Catholic Theologians on Morals

[Jan2]

Is a Catholic Theologian morally responsible to do research for reasons why morals as we know them today and maybe have known them for 2000 years should change if something is discovered. I ask this question on the premise that moral teachings are doctrine (so can change, is that correct?). Thanks for your discussion.

 

[dylanschrader]

Many moral teachings of the Church are immutable either because they are revealed by God or are the Church’s definitive interpretation of the natural law. The Church’s charism of infallibility extends to morals as well as faith.

The Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian says:

Theology’s proper task is to understand the meaning of revelation and this, therefore, requires the utilization of philosophical concepts which provide “a solid and correct understanding of man, the world, and God” (6) and can be employed in a reflection upon revealed doctrine. The historical disciplines are likewise necessary for the theologian’s investigations. This is due chiefly to the historical character of revelation itself which has been communicated to us in “salvation history”. Finally, a consultation of the “human sciences” is also necessary to understand better the revealed truth about man and the moral norms for his conduct, setting these in relation to the sound findings of such sciences.

 

[mapleoak]

Is a Catholic Theologian morally responsible to do research for reasons why morals as we know them today and maybe have known them for 2000 years should change if something is discovered. I ask this question on the premise that moral teachings are doctrine (so can change, is that correct?). Thanks for your discussion.

Doctrines defined by the Church cannot change. More information, as it becomes better understood, may be added to or updated to further clarify, however. Moral teachings, of which the Church has always held and taught, are part of the deposit of faith and protected from error.

 

[thistle]

Is a Catholic Theologian morally responsible to do research for reasons why morals as we know them today and maybe have known them for 2000 years should change if something is discovered. I ask this question on the premise that moral teachings are doctrine (so can change, is that correct?). Thanks for your discussion.

Can you give us an example?

 

[Jan2]

I am a convert (2002) and have been attending RECON meetings with converts/reverts. I also work at Creighton University and here are two recent articles that have been published by Creighton theology faculty:

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At a RECON meeting, I shared my dismay about these two articles and another convert voiced her opinion that she was very comfortable with research such as this taking place and that we need to be “open” to new developments in science taking place.

When doctrine and dogma are put into this discussion, is it true that doctrine can change and how does this fit into us needing to be “open”.

My thoughts took me to contraception. If contraception had always been intrinsically evil, then why did what took place before Humane Vitae need to take place. It seems to have set everyone up for the chance of a change taking place, which didn’t.

Thanks for your help in how I can best continue in my conversation with my fellow convert.

 

[Jimbo2]

I wasn’t around in the mid 60’s, and I sure wasn’t in the Vatican, so I cannot say with certainty all the reasons the AC question was opened for study then. However, of all the discussion Ihave heard, this seems most likely:

When the pill was introduced, wild promises were made about it and the good effects it would have upon the world. Also, (even today) many people are unaware of the mechanisms by which it works. It was something genuinely new when it was invented, and certainly revolutionary.

The argument being made about the pill at the time, as I understand it, was that it was a new thing, and not related to other forms of birth control, and might not even qualify as contraception according to the Church’s definition.

So, the Vatican investigated, determined that, in fact, the pill was like other forms of artificial contraception, and was not to be used.

You can imagine, however, how many wishful peple had their hopes dashed…and how many wishful Catholics had started using the pill during the period of investigation…and how many pastors (goaded by progressive theologians) had started counseling their people to use the pill (“it will almost certainly be approved”). A lot.

Ever since, lots of people, still reeling from the shock of the Church refusing to follow the progressive theologians and instead following God, have made much of the investigation that was done. I always think “so? What did you expect?”. Of course, I have 20/20 hindsight.

 

[dylanschrader]

I am a convert (2002) and have been attending RECON meetings with converts/reverts. I also work at Creighton University and here are two recent articles that have been published by Creighton theology faculty:

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These articles are patently heterodox and show either an incredibly poor understanding of the nature of the Church or a deliberate refusal to assent to the truth.

The theologians who write articles like these either need to read the Catechism or go to confession and probably both.

At a RECON meeting, I shared my dismay about these two articles and another convert voiced her opinion that she was very comfortable with research such as this taking place and that we need to be “open” to new developments in science taking place.

When doctrine and dogma are put into this discussion, is it true that doctrine can change and how does this fit into us needing to be “open”.

To understand better the varying kinds of assent which must be given to the Church’s pronouncements, read DOCTRINAL COMMENTARY ON THE CONCLUDING FORMULA OF THE PROFESSIO FIDEI.

It can seem complicated, but it explains three kinds of assent/submission which are required:

1. The truths which the Church as proposed as divinely revealed must be believed with the theological virtue of Faith (the virtue by which we believe what God reveals because he has revealed it).
   

    For example, the doctrine of the real and substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

2. “All those teachings belonging to the dogmatic or moral area, which are necessary for faithfully keeping and expounding the deposit of faith, even if they have not been proposed by the Magisterium of the Church as formally revealed” must be assented to with “firm and definitive assent to these truths, based on faith in the Holy Spirit’s assistance to the Church’s Magisterium, and on the Catholic doctrine of the infallibility of the Magisterium in these matters.”
   

   For example, the doctrine on the illicitness of euthanasia, taught in the Encyclical Letter *Evangelium Vitae*.

3. “All those teachings * on faith and morals - presented as true or at least as sure, even if they have not been defined with a solemn judgment or proposed as definitive by the ordinary and universal Magisterium” must be adhered to with “with religious submission of will and intellect.”
   

   For example, "one can point in general to teachings set forth by the authentic ordinary Magisterium in a non-definitive way, which require degrees of adherence differentiated according to the mind and the will manifested; this is shown especially by the nature of the documents, by the frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or by the tenor of the verbal expression."

It also notes (#8):

With regard to the nature of the assent owed to the truths set forth by the Church as divinely revealed (those of the first paragraph) or to be held definitively (those of the second paragraph), it is important to emphasize that there is no difference with respect to the full and irrevocable character of the assent which is owed to these teachings.

My thoughts took me to contraception. If contraception had always been intrinsically evil, then why did what took place before Humane Vitae need to take place. It seems to have set everyone up for the chance of a change taking place, which didn’t.

Thanks for your help in how I can best continue in my conversation with my fellow convert.

Yes; contraception has always been immoral. It was impossible that Humanae Vitae would change the Church’s teaching on this matter just as it is impossible today for the Church to change her teaching on this matter.

In 1930, Pius XI wrote an encyclical called Casti Connubii, which condemns contraception in #53-55 and also shows that the Church has always regarded contraception as immoral. Humanae Vitae couldn’t change this, but it could re-affirm this teaching in the modern world and attempt to express it in terms that men of this age can understand.

 

[Jan2]

Thanks for your help. I really do appreciate the time you spent to better inform me.

 

[Jan2]

I just listened to an interview on kvss.com with Dr. Tom Hilgers of the Pope Paul VI Institute (it is a taped interview that you can listen to) and heard that the commission’s vote on accepting the birth control pill was 54-4, the 54 in favor of accepting the pill. That is truly amazing to me. I need to dig deeper and see who was on this commission and whether or not they would change their vote today in light of witnessing this devastating societal experiment.

 

[otjm]

Part of the problem herein, and with no disrespect meant to any of the posters herein, is the availability of the official works of theologians to the public. Were these papers not published in a way that makes them available to the public, but only to other theologians, speculative opinions and opinions that are at obvious varience from Church teaching would not be leading people astray.

However, they are available to the public; and the public, which is generally untutored in either Philosophy (and specifically logic) or
Theology is not able to distinguish where ideas are complimentary to Church teaching and where they are off track; where they do not logically flow, and how they mistake, misquote, or selectively edit what other writers have said, and where they set up “straw man” arguements.

I would assume that the writers of the articles from Creighton have at a minimum a Masters, if not a PhD. The net result is that they tend to write at a level which most people cannot truly follow completely, without a sound educational base; one that requires at the minimum an undergraduate degree in the discipline if not an advanced one, to be able to not only understand what the writer(s) is/are saying, but to also understand those who may have different conclusions. In addition, it is important to have an understanding of the specific field which the writer(s) write.

In other words, it is all too easy to get sucked in by a scholarly (as opposed to a public consumption) article and presume that the article is fine to follow without understanding thoroughly what the Church has taught up to that point concerning the matter, and why. The article sounds good; it seems to make sense in and of itself, and never mind that the writer(s) may be off on such an extreme tangent that they have nothing to do with the last two thousand years of Church thinking.

In short, there seems to be a facination with scholarly works, particularly as they may be at varience with Church teaching; and people making up their minds about the articles too often have no base from which to make a valid decision.

And even where there may not be a varience with authentic Church teaching, one not schooled in critical analysis can often come to false conclusions about the author’s work because of the inability to read what is actually written.

 

[otjm]

As to the Betrothal Proposal, it may be that the report from Daniel Lichter of Cornell University, published in the journal Demography, was published too late for the writers of Betrothal to take into consideration; the alternative would be that they did not do their background research.

Lichter’s research shows that cohabitation, rather than being some road to a happy marriage, or even a happy relationship, is just the opposite; such relationships end in separation** 90% of the time.**

Betrothal is just another example of writers with a specific goal - legitimizing what the Church has condemned - trying to put a spin, gloss and new angle on what simply doesn’t work.

It takes a great deal of thought and honesty, as well as the ability to sort through a lot of prejudice, to look at root motivations. Too often, rather than getting down to the bottm of why we do what we do, we end up trying to justify our actions and give them legitimacy. If one looks at Moral Law as just some hide-bound bunch of rules that were outdated years ago, one is not going to ask why those laws have been around for so long, why those who don’t follow them are getting the results they are, and what, at the very bottom, drives people to do the things they do (both good and bad).

Oh, and the article by Lichter was published on or before July 21, 2006 (the date of the announcement in the news); so methinks the writers of Betrothal are less interested in the reality of marriage and sexual realtionships, and more in their own pet theories. Had they done some real research, they should have found the article, and one would think they would have pulled back from suggesting a postion that the real world is already showing doesn’t work.

It sounds more as if their research was done on the back of a cocktail napkin; one that would have been better used to sit under the glass of whatever they may have been consuming…

 

[Jimbo2]

Why not blame the author of the “public consumption” 2nd article instead of the readers thereof?

 

[otjm]

Why not blame the author of the “public consumption” 2nd article instead of the readers thereof?

I am not suggesting they are blameless. I am suggesting that the problem is due to the fact that 60 years ago, the public simply didn’t have much if any access to professional journals. There were theologians then who were falling off the edge of the earth; they just weren’t taking a lot of simple folks with them.

Now, because publishing seems to have changed, and the public has more access to professional journals, the simple folks are falling off the edge of the earth with them; and some simple folks are falling off the edge of the earth over theologians who are legitimate.

In short, one should not be reading something that was not meant for their edification, and should be a whole lot more judicious about what they read that was meant for their edificiation.

And rather than you and I trying to hash out who is or is not true to the Magisterium, that should be left to the professionals too.

And if you read my second post, I think I did a fairy pointed job of taking them to task - the authors of the second article.

 

[Jimbo2]

Perhaps I lack the requisite education to read you.

 

[otjm]

Perhaps I lack the requisite education to read you.

I wasn’t taking a poke at you.

I think that the biggest problem with people getting lead astray by errant theologians is a lack of catechesis. Some of that, albeit minimally, is being rectified by the clean up of educational materials for children and teenagers; it took the bishops long enough.

However, the bigger problem, it seems to me, is adult catechesis. The homily is not really meant to be a catechism of evey doctrinal and moral teaching of the Church; it’s primary purpose is to bring the Gospel and other readings to a practical application in our daily lives. There needs to be much more beyond the Mass that people need in order to be an educated Catholic; but when you offer a class and one fourth of one percent of the adults in the parish show up, it is problematic. They don’t seem to see the need; and yet they get their noses into all sorts of things not meant for them, and certainly not helpful to them. and lacking solid catechesis, they are easily suckers for anything that supports their innate prejudices.

 

[Jan2]

I am going to try to ask my question in a different way. When looking at the Papal Commission on Birth Control instituted by Pope Paul VI and the Commission voted 52-4 in favor of allowing the birth control pill, have there been other commissions over the years on such subjects as homosexual acts and fornication? If so, did any of these commissions vote in favor of changing moral Church teaching? How is is possible that if Church teaching has always been against birth control, that the Commission would have voted in favor of accepting the pill? Did they not accept this as a form of birth control? I am wondering if this is why some Catholic theologians keep plugging away at trying to change moral teachings.

 

[dylanschrader]

I am going to try to ask my question in a different way. When looking at the Papal Commission on Birth Control instituted by Pope Paul VI and the Commission voted 52-4 in favor of allowing the birth control pill, have there been other commissions over the years on such subjects as homosexual acts and fornication? If so, did any of these commissions vote in favor of changing moral Church teaching? How is is possible that if Church teaching has always been against birth control, that the Commission would have voted in favor of accepting the pill? Did they not accept this as a form of birth control? I am wondering if this is why some Catholic theologians keep plugging away at trying to change moral teachings.

I think there were several reasons why it may have seemed to some like the Church could change her teaching on contraception; to others, the issue may have seemed like one of applying the Church’s teaching to new circumstances.

For instance, there were some new moral theories (especially related to theories that embrace the so-called “fundamental option”). Under these theories, individual acts of contraception could be rendered licit within the context of an overall fecund marriage.

There were also questions about how to apply the Church’s teaching on contraception to the newly developed chemical methods of contraception (since they seemed to some to be an exercise of man’s dominion over nature).

Of course, there was no danger that the Church’s teaching could have been other than what it was because of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but at the time, perhaps, things were not so clear to all.

Humanae Vitae addresses these issues and–regarding those new moral theories–other documents such as Persona Humana and Veritatis Splendor re-iterate the validity of the Church’s teaching about individual human actions, mortal and venial sin, etc.

 

[Jimbo2]

How is is possible that if Church teaching has always been against birth control, that the Commission would have voted in favor of accepting the pill?

You have met people, haven’t you? You’ve interacted with them?

Look at our Bishops in the USA over the last generation. Nutters, mostly.

The commission was quite simply wrong, and this shouldn’t surprise us too much. Lots of people were quite ga-ga over the pill and all sorts of euro-liberal ideas at the time.

The important point is not who was wrong at the time, but who was right. As usual, the Pope, ruling on an issue of morality, was rendered infallible by action of the Holy Spirit.

How do I know? Because, hindsight is 20/20. Go back, look over the last 40+ years. Only one organization in the world went against the grain and conemned the pill - the Church. Now look at us. Europe is dying and Islam is replacing European culture in a simple war of attrition. The pill did this. The protestant denominations which embraced the pill either have egg all over their faces as the abortifacient properties of the pill become more and more widely known - or they have embraced their error more consistently and have beocme pro-choice. It is their ruin.

What makes Rome different? Well, it sure as Hell is NOT because we are smarter - look at the commission! Without the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Catholic Church would have gone the same way as all the others.

 

[otjm]

I am going to try to ask my question in a different way. When looking at the Papal Commission on Birth Control instituted by Pope Paul VI and the Commission voted 52-4 in favor of allowing the birth control pill, have there been other commissions over the years on such subjects as homosexual acts and fornication? If so, did any of these commissions vote in favor of changing moral Church teaching? How is is possible that if Church teaching has always been against birth control, that the Commission would have voted in favor of accepting the pill? Did they not accept this as a form of birth control? I am wondering if this is why some Catholic theologians keep plugging away at trying to change moral teachings.

A lot of questions; I’ll try to sort them out.

1. No there have not been other Commissions. The Church certainly has worked on the issues of homosexuality and fornication, but the Commission on the Pill was fairly unique.
2. How did they end up so heavily favoring the Pill? Several things need to be kept in mind. To begin with, there was nowhere near the amount of information available then, as there is now, as to what the Pill actually does (often acts as an abortificant; strong interconnection with cancer); and the world, while it was on the brink of sexual license, had not really done more than get its’ toe wet (contrary to popular opinion, everyone was not sleeping with someone elses outside of marriage) in that cesspool. In fact, it was the Pill that made sexual license so readily available and a part of the world’s culture.

In addition, we were in the throes of the “population crisis”; the current thinking at that time saw population going up geometrically, but food production only arithmetically; there was a true fear that we would reach starvation world wide shortly.

On top of all this, the Pill was seen as radically different than any other form of birth control; all other forms (except withdrawl) were mechanical. The Pill did not mechanically prevent conception; rather, it changed the woman’s cycle so that she would not become pregnant. Thus it was seen as not being an interferance with conception. Many deemed it permissible because it did not act the way that other forms of ABC worked.

Note that what was called the Rythym Method (aka Vatican Roulette) was also considered by many to be “birth control”, and was acceptable to the Church under certain circumstances (legitimate spacing of children). The Pill was seen a hormonal action on the body which regulated what was seen as not a very regulated process (ovulation), and was seen as legitimate within the definition the Church accepted for rythym.

something needs to be kept in mind; there are often a lot of comments made about not only the commission but also bishops, theologians, priests and laity which are shorthand for “they were all a bunch of liberal, heretical people out to destroy the Church”. Not only is that extremely judgemental in and of itself, but it als is slanderous of people who in good fatih were trying to grapple with serious questions, and with much less information than we have today. That they were wrong, one only needs to look around and see the results. Some have continued to hold their positions; others have changed. But to wholsale judge the moral character of those on the Commission is absolutely wrong. If the question had had a clear answer at the beginning, there never would have been a Commission. To presume that these people were not involved in prayerfully trying to answer the question presented is simply beyond the pale. Althoug not all on the Commission were Catholics, those who were most certainly were attempting to bring honest, forthright and careful answers to the question posed.

Your last question involves a lot of discussion; but relates back to how Moral Theology got off track after Vatican 2; a very simplistic answer is that it (Moral Theology) got itself tangled up with a new philosophical approach to ethics, called Situational Ethics. But that is a whole 'nother topic.