Two traditions: historical consciousness meets the immutable.

Do Catholics suffer from schizophrenia when it comes to papal moral teaching? I am not referring to the often cited differences between liberals and conservatives, in fact, each faction frequently seems to have its own form of schizophrenia. Liberal Catholics enthusiastically endorse papal social teaching while being somewhat disenchanted with papal sexual teaching. Conservative Catholics often exhibit the reverse preference. There is an objective basis for these different reactions and I want to examine them here.

In September 1993, John Paul II issued the encyclical Veritatis splendor to deal with, as he said, a "genuine crisis": an overall and systematic calling into question of traditional moral doctrine even in seminaries and theologates (Origins, October 14, 1993, nn. 4, 5). In March 1995, his Evangelium vitae (Origins, April 6, 1995) reaffirmed in a very strong manner traditional Catholic teaching on murder, direct abortion, and euthanasia. As I hope to show in comparing Veritatis splendor and Evangelium vitae with the pope's address to the United Nations in October 1995 (Origins, October 9, 1995, an important difference in approach and emphasis continues to exist within the total ambit of papal teaching on moral issues between personal morality, especially sexual issues, and social issues.

Four very significant differences in approach exist between the two encyclicals and the UN address.

* First, the two encyclicals downplay historical development and even see it as a threat to existing teaching. Their emphasis is on what has been true always and everywhere. According to Veritatis splendor, new approaches to Catholic moral theology reject the traditional doctrine regarding the natural law and the universality and permanent validity of its precepts (n. 4). Evangelium vitae proclaims the older Catholic teaching about life in all its dimensions and reaffirms it because of the extraordinary increase in the threats to life in the modern world. In the pope's view this disturbing state of affairs is expanding in a cultural climate which gives crimes against life a new and ever more sinister character (nn. 3, 4).

Contrast this to the pope's UN address. Here, John Paul wants to reflect on "the extraordinary changes of the last few years" (n. 1), with the "global acceleration of that quest for freedom which is one of the great dynamics of human history" (n. 2). He observes that many people at the end of the twentieth century are fearful of themselves and of the future. We must learn to conquer fear, he says, through a new flourishing of the human spirit based on an authentic culture of freedom and a rediscovery of the spirit of truth (n. 16).

* Second, Evangelium vitae develops its theme by contrasting the culture-of-life with the culture-of-death at work in the world today. "We are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, `the culture of death' and `the culture of life,'" (n. 28: also nn. 21, 24). Catholic teaching, including its philosophical refinements of direct and indirect killing and direct abortion, constitutes in the pope's view the culture-of-life in mortal opposition with all in society who disagree with this position and who foster the culture-of-death. Thus Evangelium vitae adopts an "either-or" or "we versus them" approach. Yet at the United Nations, the pope took a very different tack. The answer to fear about the future is "neither coercion nor repression, nor the imposition of one social model, on the entire world. The answer to the fear which darkens human existence at the end of the twentieth century is the common effort to build the civilization of love, founded on the universal values of peace, solidarity, justice, and liberty" (n. 18). There is no "we versus them" approach here.

In fact, the culture-of-life versus the culture-of-death approach goes against the central Catholic emphasis on mediation which traditionally distinguishes the Catholic approach to moral methodology by insisting that the divine is mediated in and through the human. Such a theological understanding grounds the traditional Catholic insistence on the natural law, which holds that human reason and human nature are basically good. As a result, human reason reflecting on human nature can arrive at true moral knowledge about what God wants us to do. With this understanding of mediation the Catholic approach does not go immediately and directly to God and God's win but rather to the plan that God placed in human nature and in the world and which human beings can know by their own reason.

* Third, Veritatis splendor insists on the universal and the uniform. What it presents is the same for all persons in all places and at all times. The "central theme" of Veritatis splendor is "the reaffirmation of the universality and immutability of the moral commandments, particularly those which prohibit always and without exception intrinsically evil acts" (n. 115).

At the United Nations, however, John Paul II was far more open to particularity, differences, and diversity. "The human condition thus finds itself between these two poles - universality and particularly - with a vital tension between them; an inevitable tension, but singularly fruitful if they are lived in a calm and balanced way" (n. 7). "To cut oneself off from the reality of difference - or, worse, to attempt to stamp out that difference - is to cut oneself off from the possibility of sounding the depths of the @mystery of human life" (n. 10). Consider what would happen if the above sentence were applied to homosexuality.

* Fourth, Veritatis splendor and Evangelium vitae both presume that moral truth is easy to find and that the hierarchical magisterium has this truth and proclaims it authoritatively to all others. The entire thrust of Veritatis splendor rests on the splendor of truth and that people are "made holy by the 'obedience to the truth, (1 Peter 1:22)" (n. 1). At the root of the resent crisis in the church lie "currents of thought which end by detaching human freedom from its essential and constitutive relationship to truth" (n. 4). The encyclical's first chapter tells the story of the rich young man asking Jesus what he must do to have eternal life. "Jesus, conversation with the rich young man continues in a sense in every period of history, including our own....The task of interpreting these prescriptions was entrusted by Jesus to the Apostles and to their successors, with the special assistance of the Spirit of truth: 'He who hears you hears me' (Lk. 10: 16)" (n.25). The church ("the pillar and bulwark of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15) continues the teaching role of Jesus with the task of authentically interpreting the word of God...entrusted only to those charged with the church's living magisterium whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ" (n. 27).

How different is the understanding of truth and the search for it in the address to the United Nations. "The truth about man [sic] is the unchangeable standard by which all cultures are judged; but every culture has something to teach us about one or other dimension of that complex truth. Thus the difference, which some find so threatening can, through respectful dialogue, become the source of a deeper under standing of the mystery of human existence" (n. 10).

There can be no doubt that significant differences in approach exist between Veritatis splendor as well as Evangelium vitae and the 1995 papal address to the United Nations. Significant continuities also exist, but the thrust of this essay is to point out the differences.

How do we explain these two significantly different approaches? One possible explanation lies in a basic difference between personal and social ethics. For example, Catholic social thought has always been willing to tolerate in the social realm evil which it will not in the personal realm. Society needs a statute of limitations, but such a statute does not exist in the personal moral order. However, this difference does not seem to account for the more significant differences between the two approaches in papal moral teaching, especially because the Catholic tradition, while recognizing differences between the two areas, has tended to emphasize the continuities between them.

Perhaps the very nature of the documents under consideration explains the differences. Veritatis splendor and Evangelium vitae are both, by definition, apologetic documents defending the present teaching against those who disagree with it. The address to the United Nations, on the other hand, speaks to the whole world about the need for human cooperation. Without doubt, these differing genres and audiences had some influence on the different methodologies invoked in the documents. However, I do not think this constitutes the total or the most basic explanation for the differences.

In my judgment a primary difference between the two comes from the fact that, in general, social teachings employ a more historically conscious approach than the teachings on sexual and personal morality, which employ a more classicist approach. The classicist approach tends to stress the eternal, immutable, and unchanging, and adopts a more deductive methodology, the historically conscious approach gives greater emphasis to change, development, and historical differences while employing a more inductive approach. The four differences I noted in contrasting the encylicals with the UN address can be explained in great measure by these two different methodological approaches.

Everyone recognizes there has been change in hierarchical and papal social teaching over the last hundred years. Nineteenth-century papal teaching strongly condemned individualistic liberalism, the Enlightenment, and democracy. In the twentieth century, the growth of totalitarianism of the Right and, especially, of the Left, brought papal teaching to defend the dignity, freedom, and rights of the person. This did not mean that papal and hierarchical teaching no longer had some problems with individualism or the Enlightenment. Only in the 1940s did Pius XII recognize democracy as the best form of government. Only in 1963 did John XXIII develop a systematic Catholic understanding of human rights. Only in 1965 did Vatican II accept religious freedom. These three represent a significant change in hierarchical social teaching.

Corresponding to these changes, papal and episcopal documents adopted a more historically conscious approach that begins with the concrete historical realities and not with abstract definitions or essences that are always and everywhere true. Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World begins its discussion of five different areas of social morality with a consideration of the signs of the times. Paul VI's Octogesima adveniens (1971) adopts a very historically conscious approach: "In the face of such widely varying situations it is difficult for us to utter a unified message and to put forward a solution which has universal validity. Such is not our ambition, nor is it our mission" (n.4). His pre-Vatican II predecessors would not recognize themselves in that description.

Vatican II itself employed a historically conscious hermeneutic to justify change in church teaching. In many ways the primary issue in the council's debate about religious liberty was the change that had obviously occurred in church teaching. The problem was solved by invoking a historically conscious hermeneutic, that is, the historical circumstances changed and so the teaching on religious freedom has changed.

Over time some significant developments have occurred in the area of sexual and personal morality. For example, at one time marital sexual relations required that a couple intend procreation to avoid mortal sin. With the development and acceptance of rhythm and natural family planning, married couples could intend not to procreate and still have moral sexual relations. However, the emphasis in recent papal teaching has been on the immutable nature of sexual and personal morality. Such an emphasis by definition opposes the historically conscious methodology which now characterizes contemporary papal social teaching.

One final point. The invocation of an historically conscious hermeneutic to explain the change in the church's teaching on religious freedom was not and is not adequate. There had to have been some error involved at least at some time in the official teaching. Even Vatican II was unwilling to explicitly admit error in past church teaching. If it had, Catholicism might have developed quite differently over the past thirty years. Consider the case of artificial contraception. Paul VI took this issue out of the council (where it might have been solved in a different way) and reaffirmed the ban on artificial contraception in Humanae vitae primarily because he could not accept the inference necessarily to be drawn from any change that the past teaching was in any way erroneous.

My point is that different methodological approaches exist in papal teaching on social and personal morality. I have tried to explain why this has occurred. To explore the implications of these differences would require not only another article but at least a volume or two. Many of my own writings in moral theology attempt to deal with these implications.

These different methodological approaches raise problems of consistency and coherency for papal moral teaching. A more historically conscious approach with all that that entails should also be employed in personal and sexual morality. Even so, such an approach would by no means exclude the existence of some absolute moral norms (for example, unjustified killing of human beings, adultery) and very significant continuities in the teachings. But it would call for the recognition that certitude and truth are much harder to come by on specific moral issues.