The Thomist 65 (2001): 465-73

MORAL THEOLOGY IN A SAPIENTIAL MODE:

VERITATIS SPLENDOR AND THE RENEWAL OF MORAL THEOLOGY

Christopher J. Thompson

University of St. Thomas

St. Paul, Minnesota

The issuance of Veritatis splendor on the Feast of the Transfiguration in 1993 marked one of the most important catalysts in the renewal of moral theology. Veritatis splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology, a collection of essays published to mark the five-year anniversary of the encyclical, continues that renewal at least through the next generation of Catholic scholarship.⁽¹⁾ Bringing together some "outstanding" Catholic scholars, the collection provides readers with an excellent analysis of some of the leading themes and insights inaugurated by the Holy Father. It is likely to become a standard resource among seminary students as well as interested laity.

Part 1, focusing on "Perspectives," features the reflections of three leading scholars, J. Augustine DiNoia, O.P., Servais Pinckaers, O.P., and Alasdair MacIntyre. Part 2 focuses more specifically on certain "issues" in moral theology, featuring re-flections by Russell Hittinger (on natural law), Avery Dulles, S.J. (on freedom), Livio Melina (on the desire for happiness), Martin Rhonheimer (on intrinsically evil acts), and Romanus Cessario, O.P. (on moral absolutes). The issues and scholarship displayed here are familiar enough to anyone acquainted with the con-temporary shape of the discipline, reinforcing the notion that this

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collection is likely to become a standard supplement to any serious course in moral theology. Part 3 focuses upon the encyclical's "reception" and features efforts by William May and Rhonheimer. In this last section the question of the accuracy of the encyclical's portrayal of dissenting traditions, specifically "proportionalism," is raised--no doubt in an attempt to address the less enthusiastic reception of the encyclical among those who have challenged its accuracy. The essays conclude with an epi-logue by Pio Cardinal Laghi, at the time of publication Prefect for the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, concerning the reception and impact of Veritatis splendor on Catholic higher education.

For anyone familiar with these contributors, it should come as no surprise that the overall tone of the collection is one of enthusiastic support for the encyclical, specifically its overall injection of a spirit of renewal for a more Thomistically oriented ethics. In this sense, the collection follows nicely upon the themes addressed in the encyclical as well as the more recent reflections of the Holy Father in Fides et ratio on the importance of philosophical reflection at the heart of a sound theological method. However, it would be wrong to assume that the essays are simply the reflections of now rather familiar positions, simply one more round in the neverending chorus of recriminations that has marked moral theology for the past few decades. Instead, the collection gives rise to a hope in the new evangelization in-augurated in this pontificate, a hope that the call for renewal in moral theology announced by the Second Vatican Council is beginning to take shape.

To get at this issue of a renewal in moral theology, the ques-tion may be reasonably asked: what is the advantage of compiling a collection of essays, many of which have previously appeared in well-known Catholic venues? What does the collection do as a whole, in other words, that is not already accomplished in its parts?

The first line of response might be simply practical. Compiling leading essays on the questions raised in Veritatis splendor supplies the teacher of moral theology a handy reference toward

which he might direct students interested in the orthodox reception. For whatever else mainstream Catholic academics might be remembered, if at all, in this period of the intellectual history of the Catholic academy, enthusiastic study of the thought of the Holy Father will not be one of them. Students interested in the intellectual history of theology may satisfy some curiosity in this collection on those terms alone.

But to frame the collection of essays from the vantage of its place within a "history of the conversation" of moral theology, to see the compendium as merely the necessary, and thus predictable, complement to other, less enthusiastic collections of responses, would be already to miss its spirit. What the compilers of these essays intend is not merely to display, from the vantage of some disinterested desire for comprehensiveness, the range of responses to Veritatis splendor among enthusiasts. They wish rather to give voice to, if only through a chorus line of individual performers, a reformulation of what the task of moral theology ought to be about.

To yield to mere historical curiosity in matters of contemporary moral theology would be to run precisely counter to the very point of this book. "Theological discourse today," the editors note in the brief preface, "is often dominated by historicist interests. The question addressed by researchers is not 'What is the truth of the matter?' but 'what did a particular author think about the subject?'" (viii). Though there is no evidence that the editors would prohibit sales to those who are interested in merely finding out "what a particular author thinks about the subject," to receive the collection on these terms alone is to miss the point. The editors note that  

though many of the essays do take account of the history of moral theology, they do not end there; nor do they confine themselves to a dialectical exchange with previously published assessments of the encyclicals. The ten internationally known scholars . . . are united in their effort to take the encyclical as a source for serious theological thinking. (Ibid., emphasis added)

"Serious theological thinking," it turns out, will have a multifaceted appearance throughout the collection, but common to all the essays is the consistent hue of a "reformulation of morality in terms of a theology of the moral life" (ix). In other words, what the essays taken together as a whole begin to convey to the careful reader is the overall impression of a change in direction in the mode in which moral theology is to be under-stood and conducted. By assembling essays whose unifying conviction orbits the question of the truth--not merely of the encyclical, but of the truth of the moral life in Christ-- the editors have done more than supply a particular collection driven by a set of academic convictions. They have, instead, supplied a kind of apprenticeship in Christian formation by drawing upon the sapiential character of moral theology. Because of this drawing together of disparate voices into a common chorus of theological reflection, readers are better able to discern the kind of theo-logical reflection the encyclical itself is hoping to renew.

Moral theology, in these essays taken as a whole, is to be understood not merely as an exercise in academic reasoning, a kind of scientia divorced from any practical reasoning. Rather, it is to be understood in its sapiential mode, as an exercise in the wisdom in which the practical living of the life in Christ is to be taken up. In short, what the editors are attempting to accomplish is the very thing Veritatis splendor sought to inaugurate, namely, a reconfiguration of the task of moral theology as precisely the search for the wisdom one finds in a life ordered toward Jesus Christ. All practical reasoning in its Christian mode will either be directed to this aim or it will fail as an authentic expression of moral reasoning.

It would be wrong, moreover, to see the encyclical as well as these essays as simply a response to what proportionalist theories have sought to develop after the council. Alasdair MacIntyre rightly warns, "One way of missing the point of Veritatis splendor would be to tie its reading too closely to the work of those particular moral theologians whose writings may have been the occasion for its composition" (94). Though the essays by Rhonheimer and May address the question of the fairness of the

encyclical in its criticism of certain strands of theological rea-soning, the encyclical's reach is far beyond the parameters of the proportionalist disputes.

Servais Pinckaers's essay provides one way by which the reader can begin to appreciate the depth and scope of the encyclical's vision. In a comprehensive and masterful synopsis which itself is worth the price of admission, Pinckaers identifies six guidelines, or points of departure, for the evangelical renewal of moral theology: the relationship between moral theology and Scripture, the question of happiness, the reinterpretation of the decalogue in the light of authentic love, the reintegration of the new law in moral theology, the link between the commandments and the search for perfection, and the necessity of grace (19-34). The comprehensiveness of his analysis should be enough to persuade the reader that the vision of the encyclical, as well as the con-versation it seeks to inaugurate, while occasioned by certain recent trends, extends well beyond the horizons of the last few decades. It is a call to renew moral theology, not to reinvigorate a restorationist longing for a preconciliar tradition.

This is why the essays cannot fairly be described as "conser-vative." For those of us who were trained in moral theology within the last decade or so, "conservatives" tended to be those who objected to proportionalist analyses, and because of that conviction were inclined to speak of the moral theology almost exclusively along the fault lines of "intrinsically evil acts," "objective evil," and to speak in terms of the moral "act itself." Such language remains instructive, to be sure, but it is difficult to find undergraduate students or incoming seminarians these days who are energized by the notion that the accomplishment of Veritatis splendor lies in its more or less definitive rejection of proportionalist moral reasoning. To limit one's theological formation, or one's subsequent efforts in teaching, to the charting of these now ossified categories is simply to ensure that the renewal in moral theology will be happening in someone else's seminar.

One promising line of inquiry opened up in several of the essays has to do with the Holy Father's remarks that in order to

enter effectively into the task of moral theology one has to take serious the demand to place oneself "in the perspective of the acting person." The phrase is put to use in several ways through-out many of the essays, though it lacks an entry among the subjects in the index. Among them is the notion that one must shift one's emphasis from that of an abstract consideration of moral acts as such to the concrete context of a deliberative choice on the part of the person.

Rhonheimer's reflections in part 2 on "Intrinsically Evil Acts and the Moral Point of View" picks up this line of reasoning and argues on several fronts that such a perspective helps reveal deficiencies in typically proportionalist accounts of moral reasoning. For example, by addressing the question of the natural inclinations from the perspective of the acting person, one is better able to discern the important distinction between the genus naturae of human acts and the genus moris. The proportionalist habit of speaking of "non-moral goods," Rhonheimer suggests, confuses the two orders.  

It is not the ends of these inclinations which are non-moral, but rather the abstract way of considering them which is non-moral. The problem springs from looking at natural inclinations simply as natural inclinations, inclinations of the "genus naturae" abstracted from the actual human person. (165)

There can be, from the perspective of the acting person, no non-moral goods directing the will in a deliberate choice; the attempt on the part of some proportionalists to deracinate the object of the will from any moral valuation distorts what occurs psycho-logically in the performance of a properly human act.

In his second essay, written in response to Richard Mc-Cormick, Rhonheimer returns again to the perspective of the acting person, this time focusing more precisely on the nature of deliberation and the object of the act understood as "a freely chosen kind of behavior." Precisely as a chosen kind of behavior, the object of the moral act carries with it some kind of intentionality. Otherwise, it is not a moral, deliberative act. The failure to recognize any intentionality in a deliberative act (the

object of which is a freely chosen kind of behavior) leads to a kind of physicalism in terms of human action by pushing any consideration of "intentions" whatsoever under the consideration of "ends." Thus while proportionalists might speak of the so-called object of an act, "killing as such," and only then discuss the issues of proportionate intentions, Rhonheimer suggests that "killing as such," is not a proper grasp of the moral object. It fails to include precisely the deliberate intention, the choice, to kill. There is a difference, in other words, between the object of the act, as an "intentional basic action," and further intentions (249). And because of this difference one can reasonably assert that there are certain actions, as deliberate, freely chosen kinds of behavior, that can never be part of one's intentional action, independent of any further intentions on the part of the agent. There are, in other words, objectively evil acts, which in their very object can be said to be "not capable of being ordered toward God."

The reason why "killing the innocent" "as such" might be indifferent in its species (and thus taken to be a kind of non-moral or pre-moral evil) is that one can imagine the (albeit rare) instance in which the death of an innocent person is the consequence of a non-moral act, an actus hominis. But from the perspective of the acting person, as opposed to a person who merely happens to cause events, "killing the innocent" is always and everywhere wrong, a species of murder. As a human act (the actus humanus) of an acting person, it is a deliberate, freely chosen kind of behavior. Considered "as such" in this light, it cannot ever be the case that this freely chosen kind of behavior is a kind of non-moral or pre-moral evil. For as a human act of the acting person it is by definition morally specified. As evil in its species, it cannot ever be performed by one whose deliberative intelligence is also ordered toward God. It is, in other words, evil in its object-- regardless of any further intentions.

Livio Melina is another of the essayists who takes up this perspective of the acting person and draws upon this vantage point to reintroduce the notion of the desire for happiness and the tradition of the virtues at the center of morality. "The priority of virtue over the commandment is a decisive characteristic of the

'ethics of the agent subject' or 'ethics of the first person' vis-à-vis the 'ethics of the observer' or 'ethics of the third person.'" Melina continues, "For the former, the agent subject is at the center with his aspiration toward happiness; for the latter, an external regulation of behavior by means of norms and precepts is at the center" (149). By beginning its meditation on moral theology from the context of the desire for happiness, Veritatis splendor "reintroduces the desire for happiness as the original experience and foundational principle of morality, within which the Commandments, in their turn find their proper place and sig-nificance" (ibid.). In this sense, Melina serves as a nice comple-ment to some of the insights developed at length by Pinckaers.

Still, I am less persuaded that further nuances on the distinctions between first and third person accounts of the moral life will yield as much fruit as a more adequate appropriation of St. Thomas's moral psychology. Once the analysis of the deliberative choice is fully grasped, so many of the comple-mentary notions of the Christian moral life can be adequately introduced. In the deliberative choice the intellectual appro-priation of the truth is wedded to the vigorous desire for an authentic good. Then the role of the intellectual virtue of faith becomes paramount. The need for the right ordering of the appetites through the moral virtues and the theological virtues of charity and hope emerges. The integral role of prudential reasoning becomes apparent. The essential and elevating role of the gifts of the Holy Spirit becomes manifest and the vocation of the person in the New Law toward beatitude is revealed--not a bad start to begin one's renewal in moral theology.

While a more adequate psychology would likely go a long way toward reinvigorating the place of morality in the Christian life, it alone will not be enough to complete the kind of renewal toward which both the encyclical and the editors seem to be pointing. For to turn to "the person" is not merely to turn to a more adequate psychology. Rather, to speak of the person is to enter into the realm of metaphysics. The "person" is the supposit, that "subsistence" in which the intimate dialectic of freedom and truth in the spiritual being is nurtured. "To his people and to his

faithful ones, to those who put in him their hope," borrowing from the imagery of the Psalmist, "person" is that sanctum where "kindness and truth shall meet, justice and peace shall kiss" (Ps 85). The person is not merely the sum of the performance of actions by a protagonist, nor is "person" to be at all reduced to personality. "Person" is the source of personality and action. It names that impenetrable mystery of the "I," the forge in which the love of the good is purified in the fire of a true conscience. It is that which gives rise to personality, but because it is more than personality, it is also that source, that origin by which personality may be healed of its defects, where one's character is no longer to be confused with lack of character. "Person" discloses the subsistent at the heart of personality, that utterly unique gift of existing by which we are a gift of self. Any moral theologian who wishes to take "the perspective of the acting person" seriously, then, must also be willing to take up the task of helping people "acknowledge their sins, so that [they] can move beyond the state of image-restoration, which entails sorrow and conversion, to that of image-perfection, which is the state of genuine freedom" (Cessario, "Moral Absolutes in the Civilization of Love," 203).

Failure to grasp the sequla Christi at the heart of all sound moral theology is ultimately, "fatal to true theology, for it prevents the theologian from developing the habit of syste-matically understanding the truths of the faith" (viii). More to the point, it prevents the theologian from developing the habit of systematically understanding the faith as true. One can, it seems, master the trade of the academy and thus "manage" the claims of the faith in a manner which is perhaps systematically consistent without ever having to raise the more poignant, the most human question: what is the truth? To do so, though, would be to join the ranks of all of those "rich with intellectual possessions," who have nonetheless gone their own way--sad.

1. J. A. DiNoia, O.P., and Romanus Cessario, O.P., eds., Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology: Studies by Ten Outstanding Scholars (Chicago: Midwest Theological Forum, 1999). Pp. x + 287. ISBN 0-87973-739-5.