REPOST: Discovering Ethics I: Introduction (Pinckaers 1995)

In the coming days I will revisit a series of posts I wrote some time ago on the Swiss Catholic theologian Servis Pinckaers' important work The Sources of Christian Ethics. At that time I provided a summary and some reflections on the introduction, in which he explains the scope of the work and asks some basic questions to start off his investigation. I now offer these posts again for reflection and discussion, and hopefully I will soon delve further into the book:

(Originally published 28 February 2009)

This is the first of a probably long series of posts where I will relate my thoughts on works on ethics which I am reading. In this day and age, it is hard to distinguish good, orthodox Christian books on ethics from dissenting ones. There is such confusion as to what constitutes genuine Christian thought, which is why everyone studying this type of subject should consult theologians whom one knows to be solidly orthodox and whom one trusts.

Incidentally, I got Servis Pinckaers OP's book The Sources of Christian Ethics as a present from my mother, who is not Catholic. But I had confirmed by a Priest whom I trust that it was an excellent work. Pinckaers is a member of the Order of Preachers, the Dominican Friars, who have a long tradition of scholarly excellence. Sadly, many of them have lately veered off into speculative non-Christian theology, but Pinckaers places himself squarely in the ancient tradition along with the greatest philosopher of the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas (also an OP).

Pinckaers' main point, with which I heartily agree, is made clear from the very start: any genuinely Christian view of ethics and morality must be based in the sources of the Christian faith - namely, Holy Scripture and the Church Fathers. This seems self-evident, but, as he shows, the sources have been largely neglected, not only during the past century, but in fact since the late Middle Ages.

I am always wary of theologians who imply that the pre-Vatican II Church went 'off course', as if it had completely misunderstood the message of the Gospel. Such a notion is of course intolerable for a Catholic. Yet Pinckaers is not the first I have seen raise the point that the late Middle Ages saw some unhelpful shifts happen in Catholic theology, and it seems there is something to it. If we look at the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, and further back of St. Augustine and most of the Fathers, they are adamant that the participation of the human intellect with Divine Reason, the source of all existence, is a necessary element of Christian faith. Life as a Christian is "Life in the Holy Spirit", is communion with God. Though we are fallen and sinful human beings, God's grace gives us the ability to overcome sin and become ever more like Him.

But from the late Middle Ages until modern times, moral theologians focused increasingly on the duties and obligations required of the Christian. Pinckaers points out that the need for Priests to determine (especially vis-à-vis Confessions) which actions were sinful and which sins were mortal and which venial (for an understanding of this distinction, read here) led to the drawing up of manuals classifying sins according to their nature, and listing moral obligations imperative upon Christians. These were intended for the formation of Priests, but Priests were influenced by them in their preaching, which perhaps at times led to an unhealthy focus on the letter of the Law rather than its Spirit in the life of the Church in general.

I contend here: duties and obligations are indeed important, something which our age has largely forgotten. Ills like divorce and abortion arise from a lack of sense of duty and a supreme focus on one's personal well-being. It is also important to know what is sinful and what not. But it is true that a genuine sense of duty and of love for others cannot arise from a purely juridical view of ethics which easily degenerates into legalism. It must be born from the encounter with the Divine, the infusion of God's grace into our lives.

Of course, moral theologians of the past centuries would have largely agreed. But Pinckaers' issue with them is that they wanted to treat moral theology as a science separate from the rest of theology, essentially leaving it in the hands of jurists who would work out what was sinful and not according to more or less arcane casuistic principles. This concept of morality focuses very much on the Moral Law, starting from the Ten Commandments as an expression of the Natural Moral Law (the Law inherent to all Mankind) and adding various prescriptions of the New Covenant, as well as some particular laws of the Church (such as the ancient obligations of fasting and attending Mass on Sundays). One can be forgiven for seeing in this the works-centred Christianity which Luther rebelled against (although it has nothing to do with 'justification through works'). It certainly is, Pinckaers says, a system which is more concerned with sin than with virtue.

Instead, or rather to complete this truncated view of ethics, Pinckaers offers a view of ethics as

the branch of theology that studies human acts so as to direct them to a loving vision of God seen as our true, complete happiness and our final end. This vision is attained by means of grace, the virtues, and the gifts, in the light of revelation and reason.

According to Pinckaers, theology has suffered from being divided into ethics, dogmatics, and various other disciplines. It must rather be integrated and seen as a whole. Also, ethics must focus more on both the external and internal, individual and communitarian realm, rather than merely on cases of individual conscience, such as the casuists did. All this is to direct us to God, our final end, but it must include the dimension of love, without which ethics is sterile. Also, it must include the dimension of happiness; not understood in a sentimental way, but as the natural aim of our actions. Grace builds on nature. It is perfectly natural for us to want to attain happiness, even if we have a distorted view of what happiness constitutes. By God's grace, our natural impulses are given the proper direction and become vehicles of grace.

Blogging again

As my lovely wife decided to take up blogging, I thought I might have a go at it again after a four-year hiatus. I think I need somewhere to pen thoughts that are deeper than a facebook update can bear.

Just to recapitulate what I want to do with this blog:

• Share thoughts on various issues I grapple with, such as: Christian faith and morality, medical ethics, unborn rights, family, fatherhood, the place of religion in society, politics, traditionalism, art...

• Try to uncover the meaning of human life and the mystery of the human person, with the help of Catholic Christian teaching and the great philosophers and theologians, Christian as well as non-Christian.

• Promote a vision of human life as a pursuit of truth, of beauty and of happiness - not understood as pleasure but as a state in which life is suffused with meaning and beauty, even in the face of struggles and adversity, a happiness that can only be fulfilled by fellowship with the Creator.

Looking back at some of my previous posts I can see that I have since matured somewhat in my way of thinking and reacting. Some of what I wrote then was perhaps rather unreflected and harsh, but I hope to do better in the future and that all I write will be edifying for all who happen to pass by.

Divine Beauty: Love Unto the End

Popule meus, quid feci tibi?

Aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi.
Quia eduxi te de terra Aegypti:

parasti Crucem Salvatori tuo.

My people, what have I done to thee?

Or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me.
Because I led thee out of the land of Egypt,

thou hast prepared a Cross for thy Saviour.



Crux fidelis, inter omnes
Arbor una nobilis:
Nulla silva talem profert,
Fronde, flore, germine.
Dulce lignum, dulce clavo,
Dulce pondus sustinens.

Faithful Cross! above all other,

one and only noble Tree!

None in foliage, none in blossom,

none in fruit thy peers may be;

sweetest wood and sweetest iron!

Sweetest Weight is hung on thee!

The New York Slimes, the Church, and Children

Even as we Christians celebrate the great mysteries of our redemption, I am compelled to state the following: The New York Times has gone completely off on a limb accusing Pope Benedict of being complicit in shielding a particularly gruesomly perverted US priest from justice.

The priest in question abused around 200 deaf boys in his care in the 1950's-1960's. These really are sickening and heartbreaking stories. But the Pope has nothing to do with them. First of all, they were investigated by local police at the time who did not find grounds for prosecuting; however, the priest was removed from his position and only occasionally functioned as priest thereafter.

Second, it took 20 years for the local Bishop to make the Vatican aware of his crimes, and a Church trial was in fact begun against him by the Vatican office headed by then-Cardinal Ratzinger. Only when it was clear that the priest lay dying did Ratzinger's deputy decide that it would be impossible to go ahead with the trial, and instead he was completely removed from active ministry; he died a few weeks later.

All this is perfectly clear from the NYT's own documentation, which is available on their website. It provides no support for their assertions about the Pope. This is not journalism. This is harrassment.

And as pointed out by Rorate Caeli, who the Hell do the NYT think they are to all of a sudden set themselves up as some kind of children's rights campaigners? As this article documents, they have for decades campaigned for the legal right for parents to destroy their children before they have even seen the light of day, and they have even defended the most gruesome and detestable form of abortion, that which is commonly termed 'partial-birth abortion', which even some usually pro-abortion Democrats in the US Senate a few years ago found so "close to infanticide" that they felt compelled to abolish it, Roe or no Roe. (see e.g. this book, p. 43 ff.)

Partial-birth abortion is a form of abortion where the infant is literally partially born before it is aborted, i.e. killed. The cervix of the mother is dilated, and the baby is pulled out into the birth canal until its legs are outside the mother but its head is still inside. Then the baby's skull is pierced and its brains sucked out. Before its abolition in 2003, this procedure was often performed even on perfectly healthy infants of 20 weeks gestational age and above.

And people who defend such barbaric and inhuman procedures have the gall to claim the moral high ground over the Catholic Church???

The Cure for Pain and Death

The erudite Anglican priest Fr. Hunwicke* today has a post pertinent to this blog, due to its connection with the Scripture verse from which the title of the blog is taken:

"Ancient Jewish tradition held that the tree of life standing in the midst of the garden of Eden was an Olive, from which came the oil of mercy that cured both pain and death. That is why patristic sources insistently associate the Chrism [oil for anointing] of Confirmation with immortality and resurrection.

There is evidence that for the 'hippolytan' writings, the tree from which this oil flows is the tree of the Cross. It seems to me that here the images of scripture and tradition merge and mingle. The Cross, the New Tree in the New Garden, is the true tree of life, and the Anointing (Chrisma) which makes and marks us as Christians unto everlasting life flows from that tree. And it is the tree of which Venantius Fortunatus in his Pange lingua teaches us that it is itself soaked, anointed, through and through, with the blood of the lamb (...quem sacer cruor perunxit fusus agni corpore) [hymn for the Adoration of the Cross, Good Friday].

A pre-Christian Jewish writing pictures Adam begging to be given of the oil that flows from the tree in garden. He is given for anwer: 'It shall not be thine now, but at the end of the times. Then shall all flesh be raised up and God will give them of the tree of life'. Praise be to God, who, here in the end-time, gives us to be marked with the anointing of eternity."

(*Caveat for observant Catholics: Fr. Hunwicke is one of the few Anglican priests I have no problem calling "Father", since he is in fact an impeccably orthodox Catholic Christian who just happens to labour under the factual error that the Anglican Church is a schismatical church rather than a heretical sect and has valid Holy Orders.)

State Morality and the Myth of Moral Relativism

From time to time I slip into 'blog apathy' and simply can't bring myself to write posts, which is why I haven't posted since November. Things have also been rather hectic in my life recently (nothing sinister, merely purely professional challenges that I am quite happy to tackle). But the world is moving fast and lots of things are going on. No time to comment on them all, but an issue that has been addressed more and more frequently in the British Catholic blogosphere is the government's bill to teach sex education to children as young as five - including information on contraception from eight years of age and on abortion from 11 years. Initially these provisions were made mandatory also for 'faith schools' - such as Catholic schools which absolutely could not in good conscience teach a curriculum that said contraception and especially abortion were perfectly legitimate options. After much consternation, including a sharp comment from Pope Benedict, an amendment was introduced that opened up for such schools to be able to present the views of the denominations they are affiliated with - but they would still be required to present opposing views in addition to their own, including providing information to little girls about how they can have sex without getting pregnant and how they can have their babies killed if it happens anyway!!

Though the government will deny it, what it is doing is passing moral judgments in the manner of religious authorities. It is not possible to divorce sex & relationship education from morality: no matter whether you teach that abortion is acceptable or unacceptable, you are expounding a particular morality. Even if you desire to remain 'neutral' by presenting both sides of the argument and leave it to the pupils to decide you are still sending the message that both are legitimate options in their own right. This shows the flaw of Moral Relativism - though it purports to be 'neutral' and 'balanced', by arguing for the moral equivalence of multiple paths of moral reasoning, it is itself passing a moral judgment that it is perfectly legitimate for a person to abitrarily select one such path or the other. As such the very concept of Moral Relativism is self-contradictory, because it itself presupposes the existence of the very Absolutist principles it claims do not exist (it is readily demonstrable that the statement "Everything is relative" is self-contradictory because it is Absolutist - as long as one believes in logic).

(Interestingly, secular schools are not required - or even allowed - to present more than one side of the arguments on S&R issues. This does not seem particularly 'pluralist'. Indeed, most contemporary Western governments do not even base their policies upon moral relativist reasoning intended to represent a genuine plurality of viewpoints, but rather increasingly upon an agressive 'secularism' which embodies a distinctive morality of its own that a priori excludes the legitimacy of other viewpoints. Thus the 'secular' view that contraception and abortion are legitimate options is made the norm, and the 'religious' view that they are not is merely tolerated, and then only to a certain degree. This 'secularism' is thus an ideology in itself that seeks to exclude and destroy opposing ideologies and as such it is irrational to tout it as a common platform for all of society.)

Divine Beauty: The Byzantine Liturgy - The Blessing

Nope, they aren't 'Orthodox' - they are as Catholic as anyone, but merely follow their own distinctive (and gorgeous) liturgical and other traditions. These so-called Eastern Catholics also elect their own Bishops and follow their own legal code, all in perfect harmony with the Patriarch of Rome (that's the Pope for you). Here, some of their Bishops are seen blessing the congregation with the dikirion and trikirion, candlesticks with two and three candles, respectively, with which he makes the sign of the cross:

The trikirion symbolizes the Holy Trinity and the dikirion the dual nature of Christ: God and man.

(H/T Rorate Caeli)

On a related note: this evening I will be attending the annual meeting of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius in Copenhagen. The fellowship exists to promote unity between Eastern and Western Christians - mostly Orthodox and Anglicans/other traditional Protestants, respectively, but I'll try to have some Catholic viewpoint thrown in. In fact, the unity which the fellowship seeks is already effected in the Catholic Church, where Eastern and Western Christians are even now under the same roof, united in doctrine and with equal rights and dignity - but unfortunately most of those involved in the fellowship don't realize that that unity is already there and just waiting for them to join in.