May 28, 2012                               Brian Lewis, Ballarat, Australia                             Brian's previous articles

THE HUMAN PERSON AT THE CENTRE OF MORALITY

Moral theology especially since Vatican II has been characterised as personalist in its overall approach and has sought to recapture and develop the strong humanist element in the Christian ethical tradition. The biblical revival has highlighted the fact that the dignity of the human person created in God's image and redeemed in Christ is central to the Christian story of God's creative and redemptive action in the world. In this light it is not surprising that Catholic moral theology in recent times has focused on the value of the human person, a theme that reverberates through the documents of Vatican II.  

We might recall, for instance, the clear affirmation of the centrality and dignity of the human person that begins the first chapter of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes): 'According to the almost unanimous opinion of both believers and unbelievers, all things on earth should be related to the person as centre and crown' (n.38). By this criterion the specific moral situations taken up in the second part of the document are judged: marriage and the family ('the nature of the human person and her/his acts', n.51), culture ('men and women authors and promoters of culture', n.55), the economy ('the person is the author, the centre and the end of all socio-economic life' n.63), political life ('search for the common good', n.74). In this way the cause of humanity becomes the basic touchstone of morality, in relation to both personal and social life.  

Against the static conception of human nature common in the past, today the human person (to summarise John Macquarrie's discussion) is considered as  a 'being-on-the-move', self-transcending, ever responding to new challenges and adapting to a constant process of change. Against the idealist or spiritual view of the human person as a 'ghost in a machine', imprisoned in the body, a view that stems from Plato, the modern understanding of the human person is of one who is essentially body/spirit, a 'being-in-the-body' and through the body a 'being-in-the-world'. In place of the exaggerated individualism of the past, we see the human person as essentially a social being, a 'being-with-others'. The human person is not a passive spectator but essentially one who acts freely and responsibly to, in a sense, create the self and the world to which we belong.  

As human beings we need to be secure,  and so ethics must be concerned with established  rules, laws and patterns of responsible behaviour that are accepted and upheld in society. In this way we can enjoy a needed sense of stability and permanence. But a sense of stability and permanence, though necessary for security, is not enough for the growth and development of human persons in society. The possibility, and indeed inevitability, of change must also be taken into account. For many, there lies the rub. We naturally do not like change and sometimes cannot either understand it or accept it when it confronts us. I am reminded of the Americans whose ideas on the limits of space travel were so entrenched that they could not accept that a man had landed on the moon. They simply could not accommodate in their thinking such a reality change. Ethics must be concerned, not only with what makes for stability and security in society, but also with the dynamics and appropriate limits of change, which through their decision making human beings set in motion in living and acting as becomes human persons.  

As we grow and develop through life, new needs and challenges to personal growth arise within ourselves. We can all recall the problems we weathered in making the transition from childhood through adolescence to adulthood, problems occasioned not only through bodily changes but also in our relationships with our parents, with our siblings and our peers, and especially in maturing from an authoritarian conscience, evolving out of parental directives and prohibitions, to an authentic conscience, whereby we made decisions about our lives arising from our own internalised values, beliefs and convictions.  

Also, we are no strangers to the challenges we face from the inevitable changes in our personal circumstances. Perhaps for most of us the biggest change of this nature comes about when we marry. Marriage makes many demands upon us as we learn to create a unit from two independent personalities, as we cope with increasing financial needs and especially as we measure up to the new challenge of parenthood and all that being good parents requires of us. And down the track we are called upon to meet the changes that advancing age thrusts upon us in such a way as to grow old gracefully when perhaps health begins to fail, when we find that we cannot do all the things we used to do, and when the security of our cherished independence perhaps tend to shrink.  

Change is a fact of life, not only within ourselves but in the society of which we are part. Indeed in our lifetime society has changed more radically and at a much faster pace than ever before in human history. We all have experience of changes in the value of money,  in property prices, in our quality of life, in extraordinary advances in technology, in the shrinking of distance, in globalisation, in global warming, not to mention the ramifications of changing mores and of the sexual revolution. But for Catholics one of the greatest social changes confronting us relates to the Church. Apart from the obvious example of the new translation of the text of the liturgy, we hear calls for a revision of the teaching of the Church on contraception, on priestly celibacy, on the treatment of the divorced and remarried, on the ordination of women, on the role of the laity, on the centralisation of authority and power in Rome, and in many other areas. It is important for us to be clear about the limitations of change in such matters.  

Attention has already been drawn on this website to the different levels of teaching by the magisterium of the Church. The question of change is not in dispute in regard to the fundamental truths of faith (dogmas) nor doctrines of the Church that are indispensable to protect the integrity of the revealed word of God in Scripture and Tradition. When, however, we consider issues that have little or no connection with revelation – with what is essential for faith - that is, the category included under what we have called discipline (for instance, governance, practices, teachings, mores), the possibility of change becomes a real issue. Arguably the questions raised in the last paragraph, and many others too, fit into this category.  

What the magisterium of the Church teaches in this area should exhibit, as theologian Joe Selling wisely maintains, the three characteristics of credibility, communicability and conviction. On these three pillars rests the authoritativeness of the Church's day-to-day teaching. Without them, no amount of insistence will make something credible, more communicable or convincing, and so insure against the possibility/probability of change.  

On the individual level, a person contemplating a decision for change ought to have sound reasons why it is judged worthwhile and truly a change for the better. The choice for change in one's personal life ought to be reasoned and not merely the result of whim or passion. To be morally right, change needs to be capable of integration into the 'whole' which is the individual self. On the level of society, the public needs to be assured by accessible rational argument that a new possibility of living is indeed an important value to the community and its members. This is often problematic.  

New possibilities for human living discovered by the community or by certain persons within the community need to be tested over time to ensure that they are really opportunities for genuine advancement of the quality of life and not in fact destructive and dehumanising. And that applies, not only to the Church, but also to the broader society. What is to be said, for instance, of the morality of using fertility drugs, or of the practice of freezing human embryos, or of experimentation on human embryos or young children without their informed consent? The mere fact that modern technology opens up incredible possibilities does not mean that each or all of these ought to be implemented. The danger of the so-called 'technological imperative' is not to be underestimated.  

The process of discovering deeper possibilities of human living and so avenues for change goes on all the time, among certain individuals, in the family and in the wider society, as we profit from the accumulated wisdom offered by research, reflection on our changing lifestyle, and our culture.