October 10, 2012              Brian Lewis, Ballarat, Australia

VATICAN 2 AND THE RENEWAL OF MORALS

11^th October marks the Golden Jubilee of the beginning of the ecumenical council known to us as Vatican 2, which Pope John XXIII spoke of as rising in the Church 'like daybreak, a forerunner of most splendid light'.  

One of the many reforms explicitly called for by the Council was the renewal of moral theology in its Decree on Priestly Formation (Chapter 5). The main objective of this revision was that the whole of moral theology should be centred on the Gospel of Christ. It should therefore be thoroughly nourished by Scripture and should thrash out the implications of the vocation of all Christians to love as Christ loved, in contrast to what had for long been a theology tending to focus on authority, law, sin and how far one could go without committing sin.  

Much has been achieved over the last 50 years and there are other issues, perhaps not stemming directly from the Council, that remain at the level of discussion. I review briefly some of the achievements that are now commonly accepted in moral theology.

 The Distinctiveness of Christian Morality  

Early attempts at the renewal of moral theology over-emphasised the specific distinctiveness of  Christian morality as revealed, principally in the Bible, in comparison with the morality of someone without Christian faith. Inevitably there was a reaction, supporting the view that, given the emphasis traditionally put on natural law in the Christian moral tradition, revelation does not add substantially to the material content of morality as it can be worked out by human reason. Supported by some big name moral theologians in the 1960's and 1970's, this became known as the movement for an 'autonomous ethic'. However, it in turn was challenged by another movement called a 'faith ethic', insisting vehemently that faith does make a distinctive difference to the morality of the believer.  

If it has done nothing else, this debate about faith and morality has made moral theologians more alert, not only to the riches of the moral teaching of the Bible, but also to the complexity of interpreting it correctly. The upshot is that we now see that the main difference between the moral life of Christians, especially Catholic Christians and non-Christians is not so much that we have a moral agenda not shared by others (otherwise dialogue with non-Christians on moral issues would be impossible), but that they must seek to implement this agenda in a different context, that of the Christian story: the story of  God's intervention in human affairs, interpreted and written down by the biblical writers and lived by believers ever since. Christian moral life is thus situated within the context of the Church's web of beliefs and practices deriving from the Gospel. It is transfigured by faith in the revealed Word.[i]  

Not only do faithed people have a distinctive source of inspiration and of motivation, but at a deeper level their faith has the potential to imprint upon the Christian community and on individual believers a distinctive character formed by the stories of the Bible and of their tradition, a distinctive vision of the world and of one's place in it, a vision of life centred upon Jesus, the true and life-giving way to God. 'Faith throws light on everything, manifests God's design for our total vocation, and thus directs the mind to solutions that are fully human' (GS, n.11). A distinctive moral character is the matrix of discernment and of distinctive moral judgments and decisions, communal and individual, about the course of action needed in the world and in one's personal life.

Others who do not share the Christian faith may make similar judgments and decisions, but they do so out of a different value system and in a different style. Christians do not have ready-made answers to moral problems but faith should colour their decisions and lead to solutions that at least are not at odds with or inimical to the Gospel. 'Its distinctive ethos, its shaping stories about God, humans and the cosmos, facilitate a moral sensitivity in the pursuit of norms, even if these are per se available outside the community'[ii].      

Morality Centred on the Human Person  

The theme of the human person runs through the documents of Vatican 2 and must be at the heart of a renewed moral theology. See for example the first chapter of GS, which stresses that everything 'should be related to the person as centre and crown'. By this criterion the specific moral situations taken up in the second part of the document are judged: marriage and family, culture, the economy, political life, international peace and co-operation. Thus the cause of the human person becomes the basic criterion of morality.

As a result moral theology has become personalist in its overall approach and has recaptured the strong humanist element in our moral tradition. Against the static conception of human nature previously so common, the human person is now seen as dynamic, self-transcending, adaptable and open to challenge and to change, free and responsible, social and relational to others. Because of the power and need of self-transcendence, a new centre of being is discovered, namely the good of others, and ultimately the Centre of all being, the Good, the Truth that is God.  

Personalism has led to a number of further developments in moral theology.  

•    the contemporary theory of the fundamental option, first suggested by Karl Rahner in regard to the theology of grace and subsequently taken over by many moral theologians. No doubt because it reflects ideas drawn from Kantian philosophy, this theory was given only partial acceptance by John Paul II in his 1993 encyclical, Veritatis Splendor. The Pope makes the point that human action is ultimately a 'decision about oneself'. This, he says, explains the emphasis placed today on 'the importance of certain choices which shape a person's entire life and which serve as bounds within which other particular everyday choices can be situated and allowed to develop' (n.65). This shaping of the person's entire life in response to the universal magnet of the Good is formed by and actually exercised in the particular free decisions that a person makes. This emphasis has important pastoral implications, for example, in regard to the understanding of mortal sin.  

From a Christian point of view the 'decision about oneself', which 'qualifies the moral life and engages freedom on a radical level before God, is a question of the 'decision of faith', which comes from within, the heart, and by which we make a total and free self-commitment to God (nn.66-67).  

•    Another aspect of the contemporary focus on the human person is the retrieval and development of what St. Thomas Aquinas had to say about the moral virtues. This  has led to what is known as Virtue Ethics, which focuses less on judging and evaluating human actions, traditionally the main thrust of moral theology, and more on the persons who do the actions. Virtue ethics does not neglect consideration of what we should or should not do, but lays more emphasis on what a person should or should become.  

•    A final very significant development in the personalising of moral theology is Feminist Ethics. Women have much to contribute to our understanding of moral life, the most important moral issues and the way these should be dealt with. In the past this wellspring of insight into the meaning of the human person and of guidance into how human flourishing should be realised remained largely untapped. Feminist ethics is an attempt by women moral theologians to consider what is distinctive about the femiiine experience of human life and its problems with a view to shedding light on the ethical endeavour.[iii]  

A Change of Worldview and Methodolody  

In the light of the foregoing considerations it is easy to see that modern ecclesiological and theological perspectives on human existence, which were endorsed by Vatican 2, have led  to a way of looking at things that is more attuned to history and experience.

An older approach adopted a classicist  worldview, that is, it tended consider essences to the neglect of particular circumstances, to look at reality in the abstract and so distance itself from the forces shaping the contemporary world. It laid stress on the eternal, the universal and immutable and often employed the deductive method in its argumentation. It emphasised law, authority and the hierarchical magisterium and viewed departure from them as disloyalty. It aimed at security and, as far as possible in moral matters, certainty.  

Historical consciousness centres rather on the particular, the individual and the contingent. It tends to take life experience as its starting point, reflecting on this in the light of reason and faith, and so to argue inductively. It places more emphasis on persons and conscience and so has led to a re-examination of some traditional formulations. 

In Catholic circles the change of vision and methodology is very evident, for instance, in the development of the Church's social moral teaching from 1963 [iv], but not in other areas of morality, particularly in the familial, sexual and biological fields. However, Catholic moral theology has made a serious attempt to implement and follow through the newer approach, without of course abandoning deductive reasoning. There is greater emphasis on the concrete situation as well as on the level of development of the person involved in that often complex situation. Greater attention is given to data drawn from the empirical sciences, especially psychology and sociology, which throw light on human experience. The experience of the larger community and of other cultures is also consulted.  

Wider consultation of this nature enables moral theologians to formulate statements about morality with greater care and in a language and according to thought patterns that are meaningful and accessible to people of our era.  

The Understanding of Natural Law  

The Catholic theological tradition has long focused on the nature or structure of the human person as the fundamental criterion of what is morally right or wrong. An older theory of natural law, typical of the moral textbooks prior to Vatican 2, interpreted human nature as 'what nature teaches all animals'. It thus tended to focus too exclusively on the physical or biological nature of the human person and on this basis drew up a moral code of immutable and universal rules binding on all human beings. According to this view certain classes of acts can be assessed (at least prima facie) as morally wrong in themselves apart from the surrounding circumstances, simply because of the kind of acts they are, e.g., killing an innocent person, lying, stealing, abortion, masturbation, contraception, etc.  

Many contemporary moral theologians think that this theory takes only a partial view of human nature. It also seems to contradict the Church's teaching about the unity of the human person as a psychosomatic whole. Factual information about the natural orientation of our faculties and organs does not enable us to make a moral assessment about what ought/ought not be done. It is not physical nature which determines this but reason, informed by nature about the facts. And reason assesses the morality of human acts from the precise point of view of whether or not they accord or conflict with the total good of the person. Nature in the biological sense has a merely indicative character. Elements of this natural law thinking are reflected in some documents of the Church, e.g., Casti Connubii and Humanae Vitae.  

Today a more truly personalist understanding of natural law has tended to replace the older view. Humans 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 biological dimension of human nature. There is no limit in principle to how much can be learnt and the more the person learns the more God's creative design for the human race (the eternal law) becomes clear. This participation in the eternal law by the rational creature Aquinas calls natural law[v].  At root natural law is not a code but rather a tendency to realise all that is necessary to flourish as an authentic human person.  

The fundamental criterion of morality and therefore the ultimate grounding of all moral rules must be the human person as a totality, including all the dimensions of the person, the physical, the psychological, the emotional, the social and the spiritual. The discovery of what behaviour contributes to the flourishing of the human person is an ongoing task that begins with the lived convictions of the human community and that calls us to be open to be open to new possibilities of fuller living as human beings and as Christians.  

The Dignity of Personal Conscience  

Vatican 2 was perhaps at its inspirational best when it initiated the renewal of the theology of conscience. I have written about this already on this website and refer the reader to these articles. Suffice it to say that the conciliar approach sees conscience as centred on the law of love, on an order of persons in communion with one another and with God. In this perspective moral truth is not an application of an impersonal norm, as used to be said. It is rather the truth of fidelity to oneself as one listens to and discerns the call of love. In a word moral truth is the truth of conscience.  

The ramifications of these profound insights, many not envisaged by Vatican 2, are  the subject of ongoing refinement and development among moral theologians today.