Digital Shepherding: Moral Theology and Ministry in a Digital Age – Retrieving the Past for the Future
By Nadia Delicata
[Professor Delicata teaches in the Department of Theology at the University of Malta. Her research interests include fundamental moral theology, media ecology, and Christian life in a digital age.]
Abstract
In this paper I will attempt to build on Pope Francis’ dictum, “Time is greater than space” as a pedagogical principle for the digital age. The primary difficulty that emerges is that while, according to Aquinas, Aristotle and others, moral virtue cannot be taught but can only be modeled, one can attempt to shape intellectual virtues that sharpen the intellect enabling a better grasp of the situation and the goods that are desirable.
Marshall and Eric McLuhan also suggest that, especially for deep-seated perceptual and intellectual biases, (like those inculcated through cultural imaginaries), satirical techniques can be especially effective to, at least, raise doubt about the veracity of one’s preconceptions. The task that I envision for this paper is three-fold. First, to name key “moral” biases that are the product of a modern age inherited in our cultural context (for example, the “disconnect” between freedom and truth Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict alert us to, the “dominant technocratic paradigm” that Pope Francis presents in Laudato Si, and what Charles Taylor names, the “ethic of authenticity”). And the specific form they take in a digital age (the fluidity and interpenetration between reality and its construction, new cybernetic embodiments, and a global tribalism).
Next, to suggest how “moral theology,” the birth child of a modern seminary manualist education and “geometric” casuistical approach to moral reasoning is being reborn as a pedagogical praxis that is flexible enough to seek to correct cultural biases and personal limitations in the quest for the common and individual good. Under digital conditions, this would require the perfecting of a whole array of not only philosophical, but pedagogical and rhetorical skills—that would include the satire described by the McLuhans, but also classical techniques like epideictic, deliberation, monastic discipline, and spiritual accompaniment etc.
Moral theology would become a reflective, communicative, and therefore truly formative praxis to entice to conversion and ongoing Christian discipleship as witness in a digital age. However, this envisioned rebirth of “moral theology” must also be considered in view of the ongoing reform to the discipline that has been going on since Vatican II. Optatem totius (16)’s call for renewing moral theology itself; this came in the midst of cultural upheaval, as the “modern world” which it sought to respond to, that was fast being taken over by new imaginaries “under electric conditions.” The initial “revisionist” attempts at reform seemed to cause more turmoil than thriving in the church, just as Veritatis splendor, the encyclical that, 30 years later, specified more clearly what form “moral theology” should take in this new world (and condemned approaches like proportionalism that went off the mark in their pastoral zeal), and was received with mixed views.
Twenty-five years later, even if the main trajectory of the reform has been more solidly (albeit slowly) established, controversies surrounding Amoris laetitia reveal that our understanding and practice of moral theology in a digital age still has not fully matured. Thus, the efforts of reform themselves must be evaluated according to criteria of fitness of form and appropriateness of matter in view of the challenges and demands of a digital culture. The efforts of reform can roughly be seen as falling under three categories: • a return to the sources of Scripture and tradition, and therefore to a more consciously Christian and theological moral reasoning; • the retrieval of teleology and the virtue approach as philosophical grounding; and • a slow shift in the “language” or rhetorical style, even of the church’s body of moral teachings.
In conclusion, I will propose specific questions to assist in this evaluation of whether the reforms to “moral theology” are sufficiently effective, persuasive and pedagogically robust, not merely to teach about the good, but also to form characters to become good in a digital age. Does the emerging “new” (?) moral theology reflect, and simultaneously challenge, the imaginaries of a digital age? Is “moral theology” even a fitting descriptive for the challenge of Christian living in a digital world? Is the content of new church teachings speaking to the complexities and therefore, to the pastoral concerns, of today’s Christians in the world? Are there lacunae in the church’s moral reflection, specifically as new technologies create not merely new dilemmas but new understandings, of what it is to be human.
In many respects, what I am proposing is simply a very personal reflection. For these past few years, I have been teaching and writing in two areas that often do not intermix as readily in our “academic”, theological, or even ecclesial discourse. Here I tend to “bracket” the fact that my primary teaching responsibilities and service in my local diocese are as a fundamental moral theologian. Likewise, and specifically, in the context of the ethical and political issues that have risen lately in my country, the moment I am labelled a “moral theologian”, it becomes more difficult to explain to fellow theologians, or to members of the hierarchy, that there are technological effects and media dynamics to consider, even in the very analysis of the social, political or personal situation. It is only in the sanctuary of the classroom, (and in more “esoteric” academic journals and books), that I find myself able to speak my mind and to string together in the same sentence natural law and the Laws of Media, or to apply Veritatis Splendor’s teachings on the morality of the act to the dangers of Deep Learning. Otherwise, the two worlds of discourse seem to remain parallel to each other, never truly “touching”, let alone to mutually-mediate one another.
This, in a nutshell, is my lament, but also hope, not just for this reflection, but in my ministry in the church: what is my responsibility as a moral theologian in a digital age? How do I facilitate a mutual self-mediation between the “reading” of digital culture and the church’s tradition of moral reasoning? How does this reflection assist the ministry of the church, not only ad intra, but also in the world? Ironically, this kind of reflection, which can be broadly construed as pertaining to the moral dimensions of “culture”, is hardly uncommon in the Roman Catholic Church. How can one forget the richness of the tradition of Catholic Social Teachings, in particular from Pope John XXIII to today?
Nor can it be denied that the calls that we find among others, in the World Communications Day Messages, to nurture “neighborliness” or to “witness” the gospel in the digital “Areopagus” are not moral exhortations. Moreover, though still few, there are moral theologians, like Jim Caccamo, reflecting on the ethics of new digital practices, in the same way that moral theologians continue to reflect on the moral dilemmas created by biotechnologies or business practices etc. Thus, the heart of my lament—if it can be called such—is not that the Church or moral theology is ignoring digital culture. Rather, my lament is more fundamental, because, it seems to me, the methods and language of moral theology are still not sufficiently sharpened to respond adequately to the challenges of the moral life in digital culture. To put it more bluntly, if the subject of moral theology is the human as agent—and more narrowly, the Christian disciple as agent—it is necessary for moral theologians to consider how in a digital context it is the very understanding of being human and of “agency” that is profoundly shifting.
Still, the new challenges of digital culture are not the only complications facing moral theology. Many of us are still quite distracted by “old” battles. It is not too long ago—merely six years, in fact—when I simply could not, and would not, imagine myself teaching moral theology. I disliked the politics of the discipline, and I abhorred the futility of the labels that seemed to come with the job. What is worse, they were a strong reminder of the mess—the very profound mess—in which the discipline found itself. Much has changed in these past six years—and most notably for moral theology, the Pope. But there is a level where, more than fifty years after the Council that called for the discipline’s renewal, we are still fighting demons, perhaps as old as the Church’s ministry with sinners. Maybe these demons mask an even deeper existential crisis, where it is the role of the moral theologian itself that is disputed in the church. To my mind, the two issues—moral theology’s identity crisis, and her persistence in “bracketing” profound anthropological challenges being posed by digital culture—are two facets of the same coin. Moral theologians are being faced with a profound challenge in their service to the church, but at a point in time where we are unsure what we can contribute.
Thus, my limited aim in this very personal reflection is to unpack somewhat this situation. I propose to do so by applying to moral theology a commonly used metaphor in the church: the gospel metaphor of the new wine “carried” in wineskins. But to persuade why this metaphor is fitting for all theology in our digital times, I will rely on the quote from Marshall McLuhan that continues to inspire my theological work because I still struggle to unpack its ramifications. So here it is—once more—in skeleton form:
The cradle of the Church was Greco-Roman literacy, and this was providentially designed, not humanly planned. […] But now we have suddenly a way of propagating information and knowledge without literacy. I would say it is a wide-open question whether the Church has any future at all as a Greco-Roman institution. […] This cultural heritage is expendable.
The quote’s point is a simple one. We do not know any Christianity, any “lived” and systematically reflected upon experience of the Gospel, outside of “the cradle of Greco-Roman literacy.” Yes, the Church has “inculturated” (or at least, attempted to inculturate) the Gospel in other non-Greco-Roman cultural contexts. However, those attempts could not escape being a translation of an already inculturated Gospel. Moreover, the Gospel’s first inculturation “was providentially designed, not humanly planned.” Just as it was divinely willed that Jesus be born a Jew, and therefore the Hebrew tradition remains paramount to interpreting the Good News, so it was divine providence that Jesus be born a Jew in the Roman Empire and that a Jewish Roman citizen would be chosen as the Apostle to the Gentiles. One could even argue that Constantine was not a mere blip for evangelization: like no other, he guaranteed that Christian discipleship, that being church, would cease being sectarian and become palpably “universal”. The empire, itself driven on Greco-Roman literacy, guaranteed this transition – the move from small individual churches to the earthly manifestation of the kingdom to come.
If the Church, at various points in its history, believed itself to be the kingdom, it is but a painful proof that even the church, the “chosen ones”, are not immune to hubris. Which, of course, brings us right to the heart of the matter when it comes to moral theology. For authentic Christian discipleship, cannot be taken for granted not even for the baptized. Rather, it must be slowly, and often painfully, nurtured in a world that remains marred by sin. The church is the Marshall McLuhan Futurechurch (Edward Wakin interviews Marshall McLuhan,” U.S. Catholic 42/1 1 (January 1977): 6-11. Reprinted as “Our only hope is apocalypse,” in Medium and the Light, 58-59). perfect symbol of contradiction as a community of saints who are sinners. How the church deals with its own weakness—let alone the contradiction in the world—is what moral theology reflects upon. To put in words this reality, moral theology has appropriated the classical language of Greek philosophers and Roman Jurists perfected by the gospel: the good life, virtue, nature, law, but also grace, beatitude, and love.
Classical philosophy allowed for a coherent reflection, and therefore a systematic understanding of discipleship as paideia of Christ. Still—and this is the gist of the quote’s argument—our “tradition”, East and West, and indeed, our tradition of moral reflection, is not only profoundly “literate” and therefore practically inseparable from classical thinking, but in some (or many) respects, incomprehensible outside of that literate environment. This is nowhere as evident as with moral theology’s classic teleological arguments or arguments based on the nature of things, whose philosophical foundations of realism have become so alien in our culture. So, what is happening now that the cultural ground of literacy itself is obsolesced? What is expendable of our moral discourse? What remains profoundly pertinent and needs to be renewed? How can it be renewed?
As a way of proceeding, first I want to look at the artifact “moral theology” we have inherited, that package of wineskin carrying wine. Then, since what is at stake is distilling the wine of moral theology in service to the gospel, I will try to unpack what essential ministry to the church is offered by moral theology. Which will lead us to the third dimension: as we center our reflection on the “new wine”, inevitably we will also have to make a difficult judgment. As wineskins grow old and tired, what new wineskins must we sew to renew moral theology?
The Artifact Moral Theology
In his fascinating study A History of Catholic Moral Theology in the Twentieth Century: From Confessing Sins to Liberating Consciences, James Keenan, introduces his work by tackling this (minor?) controversy among moral theologians: Is “moral theology” a product of a very particular time, culture, and church? Or is “moral theology” an ecclesial reflection or praxis for all time and cultures, for the universal Church? Keenan opts to defend the latter meaning, even if, as Norbert Rigali has argued, the term must surely be anachronistic when applied to theological reflection on the Christian life prior to the rise of the word “moral theology” with the advent of “professional” priestly training for hearing confessions demanded by Trent. Indeed, one could even argue this “moral theology”, marked by a morality of obligation under the influence of Nominalism and driven by the (low) casuistical approach of the manuals, is the quintessential artifact created by the “modern” Catholic Church. Thus, in my view, even if Keenan opts to argue that we might as well call “moral theology” any form the ministry of the healing of souls takes in the history of the church, this still misses the point that the medium is also the message, and therefore the particular form a ministry takes has profound consequences on the community.
In other words, at every point in time, in every culture, a ministry could take different forms that, in themselves, can be judged as more or less conducive to fulfill the demands of the gospel. Thus, while, for better or for worse, we continue to use the term “moral theology”, this in no way means we should hang on to past methods or simply appropriate new methods without the necessary reflection. Indeed, it should go without saying that, first the Second Vatican Council, then John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor and now the current papacy, not only are going beyond the methods of manualist “moral theology”, but in many respects, subverting it too. In their stead, moral theology is slowly taking a new form that is still quite fluid. But the question remains: are these methods of moral theology merely the effect of changing times? Or are they the conscious appropriation by the church to minister more effectively in digital times? What is the essence of moral theology that remains necessary for the church’s ministry in all times?
New Wine
As suggested earlier, the matter of moral theology is none other than the reflection on human life as ordered to God. While each man and woman is created “in the image of God”, Christian discipleship, becoming in Christ’s likeness, is a lifetime transformation. More significantly, it is a lifetime transformation that relies on the free acceptance of God’s grace, that alone can elevate us to communion—friendship—with the Father. God wills that all will be saved; God desires communion with all God’s children; but as it was from the beginning, man and woman must consciously and freely will, to receive God’s gift of divinization. As the Fourth Gospel puts it, those who stubbornly persist in self-righteousness, who refuse his healing by not desiring to abide in him, “condemn” themselves. The reason for the complexity of this lifetime journey is, as Gregory of Nazianzus argues in his famous homily On Pascha, if Adam was created virtuous, in harmony with all creation, and his desire completely ordered to knowing and loving God, his “sin” disrupted all his relations, in turn marking humanity forever. In our postlapsarian reality, even if Christ’s death and resurrection open the gates of hell and he sends his Holy Spirit that we may become divinized, our reason and will remain prone to becoming darkened, just as our efforts at participating in God’s creation, remain tentative, fragile, and often broken.
Thus, the theology of Christian discipleship continues to be marked, not only by the reality of grace, but by the reality of sin. Even when our heart desires nothing more than the Spirit of God, we remain weak and partially blind, easy prey for the spirit of evil. Our transformation to conform to Christ is a long process, where desires and inclinations—in body and soul—must be purified, so that in receiving the Spirit, our freedom to embrace the authentic human potential for which we were created, is fulfilled. As such, it is not surprising that for much of its tradition, “moral theology” (widely construed) has focused on the moral and spiritual development of the agent (that is, our growth in virtue and to receive the theological virtues), and on the actions of the agent (that is, the goodness or otherwise of particular acts, or better still, the appropriateness and “fittingness” of human action in particular circumstances).
All throughout, as John Mahoney has forcefully argued, this reflection has also been in mutual self-mediation with the development of the crucial pastoral praxis in the church of rehabilitating and “reforming” the sinner. As the earliest Christian communities soon realized even the baptized would scandalize the community through their refusal of God’s love and particularly evil actions; the pastoral and theological crisis was precisely whether to exclude the sinner to maintain the purity of the community, or to rehabilitate the sinner to the fold of the community. As the Council of Nicea recognized, in imitating Christ’s own salvific action, and the great mercy shown by the Father towards fallen humanity, the Christian path can only be one of rehabilitation (as Pope Francis puts it: “no one can be condemned forever!”) making the most crucial ministry in the church, the conversion and healing of the sinner. Still, how this ministry is exercised also gives crucial indications of how the ministry is understood.
It is enough, in this context, to reflect briefly on the “names” given to the sacrament of God’s mercy in various epochs: penance (even tariff penance), confession, and, in our days, reconciliation. The first, emphasized the long arduous path of doing penance as an act of spiritual discipline (analogous to that self-imposed in monastic communities for purification), but also of suffering “punishment” for transgressions. Unsurprisingly, it was this dual sense of penance that increasingly led the church to shift the imaginary of its ministry from being one predominantly of “healing” and of formation to virtue, to one stressing the other important biblical metaphor of “judgment” and condemnation. By the time of the 11th century’s dialectical renaissance that birthed Scholasticism, the Anselmian image of the Father was one who demands justice for human transgression, a price that could only be paid through his Son’s blood. This imbues western medieval popular piety, but also its understanding of the Eucharist. The fear of God’s judgment becomes foundational for understanding the church’s ministry towards the sinner.
The second epoch, stressed, even more, this legalistic metaphor, as “confession” went full circle from the early church “confession of faith”, to becoming one of the necessary acts of the penitent (the “integral confession” of “sins” after contrition and prior to satisfaction) in the tribunal of the Tridentine “confessional”. The confessional, however, was a fascinating symbol not just because of the horror it could provoke. More significantly, it strengthened the belief, already emerging with tariff penance, that sins could be washed away... and the cycle repeated. As moral theology developed as the theological and philosophical foundation for the praxis of rehabilitating ‘lost sheep’, in the manualist period in particular, it would become the science of scrutinizing actions (disconnected from actors) and culpability (disconnected from a pedagogical journey to virtue). The beauty of the Thomistic journey of discipleship to virtue, indeed to friendship with God, is distorted beyond recognition. To this day, confession remains a profoundly “Catholic” symbol—as profound as the “Blessed Sacrament,” the “Virgin Mary” or even the Pope. Nonetheless, after the post-conciliar reforms to the sacrament, the term “sacrament of reconciliation” has come to be preferred. In no uncertain terms, it retrieves the theological meaning of what Christ has done for us: reconcile us to the Father. Thus, today’s practice of the sacrament seeks to be, as Pope Francis evocatively puts it in Evangelii Gaudium (44) “an encounter with the Lord’s mercy which spurs us on to do our best.”
This emphasis on “doing our best” is ultimately the heart of the Christian discipleship assumed in moral theology: it implies a recognition of frailty, but also of our freedom to be constantly, slowly, converted. It is, beautifully captured in another central saying of Pope Francis as paradigmatic of his ecclesiology. It is fitting that “time is greater than space” can also exemplify moral theology. It implies sowing the right seeds even in the church’s ministry with the wounded. After all, the judge is righteous even when he condemns. But the doctor cannot be a true healer while the patient remains mortally wounded. Gently and tenderly, the doctor urges the patient to imbibe the right medicine, progressively promoting the healing of body and soul. The church’s ministry with the sinner, that ministry that moral theology exemplifies in the church and outside of it, recognizes ‘judgment’ as necessary to diagnose the illness. But naming the sin, while essential to ground us in truth, does not, on its own, heal the sinner. Rather, healing remains a process of slow acceptance and opening of each of us to the Spirit of God—a process that, as the church has recognized from the beginning, requires the support of the whole Christian community.
In with the new and out with the old Moral theology can thus be understood to rest on two imaginaries at the heart of the church: the imaginaries of healing and of judgment. Our temptation in every epoch might be to prefer one over the other. But the sure sign of wine in “old” wineskins is when they stop working in tandem because they become disconnected from each other. For instance, manualist moral theology tended to be strongly legalistic, analyzing the righteousness or otherwise—and if otherwise, the gravity of matter—of specific acts. At the same time, confessors were just as meticulous in their examination of extenuating circumstances that would mitigate the culpability of the individual sinner. Thus, ironically, the reversal of a strongly rigid deontological church teaching was a pastoral adaptation that tended to empty the very notion of sin. The important distinction between “objectively grave matter” and “subjective non-culpability” was often used in the confessional “not simply to absolve confessing laity,” but even “to dissolve them of any guilt in the first place.” If, in his desire to console the penitent, the confessor was increasingly willing to see the laity, because of ignorance, or an increasingly complex list of psychological conditions, as incompetent to make moral judgments, (Keenan, 148-149.So they “stretched the divide between Church teaching and pastoral practice” until effectively they “gave us sins without sinners.” The risks today might be different, but perhaps even more grave. Today it is not just confessors who not merely absolve, but dissolve, responsibility for wrongdoing. Today we tend to do it ourselves by not seeing anything wrong with our actions in the first place. It is the sense of sin that has become weaker, and with no sense of sin, there can be no sense of God’s grace either.
So how is moral theology to assist the church’s ministry of healing and judgment in our times? I would suggest four aspects that moral theology needs to continue strengthening to heal from its past excesses, understand the spirit of the age, and continue serving the church in the future.
First, a decisive shift that reclaims virtue, and not merely the distillation of norms, as the true aim of Christian moral pedagogy
Second, the importance of truly paying attention to the signs of the times as we continue to seek the truth about human freedom and action in every circumstance
Third, that we are attuned to the pain and suffering of the people of God
Fourth, that we discern in which specific ways moral theologians can contribute most fittingly to the church’s ministry of accompaniment in conversion, healing and formation.
At the same time, that we ourselves, those called to serve as moral theologians, continue our personal pilgrimage to be cleansed of the marks of our own shortcomings and of the complexity of the situations we find ourselves in. The turn to virtue We have long been obsessed with a “shortcut” morality that focuses on specific acts rather than an arduous pedagogy of virtue. Moral norms are important, and especially so as guidelines for the novice on the path to virtue. But moral norms are also tricky: as Thomas Aquinas reminds us, the deeper we delve into the nitty-gritty details of daily life, the harder they become to ascertain, as a general rule. Thus, it is only the wise person, the person of virtue, who can act most fittingly in any circumstance. Nevertheless, the real issue in our times is not even the problematic nature of ascertaining rules in contingent circumstances. The deeper issue is how the particular nature of our moral crisis impoverishes the purpose we give to human law itself. In other words, because we no longer share a robust anthropological foundation, we no longer share a common view of the good life, and therefore cannot share a common ethic or law.
Law, of course can still be enforced, but it ceases to defend or inspire a shared identity or community. Instead, it can create even deeper divisions, as some start feeling as strangers in their own home. Pope Benedict continuously reminded us, that the foundational moral problem we inherited from modernity is the disconnection of freedom from truth. As Alisdair MacIntyre and others have persuasively argued, after centuries of Nominalistic bias, and therefore after centuries where moral reasoning has been replaced by moral theories, the excellence of discerning ‘wisely’ in human matters has been replaced by poorer substitutes like competence or management. This is a particularly serious predicament, since what characterizes the human as embodied spirit is precisely our natural ability to direct our freedom in a reasonable manner—that is, to be virtuous—a potential that relies on understanding our proper ends, and on the personal commitment to strive to reach those ultimate ends.
However, what the rise of secular culture tends to eclipse, are precisely transcending ends: the flattening of our horizon of meaning, the death of true leisure (Sunday as the day of the Lord) and of the philosophical art of contemplation, all disconnect us from our ultimate desire, and therefore the truth of our becoming as oriented to God. Hence, the necessity in our times of reconstructing a true anthropology, where the human is reclaimed as the being who exercises his or her freedom for true transcendence, not just for “indifferent” choices among options or actions. Nevertheless, the challenge of remembering and reclaiming who we are as creatures in light of the divine is compounded further by the fact—self-evident in digital times—that the human is becoming a ‘new’ being. As Romano Guardini and others have argued, through technology as the extension of our intrinsic capabilities, the human today is immensely more powerful, almost like a god. Yet the ‘machine’ itself has a paradoxical effect as it functions “on its own” thus distancing us from our own power. It “narcotizes us” by making us believe the machine is something altogether ‘other’ to ourselves. As such, the greater our technological power, the greater our temptation to hide behind impersonal structures, through which we wash our hands from the exercise of responsibility. Evil happens and none of us are to blame.
Our freedom to act becomes disconnected from the truth, not only of the ultimate telos of our actions, but even of the reach of our actions, and therefore of our own power and responsibility. As we become helplessly paralyzed by the complexity of the technical structures we birth, we are transformed into puppets, as anonymous power becomes appropriated—as Guardini evocatively puts it—by the spirit of evil. Anonymous power becomes properly demonic because no power can be left without “order” or “direction.” Washing our hands, refusing to be who we are called to be—agents who co-create with the divine—turns us into anonymous ghosts driven by passions now beyond our control, because beyond our recognition or comprehension.
Attentiveness to Discern the Truth and Act with Wisdom
Such “anonymous” forces are becoming more insidious—the market, propaganda, the rise of more “intelligent” algorithms etc. We ignore them at our peril. The exercise of prudence, traditionally understood through the context in which it was to be applied—for instance, the domestic sphere or the sphere of governance—must today match the reach of our power of influence through technologies. Not just to determine the fitness of our future actions, but to judge the harm or goodness caused by our ongoing application and creation of ‘tools’. Thus, conversion to virtue also implies the challenge of re-awakening of that deeper truth to human searching, the more integral truth to which human desire itself is oriented, and therefore to the truth of who we are as human beings.
While the traditional language of natural law has been lost, even among the faithful, moral theology must continue to ask those fundamental questions that give us a real “measure” for our becoming (and not mere subjective desire): What is the authentic flourishing, the integral flourishing that not only befits, but respects, who we are as human beings? Who are we as human beings? If our discernment of the human condition is to be truthful, it cannot bypass the question of what constitutes or contradicts, authentic flourishing according to our unique nature. Thus, another difficult challenge for the moral theologian is to retrieve precisely a language of fundamental principles, when such principles are not only openly contested, but rapidly collapsing. As the professor of rhetoric, Richard M. Weaver wrote after the Second World War: “We can infer important conclusions about a civilization when we know that its debates and controversies occur at outpost positions rather than within the citadel itself. If these occur at a very elementary level, we suspect that the culture has not defined itself, or that it is decayed and threatened with dissolution”. (The Ethics of Rhetoric, 171)
On Being Attuned to the Suffering of the People of God
As Pope Francis remarks in his discussion of the “dominant technocratic paradigm” the appropriation of a technocratic mindset reduces even us, the human being, to mere objects that need fixing. This is, in fact, how we tend to look at human suffering in our age. Mortality, illness, barrenness, even spiritual ills, become “problems” that can be “fixed.” Not so in the wisdom of the Gospel, where suffering is what we bear, not for its own sake, but as reflecting the existential reality of our dependence on God. Suffering is the quintessential mark of fallen humanity constantly in need of God’s healing. The gospel, the good news, is precisely of that healing being offered to the world where our suffering is not annihilated, but transformed into joy, into glory. This is the crucial significance of the recovery of an imaginary of healing, that ultimately is a recovery of the good news of God’s mercy. As God was merciful towards us first, so God’s church is called to exercise mercy. Mercy is a virtue that presupposes the right ordering in our relationship with God and with one other: an ordering of greater moral perfection. Not only is God’s love more perfect than ours, but our love of neighbor, the love that characterizes the church, must imitate God’s love, and thus it cannot be other than merciful. This is, in fact, how the church witnesses the gospel itself. Nevertheless, for the Christian, mercy is not an end in itself. The end of the Christian life is caritas, “friendship with God,” and while our abiding in God’s love depends on God pouring on us mercy first,
God’s mercy presupposes our willingness to be converted and perfected: to receive the Spirit and be elevated to love as we were loved first. In his discussion of the theological virtue of caritas and its proper interior acts of joy, peace and mercy, St. Thomas Aquinas puts it this way as he discusses the unique role of mercy:
On itself, mercy takes precedence of other virtues, for it belongs to mercy to be bountiful to others, and, what is more, to succor others in their wants, which pertains chiefly to one who stands above. Hence mercy is accounted as being proper to God: and therein His omnipotence is declared to be chiefly manifested.
With regard to its subject, mercy is not the greatest virtue, unless that subject be greater than all others, surpassed by none and excelling all: since for him that has anyone above him it is better to be united to that which is above than to supply the defect of that which is beneath. .... Hence, as regards man, who has God above him, charity which unites him to God, is greater than mercy, whereby he supplies the defects of his neighbor. But of all the virtues which relate to our neighbor, mercy is the greatest, even as its act surpasses all others, since it belongs to one who is higher and better to supply the defect of another, in so far as the latter is deficient. (ST II-II.30.4)
As Pope Francis evocatively puts it, the church is ministering in a field hospital. To ignore suffering is to turn a blind eye to the existential crisis of our times—and of all times—of our disconnection from God’s balm of mercy. To be attuned to suffering is thus to also be attuned to how God beckons the church to continue the “works of mercy.” Ironically, this is a ministry grounded in power—but in that power of God to offer God’s very self. Ultimately what mercy manifests, and what mercy affirms, is the subversion of worldly power under the dominion of true divine power: the power of self-emptying love.
On Discerning Our Proper Communicative Role in the Church
The diagnosis of our true condition and compassion towards the sinner, implies the long path of a pedagogy that not only offers healing medicine, but nurtures in virtue, so the patient too is able to continue the church’s ministry of mercy. The pedagogical relationship between the church as mother and her children ultimately relies on that medium that brings them together as community: the way we communicate with one another through our words and gestures. Of course, words communicate more than mere content just as actions actuate more than directly intended effects. Ultimately who we become as ministers in the church, including as moral theologians, is reflected in how we speak. I have argued for a turn to rhetoric—a turn where theologizing becomes a conscious communicative event for transformation. I have come to believe this turn is even more crucial for moral theologians who, as history has taught us, many times do not understand the power the words we speak have to build walls or to heal divisions. Moreover, in our world, where everything—matter and software—is being imbued with the power to speak, how we speak will become the most ethical of our gestures. Ironically, “moral theology”, or the ancient practices from which the discipline emerged, has a rich heritage of biblical, political, and ecclesial power: speech of prophetic indictment, parrhesia, deliberation, and of course, paraenesis or traditional moral exhortations.
But perhaps the recovery of such speech forms, and thus the recovery of the praxis of moral and “morally-forming” speech, while absolutely necessary for the church, is precisely where moral theology itself dissolves in a wider sphere of “pastoral practice” or pastoral theology. Nonetheless, might remains essential and particular to the language of moral theology, the more sober arts of speech: first and foremost, dialectic, as the art of discerning among arguments for their truthfulness, but also the more sober persuasive arts of deliberation and teaching.
Still, while moral theology must have a decidedly communicative dimension, to determine the boundaries of that “communication” might be an important question to reflect upon. Is the moral theologian’s ministry essentially a “teaching” ministry—limited to the formation of future leaders of the church? Or is it also a “pastoral” ministry in the richest sense—oriented to the moral healing and formation of the people of God, whether in the church or outside of it? Is it a prophetic ministry that seeks the transformation of culture? Or is the church’s own ministering to be more of a collaborative effort where the actual “speaking” is increasingly “strategic” and thus necessarily reliant on more than one voice, more than one minister, but on communities of witness and discourse who “speak” the good news in multiple persuasive fora simultaneously? I think these are important questions of method that urge us to ponder both the depths, but also the limits, of the disciplines we come from and that are also necessarily changing in scope in a digital environment.
Conclusion
To bring this reflection to a close, ultimately what I take from this exercise is both an acknowledgement of past errors, the necessity of conversion in the discipline “moral theology” itself, but also a renewed appreciation of the limits of what we do as moral theologians. I do think there is a profound paradox that while moral theologians must recognize their wider call to ministry, we must also not forget that what we can contribute to ministry is, in itself, crucial but very limited. I like to think of our call as distilled in the recovery of “common sense”; the ability to grasp truth that is self-evident but hidden under many layers of cultural biases.
Common sense must also be articulated in “common speech”: not “common” because plebeian, but “common” because truly shared in common, as the hope for our future as one community. But that commonness must rely on truth: truth about human-becoming in our relationship to the Creator... but truth that is increasingly eclipsed and difficult to discern in our complex new technological reality. From myth to dialogue as philosophical method, to the summas as contextual and systemic presentation of truth, can we recreate an analogous truthful language in our times? Can we uncover and utter the good news in an age of fake news? Perhaps what is being asked of moral theologians is no more—but also no less.