What is the solution?

[Big_Dummy]

It seems to me that the historic challenge for the Church has been to reconcile its traditional teachings with current knowledge which comes from science, and so on. The record has been mixed. Sometimes the Church has been progressive and morally correct in the hindsight of historical perspective. Sometimes it has been dreadfully wrong and immoral. I don’t think I need to elaborate on this obvious points, but will if anyone is unaware of Church history.

The current trend in the Church is to resist progress. Historically, the Church has firmly and resolutely embraced moral relativism when it has been at its best, and rejected it when it has been practicing immorally. Yet, we have a pope who identifies moral relativism, the most positive force in Church evolution and progress, as being dangerous and a principal challenge to the integrity of the Church. This has some very serious implications if you consider the history of the Church and care about its vitality and survival. It appears that a single individual intends to abort the path that the Church has followed for many years for his own personal vanity and prejudice. I find this troubling.

Please elaborate, thanks BD

 

[Big_Dummy]

I think your premise is flawed. The Church has boldly embraced moral relativism for 2,000 years. John Paul II started to change that policy. Benedict XVI has decided to be a radical and oppose Church tradition in this respect.

If you doubt me consider the following:

The Church no longer burns heretics.

The Church no longer admonishes rulers to put Jews in ghettos, restrict their income and wear badges, as it did for more than 700 years.

The Church no longer condemns usury. In fact it is a lender and owns a bank

The Church no longer endorses slavery. Indeed one of the Gregory’s owned a slave.

The Church has radically changed its doctrine on the annulment of marriage.

These are just a few examples of moral relativism over time as has been practiced by the Church. The Church would not exist today if it still advocated the same moral code which it did in 1,200 AD. That is a fact.

I will need to see proofs of these from offical sources, please.

 

[St_Francis]

1. Yes there are, for eg. polygenism
2. You’re probably right, but we can hope - I actually don’t want a progressive pope, i’m generally fine with the Church’s moral teaching but i’d want a pope who isn’t antagonistic to science and reason.

The Church is in no way antagonistic to reason or science and has always supported both. For an example of reason, check out St Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.

As to science, the Church has always supported natural philosophy, or learning more about God’s creation. Brother Gregor Mendel and Louis Pasteur are a couple who come immediately to mind. Monsignor LeMaitre is the Catholic priest who came up with the Big Bang theory.

Polygenism is not really a current scientific theory and has been discredited by mitochondrial and other studies showing common ancestry for everyone on Earth, so it is not a good example of the Church disagreeing with science.

 

[Rock_Happy]

You don’t appear to know what moral relativism IS. Your examples prove the exact opposite of what you seem to think they do. Moral relativism is the idea that there are no intrinsic rights and wrongs. Instead, right and wrong are decided by the ethics developed by society based on what works and appears to support a sustainable civilization.

What you further seem to misunderstand is the difference between infallibly defined moral teachings and the personal example set by churchmen in the past. To your examples:

1. Look all you want. You’ll never find an authoritative church document that discusses the principle of burning heretics and how it is compatible with the idea of human diginity being a gift of God via our being created in His image and likeness. Burning heretics at the stake was a practice born of the culture of the day (which executed people for all sorts of things) and that churchmen failed to recognize the immorality of. Instead, they succumbed to the temptations of moral relativism and simply did what the culture around them did to troublemakers: execute. It was the recognition that execution for theological offenses was incompatible with moral absolute teachings of the church that lead to it being ended. The exact opposite of your contention.
2. Again, look all you want. You will not find an authoritative teaching that Jews are, by nature, lesser human beings than everybody else. Again, it was FAILURE to apply the absolute moral teachings of the Church to their logical conclusions that enabled this behavior (which was perfectly acceptable in the secular culture of the day. Relativists would have seen no problem with it).
3. The Church hasn’t changed its teachings on usury, but the economic systems of the world have changed to the point to make many earlier teachings of the church difficult to understand today since the invention of modern inflation and arbitrary monetary basis (paper money of no intrinsic value). There’s no doubt in my mind that an awful lot of credit card companies are sinful usurers. But it’s a lot harder to draw the line than it used to be. The church is quiet on the matter because the principles are all already out there. Application of them (i.e. drawing and exact interest rate at which fair compensation for loss of value and opportunity cost are offset) is not in her charism. That belongs to the laity. Contrary to uninformed opinions the Church does not claim to be all seeing and all knowing on all subjects.
4. Look all you want. You will find churchmen who owned slaves, you may even find opinions and guidance the duties of slave owners. You won’t find any authoritative teaching that argues that slave ownership is acceptable and morally compatible with the dignity of a human being made in the image and likeness of God. Be careful not to mistake indentured servitude for chattle slavery when reading. The word slave is sometimes used for indentured servants. Again, it was when churchmen STOPPED behaving based on cultural norms (moral relativism) and started challenging those norms with reasoning from basic principles that progress happened. Not the other way around, as you contend.
5. You lack the facts here. The church has always made the distinction between sacramental marriage and two people who dressed up and said “I do.” Examination and the potential for a decree of nullity are truly ancient. What is different today is the number of people with the time and resources to conduct such an investigation. It’s tough to prove your case when there are fields to till, weeds to pull, sheep to tend and brigands to fight… The principles haven’t changed a bit, there are just more people with the resources to fund an objective look at what their putative marriage really was in today’s world than there were in the past. There are also arguably a lot more people in today’s totally secular culture getting married in a church for the nice photo-op instead of because they truly understand and want the sacrament. No wonder those folks wind up divorced in droves.

In short, you need a dictionary. The Church hasn’t flourished for embracing moral relativism. She’s flourished when she has identified and rooted it OUT. That’s the problem with a church full of flawed humans - we bring our baggage in with us and it takes time to unpack it all. LOTS of time.

You seem to be laboring under the idea that anything but a totally static interpretation of moral teaching is moral relativism. Not so. Catholicism has always embraced the idea of doctrinal development in which one can draw true conclusions from true revelation and add to our understanding of what God has revealed to us. These aren’t reversals, they are true growth and fulfillment of what came earlier.

Hmmm… apparently you don’t understand the Church’s history of moral relativism. When it became unfashionable in society to persecute Jews, then it reduced its persecution. When it became more fashionable in society to get divorced, it changed the rules on annulment and increased the rate. When it became fashionable in society to lend money, it changed its moral stance on money lending. When it became unfashionably to burn witches, the Church changed its practices. When it became unfashionable to own slaves, the Church changed its position.

I was have been listening more and more to historical theologians lately, and one from Yale Divinity made the startling comment the other day, on the topic of gay rights, that the Church has lost every debate on social issues which it has ever engaged. I found hit statement shocking, but then with my limited knowledge of history, I could not come up with a single example in which the Church has not eventually been required to change its moral position. Can you think of any?

 

[Gianniugo]

Whatever we do; it must begin with highlighting the art of Christianity that also includes the need to be hospitable to everyone who comes within our sphere of influence: could that be taken as a given?

It is by showing that we have a love that is of a heavenly origin that we will begin by accomplishing much in the vineyard of souls.

What we often forget is that we are representatives of the government of God: our primary focus is to be on our Father, and on our ‘Big Brother’ who is also the Good Shepherd.

Everything that we do in life must show the love feasts that we have in our hearts; and in every fibre of our being. Also we will achieve much by waking up in the morning and falling down at the foot of the cross of the Great Skull that is also known as Calvary.

Our destiny, our mission, must always that we wear the insignia of the Royal Family of Heaven: by wearing that we will become a modern-day version of the Good Samaritan who appeared to do the work of God – without batting an eyelid.

 

[St_Francis]

apparently you do not understand the Church and Her teachings. What to do in particular situations changes with the times but the underlying morality does not.

Let’s look at your example of burning heretics. In a thoroughly Catholic society, a heretic–and the heretics the secular authorities burned were those who tried to convert othera to their thinking–were dangerous not only to the eternal fate of souls, making this an important issue, but to the social order, hence the involvement of the secular authorities.

However, when Protestantism swept through Christendom, many of the secular rulers converted as well, and we saw the fruits of heresy which the Church and secular authorities had tried to avoid, such as the very destructive 30 Years’ War.

The Church has not changed her stance on heresy at all, and is still correct; however, we are no longer living in a Catholic world.

WRT annulments, again, the teaching has not changed but oir understanding of human psychology has. Marriage is still a sacrament, and entering into a marriage unfreely can still create the absence of the sacramental aspect of marriage. The issue of the use of artificial birth control, for example, was not so much of a problem when abc was erractic in its effectiveness and not generally practiced.

A quick note on usury: when usury was condemned, high interest rates were the norm and there was not a lot of investing. It was more like loansharking than a bank’s mortgage; people were getting rich off poor people’s misery. When the economy developed and the rates of interest were connected with the loss of use of it and consequently much lower
than usury was, a different financial instrument arose. Usury is still condemned by the Church.

Now, with all due respect to the historical theologian from Yale, is he Catholic? Does he understand how Church teachings work? Because even the most intelligent person in the world cannot be an expert on everything.

Hmmm… apparently you don’t understand the Church’s history of moral relativism. When it became unfashionable in society to persecute Jews, then it reduced its persecution. When it became more fashionable in society to get divorced, it changed the rules on annulment and increased the rate. When it became fashionable in society to lend money, it changed its moral stance on money lending. When it became unfashionably to burn witches, the Church changed its practices. When it became unfashionable to own slaves, the Church changed its position.

I was have been listening more and more to historical theologians lately, and one from Yale Divinity made the startling comment the other day, on the topic of gay rights, that the Church has lost every debate on social issues which it has ever engaged. I found hit statement shocking, but then with my limited knowledge of history, I could not come up with a single example in which the Church has not eventually been required to change its moral position. Can you think of any?

 

[razredge]

The Church is in no way antagonistic to reason or science and has always supported both. For an example of reason, check out St Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.

Good, then the teaching will change

Polygenism is not really a current scientific theory and has been discredited by mitochondrial and other studies showing common ancestry for everyone on Earth, so it is not a good example of the Church disagreeing with science.

Polygenism has practically been proved by science, just ask our resident Catholic biochemist Al Moritz.

So the Church will change it’s teaching to incorporate polygenism, indeed recent theological documents are implying it.

 

[St_Francis]

Good, then the teaching will change

The teaching on what? Have you ever read anything by St Thomas Aquinas?

Polygenism has practically been proved by science, just ask our resident Catholic biochemist Al Moritz.

I’m sorry, if you want to make a point, you need to make it yourself, not tell me to go talk to someone else. Polygenism is the theory that the human species descended from more than one human couple and was in part used to explain the different races, that they descended from different couples.

What the Church teaches and what She has always taught is that all humans are descended from one couple, Adam and Eve, in whose creation God participated in a particular way, rendering them not just a material creature but a sporitual/material creature.

The fact that one person, who happans to be Catholic, says something is te case does not mean that that is what the Catholic Church teaches.

So the Church will change it’s teaching to incorporate polygenism, indeed recent theological documents are implying it.

Please provide some evidence for your assertions 1. that polygenism is a currently active scientific theory, and 2. that recent theological documents are implying that the Church is changing Her teaching to incorporate that.

 

[razredge]

Firstly, regardless of what the Church teaches or not - if polygenism is a scientific fact then what the Church says has no bearing on its validity, any more than Church teaching can disprove gravity exists for example or the age of the earth.

Secondly, there is plenty of evidence that the Church is changing her position on polygenism.

Eg the 2004 document Communion & Stewardship by the International Theological Commission, ratified by none other than Ratzinger himself (he was president of the commission) says:

“In its original unity – of which Adam is the symbol – the human race is made in the image of the divine Trinity.”

“While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage.”

“Catholic theology affirms that that the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations) represents an event that is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation and which can appropriately be attributed to divine intervention. Acting indirectly through causal chains operating from the beginning of cosmic history, God prepared the way for what Pope John Paul II has called ‘an ontological leap…the moment of transition to the spiritual.’”

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html

Then there is this presentation by a Jesuit theologian and his blog
whosoeverdesires.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/polygenism-talk1.pptx
vox-nova.com/2011/02/11/moving-forward-with-polygenism/

polygenism is now essentially “proved,” and since the Church has no trouble at all reconciling science with faith, we need to begin teaching, not polygenism yet as a “doctrine,” but the full debate surrounding it, to our students. They need to know the questions and that there is a good chance that the Church will say something soon about polygenism thanks to the mapping of the human genome.

Then there are the views of prominent Catholic apologists like Mark Shea and Jimmy Akin.
markshea.blogspot.com/2009/02/interesting-conversation-on-polygenism.html

jimmyakin.typepad.com/defensor_fidei/2006/10/monogenism_scie.html

Pius XII did not say that monogenism is a dogma of the faith (“de fide”). What he said was that Catholics did not have the liberty to discuss the idea that polygenism is true because it is “in no way apparent” how it could be reconciled with the sources of faith (HG 37). I also pointed out that the Holy See has gone silent on this aspect of Pius XII’s teaching on evolution, while maintaining the other elements of it, which may indicate that it is being rethought.

 

[St_Francis]

I am very confused about what you are trying to do here. Aside from the fact that polygenism is by no means proved, both Shea and Akin in the links you provided give clear explantions about why polygenism cannot be used as an example of the Church changing Her teaching.

Firstly, regardless of what the Church teaches or not - if polygenism is a scientific fact then what the Church says has no bearing on its validity, any more than Church teaching can disprove gravity exists for example or the age of the earth.

Secondly, there is plenty of evidence that the Church is changing her position on polygenism.

Eg the 2004 document Communion & Stewardship by the International Theological Commission, ratified by none other than Ratzinger himself (he was president of the commission) says:

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html

Then there is this presentation by a Jesuit theologian and his blog
whosoeverdesires.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/polygenism-talk1.pptx
vox-nova.com/2011/02/11/moving-forward-with-polygenism/

Then there are the views of prominent Catholic apologists like Mark Shea and Jimmy Akin.
markshea.blogspot.com/2009/02/interesting-conversation-on-polygenism.html

jimmyakin.typepad.com/defensor_fidei/2006/10/monogenism_scie.html

 

[razredge]

I am very confused about what you are trying to do here. Aside from the fact that polygenism is by no means proved, both Shea and Akin in the links you provided give clear explantions about why polygenism cannot be used as an example of the Church changing Her teaching.

Well the teaching that Adam and Eve are real persons will have to change won’t it?
Which is why so many people are vainly holding on to monogenism in the various threads discussing it on CAF, if you have been following the discussions.

 

[St_Francis]

Well the teaching that Adam and Eve are real persons will have to change won’t it?

Did you read the blog entries you linked to?

Which is why so many people are vainly holding on to monogenism in the various threads discussing it on CAF, if you have been following the discussions.

I’m sorry, my time online is limited so I have not been following those discussions–in fact, I did not even know they were occurring. However, it seems that mitochondrial DNA studies show there was one zillions-times great grandmother for the entire human species, so it seems to me that it is not the Church which has a problem here.

 

[razredge]

Did you read the blog entries you linked to?

Yes, and they say there is no problem with the Church changing it’s teaching from Adam & Eve as real persons to them as a symbol for humanity.

I’m sorry, my time online is limited so I have not been following those discussions–in fact, I did not even know they were occurring. However, it seems that mitochondrial DNA studies show there was one zillions-times great grandmother for the entire human species, so it seems to me that it is not the Church which has a problem here.

No, that is a common misunderstanding, Mitochondrial Eve is only our Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) not our oldest common ancestor.

But that is a topic for a different thread.

 

[St_Francis]

Yes, and they say there is no problem with the Church changing it’s teaching from Adam & Eve as real persons to them as a symbol for humanity.

And why did they say that?

No, that is a common misunderstanding, Mitochondrial Eve is only our Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) not our oldest common ancestor.

But that is a topic for a different thread.

istm that our having a most recent common ancestor indicates that we are all descended from this one person?

 

[Rock_Happy]

And why did they say that?

istm that our having a most recent common ancestor indicates that we are all descended from this one person?

Cutting through the particulars of the day. The history of the Church is that it changes its immutable and permanent moral positions with regularity in order to remain viable in the context of scientific and social change. Otherwise the lights would go out at the Vatican, and the Swiss Guards would not be paid, the art treasures would be sold at auction. The historic evidence is compelling. Denial is simply that.

 

[razredge]

And why did they say that?
Because Church teaching can be changed from a literal Adam & Eve to a symbolic Adam & Eve? Indeed, that has been implied by more recent Church documents

istm that our having a most recent common ancestor indicates that we are all descended from this one person?

 

[St_Francis]

Cutting through the particulars of the day. The history of the Church is that it changes its immutable and permanent moral positions with regularity in order to remain viable in the context of scientific and social change. Otherwise the lights would go out at the Vatican, and the Swiss Guards would not be paid, the art treasures would be sold at auction. The historic evidence is compelling. Denial is simply that.

The teaching about Adam and Eve is not a moral teaching.

 

[St_Francis]

Yes, but not only them, each person alive today will also have ancestors older than this MRCA which they do not share with everyone else on the planet today.

I don’t understand how this can be.

Say we are all descended from the woman they call the Mitochondrial Eve, Eve for short. She is the great-…greatgrandmother of all of us. If she had children from different fathers, then we would not all have all our ancestors in common, because the paternal ancestors would differ.

However, there apparently are more recent most common ancestors than M Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam (who, oddly enough, appear most recently about 5000 years ago…).

We do not know, and will never know in this world, what happened way back when, but the science of it is separate from theology. The Catholic Church teaches that the universe is made for Mankind, and this seemed to be backed up by the apparent centeality of the Earth in the universe. When we learned more about astronomy, we discvered we are not even the center of our own galaxy. What does this change about the nature of good and evil? Nothing.

We read in the Bible that the descendants of Adam and Eve were involved with the Nephilim, who remain anonymous. Whatever science discovers about our ancestry will have no effect on the nature of good and evil, and why this should be a problem is beyond me. It has nothing to do with the teachings of the Church.

 

[Rock_Happy]

The teaching about Adam and Eve is not a moral teaching.

I said nothing about Adam and Eve. And you are correct, denial is simply that. Projection is is attributing one’s own attributes to others as a form of “denial”. Shall we define any more terms here?

 

[razredge]

I don’t understand how this can be.

Say we are all descended from the woman they call the Mitochondrial Eve, Eve for short. She is the great-…greatgrandmother of all of us. If she had children from different fathers, then we would not all have all our ancestors in common, because the paternal ancestors would differ.

No, see this Eve is the most recent (ie not the oldest) common ancestor shared by all human beings alive today. Some people will be descended from her along with much older ancestors that they do not share with all the other humans alive today.

However, there apparently are more recent most common ancestors than M Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam (who, oddly enough, appear most recently about 5000 years ago…).

Mitichondrial Eve lived about 200,000 years ago

The Catholic Church teaches that the universe is made for Mankind, and this seemed to be backed up by the apparent centeality of the Earth in the universe. When we learned more about astronomy, we discvered we are not even the center of our own galaxy. What does this change about the nature of good and evil? Nothing.

Of course it has no bearing on nature of good and evil, but I doubt the universe was made solely for mankind - there could well be other intelligent life out there which we share the universe with (after all it is a ridiculously big universe for God to create and then just have one planet support life)

Whatever science discovers about our ancestry will have no effect on the nature of good and evil, and why this should be a problem is beyond me. It has nothing to do with the teachings of the Church.

Of course it doesn’t, who said otherwise? But you’ve summed it up perfectly, there is no problem in believing polygenism versus monogenism.