Doctrinal development: does it apply to family and sex?

In an article in Commonweal (October 11, 1996), Charles E. Curran asked the provocative question, "Do Catholics suffer from schizophrenia when it comes to papal moral teaching?" For Curran the answer was yes. The malady, he believes, infects both the left and the right in the church. Liberal Catholics applaud the church's social teaching but shrink from its sexual ethic. Conservative Catholics endorse the church's sexual ethic but eschew its social teaching. This schizophrenia is not merely the predicament of a politicized laity unable to distinguish between the claims of faith and the influences of culture, Curran argues. Rather it is rooted in church teaching itself and especially in the writings of Pope John Paul II.

To prove his point, Curran refers to the "significant differences" between, on the one hand, two of the pope's encyclicals, Veritatis splendor (1993) and Evangelium vitae (1995), and, on the other, his address to the United Nations (1995). The two encyclicals, Curran contends, represent a "classicist approach." These documents, Curran argues, rigidly apply absolute natural-law principles to issues of life and sexuality. In contrast, John Paul's United Nations address is less rigid and more "historically conscious." Here the pope views social change in positive terms, sees the church as basically open to the world, and understands truth as a complex phenomenon to which every human culture can contribute.

We believe Curran's dichotomy is problematic and borders on caricature. It is true, as he argues, that most of what John Paul views in Evangelium vitae as "moral absolutes" concern life issues such as abortion and euthanasia. But this is not the result of a "classicist approach." Rather, John Paul affirms the fundamental value of human life without which the realization of the social goods he discusses in his United Nations address is impossible. Curran charges John Paul with failing to take the more open and historically conscious approach of Vatican II's Gaudium et spes. But Gaudium et spes, like Evangelium vitae, never flinches on the absolute importance of protecting life. The bishops write that, "Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia...poisons human society" (GS, 27). Hence not just Evangelium vitae, but Gaudium et spes takes the "either/or" approach Curran critiques. Any other approach would undermine the church's prophetic responsibility, as set forth in Deuteronomy: "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life that you and your descendants may live" (Deut. 30:19). To speak against the culture of death in absolute terms is not to advocate a rigid and closed system of morality, as Curran argues, but to protect human life - the basis of all culture.

Curran's greatest disagreement with John Paul is over sexual issues, such as artificial contraception, homosexuality, and nonmarital sexual relationships. On these issues, Curran accuses John Paul of failing to take seriously the particularities of individual circumstances, as the pope does with social issues. But unlike social issues, embedded in constantly changing governments and institutional bodies, sexual issues within the church refer to the context of the family. The family plays a fundamental role in the procreation and protection of human life through the conjugal union of man and woman in marriage. Because of this role, the family has a more foundational and permanent character than other social institutions.

The family, in fact, is the basis of other institutions and human society as a whole. In Gaudium et spes, the first modern issue the council fathers examine is marriage and the family. The document then moves out into cultural, economic, political, and international communities. It does this because it sees all communities, even the United Nations itself, as rooted in the unity of the family. The family is the basic cell of every human society; hence society is dependent upon the family. To claim that the family is a more immutable structure than other institutions is not to oppose a "historically conscious" approach, as Curran maintains, but to recognize the family's fundamental role in social stability and its rootedness in the permanent union of a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage.

There is, therefore, some truth in Curran's claim that the church's social teaching is more open-ended and dynamic in the face of historical change. Since the church's social teaching focuses on economic and political institutions, it must respond to the contingencies of historical circumstances in order to foster human development. The church's social teaching does not specify particular socioeconomic and political structures, but rather condemns or condones them on the basis of whether they respect the dignity of the human person in light of both revelation and natural law. The understanding of the family in church teaching has developed (extended to nuclear), but these developments have been minor in nature in comparison to shifts in socioeconomic structures (agricultural to industrial to informational). Curran is correct that the church's social teaching is more historically conscious than its sexual ethic, but to have it any other way the church would either have to relativize the family or baptize a particular social arrangement - for example, capitalism or socialism.

Curran's analysis raises the much larger issue of the development of moral doctrine in the church. This issue is too vast to examine adequately here, yet it should not surprise us, as it does Curran, that the church's social teaching has developed more quickly than its teaching on human life and sexuality. This is not because the church is more "with it" on the social issues, but rather because of the contingent nature of the latter. Curran argues that, because the church has changed its mind on democracy, religious liberty, and human rights (adopting Enlightenment insights), it should be able to change its position on sexual issues such as contraception and homosexuality. But to say such a thing is to fail to recognize the more basic nature of sexual values and the institutions embodying them.

We want to be careful not to give the impression that the issues of life, sexuality, and social living can be neatly separated into distinct categories. To the contrary, there is an organic unity to the moral life; in the words of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, it is a "seamless garment." The respect for life enshrined in the commandment not to kill is the very basis of every just human society. Indeed this commandment underlies the social teaching of the Hebrew Scriptures enjoining care for strangers, widows, orphans, and the poor. When this respect for life in all its forms is not present, society itself degenerates into manifestations of the "culture of death."

We do not see a clash in John Paul's teaching between a rigid classicist approach to sexual ethics and an open, historically conscious approach to social ethics. What we do see is an effort to formulate an integrated account of morality that reflects the understanding of the human person as created in God's image. It must be admitted, however, that there is something in Curran's diagnosis of schizophrenia that rings true. Still, the root of the problem is not a clash between classicist and historically conscious ways of thinking. Rather, it is the endurance of the legalistic morality that dominated Catholic thought in the last four centuries. Because the Catholic manualists held that, strictly speaking, one is only required to avoid evil rather than to do good, many of the positive injunctions of the social tradition were marginalized. So in many cases, Catholic social teaching seems to lack "teeth" in church law and in the practice of Catholic organizations. The solution to this legalism is not, however, to equivocate in regard to values of life or sexuality, but to reject the mindset that makes social goods dispensable. As a church, we must discover ways to describe the binding character of the good without reducing the whole of morality to law.

Undoubtedly there is room for deeper understanding and better formulations in all of the strands of Catholic moral teaching. Because the moral life is rooted in the spiritual life, it is always open to growth. But Curran's diagnosis of schizophrenia fails to appreciate the organic unity and integrity of the church's moral tradition. It also fails to identify the legalism that is the real cause of the schizophrenia hamstringing the application of Catholic social teaching.

RELATED ARTICLE: CHARLES E. CURRAN REPLIES

Do I detect a little schizophrenia in the Grabowski-Naughton reply to my article? "Curran's dichotomy is problematic and borders on caricature." Yet they acknowledge: "Curran is correct that the church's social teaching is more historically conscious than its sexual ethic...."

Grabowski-Naughton and I agree there are differences in methodology between the papal social and papal sexual teachings. They are absolutely correct in asserting that my "greatest disagreement with John Paul is over sexual issues" and the dialogue between us "raises the much larger issue of the development of moral doctrine."

My respondents agree with the papal teaching on sexual matters and logically argue that change or development on sexual issues has not been as significant as it has been on social issues. They contend that sexual issues are embodied in the context of marriage and family, which have a more permanent and fundamental character than political and economic social institutions. Here lies the ultimate difference between us.

There have been significant developments and changes in our teaching on marriage, family, and human sexuality. For the greater part of the church's history, marriage was not acknowledged as one of the seven sacraments. The requirement of marriage before a priest as the witness of the church came only with the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century. The church has made exceptions in the indissolubility of the marriage contract where both partners were not baptized. The practice of granting annulments has changed dramatically in the last fifty years. I strongly criticize some Catholic teaching on the family that still maintains the 1930s' papal teaching that the husband is the head and the wife is the heart of the family. Sociologists remind us of the tremendous developments that have occurred with regard to our understanding of the family. The fact that life expectancy has doubled in this century has greatly influenced the relationship between husband and wife.

Changes in the moral understanding of human sexuality have been even more dramatic. In the early church, the intention of procreation was necessary to prevent marital intercourse from being sinful. Later on, the church recognized that spouses did not have to intend procreation in their marital sexuality; love union was accepted as an end of marriage and sexuality. With the official acceptance of rhythm by Pope Pius XII, spouses could even intend to avoid procreation in their sexual acts! Without doubt, the church's teaching on sexuality has developed and changed a great deal over time. I argue for the need for further change in our understanding of human sexuality.

I do not see the positions I propose in both social and sexual ethics as justified by being "more 'with it.'" At times, Catholic teaching learns from the broader society and at other times must criticize it. In both social and sexual ethics, we must continue to criticize the one-sided individualism that too often characterizes American life and thought today.

The Reverend Charles E. Curran is Elizabeth Scurlock University Professor of Human Values at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

John S. Grabowski is associate professor of moral theology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Michael J. Naughton is assistant professor of social ethics and management at the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota.