We’re experiencing a communication problem.
Moral norms are one thing…surely the scriptures and the magesterium teach infallibly in these areas.
Where difficulty lies is in the concrete, everyday lives of people and the choices they’re confronted with. There are any number of factors which affect people as they engage in moral decision-making.
What people are required to do is think with the church and then make the best decisions they can.
As an example…a nun I know of was kidnapped, tortured and gang-raped by the U.S. backed military regime in Guatemala in the 1980’s. After several days she managed to escape and returned home to her religous community in the US. She was psychologically devastated and her faith in shambles. It was discovered she had become impregnated by these sick, sick people. She was in utterly no condition to go through a pregnancy and give birth to a child. In the end she with the support of her community decided abortion was the best option.
The moral norm claims abortion is a grave and serious act worthy of condemndation. Now one gets to the nitty gritty of admittedly extreme cases like this and all of sudden “black and white” thinking goes astray…
Do you see what the church is pointing too? The moral norm is the ideal…in our decision-making we operate in less-than simple circumstances and must make the best choices we can while living in the shadow of moral norms…
Does this help?
I see a number of problems with your reasoning.
You acknowledge that the moral norm is the ideal, but then you effectively disregard the norm with the idea that we “must make best choices we can while living in the shadow of moral norms.” If such choices are in clear and indirect conflict with the norm then how is that you can say you are abiding by the norm?
Christ said “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect”. But according to the logic of your argument Christ is requiring of us something that is not possible. Yet He promised us the grace to will the good that we should will, and to do the good that we should do.
Take for instance, your story about a nun who had an abortion. Did she have a choice in the matter? If so, did she think something good would be accomplished by having an abortion? Apparently so. However, St. Paul says we cannot do evil that good may come from it. In modern ethical parlance, we say the end does not justify the means.
What were the means in this case? Killing a pre-natal child. Pre-natal child murder has never resolved rape. It does not undo the fact that a rape has occurred. It does not undo the severe trauma of rape. What it does is add the guilt of murder to the victim’s already existing emotional trauma. The problem has thus been severely compounded.
Perhaps you are not yet an ethical relativist, but what you are describing is a situation ethics that borders on a practical relativism, though theoretically you still admit to objective norms. Perhaps the likes of Charles Curran would agree with your logic, but the Church has formally disagreed with Charles Curran.
In “What’s Wrong With the World”, G.K. Chesterton says, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” Christianity does not say we are to apply the moral norms the best we can to individual situations, and just leave it at that. Application of moral norms to the particular requires a well-formed conscience. We are called to form our consciences in Catholic moral teaching. Furthermore, a competent spiritual adviser should be resorted to in difficult moral situations.
I once met a young Catholic lady at a pro-life convention. She had two young twin boys. The father of her boys was her drug-crazed brother who raped her. Yet, she found the courage in Christ to give birth to the twins and to tell people that the father of her children is her brother. I think her courage is absolutely heroic. And so she was a marvelous witness for the pro-life cause. She is most happy that she did not choose to abort. The twins were absolutely adorable.
How could she have been better off spiritually and emotionally if she had aborted the twins and publicly concealed the fact she was raped by her brother? She took the norm “Thou shalt not kill” most seriously.
