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FR. DAVID BUERSMEYER'S WEBSITE

The Church serves as a leaven and as a kind of soul for human society as it is to be renewed in Christ and transformed into God's family. [ Gaudium et Soes #40]

Writer's pictureDavid Buersmeyer

Catholic Social Teaching: Overcoming the Separation between Spiritual Discernment and Moral Decision Making

Updated: Sep 20


Recently I did a webinar on “Catholic Social Teaching and the Upcoming Election.”  I will make the video available through a link under the "Video" tab on this website, if it becomes available. As I reflect on that experience and other conversations I have had surrounding the 2024 election, there are two areas I wish I would have emphasized more clearly, which address the issue in the title above.

 

The first is a suggestion (plea?) to embrace Catholic Social Teaching as the best framework for moral and spiritual discernment, no matter the issue, no matter the level of discernment—as an individual, family, a community, state, nation, or the whole world.  Catholic Social Teaching is not something to turn to every four years at election time or only when significant policy issues are being hammered out at government levels.  The principles that ground all Catholic Social Teaching open up, at least in my view, the best way to enter into any moral or spiritual discernment. In fact, the Vatican has come to call it not Catholic Social Teaching but Catholic Social Doctrine, in order to emphasize that such teaching is as authoritative as other moral teaching, based on underlying principles that have doctrinal value.

 

For a variety of reasons, over the course of centuries, aided by the reforms initiated at the Council of Trent in the 16th century, especially those aimed at improving the quality of formation of priests as confessors, moral theology became focused mostly on individual acts viewed in terms of the questions “Is this a sin or not? If so, is it a mortal or venial sin?”  In turn, the question of sin tended to be answered by reference to some established moral norm, which then provided the objective answer to that question.  Emphasis was put on theoretical cases (casuistry) to help tease out how the norms were to be applied, rather than starting from the actual lived experience of people. And the greatest emphasis was given to those norms which could be framed as universally binding. If there was a question of how to apply a norm or law, consulting theologians gave way more and more to consulting Rome for an official, binding judgment.  Circumstances might affect one’s subjective culpability but there was not a lot of room for questioning how a person was to follow the objective moral norm.  The idea that the mature Christian life was more than avoiding sin or following moral norms, that one must grow in virtue, and that virtue must bear fruit in concrete actions that go way beyond any negative norms became the realm not so much of moral theology but was left to ascetic and spiritual masters.

 

For the most part, such an approach to moral questions could be used to great effect in the hands of pastoral leaders who took care to show the mercy of God in their guidance, but in practice it produced a fair number of overly rigid, even scrupulous priests and teachers, who in turn inculcated that attitude in many under their pastoral care.  Tied to frequent confession, we still see the residue of this legacy today, where a number of people are overly fixated on those sins that can be easily categorized according to some violation of a norm, especially sexual sins or missing Mass.  One of the great gifts that the Second Vatican Council gave to the Church was an invitation to a renewal in moral theology, which has now recovered the virtue-centered dimension to the Christian life, rooted in a re-discovery that Thomas Aquinas’ moral theology was precisely virtue-centered more than norm and sin-centered.  Yes, sin needs to be recognized, named, dealt with and forgiven.  Yes, norms are important for guidance, but in applying such norms to specific circumstances the virtue of prudence is always needed.  The core of the moral life, then, is the same as that of the spiritual life—to grow in virtue, producing a holistic character where all that we say and do is rooted in a heart open to doing God’s will.  The examination of conscience now becomes less “What did I do wrong or what norms did I violate?” and more “How have I shown the love of God to others in what I have said and done?  As I examine my heart, the core of my being, what is God asking of me in this situation?”

 

In the midst of this development of a rather narrow moral theology, and prior to the Second Vatican Council, we witness the emergence of the modern world with its many social-cultural upheavals, much more rapid change, producing significant moral issues that could not be easily addressed under the existing paradigm.  The first tendency is to simply condemn the “modern things” or claim we can only tolerate them until we can overcome them, such as a non-religious state with freedom of religion, or freedom of the press, or free speech or free assembly, and so on. But soon it became clear that more needed to be said from an authoritative viewpoint, tied to a re-reading of our Catholic tradition, lest more and more Catholic men (sic, society at the time is viewed in a highly patriarchal way) and their families simply leave the Church behind and join socialist and communist movements.  So, in 1891 Pope Leo XIII issues a new form of papal teaching—the encyclical—and in the first one, Rerum Novarum (“On the New Things”), the pope addresses some of the moral issues that have resulted with the emergence of capitalist, industrialized local and national economies.  After Pope Pius XI issued his own encyclical on the issues of his day forty years later (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931) and then Pope John XXIII does the same on the sixtieth anniversary of Pope Leo’s encyclical (Mater et Magistra, 1961), it became clear that a new type of moral teaching was emerging in the Church. 

 

Because it is dealing with complex social-economic-political-cultural issues, such teaching cannot be easily contained in a set of norms/laws that definitively state which concrete actions are morally wrong versus morally right.  Rather, grounded in a few key principles (fundamental dignity of the human person, the common good, subsidiarity, solidarity, etc.), this moral teaching invites a discernment process based on these underlying principles, recognizing that there can be disagreements on the concrete steps needed to achieve them in a specific instance. With the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et Spes, the 1971 Synod of Bishops document, further addresses and encyclicals from Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, as well as some key gatherings of regional groups of bishops and their statements, the Catholic Church now talks about a Catholic Social Doctrine, which, as I mentioned at the top, I believe can guide all our moral and spiritual discernment, not just on social issues but in our daily personal lives as well. For a more detailed look at these principles one can look at the Vatican’s 2005 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. For a quick overview of this teaching, I invite you to click on the tab “Pamphlets” on this website and then on the booklet about Catholic Social Teaching.

 

In the broadest sense, relying on principles of Catholic Social Teaching (Doctrine) means that there is no such thing as an “individual issue” or “individual sin”.  Nor is there really a distinction between morality and spirituality. All sin has a social dimension, and all individual actions contribute either to the common good or to deepening what has become called the “structures of sin.” Or, better, to evaluate the morality of an action, one cannot isolate the action from the social-economic-political-cultural web it is part of, and one’s decisions affect how well one is living a life of true discipleship.  For example, pornography.  Analyzed from an individual, sin-centered and norm-centered perspective, if one engages in pornographic activity (usually tied to self-pleasure), of course one is committing a sin. But then it too easily tied to the sin of self-pleasure rather than pornography and then can be too easily dismissed with a confession, all forgiven, until the next time.  Analyzed from a Catholic Social Teaching perspective pornography is seen as the more serious issue (rather than self-pleasure) and the journey toward a more virtuous life for the individual includes a recognition of the harm pornography does to all involved, of the complicity users have in the exploitation of so many used by that industry, and a recognition that there is no full reconciliation, unless one truly commits serious time and energy to ending its use, including supporting wider social-political efforts to do so. One cannot be “right with God” while supporting the pornographic industry.

 

Catholic Social Teaching principles do not provide a manual of norms and actions characterized as sin versus not sin, mortal versus venial sin, as did the older paradigm. Rather they invite a process of discernment, ultimately relying on the virtue of prudence as to what is the best we can do here and now in this situation.  Again, this is exactly what spiritual discernment has always invited us to do.  For example, the moral norm condemning directly intended abortion is exceptionless—not even in cases of rape or incest.  Catholic Social Teaching does not do away with that norm but places that norm within the whole social-economic-political-cultural context.  It promotes the wisdom of that norm as core to protecting the fundamental dignity of the most vulnerable among us—the unborn child.  It challenges society to see the human life that is there from conception to natural death. It is a powerfully prophetic norm. But, Catholic Social Teaching also recognizes that the dignity of every human being means that one cannot be coerced into following that norm, that some decisions need to be made by individuals and families rather than government and law enforcement (principle of subsidiarity).  Catholic Social Teaching authoritatively reminds us that we are all complicit in the abortions that take place, if we are not doing everything we can as a society to surround anyone who is pregnant with access to excellent mental health support, medical care, health services, nutrition and food for mother and baby, support for early childhood development, and so on (principle of the universal destination of all goods with a preferential option for the poor). Catholic Social Teaching calls to task those who would condemn and judge someone for their decision, who think it is enough to know the truth and believe it themselves but do nothing to understand or offer support to the person who is caught in an often-agonizing dilemma (solidarity).  Catholic Social Teaching recognizes that the moral law for the sake of the common good cannot always be enshrined in criminal law and that some important realities have to be contested in the public forum, by persuasion and not coercive law. 

 

If embraced wholeheartedly, Catholic Social Teaching brings together moral theology and spiritual theology/discernment in a way that both recognizes all the moral norms that provide concrete wisdom for us and that such norms do not remove the ultimate decision from the person or community that is going through the experience.  That will always be a matter of forming one’s conscience and the obligation to follow a well-formed conscience.  But with that comes a caution, and that leads to the second point I want to emphasize a bit more. If the danger of the older style moral theology was scrupulosity and rigidity, divorced from a more holistic spirituality, the danger of a moral-spiritual theology grounded in Catholic Social Teaching might be the opposite: laxity, both in our moral decision-making process and in our prayer and spiritual life.  The reality is that many (most?) of us, me included, at times too easily stop short of making a true decision of conscience (a true discernment), because we are so convinced we already know the best answer or outcome. Instead of engaging in a real process of mature discernment (which requires a willingness to learn, to seek out the wisdom of others, including those we might initially disagree with, examine how peaceful we are with the decision we are about to make, and praying throughout the process of discernment for the Spirit of God to enlighten us and shape within us the mind of Christ), we jump to conclusions too quickly, instead of doing the harder work of truly forming our conscience in a mature way.

 

Because of the responsibility to form our conscience in a mature way, it is not enough to say, “Well, I am following my conscience,” just because we believe something to be so.  The Church’s wisdom reminds us that, yes there is a primacy to conscience, but also that conscience can “frequently err”: “Conscience frequently errs from invincible ignorance without losing its dignity. The same cannot be said for a human being who cares but little for truth and goodness, or for a conscience which by degrees grows practically sightless as a result of habitual sin.” Conscience is said to be “the most secret core and sanctuary of a human being. There one is alone with God, whose voice echoes in one’s depth,” and that “In fidelity to conscience, Christians are joined with the rest of humanity in the search for truth, and for the genuine solution to the numerous problems which arise in the life of individuals from social relationships.” (All quotes from Gaudium et Spes, #16).  In other words, it takes real attentiveness, openness to seeking out wisdom, prayerful reflection, acknowledgement of our own biases, time and energy to truly form us to the point of being able to say we are ready to make a decision of conscience.  Without such effort at formation, there is a danger of laxity, of lazily believing and acting only on our own opinion of something, and if we do so, there is a good chance we will be furthering not truth or goodness but chaos and harm.  In decisions of conscience the depth of our being is at stake, the core of who we are, our souls. We are asked to come to an inner peace that to act in a particular manner is necessary to remain true to who we are at the deepest level, and to not act in that manner would violate that core of who we are.

 

However, there is a corollary. If we have done our best to form a mature conscience, there is an absolute obligation to follow that conscience, even if it goes against a particular norm or is different than what others are recommending.  In that sense, there is no distinction between a conscience-based decision that comes from following a norm of the Church and one that comes from a process of reflection, where there is no way to frame a norm for it.  At the level of conscience, properly formed, there is an obligation imposed on us to be true to that conscience. On the level of conscience, no matter how we get there, as long as it is a well-formed, mature conscience, the obligation is the same—we are obliged to follow that decision of conscience, because, as the quote from Vatican II says above “it is the voice of God echoing in our depths.”

 

What would happen if we approached all important decisions as a process of spiritual discernment, recognizing the complex web of social relationships that are involved, trusting that the Spirit of God can lead us to a true discernment on the next step or decision to make? And we bring to that discernment all the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, as a way to form our conscience in as deep a way as possible?  This necessarily includes the normative wisdom of the Church but asks us to always take responsibility for how we put that wisdom into practice. There is a danger this might be asking too much, which means a great deal of laxity could result in our moral and spiritual lives. But, if embraced freely as a way to deepen our journey with God, moral theology no longer gets separated between objective norms and subjective prudential judgments.  Moral discernment becomes spiritual discernment, and spirituality necessarily and always includes a moral dimension with an appreciation for the social-economic-political-cultural context that surrounds all that we do.

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