HOW DO WE WORK OUT WHAT IS MORALLY RIGHT?

A long Catholic moral tradition has enshrined the theory of natural law as the heart of moral reasoning. The focus has been upon the rational nature or structure of the human person as the fundamental criterion of what is morally right or wrong.  However, in applying this criterion there have been two interpretations, dating back to the ancient Greek philosophers, which can lead to two extremes: a naturalism that is forgetful of personal transcendence and a personalism that ignores the physiological nature of the human person.  

An older theory of natural law, typical of much Catholic text-book ethics in the first half of the 20^th century, was based on the first of these interpretations of human nature, understood as 'what nature teaches all animals'. It tended to focus too exclusively on the physical or biological nature of the human person and so has been accused of a 'naturalism that is forgetful of personal transcendence'. The theory runs somewhat as follows. On the basis of physical/biological nature it is possible to draw up a code of immutable and universal moral rules, fundamentally binding on all human beings simply because of their humanness. God in the overall scheme of things is seen as the author of a great blueprint, which is spelled out in the natural function of our organs and faculties. Thus speech is for making known what is in our mind, sight is for seeing, the sexual faculty is for the generation and education of offspring (as well as for the expression and fostering of mutual love). To act against these natural functions is to disobey the will of God and so to do wrong.  

According to this understanding of natural law, certain classes of acts can be assessed (at least prima facie) as morally wrong in themselves apart from the particular context in which the act is carried out, simply because of the kind of acts they are. Many examples of such acts could be given, among them killing an innocent person, lying, stealing, suicide, abortion, contraception, masturbation, pre-marital sex.  

In the judgment of many contemporary moral theologians, this theory takes only a partial view of the nature of the human person. It also seems to contradict the Church's teachings about the unity of the human person as a psychosomatic whole, the spiritual element being the principle of unity of the human being, who exists as a whole – one in body and soul. Factual information concerning the natural orientation of our faculties and organs does not enable us to make a moral assessment about what ought to be done. It is not physical nature that determines what is to be done or avoided but reason, informed by nature about the facts. And reason assesses the morality of human actions from the precise point of view of whether or not they accord or conflict with the total good of the human person as a social being.  

Nature in this sense has a merely indicative character. Sometimes biological laws may stand the test of serving the good of the total person, but it is unreasonable to expect that this will always be the case. Their significance needs to be discovered through human experience rather than a priori and deductively. For example, the immorality of the so-called simple case of IVF between husband and wife is supported by arguments that it is against the nature of their relationship or that it is dehumanising, but it would seem that the only way of verifying whether this is so or not is through the experience of infertile married couples who have undergone the procedure.  

Elements of this 'natural law' thinking seem to be reflected in official documents of the Church, for example, in the Declaration on Sexual Ethics of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1975) and in other statements about human life and sexuality, such as Pope Pius XI's Casti Connubii (1931) and Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae (1968). The heart of the debate over contraception in the Catholic Church is precisely whether the giving of self in sexual intercourse must in all situations be limited by the physical/biological structure of the act or whether in the context of responsible parenthood contraceptive marital intercourse for the good of the spouses and of the marriage is not a violation of natural law. Factual information about marital experience of sexuality and the biological process of conception needs to be taken carefully into account in reaching a conclusion.  

Today a more truly personalist understanding of natural law has tended to replace the foregoing view. St. Thomas Aquinas makes allowance for both views, but I think it is fair to say that his preferred position is that natural law is brought into being by human persons themselves through their own intelligent activity. According to him, all creatures share in God's creative design, which he called eternal law, but in different ways, non-human creation in a deterministic way, human beings by the use of reason. As he put it, 'This participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called natural law'. Human persons have the task of discovering for themselves what it means to be truly human by using their intelligence to reflect upon the totality of human experience, not just one aspect of it, such as the physical or biological dimension of human nature. There is no limit in principle to how much can be learnt and the more the human person learns, the more God's creative design for the human race will become clear. At root, natural law is not a code but rather a tendency to realise all that is needed to flourish as an authentic human person in community with others.  

For contemporary moral theologians, with their modern worldview, human nature is not regarded as a finished product but as ever evolving. The fundamental criterion of moral rightness and wrongness and therefore the ultimate grounding of all moral rules must be the human person as a totality, integrally and adequately considered, that is, including all dimensions of the person, the spiritual, the physical, the psychological, the emotional, the social. What behaviour contributes and is indispensable to the good, the fulfilment, the flourishing, of the human person thus considered is in fact discovered by the collective and individual experience of living and communicating as human beings and members of society. It is an ongoing task that begins with the lived convictions of the human community and that calls us to be open to new possibilities of fuller living as human beings and as Christians.  

In this understanding of natural law, morality is objective because it is based on the constant struggle to discover the whole of human reality in all its relationships. As reality is subject to change, so moral positions must be open to revision. And because only a part of the whole can be grasped at any one time, specific moral conclusions based on natural law will necessarily be limited and tentative. These conclusions are reliable insofar as they reflect as accurate a grasp of human reality as is possible at any one time. But such conclusions must necessarily be open to revision, since more of the meaning of being human still remains to be discovered.