Is Moral Truth Immutable or Historically Conditioned?

What is truth? Is it objective and permanent or is it historical and mutable? And what are the criteria for discerning truth? These foundational questions have overshadowed Catholic theological discourse for the past several decades. Many progressive theologians in the postconciliar era have opted for some version of historicism. In their opinion, it is virtually axiomatic that Catholic dogmas and doctrines conceived under the guise of revelation are an historical reality, always evolving and subject to reinterpretation. This is, of course, a recipe for moral relativism, as novel moral “truths” are often conditioned by shifting social conventions.

Many members of the hierarchy are also convinced that moral precepts should change over time. It was recently reported that 90 percent of Germany’s bishops support modifications to the Church’s traditional teachings on sexual morality. Bishop Peter Kohlgraf of Mainz, for example, has indicated that scriptural statements about homosexuality should not be interpreted as “timeless truths,” based on the presumption that the moral norms in St. Paul’s epistles and the Gospels are historically and culturally conditioned. And Bishop Heinrich Timmerevers of Dresden-Meissen is seeking changes to Church teaching on gender identities and sexual orientations to keep pace with scientific and cultural developments.

These German bishops can find reinforcement for their heterodox views in Fr. Mark S. Massa’s controversial new book Catholic Fundamentalism in America, which revives the debate about the nature of truth. Fr. Massa’s principal task is to expose “Catholic fundamentalism” in the United States. He describes, sometimes with unabashed irreverence, what he considers the emblems of fundamentalism, such as the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), Christendom College, and CrisisMagazine.com. His harsh polemic singles out EWTN for particular scorn for trying to construct an “alternative church by fashioning something like an alternative ‘authentic magisterium.’” According to his way of thinking, many other Catholic organizations could be added to this list due to the defective ways they witness to the Gospel.

The traits of fundamentalism, so the thinking goes, include a sectarian aversion to ecumenical dialogue, the frequent use of extreme political rhetoric to castigate opponents, and, in particular, an ahistorical and “primitivist” understanding of Catholic dogmas and doctrines. According to Fr. Massa, those doctrines are not preserved in amber, as many presume. Fundamentalist Catholics fail to apprehend that truth is not ahistorical; hence, they remain trapped in the old paradigm of orthodoxy. On the contrary, Catholic institutions must accept the new paradigm that began to take shape at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). And that paradigm insists on the historical character of dogma, which is not fixed and propositional but mutable and often ineffable.

Lonergan & Historical Consciousness

In the past, progressive Catholic theologians like Frs. Richard McBrien and Richard Gula referred to the influential philosophy of Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (1904-1984) to defend their views on the primacy of historical consciousness. So, too, does Fr. Massa. Fr. Lonergan’s 1967 address to the Canon Law Society of America, “The Transition from a Classicist Worldview to Historical-Mindedness,” offers the perfect foundation for Massa’s conclusions. As the title of Lonergan’s speech suggests, he distinguishes between historical consciousness and the more classical, static worldview consistent with the Scholastic philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. The classicist position is conservative and traditional, while the other is “modern, liberal…historicist.” These differences are not just relevant to theology but affect a person’s total mentality. Classicism sees the world in terms of unchanging laws, shaped by the reality of a “supernatural order.” Historical-mindedness, on the other hand, sees the world as caught up in an endless sequence of changes and upheavals that sometimes requires the revision of well-established truths. It emphasizes the empirical over the metaphysical, and lived experience over tradition. Classicism represents the philosophy of being, while historicism affirms the anti-Platonic philosophy of becoming.

Lonergan’s address also underscores that these sharply contrasting worldviews constitute “two different apprehensions of man.” The classical perspective conceives of the human person abstractly, through a universal definition that captures his immutable essence. Accordingly, human nature transcends history and culture. The other perspective regards mankind as “a concrete aggregate developing over time.” Human nature, therefore, is not constant. Rather, it is a plastic reality that can be redefined in many ways, unconstrained by an antecedent order of creation. This way of thinking could easily lend credence to the current anthropological revolution that severs the connection between human nature and bodily identity.

Lonergan’s notion of historical consciousness, which has become a hallmark of Catholic progressivism, is consistent with the views of German philosophers Hegel and Heidegger, who insisted on the intrinsic relation between truth and history. According to Massa, this viewpoint has become normative not only in Western culture but also among Catholic scholars who recognize that historicism rescues us from the tyranny of the past.

The irreconcilable dichotomy Lonergan proposed has particular relevance for moral theology and is often invoked in books and articles that address moral issues, suggesting that moral doctrines must evolve over time to keep pace with the inexorable march of history. As a result, the new paradigm prioritizes an historical and flexible approach to moral questions. Technological and cultural transitions demand the creation of a new moral order that supersedes the old. The new paradigm also calls into question the transcendent order of human nature as the ground of moral norms. As Lonergan implied, what’s needed is a far more dynamic vision of the human person. Along these lines, Fr. Kenneth R. Himes and Dr. Ronald P. Hamel argued in Introduction to Christian Ethics: A Reader (1989) that “the time-conditioned nature of human existence has influenced contemporary theology through a revision of what it means to be human.”

Fr. Massa refers to moral theologians like Josef Fuchs, S.J., and Bernard Häring, C.Ss.R., who understood that legalistic, propositional theology yielded too many anomalies to remain a useful framework for working out complex moral dilemmas. Both theologians were influential in orchestrating the paradigm shift Massa claims took shape at the Second Vatican Council. Pope Francis extolled Fr. Häring’s work because it helped moral theology flourish after the demise of Scholasticism. But Häring has always been an especially controversial figure because of his strident opposition to magisterial teachings in the papal encyclicals Humanae Vitae (1968) and Veritatis Splendor (1993). He believed both were symptomatic of the reductive moralism that infected the old paradigm of moral theology.

Fr. Häring (1912-1998) also dissented from many other orthodox Catholic teachings, such as the indissolubility of marriage, and he argued for the authority of conscience over moral doctrine. He rebuked the moral principles of the natural law because, he argued, they were based on a static vision of history and human nature. He claimed that moral theologians must be guided by a passage from Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II’s “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” proclaiming that “history itself speeds on so rapid a course that an individual person can scarcely keep ahead of it” (no. 5). Moral theology, therefore, must recognize the need for new moral values to accommodate historical progress, and those values will be found in the Zeitgeist.

A Paradigm Shift at Vatican II?

These tangled issues invite many remarks and reflections. Fr. Massa’s definition of “fundamentalism” is open to dispute, even as his criticism of institutions like EWTN is unbalanced and unnuanced. But let us confine our discussion about the debate Massa’s book has reignited to two questions. First, is there any warrant to the claim that a major paradigm shift began at the Second Vatican Council? Second, does the argument proposed by theologians like Lonergan and Rahner, that human nature changes essentially along the historical continuum, withstand critical scrutiny?

Fr. Massa contends that Vatican II effected a seismic shift to an historically sensitive understanding of moral doctrine that is superior in guiding conduct under complex and varied circumstances. Fr. Häring would have concurred. This new beginning to which the Church should aspire consists in accepting a dynamic and antinomian vision of morality. But can this paradigm shift be verified by any of the conciliar documents? No. On the contrary, the documents that directly address moral issues affirm a universal and immutable natural law. For example, Dignitatis Humanae, the council’s “Declaration on Religious Liberty,” states that “the supreme norm of human life is the divine law itself — eternal, objective, and universal” (no. 3). Elaborating on that statement, the declaration refers to St. Thomas, who explains in the Summa Theologiae that “the eternal law…is the unchangeable truth. And all men know the truth to some extent, at least as to the general principles of the natural law.” There is, therefore, no doubt that the eternal or divine law includes the morally binding and objective precepts of the natural law. Dignitatis Humanae goes on to explain that these unchangeable “principles of the moral order derive from human nature itself” (no. 14).

To be sure, as Fr. Häring observed, Gaudium et Spes acknowledges that history changes rapidly, and on occasion those developments will inspire more conceptual clarity about a moral issue. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that moral norms or judgments should always be adapted to such changes. And nowhere in the documents of Vatican II is there even an intimation that the laws of morality must be rewritten to accommodate new historical or social realities. Instead, Optatam Totius, the council’s “Decree on the Training of Priests,” instructs the clergy to learn how to “apply eternal truths to the changing conditions of human affairs” (no. 16). Thus, there is no evidence of a paradigm shift at the Second Vatican Council but rather a persistent conviction regarding the primacy of eternal moral truths that transcend time and history.

Is there a plausible case to support the argument for the historically conditioned nature of human existence? Lonergan’s speech, which cites the work of Rahner, declares the need for a more concrete apprehension of human nature, while Häring objected to the Church’s static vision of human nature. Rahner believed that the person in his “concrete nature,” understood as the ground of normativity, undergoes an extensive process of change. However, as moral theologian Germain Grisez explained, while human nature in its historical and cultural actuality can change over time for better or worse, human nature as the standard for moral norms is not subject to change. According to Grisez, nature must be understood not in terms of a formal essence but as the basic possibilities (or opportunities) for fulfilment as outlined in Aquinas’s treatment of the natural law in the Summa. We cannot find throughout the course of human history any community or persons who were not bodily, intelligent beings for whom the fundamental goods of life and health, marriage, knowledge, friendship, and so on were not the source of their fulfillment and, hence, their basic reasons for action. Moreover, Lonergan, Rahner, Häring, and others who propose the possibility of changes in human identity offer no examples to support their argument.

Pope St. John Paul II skillfully addressed these issues in Veritatis Splendor, demonstrating that historical contingencies cannot be the basis for the creation of new moral norms that contradict “the truth about man.” Rather, cultural transitions and upheavals demonstrate that there is something in the human person that transcends time and culture. And “this ‘something’ is precisely human nature: this nature is itself the measure of culture and the condition ensuring that man does not become the prisoner of any of his cultures but asserts his personal dignity by living in accordance with the profound truth of his being” (no. 53).

Thus, progressives like Fr. Massa, who endorse the pre-eminence of historical consciousness and the mutability of human nature, cannot find confirmation for their heterodox views in Vatican II. In addition, they must contend with the magisterial teaching of Veritatis Splendor, which insists that there are “intrinsically evil acts” that are prohibited “always and without exception” (no. 115; emphasis added).

Conclusion

Historicism and normative flexibility are also incompatible with Scripture and the Church’s immense tradition, which includes the witness of countless martyrs to eternal moral truths. If we embrace the new paradigm Fr. Massa proposes, the validity of many moral teachings of the New Testament (such as those St. Paul expresses in 1 Cor. 6:9-10) are jeopardized whenever they conflict with the social conventions of liquid modernity. When scriptural authority is challenged in this way, the Church becomes detached from the faithful teachings of the Apostles. Moreover, as Pope Pius XII pointed out in his “Address to Young Catholic Women” (1952), the mother of the Maccabees and her sons, SS Perpetua and Felicity, Maria Goretti, and thousands of other men and women the Church venerates are the “most direct witnesses of the truth, against the new morality.” The new morality Pius had in mind was precisely the rejection of a fixed moral order from which are derived true moral precepts that exclude certain actions in all circumstances.

Catholic theologians striving for fidelity to the teachings of Vatican II should encourage the faithful to conform to those eternal principles of morality reaffirmed in documents like Dignitatis Humanae. They should not be deceived by the beguiling mystique of history that beckons us constantly to overcome the past, even if it means contradicting the Deposit of Faith. And the pope should be a faithful promoter of that same eternal moral doctrine that is part of the Church’s apostolic inheritance. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI made great strides in this regard, especially through their encyclicals and other writings.

One wonders, of course, what Pope Leo XIV thinks about these matters. How he answers the questions at the beginning of this discussion will help determine the future of Catholicism as it struggles to sustain a coherent moral vision amid the shards of postmodernism and the tidal wave of the sexual revolution.

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