the Church "changing its mind" on the question of artificial contraception were after much bigger game: they intended to install proportionalism and the theory of the "fundamental option" — methods of moral reasoning later rejected by John Paul the Great in the 1993 encyclical, Veritatis Splendor — as the official moral theological method of the Catholic Church. Paul VI recognized this, and rejected the proposal accordingly. Pope Paul undoubtedly was told that a "change" of "position" on contraception would undermine the credibility of the magisterium; but that was, at best, a secondary question. The real issue was much graver, and touched virtually every question in the moral life.

(Proportionalism and consequentialism), while acknowledging that moral values are indicated by reason and by Revelation, maintain that it is never possible to formulate an absolute prohibition of particular kinds of behaviour which would be in conflict, in every circumstance and in every culture, with those values.

...

Such theories however are not faithful to the Church's teaching, when they believe they can justify, as morally good, deliberate choices of kinds of behaviour contrary to the commandments of the divine and natural law. These theories cannot claim to be grounded in the Catholic moral tradition. Although the latter did witness the development of a casuistry which tried to assess the best ways to achieve the good in certain concrete situations, it is nonetheless true that this casuistry concerned only cases in which the law was uncertain, and thus the absolute validity of negative moral precepts, which oblige without exception, was not called into question.

The morality of the human act depends primarily and fundamentally on the "object" rationally chosen by the deliberate will, as is borne out by the insightful analysis, still valid today, made by Saint Thomas. In order to be able to grasp the object of an act which specifies that act morally, it is therefore necessary to place oneself in the perspective of the acting person. The object of the act of willing is in fact a freely chosen kind of behaviour. To the extent that it is in conformity with the order of reason, it is the cause of the goodness of the will; it perfects us morally, and disposes us to recognize our ultimate end in the perfect good, primordial love. By the object of a given moral act, then, one cannot mean a process or an event of the merely physical order, to be assessed on the basis of its ability to bring about a given state of affairs in the outside world. Rather, that object is the proximate end of a deliberate decision which determines the act of willing on the part of the acting person.

...

The reason why a good intention is not itself sufficient, but a correct choice of actions is also needed, is that the human act depends on its object, whether that object is capable or not of being ordered to God, to the One who "alone is good", and thus brings about the perfection of the person. An act is therefore good if its object is in conformity with the good of the person with respect for the goods morally relevant for him. Christian ethics, which pays particular attention to the moral object, does not refuse to consider the inner "teleology" of acting, inasmuch as it is directed to promoting the true good of the person; but it recognizes that it is really pursued only when the essential elements of human nature are respected. The human act, good according to its object, is also capable of being ordered to its ultimate end. That same act then attains its ultimate and decisive perfection when the will actually does order it to God through charity. As the Patron of moral theologians and confessors teaches: "It is not enough to do good works; they need to be done well. For our works to be good and perfect, they must be done for the sole purpose of pleasing God".

Lest his readers be confused on any points thus far, Thomas gives an account of an entire moral act, with all circumstances and intentions, hidden and visible, shown in their respective positions. Naturally his language is rather complicated, but by applying what has been dealt with previously regarding circumstances, one finds the explanation quite satisfactory. He begins by discussing how the "interior action of the will" (that is, the person's intent and consent to an action) and the "external action of the will" (that which is actually done visibly) are both determined in species by their ends. Now, when the will consents interiorly, the action becomes formal-even before the body is able to carry it out. Material cooperation occurs when the body carries out what the will has ordered. Thus, the consent of the will is the first action in any circumstance, so if a person already consents to something evil but does not have the chance to carry it out, he has already committed a sin.

posted by Shaun Kenney | 5/25/2006 11:21:00 AM | 0 comments

JEFFERSONIAD POLL: Whom do you support for Virginia Attorney General?

About

Contact

E-mail
RSS/Atom Feed

The Jeffersoniad

Archives