LORD, I am your servant,
the son of your handmaid,you have loosed my bonds.
I will offer a sacrifice of praise
and call on the name of the LORD.Psalm 116
“Good theology is always pastoral.”
I will always remember those words from Fr. Larry Hennessy at Mundelein Seminary.
The Catholic Church, particularly in America, has been stuck in the dichotomous throes of the post-Vatican II turmoil for more than sixty years. This is, in large part, connected to the wider American habit of reducing everything, everyone, to belonging either to the left or to the right. The onset of “cancel culture” has made this worse; it seems that the days of polite disagreement on certain issues while still acknowledging a shared commitment to the common good are gone.
The divisions in the Church cover basically every category: is the Mass a participation in the One Sacrifice of Jesus Christ offered to the Father for the salvation of the world, or is it a communal meal, a banquet of covenant renewal? Should we be more committed to teaching the Truths, formulas, and doctrines of the faith or to allowing our brotherhood with Jesus and with each other to spur us on toward greater witness and service in the world? Can the laity take on a greater role in the administrative and formation efforts of the Church, or do the clergy - specifically the College of Bishops as successors to the Apostles - have a particular place in the teaching, sanctifying, and governing functions entrusted to the Church by Christ? Can’t we have coffee and fruit juice on Donut Sunday?
The answer to these questions, like the answers to so many questions in the Catholic world, is at once very simple and yet unsatisfying: both.
Good theology is always pastoral. That is, the Truth - in all of its loftiness - will always find application in the lived experience of the people of God. Living a life conformed to the Truth is no easy task, but it is the task, and the goal, to which every Christian is called.
For the command which I am giving is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach.
It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who will go up to the heavens to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may do it?”
Nor is it across the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross the sea to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may do it?”
No, it is something very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it.
Deut. 30:11-14
The broader culture often observes that the Church has an obsession with rules, regulations, and procedures. My aim here is to offer another view, namely that it is not the Church herself who is obsessed with these things, but rather it is some Christians who reduce the Christian moral life to these things because they themselves to do not yet know Christ. If the teacher does not know Jesus, how can they possibly be expected to introduce him as a living person, a companion for life, to those entrusted to their care?
Moral theology has suffered in a particular way from this kind of teacher. The moral teachings of the Church only make sense in the context of the worldview that inspired them. This worldview is the one in which Jesus is Lord.
On the first day of class, I always ask my students: if Jesus Christ - the Son of God and Son of Mary, the one who is, who was, and who is to come; the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end; the one to whom belongs all time, history, power, and authority - had died for you and risen from the dead and was living in our midst, even now…how would this change the way you behave?
I call it the argument from implication. If Christ really lives, what does this imply about the way I live my daily life? How does Jesus living in my midst and calling out to me always change the way I approach both the major and minor aspects of my life? If death is conquered and my sin is forgiven, what does imply about the way I approach prayer, worship, family life, sexuality, society, social media, the economy, or politics?
When I teach moral theology at the high school or graduate level, many students come to class already knowing the “what” of the Church’s proposal. But I have seen lives changed when the moral vision of the Church is put for the first time for them into its proper context, namely a discussion of the Christian worldview and the power this worldview has for the formation of a truly Christian personality.
This set of articles won’t be a comprehensive volume of the nuts and bolts of Catholic moral theology. Readers interested in that might consider Fr. Cessario’s Introduction to Moral Theology (CUA, 2001) or Fr. Prümmer’s classic Handbook of Moral Theology, reprinted in 2022 by Benedictus Books in celebration of the work’s centenary. My aim is to re-introduce the foundational elements of the Catholic moral worldview: God’s sovereign power over all creation, the search for happiness, the centrality of the Church and the sacraments in the economy of salvation, and the idea that, in Christ, an experience of true freedom is not something found in a faraway heaven but is ours even in the here and now even while we await the fulness of the experience in heavenly glory.
The broader culture would like us to believe that the Christian mentality is one of closure, censure, and restriction. How many people in our immediate circle of friends and family have told us that they’d love to be part of the Church but [insert basic moral teaching here] is really too much to ask/too unrealistic in 2023/too hypocritical to expect/too hard to understand? In other words, we don’t see the Christian moral proposal as being filled with life, as being pastoral - we don’t perceive the voice of the Good Shepherd who is out looking for us, leading us back to the fold.
The friends of Jesus know a very different reality, that the encounter with Christ leads us away from slavery and censure. We can look at God with open eyes and grateful hearts and say with the Psalmist: “You have loosed my bonds.”
Good theology, especially moral theology, is always pastoral; it always leads us to life. It never enslaves, it always loosens. If it chastises, it does so to heal.
In the articles that follow over the next several weeks, I’ll look at:
Theology in general and what moral theology is and isn’t;
The Dilemma of Authenticity, and how the world and the Church are confusing each other by equivocating on the concept of “authentic” living;
Morality vs. Ethics and why they’re both important;
The Pursuit of Happiness as the basis for the moral life;
What Freedom is, what Freedom isn’t, and What Freedom could be;
The Morality of Actions and a look into the Passions (St. Thomas and Aristotle, anybody?);
Conscience;
Personalism as a pretty philosophy if you want to understand the Christian moral proposal;
Catholic Social Teaching (a Brief Primer On);
Law: Old, New, & Natural
My favorite: “Etc.”