Morality: the deepening crisis

...the struggling lower classes of thirdworld nations who seek from the church and the Scriptures a language with which to express their experiences of oppression and liberation...

...Notions such as "Men are aggressive, dominant, rational leaders," "Only men can fully represent Christ," "A woman's place is in the home or convent," or even, "Women are more nurturant, sensitive, and caring" limit both men and women to roles defined'by uncritical stereotypes at best, and self-serving views of sociopolitical expediency at worst...

...Furthermore, the "message" from the center often comes across as a demand for conformity to church authority in questions of sexual morality and — not unrelated — of the roles of women, of religious, and of the clergy...

...Paul called "good order...

...We Catholics may gain a better balanced and more consistent perspective on the importance and purposes of sexual acts, on the responsibilities of having and nurturing children, and on our responsibilities to all persons suffering disadvantage or injustice when we come to Commonweal: 498 see that men and women have shared and equal responsibility in sexual intimacy, in the family, in the church, and in public life...

...In my judgment, battles over the specific lines of church authority (e.g., Roman investigations of theologians, and interference in religious orders), sexual ethics (contraception and homosexuality), and male-female roles (women's ordination) are liable to become red herrings with which the dominant northwestern church distracts the global church from more basic, systemic concerns in the realms of theology, ecclesiology, and ethics...

...The arms race and international economic injustice both have global roots and global repercussions...

...I suspect that situations of international injustice and violence, such as the nuclear arms race, economic exploitation, and political repression, are more radically important questions than sexual ethics and church authority...

...The experience of Christianity in other cultures is not taken seriously as an authentic, critical source of the church's self-understanding, and of its views of marriage, family, ministry, political involvement, social analysis, and so on...

...It is true that even before the council, the modern social Commonweal: 496 encyclicals had shown more explicit attention to the interdependence of persons and their moral duties, and to shifting social and moral factors...

...While a loving union has been recognized as an equal purpose of sexual relations since about the time of the council, the welfare of the person, couple, or family is still never permitted to take precedence over the "natural" goal of procreation...

...It is thus sometimes said that the council introduced a note of personalism into Catholic moral theology...

...It can only encourage institutions and relationships — national, international, and ecclesial — in which not only women's participation but even the so-called "feminine" qualities are minimized...

...These possibilities become "crises" to the extent that their realization may require reevaluation of standard moral teaching, e.g., on divorce, just war, or property ownership...

...It is helpful to recall, along with the phrase "signs of the times," the council's o'wn explanation of its importance: to enable the church, "in language intelligible to each generation," to "respond to the perennial questions" about this life and the next, with the aim of assisting persons anxious about the modern world in ' 'accurately identifying permanent values and adjusting them properly to fresh discoveries" (Gaudium et Spes, 4...

...The occasional exercise of authority is necessary for the sake of what St...

...But despite practical flexibility, a major stress was on the unchanging character of principles used to criticize varying social conditions, such as "common good," "mutual rights and duties," and "principle of subsidiarity...

...The same is true of the plight of the desperately poor, large classes of whom in many countries lack access to the basic material necessities and to social and political avenues of remedying 20 September 1985: 497 their condition...

...Leo used "subsidiarity" to affirm the autonomy of groups in society, while John used it to support government intervention for the common good...

...Unless these challenges are more successfully met, the hierarchical magisterium will not shake off an aura of defensiveness likely to alienate the very audiences to which the church presumably hopes to appeal...

...The problem, given no specific resolution by Gaudium et Spes or other council documents, is this: How is a "dynamic," "evolutionary" view of human nature, in which ethics begins by reading the "signs of the times" and ends with "interpretation in the light of the Gospel," to be reconciled convincingly with the older natural law approach, which was by the time of the council enshrined in many of the church's formal teachings...

...of those whose children are not kidnapped, tortured, and killed...

...and Europe (including Rome) are far from unimportant, but their importance is limited and the issues themselves are symptomatic...

...These characteristics and values (human nature) are the basis of' 'laws'' of moral behavior with which any rational person supposedly can agree...

...What has since been much more disputed than the mandate itself is its meaning, especially in the realm of concrete moral questions...

...For one thing, interpretation of anything "in the light of the Gospel" is an endeavor which prior to the council had been largely foreign to Catholic ethics...

...Ethics came to be seen more in relation to the person than to human nature in the abstract...

...But they did highlight the importance of realizing that human ' 'nature'' — that is, human experience — is historical, particular, relational, and diverse: "The human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one" (Gaudium et Spes, 5...

...An example is the way the "faculty" of procreation was understood primarily as a physical function with an integrity and purpose considered independently of the good of the whole person and his or her relationships...

...whose daily lives are not filled with physical as well as psychological and spiritual suffering...

...Catholic ethics, or moral theology, had depended instead on the natural law method of St...

...I hope these ambitions are taken seriously for I concur in the pope's apparent perception that they are the major unmet challenges of the council...

...We are, and will be, the strongest" (Boston Globe, July 7, 1985...

...I feel that a major obstacle to a successful mediation of the church's message to these constituencies is that both message and mediation too often are conceived as one-way emanations from Rome...

...The heated academic and ecclesial debates over "absolute moral norms," "intrinsically evil acts," and "proportionalism" focus fairly quickly on sexual ethics...

...the knowability of this morality by reason...

...They also remain the major challenges to the church of the present and for the future...

...THE COUNCIL documents in no way denied the reality of a common human nature and thus of a universal human morality...

...Perennial candidates for concentrated attention are contraception, premarital sex, homosexuality, divorce, and abortion...

...In many nations, these same people are the victims of violence perpetrated by native political factions supported by the governments of more comfortable and powerful nations to whom their own sphere of influence is of paramount concern...

...Humans are inclined incorrigibly to lust for power, to deny both their duties and their limits, and to blame others when their overweening ambitions are frustrated...

...A perfect, albeit extreme, example of the "macho" political ethos is the message of the Beirut terrorists to President Reagan last summer: "[We] advise Reagan not to carry out any military action otherwise we will retaliate immediately as strongly as America...

...14:3, 4, 12...

...The Gospel converts by faith, hope, and love, not fear...

...This sin is epitomized in the sort of role distortion we call sexism or patriarchy, but which is surely not described satisfactorily as a women's issue, or even as feminism...

...Abortion goes beyond sexual ethics, and thus has far more genuine importance...

...The council, represented by Gaudium et Spes, did not move far in this direction, stating that the "domestic role" of the "mother at home" should be "safely preserved," even though "the legitimate social progress of women should not be underrated on that account" (52...

...The universality of the church can exist in the abstract no more than its particularity...

...This was especially the case in matters of so-called personal ethics, such as sexuality, marriage, and medical decisions (all of which were construed primarily in individual rather than social terms...

...Closely following sexual ethics in prominence are issues of malefemale relationships which bridge moral theology and ecclesiology, such as married or female clergy and the role of women's religious orders in the church...

...Although sensitivity to the sharp moral edge of these global inequities is increasing in the first world, it is far from clear that they come first to mind when "the moral witness of the church" or "the crisis of Catholic moral theology" are mentioned either among hierarchy or laity...

...The issues which presently seem to receive highest attention from Catholics in the U.S...

...While extravagant sums are being spent for the furnishing of ever new weapons, an adequate remedy cannot be provided for the multiple miseries afflicting the whole modern world...

...As I see it, deeper crises have been occurring in at least two categories...

...If instead of lowering the minimum wage for students, we increase the minimum wage to a realistic level, the concept of comparable worth should be truly irrelevant...

...It should be evident what must result from equating empathetic concern for others, loving service to the dependent, and conciliatory attitudes, with women's roles...

...They cannot be resolved satisfactorily until their interconnection with each other and with more fundamental problems is perceived, and until those deeper crises are addressed...

...The scrutiny of timely signs and the invocation of Gospel witness are the major contributions to ethics of Vatican II...

...A key point to appreciate is that the most important resource in teaching by and for the "universal church" should be the lived faith of the particular representative churches, in all their cultural diversity...

...YVONNE M. ELIAS What salary reflects New York, N.Y...

...Certainly the international race to develop and stockpile nuclear weapons and the threat of their actual use are moral problems whose very magnitude is ennervating...

...Consistency with the teaching of earlier pontiffs and with the unvarying demands of natural law was emphasized even when a current pope was using familiar language to make a new point...

...on the other, to the necessity of speaking to each generation in familiar language, grounded in experience...

...Secondly, the very suggestion that timely signs should be the point of departure for ethics seems to call into question the Catholic natural law hypothesis of an objective and stable moral order which transcends the relativities of time, place, and culture...

...Among potential hearers are the so-called "secularized" Catholics of the prosperous first-world nations who seek renewal of deep religious experience...

...It might even be worthwhile to consider whether universality does not inhere at least as much in a constant process of mutually critical dialogue as in a single, centralized expression of the fruits of that dialogue...

...However, if sexual morality and, to an extent, church authority are reconceived in relation to the larger problem of male-female role distortions, the interconnection of sexual and feminist issues with issues of global justice comes more clearly into view...

...The first is the church's basic approach to understanding morality and moral obligation As I already have indicated, the council introduced the possibilities of listening to concrete moral experience and of reading Scripture on its own terms, not as a mere addendum to natural law thinking...

...The link is the sinful distortion of human nature to which humans have been prone from the Fall onward...

...As a positive, more biblically-based alternative, these authors have called attention to the figure of Mary Magdalene, attested by all four Gospels to be the first witness to the Resurrection (and whom the New Testament nowhere calls a prostitute, but, like many of us, a repentant "sinner...

...In these areas, moreover, human experience tended to be broken into segments and considered in a disunified manner...

...it is the relegation of women to the domestic sphere which is considered secondary and subsidiary to the sphere of public influence...

...Historically, the model of Virgin Mother (impossible for most of us to fulfill) has been used to enjoin for women the virtues of sacrifice, humility, submissiveness, understanding, and gentleness...

...Certainly a task for the post-Vatican II church is to expand the imagery with which it understands femininity and female roles...

...Thus sexual morality was defined in close relation to procreation...

...A balance is achieved in these sentences between commitment to the perennial and the permanent in human experience, on the one side...

...The second category of crisis is the definition of what counts as "a serious" or "the most serious" area(s) of practical morality, the ones which the church should put high on its agenda...

...The Pyschology of Sex Differences by Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin is a widely noted example of empirical research indicating that innate sex-related differences in the cognitive and affective make-ups of men and women are relatively few, and that these do not "cash out" in terms of rigidly delimited social roles...

...I am convinced that such role definitions could meet the test neither of experienced capacity nor of Gospel values...

...In this methodology it is presupposed that there are certain universal human characteristics and values which can be known quite apart from any specific religious commitment...

...These problems are most acute in nations where parity of male and female influence is gaining broader social recognition...

...To the Editors: The League of Women Voters strongly supports comparable worth ["Women, Work and the Question...

...Among other effects, this inhibits our ability to see sexuality in relation to total personal development, and tends toward a view of women as primarily wives and mothers, usually in the home, prepared to give birth and raise children...

...Furthermore, the central emphasis in the moral teaching of both universal and particular churches should be exhortation and support rather than delimitation of orthodoxy or condemnation of abuses...

...In announcing the 1985 extraordinary synod, Pope John Paul II expressed a hope "to revive" the "extraordinary atmosphere of ecclesial communion" and "mutual sharing" experienced at the council, "to exchange and examine experiences" of the council's application, and to continue to apply its insights "in the light of new exigencies as well" (Osservatore Romano, English ed., February 4, 1985, my italics...

...But the very legitimacy of religious authority — in ethics or elsewhere — resides in its power to "edify" and to "excel" in "upbuilding and encouragement and consolation" (1 Cor...

...In the decade preceding the council, it was the stability of human experience which was the dominant note in church teaching about morality...

...In the religious realm, scholars such as Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Raymond Brown, Elizabeth Carroll, and Elizabeth Johnson have used biblical evidence to illumine a servant role for all Christians, to support women's ministry, and to challenge Mary the Virgin Mother as a role model for the Christian woman...

...EVEN MORE important than the ethics of sexuality and of the status of women in the church is the interconnection of these realms with the nuclear threat, economic deprivation, and politically motivated violence...

...and the citizens of newly Christianized countries who strive to incarnate the Gospel faithfully, while transforming rather than abandoning their indigenous, nonWestern moralities and customs...

...While nuclear war would be a more immense disaster, economic deprivation and political repression are more immediate causes of suffering...

...From Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (On the Condition of Labor, 1891) to John XXIII's Mater et Magistra (Christianity and Social Progress, 1961), these encyclicals adapted past teaching to deal with changes in the predicament of the working class and the competition between socialist and capitalist systems...

...Thomas Aquinas...

...or the essential agreement of human and biblical morality...

...Continued from page 482) of wage that meets today's cost of living, why does the job exist at all...

...It is hard to know which is more important...

...It is important for us who are more privileged to remember that, to those in the world for whom sheer survival is an open question, intramural battles over sexual and gender ethics may appear a luxury of those who have a place to live and something to eat...

...Therefore, it must be said again: the arms race is an utterly treacherous trap for humanity, and one which injures the poor to an intolerable degree" (Gaudium et Spes, 81...

...The task of "scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of Gospel" became a watershed for post-Vatican II moral theology when that duty was enunciated in the council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes, 4...

...However, as Gaudium et Spes, Pope John's Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth, 1963), and the NCCB's 1983 "peace pastoral" have all pointed out, consistently but thus far ineffectively, the two are integrally connected...