et
Vetera

Nova

Winter 2018 • Volume 16, Number 1

The English Edition of the International Theological Journal

Co-Editors
Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary
Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Dominican House of Studies

Associate Editors
Holly Taylor Coolman, Providence College
Gilles Emery, O.P., University of Fribourg
Paul Gondreau, Providence College
Scott W. Hahn, Franciscan University of Steubenville
Thomas S. Hibbs, Baylor University
Reinhard Hütter, Catholic University of America
Christopher Malloy, University of Dallas
Bruce D. Marshall, Southern Methodist University
Charles Morerod, O.P., Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg
John O’Callaghan, University of Notre Dame
Chad C. Pecknold, Catholic University of America
Michael S. Sherwin, O.P., University of Fribourg

Board of Advisors
Anthony Akinwale, O.P., Dominican Institute, Ibadan, Nigeria
Khaled Anatolios, University of Notre Dame
Robert Barron, Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles, CA
John Betz, University of Notre Dame
Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas
Christopher O. Blum, Augustine Institute
Stephen Brock, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Peter Casarella, University of Notre Dame
Romanus Cessario, O.P., St. John’s Seminary
Boyd Taylor Coolman, Boston College
Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P., Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Douglas Farrow, McGill University
Anthony Fisher, O.P., Archbishop of Sydney, Australia
Simon Francis Gaine, O.P., Blackfriars, University of Oxford
Timothy Gray, Augustine Institute
Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., Pontifical John Paul II Institute (Washington, DC)
Russell Hittinger, University of Tulsa
Paige Hochschild, Mount St. Mary’s University
Andrew Hofer, O.P., Dominican House of Studies
Joseph Lienhard, S.J., Fordham University
Steven A. Long, Ave Maria University
Guy Mansini, O.S.B., Saint Meinrad School of Theology
Francesca Aran Murphy, University of Notre Dame
Thomas Osborne, University of St. Thomas (Houston)
Michał Paluch, O.P., Instytut Thomistyczny (Warsaw, Poland)
Trent Pomplun, Loyola University Maryland
Christopher J. Ruddy, Catholic University of America
Richard Schenk, O.P., University of Freiburg
Michele Schumacher, University of Fribourg
Janet Smith, Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Christopher Thompson, St. Paul Seminary
Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., Dominican House of Studies
William Wright, Duquesne University
Instructions for Contributors
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Nova et Vetera
The English Edition of the International Theological Journal
ISSN 1542-7315

Winter 2018

Vol. 16, No. 1

C ontemporary M oral T heology
Commentary
A Thomistic Appraisal of the Catechism of the
Catholic Church on the Capital Vices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Basil Cole, O.P.
The Church as Pastoral Icon of the
Mercy of the Good Shepherd.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David W. Fagerberg
The Courage to Rest:
Thomas Aquinas on the Soul of Leisure. . . . . . . . . Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.

1
21
39

Articles
Is Artificial Impregnation Opposed to
the Unity of Marriage?: A New Look at the Question
of Embryo Adoption. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Irene Alexander
Amoris Laetitia, Pastoral Discernment,
and Thomas Aquinas. . . . . . . . . . . Kevin L. Flannery, S.J. & Thomas V. Berg
Married Sexuality within the Drama of Creation
and Redemption: Humanae Vitae through the Lens of
Gaudium et Spes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Dauphinais
Thinking the Embodied Person with
Karol Wojtyła. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Angela Franz Franks
Leonine Social Anthropology:
Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jason A. Heron
The Virtue of Sobriety:
Integral Ecology in Its Full Flourishing.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jennifer E. Miller
Securing the Foundations: Karol Wojtyła’s Thomistic
Personalism in Dialogue with Natural Law Theory. . . . . . . Petar Popovi ć
On Love and War: Reflections on the
Abuse of Technical Rationality.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael S. Sherwin, O.P.
The Formation and Exercise of Conscience
in Private and Public Matters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem.
An Examination of the Role of Faith in
Matrimonial Consent and the Consequences
for the Sacrament of Marriage. . . . . . . Lawrence J. Welch & Perry Cahall

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113
141
173
205
231
259
275

311

Book Reviews
Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law
by J. Budziszewski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Francis J. Beckwith

343

The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification According to St. Thomas Aquinas
by Daria Spezzano.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daniel W. Houck
Benedict XVI’s Reform: The Liturgy between Innovation and Tradition
by Nicola Bux. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dominic M. Langevin, O.P.
Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, & William of Ockham
by Thomas M. Osborne, Jr.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew R. McWhorter
Verbum Domini and the Complementarity of Exegesis and Theology,
edited by Scott Carl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William M. Wright IV

346
349
352
355

The English edition of Nova et Vetera is published quarterly and provides an international
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Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2018): 1–19

1

A Thomistic Appraisal of the Catechism of the
Catholic Church on the Capital Vices
Basil Cole, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies,
Washington, DC

As the desire for happiness underlies the desire for

natural virtue, so the desire for God underlies the supernatural virtues,
such that charity becomes the form or inspirer of all the virtues. What
underlines all the vices is pride because pride influences all the mortal
sins, since to choose spiritual, bodily, or material goods against reason
tears one away from one’s ultimate end, either directly by contempt of
God or indirectly by preferring spiritual or material goods to God in
such a way that envy of another’s good brings sadness that tears away
from a union with God. The arrogantly proud person reaches a point
of not wanting to respect the limits of the natural law implanted in his
soul by God or the divine precepts that are taught by revelation and
associated with the theological virtues.
However, committing grave sin does not mean one has lost all
affection for God, just as disobeying one’s parents does not ipso facto
mean definitively hating one’s parents. Is there an overall principle at
all for undermining virtue? It seems not, since some sins occur as a
result of ignorance or weakness. Can a specific moral virtue be the
result of ignorance or even weakness in another virtue? By accident
this can happen if humility results. Sins of omission might be only
materially evil and virtues only materially good when commanded
by pride or one of the capital vices. In such cases, virtue is not
implanted in the faculties of soul or in the passions.
Though St. Thomas did not know the work of Evagrius of Pontus
(Antirrhêtikos, or Talking Back), he did know Cassian’s Institutes and the

2

Basil Cole, O.P.

Moralia of St. Gregory the Great, which deal with the realities of evil
thoughts, deadly sins, capital sins, or (what finally becomes settled
terminology) the seven capital vices. But, before we get to Aquinas’s
helpful insights into human nature, it is important to see what the
Catechism teaches about the capital vices.
Pride and Its Property, Vainglory
The Catechism of the Catholic Church mandated by Pope St. John Paul
II in 1992 has become a fine example of turning a corner concerning
moral absolutes and other doctrinal disputes. However, I would suggest
that a few supplements would be in order concerning the capital vices
to flesh out more deeply some problems of the moral life. St. Thomas
Aquinas’s theology can be a great help especially when it comes to
making an examination of conscience or preventing major falls from
grace and in keeping the Christian faithful vigilant in their spiritual
life. The spiritual combat takes place primarily against the enemies that
flow from within, though often suggested from without by the media
or the devil himself.
To begin with, unfortunately, the Catechism of the Catholic Church
(hereafter, CCC) does not give a clear definition of what a capital
vice is. Second, it prefers to call the seven dispositions capital “sins”
instead of capital vices (§1866). Third, it merely gives a list of seven
capital vices (ibid.), and it does not include vainglory in the list or
follow Pope St. Gregory and Aquinas in teaching that pride is mother
of the vices and not a capital vice in itself, strictly speaking, because
pride pervades all the vices, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly.1 The Catechism merely associates pride with selfishness (§1931)
as causing both the hatred of God (§2094) and, often, the vice of
envy (§2540), but it does not clearly show how and why pride causes
these vices. Fourth, it merely states vainglory as an intention that can
render a good action morally culpable without giving definition as to
its underlying meaning (§1753). Nor does CCC mention the sins of
contention or obstinacy, two daughters of vainglory, and it mentions
discord only briefly, and without analysis. However, hypocrisy and
boasting are mentioned as opposed to the virtue of truth (§§2468 and
2481), whereas Thomas places them as fruits or daughters of vainglory. Further, CCC does not define anger, acedia, or gluttony. Their
		
Summa theologiae [hereafter, ST] II-II, q. 162, aa. 6–8. All English translation of
ST is from Summa theologica, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province
(New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948).

1

A Thomistic Appraisal of the Catechism on the Capital Vices

3

daughters or consequences are more or less ignored as well. While,
in fairness, CCC cannot be expected to give a complete theology of
the vices, its neglect of some of them should be rectified for the sake
of greater intelligibility in a subsequent edition.
St. Thomas, on the other hand, clearly states that a capital vice
is a fount or final cause of many vices and that from these flow sins
that he calls daughters of the capital vices. Since pride can pervade
all the vices either as an act of direct or implicit disobedience to
God, Thomas will not call it a capital vice, but the beginning of all
the vices’ activation into sins (vice being a disposition). Mortal sins
flowing from pride and the capital vices expel sanctifying grace from
the soul. Therefore, pride, being an excessive craving for distinction,
undue excellence, or exaltation, often leads to a specific refusal to
accept the rule of God’s law as known from the natural or divine law.
It leads to arrogance toward others and an exaggerated sense of one’s
own perfections.2 Some angels fell because they wanted to achieve
their happiness exclusively by their own powers and did not want to
submit to God for receiving the joys of heavenly beatitude.3
St. Thomas does not teach that pride is one of the capital vices,
but rather something deeper or more widespread, like a queen over
all the vices, which are her “lieutenants,” and sometimes generals.4
What this means is that the excessive desire for excellence gives rise
to an arrogant disposition. This in turn leads to the person “refusing
to be subject to a higher rule, which any sinner does inasmuch as he
does not submit to the law of God.”5 This can develop a contempt for
God to the extent of rejecting faith or love for him (affective love),
or it can mean falling into mortal sin, choosing according to some
disordered love for spiritual or material goods that pulls away from
a love of God out of disobedience. But this does not mean that one
has completely or definitively rejected God, since sin can come about
from weakness or true or feigned ignorance.
While pride is not a capital vice with its own daughters, but rather
the beginning of all the vices, it has four species or kinds as outlined
		
De malo, q. 8, a. 2, in St. Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, trans. Jean Oesterle, (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995).
3
		
ST I, q. 63, a. 4.
4
		
ST II-II, q. 162, a. 8.
5
		
De malo, q. 8, a. 2. In ST, it necessarily leads to a lack of subjection to God’s
rule or measure of one’s self and further leads a person to raise self above God’s
providential design for each person (ST II-II, q. 162, a. 5).
2

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Basil Cole, O.P.

by Gregory the Great, which can lead or inspire one to give into
the other seven vices and their daughters: “There are four marks, or
species by which every kind of pride of the arrogant betrays itself;
either when they think that their good is from themselves, or if they
believe it to be from above, yet they think that it is due to their own
merits; or when they boast of having what they have not, or despise
others and wish to appear the exclusive possessors of what they have.6
Further, Thomas makes note in the main body of the text that,
while superiority results from the possession of a good, it is easy for
the proud person to think he possess more worth than he actually
has. Worse still, however, is that proud people do not want to be
submissive to God, so that the vice “spurns the condition appointed
for him by divine rule or mission, in defiance of the lesson of St. Paul
(2 Cor 10:13), But we will not glory beyond our measure, according to the
measure of the rule which God has measured for us.” 7 Continuing from a
religious perspective, Aquinas goes on to say that “the root of pride”
is “somehow not being subject to God and his rule.” God’s rule, of
course, means keeping his precepts or commandments as taught by
the Church. When someone says that no pope is going to tell them
what he or she can or cannot do in the bedroom, what they are
objectively “doing” is making a choice of pride, not exclusively out
of lust for pleasure.
All of these species indicate already a beginning of distancing
oneself from God or of a disordered attitude to human beings, the
image of God. And a failure to acknowledge one’s dependence on
God, or a false imagining of having greater gifts that one does not
have, leads to boasting, or vainglory (looking for praise—a daughter
of vainglory). Also, the sin of pride, as it grows, inclines one to see
any gift one possesses as if it were owed to oneself by God. Further,
pride also undermines a certain sense of fraternity or solidarity with
others equal in dignity. St. Thomas is quick to say that it makes a
person “rigid.”8 Self-glorification, rationalizing to oneself that certain
actions are not sins, being “intoxicated” with self, and displaying a
condescending and patronizing attitude toward others all lead to an
antisocial way of life.
Moreover, a proud person fails to respond to the splendor of truth
because his self-love prevents him loving the truth with a certain
		
ST II-II, q. 162, a. 4, ad 1.
		
ST II-II, q. 162, a. 5, corp.
8
		
ST Suppl., q. 1, a. 1.
6
7

A Thomistic Appraisal of the Catechism on the Capital Vices

5

sweetness or relish.9 His failure to respond to the splendor of truth
inhibits his contemplation of divine things. Pride also inclines a
person to dwell on other people’s failings and, because of exaggerated
self-esteem, to appear singularly good.10 Often rash judgments based
on vague signs are the products of “projecting” one’s own unrecognized sins onto others.11 All of these properties of pride undermine a
central foundation for the spiritual life, which is humility before God
and his image, the human person.
Due to this excessive desire for excellence without recognizing
one’s limitations, conceit, selfishness, and the inability to recognize
one’s faults and sins set in. Regarding the spiritual life as a battle and
the vices as one’s attackers, St. Thomas further calls the seven capital
vices the lieutenants of the queen.12 When these seven capital vices
are activated by operative pride and consented to, they slowly weaken
and blind the spiritual faculties (intellect and will) and bind the sense
faculties (imagination, memory, and the unifying sense traditionally
called the “common sense”) against right reason and faith (though
they do not provoke sins directly against faith). The vices in turn
undermine both the passions and the good inclinations of the human
person by directing them away from their fundamental inclination to
the good of the human person.13
Of their nature, the vices are not so unified that one cannot act
without the others. Gluttony is not the same as avarice, or envy the
same as wanton anger or vainglory or acedia (often called sloth or
spiritual boredom). Each is not the other, yet two vices can coexist,
with one motivating the other. It is easy to see that, if someone is
gluttonous, he may also become avaricious so that he can eat more.
He may also become envious of the rich who can have sumptuous
banquets and go to the best of restaurants and vacation spots. Moreover, the lustful person may become so filled with the love of pleasure
that he eventually succumbs to acedia and no longer thinks sexual
sins are evil, and may even come to the conclusion that it is a moral
good to fornicate or commit adultery or contracept.14 A couple may
contracept because of an avaricious desire for more homes, better
		
ST II-II, q. 162, a. 3, ad 1.
		ST II-II, q. 162, a. 4.
11
		ST II-II, q. 60, a. 3.
12
		ST II-II, q. 162, a. 8.
13
		ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2.
14
		De malo, q. 9, a. 3.
9

10

Basil Cole, O.P.

6

vacations, and other luxuries. Or someone may so love to be honored
and praised that he becomes envious or saddened when someone else
is honored. Further, someone may unreasonably desire more material things because, for him, it is a sign of importance and meets his
need to be honored and praised. A vainglorious person may even
become unreasonably angry when, at work, he is not given esteem
and reward for contributions he may have made to the common good
of his company.
From this quick glance at all the capital vices under the queen of
pride, vainglory emerges as an offspring of pride, though, for Aquinas, there is no rigidly logical order of the vices. Each is a kind of
final cause for a string of vices under its own lieutenant as a fountain
of vice. This sin boils down to an excessive desire for attention, affirmation, popularity, yearning to be a celebrity, to impress, and, as a
result, to receive applause and to stand out from the crowd. Thanks to
the internet, social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
are some of the more popular means of satisfying an excessive craving
for recognition; however, they can also be means for the new evangelization. All of these attributes of false desire are related to pride
because they are part of fulfilling the excessive yearning for excellence that is not in keeping with one’s nature or talents, together with
a desire for pre-eminence—that is, having other people notice how
important one is. Therefore, this desire for vainglory helps intensify
the vice of pride.
Thomas is careful to assert that movements of pride and vainglory,
more often than not, are first movements of the soul, rather than
deliberate venial sins. However, when pride and vainglory lead to
grave harm to individuals and the common good due to grave sins,
pride and vainglory share in the gravity of injustice. More precisely,
vainglory is the desire to want others to know of one’s excellence
as an added bonus to one’s sense of greatness. By reason of a certain
affinity, other sins, mortal or venial, flow from this fount: disobedience, boasting, hypocrisy, contention, obstinacy, discord, and
presumption of novelties (attention seeking).15 None of this analysis,
which can be of great help in the spiritual life, is found in CCC.
The Motivation of Envy
The envious are the have-nots of this world because of a lack of selfworth compounded by feelings of inferiority. Feeling offended at the
		De malo, q. 9, a. 3, obj. 4 and ad 4.

15

A Thomistic Appraisal of the Catechism on the Capital Vices

7

talents, successes, and good fortune of others leads the envious to selfish
kinds of rivalry and competition together with pleasure at another’s
difficulties or distress, besides reading bad motives into another’s behavior or just belittling others. The envious may also want others to be as
unsuccessful as they are. Aquinas and Gregory say that envy often arises
from vainglory because a false sense of self-worth rests conditionally
on another’s approval.
From a global perspective, wealth inequality and class conflict
within and among nations can be instigated and exploited by their
leaders. However, the roots of envy begin in childhood when some
are compared to others as more intelligent, beautiful, stronger, or
richer than their neighbors. However, greed and lust may also lay
the groundwork for envy due to spiritual blindness. What is petty
and unsubstantial becomes central to a person’s identity. Sometimes
it take hours of psychotherapy to get someone to admit that it is envy
behind their emotional negativity. Self-worth tends to be measured
by things, talents, beauty, riches or success, and praise from others.
Saul’s hatred of David was obviously motivated by envy, whereas
Jonathon’s humility and friendship with David remained as the latter
became the king of Israel. St. Paul teaches that love envies no one.16
Contentedness is the solution to this problem as we come to love the
people toward whom we feel the sting of envy. Also envy can change
into emulation of the other’s virtues in some way.
So another’s good diminishing an individual may lead to self-belittlement and at the same time motivating the envious person to pull
down another’s good. This makes it impossible or at least difficult to
admire, respect, and be grateful to what is nobler, lovelier, or greater
than self. As Aquinas says, envy may lead to various sins of speech
that are similar to vainglory, though the daughters of envy are hatred,
tale-bearing, detraction, exulting over another’s misfortune, and
sorrow over another’s prosperity.17
The Catechism’s Developed Idea of Envy
Envy has a plethora of numbers in CCC.18 It is defined and explained
in the following numbers:

		1 Cor 13:4–8.
		De malo, q. 10, a. 3; ST II-II, q. 36, a. 4.
18
		CCC, §§391, 412, 413, 1852, 1866, 2259, 2317, 2475, 2538, 2559, 2553, and
2554.
16
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Basil Cole, O.P.

8

§2539: Envy is a capital sin. It refers to the sadness at the sight of
another’s goods and the immoderate desire to acquire them for
oneself, even unjustly. When it wishes grave harm to a neighbor it is a mortal sin: St. Augustine saw envy as “the diabolical
sin.” “From envy are born hatred, detraction, calumny, joy
caused by the misfortune of a neighbor, and displeasure caused
by his prosperity.”
§2540: Envy represents a form of sadness and therefore a
refusal of charity; the baptized person should struggle against
it by exercising good will. Envy often comes from pride; the
baptized person should train himself to live in humility: Would
you like to see God glorified by you? Then rejoice in your
brother’s progress and you will immediately give glory to God.
Because his servant could conquer envy by rejoicing in the
merits of others, God will be praised.
However, one aspect of the definition is not mentioned: the perverse
joy that can come from seeing the envied person suffer a setback or a
loss of some good. Further, “humility” as a counter weight against the
vice is mentioned twenty-three times in CCC, but it is not explained
(what it is or how to grow in this essential virtue against pride or
vainglory through daily life). CCC presumes everyone knows what
humility is and how to grow and guide oneself in it through daily life.
But, if there is a clear definition of neither pride nor of vainglory, then
humility remains in a kind of fog of meaning, rather than in a challenge
to do something to become a saint based on understanding the counter
root to pride in the spiritual life.
St. Thomas’s Contribution in Understanding Humility
The two virtues that challenge envy, pride, and vainglory are humility
and magnanimity. First, humility means for Aquinas a right appraisal of
one’s gifts and talents so as not to press for high things beyond one’s
abilities and so as to accept one’s limitations (natural and supernatural)
under God. Humility exists primarily in the will, while in the intellect
it makes a correct appraisal.19 It is likewise based on the reverence the
human person owes to God. I think that CCC would have profited by
citing the following from the Summa theologiae:

		ST II-II, q. 161, a. 1.

19

A Thomistic Appraisal of the Catechism on the Capital Vices

9

The reason why Christ chiefly proposed humility to us, was
because it especially removes the obstacle to man’s spiritual
welfare consisting in man’s aiming at heavenly and spiritual
things, in which he is hindered by striving to become great in
earthly things. Hence our Lord, in order to remove an obstacle
to our spiritual welfare, showed by giving an example of humility, that outward exaltation is to be despised. Thus humility is,
as it were, a disposition to man’s untrammeled access to spiritual and divine goods. Accordingly as perfection is greater
than disposition, so charity, and other virtues whereby man
approaches God directly, are greater than humility.20
With these words of Thomas, we discover what humility can do for
the virtue of prayer when it is really understood and lived when CCC
says: “Humility is the foundation of prayer. Only when we humbly
acknowledge that ‘we do not know how to pray as we ought,’ are we
ready to receive freely the gift of prayer. Man is a beggar before God”
(§2559).
CCC goes on to assert that humility must also penetrate the prayer
of adoration (§2628), petition (§2631), and contemplation (§2713)
and fight dryness and distraction in the battle of persevering prayer
(§§2728 and 2753). It accompanies faith (§2854) and penance (§1450)
and enables the human mind to know God through reason (§299).
Finally, it is an antidote to envy (§2540). Given all these various
doors or avenues to virtue that humility opens, the only logical
conclusion is that it is a precept of the Lord (§768) that, if followed,
brings us to our eternal homeland.
Avarice, Greed, Coveting, the Root of the Vices
St. Thomas calls the vice of avarice the root of all the vices because
it includes excessive desires for created goods, riches, and power. But
the Catechism refers to it as an idolatry (§2534) without explanation.
Citing the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent in relationship
with the tenth commandment, CCC asserts that man’s desire for material goods is “infinite” but that these should never be envied. CCC does
not clearly analyze how and why envy causes avarice.
Following St. Paul, Thomas sees why the root of sin is avarice:
avarice is a sign of material success, which can be the cause of false
security. Ample opportunities for self-indulgence lead to a neglect
		ST II-II, q. 161, a. 5 ad 4.

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of the common good of one’s family or society. The loss of material
goods may cause depression, since enough is never “enough” to those
controlled by avarice. The daughters of this vice include treachery,
fraud, deceit, and perjury, all of which lead to injustice and violence.
Further obduracy can lead to grave injustice to one’s fellows and
the community if one refuses to cooperate practically for specific
common goods.
Restlessness and the lack of due regard to mercy, all of which
border on mortal sin, are attitudes that lead one to forget about the
family and especially the poor. In particular, the desire for luxury
goods often quashes the virtue of liberality or the wise distribution
of goods to the needy. Restlessness or worry about the future tempts
one to workaholism, which, in the case of both parents, can cause
them to ignore their children’s immediate needs for attention. While
thinking of the long-term of their college education and the like,
they forget the children’s short-term needs. When money and things
are desired as ends in themselves, one is prevented from using them
in a reasonable way. One who has lost the sense of God as creator
and author of all goods also loses trust in divine providence and
governance. His heart is hardened toward other people’s needs and
opportunities for generous acts of mercy.
Thomas explains and experience shows that covetousness looks
to the great, illusory promise of self-sufficiency.21 Excessive material
goods feed the desire for more than one truly needs.22 When it is
unchecked, the love of material goods as ends in themselves turns
the heart to stone. CCC wisely warns: “St. John Chrysostom vigorously recalls this: ‘Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to
steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are
not ours, but theirs.’ ‘The demands of justice must be satisfied first
of all; that which is already due in justice is not to be offered as a
gift of charity”: When we attend to the needs of those in want, we
give them what is theirs, not ours. More than performing works of
mercy, we are paying a debt of justice” (§2446). Until one’s heart is
purified of avarice so that one lives within the measure of one’s true
material and cultural needs, this teaching of the Catechism cannot
be understood.
Finally, Thomas gives a fine outline of what happens when the
Christian seeks temporal goods too earnestly:
		ST II-II, q. 118, a. 7; Jas 5:1–6.
		ST II-II, q. 118, a. 6.

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Solicitude denotes an earnest endeavor to obtain something.
Now it is evident that the endeavor is more earnest when there
is fear of failure, so that there is less solicitude when success
is assured. Accordingly solicitude about temporal things may
be unlawful in three ways. First on the part of the object of
solicitude; that is, if we seek temporal things as an end. Hence
Augustine says (De Operibus Monach. xxvi): “When Our Lord
said: ‘Be not solicitous,’ etc. . . . He intended to forbid them
either to make such things their end, or for the sake of these
things to do whatever they were commanded to do in preaching the Gospel.” Secondly, solicitude about temporal things
may be unlawful, through too much earnestness in endeavoring
to obtain temporal things, the result being that a man is drawn
away from spiritual things which ought to be the chief object
of his search, wherefore it is written (Mt. 13:22) that “the care
of this world . . . chokes up the word.” Thirdly, through over
much fear, when, to wit, a man fears to lack necessary things if
he do what he ought to do. Now our Lord gives three motives
for laying aside this fear. First, on account of the yet greater
favors bestowed by God on man, independently of his solicitude, viz. his body and soul (Mt. 6:26); secondly, on account
of the care with which God watches over animals and plants
without the assistance of man, according to the requirements
of their nature; thirdly, because of Divine providence, through
ignorance of which the gentiles are solicitous in seeking
temporal goods before all others. Consequently He concludes
that we should be solicitous most of all about spiritual goods,
hoping that temporal goods also may be granted us according
to our needs, if we do what we ought to do.23
Anger or Wrath, Often a Vice but Sometimes a Virtue
Anger can be expressed in a virtuous way or a sinful way, depending
upon its purpose. Its use comes down to reasonably defending oneself
and others from serious injustices. Quoting St. Gregory, Aquinas says,
“Let anger stand up robustly against vice, says Gregory, like the bodyguard of reason.”24 Anger is a violent reaction caused by real or illusory
unjust physical or moral suffering arousing energies to overcome the
difficulty against persons, animals, and even things. Bodily changes
		ST II-II, 55, 6.
		ST II-II, q. 158, a. 1, ad 4.

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occur such as a change of color in the face and rising blood pressure
due to a rising heartbeat. The angry person also wants to repel and
punish an aggressor. Anger can be legitimate if it is just, moderate, and
animated by motives of divine love. It becomes a capital vice when it
is an inordinate and violent desire to punish without proper conditions. The intensity of impatience, agitation, blows, or hatred betray
an unreasonable kind of anger.25 Gregory says the vice of anger can
make us lose good judgment, gentleness, a sense of justice, and a spirit
of recollection.26 Remedies must have to anticipate problems arising
such as learning how to think before acting and developing a benign
and humble spirit that is able to oppose a proud and vainglorious heart
blowing apparent injustices out of all proportion.
Wrath can become obsessive, even though, under certain conditions, it must be expressed when necessary, and if not expressed, it
becomes a sin. (Thomas reminds the reader that there is no name for
a particular sin of failing to be angry.27) Self inflation can dispose one
to anger if one feels unjustly treated, but disproportionate anger can
inflame other vices , making one more proud, more envious, more
avaricious, or more filled with acedia.
Some people become excessively angry with themselves, with life,
their place in life, the world, and everybody else. Unfortunately, this
is an age of wrath, as we think of the terrorist, the kidnapper, the
hijacker, the looter, the demonstrator, or even a man terrorizing his
wife and family. Wrath also rises when one demands false rights of
all kinds. Any felt want or need or longing construed as a right can
lead to discord and, on a collective scale, to a violent society. When
people claim a right to something they desire and this alleged right
it not granted, their grievance will yield to anger, which becomes a
warrant for physical or verbal violence, as in demonstrations against
an institution. One becomes an extremist against “the system, the
establishment, the pigs.”
Sinful wrath is often linked to pride, envy and hatred—vices that
can flow from lust, envy, or acedia, as well as from frustrated greed.
A perfectionist temperament can also become obsessive with people
in his household or workplace because he wants them to be like him.
Nevertheless, bravery in battle, due chastisement of disobedient children, or police work against crime requires some anger.

		ST II-II, q. 158, aa. 1–2.
		De malo, q. 12, a. 1, obj. 5 and obj. 7.
27
		ST II-II, q. 158, a. 8.
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A gentle or forgiving personality sees slights not as grave or
malicious insults; and again, a mark of true greatness, according
to Seneca, may even be to not notice that one has received a blow.
Parents who are angered at their children without just cause and
hasty in punishment eventually lose their children’s respect and incur
their resentment. Forgiveness, compassion, and recognition of human
frailty can help. While the Lord Jesus as portrayed in the gospels
would on occasion become angry or annoyed, in general, he was
pervaded with the spirit of gentleness and merciful love.
Anger, as defined by CCC §2302, following St. Thomas, can be
a vice or a virtue:
By recalling the commandment, “You shall not kill,” our Lord
asked for peace of heart and denounced murderous anger and
hatred as immoral.
Anger is a desire for revenge. “To desire vengeance in order to
do evil to someone who should be punished is illicit,” but it is praiseworthy to impose restitution “to correct vices and maintain justice.” If
anger reaches the point of a deliberate desire to kill or seriously
wound a neighbor, it is gravely against charity; it is a mortal sin.
The Lord says, “Everyone who is angry with his brother shall
be liable to judgment.” (emphasis mine)
It becomes a mortal sin when grave injustice is inflicted upon someone, and in CCC §2534, this is reduced to physical violence. However,
one can inflict not physical but moral violence by words, as Aquinas
explains throughout his Summa.This would be akin to modern “bullying” or attempting to manipulate people. The daughters of the vice are
sixfold: quarreling, swelling of the mind, contumely, clamor, indignation, and blasphemy.28 The last daughter St. Thomas places under the
sins against faith when actually intended but as a venial sin when words
against God slip out spontaneously in anger.29 CCC has only a developed idea of this last daughter of anger when it teaches. CCC evidently
is concerned only with the mortal sin against faith, not the venial sin
that is the daughter of anger that St. Thomas speaks of:
Blasphemy is directly opposed to the second commandment.
It consists in uttering against God—inwardly or outwardly—
		De malo, q. 12, 5; ST II-II, q. 158, a. 7.
		ST II-II, q. 13, aa. 1–4.

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words of hatred, reproach, or defiance; in speaking ill of God;
in failing in respect toward him in one’s speech; in misusing
God’s name. St. James condemns those “who blaspheme that
honorable name [of Jesus] by which you are called.” The
prohibition of blasphemy extends to language against Christ’s
Church, the saints, and sacred things. It is also blasphemous
to make use of God’s name to cover up criminal practices, to
reduce peoples to servitude, to torture persons or put them
to death. The misuse of God’s name to commit a crime can
provoke others to repudiate religion. (§2148)
Blasphemy is contrary to the respect due God and his holy name. It is
in itself a grave sin.
Gluttony or Modern “Foodies”
Wise eating habits are what Thomas calls the virtues of abstinence,
sobriety, and fasting. These may be called “pro-life” virtues, since they
concern health of the body, a gift of creation. Rarely has anyone written
in this vein except for an occasional article in the field of bioethics and
medicine. Concerning gluttony, CCC has no analysis, even though the
health crisis in the first world has been in part produced by overeating
and drinking. Some theologians would also include smoking cigarettes
made from tobacco or from cannabis, as well as ingesting drugs to create
a certain euphoria, as another species of gluttony, since these substances
are consumed for physical pleasure and, from experience, harm the
common good of society. In addition, gluttony affects or the common
good of society when illnesses caused by gluttony lead to expensive
healthcare. Gluttony’s daughters result from intemperance in food and
drink namely: unseemly joy, scurrility (coarse and obscene conversation), garrulousness (excessive talkativeness), uncleanness (sexual arousals and discharges), and dullness of sense (unclear thinking).30 Since all
the cardinal virtues are meant to work together, inordinate eating and
drinking and other forms of intemperate consumption harm the good
of friendship within the family and society at large. CCC, I believe,
has erred in failing to articulate the norms for enjoying the pleasurable
gift of food from God. Even mentioning the species of gluttony could
help family life when parents articulate them: namely, eating “hastily,
sumptuously, excessively, ravenously and fastidiously.31
		De malo, q. 14, a. 4; ST II-II, q. 148, a. 6.
		De malo, q. 14, a. 3; ST II-II, q. 148, a. 4.

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Gluttony can be an effect of another vice called “prodigality”
(spending money beyond one’s means), which flows from avarice. It
can also be the effect of vainglory when it results from showing off
one’s wealth, or eating the most delicate of foods, or drinking too
much to show that one can “outdrink” others. It can also be the cause
or an effect of not caring for the poor and destitute by wasting money
on costly foods and drinks, as well as an effect of many different
kinds of sins that dull the mind. While it may not be easy to determine what is moderate eating, St. Thomas says that “a person can
discern it with the help of God.”32 The purposes of food and drink
are manifold. When consumed reasonably, they keep us alive (the
most fundamental inclination is to keep oneself in existence). Since it
is so necessary for life, it is reasonable too that it is pleasurable. One
does not have to be consciously motivated, because hunger is instinctual. The problem is to make certain that hunger is proportionate or
according to reason. Even when a woman is pregnant, proper eating
of certain foods also nourishes the child in her womb. Occasionally, consuming certain foods may even facilitate pregnancy.33 It is
also clear that common meals with family members enhance family
unity. Imbibing in alcoholic drinks stimulates hunger and is often
healthy for certain members of the body such, as the heart (among
potential medical problems). Some beverages possess many nutrients
and vitamins necessary for good health. In earlier times, drinking
wine prevented many diseases coming from tainted drinking water
that could not be identified as harmful by appearance. St. Paul even
suggested that wine was good for stomach ailments (1 Tim 5:23).
Lust versus the Natural Inclination for
Marriage and Family Life
Perhaps the best understanding of a vice in the Catechism is found
in the section dealing with lust. Its definition is very sound when it
says: “Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual
pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself,
isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes” (§2351). Likewise,
throughout this section under the sixth commandment, the reader
discovers the mainline particular vices and practical considerations on
how to grow in chastity away from sins of the flesh. Chastity is premar		De malo, q. 14, a. 2 ad 2.
		For more details, see Fertility: Cycles and Nutrition, ed. Marilyn M. Shannon,
4th ed. (Cincinnati, OH: Couple to Couple League, 2009).

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ital (virginal and celibate), marital, and post-marital. Aquinas will give
much further insight into some daughters of lust that are not brought
out in CCC.
Traditionally, from Pope St. Gregory the Great and St. Thomas
Aquinas, lust’s daughters are named blindness of mind, thoughtlessness, inconstancy, and rashness, all of which undermine solid
prudence. These moral problems, the consequences of lust, are not
mentioned in CCC, unfortunately. Decisions of right and wrong and
when, how, and where to do any good act become murky due to
lust wounding the intellectual virtue of prudence. Failure to think
before acting, thinking too much and never acting, and rarely seeking
advice from persons of virtue all go to frustrate the effort to lead a
reasonable and holy life under grace. Lust deforms the conscience in
this scenario, and following one’s deformed conscience is following
a fool.
Another daughter of lust is self-love or self-centeredness, which
makes one unwilling to think of others and fulfill their reasonable
needs when it is the right course of action. This is akin to pride.
Worse still are the other daughters of lust: hatred of God, love of
this world, and abhorrence or despair of a future world, which is also
called the sin of folly against the virtue of wisdom.34 These enervate
the desire to know God and his will in the practical order as the
means to achieving union with him on earth, as well as to one’s ultimate goal of heaven. The common good of societies, beginning with
one’s home, becomes subordinated to one’s inordinate desire for the
goods of this world.35 Material goods (money and property) become
one’s “be all and end all,” and thus the vice of avarice settles into one’s
soul. The notion that all things have a universal or common destination that includes others when in need is lost. Sharing one’s bounty
with others in need, the virtue of liberality according to Aquinas,
becomes meaningless.36
These daughters of lust within the soul battle in varying degrees
against God the creator, the redeemer, but above all God the
consummator of human life. When these daughters of lust entrench
		ST II-II, q. 46, aa. 1–3.
		ST II-II, q. 77, a. 4.
36
		As we shall see, the knowledge of the daughters of acedia is also apt warning
for every Christian in the slavery of lust, for what happens once someone or
a group loses its idealism and becomes influenced by the following: malice,
despair, spite, faintheartedness, sluggishness with the commandments, and a
wandering of the mind after unlawful things.
34
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themselves in the human soul, damnation, or eternal death naturally
follows, either because one has forgotten or denied an eternal destiny
beyond this life or because one falsely assumes that heaven will be
granted anyway—the sin of presumption, opposing divine hope.
The hope for a final prize (eternal glory) slowly deteriorates as the
heart (intellect, will, and passion) is captivated by lust. Put simply,
anger, blasphemy, vainglory, and envy are not easily resisted unless
a foundation of chastity is solidly informing both the will and the
concupiscible appetite.
Acedia and Looking at a Real Good as an Evil
With regard to the vice of acedia, CCC has the following to say:
“Another temptation, to which presumption opens the gate, is acedia.
The spiritual writers understand by this a form of depression due to
lax ascetical practice, decreasing vigilance, carelessness of heart. ‘The
spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ The greater the height,
the harder the fall. Painful as discouragement is, it is the reverse of
presumption. The humble are not surprised by their distress; it leads
them to trust more, to hold fast in constancy” (§2733). While it is
true as far as it goes, this paragraph is still vague. Lax ascetical practice
really implies a lack of contemplation of spiritual things that might
generate convictions against all the capital vices. Depression is a kind
of sadness—but why is one sad? This sadness and lack of enthusiasm is
over something spiritually good that in some way is felt or judged to be
evil. If sin is the choice of an apparent good, acedia judges something
objectively good to be not so and rejects it. Such objective goods might
be spiritual exercises such as prayer, confession, attending Mass and so
on, as Aquinas points out in his treatment.37 The sadness of acedia is
similar to envy, but for different reasons.
Dejection that gives rise to apathy of mind, feeling, and heart,
sluggishness, a poisoning of the will, despair, faintheartedness, and
lack of desire for anything even for what is good creates a morbid
inertia. One is disinclined to practice any virtue. A feeling of “I
couldn’t care less” or “whatever” or a lack of purpose prevents one’s
striving for perfection. What is left is a leaning toward self-indulgence and self-entertainment. As this vice grows, hatred of all spiritual things that entail effort to attain and faintheartedness in matters
of difficulty lead to either not caring about others or criticizing those
that do care about the spiritual life. Children become slow to obey,
		ST II-II, q. 35, aa. 1–4.

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parents too uninterested to command, pupils too lazy to do homework, teachers not caring to update their notes, and preachers lacking
in enthusiasm and too lukewarm to inspire. Such apathy leads to sins
of neglect or omission.
Zeal and joy in the service of God are moral duties. Someone not
directed by a self-transcending religious or moral commitment has
little reason to go on in the face of pain, bereavement, loss of wealth
or status, or the inability to experience delight. Effort and sacrifice
are pitted against a popular culture of immediate pleasures.
As if the previous moral pitfalls are not deep enough, acedia’s final
coup de grâce looks upon grace itself as a kind of evil due to spiritual boredom and a desire for any pleasure. As Aquinas understands
this vice, he says: “For acedia signifies a kind of sadness from the
repugnance of human affections to a spiritual divine good; indeed
such repugnance is obviously contrary to charity, which adheres to a
divine good and rejoices in it.”38 St. Thomas further elaborates what
this could mean in the practical order when he says that “acedia is
contrary to the command of keeping holy the Sabbath in which
repose of the mind in God is commanded according as it is a moral
precept.”39 This is withdrawing from the joy of a divine good because
spiritual goods are perceived as something to avoid with disgust and
sadness, rather than pursued is morally evil. In the throes of acedia,
divine goods are seen and felt to be distasteful. Spending time before
the Blessed Sacrament becomes repulsive or boring. These are some
of the reasons why Aquinas places the vice of acedia and its daughters
as opposed charity, since they are opposed to joy.
Finally, an acquaintance with the daughters of acedia offers timely
warnings for every Christian. When someone or a group loses
idealism for union with God and virtue, the daughters of acedia
emerge: malice, despair, spite, faintheartedness, sluggishness with
the commandments, and a wandering of the mind after unlawful
things.40 This confirms the insight of Aristotle that “no man can be a
long time in company with what is painful and unpleasant (Ethic. Viii,
5, 6).41In conclusion, it would be helpful for the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith to supplement the CCC’s teaching about the
capital vices with many of the practical insights of St. Thomas. This
would, in turn, clarify some of the vagueness and lacunae in CCC’s
		De malo, q. 11, a. 3.
		De malo, q. 11, a. 3, ad 2.
40
		ST II-II, q. 35, a. 4, obj. 2.
41
		ST II-II, q. 35, a. 4, ad 2.
38
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account of the capital vices. To clearly understand virtue theory, one
needs a good grasp of vice theory as well so as to know not simply
the names and definitions of the vices, but also all the ways they
operate on souls along the way to heaven to set them off this road to
N&V
damnation.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2018): 21–38

21

The Church as Pastoral Icon of the
Mercy of the Good Shepherd
David W. Fagerberg
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

These unworthy comments rest upon an image I am
bringing to a passage in Scripture.1 I confess to committing an act of
eisegesis. I agree that a scientific reading of Scripture should use exegesis,
whereby a meaning is “drawn out” of the text, but I also propose that
a spiritual reading of Scripture is sometimes of equal value, whereby
we are “drawn into” the text. How else do we fuse our horizon with
the eternal Word but by laying ourselves upon the sacred page? I wish
to draw us into an image contained in Hebrews 11:1, where we find
the word hypostasis. The component parts of the word are easy enough
to see: hypo means “under or beneath,” and stasis means “a position
or standing.” Hypostasis refers to that which stands under something,
giving it actual existence and real being. This is evident in its Latin
translation, sub-stantia. Thus, Hebrews 11:1 is rendered in both the
King James and Douay Rheims translation as follows: “Now faith is
the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” But
the word hypostasis was also used in the legal world to describe documents that gave evidence of ownership to a property, so The Amplified
		
This paper was delivered in September 2016 at the Pontifical University of the
Holy Cross in Rome as part of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy called by
Pope Francis.The XIII International Symposium of University Professors was
on the topic of “Knowledge and Mercy: The Third Mission of the University”
in “Celebration of the Jubilee of Mercy of Universities, Research Centres,
and Institutions for Artistic Higher Education.” The theme at Holy Cross was
“The Merciful Face of the Father.” This paper was one of three presented
there. I am grateful to them for permission to print it here.

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David W. Fagerberg

Bible translation says, “Faith is the title-deed of things hoped for.” The
word indicates an emphasis on confidence and firm trust, which can
be detected in several other translations: “Faith is the realization of
what is hoped for” (New American Bible), or “the confidence in what
we hope for” (New International Version), or “the assurance of things
hoped for” (Revised Standard Version). I do not dispute any of these
translations; nor am I trying to exegete a better one. They all work
from the bottom upward: faith is the foundation on which is built the
assurance, confidence, and substantial hope we have in the covenants
and promises of God.
But there is a different image that comes from an etymology of
the word hypostasis, an image that works from the top downward. I
am going to apply this difference twice, once to faith and hope, and
then to love and mercy.
G. L. Prestige contributed to a lexicon of patristic Greek terms,
and at the end of his research, he wrote a book titled God in Patristic
Thought that explains the theology of the Church Fathers by looking
at specific words they used. When he comes to the word hypostasis,
he notes: “The historian, Socrates, quotes Irenaeus Grammaticus for
the application of the term hypostasis to the dregs of wine in the cask.
There is nothing new in this usage, since Aristotle and Hippocrates
are both quoted by Liddell and Scott as using the term to denote sediment. However, it also occurs in a wider sense to denote the underneath or hidden part of any object.”2 In a wine barrel, some sediment
settles (stasis) at the bottom (hypo), though most of the cask is liquid.
Winemakers still today speak of red wines “throwing sediment”
when they age. Something hypostasizes at the bottom: the free-floating sediment substantializes at the bottom. Prestige also finds this
sense in the Clementine Homilies, which discussed the legend of
Kronos and said the primordial substance “sank downwards” when it
was devoured by the titan.3 And Hippocrates used the term to mean
“a deposit,” leading the medical world to still use hypostasis to refer to
“the settling or accumulation of blood in the lower part of an organ.”
Now let us turn back to Hebrews 11:1 and hear the verse with
this wine barrel in mind: “Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped
for.” Faith is the sediment of hope: the liquid hope solidifies at the
bottom of the cask as faith; when hope hypostasizes, faith results;
faith stands under our hope; faith is the substance of things hoped
		
G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1985), 163.
		
Clement, Homily 6.7 (quoted in Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, 163).

2
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for. From the bottom up, faith is the ground upon which one builds
a hope, but from the top down, hope is being given substantial form
when it hypostasizes as faith. Hope settles at the base of our hearts and
exists there as faith. Hypostasized hope is no vague sentiment; it is a
substantial confidence. And the whole chapter of Hebrews 11 gives
a lengthy rendition about people who had not just a general, liquid
optimism about God, but a particular, faithful certainty in God:
Abel’s sacrifice, Enoch’s translation, Noah’s shipbuilding, Abraham’s
departure, Sarah’s maternity, Jacob’s blessing, Joseph’s protection,
Moses’s exodus, and the judges and prophets who conquered kingdoms, wrought justice, obtained promise, and stopped the mouths of
lions. These were substantial forms of hope. In Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI comments about the history of this translation. Thomas
Aquinas used the terminology of his philosophical tradition to say
that faith is a habitus, “a stable disposition of the spirit, through which
eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it
does not see” (§7). Benedict thinks this modifies “substance” insofar
as it is describing faith in embryo: there are already present in us the
things that are hoped for, and that creates certainty. Luther and other
Protestants took it in a subjective way to mean faith as an expression
of an interior attitude, but scholarship today generally moves toward
an agreement that Hebrews does not mean just a personal reaching
out towards something absent; rather, Hebrews means to say that faith
gives us something. So Benedict concludes: “Faith draws the future
into the present, so that it is no longer simply a ‘not yet.’ The fact
that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by
the future reality” (ibid.).
And here, at last, is my parallel application of this image to our
topic at hand. As faith is the hypostasis of hope, I want to suggest that
mercy is the hypostasis of love. When love solidifies at the bottom of the
wine barrel, it is mercy. Love hypostasizes as mercy. Or, mercy is the
substance of love. Mercy is how the general virtue of love is realized
(made real, given being). Mercy is not a general love, it is a hypostasized love, having settled down with specificity to serve a particular
person, a particular situation, and apply the love of God to a particular circumstance. Mercy is love concretized, instantiated, made real,
substantialized. This is the understanding I see in Pope Francis’s bull
calling for this Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy. He writes: “In short,
the mercy of God is not an abstract idea, but a concrete reality. . . . It
is hardly an exaggeration to say that this is a ‘visceral’ love. It gushes
forth from the depths naturally, full of tenderness and compassion,

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indulgence and mercy.”4 Mercy gushes forth from the bottom of the
wine barrel as hypostasized, concrete love.
Pastoral Theology
I further suggest that hypostatic love—that is, mercy—gives us a
description of the pastoral work of the Church. Pastoral theology
is theology that occurs on the hypostatic level. Remembering that
wine-makers talk about “throwing sediment,” I imagine pastoral theology as “thrown doctrine,” doctrine thrown from our creeds and our
libraries into daily life. It is theology under the domain of prudence.
There is a false impression that, when the adjective “pastoral” is
attached to the discipline of theology, the former waters down the
latter, or plays loose with orthodoxy, or becomes less rigorous. But
this is not the case at all. Pastoral theology is hypostasized theology: it
is substantialized theology united to mercy, moving from the generic
to the specific question at hand. It is theology that shepherds (pastors)
souls to eternal life. The pastoral task is aimed at priceless human souls
and their communion with God. Jesus is the pastoral icon of the face
of the Father because, as supreme pastor of his Church, he fulfills the
two merciful tasks of a shepherd: protecting his sheep and leading them
to pasture. The Church, his mystical body, is called to do the same.
The Church’s ministry proclaims the Kingdom of God in real life:
she proclaims the Kingdom pastorally when, through preaching and
sacrament, she leads humanity to the pasture of eternal life. Faith and
doctrine and theology are no less rigorous for being pastoral; in fact,
they may be all the more muscular, if they are to conduct daily battle
with sin and selfishness. The love that circulates between the persons
of the Trinity is hypostasized in the Church, making her an icon of
mercy. Both the totus Christus and the individual person whom the
Church penetrates sacramentally are called to be an icon of him who
is an icon of the Father. Each individual Christian receives grace in
order to become mercy.
But this category of hypostasis does not apply only to our love
becoming concrete. It was a term with Christological history and,
so, applied to the merciful face of the Father taking human form.
The word had picked up more precise meaning in the controversies
concerning the Trinity and the Incarnation. After the grammar had
settled, the Church could say that Jesus is one hypostasis with two
		
Pope Francis, Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy Misericordiae Vultus (2015), §6.

4

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natures, and that there is one God in three hypostases, and with this
clarification, the word could be used in the defense of icons, where it
distinguished nature from a particularly existing thing.
Iconoclasts had three main reasons for thinking that icons were
being used idolatrously. First, if the icon represented the divine
nature alone, it would be a violation of the biblical prohibition about
making idols; second, if the icon represented both the human and
divine natures of Christ, then the natures were being confused, as
the Monophysites did; third, if the icon represented only the human
Christ, then the natures were being separated, as the Nestorians did.
They thought iconographers were depicting the nature of God, or
one of the two natures of Jesus. Here is where the term hypostasis
could help, because it named the distinct member of some group that
shared the same nature. Maximus the Confessor said: “An angel is
distinct from another angel, a man from another man, an ox from
another ox, a dog from another dog, by reason of their hypostasis,
not their nature and essence.”5 This can be applied to the Trinity:
the Father and Son and Holy Spirit are distinct by reason of their
hypostasis, not by reason of being different natures or essences. One
God, three persons. And this can be applied to Jesus, as Theodore
the Studite did:
When I say “man,” I mean the common essence [ousia]. When
I add “a” I mean the hypostasis: that is, the self-subsisting existence of that which is signified. . . .
“Man” in general is a common noun; but the particular
name, such as “Peter” or “Paul” is a proper noun. . . . If,
therefore, Christ were called simply “God” and “man” in the
Scriptures, then He would have assumed simply our nature in
general. However, Gabriel said to the Virgin “Behold, you shall
conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call His
name Jesus.” So Christ is called not only by a common noun
but also by a proper name: this separates Him by his hypostatic properties from the rest of men, and because of this He
is circumscribable.6

		
Maximus the Confessor, quoted in Christoph Schönborn, God’s Human Face
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 104.
6
		
Theodore the Studite, On the Holy Icons, trans. Catharine P. Roth (Crestwood,
NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981), 83–84.
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David W. Fagerberg

All human beings have a common nature, but at that level, we
could not distinguish one of us from another. The human nature we
have is the same. But, when that nature hypostasizes, it settles into
something particular, concrete, individual, delineated—it becomes
personal. That fellow over there may be called “man” or “a man,”
and if the latter, he could be named “Paul.” That carpenter over
there, the one from Nazareth, may be called “man,” and he may be
called “God,” but at the level of hypostasis he is “a man with human
and divine natures,” and as such, he is named “Jesus.” The divine and
human natures are in union at the level of person in a way that does
not confuse the natures, or change them, or divide them, or separate
them, as the Council of Chalcedon said.
Applied to our case, when love hypostasizes it, becomes personal.
It is no longer general love, but personal love. Mercy is love hypostasized into something particular, concrete, individual, delineated.
If I can walk past the beggar and not give him what he needs at the
moment, my love has not hypostasized, even if I feel general pity for
his state. That is the whole point of the parable of the good Samaritan.
Jesus tells of a priest and a Levite who both see a man who has been
beaten, and we have no reason to doubt that they were sorry about
his condition. But Jesus says it was the Samaritan traveler who was
“moved with compassion at the sight” and found his love hypostasizing from theory to praxis. This was clearly understood by the scholar
who started the whole conversation, because, when Jesus asked him
which of the three was neighbor to the victim, he answered “the one
who treated him with mercy” (Luke 10:29–37). I can love humanity
in general, in the abstract, but I am a neighbor only if that love treats
an individual man with mercy.
Theodore says that a hypostasis is the circumscription of a general
nature until it consists of certain properties. I say that mercy is the
circumscription of generic love until it consists of certain properties
appropriate to the moment, to the neighbor, to the need encountered.
Mercy is prudential love, and the skill required to identify what
circumscription is required is a skill called pastoral theology. In fact,
this seems built into our understanding of charity. On the one hand,
even those who have not studied scholastic terminology know that
caritas means love, friendship with God, the third of the theological
virtues. On the other hand, the meaning more often carried by the
word “charity” is almsgiving, giving to those in need, concrete acts
that alleviate suffering and distress. The word “charity” has come to
reflect both the liquid and the sediment! Caritas is both the virtue

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27

that takes hold of us as a second nature (habitus) and the charitable
act done personally. Caritas does not remain just a virtue; it becomes
an enacted virtue. Caritas becomes charity by passing through pastoral theology, like light passing through a prism becomes color. And
at the end, we will be judged on whether the two facets of caritas
connect in us: does our love bear fruit? So Benedict XVI says love
itself will be our judge. “Caritas does not stand opposed to the law;
it is itself a law court; it alone and in particular is the divine court of
law: it discriminates between left and right (Mt 25!). Whoever loves
stands ‘on the right’, and whoever does not love is turned to the left.
Without it, nothing ‘good’ is good.”7
For a Christian, this charity is of a special character. It is not human
charity; it is graced charity. Whenever we treat our neighbor with
mercy, we are doing so as sacraments of love ourselves. It comes from
the new habitus the person receives in baptismal grace. The Catechism
says: “Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into
the intimacy of Trinitarian life: by baptism the Christian participates
in the grace of Christ, the Head of his Body. As an ‘adopted son’ he
can henceforth call God ‘Father,’ in union with the only Son. He
receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who
forms the Church” (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] §1997).
At the bottom of the baptismal barrel, the sinner can find a substantially new life, if he will dive for it. At these depths, the power of the
sacramental water corrodes the shackles of original sin that bind us in
mortality and selfishness and regenerates us to new life. Jesus is the
mercy of the Father, a hypostasized love who walks among us, and in
baptism, we are given his love and life and pastoral charity as our new
habitus. It is not just that we hypostasize our love. The point is that
God has hypostasized himself: the Son, eternally begotten of him,
became mercy in the flesh. The Church is God’s love hypostasizing.
Once our soul has been healed of sin, then sanctified and deified, this
new nature disposes us to certain modes of activity. Theodore went
so far as to say that Christ and his painted icon have the same hypostasis. I will follow his lead and say that Christ and his living icons,
the Christians, have the same hypostasis. We form one mystical person
with Christ (Pope Pius XI, Mystici Corporis, §67).
Pastoral theology treats the sacraments on this personal level, not
on their metaphysical level. Pastoral theology understands the hypo		
Benedict XVI, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith:The Church as Communion (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 50.

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static quality each sacrament owns. Marriage is personalized love,
because a man does not love all women, but this one woman. Penance
is personalized confession, because a person is not admitting general
sinfulness but, rather, is asked to name particular sins. Anointing
of the sick is personal in application because, although we are on a
constant slope toward death, this sacrament anoints at the particular
moment when we begin to be in danger of it. All the sacraments are
given personally and received personally, but I would like to focus
on four of them. Three give a character, and the fourth concerns
a substantial change. The former will help me make a connection
between hypostatic mercy and the iconic nature of pastoral theology.
This same word, “character,” was used both in these three sacraments
and in iconography.
A kharax meant a pointed stick that could inscribe a mark upon
wax. Such an etching tool was used to transfer the outline of an
image onto a board prepared with gesso by cutting the image into
the board’s coating. The kharax produced an engraved mark, and an
imprint that was called a charakter. Therefore, the term “character”
was used interchangeably with the term “icon” and “image” to mean
the defining quality or face of the one depicted in the icon. We may
similarly say that the three sacraments that etch the character of Christ
upon us do so because they incise Christ’s Cross upon our hearts; they
imprint the face of Christ upon our faces, he who is the hypostasized
merciful face of the Father. That’s going to leave a mark. A kharax
leaves a character, which the Catechism says “remains for ever in the
Christian as a positive disposition for grace, a promising guarantee
of divine protection, and as a vocation to divine worship and to the
service of the Church” (CCC §1121). Baptism, Confirmation, and
Ordination are pastoral sacraments of ministry that promise protection in the vocation to worship and service. A Christian is someone
who has been “Christoformed” by the third person of the Trinity at
the directive of the Father. The Christian character—the face with
which a Christian looks upon the world—is Christ’s own face, who
is the merciful face of his Father. The Church must be merciful in
order to be God’s image.
Spiritual Warfare
It sounds easy enough; we certainly desire it, if we are people of faith.
But hypostasizing our love requires overcoming some hurdles called
vices, or passions. Baptism begins an interior battle with the passions,
and all the sacraments aid that battle, but that battle (which I have

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29

called “liturgical asceticism”) will occupy our entire life. Passions
distort our vision. First, they distort the perception we have of God.
Like heat waves rising from desert sand will distort our vision of a
distant object, so the rising waves of passion will obscure our vision of
the Father’s face. We fail to read God’s merciful face, and instead read
resentment and judgment and hostility in it. This spiritual darkening
causes us to miss the merciful glances the Father constantly directs our
way. And second, these passions also distort the perception we have of
our neighbor. We cannot see our neighbor with mercy when we envy
him; we cannot see him with love when we are enraged.
Evagrius of Pontus was the first to give a systematic articulation of
the primary passions from which the others flow. His thought subsequently entered the West to stimulate its thinking about capital vices
and deadly sins, but let us use his list of eight for our brief consideration: “First is [the passion] of gluttony, then impurity, avarice,
sadness, anger, acedia, vainglory, and last of all, pride” (The Praktikos
6).8 I want to ask, which of these passions cripple mercy? The answer
is: All of them! That is the worst thing about the passions. All of
them cause the twin effect of refusing to receive mercy from God and
refusing to give mercy to our neighbor.
• Evagrius says gluttony is not so much overeating as it is lack of trust
in providence. This temptation pushes concern for oneself to the
forefront, so we do not fully trust God’s mercy to meet our needs.
And our neighbor angers us by preventing us from attaining something on which we have set our appetites. Nervous acquisitiveness
prevents us from merciful sharing with our neighbor.We are always
building bigger barns so that we can lay up good things for many
years and can eat, drink, and be merry (Luke 12:19), not knowing
that this very night our life may be demanded of us.
• Impurity is the failure to observe moderation in soul and is an
impediment to chastity. Impurity turns us in upon ourselves and
stokes our lust and fuels our self-pleasure, and this adulterates our
natural love. Impurity is countered by chastity, which is why St.
John Paul II called chastity “a spiritual energy capable of defending love from the perils of selfishness.”9 Chastity makes for purity,
		
Evagrius, The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer, trans. John Eudes Bamberger
(Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981).
9
		
Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (1981), §33.
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David W. Fagerberg

which is why Paul Evdokimov connects it to the sacrament of
Marriage: “Chastity signifies that one belongs totally to Christ,
undividedly. For monks it is an engagement of the soul in unmediated relationship, and for the spouses, engagement through the
hypostasis of matrimony.”10 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God’s eros; also blessed are those who possess such a heart,
for they shall be able to give pure love.
• Avarice is an irregular love of money or rank or knowledge. It
desires something more than befits its value. The avaricious man
will always feel a lack, an insatiability, no matter how many gifts
he receives from God. Therefore, the avaricious man never thinks
he has enough in order to practice almsgiving. If we cannot practice mercy out of our ten talents, having a thousand talents will
not make it any easier. John Climacus writes, “Avarice is said to
be the root of all evil, and so it is, because it causes hatred, theft,
envy, separations, hostility, stormy blasts, [and] remembrance of
past wrongs.”11 Avarice sterilizes the soil, and no mercy will ever
grow there.
• Sadness or dejection is described by Evagrius as regret for having
started upon the spiritual path. For the monk, this may mean
cherishing memories of his former life; for the secular Christian,
this means doing our piety with regret and reticence. Then we act
like a slave instead of a son. Modern psychology might call it a
passive aggressive behavior: I will obey God, but you will find me
grumbling as I do so. Only if we are freed from this passion can we
serve the Lord with gladness (Ps 100:2) and, having put our hand
to the plow, not look back with regret (Luke 9:62). If a person were
conscious of the amount of mercy God had shown him, he would
not be downcast. When he fasted, he would not look gloomy like
the hypocrites; when he prayed, he would not be like the hypocrites who pray on the street corner; when he gave alms, he would
not blow a trumpet before him, as the hypocrites do (Matt 6). It
is hypocritical to be sad or dejected at the thought of giving piety
and mercy.
		Paul Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 67 (emphasis added).
11
		John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. Colm Luibheid, The Classics
of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 190.
10

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31

• Anger is the most fierce passion of all, and it affects our relationship with both our God and our neighbor. First, before God, this
passion sulks and refuses to accept mercy, as did the elder brother
when he thought his father was stealing from him to make a feast
for his prodigal brother. Second, before our neighbor, this passion
sulks and refuses to give mercy, as did the elder brother when he
thought his younger brother had trespassed against him in some
way. The prodigal’s sin was against his father, yet the elder brother
nursed his own grudge. Any anger—be it indignation, or wrath, or
vengeance—neutralizes mercy because, Evagrius says, this boiling
and stirring up of wrath constantly irritates the soul. It is a desire
to get vengeance and never to have pity. Pity, which is one of the
first daughters of mercy, only tastes bitter in the angry mouth.
• Evagrius calls a sixth passion acedia, which is perhaps best translated as “despondency.” We might also translate it as sloth, but
something more than laziness is meant. Acedia means a lethargy in
one’s spiritual duties. Mercy will not rise up from such a state of
torpor; listlessness does not put mercy into action. The man who
suffers acedia will find arduous the command to feed and water
and welcome and clothe and visit his neighbor. Thomas Aquinas
identified acedia with the “sorrow of the world” described by Paul
in Second Corinthians 7:10.12 It is the very opposite of the spiritual
joy that accompanies mercy.The person who suffers acedia does not
show joy on his face. Evagrius’s list does not mention the passion
of envy, but the western list of vices does so here, and the medieval
preacher’s manual, Fasciculus morum, defines envy as “sadness about
someone else’s happiness and glee about someone else’s ruin and
adversity.”13 Envy will leave the Pharisee unsure whether he is
more angry at Zacchaeus for inviting Jesus or at Jesus for accepting.
• Vainglory and pride are the seventh and eighth passions in Evagrius’s list. The modern world thinks of these as almost synonymous,
but Evagrius has a difference in mind. Vainglorious people “desire
to make their struggles known publicly, to hunt after the praise
of men.”14 It is the desire to boast of one’s achievements. When
		Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q. 35, a. 4, sc.
		Fasciculus Morum: A 14th-Century Preacher’s Handbook, ed. and trans. Siegfried
Wenzel (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1989), 148.
14
		Evagrius, The Praktikos, 19.
12
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that achievement is salvation, then we are talking about pride.
“It induces [the person] to deny that God is his helper and to
consider that he himself is the cause of virtuous actions.”15 Together,
vainglory and pride lay the foundation for considering oneself a
self-made man who neither needs mercy nor will give mercy. The
Pharisee spurns the mercy offered by God and locks the gates of
his hell from inside his heart. The proud Pharisee boasts that he is
not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, or like that tax
collector who, unbeknownst to the Pharisee, is uttering the first
instance of the Jesus Prayer: “O God, be merciful to me a sinner”
(Luke 18:13). Believing that he relies on justice, not mercy, the
Pharisee does not extend mercy to his own creditors. But eventually the king will “[call] in the man he had forgiven and say,
‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you
pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant,
just as I had mercy on you?’” (Matthew 18:32–33).
This is our sad situation. This is our inheritance after the corruption caused by the devil in Eden. Isaac the Syrian says: “When we
wish to give a collective name to the passions, we call them world.
And when we wish to designate them specifically according to their
names, we call them passions.”16 The world is the passions collectively,
and worldliness is a corrupted heart that has been drained of mercy.
The whole purpose of liturgical asceticism is the therapeutic purpose
of recreating a heart of mercy. Isaac records the answer given by an
elder to the question “what is the merciful heart?”
It is the heart’s burning for the sake of the entire creation, for
men, for birds, for animals, for demons, and for every created
thing; and by the recollection and sight of them the eyes of
a merciful man pour forth abundant tears. From the strong
and vehement mercy which grips his heart and from his great
compassion, his heart is humbled and he cannot bear to hear or
to see any injury or slight sorrow in creation. For this reason
he offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts,
for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm him,
that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner
		Evagrius, The Praktikos, 20.
		Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, homily 2
(Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1984), 14–15.

15
16

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he even prays for the family of reptiles because of the great
compassion that burns without measure in his heart in the
likeness of God.17
How shall a merciful heart be restored to man and woman? At
every Easter Vigil, the Church reads aloud the scriptural marking
posts leading to the Cross that the catechumen will encounter in his
hypostatic plunge to the bottom of the baptismal font. Rising up a
new human being, his worldly heart of stone will be replaced by a
merciful heart of flesh. Then the catechumen goes to the altar to
imbibe Christ’s blood flowing from his merciful heart, to eat his own
body, which he makes present along with his soul and divinity in the
Eucharist. This is the fourth sacrament I want to look at.
The change to our person in this sacrament is deep and true, for
it unites us with Christ. Nicholas Cabasilas speaks about it this way:
What a thing it is for Christ’s mind to be mingled with ours, our
will to be blended with His, our body with His Body and our
blood with His Blood! . . . It is clear, then, that Christ infuses
Himself into us and mingles Himself with us. He changes and
transforms us into Himself, as a small drop of water is changed
by being poured into an immense sea of ointment.18 . . . What,
then, is greater than that the Father of the only-begotten Son
Himself recognizes in us His members and finds the very form
of the Son in our faces?19
St. Paul was right when he told the Church in Rome that God had
predestined them to be conformed to the image of his Son (Rom
8:29). We are to become an icon of the incarnate icon of God. The
unseen Kingdom of God is seen first in the incarnate Christ and then
in the baptized Christian who dwells in the faith, hope, and love that
are infused from his life-giving Spirit. The result of this inheritance is
new eyes. We receive the eye of the Dove in the sacraments, tutor it in
liturgy, and pastoral theology trains its eyebeam upon the world, and
that involves the whole of Catholic education.

		Ibid., homily 71, 344–45.
		Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, trans. Carmino J. DeCatanzaro (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), 123.
19
		Ibid., 127.
17
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Theology in the University
I was invited to speak about the theological discipline, specifically liturgical and pastoral theology, but I am aware that this workshop occurs
within a larger agenda. The letter of invitation said, “The organization of this event will involve all Universities, Research Centres and
Advanced Professional Training Schools present in Rome,” and it can
be “an opportunity to respond to the attention that the whole Church
pays to the world of universities.” Thus, concurrent with this session
are sessions about environment, architecture, bioethics, philosophy,
communications, law, economics, social and economic development,
management, medicine, psychology, education, natural sciences, social
sciences, philology, history, sport, history of Christianity, and technology. What has theology to do with them? Does theology have anything
to say to these other branches of human sciences, or does it stand
isolated, in some remote sacred sphere lacking contact with the other
profane sciences of the university? In closing, I would like to venture
a thought about this, again using the concept of hypostasis, or person.
We are asking about the relationship between gnosis and eleos,
knowledge and mercy, comprehension and compassion, expertise
and empathy. A one-sided and superficial understanding might think
we have to choose between them, either forsaking mercy in order to
increase our stock of knowledge or forsaking science and technology
in order to act more mercifully. But neither Pope Francis nor St.
John Paul II seem comfortable with such a conclusion. In the words
of the latter, whom the former quotes in his Bull of Indiction: “The
word and the concept of ‘mercy’ seem to cause uneasiness in man,
who, thanks to the enormous development of science and technology,
never before known in history, has become the master of the earth
and has subdued and dominated it. This dominion over the earth,
sometimes understood in a one-sided and superficial way, seems to
have no room for mercy.” Mercy does not require us to be simpletons, and science does not require us to be merciless. The dominion
over the earth made possible by the university sciences does have
room for mercy, and I will suggest that pastoral theology can aid the
other sciences because it provides a liturgical anthropology under this
category of hypostasis.
There are three possible ways to consider human beings when we
train our eyes on humanity: we might focus en masse, on the individual, or on the person. First, we could regard mankind in general.
Many ideologies have done so when they wanted to manipulate the

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masses, and advances in science and technology, psychology, and
education have made possible a political and social engineering of the
multitude such as we have not seen before. Second, we could regard
individuals. An individual is a part of the whole, a cell in the organ,
a splinter off the stick. Individuals are distinguished according to the
function they play in the group or the contribution they make to the
colony, and they are considered only as a means to that end. Vladimir
Lossky says the individual comes about by splitting and apportioning,
by dividing and parceling out, by excluding and contrasting himself
with others, which means an individual must compete with other
individuals and is in perpetual conflict with other members. But
third, we could regard persons, who are different from individuals in
precisely the fact that they do not establish their identity by splitting
and dividing and conflicting. Lossky writes, “a person can be fully
personal only in so far as he has nothing that he seeks to possess
for himself, to the exclusion of others, i.e., when he has a common
nature with others.”20
Where do we find such personhood? The supreme case is God,
Lossky says: “The Hypostases are not three parts of a whole, of the
one nature, but each includes in Himself the whole divine nature.”21
There is no conflict, no fractioning of the divine essence, no splitting
and apportioning. Each Person of the Trinity is fully God and gives
himself in mutual, personal relationship to the other Persons. Where
else do we find personhood? In those created beings who are icons of
this Triune God: creatures who, as imago Dei, are persons in the true
theological sense. “A human being is not limited by his individual
nature. He is not only a part of the whole, but potentially includes the
whole, having in himself the whole of the earthly cosmos, of which
he is the hypostasis. Thus each person is an absolutely original and
unique aspect of the nature common to all.”22 Here is unity but not
uniformity; here is uniqueness but not isolation; here is community
but not at the expense of identity. This is our human nature perfected
in the Church. By the sacraments of the mystical body of Christ, the
Holy Spirit is at work in our person. We con-spire with him—we
“breathe together.” The Church is a conspiracy of mercy. And the
result is that the human person—the human hypostasis—becomes
		Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, ed. John H. Erickson and
Thomas E. Bird (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), 106.
21
		Ibid.
22
		Ibid., 107.
20

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David W. Fagerberg

deified. The theological discipline tells all other university sciences
what man and woman are destined for: full personhood. Evdokimov
summarizes it in this way: “In every human being conformed to
Christ the human person is the place of communion, . . . and, by
virtue of that communion, becomes a hypostasis. . . . The hypostasis, it
becomes clear, is thus: the person of a deified being. In Christ deified human
nature is enhypostasized in a divine person. In the deified human
being the created person, by its very deification, is united to the
deifying divine energy, which is then enhypostasized in that person.
The hypostasis is the personal presence, unique and incomparable, of
the theandric life of each Christian.”23
Masses are grouped, individuals are numbered, but persons are
named. The person does not want to exist simply as an individual. The personhood we desire is not an arithmetical concept, and
no person should be used as a means to another end. Thus, John
Zizioulas concludes: “Outside the communion of love, the person
loses its uniqueness and becomes a being like other beings, a thing
without absolute ‘identity’ and ‘name,’ without a face. . . . Life for the
person means the survival of the uniqueness of its hypostasis, which
is affirmed and maintained by love. . . . The goal of salvation is that
personal life which is realized in God should also be realized on the
level of human existence. Consequently, salvation is identified with
the realization of personhood in man.”24
If we apply the distinction between masses, individuals, and
persons, we can conclude that Catholic University Professors,
whatever their discipline, should always align their studies with the
revealed fact that man and woman were created as persons to grow
into a theandric life. None of our disciplines should ever consider
the human being as destined for anything less. Mercy must deal with
one person at a time. Pastoral liturgy is not different from general
liturgy for being vaguer, more ethereal, more practical; it is different
for being personal. There may not be room for mercy at the level of
the genus that operates as a blind life force; there may not be room
for mercy at the level of the individual who can be sacrificed for the
greater good of the hive; but persons will always deserve merciful
treatment. The merciful eye sees past the generic, past the unit, to
the person.
		Paul Evdokimov, Orthodoxy (New York: New City Press, 2011), 78–79
(emphasis added).
24
		Ibid., 49–50.
23

The Church as Pastoral Icon of the Mercy of the Good Shepherd

37

When that knowledge is coupled with mercy, it yields Catholic
humanism. Etienne Gilson defined the medieval concept of science
by calling it a virtue, because a virtue, he says, is “the power to act.” It
comes from vir, which means strength or power. (I imagine the medieval University Professor encouraging his modern University counterparts to become virile scientists!) Gilson says science is a power
that “puts reason into a state in which it can judge certain objects
of knowledge soundly.”25 In other words, educators want to create
a power of knowing—a virtue of knowledge—in their students so that
those growing minds can simultaneously accommodate knowledge
about earth and heaven, nature and supernature, the empirical and
the spiritual, the historical and the eschatological, efficient causes and
the final one, natural law and revealed law, knowledge and wisdom,
knowledge and mercy, and what human wisdom has discovered
about beings and what divine Sophia has revealed about the logoi of
those beings. One can hardly call such an education narrow-minded.
Catholic education has a greater horizon in its curriculum than secular education does, because liturgy has drawn back the veil of the
hidden holy place and liturgical theology has learned the teleological
purpose of each person and pastoral theology has the commitment to
coordinate mercy and technology toward this one end.
Conclusion
I should not end what I hope was a respectable paper by closing with
a personal anecdote that may make you look at me suspiciously, but I
am going to do so anyway. Not too long after I accepted Fr. Giovanni’s
invitation, he asked me for an abstract that could go into the general
publicity. As you know, writing an abstract is basically writing the paper
in advance of actually writing it, because, although an author leaves
wiggle room for himself, he must determine the vision. And my vision
of this talk came to me in a dream. An actual, nighttime dream. I am
not prone to them and do not receive them with the rate of frequency
described in Scripture, and I would not base my life on them, but you
might find this one interesting.
I was in Rome in my dream, which makes sense. I was in a Roman
plaza with a large pool in the middle, which is a common sight. But
the pool had a life-sized crucifix laying horizontally upon the water.
It was a pool in a public square, but it also seemed to be a baptismal
		Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K.
Shook (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956), 262.

25

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David W. Fagerberg

font. And Jesus was alive on the cross, lifting his head the way you
might lift yours in bed if you wanted to see your toes. And he had
freed one arm, like in Murillo’s painting of Jesus embracing St. Francis of Assisi. We could psychoanalyze the components of my dream,
but I think the real meaning of dreams is found in the feelings that a
dream image creates, and the feeling I was given was that this Christ
was not dead weight on a vertical Cross, he was alive and resisting and
struggling to get up from a horizontal Cross. He was attempting to sit
up—a slight adaptation of the Greek word for resurrection: anastasis,
“to stand up again.” Jesus was sitting up again. And the first conscious
thought I had as I came out of the dream was, “Romans raised up
criminals on a cross so they could watch them die, but the Church
is where Christ is raised up so the world can watch him live.” The
Church is where the world can see the first effects of resurrection.
The Mystical Body of Christ, with its liturgical and sacramental
and pious disciplines, is like a great contraption of transformation:
knowledge turns into love, grace turns into works, self overcomes self
to become caritas, doctrine yields mysticism, the passions become a
merciful heart, hope is hypostasized as faith, and love is hypostasized
as mercy. A sacrament is an efficacious sign of life overcoming death,
a moment when Christ infuses his life into us. The Church militant is
the struggle of the merciful Christ to rise up in us in order to enlist us
into his struggle. The Good Shepherd rose up from Hades, where he
took on the smell of his sheep, and leads them up a sacramental path
whereby they are spiritually trained to follow their Pastor in search
of other souls—to do pastoral theology. Each Christian receives grace
N&V
for the purpose of becoming personal, hypostatic mercy.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2018): 39–46 

39

The Courage to Rest:
Thomas Aquinas on the Soul of Leisure1
Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

Whenever the topic of leisure is raised in conversation, whether in the classroom or among friends, inevitably someone
will ask the question: “Have you read Pieper’s essay?” The question
is inevitable because, in conversations about leisure, it is exactly the
right question to ask. For seventy years now, Josef Pieper’s “Leisure:
The Basis of Culture” has exemplified what discussion of leisure as a
perfective human activity should be.2 In order to clarify their thinking
on the subject, professors, students, and the general reader still rely on
Pieper’s succinct and compelling description of the nature of leisure, as
well as his correction of any number of erroneous notions of human
rest that we might entertain. With Thomas Aquinas as his guide, Pieper
resists the modern tendency to regard leisure simply as the cessation of
work or, worse, to equate leisure with sloth. Instead, Pieper emphasizes
leisure’s nature as an activity rather than a lack of one, and as a joyful
celebration of reality rather than a sorrowful retreat from it.
What I would like to do this evening, in celebration of the essay’s
seventieth anniversary, is to review Pieper’s description of leisure,
but with a view to expanding it. With Thomas Aquinas as our
guide, I want to build on Pieper’s description of leisure by exploring
I delivered this talk on January 31, 2017 at Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center
in Washington, D.C. It was the first of a three-part series on “The Human
Person” co-hosted by the Thomistic Institute and the Kirby Center.
2
		Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, trans. Alexander Dru (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2009).
1

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Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.

in greater detail than he does the soul of leisure, or better, the soul
capable of leisure. We will conclude that, in addition to being a soul
receptive of reality, as Pieper notes the leisurely soul is, the soul of
leisure courageously dreams big dreams, and it does so humbly.
I
When he wrote “Leisure: The Basis of Culture” in 1947, Pieper had a
particular end in view. He recalled the Aristotelian-Thomistic doctrine
of leisure in order to combat the modern, and what Pieper calls the
totalitarian, view of work. This view exaggerates the importance of
work in human life, making work, or labor, the whole for which and in
which all human activity takes place. Max Weber describes the modern
notion of work like this: “One does not work to live; one lives to
work.”3 Pieper opposes this notion of work, noting that it corrupts not
only our understanding of human industry but also our understanding of human epistemology and human morality. For example, in the
realm of epistemology, Pieper observes how the totalitarian notion of
work corrupts Emmanuel Kant’s theory of human knowing. For Kant,
Pieper explains, reason is all work. It indulges in no play. All reasoning
is striving. Nothing known, according to Kant, is received or gained
by resting.4
Similarly, the totalitarian notion of work corrupts our understanding of morality. It turns all moral activity into pure striving. “It is
normal and essential,” Pieper writes when articulating the totalitarian
view of morality, “that the effort of will required in forcing oneself to
perform some action should become the yardstick of the moral good:
the more difficult a thing, the higher it is in the order of goodness.”5
In the realm of doing, as in the realm of knowing, all is work according to the totalitarian view. The moral man indulges in no play.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, the old adage says.
The same holds true for the totalitarian view of work. All work and
no play makes knowing and loving dull activities.
Pieper warns his reader that, when the totalitarian view of work
exaggerates the importance of labor—and, by extension, reduces
thinking and loving to pure striving—then something like leisure
begins to appear as something vicious, if not completely monstrous.
From the totalitarian point of view, Pieper writes, “leisure appears as
		Ibid., 20.
		Ibid., 26–27.
5
		Ibid., 32.
3
4

The Courage to Rest: Thomas Aquinas on the Soul of Leisure

41

something wholly fortuitous and strange, without rhyme or reason,
and, morally speaking, unseemly: [leisure becomes] another word for
laziness, idleness, and sloth.”6
In his essay, Pieper employs the classical and medieval notion of
leisure to rehabilitate our understanding of all three of these areas of
human activity—labor, knowing, and loving.
Against the modern notion of labor, according to which “one
does not work to live; one lives to work,” Pieper proposes Aristotle’s
view that “we are unleisurely in order to have leisure.” 7 Against the
modern epistemology of Kant, which sees knowing as a “herculean” task, Pieper recalls the classical distinction between ratio and
intellectus. Ratio denotes our discursive thinking, in which we form
knowledge through intellectual activity, through composing and
dividing intellectual species and comparing and contrasting them.
Intellectus denotes our understanding, which is a more passive activity,
in which we grasp reality more by receiving forms than by producing
thoughts. The human possession of intellectus means that the highest
form of our knowing does not involve acting so much as it involves
resting.8 Finally, against the modern notion of moral living as something strictly arduous, Pieper recalls Aquinas’s teaching that “the
essence of virtue consists in the good rather than in the difficult” and
says that “the sublime achievements of moral goodness are characterized by effortlessness—because it is of their essence to spring from
love.”9 Here, Pieper recalls Aquinas’s teaching that virtuous action is
not difficult, slow, and doleful, but rather easy, prompt, and joyful.
In order to correct the totalitarian notion of leisure as idleness or
sloth, Pieper describes leisure not according to its external appearance, but according to its interior reality, or better, according to the
interior qualities of the human soul necessary for man to be at leisure.
These qualities could not be more removed from idleness and sloth.
Rather than being merely physically at rest or spiritually immobile, as
the idle and the slothful are, the man at leisure is, Pieper says, “at one
with himself.” What Pieper means by this is that the leisurely man
“acquiesces in his own being.” For Pieper, to acquiesce in one’s own
being is not a physical activity as much as it is a spiritual one. Leisure
therefore is not determined by material factors external to a person—
		Ibid., 43.
		Ibid., 20.
8
		Ibid., 28–33.
9
		Ibid., 33.
6
7

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Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.

like “spare time, a holiday, a weekend or a vacation.” Instead, leisure
results from the convergence of spiritual factors within a person. It is
an “attitude of mind,” a “condition of soul,” a “form of silence” that
is “not only the occasion but also the capacity for steeping oneself in
the whole of creation.”10 The leisurely man is not an idle machine,
but a soul at rest in reality. More precisely, Pieper explains, the
leisurely man is at rest interiorly—intellectually and appetitively—
with the world around him.
Pieper is quick to clarify that the interior rest of leisure is not just
any resting. For example, leisure is not a resting in which one turns
inward in order to look after some need. To the contrary, leisure is
a resting in which one turns outward in order to look with delight
at the world. Leisure is a resting in which one takes contemplative
delight at being and in being. “Leisure draws its vitality from affirmation,” Pieper writes, an affirmation of existence. Again, Pieper
underscores that leisure is not “the same as non-activity, nor is it identical with tranquility.” Rather, Pieper continues, leisure is “like the
tranquil silence of lovers, which draws its strength from concord.”11
According to Pieper, one achieves the rest of leisure through entering
into an intellectual and appetitive union with the world outside of the
self. In leisure, man achieves a contemplative union with the whole
of being. When at true rest, the human individual “celebrates the end
of his work by allowing his inner eye to dwell for a while upon the
reality of [God’s] creation.” Pieper says that man at leisure “looks [at]
and affirms” the world, and like God man declares: “It is good.”12
For Pieper, then, leisure is the kind of rest proper to the rational
animal. Leisure is not merely a physical resting from labor, as a dog
may rest after chasing a squirrel. Leisure is an intellectual resting in
reality. Accordingly, Pieper warns that “no one who looks to leisure
simply to restore his working powers will ever discover the fruit of
leisure.” In other words, the end of leisure is not the recuperation of
one’s physical strength, though this may result from leisure. Pieper
observes that when the rational animal rests his body from the toils
of labor he still retains his intellectual powers, to which belongs
an intellectual form of resting. This resting is not the cessation of
reason and understanding as physical resting involves the cessation
of movement. To the contrary, the intellect’s resting involves some
		Ibid., 46–47.
		Ibid., 48.
12
		Ibid., 49.
10
11

The Courage to Rest: Thomas Aquinas on the Soul of Leisure

43

activity that is contemplative in nature. When the intellect rests, it
rests in the understanding of that which it naturally seeks—the whole
of reality. For, when at rest man retains “the faculty of grasping the
world as a whole,” then it is at leisure, when free of distraction, that
man can actualize his “full potentialities as an entity meant to reach
Wholeness.”13
For Pieper, the leisurely reach for wholeness includes the human
reach for God. This is because man’s leisurely resting in reality,
which reaches out intellectually for reality’s wholeness, includes an
affirmation as well as a celebration of reality, which we have already
mentioned. As affirming and celebrating reality, Pieper says, leisure
seeks to affirm and celebrate also the divine origin of created reality.
Thus, according to Pieper, does leisure find its perfection ultimately
in divine worship. Leisure achieves its true purpose when it equips
the human individual to fulfill the third commandment: “Remember
the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”14
II
If we step back from Pieper’s argument in “Leisure: The Basis of
Culture” and examine his logic apart from his polemic against the
totalitarian view of work, we will recognize that Pieper describes
leisure according to the perfections of man’s rational powers, both his
intellect and his will. In other words, he describes leisure as an activity
of the perfected intellect, since through the virtues of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, man grasps intellectually the whole of reality. He also describes leisure as an activity of the perfected will, since
through the virtue of justice, especially religion, man renders God the
worship that he is owed. Pieper argues beneath the surface of his text,
therefore, that the leisurely man is the virtuous man. But the portrait he
paints of the leisurely man, at least in terms of the leisurely man’s virtue,
is incomplete. Pieper depicts leisure as an activity possible to one with
a virtuously perfected intellect and will. But what of the virtuously
perfected passions? Do courage and temperance, like justice, inform the
activity of leisure? Pieper does not say. Pieper’s silence on this question
does not mean that his description of leisure is wrong, of course. It just
means that it is incomplete, at least in terms of describing how all of the
moral virtues together contribute to rendering an individual capable of
leisure. In what remains of this talk, I propose to indicate how Thomas
		Ibid., 50.
		Exod 20:8–10.

13
14

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Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.

Aquinas’s doctrine of courage and temperance can help us to complete
the portrait of the leisurely man that Pieper began.
Let us begin with the virtue of courage. Courage equips a man for
leisure in a very particular way. It equips a man for leisure by making
him magnanimous, which means, literally, big-souled. According
to Aquinas, magnanimity is that virtuous quality of soul by which
the soul stretches itself out to great and difficult things. As a part of
courage, magnanimity contributes to the attaining of great things by
fortifying the passion of hope, which passion stirs when a future good
becomes visible to us but remains difficult to attain. Magnanimity is
that virtue we require in order to strive for great things even after
the difficulty of their attainment becomes apparent to us. Aquinas
explains that the great things that magnanimity seeks are the great
deeds made possible by the virtues.15 These great deeds require great
attention, and our performance of them is slow and deliberate.16
Magnanimity strives, therefore, not just for what is good and virtuous, but for what is excellent and virtuous.17 The magnanimous man
seeks to know not just the truth, but the highest truths. The magnanimous man seeks to love not just the good, but the highest goods.
As a form of courage, magnanimity guards the passion of hope for
the highest and best things and keeps it virtuous. Magnanimity holds
hope firmly within the rule of reason so that it does not turn vicious
and become presumptuous, ambitious, or vainglorious.18
In terms of leisure, magnanimity becomes a prerequisite virtue
insofar as leisure rests in the understanding of the highest things
knowable and in the love of the highest things loveable. To know
the highest thing—namely, the whole of being—is difficult. To love
the highest reality—namely, God—is difficult. Courage is required
to strive for this knowledge and love. Magnanimity is the particular
form of courage necessary to pursue and rest in the highest truth
accessible to human wisdom and the highest good accessible to
human justice. Magnanimity renders the pursuit of these difficult
goods easy, prompt, and joyful.
As a form of courage, magnanimity is assisted in its pursuit of
leisure by the virtue of temperance, particularly in the form of humility. Pieper makes this observation in his famous essay on temperance.
		Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] II-II, q. 129, a. 4, ad 1.
		ST II-II, a. 129, a. 3, ad 3.
17
		ST II-II, q. 129, a. 4, ad 2.
18
		ST II-II, qq. 130–32.
15
16

The Courage to Rest: Thomas Aquinas on the Soul of Leisure

45

“Humility and magnanimity,” he writes, “not only are not mutually
exclusive, they actually are neighbors and akin to each other.”19 This
is St. Thomas’s own view. Aquinas writes in the Summa theologiae that,
in regard to the difficult good, two virtues are needed. Magnanimity,
as a form of courage, strengthens the passions, particularly hope, in
the pursuit of great things. But in the pursuit of great things, another
virtue becomes necessary: temperance in the form of modesty, in
order “to temper and restrain the mind,” St. Thomas says, “lest
the mind tend to high things immoderately.”20 This tempering and
restraining of the mind is the work of a particular form of modesty,
which is humility. For St. Thomas, therefore, magnanimity and
humility each have their part to play in keeping the human pursuit
of great things reasonable. He writes: “Humility restrains the appetite from aiming at great things against right reason: while magnanimity urges the mind to great things in accord with right reason.
Hence it is clear that magnanimity is not opposed to humility: indeed
they concur in this, that each is according to right reason.”21 Humility, as a virtue shaping the concupiscible appetite, puts a check on the
irascible passion of hope, which itself is perfected by magnanimity,
so that magnanimous hope, which undergirds the activity of leisure,
does not veer into the realm of pride. Accordingly, humility inserts
reason into appetite by maintaining in the magnanimous individual
a proper reverence both for God and for his providence for man.
Humility ensures that the hopeful man does not, in the words of
Aquinas, “ascribe to himself more than is competent to him according
to the position in which God has placed him.”22 Humility therefore
keeps the magnanimous striving after great things from becoming
impetuous. Humility ensures that the magnanimous man does not
foolishly reach beyond the limits of his nature and seek after, in the
words of the Psalmist, “things too great,” or “marvels beyond us.”23
Humility directs the striving of magnanimity toward the great things
to which man is actually made to attain, which include a grasping of
the whole of reality and a peaceful and festive resting within it. Like
magnanimity, humility is a prerequisite virtue for leisure.
		Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, trans. Richard Winston (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 189. See ST II-II, q. 129, a. 3, ad 4.
20
		ST II-II, q. 161, a. 1, corp.
21
		ST II-II, q. 161, a. 1, ad 3.
22
		ST II-II, q. 161, a. 2, ad 3.
23
		Ps 131:1.
19

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Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.

III
With St. Thomas as our guide, we have expanded on Pieper’s description of leisure. To Pieper’s explanation that leisure involves the perfection of the intellectual virtues, especially wisdom, and of the moral
virtue of justice—namely, religion—we have added how the other two
moral virtues—courage and temperance, particularly through magnanimity and humility—also contribute to the activity of leisure. Magnanimity gives man the courage to strive after the highest things, to apply
his mind to the difficult task of knowing the whole of reality, and it is
humility that keeps man receptive in his striving. Humility keeps the
magnanimous man open to the whole of reality, to rest finally in what
is, as a gift, not supplanting God’s providence with his own. The soul of
leisure, therefore, is not only wise and religious, as Pieper says, but also,
as Aquinas helps us to see, magnanimous and humble.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2018): 47–80

47

Is Artificial Impregnation
Opposed to the Unity of Marriage?:
A New Look at the Question of Embryo Adoption
Irene Alexander
University of Dallas
Irving, Texas

The question of embryo adoption is one of the most
difficult and most nuanced questions in all of bioethics.The difficulty of
the question lies not only in the grave reality that the lives of more than
400,000 cryopreserved embryos are at stake but also in the fact that the
technological procedures used by the in vitro fertilization (IVF) industry have created an ethical situation that has never before existed in
the history of the human race. No Father or Doctor of the Church in
centuries prior could have anticipated the kind of medical technology
available today and, thus, commented on such a unique moral situation.
Both the weight of the question for these tiny orphaned persons and
the novelty and absurdity of their current state make the evaluation of
embryo adoption extraordinarily difficult. Even the 2008 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) document Dignitatis Personae,
which treats the issue explicitly, does not give a definitive solution to
the moral issue. Dignitatis Personae states that there are “problems” with
embryo adoption similar to those with IVF, surrogacy, and the transfer
of embryos for infertile couples as a “treatment for infertility,” all of
which the CDF condemns as “not ethically acceptable” because they
are opposed to the unity of marriage. 1 Nevertheless embryo adoption
		Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith [CDF], Dignitatis Personae (September
8, 2008), §19. The final remarks in Dignitatis Personae on the issue of embryo
adoption are striking. The CDF notes that the current status of the thousands

1

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Irene Alexander

itself is not formally condemned as illicit. The judgment in Dignitatis
Personae leans in a negative direction but does not make a definitive
pronouncement either way. While much of Donum Vitae and Dignitatis
Personae is aimed at addressing the immorality of artificial fertilization,
the main issue surrounding embryo adoption is whether or not artificial impregnation is morally licit.
Moral theologians themselves are currently divided on the issue.
Those in favor of embryo adoption do not find artificial impregnation—that is, heterologous embryo transfer (HET)—to be morally
problematic but may have concern with the proximity of the couple’s
cooperation with the IVF industry.2 These proponents of embryo
adoption do not see any moral difficulty in what is considered a
clinical act of transferring of an embryo into the womb of a married
woman to impregnate her if it is the couple’s intention to adopt the
of orphaned embryos represents “a situation of injustice which in fact cannot
be resolved.” Furthermore, the text cites Pope John Paul II, who calls for
an immediate halt of the IVF procedures that are causing this grave moral
situation, noting that “there seems to be no morally licit solution.” Thus,
the judgment of the CDF on embryo adoption is overall a negative one. By
“negative judgment,” I am arguing that the text does not in any way state that
embryo adoption is a licit practice and that married couples should go ahead
and gestationally adopt these embryos, but rather suggests serious reservations,
alludes to “problems,” and even states explicitly that this situation “in fact
cannot be resolved” or repaired, even though embryo adoption as a solution had
been proposed to the CDF and there are many generous couples who would
potentially volunteer. Thus, by “negative judgment,” I am stating specifically
(1) that Dignitatis Personae is fundamentally not neutral in its evaluation of
embryo adoption, but leans far more in the direction of saying “no” to the
idea, but also that (2) it does not formally condemn the practice as “illicit” as
it did other artificial reproductive procedures.The judgment is clearly negative,
albeit not definitive.
2
		See Edward Furton, “Embryo Adoption Reconsidered,” National Catholic
Bioethics Quarterly 10, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 329–47. See also: E. Christian
Brugger, “In Defense of Transferring Heterologous Embryos,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 5, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 95–112; Elizabeth Rex, “IVF,
Embryo Adoption and Embryo Transfer,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly
14, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 227–37; Christopher Tollefsen, “Could Human
Embryo Transfer Be Intrinsically Immoral?” in The Ethics of Embryo Adoption
and the Catholic Tradition: Moral Arguments, Economic Reality and Social Analysis,
ed. Sarah-Vaughan Brakman et al., Philosophy & Medicine: Catholic Studies
in Bioethics 6 (New York: Springer, 2007), 94. John S. Grabowski and Christopher Gross, “Dignitas personae and the Adoption of Frozen Embryos: A New
Chill Factor?” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10, no. 2 (Summer 2010):
313–28.

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child into their family. They consider it a life-saving act, one that
perhaps even restores the order of nature by placing the child where
he or she ought to be—gestating in the womb of a loving mother
married to a man who also adopts the child as his own. On the
surface this argument seems very fitting and reasonable. Most opponents of embryo adoption, however, argue that, while the intention
is profoundly noble and praiseworthy, there is a fundamental moral
problem in the very act of embryo transfer, since the woman becomes
pregnant by a person who is not her husband and this action violates
the unity of marriage, which Donum Vitae states involves “the right
to become a mother and father only through each other.”3
To complicate the matters even further, proponents of embryo
adoption absolutely agree with the text of Donum Vitae II.A.1, but
they do not see why its logic applies to embryo adoption, since
that section of Donum Vitae deals with the dignity of procreation—
namely, how procreation ought to happen in the first place. Yet, since
conception has already occurred and the injustice already taken place
to the embryo, proponents of embryo adoption generally do not
find these passages to be essentially related to the issue.4 Nor do they
CDF, Donum Vitae (February 22, 1987), II.A.1. See Tracy Jamison, “Embryo
Adoption and the Design of Human Nature,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 111–22. See also Charles Robertson, “A Thomistic Analysis of Embryo Adoption,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14, no.
4 (Winter 2014): 673–95. Robertson argues that embryo transfer, which is
required for embryo adoption, is a wrongful use of the generative faculty. It is
a sexual sin, albeit not a sin of lust. See also: Mary Geach, “The Female Act of
Allowing an Intromission of an Impregnating Kind,” in Human Embryo Adoption: Biotechnology, Marriage, and the Right to Life, ed. Thomas Berg and Edward
J. Furton (Philadelphia, PA / Thornwood, NY: National Catholic Bioethics
Center / Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, 2006),
251–71, at 269, and Tadeusz Pacholczyk, “Some Moral Contraindications to
Embryo Adoption,” in Berg and Furton, Human Embryo Adoption, 37–53.
4
		Furton comments on Donum Vitae, II.A.1, on the right of the spouses to
becomes father and mother only through each other that: “All this is true,
but irrelevant. The couple who adopt an embryo do not become father and
mother to the adoptee, and that is the tragedy of the matter. The embryo
already has a father and a mother, but they have abandoned the child. So
although it is true to say that this child was not brought into being through
the reciprocal love of the parents but by the skill of a laboratory technician,
that immorality is the fault of the true parents, not the adoptive couple. The
argument offered might apply equally well to a couple who adopt a born
child. Neither do they become the true parents of this child. They enter the
picture after the fact” (“Embryo Adoption Reconsidered,” 336).
3

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understand why opponents of embryo adoption continue to focus on
this one aspect of the biological process required to make embryo
adoption occur when there does not seem to be another morally licit
solution. How exactly does artificial impregnation violate the unity
of marriage, as opponents so often argue? Why do opponents make
such a big deal over moving an embryo imprisoned in a freezer to the
womb of a woman who will gestate and nurture the child through
birth and raise the child together with her husband?
Moral theologians both for and against embryo adoption are at an
impasse with respect to how the CDF’s moral reasoning on artificial
fertilization applies to the new issue of artificial impregnation. Opponents of embryo adoption will continue to appeal to these aforementioned texts in order to support a negative judgment on artificial
impregnation as opposed to the unity of marriage, while proponents
of embryo adoption continue to state that they absolutely agree with
these texts on the dignity of procreation but that they are not immediately relevant to the question because conception in vitro has already
occurred, and everyone involved in the disputed question agrees that it
should not have occurred in this manner.
In order to advance the conversation on this issue, I believe it
is necessary to get “underneath,” so to speak, the texts of Donum
Vitae and Dignitatis Personae in order to draw out anew the reasoning
behind them. Neither side of the debate has explicitly articulated the
underlying unity between artificial fertilization and artificial impregnation. In order to see the moral coherence that both are illicit, it is
necessary to grasp with clarity the moral logic of the former at its root
and then see how it applies to the latter. I argue that, when the magisterium made definitive pronouncements on artificial fertilization—
IVF, artificial insemination, and surrogacy—the logical consistency
of their thinking was rooted in what I call “conjugal agency”—the
reality that sound moral thinking about sexual morality and reproductive bioethics consists in (1) recognizing the dignity of spouses in
being the agent cause of new life and of pregnancy and (2) this agency
taking place through the marital act. The reason that both of these are
important is that they correspond to the causal order that God himself
has written into the fabric of nature, thereby establishing right relationships within the family whereby the dignity of all members are
preserved. In this article, I will demonstrate how the CDF employed
this line of reasoning in arriving at the judgments they did concerning IVF, artificial insemination, and surrogacy, and then I will apply

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the same line of reasoning to the issue of embryo adoption. It is my
contention that understanding the moral importance of conjugal
agency leads to the conclusion that artificial impregnation is, by its
very nature, opposed to the unity of marriage because it transfers the
agency of impregnation that is proper to the spouses and exclusive to
their union to another person. For this reason, both heterologous and
homologous embryo transfer are opposed to the unity of marriage
and are intrinsically immoral.
Conjugal Agency as the Root of Reproductive
Bioethics: Understanding the Logic of Donum Vitae and
Dignitatis Personae on Artificial Fertilization
While Donum Vitae and Dignitatis Personae do condemn many artificial
reproductive technologies currently in use as illicit, it is important to
remember that the use of artificial technology in the area of human
sexuality and reproduction is not something fundamentally immoral.
Dignitatis Personae states: “Techniques which assist procreation are not
to be rejected on the grounds that they are artificial. As such they
bear witness to the possibilities of the art of medicine. But they must
be given a moral evaluation in reference to the dignity of the human
person who is called to realize his vocation from God and to the gift
of love and the gift of life.”5 Therefore, even in the area of human sexuality and procreation, there are right uses of artificial techniques and
intervention and there are also wrongful uses of them. How does one
determine the rightful use of technological intervention as opposed to
a wrongful use? How did the CDF make such determinations?
Consider, for example, what the reasoning is that lies beneath the
following key passage from Donum Vitae: “The one conceived must
be the fruit of his parent’s love. He cannot be desired or conceived as
the product of an intervention of medical or biological techniques;
that would be equivalent to reducing him to an object of scientific
technology. No one may subject the coming of a child into the world
to conditions of technical dominion.”6 At first glance, this passage
seems to contradict the quotation I just cited above from Dignitatis
Personae, which states that technological intervention ought not to
be rejected merely on the grounds that it is artificial and suggests
that there are morally good technological interventions that assist the
process of conception. Here, by contrast, Donum Vitae states that the
		CDF, Dignitatis Personae, §12.
		CDF, Donum Vitae, II.B.4.c.

5
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human person cannot be conceived as a product of such intervention,
implying that the intervention in conception “would be equivalent
to reducing him to an object of scientific technology,” placing the
child in a different relationship entirely, one of “technical dominion.” So which is it? Does technological intervention in the process
of conception undermine the dignity of the human person, or does
it not? Are these passages simply unclear? What then accounts for the
essential difference between artificial reproductive technologies that aid
in the process of conception in a morally sound way and intervention
that is illicit?
One of the most common responses to this question has been an
appeal to the inseparability of the unitive and procreative dimensions
of the conjugal act as stated in Humanae Vitae and cited explicitly
in Donum Vitae.7 Moral theologians have rightly understood this
inseparability as foundational for sexual ethics, yet nevertheless, I
believe that simply asserting the inseparability of these ends provides
an insufficient analysis if moral theologians are to tread through the
murky waters of the latest developments in artificial reproductive
technologies. In order to serve the Church in articulating her truths
with greater clarity, it is necessary to be able to articulate the underlying reason for their inseparability.8 It is not sufficient for moral
theologians simply to assert that the unitive and procreative dimensions ought not to be separated; they must also understand why?
Furthermore, they must be able to see clearly what is happening in the
causal order in nature when this separation occurs. In fact, to speak of
“nature” or the “natural order” in the Catholic tradition is precisely
to recognize the order among causes that God has wisely inscribed
into his creation. Nature is intelligible because there are causes at
work within it that are wise and beautifully ordered, one to another,
and to an end. Man must first discover this order and then choose to
act in accord with it. Agere sequitur esse. As the tradition has always
affirmed, to depart from this order destroys the possibility for man
and woman to give and to receive genuine love, for love is always
rooted in the truth of the human person, his nature, and his ends. My
conviction is that moral theologians must be able to see clearly this
		Ibid., II.B.4.a.
		In Veritatis Splendor (August 8, 1993), Pope John Paul II notes that there are
limitations to what the magisterium can articulate in any given document,
and he explicitly exhorts moral theologians to be able to understand and to
articulate the reasons “underlying” the Church’s moral teaching (§110).

7
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ordering among causes—especially the relationship between agency
and finality—in order to make sound moral judgments. This precise
lens is especially important for reproductive bioethics, in which new
artificial forms of dissecting the process of reproduction make it more
difficult to see where exactly the natural law is being disregarded.
In reproductive bioethics, the right use of technological intervention and medicine helps to restore the ends that nature seeks to
achieve, while it also respects the agency of nature in this process.
The reason underlying the inseparability of the unitive and procreative ends of the conjugal act is that spouses possess a great dignity in
being a real agent cause of procreation through the conjugal act. This
agency is the root reason for why the unitive and procreative ends
of the conjugal act must not be separated. The ends are inseparable
because the agency of the spouses in their embodied union is of its
very nature causally ordained to procreation, as agent cause to final
cause. More precisely, there is no such thing as a conjugal act without
the male himself causing his own genetic and procreative seed to be
given to the woman, whose body actively takes it into herself. In the
very act of being unitive, their bodies are at the same time striving for
procreation, even if it may not be their deliberate intention or occur
in that instance. Even the immorality of contraception is more clearly
seen when considering the underlying conjugal agency of the spouses,
because a contraceptive act directly destroys the very agency of either
the man or the woman toward the end of procreation. A couple that
contracepts deliberately chooses an act that directly causes the disruption of their own agency, whereas a couple practicing natural family
planning (NFP) either to achieve or to postpone a pregnancy never
chooses an action that destroys their own natural agency to the end of
procreation—even if conception does not occur—and they are thus
able to maintain marital intimacy that is ordered and beautiful. The
order and beauty of their marital love is maintained precisely when
conjugal agency is respected and not deliberately destroyed in one
way or another by various technological interventions.
Thus, the moral question that needs to be asked and answered in
every new reproductive technology is the following: is the agency
that belongs to the couple in being real causes of their union and
procreation being usurped by technology, or does the technology
assist and respect conjugal agency? This is the crux of every moral
question in reproductive bioethics. I argue that, when the CDF made
definitive pronouncements in bioethical questions related to artificial
techniques for conception, the logical consistency of their thinking

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was rooted in their intuition that sound moral reasoning in these
matters always respects the conjugal agency of the married couple.
Consider how this reasoning applies to the specific issues concerning artificial reproductive technology throughout Donum Vitae and
Dignitatis Personae. If one considers the passage from Donum Vitae
cited above with new eyes attuned to the reality of conjugal agency,
it is clear that it does not contradict the text from Dignitatis Personae.
“The one conceived must be the fruit of his parent’s love.” Underlying this text is the affirmation that the spouses must be the agent
causes of the conception, and not merely in any way possible, such as
being the technicians themselves who unite sperm and egg in vitro,
but only through the loving union of the conjugal act. Both aspects
of conjugal agency are being articulated here. Likewise, when Donum
Vitae states, “He cannot be desired or conceived as the product of an
intervention of medical or biological techniques,” this prohibition
does not imply, simply speaking, that there can be no medical help
for spouses or technical interventions whatsoever, but rather that the
interventions must not usurp the conjugal agency of the spouses. If
such agency is taken over by another and someone else other than the
spouses takes on the role of agent cause, the fundamental relationships
change. The child is simply a “product” desired and purchased rather
than the fruit of his parents’ love. It is not the use of technology or
the lack of it that determines the moral object, but whether or not
the proper causal role of the spouses is being unlawfully usurped in
the clinical actions being performed. Every time the causality that is
proper to the spouses in the act of intercourse is usurped by another,
the action in question is immoral. This logic is consistent throughout
Donum Vitae and Dignitatis Personae.
The argument most clearly surfaces in this text of Dignitatis Personae:
“A medical intervention respects the dignity of persons when it seeks
to assist the conjugal act either in order to facilitate its performance or
in order to enable it to achieve its objective once it has been normally
performed.”9 The CDF is arguing that the correct use of technological intervention must aim to restore conjugal agency when, for various medical reasons pertaining either to the man or to the woman,
this ability is impeded. Dignitatis Personae gives various examples of
right uses of intervention: “Certainly, techniques aimed at removing
obstacles to natural fertilization, as for example, hormonal treatments
for infertility, surgery for endometriosis, unblocking of fallopian
		CDF, Donum Vitae, II.B.7.

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tubes or their surgical repair, are licit. All these techniques may be
considered authentic treatments because, once the problem causing the
infertility has been resolved, the married couple is able to engage in
conjugal acts resulting in procreation, without the physician’s action
directly interfering in that act itself. None of these treatments replaces
the conjugal act, which alone is worthy of truly responsible procreation.”10 This text states that interventions that aim to restore the
proper agency to the spouses are morally responsible and considered
“authentic treatments.” The text also states that the physician’s action
ought not to interfere with the conjugal act. In other words, he or she
ought not to usurp the causality proper to the spouses through their
intercourse. The dignity of spousal agency in the conjugal act is so
important that to replace it is to step outside of the natural order into
an action that cannot be per se ordered to the good and end of man.
Another intervention examined in the text of Donum Vitae is
homologous artificial insemination. This process involves a woman
being artificially inseminated by her husband’s sperm when there is
some biological defect that is causing infertility. There are currently
various methods by which this insemination process could occur.11
How are these various types of intervention to be morally evaluated? Donum Vitae states, “homologous artificial insemination within
marriage cannot be admitted except for those cases in which the
technical means is not a substitute for the conjugal act but serves
to facilitate and to help so that the act attains its natural purpose.”12
The argument is as follows: it is not licit for an agent other than
the husband to be the cause of the sperm entering his wife’s body.
This action is wrong for two reasons: first, because it separates
from the conjugal act an action that fundamentally belongs to that
act—namely, the giving of the sperm to his wife that completes the
union—and second, because it takes away from the husband his active
causal role in the process of impregnating his wife. A technician
who reinserts the husband’s sperm into his wife’s body outside of the
conjugal act contradicts the agency of the natural order. If the action
or the reproductive technology in question does not “substitute for
the conjugal act, but serves to facilitate and to help that act attain its
natural purpose,” then, according to the CDF, the action is licit.
CDF, Dignitatis Personae, §13.
		Two examples of recent technologies are gamete intrafallopian tube transfer
(GIFT) and tubal ovum transfer with sperm (TOTS).
12
CDF, Donum Vitae, II.B.6.
10
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The underlying principle of conjugal agency is even more clear in
the processes of homologous and heterologous IVF and surrogacy. It
is important to recognize that the Church’s argument against these
procedures is not simply that there is a third party’s involvement in
the process of procreation. As shown above, there can, in fact, be
licit involvement of a third party physician who assists in the healing
process proper to his medical art when a couple cannot conceive on
their own, so long as the physician does not take over the causal role
of the spouses in the conjugal act. The arguments against the procedures of IVF and surrogacy, in addition to the causing of human
embryos to be destroyed in the process, is the separation of what
properly belongs only to the conjugal act and only to the spouses
as real agent causes of conception through their union.13 Therefore,
even if the process of IVF could be so “perfected” in the future that
not one embryo were lost, IVF would still be intrinsically evil in
principle according to the following argument:
But even in a situation in which every precaution were taken to
avoid the death of human embryos, homologous IVF and ET
dissociates from the conjugal act the actions which are directed
to human fertilization. For this reason the very nature of
homologous IVF and ET also must be taken into account even
abstracting from the link with procured abortion. . . . Homologous IVF and ET is brought about outside the bodies of the
couple through the actions of third parties whose competence
and technical activity determine the success of the procedure.
Such fertilization entrusts the life and identity of the embryo
into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the
domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the
human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself
contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to
parents and children.
Conception in vitro is the result of the technical action
which presides over fertilization. Such fertilization is neither in fact
achieved nor positively willed as the expression and fruit of a specific
act of the conjugal union. In homologous IVF and ET, therefore, even
		CDF, Donum Vitae, II.B.5: “It has already been recalled that, in the circumstances in which it is regularly practiced, IVF and ET involves the destruction
of human beings, which is something contrary to the doctrine on the illicitness of abortion previously mentioned.”

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if it is considered in the context of de facto existing sexual relations,
the generation of the human person is objectively deprived of its proper
perfection: namely, that of being the result and fruit of a conjugal act
in which the spouses can become “cooperators with God for
giving life to a new person.”14
In this argument, the CDF is stating that there is something problematic about actions that should normally take place within the couple’s
intimate sphere taking place “outside the body” and “through the
actions of third parties.” What exactly is wrong with these two things?
Is it the local movement to a new place that constitutes the malice?
Not exactly. The problem is that the change in place is a concomitant
effect of the real malice of taking away the agency from the couple, and
this is done by moving the gametes and having a new agent unite them
in a petri dish.What the spouses should be uniting and causing through
their own union another person causes. The moral problem is not that a
third party is “helping” the process of conception in some way, but that
the way deliberately chosen usurps the agency proper to the spouses
and the manner given to them to be such agents: “It is in their bodies
and through their bodies that the spouses consummate their marriage
and are able to become father and mother.”15 The CDF intuits that to
change the agent cause actually changes the relationship of the embryo
to its creators. It puts the embryo into a relationship of “domination”
unfitting to its inherent dignity. It is not the technical part that necessarily causes the child to be under the “domination of technology,” but
disregard for the causal order that this specific technology enables. Therefore, “fertilization achieved outside the bodies of the couple remains
by this very fact deprived of the meanings and the values which are
expressed in the language of the body and in the union of human
persons.”16 Depriving the spouses of the gift of bestowing fatherhood
and motherhood upon each other through the agency of their own
bodies deprives them of the union proper to their married state.
If homologous artificial fertilization is illicit and opposed to the
unity of marriage, one can expect a fortiori that heterologous artificial
fertilization will also be condemned as illicit. Heterologous artificial
fertilization is defined as using IVF and embryo transfer “to achieve
a fusion of gametes of at least one donor other than the spouses who
		Ibid., II.B (italics).
		Ibid., II.A.3.
16
		Ibid.
14
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are united in marriage.”17 The CDF argues that this action is contrary
to the unity of marriage: “Respect for the unity of marriage and for
conjugal fidelity demands that the child be conceived in marriage;
the bond existing between husband and wife accords the spouses, in
an objective and inalienable manner, the exclusive right to become
father and mother solely through each other. Recourse to the gametes
of a third person, in order to have a sperm or ovum available, constitutes a violation of the reciprocal commitment of the spouses and a
grave lack in regard to that essential property of marriage which is
its unity.”18
At the heart of the “unity of marriage” and “conjugal fidelity” is
the logic of conjugal agency. To preserve the bond between husband
and wife, spouses can licitly become a father and a mother only
through their own embodied agency in spousal union. This point
is first and fundamental. What makes heterologous artificial fertilization one step worse than homologous artificial fertilization is that
it also brings into the situation the gametes of a third party. One
might ask how accepting third party gametes could be different than
accepting an organ donation. In the area of human sexuality, to seek
another’s sperm or ovum “constitutes a violation of the reciprocal
commitment of the spouses” who ought to be giving and receiving
the embodied personhood of the other through their love-making.
It permits one spouse to say to another through their actions, “you
cannot make me a parent, so I will look elsewhere (another gamete)
and without you (outside the agency of the conjugal act) for one who
can.” When spouses engage in the conjugal act, they are both the
agent cause of a new child’s coming to be and the material cause, the
genetic parents. It is not even possible to introduce a new third party
gamete (material cause) without having first violated and usurped
the agent causality of the spouses proper to their union. Once this
violation occurs, the process of reproduction becomes even further
ruptured and dissected. Even if both spouses consent to this action,
the reception of a third party gamete only deepens the rupture of the
bond. Thus, heterologous artificial fertilization “brings about and
manifests a rupture between genetic parenthood, gestational parenthood, and responsibility for upbringing.”19 The CDF wisely argues
that rupturing conjugal unity breeds societal disorder: “Such damage
Ibid., II.A.2.
		Ibid.
19
		Ibid.
17
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to the personal relationships within the family has repercussions on
civil society: what threatens the unity and stability of the family is
a source of dissension, disorder and injustice in the whole of social
life.”20 The child might rightly wonder who is his real mother and
father (genetic? gestational? adoptive?), and legal battles may ensue
over the complexity of the unjust situation in which reproduction has
been so brutally dissected into various parts.
Finally, the logic of conjugal agency extends to the question of
surrogacy that Donum Vitae condemns as illicit “for the same reasons
which lead one to reject heterologous artificial fertilization: for it is
contrary to the unity of marriage and to the dignity of the procreation of the human person.”21 In addition to the “same reasons”
explained above, a surrogate mother participates formally in the
malice of IVF. She has not only consented to a couple’s disregard of
their own spousal agency in using IVF to separate the unitive and
procreative ends of the conjugal act, but she also disregards her own
sacred role as wife and mother. If she is married, she allows another
to impregnate her outside of the conjugal act. As cited above, Donum
Vitae explicitly condemns the action of being “fertilized through
insemination with the sperm of a man other than her husband.” If
she is not married, she ought not to become pregnant artificially or
otherwise because she does not have a spouse, and she violates the
union of her own future marriage.
At the root of all of these illicit actions stands the intelligible reality of conjugal agency as the determining criteria for the CDF in its
evaluation of reproductive bioethics. One might ask why, ultimately,
this reality of conjugal agency is so important. What difference does
it make for personal relationships? The answer is at once simple and
profound. There is great dignity in being the agent cause, for in doing
so, a man and woman really do bestow fatherhood and motherhood
upon each other as a personal and exclusive gift that only the other
can give.22 Furthermore this agency creates right relationships within
the family. The wife can say in truth to her husband, “it is you who
made me a mother,” and likewise a husband to his wife, “it is you who
		Ibid.
		Ibid., II.A.3.
22
		Ibid., II.A.2: “Respect for the unity of marriage and for conjugal fidelity
demands that the child be conceived in marriage; the bond existing between
husband and wife accords the spouses, in an objective and inalienable manner,
the exclusive right to become father and mother solely through each other.”
20
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made me a father.” It is precisely their own personal and embodied
agency that secures the inseparability of the unitive and procreative
ends of the conjugal act. The union is ordered to procreation, and in
turn, the establishment of these new relationships among the spouses
and to the new child deepens their own union. The fruit of their love,
the child, now stands in a filial relationship to the parents precisely
because they were the real agents of his coming to be through a
personal union of being given and received as a gift of love.23
When a technician creates a human person in a petri dish, the child
comes into existence in a very different relationship. The change in
agency changes the relationship. The child now stands as an artifact
to the artificer and is then subject to a real “domination” of technology, reduced to a “product,” or merely an “object.” It is the absence
of conjugal agency that changes the very nature of the child’s relationship to his creators. Even a married couple who supplies a technician with a sperm and an egg that he will unite in vitro does not cause
the same kind of relationship as a married couple who causes conception through spousal union. The actions that the former have chosen
are contrary to their own unity, as well as contrary to the dignity of
the child. The natural causal order has been violently disrupted, and
the parents now stand forever in relation to their genetic child as the
material cause but not the agent cause of their child’s coming to be.
They handed over their causal dignity to the technician, and that is
the root of the malice. The change between the natural order and
this IVF event is dramatic, even if couples who engage in IVF fail to
perceive it as such.
Allow me to press the question further. What is so dramatic about
this change in causality when, in the end, the couple gets their baby?
When a technician “makes” a child in the laboratory through his
own agency, he quite literally becomes that child’s co-creator. The
parents, while genetically related, are no longer the co-creators,
for they themselves did not actually create the child. They merely
supplied the matter and renounced their agency. Why does this
transfer of agency matter? It matters because the creator of a person
possesses a certain authority and dominion over that person; that is
why children are “naturally” subject to their parents. The basis of this
		Of course, I am not arguing that the parents are the only agent causes, since
it is God alone who infuses the soul. The spouses are co-creators with God,
according to his splendid wisdom and design for the human family. I am
assuming that my readers already acknowledge this truth.

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natural subjection is the order of nature, rooted in the agency of the
conjugal act. This natural subjection is so supremely pleasing to God
that it is the basis of the fourth commandment, “Honor your father
and mother,” the very linchpin between the commandments directed
to love God and those directed to love of neighbor. Now, changing
the causality changes the dominion. The technician could, in a real
sense, argue that the embryo belongs to him and is his artifact because
he was the agent who caused the child to be. “If I made you, you
belong to me.” Such an attitude also explains why technicians often
treat these human embryos as mere artifacts that can be discarded.
This slave-like relationship of a child to a technician is abhorrent and
contrary not only to the child’s dignity but also to spousal unity that
ought to have been the ground and origin of that child’s coming to
be. The spouses should never give to another their God-given gift
to be co-creators with him. God has willed this agency to be the
ground for right relationships within the family, through conjugal
love. Nevertheless, the child born of such immoral actions possesses
the same dignity as any other child and deserves to be received and
raised in love.24
At the heart of defending the dignity of the human person and
rightly ordered relationships within the family is the need to identify
and to respect the causal order that God has designed in nature. Such
an emphasis on causality is not anti-personalistic. On the contrary,
to discover the intelligibility of the causal order and to live according
to it both respects and promotes healthy relationships because doing
so reveals the truth about who man is and what he is made for. The
truth is that agency in nature affects reality and human relationships
in a deeply personal way. Consider that amazing ontological difference between a child baptized and a child unbaptized. The agency
of grace that is bestowed in the sacrament creates a new personal relationship of the child to his beloved Father in heaven and the child’s
new relationship to the Christian community and the Mystical body.
Consider also man and woman as they stand at the altar on their
wedding day. They themselves are the agents of the sacrament of
matrimony that creates an entirely new sacramental bond through the
consent of their vows. They now exist in a new relationship to one
		Ibid., II.B.5: “Although the manner in which human conception is achieved
with IVF and ET cannot be approved, every child which comes into the world
must in any case be accepted as a living gift of the divine goodness and must
be brought up with love.”

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another that did not exist prior to their exchange of vows. If either
the man or the woman is unable to exercise such voluntary agency at
the altar, no new valid bond is created. Whether or not one is a real
agent cause or the recipient of another’s agency affects the relationship between man and woman in a deeply personal way.
The Logic of Conjugal Agency Applied to the Artificial
Impregnation / Embryo Adoption
It is now possible to return to the original question about the morality
of embryo adoption. As I have argued, it is only by seeing with new eyes
the intelligibility of conjugal agency as the logical principle in other
reproductive bioethical issues treated in Donum Vitae and Dignitatis
Personae that one can make progress in the dialogue about the morality
of embryo adoption. In this section, I will simply seek to answer the
question I raised for all other moral issues in reproductive bioethics
cited in these documents: is the agency that belongs to the couple
in being real causes of their union and procreation being usurped by
technology, or does the technology respect conjugal agency?
Because of the nuances associated with the question of embryo
adoption, it is more difficult at first to see how conjugal agency
applies to this question. The greatest difference between the prior
reproductive issues examined and this one is that conception has
already occurred, and it has occurred apart from pregnancy, which
is fundamentally unjust to the dignity of the embryo. Nevertheless,
the text of Dignitatis Personae in its examination of embryo adoption
in §19 states that embryo adoption is “not dissimilar” to other illicit
artificial technologies (IVF, surrogacy), including the transfer of
embryos for infertile couples.25 The latter was deemed “not ethically
acceptable” and likened to the to the problematic nature of IVF
and surrogacy even though there is a real difference in that IVF is
artificial fertilization, whereas embryo transfer for infertile couples is
artificial impregnation. Dignitatis Personae itself seems to intuit a morally
problematic connection between these procedures, yet it does not
provide a formal rationale for their connection other than alluding to
their being against the unity of marriage. Thus, the key question in
		The text of §19 of Dignitatis Personae uses the phrase “treatment for infertility”
to refer to the idea proposed to the CDF of allowing the embryos to be transferred for infertile couples. I believe my phraseology is more accurate, since
it is obvious that embryo transfer does not in any way “treat” the underlying
causes of infertility either in the man or in the woman.

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the debate about the morality of artificial impregnation is whether or
not, in the natural order, the conjugal agency of the spouses extends not only
to conception but also to impregnation. If the agency in nature does extend
to impregnation, then artificial impregnation is intrinsically immoral
because it violates the causal order; if the agency does not extend to
impregnation, then it is not immoral.
Other opponents of embryo adoption have argued that, inasmuch
as a technician intends to impregnate a woman artificially outside of
the conjugal act, he violates what Donum Vitae states is the “exclusive
right to become a father and mother solely through each other.”26
Elizabeth Rex, a proponent of embryo adoption, argues to the
contrary that embryo transfer is not per se ordered to the impregnation of the adoptive mother because: “Impregnation scientifically
occurs at the moment the mother’s ovum is fertilized by the father’s
sperm. Implantation, scientifically happens after the impregnation
either naturally or following the embryo transfer.”27 She concludes:
“Therefore, since impregnation and motherhood both occur prior to
embryo transfer, then embryo transfer cannot be ‘per se ordered to
the motherhood of the woman.’ Likewise, in the case of an adoptive
mother and an adopted frozen embryo, both the impregnation and
the legal adoption of the frozen embryo by the adoptive parents take
place prior to the transfer of the adopted embryonic child into the
womb of the adoptive mother.”28 According to Rex, embryo transfer
is not ordered to impregnation because the impregnation has already
occurred prior to the transfer.
I believe that there is a serious flaw with this argument. It is only
in natural conjugal relations that “impregnation” is a reality simultaneous with conception. Outside of those relations—that is, in IVF
conceptions—the reality of conception has truly occurred, but not
impregnation. The scientific definition of impregnation as simultaneous with conception applies only to conceptions as the fruit of conjugal
relations. In fact, the entire reason that moral theologians are arguing
over the morality of embryo adoption is precisely because of the quite
obvious fact that “conception” has occurred and “impregnation” has
not. That is the fundamental moral problem and the reason for the
injustice. The simultaneity of these two realities has been ruptured by
		CDF, Donum Vitae, II.A.2.
		Rex, “IVF, Embryo Adoption and Embryo Transfer,” 231.
28
		Ibid., 232 (her quote here is of Edward DeLaquil, Letter, National Catholic
Bioethics Quarterly 13, no. 1 [2013]: 17–18, at 18).
26
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technology. Rex’s use of the term “impregnation,” then, is entirely
equivocal in asserting that, even in IVF conceptions, “impregnation”
has occurred when there is no woman who is actually pregnant. She
is absolutely correct to state that, scientifically, impregnation occurs
at conception so long as what is understood by this definition is that
there is an embryo within an actual woman’s reproductive tract (even
before implantation), which is implied in the scientific definition.
Consider that, “scientifically,” one detects signs of “pregnancy” in the
blood or urine of an actual woman who is gestating a child. Before
the abandoned embryo is within the body of a woman, there may be
a genuine legal adoption by the signing of papers, but there is in fact
no “impregnation.” The use of the term is equivocal, and hence, her
conclusion that embryo transfer is not per se ordered to impregnation
and to the motherhood of the woman who adopts the orphaned
embryo does not follow.29
Nevertheless, Rex’s argument is particularly valuable for clarifying and unveiling what is, in fact, taking place in the natural causal
order. In natural conjugal relations, conception is a reality absolutely
simultaneous with impregnation, as the scientific definition demonstrates. When spouses cause the conception of a new child through
the conjugal act, the reality of conception is simultaneous with the
reality of the woman being impregnated. There is one cause of these
two realities simultaneously. The very moment that there is new
life, even prior to implantation, the woman is in fact pregnant. This
recognition of the simultaneity of realities caused by the spouses is
important for seeing just how conjugal agency applies to the question
of artificial impregnation. It reveals that, according to the order of
		In addition to the theoretical problem with this argument, there is something
strange and somewhat insensitive in suggesting to a woman who has gone
through with the “impregnation” (what else does one call it?) of embryo transfer that she is not really being “impregnated” and, therefore, is not “pregnant,”
but that, rather, since the impregnation is “prior,” it belongs, properly speaking,
to the genetic mother, who is in fact not pregnant.When this generous woman
who adopts the embryo endures nausea, back pain, swelling, or countless other
trials and difficulties of the gestation period—not to mention the difficulties
of childbirth itself—it is simply false to tell her that she is not pregnant and
has not been “impregnated” because the “impregnation” happened prior to
the embryo transfer that took place within her body. If Rex is not denying
that, after the transfer, the woman is in fact pregnant, then she must hold to
a rather absurd conclusion that the woman is now pregnant but was never
“impregnated.”

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nature that God himself has established, the dignity of being an agent
cause through the conjugal act does in fact extend not only to conception but also to impregnation, because the very same agents cause
both of these realities simultaneously, and by one and the same act. It
belongs to the spouses exclusively to be the agent cause not only of
conception but also of impregnation. For a husband to impregnate his
wife is included in his causal role. If another agent causes impregnation of a woman, he or she fails to respect the agency of the spouses
rooted in nature. Therefore, since to be a real agent cause not only of
conception but also of impregnation belongs by nature to the spouses,
it is always immoral for another agent to usurp what belongs to the
spouses. If this causal role is taken away, even though both spouses
consent to it, and even if it is for a “praiseworthy” reason, the action
itself is contrary to the order of nature, and thus always illicit. For this
reason, I conclude that artificial impregnation is by nature opposed to
the unity of marriage and, therefore, intrinsically immoral. 30
Contrary to my argument that it belongs causally to the husband to
impregnate his wife, another proponent of embryo adoption, Christopher Tollefsen, has argued that it is in fact false to claim that, in the
natural order, the husband makes his wife pregnant. He states: “The
claim that the male makes the female pregnant is, strictly speaking,
false. Making her pregnant is not any part of what the male does in the conjugal act, even in one that results in generation. And it is thus not an imitation of the marriage act for a woman to be made pregnant by embryo
transfer.”31 Tollefsen gives an argument for his position by attempting
to answer the question “who makes the woman pregnant?” He gives
		As I have argued above, embryo transfer involves the technician taking over
the role of agent cause of impregnation. This kind of action formally differs
from other medical acts such as, for example, reimplantation of an embryo in
a womb after an ectopic pregnancy, if it were at some point medically possible.
The moral difference between these two cases is that the change in place does
not usurp the causality of the husband in impregnation, since impregnation
and implantation have already occurred in an actual woman, although the
implantation has occurred in a place where the embryo cannot develop and,
thus, medical intervention is therapeutic and necessary, especially because the
situation is life-threatening for the mother. I make this distinction to clarify
that moving the embryo and attempting to reimplant it within the same
woman for therapeutic reasons can potentially be a morally sound medical
action and that this kind of action has a different moral object than artificial
impregnation.
31
		Tollefsen, “Could Human Embryo Transfer Be Intrinsically Immoral?,” 94
(italics mine).
30

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the following reply: “The question is; does the man make the woman
to be in this condition? And the answer appears to be no: There are
at least three better candidates. First, from one point of view, the man
and the woman together generate the new human being: As I argued
above, there is no sense in saying that the man has played the more
active part, so if the man has made the woman pregnant, so has the
woman herself.”32
Tollefsen rightly argues that one ought not to deny the agency of
both persons, husband and wife, in bringing about generation. This
conclusion is certainly accurate according to modern biology. But to
admit that both persons play an active causal role in generation does
not lead to the conclusion that the man does not make the woman
pregnant; rather, it leads to the conclusion that it is false to say that
only the man makes the woman pregnant. Tollefsen mentions as
his second “candidate” that God is the author of all human life and
that spouses are co-creators with him. I do not see any problem in
admitting these biological and metaphysical facts, though neither do
they deny the real causality of both spouses as ordered to the end of
procreation, and simultaneously, impregnation.
Tollefsen then mentions a third “candidate,” the embryo itself,
which makes the woman pregnant:
Why should we not say that the embryo itself—him or herself
in fact—has made the woman pregnant? The embryo does
not, of course, generate itself. But I am here addressing, not
the question of who generates the embryo—man, woman, and
God together do that; but rather the question of who makes
the woman to be pregnant. Neither the man nor the woman
contributed a new human being to the act of generation, nor
did either make a new human being. They performed human
acts which are themselves apt for bringing together sperm and
an egg, each of which are parts of human beings with a special
biological teleology.33
		Ibid., 96.
		Ibid., 97. Tollefsen continues here to describe this teleology in biological
terms:

32
33

The egg and sperm engaged in mutually transformative action, as the
sperm penetrated the zona pellucida, and plasma membranes from the
sperm and the ovum fused. Both the nuclei of the oocyte, and of the
sperm, which contain all the chromosomal material of the sperm and

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Tollefsen argues here that, while it is clear that the man, woman,
and God together generate the embryo, the question “who generates?” is a fundamentally different question from that of “who has
made her pregnant?” I have already shown above that, in natural
conjugal relations, those who generate the embryo are also responsible for impregnation because these realities are simultaneously caused
by the same agents. Yet the reason he gives for exploring these as
distinct questions even within the natural order (apart from IVF,
which separates these realities) is that, he argues, the spouses themselves did not “make a new human being,” but rather only performed
an action that has a potential for uniting sperm and egg, and that
these gametes then continue toward fertilization according to their
“special biological teleology.”
I disagree with Tollefsen’s argument that the spouses did not make
a new human being; it is precisely what they did as co-creators with
God. It is contradictory to say that “man, woman and God together”
generate the embryo and then claim that the spouses, through their
love-making, “do not make a new human being.” Are the spouses
responsible for generation or are they not? Tollefsen, is drawing a
distinction between the actual fertilization and the sexual acts that
are apt for bringing about fertilization. One can rightly distinguish
these two moments chronologically, but one ought not to sever their
underlying causal unity. Yet he is arguing that the spouses perform
only the action that has a potential for generation, that they themselves “do not make a new human being.” They perform a generative
act, but they do not actually generate. He is arguing, in other words,
that a man’s sperm has caused fertilization but the man himself has
not. Likewise, the woman’s ovum has caused fertilization but the
woman herself has not. Again, in what sense are the man and woman
real “generative causes,” as he states above, if one does not attribute
egg, then enlarged, and replicated their DNA in anticipation of their
first mitotic division.
The male and female pronuclei then lined up and fused together.
As part of the formation of gamete cells, the number of chromosomes
characteristic of the human cell was reduced from 46 to 23 in sperm
and egg. When the male and female pronuclei fused, the 23 chromosomes from the male and the 23 from the female came together, resulting, as William Larsen writes, “in the formation of a zygote containing
a single diploid nucleus. Embryonic development is considered to
begin at this point” (Larsen, 2001, p. 3).

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the origin of the motion of sperm and egg to their agency as persons
and to a specific act that was the very origin of that agency?
This denial of the origin of the agency presents a very strange and
dissected view of how causes are operative in the order of nature. It is
a denial of causality, akin to Hume, to consider these actions merely
as separate events—first a conjugal act and then a separate event of
sperm and egg uniting—and to fail to acknowledge the underlying
agency between these events. To be clear, one can rightly distinguish
these events as chronologically separate moments, but not as moments
that are unrelated to one another as agent causality extending and
leading to the final cause. What is a “biological teleology” without
a recognition of the agency that has brought it about? There is no
such thing as achieving a telos or end without acknowledging the real
agency toward that end.
Consider for example, when Babe Ruth hits a home run, one does
not claim that the bat is responsible for the home run but the baseball
player is not. One rather traces the origin of the agency back to the
man who was the first cause of the thing’s motion. That is the genuine
meaning of an agent cause. Tollefsen’s view of causality would have
his readers believe that Babe Ruth performs an action apt for hitting
a home run but, when the ball actually connects with the bat and
flies into the stands, Babe Ruth is not actually the one who causes
the home run. One might even say on his view that it is the ball
itself that, in a certain sense, has caused the home run, not because it
somehow moved itself, but because one finds it now existing in the
stands and the existence of a ball in the stands is one way of defining a
home run. Once again, to be clear, one can rightly distinguish the act
of swinging the bat (even swinging many times without connecting
with the ball) as an action chronologically distinct from the moment
the home run is actually achieved; but one cannot fail to acknowledge that, when the home run is achieved, it was not simply the bat
that caused it, but the real agency of the baseball player.
Tollefsen’s notion of causality is problematic when one considers
the very dignity and excellence of the spouses’ role in procreation.
When a couple has a baby and one calls the man a “father” and the
woman a “mother,” one is acknowledging that they are the personal
agents from which their child derives his origin. Not only are they
genetically related, and not only were their sperm and egg agent
causes, but they themselves as personal agents actually caused their
child to exist through the beauty of their marital intimacy, which
caused the motion of the sperm toward the end of fertilization it is

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seeking to realize. In cooperation with God, the spouses really made
that child, and that is part of the great dignity of sex and procreation.
In fact, if the “act apt for generation” and “fertilization” itself are
simply events that are not essentially and causally connected, why
does the Church continually defend the dignity of procreation by
defending the beauty of the conjugal act against technologies that
threaten to rupture this act from procreation?
I find Tollefsen’s denial of the origin of the agency as residing in
the spouses communion even more problematic in the next paragraph
of his argument:
At the very point when the woman . . . becomes pregnant the
activity of the man and the woman has been superseded by the
self-directed activity of the new entity, the embryonic human
being. The generative causality of the man and woman—the
causality effected by the man’s sperm and the woman’s ovum—
is at an end precisely because generation is over, and a new
being with its biological causality now exists. But it is this
existing that “makes” the woman pregnant. If anything makes
the woman pregnant, then, it might seem that it is the new
child inside her.
If so, then, it would seem that when the woman accepts
an embryo into her womb via embryo transfer, she does not
imitate her part in the marriage act (nor does the clinician
imitate the part of the man.) It is true that she admits flesh not
of her flesh that makes her pregnant, but this is not what she
does in the marriage act even when, in consequence of that act,
she becomes pregnant.34
Tollefsen claims that the agent causality of the spouses does not
actually cause pregnancy (“impregnation”), since he argues that that
agency terminates when conception occurs. According to his argument, the reason the husband does not impregnate his wife is that
“the generative causality. . . is at an end precisely because generation
is over, and a new being with its biological causality now exists.” The
problem with his argument is that the agency of the spouses comes to
term precisely because it really caused what it was meant to cause. The
agency terminated in procreation and in pregnancy (simultaneously)
precisely because it was that very agency that caused those realities to be.
		Ibid.

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Without that agency, the end would not be achieved. Therefore, it is
absolutely true to say, contra Tollefsen, that it is precisely the generative agent causality of spouses in their love-making that “makes
her pregnant.” The agency comes to term because it has actively
caused the end to be realized. In fact, one cannot truly understand
something’s “end” independently of its “agency.” Why? Because one
cannot arrive at the end or final cause of a thing without the agent
cause. It simply remains in potency until the agency really causes the
end to be achieved. In the order of causes, agency and finality work
together. Agents act for an end and, through their actions, truly cause
that end to be realized. When the causality of the agent comes to
term, that agency is now “over” precisely because it itself has caused
its purpose to be realized. What has in fact taken place is that the
purpose of a thing has been achieved through the very agent cause that
is ordered to that purpose.
Consider, for example, what happens if I accidently slice my finger
with a kitchen knife and am in need of stitches. The agency of my
body is ordered to reuniting the now separated parts in the wound
and restoring wholeness by actually being the cause of its own healing. The doctor’s stitches hold the two sides together so that my body,
the agent cause, can heal the wound more quickly and efficiently. It is
that very agency of my body that brings about the end of a restored
finger. According to Tollefsen’s concept of causality, however, one
could acknowledge that the healing of the finger has occurred and
that there was some agency of my body in this process but he would
have to argue, according to his reasoning above, that, because the
actions of my body (the creation of scar tissue and the healing and
reuniting of the tissues) come to term, the agency did not in fact cause
the healing of my finger back to its original wholeness. His argument suggests that agency exists but does not actually cause the ends
to which that agency is by nature ordered. Such an account of the
nature of causality is patently false. What is an agent cause that does
not actually cause? It is simply not a cause at all. Either one acknowledges “generative causality” as really “causing” or one is not actually
speaking about generative causality.
Tollefsen seems to overlook this problem by drawing the reader’s
attention to the reality that the embryo now has a “biological causality of its own.” What does this mean? Of course it means that, from
the moment of conception, the new embryo has its own intrinsic
powers of the soul that set it in motion toward a variety of ends in his
or her development. The potency is being actualized toward the ends

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of human development precisely through the agency of the embryo
and the nourishment of his or her mother. According to Tollefsen’s
notion of causality, however, when the developing embryo takes in
nutrition, the agent causality of the child’s body causing the growth
and development toward these higher ends of development are not
actually causing growth and development. He is essentially arguing
for a notion of an agent causality that, because it comes to term, does
not really cause the ends toward which it is ordered. This account
of causality is erroneous. The agency comes to term and is “over”
precisely because it has in fact caused the end to be realized. In fact,
if one accepts Tollefsen’s argument that a man does not “in any way”
impregnate his wife because the causality of the sperm comes to term
when the ovum is fertilized, one must also accept the conclusion
that a man (or woman for that matter) does not in any way cause the
conception of his (or her) child—the Catholic tradition has never
accepted this conclusion, nor can it ever accept it.
Tollefsen denies that the generative agency of the spouses actually causes impregnation, because he does not fully acknowledge the
origin of the agency as residing in the spouses and continuing to the
end of conception, but as I have demonstrated above, that agency
does in fact cause impregnation, otherwise it makes no sense to speak
of “generative causality.” I believe that he denies this reality precisely
because he rightly perceives the conjugal agency of the spouses as
a real moral obstacle to allowing embryo transfer. To acknowledge
fully the agent causality on the part of the spouses as really causing
the conception and, simultaneously, impregnation is to acknowledge
the intrinsic immorality of embryo transfer.
One final proponent of embryo adoption whose position is
important to consider is E. Christian Brugger, in “Rescuing Frozen
Embryos: Is Adoption a Valid Moral Option?” 35 Unlike Tollefsen,
		E. Christian Brugger, “Rescuing Frozen Embryos: Is Adoption a Valid Moral
Option?” accessed October 29, 2017, http://zenit.org/articles/rescuing-frozen-embryos (italics mine). Brugger has also addressed this question in “In
Defense of Transferring Heterologous Embryos.” In my opinion, he makes
a better argument for his position in the more recent of the two articles,
“Rescuing Frozen Embryos,” because he acknowledges therein that the
marital act causes pregnancy, whereas in the former article, he argues that
pregnancy does not belong to the marital act (1) because pairs of mammals
do not get pregnant as a result of every act of intercourse, (2) because NFP
or sterile couples can intend to consummate without intending pregnancy,
and (3) because becoming pregnant outside of the conjugal act implies that

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Brugger acknowledges that, in sexual intercourse, man and woman
cause both conception and impregnation. But he argues that those
who oppose embryo adoption collapse the distinction between
procreation and pregnancy into one moral reality: “The premise
that pregnancy belongs to marital intercourse falsely assumes that
procreation and pregnancy are a single moral reality. This assumption however muddles the significance of the legitimate moral norm
requiring the unity of procreation and marital intercourse. Sexual
intercourse derives its procreative significance—affirmed and handed
on from biblical times to our day—not from the fact that a woman
becomes pregnant, but from the fact that a new human person comes
into existence. That coming-to-be is complete with fertilization at
which time pregnancy begins.”36
Brugger states that conception is morally relevant and “tied” to
the procreative significance of sexual intercourse but posits that pregnancy is “not” a part of the procreative significance. Another way of
articulating this position is to say that, while sex causes conception as
well as pregnancy, only the causality of the former is significant, not
that of the latter. Brugger’s argument here is superior to Tollefsen’s
in that he does acknowledge the causality of both realities as coming
from the act of intercourse, but he does not find that the causality of
impregnation is morally significant, whereas the causality of conception he does.
The difficulty that I find with Brugger’s argument is that it does not
offer any explanation for why the causality of conception is morally
relevant but the causality of impregnation is not. On what grounds
is the latter simply irrelevant? These two realities (conception and
pregnancy) are simultaneously caused by the very same agency. What
warrant is there in the natural order to suggest the moral relevancy of
the former but not the latter? I am not here suggesting that pregnancy
has a kind of exalted moral status, but I am pointing out that the same
causality is responsible for both. Either that underlying causality is
morally relevant or it is not. If one admits that it is relevant, one must
be logically consistent in recognizing that relevance.
Perhaps Brugger implicitly intuits that a substance–accident
distinction could be made, that conception is morally significant
fornicators and adulterers would seem to be required to use contraception.
None of these arguments, however, disproves the fundamental reality that when
pregnancy occurs in the natural order, it is the agency of sex that has caused it.
36
		Brugger, “Rescuing Frozen Embryos.”

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because a new “substance” (embryo) with an exalted dignity is
created, whereas with impregnation, the body of the woman is only
an “accident” of place, and thus not morally significant. To this idea,
I reply that the dignity of a new substance remains even in IVF
conceptions and that the morally reprehensible part of the act of IVF
is the severing of conception from the very embodied agency that
ought to have been the cause of the embryo’s origin. Therefore, even
admitting a distinction between the dignity of the new substance
and the place of gestation does not take away from what is morally
significant in the Church’s eyes: the underlying spousal agency. If that
agency is morally significant in reproductive bioethics—and Donum
Vitae and Dignitatis Personae absolutely demonstrate that it is—then
moral theologians must be consistent in recognizing its significance.
Finally, in the natural order, it does make sense to treat conception and impregnation as both morally significant, because to fail to
do so is a result of not taking seriously enough the embodiment of
the human person, especially the feminine body. God ordained that
“procreative significance” (the potential for conception to take place)
should occur within the woman’s body through the agency of spousal
union. Her body is the sacred place where immortal souls are created
in cooperation with spousal love and God’s own agency. At the very
moment when the wife is “with child,” she is pregnant. In the natural
order, when one causes conception, one causes impregnation. When
one “terminates a pregnancy,” one terminates a conceived embryo.
This very same underlying causality renders both conception and
impregnation morally significant.37
The proponents of embryo adoption I have considered here have
argued for the moral liceity of artificial impregnation on the following grounds: (1) “impregnation” occurs without any pregnancy at all;
(2) a generative cause does not actually cause and, hence, impregnating one’s spouse “is not any part of what the male does in the conjugal act, even in one that results in generation”; and finally, (3) the
very same underlying rationale for why conception is connected to
intercourse must be both affirmed as morally relevant and, simultaneously, denied as being morally relevant. It seems to me that these
problematic arguments spring from a denial of some aspect of the
		One must also realize and prudently foresee, that the issue of artificial impregnation will not apply not only cryo-preserved embryos but also to saving
embryos from mothers who are intent on aborting them, if it became medically possible to do so.

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natural order, because to affirm that order fully suggests that there is
a real moral problem with artificial impregnation, as much as coming
to terms with this truth is certainly very difficult.
In an age in which there are many threats to the unity of marriage,
it is tremendously important that couples do not give in to yet another
breach of marital unity, even if it is for the best of intentions. Many
couples have chosen to use intrinsically immoral acts of contraception for noble reasons as well. Governments have done the same. Yet
none of these actions that disrupt the causal order at the root of the
unity of marriage are to be permitted, lest God’s design in nature be
disregarded. As Homer poetically implies through the “immovable”
marriage bed of Odesseus and Penelope at the end of the Odessey, the
unity of marriage is deeply rooted in the order of nature itself. Homer
represents this reality by describing that the reason the marriage bed
cannot be moved is that a tree, a symbol of nature, runs through the
center of the house and forms one of the bedposts. The knowledge
that this bed cannot be moved is Penelope’s and Odesseus’s secret,
which enables her to recognize him as her long lost spouse among
other suitors. It is the marriage bed that preserves their spousal unity.
Spouses, then, ought not to betray the secret of the marriage bed,
rooted in the very order of nature itself, and hand over to another
what properly and exclusively belongs to them alone. Let us not give
our assent to moving aside what God, through his natural order, has
deemed immovable.
Objections and Replies
In this final section, I will briefly address some objections raised by
other contributors to the issue of embryo adoption and offer clarifying
replies.
Objection 1:
Brother Glenn Breed, M.S.A., in “The Only Moral Option is Embryo
Adoption,” states that the object of the moral act in embryo adoption
is protection and nurturing of a human life so that the child can be
raised by a loving family:
Pharaoh’s daughter adopted Moses to save his life. She was his
adoptive mother. Is this any different from an adoptive mother
who saves the life of a frozen embryo? Whether you are in
a tarred basket floating down the Nile River surrounded by
crocodiles or floating in a test tube surrounded by liquid nitro-

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gen, your life is at risk unless someone intervenes. . . .
The object of the act of adoptive parents is to protect a
human life, be it in utero, ex utero (baby or child), a fresh
human embryo, or an abandoned frozen one (orphan). The
parents’ choice of adoption serves to protect and nurture a
human life at various stages of life. The end objective in the
case of prenatal adoption is to grow and birth the child, raise
the child to maturity, and be the parents till death.38
I reply that there is a formal difference between Pharaoh’s daughter saving Moses from the river and the actions involved in embryo
adoption because the former does not use the reproductive faculties
in adoption at all, whereas the latter does, and uses them improperly.
Artificial impregnation violates the agency proper to the spouses,
whereas, in traditional adoption, such actions performed on the reproductive organs do not take place. Embryo transfer involves an action
that improperly uses the reproductive faculties in a way that traditional
adoption does not.
Secondly, to state that embryo adoption is a life-saving act in
which the object is to grow and birth the child and raise the child
until death gives some important yet insufficient information for
specifying the moral object in question. It does not look at the kind of
actions specifically performed on the woman in making this adoption
possible. Consider a counter example: it would not be morally licit
to directly kill a dying mother in order to hasten the saving of her
preterm baby so that the baby can be adopted by another family. The
action in question is surely a “lifesaving” act for the baby, albeit an
illicit one. It is clear that more information is needed about the actions
involved in the procedure to specify the moral object.
Objection 2:
Mark Latkovic, in “The Dignity of the Person: An Overview and
Commentary on Dignitas personae,” makes a similar argument in
suggesting that, if couples can become father and mother through
one another only through the conjugal act, then the Church ought
to condemn traditional adoption, which she obviously does not. Thus,
there must be other morally legitimate ways of becoming parents, since
the Church commends traditional adoption:
		Brother Glenn Breed, M.S.A., “The Only Moral Option is Embryo Adoption,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14, no. 3 (Autumn 2014): 441–47.

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Irene Alexander

As noted, I believe that embryo adoption or rescue can be
a morally legitimate solution to this injustice, that is, the
unjustice of embryos’ being generated by artificial means. But
does it violate the norm of Donum vitae that couples are to
become parents only through the acts proper to each other? As
mentioned above, some Catholic moral theologians have forcefully made this argument. But couples who adopt in the traditional way become parents by means of another couple’s giving
up their child for adoption. If one could become a parent only
through the conjugal act, as this norm and this argument seem
to imply, then adoption (which is approved by the Church)
would have to be condemned.39
If the Church at some point stated definitively that embryo adoption is illicit, she would not in any way be condemning traditional
adoption. The difference between embryo adoption and traditional
adoption concerns the proper moral use of the reproductive organs.
When a couple traditionally adopts a child into their home, the
spouses are not using their reproductive organs at all to make the
adoption happen, much less in an improper way. But embryo adoption does make an improper use of the reproductive faculty by transferring the agency of the act of impregnation to someone who ought
not to be the agent, and in a manner outside of the order of God’s
design: conjugal union. When Donum Vitae states that couples are
to become parents only through one another, the CDF is speaking
about the right moral use of the reproductive faculties, which does
not apply in the case of traditional adoption.
Objection 3:
Edward Furton, in “Embryo Adoption Reconsidered,” argues that
the unity of marriage is not violated when a technician transfers the
embryo into the woman because it is a clinical act in a medical setting.
If one were to argue that marital intimacy is violated, then the entire
field of gynecology would be morally suspect:
Some say that embryo transfer is wrong because the technician must insert the embryo into the womb of the adoptive
		Mark S. Latkovic, “The Dignity of the Person: An Overview and Commentary
on Dignitas personae,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10, no. 2 (Summer
2010): 283–305.

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mother, and this act constitutes a trespass on the sacred bond of
marriage. Only the husband, it is said, has the right to perform
such an intimate act. But this objection overlooks the obvious
fact that members of the medical profession routinely carry
out physical examinations on the sexual organs of men and
women. We do find it more comfortable, I suppose, to visit
physicians of our own sex about sexual matters, but it would
be a curious attitude to see any violation of marital intimacy
in such an encounter. This is a purely clinical action (or ought
to be) and therefore one that is not sexual in any way. As such,
embryo transfer does not violate the sacred bond of marriage
any more than a routine gynecological examination does. If the
insertion of an embryo into the womb of an adoptive mother is
a violation of marriage, then the whole field of gynecological
science is suspect.40
I reply that Furton is correct in stating that there is no moral evil
or violation of marital intimacy in a patient–doctor relationship that
requires routine exams on sexual organs. The violation of marital intimacy does not consist in exposing or undergoing treatment on sexual
organs in a medical context. Rather, marital intimacy is violated when
what belongs causally to the spouses in the marital act is taken away
from them. The formal malice in embryo transfer is not that intimate
organs are exposed and operated on by a medical professional; rather,
it is that the technician takes over the role of agent cause of impregnation that belongs only to the spouses, a truth that is discoverable in
the natural causal order. Furton has suggested in a footnote in the same
article that, if a husband were to be trained, he could be the one to
insert the embryo. In suggesting this as a possibility, Furton seems to be
conceding to the reasonability of the fundamental importance of the
husband’s agency in the process of impregnation. Yet even this action
fulfills only one of the criteria for conjugal agency. There is agency, but
the manner of its exercise is not conjugal.
Objection 4:
There is nothing morally objectionable in carrying an embryo to birth
who is not genetically one’s own.
I reply that the problem with embryo adoption does not ultimately
		Furton, “Embryo Adoption Reconsidered,” 338.

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Irene Alexander

reside in the fact that the child is genetically unrelated, but in the
actions that are necessary to bring about the pregnancy. Nevertheless,
I would add that the mere fact that the mother and child are genetically unrelated remains morally relevant and could be problematic
for other reasons. Dignitatis Personae §19 alludes to “problems” of a
“psychological” nature that could result when one receives an embryo
not genetically one’s own. I have in mind here the rescue and adoption of embryos of related family members where the pregnancies
forge new relationships and blur otherwise normal ones, such as when
a child’s aunt becomes impregnated with her biological nephew, and
so on. Yet none of these actions could take place to begin with if the
agency of spousal union were not violated through IVF and embryo
transfer in the first place; these actions are malum in se.
Objection 5:
The claim is made that opponents of embryo adoption focus too much
on the biological process, and fail to perceive the issue in light of a
broader theology of Christian adoption. John Grabowski and Christopher Gross suggest (in “Dignitatis personae and the Adoption of Frozen
Embryos: A New Chill Factor?”) that the majority of theologians writing on this issue have failed to examine it within the broader biblical
theology of adoption and focus too much on the biological processes
involved and that this narrow focus is a flaw in their arguments:
“While Berkman, Pacholczyk, and Stempsey offer different arguments
concerning the labeling of embryo adoption, which lead them to
different conclusions about its moral appropriateness, their analyses
share a common flaw, because they focus almost exclusively on the
physical processes involved in embryo transfer.”41 They continue later:
“Once HET is considered in light of the Christian tradition’s theology
of adoption, the biological aspects of the procedure become much less
relevant, and it becomes clear that embryo adoption is at least potentially a morally licit and even praiseworthy practice—and not merely
in the intentions of those who engage in it.” 42
I reply that, while much can be gained in broadening one’s vision
to consider a Christian theology of adoption, I find these statements
disconcerting coming from moral theologians who must be able
to make sound moral judgments on medical procedures precisely
		Grabowski and Gross, “Dignitatis personae and Embryo Adoption,” 313.
		Ibid., 321.

41
42

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by evaluating the “physical processes involved.” Since when do the
“biological aspects” of medical procedures “become less relevant”
when attempting to make a moral evaluation on actions that are
taking place on the bodies of individuals? Has this line of reasoning
ever been a sound way of making judgments on issues in bioethics?
The biological aspects matter because they are an integral part of the
data that enters the moral evaluation. One cannot make a proper
evaluation by overlooking such considerations. Whether a physician administers the right dose of a medication or a lethal dose is a
“biological aspect” that is absolutely morally relevant.
Certainly, theologians should consider particular issues both biblically and sapientially, without wholly divorcing them from their
order within the whole of God’s revelation, but that does not mean
that, when one addresses such particular issues, one does not take
into account the physical and biological processes involved in that
issue. Consider, for example, Pope John Paul’s Theology of the Body.
His work significantly enriches man’s understanding of human sexuality in light of the whole of God’s plan. But to defend the Church’s
teaching on contraception, which was the explicit purpose of the
Theology of the Body, one must also take into account the causality of
contraceptives on the natural order. One cannot simply exclude biology and physical actions from one’s contemplative moral judgment.
Actions taking place on the bodies of individuals are morally relevant
to evaluating medical procedures. How can they not be? Far from it
being a “flaw” in one’s moral reasoning to consider these aspects, it is
a flaw to fail to consider them. Can “bio-ethics” ignore the “bio” in
trying to evaluate the “ethics”?
Objection 6:
Brugger argues that “[embryo adoption] is no more a violation of the
marital good than for a lactating woman to breast-feed an abandoned
child for nine months.” 43
On the surface, there does seem to be a real similarity between
the offering of one’s womb for the gestation of a preborn embryo
and the offering of the breast for the nourishment of a child already
born. If the latter is not immoral, then why the former? The answer
to this question lies in seeing the very same principle at work: are
the actions contrary to the natural order? A wet nurse does not act
		Brugger, “Rescuing Frozen Embryos.”

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Irene Alexander

contrary to the causality of her body in feeding another woman’s
infant, nor does she somehow give to another person a causal role
that belongs to her husband. The husband does not have a causal role
in the act of breastfeeding, whereas he does have a very important
and morally significant causal role in being an agent cause of his own
wife’s impregnation. For this reason, embryo adoption violates the
N&V
natural order but feeding another’s infant does not.

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81

Amoris Laetitia, Pastoral Discernment,
and Thomas Aquinas1
Kevin L. Flannery, S.J.
Pontifical Gregorian University
Rome, Italy

Thomas V. Berg
St. Joseph’s Seminary
Yonkers, New York

The critical importance and pastoral obligation of carefully discerning the particular situation of persons in problematic moral
circumstances—particularly those of Catholics who have divorced and
civilly remarried—is clearly a paramount concern of Pope Francis. He
makes this issue the centerpiece of his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris
Laetitia (AL) following the Ordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family
that took place in Rome in October of 2015. And in more recent
remarks, he has again revealed just how pressing an issue he believes it
to be, particularly for the formation of candidates to the priesthood.
During the Pope’s encounter with Jesuits gathered for their
General Chapter in Rome in October of 2016, the Holy Father was
asked: “In your speech you clearly proposed a morality that is based
on discernment. How do you suggest that we proceed in the field of
morality with regard to this dynamic of discernment of moral situations?” He responded as follows:

		The authors would like to thank Thomas Joseph White, John Finnis, Michael
Pakaluk, Richard Doerflinger, Stephen Brock, Edward Peters, Gerard McKay,
Michael Bradley, and an anonymous censor at the Pontifical Gregorian
University for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay.

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Kevin L. Flannery, S.J. & Thomas V. Berg

Discernment is the key element: the capacity for discernment.
I note the absence of discernment in the formation of priests.
We run the risk of getting used to “white or black,” to that
which is legal. We are rather closed, in general, to discernment.
One thing is clear: today, in a certain number of seminaries,
a rigidity that is far from a discernment of situations has been
introduced. And that is dangerous, because it can lead us to a
conception of morality that has a casuistic sense, . . . [and] I
am very afraid of this.2 This is what I said in a meeting with
the Jesuits in Krakow during the World Youth Day. There the
Jesuits asked me what I thought the Society could do and I
replied that an important task of the Society is to form seminarians and priests in discernment.3
		“Casuistry” is a term that broadly describes a method of doing moral theology.
The word derives from the Latin casus, meaning an “event” or “occurrence.”
The method proceeded by analyzing moral problems (also referred to as “cases
of conscience”) presented in confession, and proceeded to elaborate answers.
These “cases” (hence, “casuistry”) were generally presented in large bound
volumes or “manuals” for seminarians in the course of their preparation for
Holy Orders and their role as confessors. This was an approach to teaching
moral theology that was in vogue from the sixteenth century to well into the
mid-twentieth century. The Dominican theologian Servais Pinckaers observes
with regard to casuistry and its evident inadequacy in our day as a method for
doing moral theology that we need to distinguish carefully between method
and contents: “The current perception of the inadequacies of casuistry challenges Catholic ethicists to strive for a renewal that can no longer be limited
to partial adaptations, but should lead to a revision of the foundations of this
branch of theology. This is not to say that the teaching of the manuals should
be discarded as old-fashioned or outmoded. We need to distinguish here
between the container and the contents, between a systematization of moral
theology that is a period piece and its contents, which include positions and
concrete moral laws belonging to revelation and the tradition of the Church.
These latter have permanent value. Certain parts of moral theology at the
rational level, such as the teaching on natural law, also have lasting value and
may be endorsed by us, even though they require reinterpretation in order
to be fully useful. The critic should endeavor to remain always in the service
of the up-building and renewal of Christian moral theology” (The Sources
of Christian Ethics, trans. Mary Thomas Noble [Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 1995], 293).
3
		A complete text of the Holy Father’s remarks on this occasion can be found in
the original Italian in Civiltà Cattlica, December 10, 2016 (anno 167), 417–31
(quoted here at 420–421), and in English online, accessed October 31, 2017,
http://jesuits.org/Assets/Publications/File/GC36-Dialogue_of_Pope_Francis_ENGLISH.PDF.
2

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Here the Holy Father is referring to a parting comment he made at
an encounter with twenty-eight Polish Jesuits on July 30, 2016.4 On
that occasion, the Pope observed:
The Church today needs to grow in the ability of spiritual
discernment. Some priestly formation programs run the risk
of educating in the light of overly clear and distinct ideas,
and therefore to act within limits and criteria that are rigidly
defined a priori, and that set aside concrete situations. . . . And
then the seminarians, when they become priests [have a difficult time accompanying the faithful].
And [then] people leave the confessional disappointed. Not
because the priest is bad, but because the priest doesn’t have the
ability to discern situations, to accompany them in authentic
discernment. They don’t have the needed formation.
Today the Church needs to grow in discernment, in the
ability to discern. And priests above all really need it for their
ministry. This is why we need to teach it to seminarians and
priests in formation: they are the ones usually entrusted with
the confidences of the conscience of the faithful. . . . We need
to form future priests not [in] general and abstract ideas, which
are clear and distinct, but [in] this keen discernment of spirits
so that they can help people in their concrete life. We need to
truly understand this: in life not all is black on white or white
on black. No! The shades of gray prevail in life. We must teach
[them] to discern in this gray area.
With these convictions seemingly still very much at heart, the
Holy Father continued elaborating his response to the question posed
to him at the October encounter with Jesuits in Rome. Here Francis
contrasts what he refers to as a “decadent Scholasticism” (referring to
the Scholastic methodology that he apparently encountered during
his philosophical and theological studies as a young Jesuit in the
1960’s in Argentina) to the “great Scholasticism” of Aquinas and
Bonaventure:

		The Italian original can be found at Civiltà Cattlica, September 10, 2016 (anno
167), 345–49 (quoted here at pp. 348–49), and the English translation here,
accessed October 31, 2017, https://zenit.org/articles/popes-conversationwith-jesuits-during-his-trip-to-poland/.

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Kevin L. Flannery, S.J. & Thomas V. Berg

We studied theology and philosophy with manuals. It was
a decadent scholasticism. . . . When the great Scholasticism
began to lose force, there arose that decadent scholasticism with
which at least my generation and others have studied. It was
this decadent scholasticism that provoked the casuistic attitude.
. . . The whole moral sphere was restricted to “you can,” “you
cannot,” “up to here, yes, but not there . . .” It was a morality
very foreign to discernment.
In the field of morality we must advance without falling into
situationalism: but, rather, it is necessary to bring forward again
the great wealth contained in the dimension of discernment;
this is characteristic of the great Scholasticism. We should note
something: St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure affirm that the
general principle holds for all but—they say it explicitly—as
one moves to the particular, the question becomes diversified
and many nuances arise without changing the principle. This
scholastic method has its validity. It is the moral method used
by the Catechism of the Catholic Church. And it is the method that
was used in the last apostolic exhortation, Amoris laetitia.
Our intention in this essay is to examine ideas that Pope Francis
has advocated in these two discourses as they present themselves in
AL. In the first section (“AL’s Teaching on Pastoral Discernment”),
we offer a schematic overview of the many laudable elements in AL’s
teaching on pastoral discernment, especially as it is presented in chapter 8 of that document. The second section (“AL’s Teaching on Pastoral Discernment: Areas of Concern”) is divided into five subsections.
The first considers AL’s innovative treatment of “mitigating factors”
and how they affect moral responsibility; the second considers AL’s
understanding of moral precepts as ideals and the nature of moral
conscience; the third considers the relationship between what AL
calls “general moral principles” and “matters of detail”; the fourth
considers the possible application of the legal concept of an internal
forum; and the fifth considers “general moral principles” as exceptionless moral norms. In the first and (especially) the third and fifth
subsections, we consider in some detail AL’s use of Thomas Aquinas.
AL’s Teaching on Pastoral Discernment
In its call upon the Church’s pastors to a merciful accompaniment and
careful pastoral discernment with regard to the divorced and civilly

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remarried, AL in a sense offers nothing new. The document builds on
and reiterates an invitation that was urged some years ago in another
synod on the family and synthesized by Pope St. John Paul II in his
post-apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio: “Pastors must know that,
for the sake of truth, they are obliged to exercise careful discernment of
situations. . . . I earnestly call upon [them] and the whole community of
the faithful to help the divorced, and with solicitous care to make sure
that they do not consider themselves as separated from the Church, for
as baptized persons they can, and indeed must, share in her life” (§84).
For the most part, then, AL offers a summation of what has long
been sound pastoral practice both inside and outside the confessional
with regard to the pastoral discernment of, as AL puts it, “those situations that fall short of what the Lord demands of us” (AL §7). Among
other important elements, AL reiterates the following:
Sound pastoral discernment, taking into account “the complexity of various situations” and “how people experience and
endure distress because of their condition,” is not incompatible
with care for the truth; indeed, care for the truth demands this.
(AL §79)
Divorced persons who, for the sake of bearing witness to marital fidelity, have not remarried must especially be the focus of
the Church’s pastoral concern. (AL §242)
The divorced who have entered a new union should be made
to feel part of the Church. They are not excommunicated: they
should be made to know that they remain part of the ecclesial community [AL §243], where, like the penitent prodigal
son, they might “experience being touched by an ‘unmerited,
unconditional and gratuitous’ mercy.” (AL §297) 5
		The words “unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous” are taken from Francis’s homily on February 15, 2015, to the then newly created Cardinals (Acta
Apostolicae Sedis 107 [2015]: 258). A note makes reference to 1 Cor 13. The
words are said in reference to charity, not mercy, although the immediately
preceding paragraph speaks of mercy, mentioning “the repentant prodigal son.”
The sentence in AL is followed by an exclamatory affirmation that “no one
can be condemned for ever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!” One
can only speculate about the Pope’s meaning here. A charitable interpretation
would say that he is referring to some kind of perpetual “condemnation”
during one’s life (the possibility of eternal condemnation after death being

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Kevin L. Flannery, S.J. & Thomas V. Berg

This pastoral discernment should identify elements that can
foster evangelization and human and spiritual growth in the
lives of the civilly divorced and remarried, as well as elements
in their lives that can lead to a greater openness to the fullness
of the Gospel regarding marriage. (AL §293)
Pastoral discernment and accompaniment will assist such individuals in understanding the divine pedagogy of grace in their
lives and offer them assistance so they can reach the fullness
of God’s plan for their lives, something always possible by the
power of the Holy Spirit. (AL §297)
Pastoral discernment will be attentive to those situations whose
complexity is such that they “should not be pigeonholed or fit
into overly rigid classifications leaving no room for a suitable
personal and pastoral discernment.” (AL §298)
Regarding discernment, after quoting the Relatio finalis of the
Synod itself to the effect that sound pastoral practice requires “humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere
search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response
to it,” AL affirms, in language harmonious with prior magisterial
teaching, that:
These attitudes are essential for avoiding the grave danger
of misunderstandings, such as the notion that any priest can
quickly grant “exceptions,” or that some people can obtain
sacramental privileges in exchange for favors. When a responsible and tactful person, who does not presume to put his or her
own desires ahead of the common good of the Church, meets
with a pastor capable of acknowledging the seriousness of the
matter before him, there can be no risk that a specific discernment may lead people to think that the Church maintains a
double standard. (AL §300)
AL’s Teaching on Pastoral Discernment: Areas of Concern
Beyond this, however, there are affirmations made in AL on the nature
of pastoral discernment that we find concerning because they lend
a matter of revealed truth); the Church cannot withdraw Christ’s offer of
forgiveness to the repentant sinner.

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themselves to interpretations that would validate pastoral applications that are inconsistent with the Church’s constant and universal
practice, founded on the Word of God, of not admitting the divorced
and remarried to Holy Communion—a practice that the Church has
long held to be binding and not subject to modification because of
diverse circumstances or situations.6 Pastoral approaches to the contrary,
based on language found in AL, would constitute an injustice to the
persons involved and hardly embody the very mercy, accompaniment,
conscience formation, and sound discernment championed by Pope
Francis. We maintain that any use that AL is put to by pastoral ministers
should be in continuity with prior magisterium.
Discernment and Mitigating Factors
One area of concern is AL’s treatment of “mitigating factors” as they
might affect the moral status of the divorced and civilly remarried and
their consequent standing within the Church. Regarding such “‘irregular’ situations,” AL §301 suggests that the fact that the Church has “a
solid body of reflection concerning mitigating factors and situations”
will allay any fears that, in exercising pastoral discernment in these
regards, “the demands of the Gospel are in any way being compromised.”7 It would appear that Pope Francis has in mind primarily
		“The doctrine and discipline of the Church in this matter are amply presented
in the post-conciliar period in the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio.
The Exhortation, among other things, reminds pastors that out of love for
the truth they are obliged to discern carefully the different situations and
exhorts them to encourage the participation of the divorced and remarried
in the various events in the life of the Church. At the same time it confirms
and indicates the reasons for the constant and universal practice, ‘founded
on Sacred Scripture, of not admitting the divorced and remarried to Holy
Communion’ [Familiaris consortio, 84]. The structure of the Exhortation and
the tenor of its words give clearly to understand that this practice, which
is presented as binding, cannot be modified because of different situations”
(Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF], “Letter to the Bishops of
the Catholic Church Concerning the Reception of Holy Communion by the
Divorced and Remarried Members of the Faithful” [1994], accessed October
31, 2017, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_14091994_rec-holy-comm-by-divorced_en.html;
Acta Apostolicae Sedis [AAS] 86 [1994]: 976).
7
		As the Holy Father acknowledges, the Church possesses a treasure-trove of
moral reflection on these mitigating factors and the crucial role they play
in the moral evaluation that confessors in particular must endeavor to make.
(see especially, Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1735). Certainly, in recent
centuries this whole reality has constituted an important part of the teaching
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Kevin L. Flannery, S.J. & Thomas V. Berg

reflection that has been done in recent years (he quotes a remark from
St. John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio), for he states: “Hence it can no
longer simply be said that all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living
in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace.” But he
also cites Thomas Aquinas, so his claim is clearly that whatever he
states in AL §301 is consistent with the tradition going back at least to
the thirteenth century. The question, then, is whether AL §301 is so
consistent.
In speaking of those in irregular situations and who are neither
in a state of mortal sin nor deprived of sanctifying grace, the Holy
Father is clearly not referring to couples who have decided to live
“as brother and sister,” for he immediately introduces the issue of a
“rule” of which the individuals involved are not ignorant, but rather,
do not accept.8 “A subject,” he says, “may know full well the rule,
of advanced coursework in moral theology—although the fundamental principles of such teaching can be found in Thomas Aquinas: see, for instance,
ST I-II, q. 73, aa. 2 and 6. It leads the confessor to be mindful that, while
the penitent might well be in a moral situation that is objectively grave (i.e.,
involving grave matter), his degree of consent might not be such that he is in
a state of mortal sin.
8
		See also AL §298, where one reads: “The Church acknowledges situations
‘where, for serious reasons, such as the children’s upbringing, a man and
woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate.’” At this point, a note is
appended in which St. John Paul’s Familiaris Consortio (§84) is initially cited.
This is followed by the following remark: “In such situations, many people,
knowing and accepting the possibility of living ‘as brothers and sisters’ which
the Church offers them, point out that if certain expressions of intimacy are
lacking, ‘it often happens that faithfulness is endangered and the good of the
children suffers.’” Here the note cites the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et
Spes (§51). This calls for a number of remarks. First, the words translated here
“the good of the children” are bonum prolis, “the good of progeny,” reference
being made to one of the traditional goods of marriage, another of which
is mentioned in the same sentence: bonum fidei (“the good of fidelity”). As
Michael Pakaluk has pointed out, the Council Fathers are teaching here that,
“if a married couple (and they are concerned with married couples; they are
not addressing the particular case of the divorced and remarried) abstain from
intimacy for too long, they may lose their zest for having more children, and
thus may fail to enjoy this particular good of the marriage bond as fully as
they might” (Michael Pakaluk, “The Other Footnote in Amoris Laetitia,” First
Things, May 26, 2016, access October 31, 2017, https://www.firstthings.com/
web-exclusives/2016/05/the-other-footnote-in-amoris-laetitia]. Secondly,
Gaudium et Spes §51, begins by acknowledging the difficulties of periodic
abstinence (and not of the brother–sister solution) but immediately adds: “To
these problems there are those who presume to offer dishonorable solutions

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yet have great difficulty in understanding ‘its inherent values.’” He
clearly holds that this “mitigating factor” is sufficient in certain cases
to ensure that the individuals involved are not in a state of mortal sin
or deprived of sanctifying grace.
It is worth noting that the words “its inherent values” are taken
from Familiaris Consortio (§33) and that John Paul is speaking there
not about the Church’s teaching regarding communion to the
divorced and remarried, but about its teaching on the responsible
transmission of life.9 Nor does he suggest there that those having
difficulty comprehending these “values” and, so, disobeying the
norm are without sin. Quite the contrary: he goes on immediately
to say that the Church, as both teacher and mother, “never ceases to
exhort and encourage all to resolve whatever conjugal difficulties
may arise without ever falsifying or compromising the truth”; he
speaks also in the same section of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Turning to Aquinas’s “reflection concerning mitigating factors and
situations,” we find in his works, of course, a theoretically more elaborated account. One who knows what the Church teaches regarding
the reception of communion by the divorced and civilly remarried
but does not accept it does not believe that the norm is good and
true, and a person who does not believe a moral truth can be said
not to know that truth. He is, at least in that sense, ignorant of the
corresponding norm. But whether an act performed in ignorance of
indeed; they do not recoil even from the taking of life. But the Church
issues the reminder that a true contradiction cannot exist between the divine
laws pertaining to the transmission of life and those pertaining to authentic
conjugal love.” Thirdly, Familiaris Consortio §84 depicts the situation of the
divorced and civilly remarried in a manner quite different from what we find
in AL §298. John Paul emphasizes that fidelity to Christ and to the original
marriage covenant “means, in practice, that when, for serious reasons, such as
for example the children’s upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the
obligation to separate, they ‘take on themselves the duty to live in complete
continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples.’”
Finally, whereas, immediately after the quotation from Familiaris Consortio
§84, the note in AL 298 cites Gaudium et Spes §51, Familiaris Consortio at the
same place cites John Paul’s own homily at the conclusion of the sixth Synod
of Bishops, October 25, 1980 (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 72 [1980]: 1082]. In that
passage, John Paul praises men and women in irregular unions who nonetheless “testify to the indissolubility of marriage” by “living continently, that is,
abstaining from acts that are proper only to married couples.”
9
		The words “inherent values” are a direct translation of the Italian version’s
valori insiti; the official Latin version speaks not of values, but of goods: “. . .
bonorum, quae eadem continentur norma morali.”

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a moral norm is culpable or not depends on the way in which voluntariness is involved.
Thomas draws a distinction between the situation in which voluntariness (that is, of the objectively evil act itself ) occurs subsequent to
a state of ignorance and the situation in which voluntariness (of the
ignorance itself ) precedes the act. A case of the former would be a
person who, through no voluntary act of his own, does not know that
fornication is a sin—and so performs that act. This person “voluntarily performs an act of fornication but does not voluntarily commit
a sin.”10 On the other hand, says Thomas, if the voluntariness occurs
before the act—that is, if it has to do with the ignorance itself—then
the act performed is a sin: “When therefore a person directly wills to
be ignorant so as not to be pulled back from sin by the knowledge,
such ignorance does not excuse sin either wholly or in part but rather
increases it, for it appears that, out of great love of sinning, the person
wills to suffer the loss of knowledge so that he might freely cling to
the sin.11
Clearly, Aquinas would not agree that a couple’s “difficulty in
understanding” the inherent values of the Church’s teaching on the
illicitness of living in a sexual relationship with a second legal spouse
diminishes the likelihood that they are “living in a state of mortal
sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace.” If anything, their unwillingness to address the difficulty, perhaps even deliberately avoiding
enlightenment on the issue, would increase that likelihood.12
		Aquinas, De malo, q. 3, a. 8. corp.: “. . . puta cum aliquis nescit fornicationem
esse peccatum, uoluntarie quidem facit fornicationem set non uoluntarie facit
peccatum.” All Latin citations of Aquinas are taken from the Leonine edition
unless otherwise noted; all English translation of ST comes from the translation done by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns,
Oates and Washbourne, 1920), although we do make occasional adjustments
[e.g., see note 22 below]); unless otherwise noted, all other English translations
of Aquinas are our own.
11
		“Cum ergo aliquis directe vult ignorare ut a peccato per scientiam non
retrahatur, talis ignorantia non excusat peccatum nec in toto nec in parte, set
magis auget: ex magno enim amore peccandi uidetur contingere quod aliquis
detrimentum scientie pati velit ad hoc quod libere peccato inhereat” (Aquinas,
De malo, q. 3, a. 8. corp.).
12
		The presence of a “difficulty” in embracing a moral norm indicates that the
person has some knowledge both of what the norm requires and of how
his or her behavior is at odds with the norm. Clearly then, AL §301 is not
here referring to persons in a state of invincible ignorance. In the latter state,
“difficulties” of this sort simply do not arise, since one is (without guilt) either
10

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Immediately after mentioning the difficulty one might have in
understanding the inherent values of “the rule,” AL §301 mentions,
as a second mitigating factor, a person’s being in “a concrete situation
that does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise
without further sin.” We might call this a situation of “perplexity.”
One might imagine a situation in which a woman, for instance,
believes that, in conscience, she must continue sexual relations with
a man not her husband in order to preserve the well-being of their
family (or families). If she intends to continue so, a priest might
advise her that she cannot present herself for reception of the Eucharist, although she is not cut off even from that sacrament, and, indeed,
that she is welcome and encouraged to attend Mass, where she might
pray that she and her partner might find a way of living together
peaceably that does not involve adultery. But that does not appear to
be the solution the Pope has in mind since, as in the first mitigating
factor, he is urging this as a way in which “the rule” might not apply.
Interestingly, a note appended to the next sentence but one cites
a passage in Aquinas where he alludes to his way of understanding
the sort of moral situation the Pope apparently has in mind.13 In
unaware of the norm or of the fact that one’s behavior is at odds with the
norm. Consequently, this discussion rests within the domain of vincible ignorance, which, of itself, does not excuse from culpability. In ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4
(to be discussed extensively below), Aquinas speaks about those whose understanding of a precept is distorted “by passion, or evil habit, or an evil disposition of nature.” He gives as an instance “the Germans of old” [apud Germanos
olim], who, he says, according to Julius Caesar, thought theft not iniquitous.
As we have been reminded by Michael Pakaluk in his helpful comments on
a draft of this article, in the relevant passage in Gallic Wars, Caesar says that
these Germans thought that theft was wrong but did not prohibit it when it
occurred outside the boundaries of their community, but rather encouraged
such acts as useful for disciplining youth and preventing sloth (Julius Caesar,
Gallic Wars 6.22–23). That Aquinas was familiar with this section of the work
is indicated by his use of book 6, chapters 13 to 18, in his De regno II, ch. 3
(Leonine lns. 143–48). Aquinas’s point would be, therefore, that such arbitrary
line drawing is an indication that a passion, evil habit, or evil disposition of
nature is at work and deflecting reason.
13
		One sentence later in AL §301, we read: “Saint Thomas Aquinas himself
recognized that someone may possess grace and charity, yet not be able to
exercise any one of the virtues well,” at which point a note is appended
containing references to two works. The second reference—which interests
us—is to De malo, q. 2. a. 2. It is difficult to find anything in this article having
to do with people who have infused virtues but cannot exercise them well.
The first reference is ST I-II. q. 65, a. 3, ad 2, where Thomas says that those

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answer to the eighth objection to his thesis that sin involves not just
the interior act of the will but also the exterior act willed, Thomas
mentions both that “an erroneous conscience binds” and that, “if
someone intends to perform a meritorious work, committing something that according to its genus is a mortal sin, he does not merit, for
an erroneous conscience does not excuse.”14 One might think again
of the woman mentioned just above. She intends to do a good thing,
but that involves committing adultery; that does not make the latter
act not to be a sin—indeed, a mortal sin—because “an erroneous
conscience does not excuse.”
Aquinas wrote of these matters more extensively a couple of
years later in Summa theologiae [ST ] I-II, q. 19, aa. 5–6. There he
acknowledges that someone is obliged to follow even an erring
conscience, since “an erring conscience binds.” But, even in so doing,
the person sins in performing the act his conscience obliges him to
perform (assuming, of course, that he is responsible for his erring
conscience).15 The third objection in ST I-II, q. 19, a. 6, argues that
blessed with infused, as opposed to acquired, virtues can experience difficulty
in acting in accordance with the virtues. He does not suggest that they are
any less obliged to act in accordance with the virtues. (Michael Pakaluk has
suggested in comments on a draft of this article that a Spanish speaker, reading
or translating the sentence in De malo, q. 2, a. 2, ad 8, beginning “Qui enim
habet uoluntatem dandi eleemosinam et non dat quia non habet facultatem,
tantundem meretur quantum si daret . . .” might have misunderstood the word
facultas as meaning not “the material means,” but rather the faculdad or “facility”
or “ease in doing.” This would then come close to the position attributed to
Thomas in AL §301—that is, that “someone may possess grace and charity, yet
not be able to exercise any one of the virtues well.”)
14
		Aquinas, De malo, q. 2, a. 2 (at Leonine lns. 285–86 and 289–92). In affirming
that “an erroneous conscience does not excuse,” Aquinas has in mind, not
error stemming from invincible ignorance (which certainly can excuse), but
error stemming from willed ignorance or negligence, also called vincible ignorance (see In III eth., lec. 3, Marietti nos. 411–13 [Leonine lns. 73–115]).
15
		See note 14. See also the corpus of ST I-II, q. 19, a. 5, at the beginning of
which he says he will be inquiring “whether the will is evil when it is at
variance with erring reason”—that is, “whether an erring conscience binds”
[“idem est quaerere utrum voluntas discordans a ratione errante sit mala, quod
quaerere utrum conscientia errans obliget”]. The key idea in his argument is
that one sins whenever one does what one believes is wrong, whether one is
correct in believing this or not. At the end of the corpus of a. 5, Aquinas says:
“We must therefore conclude that, absolutely speaking, every will at variance
with reason, whether right or erring, is always evil.” So, one is obliged to
follow even an erring conscience. If one does (as one is obliged) follow an
erring conscience and the error is the result of willful ignorance or negli-

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this places the person in a situation of “perplexity.” Thomas denies
this: the person “is not perplexed, because he can pull away from his
error, since his ignorance is vincible and voluntary” (ST I-II, q, 19, a.
6, ad 3). He must correct his erroneous conscience.
Read in its entirety, AL §301 would seem to be implying that the
subjective conviction that one is facing great difficulty in making
the right moral choice renders one not responsible for performing an
action not in harmony with the relevant objective moral norm. As E.
Christian Brugger has observed, such an assertion is in tension with
the Church’s consistent and perennial understanding of the action of
grace in the life of the disciple: “This seems to contradict the defined
doctrine in [the Council of ] Trent on justification, canon 18: ‘If any
one says the commandments of God are impossible to keep, even by
a person who is justified and constituted in grace: let him be anathema.’”16 A person might well share with a priest in a pastoral context
the conviction or fear that his situation leaves him no options other
than to perform acts that are sinful. But, clearly, sound and genuinely
pastoral accompaniment and discernment would oblige a priest to
assure the individual that with God’s grace, all things are possible,
including living according to the Church’s moral teaching rooted in
the Gospel.
Personal Discernment, Moral Ideals, and Conscience
At times, AL shifts from consideration of pastoral discernment (the
work of discernment shepherded by a prudent and knowledgeable
moral guide such as a priest) to consideration of “personal discernment,” presumably the discernment that the individual caught in the
problematic moral situation can engage in himself. And at the heart
of “personal discernment” would be what the individual perceives in
his subjective awareness to be the requirement of conscience. In this
regard, Francis observes: “We also find it hard to make room for the
consciences of the faithful, who very often respond as best they can
gence, the objectively immoral act that one performs in following the erring
conscience is, for the person acting, an immoral act. On these matters, see
Richard Schenk, “Perplexus supposito quodam: Notizien zu einem vergessenen Schlüsselbegriff thomanischer Gewissenslehre,” Recherches de théologie
ancienne et médiévale 57 (1990): 62–95.
16
		E. Christian Brugger, “Five Serious Problems with Chapter Eight of
Amoris Laetitia,” Catholic World Report, April 22, 2016, accessed November 1,
2017, http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2016/04/22/five-serious-problems-with-chapter-8-of-amoris-laetitia/.

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to the Gospel amid their limitations, and are capable of carrying out
their own discernment in complex situations. We have been called to
form consciences, not to replace them” (AL §37). Here AL expresses
an unreasonable optimism about the individual’s ability to navigate his
own way through morally complex circumstances. Not uncommon
is the human tendency to allow a sentimental and subjective “sense”
of one’s situation and what one ought to do about it to obfuscate a
genuine and sound judgment of conscience. A sincere judgment of
conscience, as human experience clearly reveals, can simply be wrong,
not in accord with prudent moral reasoning such as looks to objective
and true moral norms as one’s guide.
At AL §303, the document places the judgment of conscience itself
in tension with objective moral norms. The text reads in part:
Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands
of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty
what for now is the most generous response which can be given
to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it
is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity
of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal. In any
event, let us recall that this discernment is dynamic; it must
remain ever open to new stages of growth and to new decisions
which can enable the ideal to be more fully realized.
This is to suggest that, by way of personal discernment, an individual
could arrive at the determination that continuing to engage in what
one knows to be gravely sinful behavior (e.g., sexual intimacy with a
person who is not one’s spouse) is “the most generous response” one
can give at this time and that, further, God is somehow “asking” this
of one.
A further problem with this passage is that the relevant moral norm
(i.e., prohibiting fornication or adultery) is presented as an “objective
ideal” to be attained. AL in fact criticizes Catholic moral theology
for treating the moral life as, in essence, a matter of rule-following. It
insists, rather, that the moral life is not, in the end, about conformity
to moral rules, but about ever-closer approximations to the Gospel
“ideal.”17 The document implies that, in lieu of attaining the ideal,
		As Brugger has also observed: “The term ‘objective ideal’ . . . will be read by
many as removing them doubly from the obligation not to act: once because

17

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there can be degrees of disorder that an individual knowingly, deliberately, and indeed, with moral rectitude, allows into his life, since this
is the “most generous response” he can make in pursuit of the ideal.18
Occasionally AL seems even to be counseling leaving men and
women entrusted to the Church’s pastoral care in a state of perpetual moral ignorance, on the pretext that they would not be sinning
formally. Notwithstanding the possible applicability in a pastoral
setting of the principle of “leaving the penitent in good faith,”19 it
is difficult to see how this could constitute sound pastoral practice.
Moral Rules and “Matters of Detail”
According to AL, sound pastoral discernment would “recognize that,
since ‘the degree of responsibility is not equal in all cases’ the consequences or effects of a rule need not necessarily always be the same”
(AL §300). It is in this context that Aquinas is referenced, as follows:
I earnestly ask that we always recall a teaching of Saint Thomas
Aquinas and learn to incorporate it in our pastoral discernment: “Although there is necessity in the general principles,
the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently
we encounter defects. . . . In matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not the same for all, as to matters of detail, but
only as to the general principles; and where there is the same
rectitude in matters of detail, it is not equally known to all. . . .
an ideal is only an ideal, and once because what is objectively applicable may
not be subjectively applicable, i.e. applicable to me in my circumstances and
state of will” (“Five Serious Problems”).
18
		Occasionally spoken of in such contexts is the “the law of gradualness.” See,
for instance, AL §293–95 and 300, but most importantly Familiaris Consortio
§34 (“What is known as ‘the law of gradualness’ or step-by-step advance
cannot be identified with ‘gradualness of the law’”). See also the Pontifical
Council for the Family’s “Vademecum for Confessors Concerning Some
Aspects of the Morality of Conjugal Life,” which states: “The pastoral ‘law of
gradualness’ . . . consists of requiring a decisive break with sin together with a
progressive path towards total union with the will of God and with his loving
demands” (3.9, accessed November 1, 2017, http://www.vatican.va/roman_
curia/pontifical_councils/family/documents/rc_pc_family_doc_12021997_
vademecum_en.html). See also Thomas Berg, “Conscience, Freedom, and the
‘Law of Graduality’ at the Synod on the Family,” Homiletic and Pastoral Review,
September 2015, available at http://www.hprweb.com/2015/09/consciencefreedom-and-the-law-of-graduality-at-the-synod-on-the-family/.
19
		See the Pontifical Council for the Family, “Vademecum for Confessors,” 3.7–8.

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The principle will be found to fail, according as we descend
further into detail” [ST I-II.94.4]. (AL §304) 20
The document uses the quoted portion of ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, as
support for its final assertion in AL §304: “It is true that general rules
set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but
in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular
situations. At the same time, it must be said that, precisely for that
reason, what is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be elevated to the level of a rule. That would not only
lead to an intolerable casuistry, but would endanger the very values
which must be preserved with special care.”21
This use of ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, is incorrect, the problem depending
at least in part upon the mistranslation of the Latin word propria as
“matters of detail.”22 This becomes clear when one reads that word
in the context of the article as a whole and of several of Thomas’s
		As will be explained below, this last phrase (“The principle will be found to
fail, according as we descend further into detail”), because lifted from its original context, does not accurately represent what Thomas is saying in that place.
21
ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, is also featured in the document published by the International Theological Commission in 2009 under the title, A la recherche d’une
ethique universelle: nouveau regard sur la loi naturelle. On the document’s use of
ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, see Kevin L. Flannery, “Determinacy in Natural Law,” Nova
et Vetera (English) 9 (2011): 763–73.
22
		The Fathers of the English Dominican Province translation of ST is the
translation used in the English version of AL and, as noted above, in our
article. We do, however, make the occasional adjustment. As indicated, we do
not, for instance, accept the translation of propria as “matters of detail,” as in
“the more we descend to matters of detail.” The equivalent of that is found
in other versions of the document. The relevant phrase in Latin reads: “quanto
magis ad propria descenditur.” In the Spanish version we find, “cuanto más se
afrontan las cosas particulares”; in the Italian, “quanto più si scende alle cose
particolari”; in the French, “plus on aborde les choses particulières”; in the
German, “je mehr man in den Bereich des Spezifischen absteigt.” In ST I-II,
q. 94, a. 4, Thomas also speaks of particularia (. . . magis ad particularia descenditur
. . .). Translating particularia as “matters of detail” would be fine, but the particularia are not equivalent to the propria. Also, in the Spanish version, immediately after the words “cuanto más se afrontan las cosas particulares,” that
translation gives “tanta más indeterminación hay.” (Similarly, later in AL §304,
after speaking about lo particular, the translation reads “tanto más aumenta la
indeterminación”; in both places, the Italian version has l’indeterminazione.) In
Thomas’s Latin, the word corresponding to indeterminación is defectus. Translating defectus as indeterminación (or l’indeterminazione) is also unacceptable, as will
be explained below.
20

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other writings. Because he presupposes that his readers are familiar
with the Aristotelian distinction between the “common” (or, as it
comes through to the English translation of Thomas just quoted,
“general”) and the “proper” as set out in Aristotle’s Posterior analytics
1.10, Thomas tends to move rather loosely among terms like principia
communia (common principles), principia propria (proper principles),
praecepta communia (common precepts), and praecepta propria (proper
precepts)—sometimes also speaking in abbreviated fashion simply of
communia and propria. The words “common” and “proper” correspond
to Aristotle’s ta koina (common things) and ta idia (proper things)
in Posterior analytics 1.10. In that place, Aristotle explains that some
principles are common even to different sciences, although they enter
into the individual science in an analogous manner. Thus, although
the principle “should equals be taken from equals, the results are
equals” (76a41) is common to multiple sciences, when it enters into
geometry, it does so as a common principle of geometry. The proper
principles in geometry would include those having to do with the
particular properties of lines (76a40).23
So, near the beginning of the body of ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, we find a
reference to Aristotle’s Physics 1.1: “Now the process of reason is from
the common to the proper [ex communibus ad propria], as stated in book
one of the Physics.” In that chapter of the Physics, common principles
(principia communia) are at issue.24 Immediately after citing Physics 1.1,
		At Rhetoric 1.2.1358a12ff, Aristotle says that the idea of “more and less” is
common to physics, justice, and politics. In what follows in the present essay,
because Aristotle’s ta koina are quite different from “general principles,” we
prefer to use the translation “common” for communia (as in principia communia)—although, when referring to AL’s translation, we must sometimes revert
to “general.” All English translation of the works of Aristotle comes The
Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
24
		Thomas is making reference only to the very first sentence of the Physics. Aristotle does not use in that first chapter the “common”/“proper” terminology
set out in the Posterior analytics (and appearing repeatedly in ST I-II, q. 94, a.
4). Aristotle says rather that, in any intellectual enterprise, it is necessary to
begin by determining “the things related to the first principles” [184a15–16].
Thomas speaks of these as common (see In I phys., lec. 1, no. 4)—common,
that is, in the sense that all things considered within the “physical” sciences
(including, also, for instance, astronomy and biology) presuppose them. It is
necessary to begin with these and only eventually get to that which is proper.
Aristotle does not discuss proper principles in Physics 1.1. Immediately after
saying that we must begin with “the things related to the first principles,” he
discusses how we are to arrive at the latter—that is, by considering that which
23

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Thomas speaks in ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, of the “proper conclusions”
(conclusiones propriae) and the “common principles” (principia communia) in speculative reason. Then comes a piece of the passage we are
considering where he speaks of the communia (tellingly translated in
AL as “general principles”) and the propria (translated as “matters of
detail”) in practical reason. In the Latin, there is no explicit mention
of what the adjectives modify: this is simply presupposed.
This is followed immediately by a remark about the “principles”
(principia) and “conclusions” (conclusiones) in speculative reason—
which remark itself concludes with the explanation that the principles
(principia) are sometimes called “common notions” (communes conceptiones). In the next sentence, he uses again the abbreviated forms:
“But in matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not the same
for all, with respect to proper [principles] [propria], but only as to the
common [principles] [communia]: and where there is the same rectitude in the proper [principles] [in propriis], it is not equally known to
all.”25 But, in the immediately subsequent sentence, it becomes clear
that he has been speaking about principia (in either the speculative
or the practical sphere): “It is therefore evident that, as regards the
common principles [communia principia] whether of speculative or of
practical reason, truth or rectitude is the same for all, and is equally
known by all.”
In articles coming later in ST I-II, Thomas tends to divide the
practical sphere into “common principles” (communia principia) and
“proper conclusions” (conclusiones propriae). That is to say, he considers
the lower principles as conclusions (or sometimes “quasi conclusions”
[ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4; q. 97, a. 4, ad 3]) of the common principles. In
any case, it is clear that the proper conclusions are not “matters of
detail.” They are propositions, sometimes spoken of by Thomas as
is “more intelligible to us” (nobis magis nota) rather than that which is “more
intelligible by nature” (magis nota naturae) (In I phys., lec. 1, no. 6). That which
is “more intelligible to us” might even be called “matters of detail.” We must
go from these to the first (or common) principles and then to the proper
principles. (We use here the translation “intelligible” and not “known” for nota
or notum because that which magis notum naturae may not be known. Thomas
actually says in this section that things that are nobis magis nota are intelligibilia
in potentia (In I phys., lec. 1, no. 7). He also says that that which is magis notum
naturae is not more known by nature, but rather “more known with respect to
itself and with respect to its proper nature.”)
25
		The Fathers of the English Dominican Province translate communia as “general
principles,” thereby supplying the understood principia, but they fail to do the
same for the word propria, forms of which occur twice in the sentence.

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principles and sometimes as conclusions, sometimes as precepts.26
So, what bearing does this have upon the argument of ST I-II,
q. 94, a. 4? It means that the contrast there, such as it is, is not
between “general principles” and concrete moral situations to which
the “general principles” supposedly cannot be applied, but between
common principles and proper principles. What sometimes happens
is that a proper principle “is found not to hit the mark” (invenitur deficere).27 This never happens with a common principle (such as “do not
steal”). A proper principle, however, such as “return deposits to their
owner” can fail to hit the mark—but only in the sense that, when
it was originally formulated, the lawmaker wisely did not mention
explicitly the many situations that would make it not applicable. But
they are there implicitly in the law, since it is presupposed in law
that all the exceptions cannot be mentioned and, indeed, ought not
to be mentioned—although they are there “in the intention of the
lawmaker.”28 When the man who owns the weapon given to another
		Regarding the latter, see, for instance, ST I-II, q. 98, a. 5, corp.: “Respondeo
dicendum quod lex vetus manifestabat praecepta legis naturae, et superaddebat
quaedam propria praecepta.”
27
		The argument of ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, corp., is derived from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics [EN] 5.10; see especially 1137b13–24. The word corresponding
to deficere (or defectus) is hamartēma [EN 5.10.1137b 17], which signifies “an
act not hitting the mark.” That Thomas takes the idea of a “defect” in this
sense from this passage is apparent in the first objection in ST I-II, q. 100, a. 8,
where he refers to EN 5.10 and then says immediately, “Defectus autem legis
in aliquibus particularibus casibus est ratio dispensandi.” The Leonine edition
of ST gets the reference in ST I-II, q. 100, a. 8, obj. 1, wrong in referring to
EN 5.7.1134b18ff. See also Thomas’s commentary on EN 5.10, where he
uses repeatedly the language of defectus and also speaks of the intention of the
legislator (In V eth., lec. 16, nos. 1083–86).
28
		See, for instance, ST I-II, q. 100, a. 8, corp.: “I answer that, as stated above, in
relation to precepts a dispensation must be effected when there occurs some
particular case in which, if the letter of the law be observed, the intention of
the lawmaker is negated [contrariatur intentioni legislatoris].” The back reference
(“as stated above”) is to ST I-II, q. 97, a. 4, and q. 96, a. 6, both of which are
about the intention of the lawmaker. In the former, Thomas says that determination of the intention of the lawmaker ought not to be left to individuals
not in authority, except in cases of “evident and immediate danger [evidens et
subitum periculum]”; leaving this to the decision of “just anyone [cuiuslibet],” he
says, would itself be dangerous (periculosum). He also says that one in authority
who, of his mere will (pro sola voluntate), grants dispensation from a law is either
unfaithful or imprudent. He then cites Luke 12,42: “And the Lord said, ‘Who
do you think is the faithful [fidelis] and wise [prudens] dispenser [dispensator],
whom his lord sets over his household?’”
26

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in trust returns and (eyes darting back and forth and mumbling curses
about the local sovereign) asks for his weapon back, the other person
is not obliged to give it to him—because not returning that deposit is
already in the law (because it was in the intention of the lawmaker).
In such a case, the proper principle as formulated misses the mark.
The manner in which AL §304 represents the argument of ST I-II,
q. 94, a. 4, misses—we do not say deliberately distorts—this understanding. Recall that it quotes ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, in this manner:
“Although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we
descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter
defects. . . . In matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not
the same for all, as to matters of detail, but only as to the general
principles; and where there is the same rectitude in matters of detail,
it is not equally known to all. . . . The principle will be found to fail,
according as we descend further into detail.” This last phrase—“the
principle will be found to fail, according as we descend further into
detail”—because lifted from its original context, does not accurately
represent what Thomas is saying in that place. The Latin runs: “Et
hoc tanto magis invenitur deficere, quanto magis ad particularia
descenditur.” The word hoc refers not to a “general principle” but to
the proper principle mentioned just previously in ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4:
“Goods entrusted to another should be restored to their owner.”29
This assembly of bits of ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, would suggests that,
as soon as we leave general (or, speaking more properly, common)
principles, we enter into the realm of the indeterminate, where the
application of precepts depends upon “pastoral” or “practical discernment” (AL §304). Thomas’s position is rather that, also below the
level of common principles, there are principles that, given the appropriate circumstances, are quite determinate but that, in other (inappropriate) circumstances, must be applied (or not applied) according
to the mind of the legislator. The application of such precepts does
not depend upon pastoral or practical discernment, but upon a correct
understanding of the intention of the legislator. When the legislator
decrees that deposits must be returned, he, even by so doing, knows
		This error does not appear in the Spanish and Italian translations—which,
however, to much the same effect, fail to translate the word hoc: “Cuanto más
se desciende a lo particular, tanto más aumenta la indeterminación” / “E tanto
più aumenta l’indeterminazione quanto più si scende nel particolare.” (The
original language of AL §304 was Spanish, although much of the reworking
was done in Italian.)

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that there will be situations in which it would be irrational—and so
contrary to his intention—to apply the precept. A prudent interpreter
of the precept will immediately recognize such circumstances for
what they are.
Let us apply all this to the sorts of cases at issue in AL. If it is established that a “marriage” is not a true marriage, the proper principle
“individuals living in irregular and actively sexual relationships ought
not to receive communion” does not encounter a concrete situation
in which it does not apply. There is no need to invoke the “intention
of the lawmaker” clause, since the application of the law is apparent.
The ordinary means of establishing whether there is or is not a true
marriage is a marriage tribunal (including, if envisaged by procedural
law, also recourse to higher tribunals). In no way would such cases,
on the supposed grounds that universal principles do not reach into
“matters of detail,” be left to the “discernment” (read: the personal
conscience) of the parties involved—or even to the personal judgment of one designated as a “dispenser” of the law.30
It is possible that the ordinary canonical procedure is not sufficient
to establish that the original “marriage” was not a true marriage. As
is explained in the next subsection of the present essay, such cases,
which are extremely rare, are resolved not in a marriage tribunal (in
the external forum) but in the internal forum, employing the same
legal principles employed in the external forum. But neither would
such cases be like the situation of the madman asking for his weapon,
for the proper principle (“individuals living in irregular and actively
sexual relationships ought not to receive communion”) would still
hold—since the relationship established by the “second” (in fact, the
only true) marriage would not be irregular.
So, in neither of these two cases—where the couple are in an
adulterous union or where the union is a true marriage but verifiable
only in the internal forum—does Thomas Aquinas’s ST I-II, q. 94, a.
4, have any bearing; it ought not to have been cited where it is cited
in AL. Indeed, it ought never be cited at all in support of the notion
that, with respect to “general principles,” “the more we descend to
matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects.”31
		See ST I-II, q. 97, a. 4 (and the previous note).
		As mentioned above in note 22, for the Latin defectus, the Spanish and Italian
versions have, respectively, la indeterminación and l’indeterminazione. The English
“defects” is defensible as a translation, but la indeterminación and l’indeterminazione are not.

30
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The Internal and the External Fora
Any number of passages from AL would lead one to conclude that the
moral and ecclesial norm “individuals living in irregular and actively
sexual relationships ought not to receive communion” will fail to hold
in some cases of persons living in such relationships.The norm presumably would fail from time to time in the context of pastoral counseling
as a counselor probes further, for example, into the “matters of detail”
of the life and circumstances of the individual he finds himself counseling. What kinds of details would cause the norm to fail? As we saw in
the “Personal Discernment, Moral Ideals and Conscience” subsection,
AL suggests a detail such as the personal conviction that remaining in
the actively sexual relationship constitutes “what for now is the most
generous response which can be given to God.” And AL leaves room
for plenty of other such deep personal convictions, not least among
them the conviction that one’s prior marriage was invalid. The logic
of AL, therefore, leads one to conclude that, in light of such “matters
of detail,” the norm would not apply, thus leaving open a path to
communion.
Here we are compelled to draw attention to a feature of AL that,
though less than evident, is undeniably operative in the overall logic,
especially of the document’s chapter 8 (AL §§291–312). This has to
do with the underlying conception of internal and external fora at
work in the exhortation. Granted, the term “internal forum” appears
only once in the body of AL (§300),32 but the common issue (and the
problems) associated with the concept are present throughout chapter
8. We find there a tendency to pit the internal forum (supposedly
the domain of personal conscience) against the objective requirements of the moral order as known in the external forum and to play
the former off against the latter with a view to validating personal
choices that contradict the requirements of the objective moral and
ecclesial order.33
		“Conversation with the priest, in the internal forum, contributes to the
formation of a correct judgment on what hinders the possibility of a fuller
participation in the life of the Church and on what steps can foster it and
make it grow” [AL §300].
33
		As F. J. Urrutia puts it, “the difference between the exercise of power for the
internal forum and for the external forum lies neither in the matter ruled
on, nor in the nature of the act itself, but in the way in which the power is
exercised”—that is, privately or publicly (Francisco Javier Urrutia, “Internal
Forum–External Forum: The Criterion of Distinction,” in Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives, col. 1, ed. René Latourelle [Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press,
32

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The terms “internal forum” and “external forum” are legal terms.
A forum, according to Roman law, was a public place where official
judgments were discussed and issued, but in the Church, a forum
came to designate a “place” for judgments, possibly public or private.
Following the Council of Trent, the internal forum was commonly
equated with the “forum of conscience.”34 This usage found its
way into the 1917 Code of Canon Law (see canon 196), but logical
difficulties associated with this overly facile phrasing soon surfaced.
Judgments made in the external forum are binding in conscience.
It was also recognized that matters—the very same matters—dealt
with in the internal forum could move into the external forum.
An impediment to a previous marriage determined in the internal
forum might, for instance, have to be rendered public when other
facts become public that would otherwise suggest a couple were not
married validly. In the 1983 Code of Canon Law, canon 130, the
internal forum is no longer equated with the forum of conscience
and it is made apparent that one and the same power of jurisdiction
is exercised in both fora.35
Contrary to what is suggested by the underlying presuppositions
of AL, we must affirm that an individual’s personal convictions “in
conscience” about the invalidity of a prior marital bond or about his
or her most generous response that can be given to God at present,
while these should be heard and taken into consideration in the
1988], 644–45). See also Urrutia, “Foro Giuridico (Forum Iuridicum),” in
Nuovo Dizionario di Diritto Canonico, ed. Carlos Manuel Corral Salvador,
Gianfranco Ghirlanda, and Velasio De Paolis (Milan, IT: Edizioni Paoline,
1993), 536–39. In an article that appeared before the publication of the 1983
revised Code of Canon Law, Urrutia affirms: “Any concept of internal forum
that implies the fora are so distinct and separable that it is possible to work
out a solution in one of them without these solutions affecting the other is
unacceptable. In fact, anything that takes place in the external forum affects
the internal forum” (“The ‘Internal Forum Solution’—Some Comments,”
The Jurist 40 [1980]: 132).
34
		See Urrutia, “Foro Giuridico (Forum Iuridicum),” 536.
35
Can. 130 stipulates: “Of itself, the power of governance is exercised for the
external forum; sometimes, however, it is exercised for the internal forum
alone, so that the effects which its exercise is meant to have for the external
forum are not recognized there, except insofar as the law establishes it in
determined cases”; see Codex Iuris Canonici–Code of Canon Law (1983) [CIC],
Latin–English ed. (Washington, DC: Canon Law Society of America, 1998);
available also at, accessed November 6, 2017, http://www.vatican.va/archive/
ENG1104/_PF.HTM).

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context of pastoral counseling with gentleness and compassion, have,
as such, no bearing on the resolution of that individual’s situation
with regard to the reception of the Eucharist—an event governed, in
any case, by norms applicable in the external forum (see, for example,
canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law). Pastoral ministers, in their
capacity as pastoral ministers, are not free to apply the law of the
Church as they see fit. Rather, they are obliged to remain faithful to
true moral teaching as interpreted by the Church’s authentic magisterium and in conformity with current Church law—none of which
is at odds with a genuine pastoral concern for individuals.
It is possible—though admittedly an extreme rarity these days—
that the ordinary canonical procedure is not sufficient to prove that a
null marriage is canonically invalid. We have in mind, for instance,
the hypothetical situation in which a person might have occult
knowledge of some fact that would indicate with moral certainty
the invalidity of the prior union but, for any number of reasons, is
unable to prove that fact before a tribunal. If one party to a marriage,
null because of the impediment “vitiated consent,” refuses to make
a judicial deposition but the other party knows with moral certainty
that the other person’s consent was vitiated, a solution in the internal
forum is sometimes possible.36 Cases of this type in which recourse
to the internal forum is appropriate are extremely unlikely to occur
in places like the United States or in Western Europe. But such a
case could present itself in places where there are no real judicial
structures.
In its 1994 “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church
Concerning the Reception of Holy Communion by the Divorced
and Remarried Members of the Faithful,” the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith states:
In inviting pastors to distinguish carefully the various situations of the divorced and remarried, the exhortation Familiaris
Consortio recalls the case of those who are subjectively certain
in conscience that their previous marriage, irreparably broken,
had never been valid [Familiaris Consortio §84]. It must be
discerned with certainty whether, by way of the external forum
		Possible in such a situation would be a solution permitting conjugal relations
and the reception of communion. Even given, however, certainty in the internal forum that a previous union was not a valid marriage, the party (or parties)
involved could not go on to contract a valid marriage.

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established by the Church, objectively nullity would emerge.
The discipline of the Church, while it confirms the exclusive
competence of ecclesiastical tribunals with respect to the examination of the validity of the marriage of Catholics, also offers
new ways to demonstrate the nullity of a previous marriage, in
order to exclude as much as possible every divergence between
the truth verifiable in the judicial process and the objective
truth known by a correct conscience.37
Appended to the last quoted word is a note making reference to canons
1536, §2, and 1679, “concerning the probative force of the depositions
of the parties in such processes.” Both canons allow for the prudent
weighing of evidence other than judicial deposition.
In 1998, then-Cardinal Ratzinger commented upon the same
letter:
It is certainly not ruled out that errors may take place in marital
procedures. In some parts of the Church there are not yet ecclesiastical tribunals that work well. Sometimes the processes last
too long. In some cases they end with problematic judgments.
In principle, it does not seem out of the question that epikeia
could be applied in the “internal forum.’” The 1994 Letter
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [cited just
above] makes reference to this when it says that with the new
canonical avenues all discrepancies between the truth verifiable
in the case and the objective truth should be excluded “as much
as possible” (cf. Letter, no. 9).38
It bears repeating, however, that the determination of whether
there was or was not an earlier valid marriage would not depend on
the personal consciences as such of those involved. That is to say,
it would not depend on their subjective impressions regarding the
invalidity of the prior bond. Any discernment would be an application of the same principles used in the external forum. To be sure, just as
in the external forum, what would be requisite here would be the
CDF, “Reception of Holy Communion by the Divorced and Remarried
Members of the Faithful,” §9 (AAS 86 [1994]: 978). The Vatican’s on-line
translation is here altered.
38
		CDF, On the Pastoral Care of the Divorced and Remarried (Washington, DC:
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2012), 16–17.
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manifestation of, not a subjective impression, but a fact indicative of
invalidity.39
The Disregard of “General Principles”
In the final three sentences of AL §304, it is said of what are called
there “general principles” that they “can never be disregarded or
neglected” and that “in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations.” On the other hand, “what is part of a
practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be elevated to
the level of a rule.” The section concludes with a footnote referring us
to another text in Aquinas. The note reads: “In another text, referring
to the general knowledge of the rule and the particular knowledge of
practical discernment, Saint Thomas states that ‘if only one of the two is
present, it is preferable that it be the knowledge of the particular reality,
which is closer to the act.’” Again, it is appropriate to ask whether the
remark quoted offers support for the idea to which it is linked.
The quotation is taken from Aquinas’s commentary on a passage
in the sixth book of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics [EN] in which
Aristotle says that practical wisdom (in Aquinas, prudentia) includes
knowledge both of universal truths and of their particular applications.40 Aquinas is simply repeating the point that Aristotle makes, as
follows: “Now practical wisdom is concerned with action; therefore
one should have both forms of it, or the latter in preference to the
former” (EN 6.7.1141b21–22). Aristotle’s point (and Aquinas’s) is
		See Urrutia, “The ‘Internal Forum Solution,’” 138–39: “Admittedly in a
personal matter of this nature where such powerful emotions are likely to be
present, particularly in view of the hardships that led to the breakdown of the
first union and also because of the fact that another union is so far happily
successful, the most honest and sincere person may rather easily mistake
a doubt (particularly a reasonable doubt) for moral certitude. The person
could very easily, even with the best of intentions, be reinterpreting past facts
under the light of the past sorrowful experiences and the present happiness.
However, it should be carefully noted that what is to be required is not that
the person be certain about the validity or the invalidity of their first union.
. . . What is really needed is that they be certain about some fact which, if it
actually took place, would render the first union invalid.”
40
		The quotation in Thomas’s commentary is found at In VI eth., lec. 6., no.
1194. Thomas does not speak there of principia communia, but of universalia, so
continuing to speak of “the general knowledge of the rule” in this (the final)
note of AL §304 is misleading, as is the reference to “general principles” in
AL §304 itself. The passage in Aristotle is EN 6.7.1141b14–22; see also his
Metaphysics 1.1.981a12–b10.
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that, in practical matters, knowledge of particulars—if one has to opt
for one over the other—is more useful than knowledge of universal
truths, although it is even better to have both.41
In illustration of this point, Aristotle and Thomas speak of two
types of doctor. One—we might call him the “academic doctor”—
understands the theory of medicine; the other—let us call him the
“practical doctor”—is not well-versed in the theory but has long
experience in caring for people’s health. The academic doctor,
according to Thomas, knows that “light meats are easily digestible
and healthy” but does not know which meats are light; the practical
doctor knows that the flesh of fowls is light and healthy but knows
nothing about digestion.42
Drawing the analogy that AL §304 apparently wants to draw,
corresponding to the academic doctor would be those who have
not only studied the relevant canon law but also understand it: they
understand not only what it says but also why it says it. Corresponding to the practical doctor might be a judge on a local marriage tribunal who has not studied in great depth the relevant canon law—the
history of its formulation and the legal principles so involved—but,
since he has been a member of the tribunal for many years and has
considered many cases, has an accurate “sense” for what satisfies the
Church’s criteria, as set out in canon law, for a valid marriage.43 It
is quite possible for the academic judge to lack this sense. If asked
to adjudicate a particular case, he might not immediately know, for
instance, under which canon it falls. Applying what Aristotle and
Aquinas say about the two types of expertise, the judge with the vast
		The larger passage in Aquinas reads as follows: “Because therefore prudence is
active reason, it is suitable for the prudent man to have familiarity with both,
that is both the universals and the particulars; or, if it happens that he has only
one of the two, he ought rather to have the latter, that is, familiarity with the
particulars” (In VI eth., lec. 6, no. 1194).
42
		One of the two principal critical editions of EN, that by Ingram Bywater,
eliminates from the text the words in line 1141b20 that have Aristotle saying
that the “practical doctor” knows that the flesh of fowls is light; in other words,
he knows only that the flesh of fowls is healthy.
43
		CIC, Canon 1421, no. 3, says that tribunal judges are to be persons of good
repute who hold either a doctorate or a licentiate in canon law. In the chapter
following that in which he speaks of the academic and the practical doctors,
Aristotle speaks of the more “hands on” practical knowledge as perception:
EN 6.8.1142a27. On this issue, see Kevin L. Flannery, Action and Character
according to Aristotle: The Logic of the Moral Life (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 2013), 1–38.
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practical experience would be more useful in deciding the case.
None of this is to say, however, that a good judgment issued by
the “practical judge” could contradict the law as understood by the
academic judge. Indeed, if a particular judgment did contradict the
law as formulated, that would show that the practical judge’s sense
of the law was less accurate than desirable. Following Aristotle and
Aquinas, the best situation would be to have a judge with lengthy
experience on a tribunal as well as a good academic grasp of the law.
This judge’s particular judgments would be applications of what he
knows academically and could very well serve as models for those
with less academic backgrounds.44
So, again, we must conclude that the passage in Aquinas ought
never to have been cited in support of the ideas put forward in that
part of AL §304. Aquinas was cited there, of course, in order to
demonstrate that the ideas put forward are consistent with the tradition. That attempt has failed.
What then can we say about the passage in AL §304 to which the
note referring to Aquinas’s commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics
is appended? The first part, which says of “general principles” that
they “can never be disregarded or neglected” but also that “in their
formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations,” must be read with extreme caution, since it appears to open a
door to conclusions that cannot be squared with the Church’s teaching that some moral norms are exceptionless. Also the next bit—”At
the same time, it must be said that, precisely for that reason, what is
part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be
elevated to the level of a rule”—is problematic. As Aquinas explains
two articles before ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, it is at the level of “particular
circumstances”—that is to say, the level where our understanding
meets the natural inclinations—that “practical discernment” discovers the precepts of the natural law. Such discernment can indeed
		In the chapter immediately following the chapter in EN containing the
remarks about the academic and the practical doctors, Aristotle says that,
although it is true that the practical knowledge is more useful, in the practical sphere itself, there is still an expertise that is “architectonic.” This is the
practical wisdom (phronēsis/prudentia) as possessed by the lawmaker. This latter
is contrasted with the practical wisdom of the local official who is involved
in particular applications of the law, whom Aristotle compares to a manual
worker (a cheirotechnēs). In effect, the lawmaker is being compared to an architect, the local official to those who construct the building according to the
architect’s plan. In Aquinas, see In VI eth., lec. 7, nos. 1197–98).

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be “elevated to the level of a rule.” It is true that not every moral
perception is reasonably made into a rule; but it is also true that all
such moral perceptions are simply specifications of the “rules”—the
precepts—of the natural law, as residing in the “intention of the
lawmaker,” the author of all nature. If properly conducted, practical
discernment can never contradict the precepts of the natural law.
When, in the discernment of particular situations, it becomes
evident that the individual’s moral problem involves behavior that
can never be rightly ordered toward the love of God and neighbor
(such as is the case of being sexually involved with a person not one’s
spouse) and is therefore prohibited by an exceptionless moral norm,
sound pastoral discernment must, in all cases, take as point of departure the exceptionless moral norm that bears upon that individual’s
situation.
Despite the statement towards the end of AL §304 that general
principles “can never be disregarded,” that is precisely what the
argument of AL §304 encourages the reader in certain instances to
do—even where the moral norm in question is a specific and exceptionless moral norm. To the contrary, however, the Catechism of the
Catholic Church affirms: “It is . . . an error to judge the morality of
human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or
the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and
of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are
always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and
perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may
result from it” (§1756).
In a number of places, Thomas Aquinas too affirms the reality
of exceptionless moral norms. Frequently cited in this regard is ST
II-II, q. 33, a. 2, on fraternal correction. Thomas distinguishes there
precepts formulated in the negative that are applicable “always and
at all times” (semper et ad semper) from positively formulated precepts
directing us toward acts of virtue to be effected in the presence of
certain circumstances. Sinful acts such as are prohibited by the negative precepts of the moral law, affirms Aquinas, “are evil in themselves, and cannot become good, no matter how, or when, or where,
they are done.”45
45

“Actus autem peccatorum sunt secundum se mali, et nullo modo bene fieri
possunt, nec aliquo tempore aut loco.” Note, however, that Thomas also
acknowledges that positive precepts can sometimes be reformulated as nega-

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Kevin L. Flannery, S.J. & Thomas V. Berg

The Church’s perennial teaching on the reality of exceptionless
moral norms was reaffirmed by Pope St. John Paul II in the encyclical
Veritatis Splendor:
Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are
by their nature “incapable of being ordered” to God, because
they radically contradict the good of the person made in his
image. These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed “intrinsically evil” (intrinsece malum):
they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of
their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions
of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised
by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church
teaches that “there exist acts which per se and in themselves,
independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by
reason of their object” (§80).
Since the Apostolic age—and drawing upon the teaching of Jesus
Christ himself—the Church has consistently taught that sexual
intercourse with a person other than one’s spouse is always, without
exception, a gravely disordered behavior “incapable of being ordered
to God.” Sound pastoral discernment will embrace such true, exceptionless moral principles and endeavor to find a way, consistent with
God’s mercy and justice, of explaining their application even to
particular situations that call for personal asceticism and sacrifice.
Conclusion
A pastoral accompaniment, enlivened by genuine concern for the
human and spiritual good of divorced and remarried individuals,
requires leading them to a proper understanding of the nature of
tive precepts and negative precepts as positive (ST I-II, q. 100, a. 4, ad 2, and
q. 100, a. 7, ad 1). The characterization of some moral norms as exceptionless does not depend just upon their formulation as negative or positive, but
upon natural and eternal law themselves. The concept (and the assertion) of
exceptionless moral norms also occurs in Aristotle: EN 2.6.1107a8–17 (to
which passage Thomas refers in ST II-II, q. 33, a. 2). See Christopher Kaczor,
“Exceptionless Norms in Aristotle? Thomas Aquinas and the Twentieth-century Interpreters of the Nicomachean Ethics,” The Thomist 61 (1997): 33–62. See
also John Finnis, Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision and Truth (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 31–37.

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111

conscience. Pastoral ministers need to help them to discover that living
according to the truth of the Gospel and the Church’s teaching is
life-giving and possible with God’s grace. Even in those cases where
individuals are subjectively convinced that their previous marriage was
null, the ordinary means of determining the truth of such a conviction
is a canonical investigation in the external forum. In the extremely
rare case that such an investigation is not possible, the concepts and
criteria to be employed in the internal forum are precisely those
employed in the external forum. When, by these means, a marriage
is determined not to have been null and resumption of the still valid
marriage is impossible, as is also separation from the current partner,
no other pathway to the reception of the Eucharist exists other than
the confessional and the determination to live “as brother and sister.”
Even in such a case, it is essential for the couple to do all that they can
to avoid giving scandal.
Not admitting the divorced and remarried to communion remains
the sound pastoral practice of the Church. Nothing in Amoris Laetitia has changed that. Nor is such a practice at odds with a careful
discernment of the particular situations that the divorced and civilly
remarried find themselves in. On the contrary, the invitation to
refrain from communion, in the context of genuinely accompanying
a couple, can and should be the very fruit of sound pastoral discernment. By acting in this way:
The Church professes her own fidelity to Christ and to His
truth. At the same time she shows motherly concern for these
children of hers, especially those who, through no fault of their
own, have been abandoned by their legitimate partner. With
firm confidence she believes that those who have rejected the
Lord’s command and are still living in this state will be able
to obtain from God the grace of conversion and salvation,
provided that they have persevered in prayer, penance and
N&V
charity. (Familiaris Consortio §84)

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2018): 113–140

113

Married Sexuality within the Drama of Creation
and Redemption: Humanae Vitae through the Lens
of Gaudium et Spes1
Michael Dauphinais
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, Florida

The Catholic teachings on human sexuality promulgated in Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae are properly understood within the interpretive context of Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes.2
Specifically, Gaudium et Spes provides the broader theological and
cultural analysis that renders fully intelligible the teaching of Humanae
Vitae on artificial contraception. Living the Church’s teaching on
sexual morality depends upon the joy (gaudium) and the hope (spes)
offered by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This argument for interpretive
context, however, is challenged by those who argue for a discontinuity
between these two monumental documents.
In his 2013 The Development of Moral Theology: Five Strands, Charles
Curran articulates the now-common revisionist narrative that presents Humanae Vitae as a retrogressive step away from the supposed
progressive approach of Gaudium et Spes. He distinguishes the two
documents through two supposed dichotomies: pastoral versus didactic and personalist versus natural law. Curran follows John O’Malley
in describing the pastoral approach of Gaudium et Spes as belonging
		An earlier version of the article was presented at the conference “Mercy and
the Revolution: The Church’s Mission after the Sexual Revolution” at Benedictine College, Atchison, KS, April 8–9, 2016.
2
		English titles are respectively “On the Transmission of Human Life” and “The
Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.”
1

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Michael Dauphinais

the epideictic literary genre,3 and he contrasts this epideictic genre,
which seeks to inspire appreciation for an ideal, with the dialectic genre, which seeks to “prove a point” or “win an argument.”4
According to this questionable view, Gaudium et Spes seeks to inspire
in a pastoral tone whereas Humanae Vitae attempts simply to be right.
The implication is that the Church may offer inspiration but may not
prescribe norms for conduct.
Curran continues the contrast between the two documents in his
treatment of natural law. He affirms that Gaudium et Spes “does not
emphasize the use of the natural law” and uses the term only three
times.5 In contradistinction, Curran summarizes Humanae Vitae as
basing its teaching on the natural law: 6 “The pope repeated the
		Charles Curran, The Development of Moral Theology: Five Strands (Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013), 227, citing John O’Malley, What
Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2008), 43–52.
4
		Ibid., 228.
5
		When the term is used, however, it is used in a standard context and meaning:
“Contemplating this melancholy state of humanity, the council wishes, above
all things else, to recall the permanent binding force of universal natural law
and its all-embracing principles [iuris naturalis Gentium eiusque principiorum universalium]” (Gaudium et Spes [GS] §79). In the last section of GS, on
international cooperation, the Church exhorts herself to teach the natural law
to the world: “Since, in virtue of her mission received from God, the Church
preaches the Gospel to all men and dispenses the treasures of grace, she
contributes to the ensuring of peace everywhere on earth and to the placing of
the fraternal exchange between men on solid ground by imparting knowledge
of the divine and natural law [cognitionem scilicet legis divinae et naturalis]”
(GS §89). Moreover, the section from GS on marriage begins with a reference
to the nature of marriage: “Therefore, by presenting certain key points of
Church doctrine in a clearer light, this sacred synod wishes to offer guidance
and support to those Christians and other men who are trying to preserve the
holiness and to foster the natural dignity of the married state and its superlative
value [qui nativam status matrimonialis dignitatem eiusque eximium valorem
sacrum tueri et promovere conantur].” Both English and Latin versions are
taken from the official Vatican website: accessed November 7, 2017, http://
www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_
const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html (English); accessed November 7,
2017, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_lt.html (Latin).
6
		Joseph A. Selling reiterates this same alleged dichotomy in the second part of
the 1983 commentary on Familiaris Consortio, coedited with Jan Grootaers,
The 1980 Synod of Bishops “On the Role of the Family”: An Exposition of the
Event and an Analysis of its Texts (Leuven, BE: University Press, 1983). Selling
contrasts “conciliar theology” as expressed in “the teaching of GS on marriage
and family life” with a “pre-conciliar” view of marriage and the family
3

Humanae Vitae through the Lens of Gaudium et Spes

115

condemnation of artificial contraception based on natural law. . . .
Spouses must conform their activities to the very nature of marriage
and its acts.” 7 Ironically, Gaudium et Spes uses almost identical
language in referring to “the nature of the human person and his
acts” as the basis for the exclusion of artificial contraception.8 The
(338–40). The latter view is characterized by “the use of biological norms”
and “the marital bond as an ontological reality” and has as its foundation
what “had traditionally been called ‘natural law’” (339). He asserts that the
language of natural law, which had been “shunned by the Council itself,” was
then reexpressed in terms of “the plan of God or God’s will, . . . [which] rests
upon the (classicist) view of a world that is basically stable and predictable,”
and the idea that “society, culture, history, politics and economic are appended
considerations which never effectively alter the ontological scheme of things”
(339). According to Selling, Humanae Vitae (HV) fails to grasp the innovation
that allegedly was Gaudium et Spes: “This view of marriage and the family is
pre-conciliar. However, it did not pass away after the Council. It had a real
but subtle influence in HV” (340); “The encyclical [HV] itself, however, rather
than begin a first step in a post–Vatican II renewal as mentioned above, is
better seen as the real demise of pre-conciliar thinking” (190); “In the broad
lines of historical theology, then, HV could be said to represent the end of
an era” (191). Selling consistently opposes essentialist views of human nature
with personalist views of human relationships: “Taking HV as a starting point,
and the evident need to defend its teaching, essentialism became more and
more characteristic of official pronouncements in this area. . . . [When Karol
Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II in 1978,] there was an expectation that a
new pope would begin a new era and the evolution in conjugal and sexual
morality would move further. However, the thought of John Paul II appears
to be more favorable to the essentialist interpretation of the conciliar texts and
his own form of ‘personalism’ lies close to the pre-conciliar idea of human
nature” (193). In contrast, Thomas Joseph White, O.P., reads Gaudium et Spes
in continuity with Casti Connubii and Pope John Paul II’s later writings in
“Gaudium et Spes,” in The Reception of Vatican II, ed. Matthew L. Lamb and
Matthew Levering (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 113–43. He
writes: “Gaudium et Spes’s substantive teaching on the natural and sacramental
dimensions of marriage (nos. 47–52) followed after Pius XI’s famous encyclical
Casti Connubii (1930), building upon many of the premises of that document.
Both documents attempt to find a ‘middle way’ that affirms, on the one hand,
the traditional teaching that the generation and education of children is the
true, final end of marriage, and which, on the other hand, affirms the inherent
meaningfulness and value of the friendship of the spouses and their shared
conjugal life together” (129).
7
		Curran, The Development of Moral Theology, 98.
8
		GS, §51. Romanus Cessario, O.P., defends Gaudium et Spes as emphasizing
both nature and grace, both of which have unchanging principles, in The
Virtues, or the Examined Life (New York: Continuum, 2002), 7: “The Church
[in GS] affirms ‘that underlying all changes there are many things that do not

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Michael Dauphinais

problem, however, according to Curran is that Humanae Vitae bases
its teaching not only on natural law but also on a false interpretation of natural law. He summarizes the revisionist approach that
challenged the papal understanding of natural law in three areas:
“The problem of physicalism, the lack of historical consciousness,
and the emphasis on the teleology of the faculty with the failure to
give primary importance to the person and the person’s relationships.”9 The critique of physicalism is that “such an approach seems
to canonize what nature teaches human beings and all the animals
and does not allow human reason to interfere in these biological and
animal structures.”10 The second critique faults the document for
assuming stable, consistent understanding of human nature, which
instead “itself is historically developing and changing.”11 Curran
argues that “a more historically conscious methodology cannot
claim the same certitude for its proposals that a classicist approach
does.”12 Finally, Curran juxtaposes the teleology of the sexual
faculty with a personalist approach that allows one to interfere with
natural processes for the good of the relationship.13 Thus, according
change, and which have their ultimate foundation in Christ who is the same
yesterday, today, and forever’ [GS §10], whereas in another place the Council
itself ‘seeks to recall before all else the unchanging force of the natural law of
peoples and of its universal principles’ [GS §79]. Gaudium et Spes, then, gives
us reason to suppose that the Christian believer can respect two complementary sources for moral truth, namely: (1) the explicit revelation of Christ, and
(2) the created structures of human reality that the Christian tradition calls
natural law.”
9
		Curran, The Development of Moral Theology, 98.
10
		Ibid., 99. Here Curran is objecting to this tendency supposedly present both
in Aquinas and in Humanae Vitae.
11
		Ibid.
12
		Ibid., 100. See John Finnis, “Historical Consciousness and Theological Foundations,” in Religion and Public Reasons: Collected Essays Volume V, Oxford
Scholarship Online, 2011, in which Finnis argues that Bernard Lonergan’s
development of the idea of historical consciousness does not entail a fluid
account of human nature or an always-revisable character of moral and anthropological judgments (abstract at, accessed November 7, 2017, http://www.
oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199580095.001.0001/
acprof-9780199580095).
13
		Curran, The Development of Moral Theology, 100–101: “A personalist and more
relational understanding of the person would come to a different judgment
[than the Magisterium] on the morality of artificial contraception. For the
good of the person or of the relationship, one could interfere with the teleological ordering of the faculty. This same approach could be applied to other
sexual issues, such as homosexual acts.”

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117

to Curran, a proper understanding of natural law would eschew
reference to biological realities and focus instead on autonomous,
ever-developing reason.
Curran consolidates his criticism of Humanae Vitae by saying not
simply that it is wrong, but also that Humanae Vitae could not be
right, since human reason cannot achieve the certainty of definitive
moral prohibitions. He argues that moral truth cannot be taught
with the same level of certitude as speculative truth. He asserts that
“moral certitude by definition is a special type of certitude that
does not claim to be certain.”14 Since reason cannot reach definitive
conclusions, Curran claims, it was necessary for the Church to turn
to authority to come to a determination: “Humanae Vitae indicates
that the teaching authority of the Church and not reason was the ultimate factor in Pope Paul VI’s continued condemnation of artificial
contraception.”15 Curran asserts that there were no rationes in favor
of Humanae Vitae’s teaching, either from the natural law or from the
Gospel, when he writes, “in Humanae Vitae Pope Paul VI maintained
that the ultimate reason why he could not change the teaching was
because this would go against what the authoritative papal magiste		Ibid., 209. Curran continues, “the basic problem in the area of noninfallible
teaching is that the hierarchical magisterium has claimed too great a certitude
for these teachings” (210). In an earlier work, Curran denies the significance
of Christian revelation in moral theology and uses this as an argument for
legitimate dissent in moral matters: “The Catholic tradition in moral theology has insisted that its moral teaching is based primarily on natural law and
not primarily on faith or the Scripture. The natural law is understood to be
human reason reflecting on human nature. Even those teachings which have
some basis in Scripture (e.g., the indissolubility of marriage, homosexuality)
were also said to be based on natural law. This insistence on the rational nature
of Catholic moral teaching recognizes that such teaching can and should be
shared by all human beings of all faith and of no faith. Such teachings are thus
somewhat removed from the core of Catholic faith as such. The distance of
these teachings from the core of faith and the central realities of faith grounds
the possibility of legitimate dissent” (Faithful Dissent [Kansas City, MO: Sheed
and Ward, 1986], 61). John Grabowski offers a helpful rebuttal of this reductionistic review of Catholic moral theology in his Sex and Virtue: An Introduction to Catholic Sexual Ethics (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press, 2003). Addressing the difficult reception of the Church’s teaching on
marital sexuality, he writes, “moral theology must be reenvisioned in the light
of its most basic sources: Scripture, a treatment of the human person redeemed
by Christ, and an account of how the person grows in moral excellence to
achieve the happiness for which he or she was created” (22).
15
		Curran, The Development of Moral Theology, 263.
14

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Michael Dauphinais

rium had taught.”16 According to Curran, “the Catholic tradition has
recognized that the conclusions of natural law are not always certain
and true, but the papal teaching office does not explicitly recognize
this aspect of the tradition.”17 In Curran’s view, Pope Paul VI erred,
first by not listening to natural law understood as reason that should
have showed him contraception was permissible, and second by not
recognizing that natural law conclusions are inherently revisable.
In sum, Curran attempts to marginalize Humanae Vitae against the
background of his particular reading of Gaudium et Spes. The Church
should turn away from the prohibition of certain acts in favor of a
broader approach to human freedom that allows people to decide the
morality of their own actions.
Against this revisionist interpretation, the present article argues
that Humanae Vitae is properly read within a context of continuity
with Gaudium et Spes. In many ways, Humanae Vitae is helpfully
viewed as an extended footnote to Gaudium et Spes. As the latter was
addressing the “nobility of marriage and the family,” it reaffirmed
the Church’s prohibition of artificial birth control and, in a footnote,
established a commission to determine what exactly was involved
with the recently developed hormonal treatments.18 The footnote
referred to Pius XI’s Casti Connubii and other magisterial teachings in
support of the prohibition and created a new commission that would
lead in a few years to Humanae Vitae:
Certain questions which need further and more careful
investigation have been handed over, at the command of the
Supreme Pontiff, to a commission for the study of population,
family, and births, in order that, after it fulfills its function, the
Supreme Pontiff may pass judgment. With the doctrine of the
magisterium in this state, this holy synod does not intend to
propose immediately concrete solutions.19
		Ibid., 268. Note that Curran does not consider that authority may be a proper
ratio for certain conclusions. In so doing, he follows the classical Kantian
dichotomy between reason and authority expressed in Kant’s short work On
the Enlightenment of the Human Race.
17
		Ibid., 263–64.
18
		Gaudium et Spes reaffirmed the traditional prohibition of contraception:
“Relying on these principles, sons of the Church may not undertake methods
of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of
the Church in its unfolding of the divine law” (§51).
19
		GS, pt. II, ch. 1, note 14. The encyclical Humanae Vitae references back to the
same footnote: “The consciousness of the same responsibility induced Us to
16

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119

If Humanae Vitae arose from this footnote, then it stands to reason that
the fuller treatment of the Gospel in the modern world is presupposed
in the teaching of Humanae Vitae. Thus questions of atheism and theism
and of despair and hope form the proper context for considering the
nature of marriage and the marital act. Gaudium et Spes explicitly
affirms this connection: “All should be persuaded that human life and
the task of transmitting it are not realities bound up with this world
alone. Hence they cannot be measured or perceived only in terms of
it, but always have a bearing on the eternal destiny of men.”20 Here we
have what must first appear as a paradox: the Church presents seemingly rather quotidian human realities such as sex and procreation as
not fully intelligible outside of recourse to our eternal destiny.21
confirm and expand the commission set up by Our predecessor Pope John
XXIII, of happy memory, in March, 1963” (§5). English of HV is taken from
the Vatican site, accessed November 7, 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/
paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.
html. Latin of HV is taken from the Vatican site, accessed November 7, 2017,
http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/la/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_
enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html.
20
		GS §51.
21
		Yet, this paradox appears to be vindicated in light of the experience of sexual
morality and practices throughout the West over the past fifty years—and
undoubtedly in the many prior decades. Although the teaching of Humanae
Vitae is presented as part of the natural moral law, its adherents typically are
motivated by a fidelity to Christ and His Church. Humanae Vitae as an ecclesial
teaching shows forth the natural law in the same way that Aquinas taught that
the Decalogue shows forth the natural law. Although such teachings are in
accord with the natural moral law of human beings, their full intelligibility is
disclosed through the death and resurrection of Christ and the accompanying
great hope of eternal life. Those without such firm beliefs typically find the
teaching of the Church about contraception as at best archaic or at worst
harmful to the freedom of modern men, and especially modern women. Yet,
surely, questions about the morality of contraception within a fecund and
faithful marriage now seem quaint in light of the increasing separation of
sex from marriage, sex from children, and children from marriage. The Pew
Research Center has confirmed these societal trends in numerous studies. For
example, Gretchen Livingston writes, “Americans are delaying marriage, and
more may be foregoing the institution altogether. At the same time, the share
of children born outside of marriage now stands at 41%, up from just 5% in
1960” (“Fewer than Half of U.S. Kids Today Live in a ‘Traditional’ Family,”
Pew Research Center, FactTank: News in the Numbers, accessed November 7,
2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/22/less-than-half-ofu-s-kids-today-live-in-a-traditional-family/). Among mothers thirty years old
or younger, 50 percent of children are born out of wedlock.The entire issue of
children is increasingly foreign to the contemporary view of human sexuality

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Michael Dauphinais

What does human sexuality have to do with God or God with
sex? By placing Humanae Vitae within the context of Gaudium et Spes,
we see that understandings of sexuality, marriage, and procreation
are necessarily related to understandings about the existence, nature,
and goodness of God. Humanae Vitae affirms the same theme when
it states that questions about procreation “concern matters intimately
connected with the life and happiness of human beings.”22 Gaudium et
Spes addressed the issue of human sexuality and marriage within the
context of the broader issues of the challenge of modern atheism, the
correlative loss of human purpose, and the revelation of the mystery
of Christ. Including specific reference to the natural law does not
exclude the promise of the Gospel, as Humanae Vitae clearly affirms
its moral teaching on marriage as “based on the natural law as illuminated and enriched by divine Revelation.”23 There is the need to see
God—and human beings—as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.
In this revelation, God not only exists but also is merciful, and thus
human beings may have hope in an eschatological future. Humanae
Vitae participates in a larger message of joy (gaudium) and hope (spes).
This essay proceeds in four parts. First, we will consider carefully
Gaudium et Spes’s dialogical encounter with atheism and the revelation of hope and mercy. Second, we will present Gaudium et Spes’s
teaching on marriage and family within the context of the entire
constitution, especially the question of atheism and the modern
world. Third, we will situate Gaudium et Spes’s teaching on marriage
and family within the background of Lumen Gentium’s universal call
to holiness. Fourth, we will turn to an explicit consideration of the
teaching of Humanae Vitae in light of Gaudium et Spes.
Gaudium et Spes on Atheism and Mercy
Gaudium et Spes does not begin with the consideration simply of “the
joys and the hopes . . . of the men of this age,” but also of their “the
griefs and anxieties.”24 The document expresses a keen awareness of
and human flourishing. People hesitate to marry and hesitate to have children.
More accurately, they increasingly see marrying and procreating not merely
as steps before which one should hesitate, but rather purely elective lifestyle
options that may be picked up to suit particular desires.
22
		HV §1.
23
		HV §4.
24
		GS §1: “Gaudium et Spes, luctus et angor hominum huius temporis, pauperum praesertim et quorumvis afflictorum, gaudium sunt et Spes, luctus et
angor etiam Christi discipulorum.”

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the struggles humanity faces in the modern world.25 The advance of
human technology “often raises anxious questions about the current
trend of the world, . . . about the meaning of its individual and collective strivings.”26 In response to this anxiety, the document affirms the
natural inclination to self-preservation: “The human person deserves to
be preserved; human society deserves to be renewed.”27 This is already
somewhat startling, since it reveals that, in the modern world, many
people question the purpose of preserving the human person and
renewing society. This global and diffused concern becomes concretized in the question of having and raising the next generation of
persons. Ought persons to be brought into a world seemingly lacking
in meaning and purpose? Ought society to be renewed through the
having and educating of children?
Gaudium et Spes locates this anxiety in a loss of common values
that have often served to orient people through society and tradition. It states, “many of our contemporaries are kept from accurately
identifying permanent values and adjusting them properly to fresh
discoveries.”28 The dislocation from abiding values creates a situation in which human beings are now unknown to themselves. The
document poses this question on behalf of the modern world: “But
what is man? About himself he has expressed, and continues to
express, many divergent and even contradictory opinions. In these he
often exalts himself as the absolute measure of all things or debases
himself to the point of despair. The result is doubt and anxiety.”29
These contradictory extremes remain alive and well in contemporary
society and higher education in the West. On the one hand, there
is a kind of transhumanism in which human beings may define for
themselves what it means to be human, even so far as to define their
own gender and biological sex. On the other hand, there is a posthumanism that sees human beings as reduced to the ever-increasing
data from empirical psychology and neuroscience, so much so that
their conscious selves are merely an epiphenomenal consideration.30
		See Joseph Ratzinger’s comments on the document’s use of “the world” in
distinction from the Church in the epilogue of his Principles of Catholic Theology
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987).
26
		GS §3.
27
		Ibid.
28
		GS §4.
29
		GS §12.
30
		On this distinction between transhumanism and posthumanism, see Reinhard
Hütter, “Polytechnic Utiliversity: Putting the Universal Back in University,”
25

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Michael Dauphinais

Either way, human beings are severed from living traditions that bear
abiding values.
Gaudium et Spes offers a powerful insight into this dislocation
from permanent values that has become commonplace in the modern
world. The document refers to “a change in attitudes and in human
structures [that] frequently calls accepted values into question, especially among young people.”31 The language of “accepted values”
translates the Latin bona recepta. This expression might also be translated as “received goods,” or perhaps as the “inherent goods” or
“moral truths” handed down in a culture or a tradition and received
by the next generation.32 Goods and truths here are not exclusively
rules or customs for living well; they are also guiding principles for
what makes a life worth living. How this might apply to the case of
sex, marriage, and children is easily seen. The rules limiting sex to
within marriage and those limiting sex to openness to children reflect
the good of marriage and the good of children. Instead of a culture
of received goods and truths, Guadium et Spes diagnoses a culture of
rejected goods and truths corresponding to the loss of purpose and
meaning common in modern life.33
Gaudium et Spes diagnoses the contradictions of contemporary
understandings of the human person in light of the story of creation,
sin, and redemption. The doubt, anxiety, and confusion come
neither from our bodily nature in a kind of determinism nor from
First Things, November 2013, accessed November 7, 2017, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2013/11/polytechnic-utiliversity.
31
		GS §7: “Mutatio mentis et structurarum bona recepta frequenter in controversiam vocat, maxime apud iuvenes.” On the importance of bona recepta,
see Brian Benestad’s “Doctrinal Perspectives on the Church in the Modern
World,” in Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, ed. Matthew Lamb and Matthew
Levering (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 147–64.
32
		On the need for received traditions of moral inquiry, see Alasdair MacIntyre’s
After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). See also
Stanley Hauerwas, who writes: “America is the exemplification of what I call
the project of modernity. That project is the attempt to produce a people that
believes it should have no story except the story it chose when it had no story.
That is what Americans mean by freedom” (“How Real Is America’s Faith,”
The Guardian, October 16, 2010, accessed November 7, 2017, https://www.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/oct/16/faith-america-secular-britain).
33
		See C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, in which he diagnoses modern society
as having stepped outside the tradition of received moral values by rejecting
the doctrine of objective moral value.

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our rational nature as undirected and aimless. The human person,
instead, is a complex set of contradictions due to its present nature
as created in the image and likeness of God, on the one hand, and
as fallen through its rejection of God via sin, on the other. Gaudium
et Spes deploys the doctrine of the imago Dei, first in the ability to
know and love God and exercise care for creation and second in the
“interpersonal communion” between man and woman.34 Gaudium et
Spes nonetheless presents a strong sense of human sinfulness: “Often
refusing to acknowledge God as his beginning, man has disrupted
also his proper relationship to his own ultimate goal as well as his
whole relationship toward himself and others and all created things.
Therefore man is split within himself.”35 The internal division and
contradictions of human beings are not intrinsic to their nature but
are the result of sin. This will be extremely important for the later
understanding of teachings on sexuality presented by the Church as
part of the natural law. Moral norms are not intended to be in accord
with the present condition of human nature, but to be in accord with
human nature as it reaches its perfection.36 It is the very fact that
sexual norms do not accord with the typical state of human beings
that allows those norms to be transformative of human beings.37
In addition to diagnosing these inner contradictions as the result of
sin, Gaudium et Spes goes further and identifies a root sin as the failure to recognize God as the beginning and end of human life. This
is a challenge to the modern age, since issues of atheism and theism
are viewed as intellectual options without a moral import. The
recognition of God forms part of the moral fabric of human persons.
Gaudium et Spes examines the failure to recognize God, first in terms
of a broad philosophical theology, and second through a narrower
		GS §12. See also GS §24: “For He implied a certain likeness between the
union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God’s sons in truth and charity.”
35
		GS §13.
36
		See MacIntyre, After Virtue, ch. 5 (“Why the Enlightenment Project Had to
Fail”), for the threefold division of untutored human nature, human nature
having reached its telos and the moral laws and virtues that allow human nature
to reach its telos.
37
		See Romanus Cessario’s development of the theme of transformation of the
human person in his Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, 2nd ed. (South Bend,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009): “This transformation that takes
place in the believer makes sense only if Christian conversion entails an actual
movement from one point to another point” (24); “Christian life, in order to
maintain a vital activity, must allow for development” (25).
34

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Christological focus on the Incarnate Word. Having presented the
human being’s status as created in the image of God, it is not surprising that Gaudium et Spes subsequently turns its attention to the God
in whose image humans are made. Not only is our dignity rooted
in our “call to communion with God,” but truth requires that man
“freely acknowledges [the Creator’s] love and devotes himself to His
Creator.”38 Having set this stage, the document then declares that
“atheism must be accounted among the most serious problems of our
age.”39 What then is atheism?
Gaudium et Spes presents atheism as a complex and multifaceted
phenomenon.40 It especially emphasizes that what atheism means
depends upon which idea of God is being rejected and upon what
grounds. Thus, some of the blame for atheism rests on believers who,
through erroneous doctrine or a deficient life, “conceal rather than
reveal the authentic face of God and religion.”41 Despite the document’s sympathetic dialogical encounter, the reality remains that
atheism is an objective failure in the recognition of God that creates
a wound in society. A predominant form of modern atheism falsely
exalts human freedom while rejecting divine creation and divine
purpose in the world and in human nature.42 Human beings are now
the creators of history, and they no longer view themselves as living
in response to, and in accord with, God the Creator. The opposition
in Gaudium et Spes between unlimited human freedom, on the one
hand, and purpose within creation, on the other, will become central
to the understanding of marriage and sexuality presented in Humanae
Vitae. The Church counters that these false exaltations of unlimited
freedom in fact “contradict reason and the common experience of
humanity, and dethrone man from his native excellence.”43 Ironically,
		GS §19.
		Ibid.
40
		For illuminating treatments of atheism that situate theological and anti-theological claims within a broader cultural and philosophical milieu, see: Stephen
Bullivant, Faith and Unbelief (New York: Paulist Press, 2014); Josef Pieper, Faith
and Belief (New York: Pantheon Books, 1963), and Henri de Lubac, Drama of
Atheistic Humanism, trans. Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1995).
41
		GS §19.
42
		GS §20.
43
		GS §21. In a somewhat different tone, the Vatican I document Dei Filius (1870)
makes a similar point about the eventual harm done to the intelligibility of
human nature resulting from false exaltations of human reason and freedom:
“And after forsaking and rejecting the Christian religion, and denying the true
38
39

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by dethroning God, man dethrones himself: “The Church holds that
the recognition of God is in no way hostile to man’s dignity, since
this dignity is rooted and perfected in God.”44 Man’s dignity is not
presented as a mere static human attribute. Human dignity is something that may be perfected or, alternately, occluded or diminished.
Hence, human dignity has an intrinsic link to the end of human
beings in a final and higher life with God.
Once human dignity is seen as perfectible, the recognition of God
as Creator foretells the virtue of hope. The promise of eternal life
reveals a noble dimension of human existence that otherwise is hard
for the creature to discern. This is quite controversial in the wake
of Marx’s criticism of religion as “the opiate of the masses.” The
document reaffirms explicitly that such an eternal hope adds “fresh
incentives” to the carrying out of earthly tasks for the benefit of the
human person and society. The document then specifies its analysis
of the loss of hope as the true evil caused by the failure to offer due
recognition of God. Gaudium et Spes here focuses on the loss of hope
and the concomitant loss of joy: “When a divine substructure and
the hope of life eternal are wanting, man’s dignity is most grievously
lacerated, as current events often attest; the riddles of life and death,
of guilt and of grief go unsolved, with the frequent result that men
succumb to despair.”45 Both “divine substructure” and “hope of eternal life” are highlighted. Thus, atheism is not simply contrasted to a
naked theism of an impersonal God. Instead, atheism is presented as
a loss of theistic hope (or hopeful theism).46 The singularity of this
theistic hope or hopeful theism may be best understood when considered through the lens of the divine mercy.
The pivotal section addressing atheism and theism deliberately
closes with the revelation of God in Christ. The opposition between
atheism and despair, on one hand, and theism and hope, on the other,
God and His Christ, the minds of many have sunk into the abyss of Pantheism,
Materialism, and Atheism, until, denying rational nature itself, and every sound
rule of right, they labor to destroy the deepest foundations of human society”
(Introduction, §7, in The Decrees of the Vatican Council, ed. Vincent McNabb,
O.P. [London: Burns and Oates, 1907]).
44
		GS §21.
45
		Ibid.
46
		Note the comparison to Aquinas on explicit faith and Heb 11:6, in which he
comments that one must believe that God exists and that he will redeem or
reward those who seek him. Also, see Pope Benedict’s Spe Salvi (2007), which
addresses at length the loss of hope in the modern world.

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finds a resolution in the person of Jesus Christ. In preaching the
message of salvation, the Church seeks to restore “hope to those who
have already despaired of anything higher than their present lot.”47
This return to divine hope, however, requires the face of Jesus Christ.
Gaudium et Spes §22 states, “the truth is that only in the mystery of
the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.”48 This
beautiful statement on Christ concludes the section on the dialogical
encounter with atheism and, thus, is the final response to the failure
to recognize God as the source and end of human life. Christ not
only reveals God to man; he also reveals man to himself. Human
beings remain full of contradictions that lack full intelligibility apart
from the clear disclosure of the final goal of human history.49 Yet, this
return to Christ as the answer to human longings is not presented in
a fideistic manner that denies the natural law or the ability of natural
reason to know God as the Creator. Christ instead brings into clear
vision the naturally knowable dignity of human beings as made in
the image of God and then the higher reality of the perfection of that
image in the Incarnation. The document thus continues, “Christ, the
final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His
love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling
clear.”50 Here the document situates anthropology within Christology and Christology within the Trinitarian theology.51 The Trinitar		GS §21.
		GS §22. It has been observed by several authors that this last section on Christ
was quoted countless times by Pope St. John Paul II. See: Douglas Bushman,
“Pope John Paul II and the Christ-centered Anthropology of Gaudium et
Spes,” Catholic World Report, October 22, 2012, accessed November 7, 2017,
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2012/10/22/pope-john-paul-ii-andthe-christ-centered-anthropology-of/; George Weigel, Witness to Hope (New
York: HarperCollins, 1999).
49
		Cf. MacIntyre, After Virtue, ch. 5, for the necessity of the understanding of the
telos of human nature to the project of moral virtues and societal life. This
intelligibility has been occluded both by the rejection of divine revelation
and by the reduction of human reason. See also Pope Benedict XVI’s three
waves of de-Hellenization in his “Faith, Reason and the University Memories
and Reflections,” also commonly known as the “Regensburg Lecture,” given
September 12, 2006.
50
		GS §22.
51
		In an early commentary on Gaudium et Spes, Joseph Ratzinger highlights the
importance of this Christological conclusion as a key to the entire document:
“In accordance with the whole composition of the text, the chapter on the
dignity of man culminates in Christ who is now presented as the true answer
to the question of being human, and therefore to the question of true human47
48

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ian theology is rooted in a revelation of love and divine mercy as the
response to human confusion, sin, and death. The supreme calling
of human beings is seen most clearly by the reception of God the
Father’s love in Christ.
The document summarizes this anthropological and theological
truth in a memorable phrase: “Without the Creator the creature
would disappear.”52 Nonetheless, this expression is open to misunderstanding. This phrase emphasizes the interdependence between
the understanding of the intelligibility of the human person and its
purpose and the recognition of a God who created the universe. It is
incomplete, however, as a summary of the document’s teaching on
God and should be understood as preparing for the full revelation of
God in Jesus Christ. God’s mercy and love are fully revealed in Jesus
Christ, and only this revelation of love and mercy is able to respond
to the “griefs and anxieties” of human beings. The Creator alone is
inadequate. Human beings in their fallen and wounded state need
both the Creator and the revelation and redemption of the Incarnate
Word.
Gaudium et Spes’s Teaching on Marriage and Family
Having addressed the grand themes of the Church and the vocation
of the human person in its first part, Gaudium et Spes then addresses
problems of “special urgency” with a chapter entitled “Fostering the
Nobility of Marriage and the Family.” As we saw earlier, the document
highlights modern confusions and anxieties first and then presents the
answer in the light of Christ.
Gaudium et Spes identifies the problems associated with marriage
and sexuality in a direct and frank style. It reads: “The excellence
of this institution is not everywhere reflected with equal brilliance,
since polygamy, the plague of divorce, so-called free love, and other
disfigurements have an obscuring effect.”53 The problems of marriage
ism and of atheism. Article 22 thus returns to the starting-point, Article 12, and
presents Christ as the eschatological Adam to whom the first Adam already
pointed; as the true image of God which transforms man once more into
likeness to God. . . . The generally theologically reserved text of the Pastoral
Constitution here attains very lofty heights and points the way to theological
reflection in our present situation” (Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II,
ed. Herbert Vorgrimler, vol. 5, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern
World [New York: Herder and Herder, 1969], 159).
52
		GS §36.
53
		GS §47.

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and family, moreover, are revealed within marriage: “Married love
is too often profaned by excessive self-love, the worship of pleasure
and illicit practices against human generation.”54 Challenges from
outside of marriage are identified in the form of economic and
political challenges and concerns about over-population.55 In light
of these confusions from within and without, the Council seeks “to
offer guidance and support to those Christians and other men who
are trying to preserve the holiness and to foster the natural dignity
of the married state and its superlative value.”56 Note this dual aim
of Gaudium et Spes’s teaching on marriage and family: the first aim
defends the holiness of the marriage state; the second aim fosters its
natural dignity. Marriage forms part of the natural order, and thus
possesses an intelligibility in terms of its nature and its ends. Nonetheless, this natural order and resulting natural dignity receive their
full intelligibility only in light of the revelation of the married state
as a call to holiness.57
Gaudium et Spes subsequently presents its teaching on marriage and
family.58 Emphasizing the perfection of human dignity and freedom
		Ibid.
		Fifty years after Gaudium et Spes, some demographers worry more about
underpopulation than about the overpopulation concerns of the 1960’s. See,
for instance, the comments of scholars interviewed in the one-hour documentary film The Demographic Winter:The Decline of the Human Family by Rick
Stout.
56
		GS §47.
57
		Thomas Joseph White contrasts modern views of marriage with the view
from the Catholic tradition: “It is at this juncture that the tension between
the natural law teaching in the Pastoral Constitution and its Christocentric
doctrine of grace becomes most acutely felt and most interesting. For on the
one hand, there is a clear basis in sound philosophy and in traditional Catholic
theology for the affirmation that human marriage (traditionally conceived,
between one man and one woman for life, open to the bearing and raising
of children) is an institution of any civic polity, presupposed by the state as its
genuine basis. On the other hand, in a culture in which the traditional forms
of marriage are genuinely threatened and eroded existentially, can genuine
human marriage be even rightly understood, let along lived out effectively,
without the revelation and grace of Jesus Christ, and the explicit knowledge
of the mystery of the Church and the sacraments?” (“Gaudium et Spes,” in
Reception of Vatican II, 130).
58
		Matthew Levering has carefully gone through the document’s teaching on
marriage and family and shown how it is in continuity with the Church’s
prior teaching. See his “Pastoral Perspectives on the Church in the Modern
World,” in Lamb and Levering, Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition,165–86.
54
55

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when guided by moral norms and divine laws, the teaching begins
with the free gift of each person to the other: “The intimate partnership of married life and love has been established by the Creator
and qualified by His laws, and is rooted in the conjugal covenant of
irrevocable personal consent.”59 Although it is not explicitly stated,
the dignity of the human person allows human beings to consent
to something irrevocable. In other words, human beings are free to
bind themselves in the form of a promise or a vow. This means that
the biological order is taken up into the higher order of freedom.
The higher order, nonetheless, does not negate the lower order. And
so, the document continues to show that the nature of the marital
promise does indeed include the full psycho-somatic unity that is the
human person: “By their very nature, the institution of matrimony
itself and conjugal love are ordained for the procreation and education
of children, and find in them their ultimate crown.”60 The dignity of
marriage thus is shown to be the consensual and irrevocable promise
of conjugal love that culminates in the reception of new persons.
Persons freely bind themselves to each other in a manner that fully
includes their bodies so that new persons with new bodies (i.e., children) may result. In this manner, the personalist language employed
by Gaudium et Spes does not create a body–soul dualism in which sex
and marriage become voluntarist impositions separated from bodily
unity.61 Persons are not extrinsic to human nature, including body
and soul. In other words, two souls cannot have marital sex, nor can
two bodies. Married and conjugal love requires the unique dignity of
the human being as made in the image and likeness of God.
The document continues to correlate the dignity of married love
and the existence of norms. “As a mutual gift of two persons, this
		GS §48.
		Ibid., citing the Decretum pro Armenis, St. Augustine’s De bono coniugali; St.
Thomas, Summa Theologiae Suppl., q. 49, a. 3, ad 1; and Pius XI, Casti Connubii.
61
		The revisionist moral interpretation exaggerates the shift in language from
nature and ends to the personal gift of conjugal love. In a 1965 commentary,
Bernhard Häring writes: “The personalist viewpoint provides the decisive
criterion of the Council’s teaching on natural law. . . . Any false biological
views which overlook or underestimate the immense difference between
merely animal structure and human sexuality is most expressly excluded” (in
Vorgrimler, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 5, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 243). Haring’s reading presents a false
dichotomy between natural law as biological and natural law as personalist.
Natural law, instead, includes the full person, body and soul, and is open to the
illumination of revealed truth.
59
60

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intimate union and the good of children impose total fidelity on
the spouses and argue for an unbreakable oneness between them.”62
Here self-gift and children are presented as the basis for prescriptions
against adultery and divorce. Persons beget persons within marriage.
The mutual gift of husband and wife forms a unity with the gift
of children. They are one and the same gift, since the expression
of marital love in the marital act has as its natural consequence the
procreation of children. The dignity of human persons begets moral
norms; moral norms recognize persons.
The dignity of the human person finds expression in the roles
that it may freely embrace. Thus, each member of the laity is called
to embrace freely the role of husband or wife, with this role in turn
finding its completion in the role of father or mother. Gaudium et Spes
thus connects personalist love and biological parenthood: “Authentic
married love is caught up in the divine love and is governed and
enriched by Christ’s redeeming power and the saving activity of the
Church, so that this love may lead the spouses to God with powerful effect and may aid and strengthen them in the sublime office of
being a mother and a father.”63 Note that these roles are not created
by the person, but discovered and chosen. Christ’s redeeming love is
revealed as perfective of both the love between husband and wife and
that love’s fruition in being a father and a mother. Again, the dignity
of the human person in its body–soul unity ensures that the biological
roles of begetting offspring are raised to an office of motherhood and
fatherhood. As the document subsequently states, “the sexual characteristics of man and the human faculty of reproduction wonderfully
exceed the dispositions of the lower forms of life.”64 The institution of
marriage is the rational ordering of the natural teleologies of the body.
Within this context, the dignity of marriage cannot be separated
from its orientation to children. After highlighting the dignity of
“authentic conjugal love” and affirming its high regard for “true love
between husband and wife,” the document emphasizes married love’s
intrinsic natality.65 In describing such a reality, the document reads:
		GS §48, citing Pius XI, Casti Connubii.
		GS §48, citing Lumen Gentium [LG].The following sentence is “For this reason
Christian spouses have a special sacrament by which they are fortified and
receive a kind of consecration in the duties and dignities of their state” (citing
Pius XI, Casti Connubii).
64
		GS §51.
65
		See Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1958) for an extended discussion of natality in a philosophical context.
62
63

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“Hence, while not making the other purposes of matrimony of less
account, the true practice of conjugal love, and the whole meaning of
the family life which results from it, have this aim: that the couple be
ready with stout hearts to cooperate with the love of the Creator and
the Savior, who through them will enlarge and enrich his own family
day by day.”66 Additionally, “parents should regard as their proper
mission the task of transmitting human life and educating those to
whom it has been transmitted.”67 Gaudium et Spes links this natality
to the biblical accounts of creation by the reference to “it is not good
for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18) and to the command to “increase
and multiply” (Gen 1:28). In this pronatal ordering, “they [husbands
and wives] should realize that they are thereby cooperators with the
love of God the Creator, and are, so to speak, the interpreters of that
love.”68 Once this foundation of marital natality has been established,
then generosity with respect to new life becomes a reflection of God’s
generosity shown not only in creation but also in redemption.69 The
document links the call to procreation to both the Creator and to
Christ: “Trusting in divine Providence and refining the spirit of
sacrifice, married Christians glorify the Creator and strive toward
fulfillment in Christ when with a generous human and Christian
sense of responsibility they acquit themselves of the duty [munus] to
procreate.” 70 The language of “duty to procreate” is not wrong, but it
		GS §50.
		Ibid.: “Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the
begetting and educating of children”; and “Children are really the supreme
gift of marriage and contribute very substantially to the welfare of their
parents.”
68
		Ibid.
69
		See Fr. Anthony Percy, STD, who connects sexuality and parenthood in
Karol Wojtyła’s thought: “Wojtyła wrote of conscious parenthood in Love and
Responsibility (1960). ‘Love and parenthood,’ [Wojtyła] wrote, ‘must not therefore be separated from the other.Willingness for parenthood is an indispensable
condition of love’ (p. 236). This particular insight, that sexuality is intimately
tied up with parenthood, has gone unnoticed by many, at least as far as I am
aware,” (“Revealing the Truth of Married Love: An Introduction to a Rich,
New Translation of Humanae Vitae,” accessed November 7, 2017, https://
marriageresourcecentre.org/a-rich-new-translation-of-humanae-vitae/).
70
		GS §50: “They glorify the Creator and strive for perfection in Christ when
they carry out the duty [or office or gift] of procreation with a magnanimous,
humane, and Christian responsibility [Creatorem glorificant atque ad perfectionem in Christo contendunt, cum procreandi munere generosa, humana
atque christiana responsabilitate funguntur].”
66
67

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does not capture the fullness of the Latin munus or munere, which may
also be translated as office or gift.71 Thus, it is through the gift/duty/
office of procreation that married couples participate in the drama
of creation and redemption, whether or not this dispositive self-gift
results in actual procreation or is limited due to infertility.
It is in this pronatal context that Gaudium et Spes specifically
addresses the issue of birth control. The document reaffirms the
traditional prohibition of artificial birth control: “Relying on these
principles, sons of the Church may not undertake methods of birth
regulation which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of
the Church in its unfolding of the divine law.” 72 This is the aforementioned sentence that has the footnote that launched Humanae Vitae.73
The following sentences are illuminating in light of the whole of the
Gaudium et Spes. They read: “All should be persuaded that human
life and the task [munus] of transmitting it are not realities bound up
with this world alone. Hence, they cannot be measured or perceived
only in terms of it, but always have a bearing on the eternal destiny
of men.” 74 Sexuality and natality are fully intelligible only within a
transcendent horizon.
Gaudium et Spes thus places sexuality within the revelation of
God’s love. Just as the mystery of human beings in general is fully
disclosed only in the revelation of the Word Incarnate, so also is the
		See Janet Smith on the various meanings of the word munus, here translated
as “duty” but also signifying “office” and “gift” (“The Munus of Transmitting
Human Life: A New Approach to Humanae Vitae,” The Thomist 54, no. 3
[1990]: 385–427).
72
		GS §51.
73
		See Yves Congar, O.P., journal entry on 28 November 1965, in which he
writes: “The modi about marriage in schema XIII. Their intention was not
doctrinal but pastoral. The Pontifical Commission must be left with all its
liberty, without being subjected to pressure. But,TO BE SILENT about methods of birth control was to allow it to be understood that the position adopted
by Pius XI and Pius XII was being changed. IT MUST BE SAID THAT
NOTHING IS CHANGED. (I must say that this does not please me, nor
does it greatly set my mind at rest. . .)” (My Journal of the Council, trans. Mary
John Ronayne, O.P., and Mary Cecily, O.P., [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press,
2012], 859). Congar’s reporting of his displeasure confirms that the final text
of Gaudium et Spes §51 reaffirms the prior prohibition of artificial methods of
birth control.
74
		GS §51: “Omnibus vero compertum sit vitam hominum et munus eam transmittendi non ad hoc saeculum tantum restringi neque eo tantum commensurari et intelligi posse, sed ad aeternam hominum destinationem semper
respicere.”
71

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mystery of new human beings only thus fully disclosed. The fecundity of the marital act not only expresses the love of the couple but
also participates in God’s fecundity in his creation and redemption.
One way of viewing this reality is to say that it is wrong for a married
couple to frustrate knowingly the fertility of the marital act. Another
way of viewing this reality is that it is joyful and noble for a married
couple to cooperate intelligently with the fertility of the marital act.
Viewing Marriage through Lumen Gentium’s
Universal Call to Holiness75
As Gaudium et Spes is the pastoral constitution of the Church in the
modern world, it should be read through the lens of Lumen Gentium as
the dogmatic constitution of the Church.76 Thus, the teaching of Lumen
Gentium on the lay state and the married state form the context of the
particular teaching and pastoral responses as promulgated in Gaudium
et Spes.
Lumen Gentium places the universal call to holiness at the center
of its teaching about the mystery of Christ and his Church. After
reaffirming that the perfection of charity is seen “in a very special
way” in the practice of the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity,
and obedience, Lumen Gentium affirms that all of the faithful, both
religious and lay, are called to perfection: “The Lord Jesus, the divine
Teacher and Model of all perfection, preached holiness of life to each
and every one of His disciples of every condition.” 77 The universal
		Consider the understanding of the beatific vision as the final common good.
		See Benestad’s discussion in “Doctrinal Perspectives on the Church in the
Modern World,” in Lamb and Levering, Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition,
147–64.
77
		LG §40. On the connection between holiness and charity, see Benoit-Dominique de La Soujeole, “The Universal Call to Holiness,” in Lamb and Levering, Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, 37–54. He writes: “The commandment of
charity is not mere advice suggested for some; it is, instead, the most demanding
and the greatest commandment of the Christian life, and it is addressed to
all without distinction” (40). He continues to show that this holiness is not
a human achievement, but a divine gift, and thus necessarily connected to
the sacramental life of the Church: “In remaining faithfully connected to the
sources of grace—the Gospel and the authentic sacraments—holiness, as a
gift of God, begets holiness when accepted, as the human vocation, which is
progressively realized” (41). Latin of LG is taken from the Vatican site, accessed
November 7, 2017, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_
council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_lt.html. English
of LG is taken from the Vatican site, accessed November 7, 2017, http://
75
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call to holiness does two things: first, it opens the doors of holiness to
the lay faithful alongside that of the religious; second, it also reveals
that the standard for each will be the perfection of Christ.78 The
call is restated: “Thus it is evident to everyone, that all the faithful
of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the
Christian life and to the perfection of charity; by this holiness as such
a more human manner of living is promoted in this earthly society.” 79
Holiness is here described both as coming from each rank and area of
society and, yet, also as giving back to each rank and area of society.
It is presented not in other-worldly terms of escaping from earthly
society, but rather in terms of promoting a “more human manner of
living” in this society. Marriage and family are quintessential human
relationships that are called to become more human in light of their
call to perfection in Christ.
Through the universal call to holiness, marriage is elevated to
become simultaneously more divine and more human. Gaudium et
Spes cites Lumen Gentium in the explication of this twofold dimension of marriage and family. The citation runs as follows: “Authentic married love is caught up into divine love and is governed and
enriched by Christ’s redeeming power and the saving activity of the
Church, so that this love may lead the spouses to God with powerful
effect and may aid and strengthen them in the sublime office of being
a father or a mother.”80 This is a recurrent pattern: authentic human
love is caught up in Christ’s divine and saving love so that the divine
love may strengthen the recipients in the human realities of marriage
and parenthood. The very fleshly realities such as sex and children
www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_
const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html.
78
		Agostino Marchetto draws out how Lumen Gentium grounds the vocation of
the laity to holiness in their baptism in his Second Vatican Ecumenical Council: A
Counterpoint for the History of the Council, trans. Kenneth D.Whitehead (Eugene,
OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 450–51. Commenting on the definition of the
laity in LG §31, Marchetto writes here: “Notwithstanding this initial rather
negative and exclusionary definition of the laity, the intention of the Council
Fathers was eminently positive, as is seen in their general approach and in
what follows this definition, namely, that every baptized Christian participates
in the munera, or offices of Christ, and in that respect, are not differentiated
from those in the hierarchy, or religious life, nor do they participate at a more
limited level of Christian existence, although they are distinguished by being
engaged in ‘secular activities.’”
79
		LG §40.
80
		GS §48, citing LG §41.

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become part of this renewal of the married state in its Christ-like
and human dimensions. The path to holiness is outlined as follows:
“Furthermore, married couples and Christian parents should follow
their own proper path (to holiness) by faithful love. They should
sustain one another in grace throughout the entire length of their
lives. They should imbue their offspring, lovingly welcomed as God’s
gift, with Christian doctrine and the evangelical virtues.”81 Thus the
call to holiness is lived by married couples by faithful love, enduring
love, and fertile love, a love that is fertile both in children and in the
Christian life.
It is clear that Lumen Gentium presents marriage and family as
a means of transformation and perfection through several other
passages as it presents its teaching on the Church. As Lumen Gentium
presents the common priesthood of the faithful, it addresses specially
the sacrament of matrimony as a participation in that priesthood.82 It
states: “Christian spouses, in virtue of the sacrament of Matrimony,
whereby they signify and partake of the mystery of that unity and
fruitful love which exists between Christ and His Church, help each
other to attain to holiness in their married life and in the rearing and
education of their children.”83 Married life, with its essential natal
dimension, is a path of holiness. Immediately afterwards, the document speaks of the family as “the domestic Church.”84 This suggests
a recurrent theme: human realities become more fully human and
more fully intelligible in light of their being taken up into the supernatural worship of God.
Lumen Gentium develops the theme of transformation and perfection when it considers the role of the laity within the Church. The
laity are called to live in the Spirit: “For all their works, prayers and
apostolic endeavors, their ordinary married and family life, their daily
occupations, their physical and mental relaxation, if carried out in
the Spirit, and even the hardships of life, if patiently borne—all these

		LG §41.
		LG §10–11: “But the faithful, in virtue of their royal priesthood, join in the
offering of the Eucharist. They likewise exercise that priesthood in receiving
the sacraments, in prayer and thanksgiving, in the witness of a holy life, and by
self-denial and active charity. It is through the sacraments and the exercise of
the virtues that the sacred nature and organic structure of the priestly community is brought into operation.”
83
		LG §11, citing Eph 5:32.
84
LG §11.
81
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become ‘spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.’”85
Married and family life then are described as “an excellent school of
the lay apostolate.”86 Husbands and wives are called to witness to “the
faith and love of Christ to one another and to their children.”87 This
witness, however, is not merely internal. Instead, it aims at the world:
“The Christian family loudly proclaims both the present virtues of
the Kingdom of God and the hope of a blessed life to come.”88 Thus,
the Christian family has an eschatological dimension of hope that
forms a whole with its foundation of love and children.89
Gaudium et Spes emphasizes the need for purification on the path
to perfection. Marriage is not a sheer affirmation of the existential situation of the human person, but rather serves as a corrective
to many inclinations arising from our fallen nature. In particular,
married love in both its sensual and sentimental dimensions is very
much weakened by pride and lust. The attentiveness to the needs and
anxieties of the modern world does not lead to a Christianization of
this disordered state, but to a proclamation of mercy that the disorder
may find healing: “Hence if anyone wants to know how this unhappy
situation can be overcome, Christians will tell him that all human
activity, constantly imperiled by man’s pride and deranged self-love,
must be purified and perfected by the power of Christ’s Cross and
resurrection.”90 The very human activities of marriage and family life
are called to perfection through the purification of the Cross.
Humanae Vitae in Light of Gaudium et Spes and Lumen Gentium
Humanae Vitae places its teaching squarely within Gaudium et Spes
and explicitly affirms its formal and material continuity with the
earlier, conciliar document. Humanae Vitae claims this continuity
		LG §34, citing 1 Pet 2:5.
LG §35.
87
Ibid.
88
		Ibid. It then follows: “Thus by its example and its witness it accuses the world
of sin and enlightens those who seek the truth.”
89
		De La Soujeole draws out this eschatological dimension of Lumen Gentium,
which has often being overlooked: “The opening paragraph [of LG §48] is of
particular importance because it strongly situates the true nature of the Christian life on earth: Eternal life has already begun. . . . The theological virtue that
enables us to live this already-begun fullness of eternal life is hope. This virtue
is not well known; it risks being lived minimally or badly. Nonetheless, it
enables us to live in the Kingdom while we are still on earth” (“The Universal
Call to Holiness,” 44).
90
		GS §37.
85
86

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when it explains that it seeks to teach “with special reference to what
the Second Vatican Council taught with the highest authority in its
Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World of Today.”91 The
continuity, however, runs deeper than explicit references, since both
documents affirm the need for the twofold horizon of the natural and
the supernatural in addressing human sexuality. Humanae Vitae situates
natural law within the supernatural vocation of the human race. As the
document introduces the “question of human procreation,” it refers to
“the whole man and the whole mission to which he is called that must
be considered: both its natural, earthly aspects and its supernatural, eternal aspects.”92 As such, the marital act cannot be considered solely as the
action of husband and wife, but must also be considered as participating
in God’s creation and redemption.
Here are excerpts from Humanae Vitae that present Gaudium et
Spes’s integral view of the nobility of marriage and family:
As a consequence, husband and wife, through that mutual gift
of themselves, which is specific and exclusive to them alone,
develop that union of two persons in which they perfect one
another, cooperating with God in the generation and rearing
of new lives.93
Finally, this love is fecund. It is not confined wholly to the
loving interchange of husband and wife; it also contrives to go
beyond this to bring new life into being.94
		HV §7.
		Ibid.
93
		HV §8. Occasionally there is the criticism that HV’s focus on natural law
excludes the personalist focus of GS. In addition to being against the explicit
language of HV, the distinction expresses an imposed hermeneutic of discontinuity. See Pope Benedict XVI, 2005 Christmas Address to the Curia: “The
hermeneutic of discontinuity is countered by the hermeneutic of reform,
as it was presented first by Pope John XXIII in his Speech inaugurating the
Council on 11 October 1962 and later by Pope Paul VI in his Discourse for
the Council’s conclusion on 7 December 1965. Here I shall cite only John
XXIII’s well-known words, which unequivocally express this hermeneutic
when he says that the Council wishes ‘to transmit the doctrine, pure and
integral, without any attenuation or distortion’” (accessed November 7, 2017,
http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2005/december/
documents/hf_ben_xvi_spe_20051222_roman-curia.html).
94
		HV §9, which then continues with a quotation from GS §50: “Marriage
and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the procreation and
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Responsible parenthood, as we use the term here, has one
further essential aspect of paramount importance. It concerns
the objective moral order which was established by God, and
of which a right conscience is the true interpreter. . . . From
this it follows that they are not free to act as they choose in
the service of transmitting life, as if it were wholly up to them
to decide what is the right course to follow. On the contrary,
they are bound to ensure that what they do corresponds to the
will of God the Creator. The very nature of marriage and its
use makes His will clear, while the constant teaching of the
Church spells it out.95
These quotations reiterate three central themes of Gaudium et Spes: (1)
marriage is the mutual gift of two persons; (2) that mutual gift is inherently ordered to children; and (3) this order of man and woman first
to become husband and wife and then, second, to become father and
mother is fully intelligible as part of God’s creative design and order.96
After summarizing the view of marriage as outlined in Gaudium et
Spes, Humanae Vitae then states the focal point of the Catholic prohibition of contraception: “The Church, nevertheless, in urging men
to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act
must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of
human life.”97 In support of this teaching, there is first the argument
from the fecundity of married love itself: “And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of
marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination
to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called.”98
Another argument acknowledges God’s design: “But to experience
the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to
acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather
education of children. Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and
contribute in the highest degree to their parents’ welfare.”
95
		HV §10, citing GS §§50–51.
96
		In its conclusion, HV addresses the other central theme of GS with respect
to the revelation of mercy and the corresponding virtue of hope in midst of
contemporary atheism and despair.
97
		HV §11, citing Pius XI, Casti connubii, and Pius XII’s Address to Midwives.
98
		HV §12, which then continues: “We believe that our contemporaries are
particularly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human
reason.”

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the minister of the design established by the Creator.”99 The reference
to the Creator’s designs recalls the entire dialogical encounter with
atheism that formed a central part of the teaching of Gaudium et Spes.
Much of the modern world has in fact rejected that very Creator and
the Creator’s designs, so it is hardly surprising that the prohibition of
contraception has also found widespread rejection.
Humanae Vitae’s closing exhortation to Christian couples emphasizes the Christological and sacramental dimensions of married love
as a perfection of their baptismal vocation. Pope Paul VI writes, “In
humble obedience then to her voice, let Christian husbands and wives
be mindful of their vocation to the Christian life, a vocation which,
deriving from their Baptism, has been confirmed anew and made
more explicit by the Sacrament of Matrimony.”100 In this context,
Humanae Vitae cites both Gaudium et Spes and Lumen Gentium by
emphasizing the missionary character of all Christian life: “Thus
will they realize to the full their calling and bear witness as becomes
them, to Christ before the world.”101 The specific missionary witness
of the Christian family is to make “visible to men and women the
holiness and joy of the law which united inseparably their love for
one another and the cooperation they give to God’s love, God who
is the Author of human life.”102 Finally, this missionary dimension is
explicitly linked to the virtue of hope: “Nevertheless it is precisely
the hope of that life which, like a brightly burning torch, lights up
their journey, as, strong in spirit, they strive to live ‘sober, upright
and godly lives in this world,’ knowing for sure that ‘the form of this
world is passing away.’”103 The problems of this world and the inner
contradictions and anxieties of human beings cannot be resolved fully
within this world’s horizon. That is true both for socioeconomic
and political problems relating to population and poverty and for
marriage and family life. There must be that “hope of that life which
. . . lights up their journey.” The Church’s teachings on sexuality,
marriage, and family life receive their final intelligibility in light of
that hope.

		HV §13.
		HV §25, which continues: “For by this sacrament they are strengthened and,
one might almost say, consecrated to the faithful fulfillment of their duties.”
101
		HV §25, citing GS §48 and LG §35.
102
		HV §25.
103
		HV §25, citing Tit 2:12 and 1 Cor 7:31.
99

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Conclusion
This essay has argued that Humanae Vitae is properly read within the
context of Gaudium et Spes. Such an approach places the particular
prohibition of artificial methods of contraception within the broader
context of atheism and Christian theism, of despair and Christian hope,
and of the manner in which Christ reveals man to himself. The orders
of creation and redemption unveil the ordering of marriage to generous love and natality.
Situating Humanae Vitae within Gaudium et Spes likewise reveals
the inadequacies of the originally outlined approach taken by Curran
that places the two magisterial documents in opposition. Against
Curran’s interpretation, this essay has shown that the two documents
speak harmoniously of the natural law, of the mutual self-gift of
persons, of the twin horizons of earthly and supernatural existence,
and of the need for the acceptance of eschatological hope and divine
mercy to render fully intelligible the demands of fidelity to the
Church’s teaching on sexual morality. Curran’s revisionist approach
reduces Humanae Vitae’s teaching to an authoritative imposition
against the supposed freedom of the human person to define one’s
own self. There is thereby nothing in the order of the marital act
essentially ordered to fecundity. In contrast, when Humanae Vitae is
read within the proper teaching of Gaudium et Spes, human sexuality
is elevated to form part of the evangelical call for Christian married
couples to reflect the drama of creation and redemption.
N&V

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141

Thinking the Embodied Person with Karol Wojtyła
Angela Franz Franks
Saint John’s Seminary
Brighton, Massachusetts

Can the Body Be Thought?

In the epigraph to her book Bodies That Matter, gender
theorist Judith Butler quotes Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: “If one really
thinks about the body as such, there is no possible outline of the body
as such. There are thinkings of the systematicity of the body, there are
value codings of the body. The body, as such, cannot be thought, and I
certainly cannot approach it.”1
The answer of Spivak and Butler to this quandary is to retreat from
the field, abandoning the project of assigning meaning to the body.
Better to engage the body in other ways than to try to approximate
its concrete reality with bloodless abstractions that cannot come to
the heart of the matter. Butler is famous for arguing that the body is
not known, but performed in a complex activity of reiterating and
resisting the power discourses that precede and envelop the human
subject.2
		Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “In a Word,” interview with Ellen Rooney,
quoted from Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”
(New York: Routledge, 1993), 1.
2
		Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 2nd ed.
(New York: Routledge, 2006). See also Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and
Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” in
Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue-Ellen Case
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 270–82, and the
discussion in Sarah Salih, Judith Butler, Routledge Critical Thinkers (New York:
Routledge, 2002).
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The loss of the body from thought is mirrored by the loss of the
subject in recent philosophy, a development that witnesses to the
intrinsic connection between the body and the concrete person.
Hence the (in)famous “death of the subject” in postmodern thought.3
Nietzsche prophetically united the disparate threads of poststructuralist theory when he declared that “there is no ‘being’ behind
doing, effecting, becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely a fiction added to the
deed—the deed is everything.”4 Abandoning himself to the impersonal and uncertain mercies of the will to power, he bid a definitive
farewell to “that little changeling, the ‘subject.’”5
While no poststructuralist, John Paul II has a similar appreciation
for the difficulty of thinking the embodied person. He argues in
his theology of the body that the realization of Adam and Eve that
they were “naked” and “ashamed” (Gen 3:7) indicates a new and
“specific difficulty in sensing the human essentiality of one’s own
body” after the first sin.6 This difficulty arises out of a “fracture in the
human person’s interior,” in which the body is no longer subject to
the spiritual powers of knowing and loving. It is instead “a constant
hotbed of resistance against the spirit and threatens in some way man’s
unity as a person.” 7 Seen through this theological lens, the dualism
		For doubt on the materiality of the body, see Butler: “The regulatory norms
of ‘sex’ work in a performative fashion to constitute the materiality of bodies
and, more specifically, to materialize the body’s sex” (Bodies That Matter, 2).
The “death of the subject,” while pervasively seen, has been problematized
like every other theoretical attempt to order the chaos of postmodern thought.
E.g., see Jacques Derrida: “The subject is absolutely indispensable. I don’t
destroy the subject; I situate it” (discussion following “Structure, Sign, and
Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” in The Structuralist Controversy,
ed. Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato [Baltimore, MD.: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1972], 271).
4
		Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, no. 13, in Basic Writings of
Nietzsche, trans. and ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 2000),
481.
5
		Ibid.
6
		John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, trans. Michael Waldstein
(Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), 28:2, 243 (emphasis original; these
theology of the body audience talks will be abbreviated TOB, followed by the
audience-talk number and the paragraph number, and finally followed by the
page number in the definitive English translation by Michael Waldstein [thus,
this citation is paragraph 2 of talk 28, found on p. 243 of Waldstein]). As Thomas
Aquinas observes, sins of lust are not the worst sins, but they tend to be the
most enslaving (Summa theologiae [hereafter, ST] I-II, q. 73, a. 5, resp. and ad 2).
7
		TOB, 28:2–3, 244.
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of Rene Descartes—a lordly res cogitans over and against a rebellious res extensa—is a theoretical sedimentation of the experiences
of postlapsarian man.8 For John Paul II, however, unlike Butler and
Spivak, the body—and the person that the body expresses—can be
thought. This meaning is appropriated by the subject in a moment of
self-knowledge and self-possession (intellect and will). Rather than a
flight from thinking, a certain kind of thinking is necessary—what
Karol Wojtyła called “hot thinking” in a passage from his play The
Jeweler’s Shop.
There, he presents three couples: two older (one happy, one not)
and one younger. Of the young betrothed lovers, Christopher is
the son of the happy couple, while Monica comes from the broken
family. As Monica struggles with the immensity of love, Christopher
responds to her question “why do you love me?” by observing, “Man
must think differently, must leave cold deliberations—and in that ‘hot
thinking’ one question is important: Is it creative?”9
		The Discourse on Method argues that the human “I” is identical to “the soul
through which I am what I am,” a soul that “is entirely distinct from the body
and is even easier to know from the body.” His cogito leads him to this conclusion: since he can pretend that he has no body but cannot pretend that he
himself does not exist, he concludes, “I was a substance the whole essence or
nature of which is simply to think, and which, in order to exist, has no need
of any place nor depends on any material thing” (René Descartes, Discourse on
Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, part 4, Adam-Tannery no. 33, trans.
Donald A. Cress, 4th ed. [Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1998], 19). Elsewhere,
Descartes states simply, “Ego sum res cogitans” (Second Meditation, part 1, AT no.
27, at 65). Karol Wojtyła critiques this view as “a kind of hypostatization of
consciousness: consciousness becomes an independent subject of activity.” That
is, the person is replaced by consciousness and the body becomes one object
among others within res extensa: “This view lacks a sufficient basis for including
the body, the organism, within the structural whole of the person’s life and
activity”; see Karol Wojtyła, “Thomistic Personalism,” in Person and Community,
trans. Theresa Sandok, O.S.M., Catholic Thought from Lublin 4 (New York:
Peter Lang, 1993), 165–75, at 169. See also: the commentary by Kenneth L.
Schmitz in At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical Anthropology of
Karol Wojtyła/Pope John Paul II (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 132–37; the “Introduction” by Michael Waldstein in TOB,
1–128, at 34–44; and Jarosław Kupczak, O.P., Gift and Communion: John Paul II’s
Theology of the Body, trans. Agata Rottkamp, Justyna Pawlak, and Orest Pawlak
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 1–5 and 43–44.
9
		 Karol Wojtyła, The Jeweler’s Shop, act 3, scene 2, in Collected Plays and Writings
on Theater, trans. Boleslaw Taborski (Oakland: University of California Press,
1987), 313.
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Angela Franz Franks

What is this “hot thinking”? Since it arises in the context of a
drama and not a treatise, we do not get a systematic treatment of
it. Is it just an appealing metaphor tossed off by a playwright? Or
is there something more to be understood? I would like to propose
that Wojtyła’s philosophical and theological project is intimately
connected with elucidating this “hot thinking.” He wants to unpack
how embodied moral action forms and perfects the human personal
subject. This action, however, occurs within the context of meaning
(“thinking”). How is it that thought can adequately grapple with the
realities intrinsic to concrete human persons, such as the body? Is it
possible to think the body and particular human persons?
This essay will explore this question through analyzing the philosophical and theological works of Karol Wojtyła.10 In the next part,
I will develop more carefully the distinction that Wojtyła makes
between man as an individual and as a person in order to see the
challenge of thinking the latter. My third section will develop the
truly cognitive, as well as personal, nature of the experience of
concrete particulars, while the fourth will explore the importance
of the will in self-determination. These two sections will show how
Wojtyła develops his “hot thinking” as an activity engaging both of
man’s spiritual powers. The fifth part will then elucidate the role of
the body in this activity, because (as I will show) the knowledge of
particulars engages the whole person. I will conclude with a proposal
for further development of this theme.
Thinking the Person: Metaphysics in Motion
In Karol Wojtyła’s philosophical work, he returns frequently to the
question of the status of the concrete person, who is more than an
individual of the human species (although every human person is also
that). He examines this question through a composite methodology:
		Cf. the elegant treatment of the same theme by Adrian J. Reimers, “Truth
about the Human Person,” in Miguel Acosta and Adrian J. Reimers, Karol
Wojtyła’s Personalist Philosophy: Understanding Person & Act (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 67–83. Reimers resolves his
treatment of the question through an analysis of interpersonal relations and
the experience of entrusting oneself to another, relying especially on John Paul
II’s development of the theme of sexual union described as “knowledge” in
Gen 4:1 (exegeted in TOB, audiences 20–21). I will also treat the same theme
in my fifth section, below. My approach to the topic of this essay is somewhat
different: how can a person know not only another particular person but also
oneself and one’s body?

10

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first by taking a metaphysical snapshot, as it were, of the person, and
then by observing the person as an actor in history.11
In the first place, then, Wojtyła takes pains to affirm an ontology of
the person as substance, or suppositum, relying on Boethius’s definition

		This critique raises the important question of the actual compatibility of
Wojtyła’s method and project with Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, a
question that cannot be addressed adequately here. See one defense by
Wojtyła himself in “The Person: Subject and Community,” from Person and
Community, 219–61, at 228. Future references to this essay will be abbreviated
“Person: S&C.” For a summary of the Lublin School of Philosophy and its
focus on “the primacy of realistic metaphysics, the central role of philosophical
anthropology, and the affirmation of a rational approach to philosophy,” see
Stefan Swiezawski, “Introduction: Karol Wojtyla at the Catholic University of
Lublin,” in Person and Community, ix–xvi, at xiii. For Thomistically inclined
scholarly readings of the corpus of Wojtyła / John Paul II that are skeptical
about his methodology, see: John J. Conley, S.J., “Philosophy and Anti-Philosophy: The Ambiguous Legacy of John Paul II,” in Karol Wojtyla’s Philosophical
Legacy, ed. Nancy Mardas Billias, Agnes B. Curry, and George F. McLean,
Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change, series 1, vol. 35 (Washington,
DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2008), 33–43; and the
Polish critiques summarized in Jarosław Kupczak, O.P., Destined for Liberty:The
Human Person in the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyła / John Paul II (Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 76–80. Most contemporary
analyses argue that the philosopher-Pope integrates metaphysics and phenomenology successfully; see, among others, Adrian J. Reimers, “The Thomistic
Personalism of Karol Wojtyła (Pope John Paul II),” in Atti del IX congresso
tomistico internazionale, vol. 6, Storia del tomismo fonti e riflessi (Vatican City:
Pontificia Accademia di S. Tommaso, 1992), 364–69; Kenneth L. Schmitz, At
the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol Wojtyła/
Pope John Paul II (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
1993); Kupczak, Destined for Liberty and Gift and Communion, 1–29; George
F. McLean, O.M.I., “Karol Wojtyla’s Mutual Enrichment of the Philosophies
of Being and Consciousness,” in Mardas Billias, Curry, and McLean, Karol
Wojtyla’s Philosophical Legacy, 15–29; Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P., “Was the Polish
Pope a French Personalist? An Indication from Evangelium Vitae,” Nova et Vetera
(English) 13, no. 4 (Fall 2015): 1229–44; Acosta and Reimers, Karol Wojtyła’s
Personalist Philosophy; and Thomas Petri, O.P., Aquinas and the Theology of the
Body: The Thomistic Foundations of John Paul II’s Anthropology (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 2016). For a comparison of Wojtyła’s
method with that of Stein, Husserl, and Blondel, see Emmanuel Gabellieri,
“Phénoménologie et métaphysique: De Husserl, E. Stein, et Blondel à Karol
Wojtyła,” Recherches philosophiques 5 (2009), 59–74. Borrowing from Rodrigo
Guerra López, Acosta summarizes attempts to classify Wojtyła’s method under
three headings, in “Karol Wojtyła, Philosopher,” in Karol Wojtyła’s Personalist
Philosophy, 13–38, at 33–37.

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of the person as rationalis naturae individua substantia.12 The self cannot
be reduced to consciousness (although consciousness plays an important role in the dynamic formation of the self, as I will show later).13
Rather, as individua substantia, the person has a metaphysical stability
that endures through all conscious experiences and acts. If the person
is a substance, then he is a subject of his existence and activity.14 As
Rocco Buttiglione observes, “Being connected with reality through
the concept of person, [the substance] is not free to transform itself,
as happens in Hegel, into a hypostatized idea of which the empirical
subject is a mere carrier or exemplification.”15 Neither can it melt
away into discourses of power, as Butler and her fellow poststructuralists would have it.
		Cf. the title of no. 3 in part 1, ch. 2, of Karol Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn (rendered
in the English translation as The Acting Person): “The Synthesis of Operativity
and Subjectivity: Man as ‘Suppositum.’”The English translation of Osoba i Czyn
indefensibly translates this title as “The Synthesis of Efficacy and Subjectiveness: The Person as a Basic Ontological Structure”—a translation that neatly
obscures the metaphysical tradition with which Wojtyła is in dialogue. Other
(mis)translations of suppositum in the English translation include: “ontological
basis,” “structural foundation,” “ontological foundation,” “basic structure,” and
“structural support,” thereby replacing a single, precise term of art (suppositum)
with multiple ciphers. Others have pointed out the problems with the English
translation, beginning with the less-than-literal translation of the title (The Acting
Person, trans. Andrzej Potocki, ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Analecta Husserliana
series [Boston: D. Reidel, 1979). For a summary of the translation’s problems,
see Schmitz, At the Center, 58–60. In this essay, I will give my own translations
from the Italian translation of Osoba i Czyn (Persona e Atto, trans. Giuseppe
Girgenti and Patrycja Mikulska, in Karol Wojtyła, Metafisica della Persona:Tutte le
Opere Filosofiche e Saggi Integrativi, ed. Giovanni Reale and Tadeusz Styczeń, trans.
revised by Giuseppe Girgenti [Milan, IT: Bompiani, 2003/2014], 831–1216). In
the footnotes, I will provide the section numbers, followed by pagination both
for AP (the English translation) and P&A (the Italian translation).
13
		Wojtyła, “Person: S&C,” 227.
14
		Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, part 1, ch. 2, no. 3: “The subjectivity of man . . . has
found expression, in the philosophy developed according to the principles of
Aristotle and of Thomas Aquinas, in the concept of sup-positum. . . . The term
suppositum indicates being-subject or rather the subject-as-being. . . . Suppositum exists as a subject of existence and of action” (AP 72–73 / P&A 926). The
English translation, among other problems, omits the reference to Aristotle
and Thomas. See also Wojtyła, “Person: S&C,” 222, and especially 225: “The
suppositum humanum must somehow manifest itself as a human self: metaphysical subjectivity must manifest itself as personal subjectivity.”
15
		Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła:The Thought of the Man Who Became John Paul
II, trans. Paolo Guietti and Francesca Murphy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1987), 88.
12

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As a result, the metaphysics of the person provides an indispensable
anchor in a liquid world. Personalist anthropologies that reject this
metaphysical anchor eventually reduce the person to his experiences
or his attributes. In contrast, Wojtyła’s metaphysically grounded
anthropology is founded on a “fundamental thesis” (according to Jan
Galarowicz)—namely, “that the essence of human existence consists
in human interiority.”16 In his theology of the body, John Paul II
will explain this interiority using the biblical category of the “heart.”
A metaphysical understanding of the person provides the necessary
safeguard of human interiority and, hence, the identity of the self.
“Metaphysical subjectivity, or the suppositum, as the transphenomenal and therefore fundamental expression of the experience of the
human being, is also the guarantor of the identity of this human being
in existence and activity.”17 This metaphysical anchor enables the self
to subsist through all the tempests brewing on the sea of experience.18
And yet, the anchor is not the last word about the bark. What is
the reality that the suppositum anchors? That reality is, of course, the
person existing and acting in history, revealing and simultaneously
forming his “heart.”19 In order to focus on this reality, Wojtyła distinguishes between an individual suppositium and a personal subject.20
		Jan Galarowicz, Człowiek jest osobą. Podstawy antropologii filozoficznej Karola
Wojtyła (Krakόw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Papieskiej Akademii Teologicznej,
1994), 31, trans. and quoted in Kupczak, Destined for Liberty, 5.
17
		Wojtyła, “Person: S&C,” 223 (emphasis mine).
18
		See also Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter on Integral Human Development in
Charity and Truth Caritas in Veritate (2009), no. 68: “We all build our own ‘I’ on
the basis of a ‘self ’ which is given to us. Not only are other persons outside our
control, but each one of us is outside his or her own control. A person’s development is compromised, if he claims to be solely responsible for producing what he becomes”
(emphasis original, accessed October 30, 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/
benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html).
19
		The metaphor limps here in that it might imply that the lived reality of the
human person is somehow detachable from the metaphysical, that there is a
metaphysical “part” of the person, rather than the whole person (the whole
boat) itself being the suppositum, which is the subject of his activity. Such
are the limitations of spatial analogies. The directionality in the metaphor,
however, does at least include an echo of the “standing under” found in the
terms substance, hypostasis, and suppositum.
20
		See the treatment in Paul Kucharski, “What Does It Mean To Be ‘Incommunicable’ and Why Does It Matter?” in Thomas Aquinas: Teacher of Humanity,
Proceedings from the First Congress of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas
Aquinas Held In the United States, ed. John P. Hittinger and Daniel C.Wagner
16

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He notes: “By subjectivity here, I am no longer referring to just the
suppositum as the subject in the metaphysical sense; I am also referring
to everything that, based upon this suppositum, makes the human
being an individual, personal subject.” In other words, he is probing
the reality that a person, while being this particular suppositum, is not
merely a suppositum, but also a unique person who is not interchangeable with other persons. “Neither the concept of nature (as ‘rational’)
nor its individualization seems to capture that specific fullness that
echoes in the concept of person.”21
In his essay “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human
Being,” Wojtyła explores how we know man according to the Aristotelian epistemological tradition. We can come to know what man
is as a species within the natural world. Such concept formation
through the abstraction from sense experience is essential.22 And
yet, there remains a “basic irreducibility of the human being to the
natural world,” an irreducibility grounded in his “primordial uniqueness.” Each individual human being is also, in other words, a person,
not merely “reducible” to the natural world or to the species.23 Every
person, unlike the rest of creation, is simultaneously both a (potential) object of thought and also a subject.
Every person’s experience of himself confirms his own dual nature:
a person is always both subject and object to his own reflection. I
experience both myself and others as ones who both exist and act.
Yet, while I objectively experience others’ existence and acts, when
it comes to myself, I have both an objective experience of my exis(Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 58–67, in
which he addresses and critiques positions held by Linda Zagzebski and John
Crobsy but ultimately seems to support Wojtyła’s approach.
21
		Wojtyła, “Person: S&C,” 223. Cf. Karol Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, trans.
Grzegorz Ignatik (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2013), 3–7.
22
		Karol Wojtyła, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” from
Person and Community, 209–17, at 211.
23
		Wojtyła, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible,” 211 (italics original). See also
Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, part 1, ch. 2, no. 4, especially the section headed “Definition of the Subject (the Foundation) of Action through ‘Nature’” (rendered
more concisely but imprecisely in the English translation as “Nature Defines
the Subjective Basis of Acting”): “Nature does not signify a real and concrete
subject of being and acting; it is not identified with the suppositum. Nature
can only be an abstract subject (in abstracto). Thus, for example, in speaking of
human nature, we indicate something that really exists only in a concrete man
as suppositum and, beyond that, does not have real existence” (AP 76–77 / P&A
930–31).

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tence and acts and an experience of myself as a subject.24 This situation Wojtyła calls existence “between the suppositum and the human
self.”25 Aristotelian epistemology grasps the human being mainly as
an object, but what is “irreducible” about each person concerns her
subjectivity. Indeed, “subjectivity” serves as “a kind of synonym for the
irreducible in the human being.” An adequate grasp of this difference
requires a distinct methodology.26
In the Aristotelian tradition, Boethius’s definition of person emphasizes individuality—one of a species—rather than “the uniqueness of
the subjectivity.”27 Wojtyła contends: “Thus the Boethian definition
mainly marked out the ‘metaphysical terrain’—the dimension of
being—in which personal human subjectivity is realized, creating,
in a sense, a condition for ‘building upon’ this terrain on the basis of
experience. The category to which we must go in order to do this
‘building’ seems to be that of lived experience.”28 This is a distinctively
modern question, an answer to which will require new resources.29
		Wojtyła, “Person: S&C,” 221.
		The subheading in “Person: S&C,” 221.
26
		Wojtyła, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible,” 211. The subtlety of Wojtyła’s
thought on this score is understated by Buttiglione, who elides Wojtyła’s
treatment of man as a human being (an individual of the species) with man
as a person. Buttiglione maintains that Wojtyła’s position is that “we have no
positive knowledge of the human being, inasmuch as he or she is an image
of God.” Buttiglione then argues that Wojtyła allows knowledge of human
beings as part of the animal kingdom, but he disallows “any knowledge at a
more profound level, the level which is constitutive of humanity” (Buttiglione,
Karol Wojtyła, 52). Prescinding from the question of knowledge of man qua
imago Dei, I would argue that Wojtyła recognizes the ability to attain “positive
knowledge” of man qua species (“humanity”)—that is, qua rational animal—
through abstraction from experience. This knowledge is of more than the
animality of man, in that it includes knowledge of man’s rational nature. But
knowledge of a particular person qua particular is not a matter of abstraction.
Wojtyła makes these distinctions in “Subjectivity and the Irreducible” and
“Person: S&C,” as I will unfold here.
27
		Wojtyła, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible,” 212.
28
		Ibid. See the translator’s footnote 22 in Love and Responsibility, 302–3, in which
the difference between dόswiadczenie (“experience”) and przeżycie (“lived
experience”) is discussed. He notes: “The context of lived-experience for
Wojtyła is man’s experience of himself.When man experiences anything (even
an object outside of himself), man also experiences himself, and precisely this
experience (lived-experience) helps us understand man in himself. For this
reason, lived-experience is a truly personalistic category.”
29
		Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, who contends that anthropology is an area in
which the Church will need to develop new answers to the new modern
24
25

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The distinction he raises between the metaphysical and the experiential will reassert itself in his later theological writings, in which the
experiential is often called the “historical.”30 The distinction is not
meant to be a divide, because “the lived experience of our personal
subjectivity is simply the full actualization of all that is contained
virtually in our metaphysical subjectivity (suppositum humanum).”31
The defense for the distinction is not fully unpacked by Wojtyła,
but it might be expressed as the following: in creating human persons
within a world marked by space and time, God made them spiritual-material creatures who can act within history. They are, and they
act, and the acting follows upon the being. In fact, the explanatory
force of the theory of potency and act comes from being able to
account for this “dynamic character of reality.”32 As Thomas Petri
rightly observes, “The importance of the Aristotelian-Thomistic
ontological distinction between act and potency cannot be underestimated in Wojtyła’s reading of the Angelic Doctor,” and, I would
argue, in his entire corpus.33 Because the person is a dynamic entity,
capable of the movement from potency to act, he can also be fulfilled
through moral action.34
questions (Test Everything: Hold Fast to What is Good: An Interview with Angelo
Scola, trans. Maria Shrady [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989], 24).
30
		See the beginning of TOB, in the transition from audience 2 to 3 (between
2:2 and 3:1), when he turns from the Elohist creation account of Gen 1
(which he summarizes as “metaphysical”) to the Yahwist creation account of
Gen 2 (which gives a “subjective” and “psychological depth”) (TOB, 134–39).
He introduces the phrase “historical man” in 4:1. This distinction between
metaphysics and history depends upon the (conceptually prior) distinction
of individual and person. It should be noted that, in all of these distinctions,
Wojtyła does not mean to create dualisms, but rather interdependent binaries
that can be distinguished by the mind to fruitful effect.
31
		Wojtyła, “Person: S&C,” 232.
32
		Karol Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Separation of Experience from the Act
in Ethics in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Max Scheler,” in Person
and Community, 23–44, at 24. For an explication of operari sequitur esse, see
Wojtyła, “Person: S&C,” 223–25, and Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, part 1, ch. 2, no.
3 (AP 71–75 / P&A 924–29, although the English translation omits Wojtyła’s
quotations of operari sequitur esse). See also “Person: S&C,” 260n6: “In its basic
conception, the whole of The Acting Person is grounded on the premise that
operari sequitur esse: the act of personal existence has its direct consequences in
the activity of the person (i.e., in action). And so action, in turn is the basis for
disclosing and understanding the person.”
33
		Petri, Aquinas and the Theology of the Body, 107.
34
		Ibid., 108, citing Karol Wojtyła, “In Search of the Basis of Perfectionism in
Ethics,” in Person and Community, 45–56, at 47. See also Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn,

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The structures of both being and acting, including the mechanism of
the fulfillment of the person through moral action, can be described
in true concepts universally accessible to the mind. But the actuation
of the potency latent in these structures—any given person’s being
and acting—cannot be described in universal concepts.35 Wojtyła asks
if such a reliance on abstraction would not “in a sense leave out what
is most human, since the humanum expresses and realizes itself as the
personale.”36
The living-out of a concrete life—defined and formed by metaphysical realities, to be sure—is not the matter of science, as Aristotle himself saw.37 A life is metaphysics in motion. It is built out of
experience, lived out in history. As Hans Urs von Balthasar puts it,
“the best philosophy can do, as a human enterprise, is to arrive at the
horizon of an abstract absolute in the presence of which . . . the historical
is enacted.” As a result, Balthasar concludes, there can be no adequate
philosophy of history. 38 History is not a matter of abstract universals
playing themselves out inevitably. History is, rather, the temporal
matrix in which freedom acts: the freedom of God and the freedom
of man. This is because history, freedom, the personal—all these
are concrete realities and events that develop out of the foundation
of ontology but that put ontology into play. Precisely the concrete
particularity of these realities led Gotthold Lessing to despair of ever
crossing the “ditch” between accidental truths of history and necessary truths of reason. As Adrian Reimers puts the problem: “If truth
is the correspondence between intellect and thing (adequatio intellectus
et rei), what sense can we make of the correspondence between an
intellect and something that is not fixed, between the mind and a
part 1, ch. 2, no. 1, especially the section “The Potentia-Actus Conjunction as
the Conceptual Equivalent of Dynamism” (AP 63–64 / P&A 913–16).
35
		Hegel, or at least the left-Hegelian/Marxist camp, might beg to differ. I would
contend, however, that such philosophies demonstrate both the achievements
and the significant limitations of treating history in universal, philosophical-scientific categories.
36
		Wojtyła, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible,” 215.
37
		As did St. Thomas: “He knew very well that theology is not a science of
the necessary, in the way that Aristotle conceived it, but an organization of
contingent data received from revelation, upon which the theologian labors
to find the arrangement of God’s design” (J.-P. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas,
vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal, rev. ed. [Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 2005], 156).
38
		Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 4, The Action, trans. Graham Harrison
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 74 (emphasis in the original).

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being whose identity is based on his self-determination and his transcendence toward the good in general?”39
Wojtyła names these “unfixed,” concrete realities “irreducible”—
not reducible, that is, to a universal category. He argues: “The experience of the human being cannot be derived by way of cosmological
reduction; we must pause at the irreducible, at that which is unique
and unrepeatable in each human being, by virtue of which he or
she is not just a particular human being—an individual of a certain
species—but a personal subject.”40 Both the metaphysical-cosmological
and the personal-phenomenological methods are necessary to take
into account the full richness of the human person. Wojtyła recognizes the danger of subjectivism here, but he believes that “a firm
enough connection with the integral experience of the human being”
(an experience marked both by objectivity and subjectivity) will
“safeguard the authentic personal subjectivity of the human being in
the realistic interpretation of human existence.”41
Our experience of love, he contends, especially confirms the
importance of affirming and exploring the experience of subjectivity.
I do not come to know and fall in love with a mere individual of
the human species, fundamentally interchangeable with every other
individual.42 Nor is it sufficient to explain my preference for this
individual by pointing to a list of accidental qualities that mark off
this particular substance of a rational nature from all others. Lovers
Reimers, “Truth about the Human Person,” 77, quoting Thomas Aquinas, De
veritate q. 1, a. 1. Reimers (67n1) cites Wojtyła’s “The Problem of Experience
in Ethics,” in Person and Community, 116–17, and Fides et ratio, §§44 and 56, as
evidence of the latter’s agreement with the Thomistic axiom.
40
		Wojtyła, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible,” 214.
41
		Ibid.
42
		Cf. Karol Wojtyła, “Participation or Alienation?” in Person and Community,
197–207, at 200–201: “Thus the reality of the other does not result principally
from categorical knowledge, from humanity as the conceptualized essence
‘human being,’ but from an even richer lived experience, one in which I as
though transfer what is given to me as my own I beyond myself to one of the
others, who, as a result, appears primarily as a different I, another I, my neighbor.
. . . Participation in the humanity of other people, of others and neighbors, does
not arise primarily from an understanding of the essence ‘human being,’ which
is by nature general and does not bring us close enough to the human being
as a concrete I. Rather, participation arises from consciously becoming close
to another, a process that starts from the lived experience of one’s own I. . . .
The I-other relationship is not universal but always interhuman, unique and
unrepeatable in each and every instance.”
39

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who do this in trying to explain their choice of beloved to others
sense how inadequate the whole project is. When Christopher tells
Monica that “hot thinking” is required in order to explain why he
loves her (and not just her qualities), he is circling around this reality.
Christopher’s choice of Monica is not thought-less. But neither is
it explicable using the categories of abstraction. As Wojtyła puts it
elsewhere: “The value of the person himself must be clearly distinguished from the various values that inhere in the person.”43 On the
level of the personal and irreducible, another kind of thinking (“hot”
or experiential thinking) is required.
Wojtyła is at pains to affirm that such thinking is truly rational and
not an emotional or merely intuitive process (although these other
elements will be in play). In fact, while “lived experience essentially
defies reduction [to an abstraction],” he insists: “This does not mean,
however, that it eludes our knowledge; it only means that we must
arrive at the knowledge of it differently, namely, by a method or means of
analysis that merely reveals and discloses its essence.”44 This method is that
of phenomenology, which Wojtyła hopes will be able to grasp the
subjectivity of the human person objectively (for this is necessary for all
knowing), but not with the method of abstraction.45 Phenomenology
can supplement metaphysics, he believes, because it is a method that
is capable of grasping the concrete subject qua personal and not qua
“reducible to the world.”46
		Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 104.
		Wojtyła, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible,” 215 (italics original). One of his
opponents in this matter is Max Scheler, who reduces the ethical act to an
emotional (non-rational) experience of value, which governs an intentional
act. In this formulation, Scheler rejects a role for the reason in apprehending
a good in the object of the intentional act; the result is an “emotional intuitionism” in which ethics begins and ends with emotion, with little role to
be played by reason and will. See “The Problem of the Separation,” 23–44,
especially 34–35 and 37–38, and also the treatments in Kupczak, Destined for
Liberty, 6–24, Petri, Aquinas and the Theology of the Body, 98–105, and Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, 54–82.
45
		He clearly recognizes phenomenology’s limits, however, most lengthily in his
habilitation entitled (in translation) On the Possibility of Constructing a Christian
Ethics on the Basis of the System of Max Scheler, completed in 1959 (Ocena
możliwości zbudowania etyki chrześcijańskiej przy założeniach system Maksa Schelera
[Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukow KUL, 1959]). See also the previous footnote
for more on his analysis of Scheler, the phenomenologist with whom Wojtyła
has the most sustained engagement.
46
Wojtyła, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible,” 211. See also 216: “This personal
human subjectivity is a determinate reality: it is a reality when we strive to
43
44

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At this point, however, an objection might be justly raised: the
phenomenological method may be all very well for those still aiming
for a scientific (i.e., philosophical) knowledge of the person, but
such an approach is surely not what Christopher means when he, by
all accounts an ordinary love-besotted mortal and no philosopher,
proposes “hot thinking” to Monica. Such “hot thinking” is not so
much the philosophical examination of experience (as in phenomenology), but the lived-experience itself. I will develop below the
reasons why Wojtyła argues that lived-experience is not irrational. But first it is important to be clear that phenomenology is not
lived-experience; rather, it tries to describe and understand better
this experiential knowing. The phenomenological method justifies
the rationality of such “hot thinking” by analyzing it, but the “hot
thinking” itself does not necessarily analyze. In fact, such experiential
thinking is done by every person qua person, not by phenomenologists qua philosophers (although hopefully by them qua persons).
The next section will now explore more closely how experience is
rational in Wojtyła’s formulation of how to know concrete particulars
such as the body.
Experience as Rational and Personal
Wojtyła maintains that lived-experience is already rational, even if it is
not yet thematized or analyzed in phenomenology. He argues that, in
order to defend a “consistent realism,” we must recognize that experience is the first moment of cognition. Experience is not only sensory
but also intellectual. Hence, “one could say that human experience is
already always a kind of understanding.”47 The “Introduction” to his
understand it within the objective totality that goes by the name human being. . . .
The [phenomenologically inclined] thinker seeking the ultimate philosophical truth about the human being no longer moves in a ‘purely metaphysical
terrain,’ but finds elements in abundance testifying to both the materiality and
the spirituality of the human being, elements that bring both of these aspects
into sharper relief ” (italics original).
47
		Karol Wojtyła, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” in Person and
Community, 187–95, at 188. He prefaces this statement by asserting, “Experience is always the first and most basic stage of human cognition, and this experience, in keeping with the dual structure of the cognizing subject, contains
not only a sensory but also an intellectual element” (ibid.). On the rational
aspect of experience, see Adrian J. Reimers, “Reason and Faith in the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II,” in Acosta and Reimers, Karol Wojtyła’s
Personalist Philosophy, 41–102, especially 41–66.

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work Osoba i Czyn presents an extended defense of experience as
both rational and personal. Indeed, the inspiration for the text is (as the
first sentences tell us) the “need to demonstrate the objective aspect of
that great cognitive process that can be defined, at its origins, as the
experience of man.” Indeed, the experience man has of himself in all
of his experiences is the “richest” but also “perhaps the most complex”
experience.48
Wojtyła develops the importance of experience for knowing the
person elsewhere. In two essays, one from the mid-1950s and the
other from 1969, he defends the necessity of experience in ethics
against Kantian “apriorism” while recognizing that “experience” is
not an unambiguous term. It must be properly understood in order
to avoid a relativism or subjectivism that would eliminate moral
norms. The basis for genuine ethical experience is an experience
of causation, in which I experience myself both as subject and as
object.49 In ethical action, this experience is “the awareness that I am
performing a certain action, that I am its author,” and that awareness
“brings with it a sense of responsibility for the moral value of that
action.” A person has an experience of herself both as a person and
as a moral actor: “I then experience myself, my own person, as the
efficient cause of the moral good or evil in the action, and through
this I experience the moral good or evil of my own person.”50 This
		Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, introduction, no. 1, AP 1 / P&A 831. For treatments of
his methodology utilizing lived-experience, see: Kupczak, Destined for Liberty,
66–76; Miguel Acosta, “The Anthropology of Person and Act,” part III in
Acosta and Reimers, Karol Wojtyła’s Personalist Philosophy, 105–243, especially
125–31; Costantino Esposito, “L’esperienza dell’essere umano nel pensiero
di Karol Wojtyła, in La filosophia di Karol Wojtyła, Atti del Seminario di studi
dell’Università di Bari (Bologna, IT: CSEO, 1983), 17–43; Bernard Hubert,
“L’expérience de l’homme selon Personne et acte,” Recherches philosophiques 5
(2009): 95–112; and Deborah Savage, “The Centrality of Lived Experience
in Wojtyła’s Account of the Person,” Roczniki Filozoficzne 61, no. 4 (January
2013): 19–51.
49
		 See also Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, part 1, ch. 2, “An Analysis of the Operativity
Underlying the Dynamism of Man,” in AP 60–101 / P&A 909–62.
50
		Karol Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Separation,” 23. This article dates from the
1955–1957 edition of Roczniki Filozoficzne. This experience of the “I” as the
efficient cause of its own actions is the primordial ethical experience of the
will, an experience that both Kant and Scheler fail to understand, according
to Wojtyła. See Karol Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Will in the Analysis of the
Ethical Act,” in Person and Community, 3–22, and Kupczak, Destined for Liberty,
28–41.

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fundamental ethical experience is, according to Wojtyła, the basis for
any further philosophizing about human action, and he believes that
one of the significant weaknesses of Kantian ethical theory is that it
cannot account for this universal ethical experience.51
And yet, a mere description of ethical experience, à la sociology or
psychology, also fails to do justice to this fundamental ethical experience.52 In his 1969 article, “The Problem of Experience in Ethics,”
Wojtyła deepens his analysis of experience by discussing the engagement of the human person with a “phenomenon.” A “phenomenon”
is “something that ‘manifests itself ’ to us, something that affects our
cognitive powers in a perceptible way.”53 It initiates a cognitive and not
merely sensory response in us, contra empiricism and Kantianism.54
Experience of a phenomenon is the activation of cognition. And
experience is not a purely subjective activity: perception of an object
is “the very heart of experience.”55 Cognition through experience
always accesses a reality that transcends the mind’s own structures
(contra idealism). Otherwise the restlessness of the human mind in
the perpetual search for truth would not be intelligible.56 This is true
even when the object being experienced is oneself: “the subject, or
		“This whole lived experience [of an ‘I’ acting ethically] has a thoroughly
empirical character, and it is upon this empirical fact that ethics as a science
is based. The fact that ethics is a normative science can in no way obscure the
fact that it is deeply rooted in experience. And so ethics, a normative science,
is also an empirical science, because it is based on authentic ethical experience” (Karol Wojtyła, “The Problem of the Separation,” 23). Wojtyła’s analysis
in this article is as follows: in rejecting the “outward” directionality of the
will in genuine ethical action, Kant reduces all movement of the will toward
external goods to the simple motives of achieving pleasure and avoiding pain,
which can only infect the ethical act with preferences that might conflict
with duty. This Kantian position goes hand in hand with a rejection of the
Aristotelian-Thomistic analysis of the ethical act as a motion from potency to
act (hence the title’s reference to the separation of experience from the ethical
act). See “The Problem of Separation,” especially 23–32, 40–43.
52
		See Karol Wojtyła, “The Problem of Experience in Ethics,” in Person and
Community, 107–27, at 111.
53
		Ibid., 114.
54
Ibid., 115–17. He argues that “there can be no purely sensory experience
because we are not ‘purely sensory’ beings” (116).
55
		Ibid., 114.
56
		Ibid., 116: “Cognition must go beyond itself because it is realized not through
the truth of its own act (percipi) but through the truth of a transcendent
object—something that exists (esse) with a real and objective existence independently of the act of knowing.”
51

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self, can also be an object of this kind, since the subject also resides
beyond the concrete hinc [sic] et nunc cognitive act and is transcendent
in relation to it.”57 Indeed, the subject is always experienced along
with the objects of his experience: “man is always himself, and hence
also his experience of himself perdures in some way.”58
This excursus into the nature of lived human experience underscores its necessarily cognitive, and also personal-subjective, character. In this way, “hot thinking” can earn its stripes as genuine
thinking. Yet this creative thinking is not simply an activity of the
intellect, but rather the activity of the whole person conscious of and
determining himself in lived experience, as I will show next. In this
activity, the personal integration of sense powers with the spiritual
powers of reason and free will are “the principal means, so to speak,
whereby the human person is actualized; based on their activity, the
whole psychological and moral personality takes shape.”59 Upon this
basis arises the efficient activity of the person as ethical agent. In the
holistically integrated life of the compositum humanum, expressed especially in ethical action, the human person can assimilate the varied
truths of the world and respond ethically in a way that develops
himself as virtuous and as unique.
Willing the Person: Creative Self-Determination
In addition to self-knowledge, the full richness of personal experience
in “hot thinking” as opposed to “cold deliberation” also incorporates
what Wojtyła calls “self-determination.” Only the person is capable of
such self-determination, because only the person can determine her
ends for herself, whether well or badly.60 This activity engages both the
intellect (in judging what is true) and the will (in choosing the true as a
good). 61 From an ethical perspective, this self-determination forms the
		Ibid.
		Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, introduction, no. 1, AP 3 / P&A 831.
59
		Wojtyła, “Thomistic Personalism,” 168. He contends that St. Thomas is “well
aware” of the unity of all the faculties of the soul (the vegetative and animal,
as well as spiritual, powers) acting together for the development of the
human person in his integrity (ibid., 169). This unified vision is in contrast to
phenomenology, which, in its over-emphasis on intention, flattens the process
of human self-determination to the horizontal reduction of a will wanting
something of value (“Personal Structure,” 190–191, inter alia). Such a method
factors out the transcendent.
60
		Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 97.
61
		See Wojtyła, “Personal Structure,” 190: “The will is the person’s power of the
self-determination. . . . Self-determination takes place through acts of the will,
57
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moral status of the person in a dynamic process of ethical becoming.62
In other words, my act of will directs me toward a particular good, yet
in this will-act, “I myself not only determine this directing [toward a
particular value], but through it I simultaneously determine myself as
well.”63 I experience myself as the efficient cause of my acts, but in
acting, I do more: I am “in some sense the ‘creator of myself.’”64
This is what Wojtyła calls “the personal structure of self-determination.”65 Our will points not only outward to a “value” (as phenomenology emphasizes), but even more importantly, inward, toward
the subject-formation of oneself.66 “Through self-determination, the
human being becomes increasingly more of a someone in the ethical
sense, although in the ontological sense the human being is a ‘someone’ from the very beginning.”67 Every person is already a personal
through this central power of the human soul. And yet self-determination is
not identical with these acts in any of their forms, since it is a property of the
person as such.” In fact, he continues, even though the act of the will itself is an
accident, freedom pertains to the substance, i.e., the person: “it is the person’s
freedom, and not just the will’s freedom, although it is undeniably the person’s
freedom through the will.” See also Wojtyła, “Problem of the Will,” 14–15,
and Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, part 2, ch. 3, no. 4, “The Will as the Power of the
Self-Determination of the Person,” AP 120–124 / P&A 984–88, but also part
2, ch. 3, no. 7, “The ‘Truth about the Good’ as the Basis for the Decision and
for the Transcendence of the Person in the Act,” AP 135–39 / P&A 1003–9,
especially the section entitled “The Reference of the Will to the Truth as the
Intrinsic Principle of Decision.” For more on the importance of the intellect’s
posing true goods to the will, see Adrian Reimers, Truth about the Good: Moral
Norms in the Thought of John Paul II, Faith and Reason: Studies in Catholic
Theology and Philosophy (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria
University, 2011), and Petri, Aquinas and the Theology of the Body, 11–44. Savage
explicates the role of judgment in “The Centrality of Lived Experience,” 40.
62
		“Problem of the Will,” 20: “The person himself or herself becomes good or
bad depending on the act performed.” Thus, Wojtyła argues, ethical self-determination is not just a matter of experience (phenomenology) or of a priori
commands (Kant) or of values experienced emotionally (Scheler), but rather
concerns the reality of the actual being of the person transformed by the
ethical act. Here again can be seen the importance for Wojtyła of a robust
understanding of potency and act.
63
		Wojtyła, “Personal Structure,” 191.
64
		Ibid. (emphasis mine). See also no. 1.4, “Efficacy and Self-Determination,” in
“Person: S&C,” 228–32.
65
		As in the title of the essay “Personal Structure”; see also the title of Wojtyła,
Osoba i Czyn, part 2, ch. 3, AP 105–48 / P&A 965–1019.
66
		Wojtyła, “Personal Structure,” 192.
67
		Ibid.

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subject (a suppositum), ontologically. Yet without the full experiential
development of the person, the ontological structure will be like
a skeleton, lacking the full enfleshed reality that the depth of the
personal demands. Self-determination is not only a structural reality;
it is also a moral demand.
“The dynamic structure of self-determination,” Wojtyła argues,
“reveals to me that I am given to myself and assigned to myself.” 68 This
language is typical of Wojtyła / John Paul II: the human person,
including one’s body, is not a brute fact, but rather a task that the
Creator assigns to each one.69 I both am and become. I experience
myself “as having continually to ‘achieve’ this dynamic structure
of my self [sic], a structure that is given to me as self-possession and
self-governance.” 70 The fundamental elements of the personal structure of self-determination, then, are self-possession and self-mastery,
both forming a dynamism within the person.71
“Self-possession” refers to the reality of the human person
expressed in the medieval phrase persona est sui iuris. A consequence
of this self-possession is the ability to govern oneself, which is more
than mere “self-control.” Self-mastery is the ability, proper only to
persons, to direct one’s whole life and person in freedom with a
power over oneself that is incommunicable.72 Wojtyła observes that
the structures of both self-possession and self-mastery are dual, with
an active and a passive pole. I both possess myself and allow myself to
be possessed by myself. I both govern myself and allow myself to be
governed by myself. The more active pole Wojtyła names “transcendence,” but he notes that it is possible only based on the corresponding passive pole, which he calls “integration.” 73 The self-creation of
		Wojtyła, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible,” 214 (emphasis mine).
		From the theology of the body audience talks: “The Creator has assigned the
body to man as a task, the body in its masculinity and femininity,” and “in masculinity and femininity he assigned to him in some way his own humanity as a
task” (TOB, 59:2, 360; emphasis original).
70
		Wojtyła, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible,” 214.
71
		For this point, see Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, part 2, ch. 3, no. 1, AP 105–8 / P&A
965–68. “Self-mastery” is rendered as “self-governance” in some translations
of the works of Wojtyła / John Paul II.
72
		Ibid., AP 107 / P&A 967–68.
73
		 Summarized in Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, part 3, ch. 5, no. 1, AP 189–90 / P&A
1071–73. For the importance of the teaching of Gaudium et spes to Wojtyła’s
understanding of transcendence (and vice versa), see Pierre D’Ornellas, “Mgr
Wojtyła et la constitution Gaudium et Spes: L’Église et la personne humaine,”
Recherches Philosophiques 5 (2009): 185–204.
68
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healthy persons requires integration, as we will see.74
First, however, in order to grasp Wojtyła’s emphasis on the personal
structure of self-determination, it is important to understand that
he means to counter the reduction of this process to the development of consciousness (a tendency common in modern thought).75
Consciousness is an important aspect of the person’s development: in
consciousness, the objects of cognition are “interiorized” and made
“a content of the subject’s lived experience.” 76 Consciousness, in
other words, enables what is known through the cognitive structures
of lived experience to become not merely objective, but also personal.
Yet consciousness does not replace the cognitive act itself.
Consciousness is, rather, an important element within the cognitive
act: it “endows this objectified content [gained through abstraction] with the subjective dimension proper to the human being as a
subject.” 77 In his mature thought, John Paul II will call the conscious
encounter of the subject with an object of cognition “meaning.” He
will state in his theology of the body: “‘Meaning’ is born in consciousness with the rereading of the (ontological) truth of the object. Through
this rereading, the (ontological) truth enters, so to speak, into the
cognitive, that is, subjective and psychological dimension.” 78 Meaning is an essential part of the process of self-determination, one that
transcends mere consciousness and also mere conceptualization. “The
‘meaning’ of the body is not something merely conceptual. . . . it is
a way of living the body. It is the measure that the inner man—that is, the
heart, to which Christ appeals in the Sermon on the Mount—applies
to the human body with regard to its masculinity or femininity.”
This understanding of “meaning” is not relativistic: “That ‘meaning’
does not modify the reality in itself, that is, that which the human
body is and does not cease to be in the sexuality that belongs to it,
		Cf. Adrian J. Reimers, An Analysis of the Concepts of Self-Fulfillment and Self-Realization in the Thought of Karol Wojtyła, Pope John Paul II, Problems in Contemporary Philosophy, vol. 48 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001), 109–41.
75
		For more on consciousness in Wojtyła, see his “Thomistic Personalism”
critiquing the modern hypostasization of consciousness (as noted in footnote 4) and Osoba i Czyn, part 1, ch. 1, “Person and Act under the Aspect of
Consciousness,” AP 25–59 / P&A 861–908, as well as: Kupczak, Destined for
Liberty, 95–112; Miguel Acosta, “Consciousness and Operativity,” in Acosta
and Reimers, Karol Wojtyła’s Personalist Philosophy, 125–54; and Savage, “The
Centrality of Lived Experience,” 33–36.
76
		Wojtyła, “Person: S&C,” 227.
77
		Ibid.
78
		TOB, 119:1, 620.
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independently of the states of our consciousness and our experiences.” He argues: “[Meaning that is] purely objective [is] in some
sense ‘a-historical.’ In the present analysis, we, by contrast, take into
account man’s historicity.” 79
In other words, consciousness enables objective truth to enter into
the history of a subject—or, even, to enter into history through a
subject—but consciousness replaces neither the object of knowing
nor the subject who is conscious. “Consciousness alone is not yet that
I, but it conditions the full manifestation of the I through action.”80
Consciousness is necessary to the development of the personal “I,”
but it is at the service of it, not isomorphic with it: “Consciousness
is not an autonomous subject,” as one of Wojtyla’s subheadings puts
it.81 Here again we can see that the phenomenological method (which
tends to privilege consciousness) must be supplemented with an ontological approach.
Self-determination, then, transcends the development of consciousness. This self-development is the fundamental ethical task and
remains the primordial goal of all ethical action. True personal integration will involve the entire psychosomatic reality of the person. In
this complex, the spiritual soul as the form of the body functions as
the integrating principle, an integration that the body both expresses
and furthers.82 “The person, including the body, is completely
entrusted to himself, and it is in the unity of body and soul that the
person is the subject of his own moral acts.”83
Yet self-determination is not automatic: it can fail, when self-possession and/or self-governance fail. Wojtyła singles out not the active
(“transcendence”) but the passive pole (“integration”) as the moment
		TOB, 31:5, 255–56.
		Wojtyła, “Participation or Alienation?” 198 (italics original).
81
		Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, part 1, ch. 1, no. 2, AP 33 / P&A 872.
82
		Ibid., part 3, ch. 5, no. 5, AP 203–6 / P&A 1089–94.
83
		Pope John Paul II, Encyclical on the Splendor of the Truth Veritatis splendor
(1993), §48, accessed October 30, 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/johnpaul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.
html. When Wojtyła lays out his “personalistic norm,” a variation on the
Kantian maxim that persons can never be treated as means but only as ends,
he modifies the original to emphasize that rational personhood means that
the person can and must always freely choose her own ends. See Wojtyła, Love
and Responsibility, 11. For the original, see Immanuel Kant, “Grundlegung zur
Metaphysik der Sitten,” in Kritik der praktischen Vernunft und andere kritische
Schriften (Cologne: Könemann, 1995), 226. On the distinction between Kant
and Wojtyła, see Ignatik’s footnote 18, in Love and Responsibility, 302.
79
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at which self-determination eludes the subject due to the disintegration
of the powers of self-possession and self-mastery. Such a person, he
writes, is an “I” marked as “insubordinable” and “unpossessible.”84
The result of such interior turmoil comes out in the other pole, the
transcendent: namely, in the defective action of the person. “The
defects and insufficiencies of integration become . . . the defects and
insufficiencies of transcendence.”85
How does this appear concretely? The lack of self-integration
makes the person less a subject, leaving him susceptible to being used
as an object. Man is created to be a “subject who decides his own
actions in the light of the integral truth about himself, inasmuch as it
is the original or fundamental truth of authentically human experiences.” John Paul II recognized that contemporary ideologies reduce
man to “an object of certain technologies” rather “than the responsible subject of his own action.”86 The disintegrated subject can mount
little resistance. The contemporary ethos, privileging a shallow self
fulfilled in passive consumerism, produces human objects rather
than responsible subjects. Yet: “We are by nature creators, not just
consumers. We are creators because we think.”87 Successful self-determination is the “integration” of the spiritual powers of the person
fully utilizing somatic reactivity and affectivity in pursuit of the
true good in action (transcendence). “Disintegration” occurs when
the soma and/or affectivity run the show, asserting control over the
intellectual and volitional powers, instead of the other way around.88
The self-mastery that integration requires is something other than
the mere suppression of unruly bodily and emotional forces. Drawing
on §21 of Humanae Vitae, in which Pope Paul VI speaks of the need
of “self-mastery,” John Paul II argues that such self-mastery is not
the lack of freedom, but rather the fruit of freedom. In speaking of
prelapsarian man, he states that “self-mastery is indispensable in order
for man to be able to ‘give himself,’ in order for him to become a gift, in
		Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, part 3, ch. 5, no. 2, AP 194 / P&A 1078. He goes on
to apologize for the neologisms.
85
		Ibid.
86
		TOB, 23:3, 220.
87
		Wojtyła, “Thomistic Personalism,” 171.
88
		This sentence presents a very condensed summary of the explanation of
psychic integration and affectivity given in Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, part 3, ch.
6, “Integration and the Psyche,” in AP 220–258 / P&A, 1112–63. See also the
extensive discussion of sensuality and affectivity in Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 84–100.
84

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order for him (referring to the words of the Council) to be able to
‘find himself fully’ through ‘a sincere gift of self ’ (Gaudium et Spes,
24:3).”89 Only the truly free person is able to give herself away.
The paradigm of titanic control of the soul over the body, on the
other hand, elides too easily into the modern, Cartesian project of
the domination of nature by disembodied rationality.90 In speaking
of the ethical challenge of contraception, John Paul II argues: “The
problem lies in maintaining the adequate relationship between that
which is defined as ‘domination . . . of the forces of nature’ (HV 2) and
‘self-mastery’ (HV 21), which is indispensable for the human person.
Contemporary man shows the tendency of transferring the methods
proper to the first sphere to those of the second.”91 Modernity privileges birth-control, while Christianity calls for self-control, understood as self-mastery: an alternative between a technocratic solution
to a bodily problem versus a spiritual solution to a spiritual problem.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it: “The ‘mastery’ over
the world that God offered man from the beginning was realized
above all within man himself: mastery of self ” (§377).92 Likewise, in
the theology of the body, John Paul II insists: “This extension of
the sphere of the means of ‘the domination of the forces of nature’
threatens the human person for whom the method of ‘self-mastery’
is and remains specific.”93 The person is not made to be controlled
externally by technology, but rather to develop himself in integrated
self-mastery.
Such personal integration in the task of self-mastery leads to the
freedom of self-gift. “Man is person precisely because he is master of himself
and has dominion over himself. Indeed, inasmuch as he is master over
himself he can ‘give himself ’ to another.”94 Wojtyła / John Paul II
does not connect self-mastery to self-gift arbitrarily: here again are
		TOB, 15:2, 186 (emphasis and reference in the original).
		See Waldstein, “Introduction,” in which he singles out not only Descartes but
also Francis Bacon and Kant as contributors to a modern technocratic mindset
(TOB, 34–63).
91
		TOB, 123:1, 630–31 (reference and emphasis original).
92
		 See also Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, part 2, ch. 3, no. 1, AP 106–7 / P&A 966–67, in
which Wojtyła argues that self-governance refers to a greater reality of personal
integration, rather than mere “control.” See also Angela Franks, “The Joy of
Giving: Church Teaching on Contraception,” in Women, Sex, and the Church,
ed. Erika Bachiochi (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2010).
93
		TOB, 123:1, 631.
94
		TOB, 123:5, 632 (emphasis original).
89
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the two poles of self-determination, integration and transcendence.
When a person achieves a certain level of integration, he can express
himself in transcendence, which in turn furthers his integration. “In
this way, somehow on the basis of this suppositum, the human self
gradually both discloses itself and constitutes itself—and it discloses
itself also by constituting itself.”95 There exists, in other words, a
virtuous circle between being and acting.
We may seem to be far afield from the original question of how
to think the body, but the issue of integration returns us directly to
the main topic. At this point in the argument, Wojtyła introduces
the somatic constitution of the person: “The body determines the
concreteness of man.”96 In so doing, the body is the expression of
the person. In fact, “the personal structure of self-governance and
self-possession traverses . . . the body and is expressed in it,” because
the actions that both reveal and develop this personal structure are
expressed in the body.97
In this way, Wojtyła provides an account for the dynamic role of
the body in the formation of the self. His account also highlights
why thinking the body is so challenging. Concreteness is essential
to the body’s very definition: its function within the personal structure of man is to express the particularity that each person is. As the
drumbeat of the theology of the body repeats: “The body expresses
the person.”98 This means that the body will always be not only
the object of thought but an intrinsic element of the subject who is
thinking. Whatever can be said about the person in this regard (i.e.,
regarding his concreteness) must be said of the body as well: we
come to understand such concrete realities through “cold” abstractive
thinking but also, and even more, through the “hot,” creative thinking that engages our entire psychosomatic and experiential reality in
self-determination.
Discovering the Self through Embodied Experience
The lived-experience that leads to self-knowledge and self-determination does not happen in an isolated, warm room. Wojtyła observes,
“The dynamic structure of self-determination reveals to me that I am
		Wojtyła, “Person: S&C,” 225.
		Wojtyła, Osoba i Czyn, part 3, ch. 5, no. 5, AP 203 / P&A 1090.
97
		Ibid., AP 204–5 / P&A 1091–92.
98
		Inter alia, TOB, 7:2, 154. See Kupczak, Gift and Communion, 41–92, for a careful tracing of this theme throughout the theology of the body.
95
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given to myself and assigned to myself.”99 I am given to myself as a
task for myself. But the gift-task of the personal subject can be developed only in relationship with others, a phenomenon Wojtyła names
“participation” in the pre-pontifical writings.100 He later returns to the
theme of knowledge through “participation” (embodied experience
with other embodied persons), particularly in his theology of the body
papal audience talks.
He argues there that the lived experience of one’s own embodiment forms, and is formed by, the subject, as has already been
explored above. Hence, it is not mere primitivism that leads the
author of the Yahwist creation account to describe the conjugal act
between Adam and Eve as “knowledge,” as in Genesis 4:1 (“Adam
knew Eve his wife, who conceived . . . .”).101 The masculinity or
femininity of a particular person “defines his personal identity and
concreteness”—that is, as a person and not simply an individual.102
John Paul II observes that “‘knowledge’ in the biblical sense signifies
that man’s ‘biological’ determination, on the part of his body and his
sex, is no longer something passive but reaches a level and content
specific to self-conscious and self-determining persons.”103
But he moves the argument forward: the dramatic situation of
human love enables the knowledge not only of oneself but also
of another subject. Marriage as the sacrament of embodiment in
a particularly concrete way facilitates creative and true thinking
about the body and the person.104 In “shared married life,” the two
spouse-subjects in a sense “become one single subject” while remaining two.105 In this way, the self-determination of the single subject is
analogously enacted within a marriage when the two subjects form
the single subject of their married life. And just as self-consciousness
		Wojtyła, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible,” 214.
		See the text at footnote 43, above, from Wojtyła, “Participation or Alienation?”
summarizing and developing Osoba i Czyn, part 4, ch. 7, in AP 261–99 / P&A
1167–1213.
101
		Cf. Reimers, “Truth about the Human Person,” especially 77–83, on this
theme, and Kupczak, Gift and Communion, 51–53.
102
		TOB, 20:5, 208.
103
		TOB, 21:4, 212.
104
		 Cf. Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 96–100 and 126–27 (on integration) and
67–71 (reciprocity).
105
		TOB, 20:4, 207. See also TOB, 91:3–92:8, 480–487, which emphasizes the
“essential bi-subjectivity” (91:4) that predominates while the married couple
becomes a quasi-single subject of their shared life. Cf. the earlier treatments in
Love and Responsibility at 67–68 (on reciprocity) and 78–83 (on spousal love).
99

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is needed for the formation of the single subject, so too is it necessary
for the formation of the quasi-single subject of the couple. As Adam
gained self-consciousness through his knowledge of his own body, so
too does each spouse learn about the “uni-subjectivity” of marriage
through knowledge of the other spouse’s embodied person.
Hence, when the masculine body of Adam is received by Eve,
she knows not only his body, but Adam himself. In the conjugal
act, each person is “given” to the other as this particular personal
subject, expressed in this particular masculine or feminine body.
“And exactly in this personal identity and concreteness as an unrepeatable
feminine or masculine ‘I,’ man is ‘known’ when the words of Genesis 2:24
come true: ‘the man will unite with his wife, and the two will be one
flesh.”106 Through spousal love: “The wife’s ‘I,’ I would say, becomes
through love the husband’s ‘I.’ The body is the expression of this ‘I’
and the foundation of its identity.”107 In this way, the thinking found
within conjugal love exemplifies the love of the beloved as a personal
subject and not merely as an individual of the species.108 It is the love
by which Christopher loved Monica in The Jeweler’s Shop.
John Paul II provides other examples (beyond married love) of
the concrete experiences that must be understood by us as free rational agents. How does man ask about meaning and assimilate these
“crucial moments” or “primary experiences” of human reality? 109
		TOB, 20:5, 208 (emphasis original).
		TOB, 92:6, 485. See Reimers, “Truth about the Human Person,” for the
importance of trust in knowing, expressed especially clearly in Fides et Ratio
§31–32.
108
		See Waldstein, in his “Introduction,” for an explication of the “Sanjuanist
triangle” of John Paul II, in which spousal love is the paradigmatic case of
total self-gift in our human experience (TOB, 24). For the purposes of this
investigation, spousal love is thus the apex of “hot thinking” between human
persons in this life, but such thinking is the experiential structure of every love
as it tends to self-gift. Spousal love is distinguished from other kinds of love
by its totality, as Wojtyła specifies in Love and Responsibility. Spousal love is the
only love wherein one gives away one’s “I” to be the possession of another
“I,” a gift that can be safeguarded only within the loving reciprocal subjection
(Eph 5:21; cf. TOB, 89:1–4, 472–74) of the sacrament of matrimony (Love and
Responsibility, 78–83).
109
		The poles of birth and death in human existence are instructive examples. In
Evangelium Vitae, John Paul II notes that “man is no longer capable of posing
the question of the truest meaning of his own existence.” But further, he
cannot “assimilate with genuine freedom” the “crucial moments” of birth and
death, which he tries to control through technology. In assessing the mission
field, the Pope traverses easily from meaning to living, as he argues that the
106
107

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Through living them intelligently and freely. In this thoughtful and
receptive living (“hot thinking,” not merely “cold deliberations”),
the meaning of experience is revealed, and with it the meaning of the
personally irreducible—the body and the embodied person.
Conclusion and a Proposal
As outlined here, Wojtyła develops a rich and provocative epistemology and anthropology of concrete personhood. We have seen that
the embodied person knows himself through self-knowledge and
self-determination. He pursues self-knowledge and self-determination
by means of his concrete embodied experience (“lived-experience”),
which is already cognitive. Hence, a person grasps concrete reality
qua concrete through an embodied process of living out the reality
intelligently and freely. I come to know my body not only through an
abstract concept but even more through living out the reality captured
by the concept: my body becomes “meaning” when its (objective)
truth is “reread” and lived out by me as a subject. The achievement
of this meaning requires that I integrate my embodied experience
into my self-knowledge and that I form myself (“self-determination”)
into “more” of a person through my ethical action. In this way, the
body—and hence, the concrete, embodied person—can be known by
concretizing abstract concepts in and through lived-experience. It is a
knowing that is also a doing; it is a living subject’s creative engagement
with objective truth. This is Wojtyła’s “hot thinking”: I know my body
by living out my embodied life in accordance with the body’s objective
truth. In the theology of the body, John Paul II will explicate at length
this truth of the body as a “spousal meaning,” that we are made for selfgift. But that is a topic that requires its own treatment.
Yet, is this treatment of the knowledge of the embodied person
satisfactory? One could justly argue that Wojtyła leaves us with a
formal account of knowing the embodied person that stops short of
explicating what precisely one knows (the material content). When
Christopher knows Monica in his “hot thinking,” what does he
know? For that matter, what does he know when he knows himself?
To respond “the person,” as Wojtyła possibly would, can be called a
defect in meaning is immediately reflected in experience: “Birth and death,
instead of being primary experiences demanding to be ‘lived,’ become things
to be merely ‘possessed’ or ‘rejected’” (Encyclical Letter on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life Evangelium Vitae [1995], §22, accessed October 30,
2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/
hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html).

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kind of methodological humility. Or it might be called a tautology.
I would like to propose a way out. As others have observed,
“person” is a discovery that unfolded historically to meet the exigencies of the development of Christian doctrine.110 As Thomas Aquinas
notes, it is what is most perfect in nature.111 It straddles philosophy
and theology. Philosophy can unpack the formal structures of personhood, via both metaphysics and phenomenology. But philosophy
limps when it comes to saying precisely what the content of personhood is: does anything distinguish one person from another, beyond
material individuation?
Balthasar argues that philosophy develops “person” as an individual member of the human species but cannot go farther to give
“person” positive content.112 Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, in his
explication of “person” during the early Christological controversies,
notes that a common solution (seen among, e.g., the Cappadocians)
was to distinguish persons by accidental qualities. We have seen
how unsatisfactory this solution is in the arena of human love; even
		See, e.g.: Hans Urs von Balthasar, “On the Concept of Person,” in Explorations in Theology, vol. 5, Homo Creatus Est, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2014), 114–25, and Balthsar, Theo-Drama, vol. 3, The Dramatis
Personae: Persons in Christ, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1992), 208–20; and Joseph Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion of
Person in Theology,” Communio 13 (1990): 438–54. Wojtyła acknowledges
that “theological personalism is prior to humanistic personalism” in Christian
thought (“Thomistic Personalism,” 166), but he also notes that in Thomas as
well there is philosophical access to a personal God through the realization
that the person is perfectissimum ens, which analogously would apply to God
(ibid., 167).
111
		ST I, q. 29, a. 3.
112
		Balthasar, “On the Concept of Person,” especially 114–15; cf. Augustine, De
Trinitate 5.1: “When you ask ‘Three what?’ human speech labors under a
great dearth of words. So we say three persons, not in order to say precisely,
but in order not to be reduced to silence” (in The Trinity, trans. Edmund
Hill [Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1991], 189). Balthasar did not find the
phenomenological method congenial, remaining instead firmly anchored
within a Thomistic metaphysics and epistemology in his philosophical orientation (see, e.g., My Work: In Retropect [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993]
and Theo-Logic, vol. 1, Truth of the World, trans. Adrian J. Walker [San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2000]). Wojtyła would most likely dispute Balthasar’s assessment
of the limits of philosophy and propose supplementing the latter’s ontology
with phenomenology. Balthasar might contend that phenomenology might fill
out the formal structure of personhood but does little to explicate its material
content. In other words, we still do not move beyond an individual of the
human species.
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more, it exposes a person to a kind of utilitarian quantification based
upon qualities.113 A further precision, first proposed by Maximus
the Confessor, helpfully distinguishes between logos and tropos: each
human person is human (logos), but he enacts his human nature in a
particular and unrepeatable way (tropos).114 This approach anticipates
the real distinction laid out by Thomas Aquinas, in which a distinction is made between an essence (what something is) and its concrete
act of existing. Thomas develops his emphasis on person as subsistence
with his subtle correction of the Boethian definition into a “subsisting individual of a rational nature.”115 This line of thought gives an
important reorientation to “person,” locating it less in the arena of
essence and more as a concrete act of existence. But how much does
this reorientation help our problem? Can we still think the concrete,
embodied person, especially given that Thomas argues that being is
not accessed through an act of conceptualization but in a judgment?116
Wojtyła develops how I know the body and the person; but what do I
know when I know an embodied person?
I see a way forward in Balthasar’s postulate that the content of a
person is found in mission, with the full Trinitarian content that the
word “mission” implies.117 Where philosophy breaks off, theology
can complete the question. What makes this particular person unique
(and not merely an individual) is the mission given to him by God,
a participation in the mission of the Son. The Son’s mission is not an
		Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, God Sent His Son: A Contemporary Christology,
trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 142–47.
114
		See Opuscule 1:1036C, translated and exegeted in Andrew Louth, Maximus the
Confessor (New York: Routledge, 1996), 49–59.
115
		ST I, q. 29, a. 3 (my translation). See Gilles Emery, O.P., “Essentialism or
Personalism in the Treatise on God in St. Thomas Aquinas?” trans. Matthew
Levering, in Trinity in Aquinas (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press at Ave Maria
University, 2006), 165–208.
116
		See especially in Thomas’s Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, q. 5,
a. 3, found in translation in Thomas Aquinas, The Division and Methods of the
Sciences, Mediaeval Sources in Translation 3, trans. and intro. Armand Maurer
(Toronto: PIMS, 1986), and discussed in Etienne Gilson, Beings and Some
Philosophers, 2nd ed. (Toronto: PIMS, 1952), 190–204, and in John F. Wippel,
The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated
Being, Monographs of the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy
1 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 24–62.
117
		For a more detailed treatment of Balthasar on the question of knowing
concrete particulars, see Jörg Disse, Metaphysik der Singularität: Eine Hinführung
am Leitfaden der Philosophie Hans Urs von Balthasars, Philosophische Theologie
7 (Vienna, AT: Passagen, 1996).
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accidental property but rather the temporal “extension” of his eternal
Person.118 This material content fleshes out the formal structure of
personhood and brings it to life. This approach is consonant with
John Paul II’s treatment of mission (although he does not develop it in
the terms used here—namely, the content of the person). I am unique
because of my mission. It provides the dramatic content that structures and develops my personal life. Less this seem excessively functional, it should be noted that mission for Wojtyła is more about being
than doing.119 Waldstein summarizes Wojtyła thus: “Mission is thus
not in the first place an attitude of moral commitment in response to
a moral duty, but a way of being that is rooted in the person of Jesus as
the Son of God.”120 Through “hot thinking,” I can know my embodied self, and what I know is not simply my human nature, but more
significantly my mission, who God wants me to be. As Wojtyła says,
the Christian in faith shares in the divine being-mission: “Thus he
takes part in the ‘state of mission’ in which all the Church continually
finds itself; and each individual is a unique, unrepeatable embodiment of the salvific ‘state.’”121
		“Mission” in God signifies an eternal procession with a temporal term (ST I,
q. 43, a. 2, ad 3).
119
		 Karol Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal:The Implementation of the Second Vatican Council, trans. P. S. Falla (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980), 207: “[Mission]
does not initially imply a function or institution, but defines the nature of
the church and indicates its close link with the mystery of the divine Trinity
through the mission of the Persons” (emphasis mine).
120
		Waldstein, “Introduction,” 93, glossing Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal, pt. 3, ch. 1,
203–18. See also the Second Vatican Council, Decree on the Mission Activity
of the Church Ad Gentes, §2, concerning the Church’s missionary nature:
“The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature, since it is from the
mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she draws her
origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father” (accessed October
30, 2017, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/
documents/vat-ii_decree_19651207_ad-gentes_en.html). In other words,
the Church is missionary by nature, prior to her deeds, just as the missions of
the Son and Holy Spirit are extensions of their Persons and not simply roles
taken on ad extra. See also John Paul II, Encyclical Letter on the Permanent
Validity of the Church’s Missionary Mandate Redemptoris Missio (1990), §23,
exegeting John 17:21–23: “We are missionaries above all because of what we
are as a Church whose innermost life is unity in love, even before we become
missionaries in word or deed” (accessed October 30, 20107, http://w2.vatican.
va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_07121990_
redemptoris-missio.html; emphasis original).
121
		Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal, 207.
118

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This conclusion outlines one approach to the question of the material content of the concrete, embodied person. The supple resources
of Wojtyła’s thought, in both the questions he addresses and those
he leaves unanswered, have brought us to this point, better able to
N&V
engage the questions that remain man’s perennial horizon.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2018): 173–203

173

Leonine Social Anthropology:
Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism
Jason A. Heron
Mount Marty College
Yankton, South Dakota

In the century after 1789 , the Catholic Church faced
numerous challenges to its authority, autonomy, and liberty.1 The
Church’s response to these challenges is now part of the Catholic social
doctrine tradition. From our vantage point, nineteenth-century social
doctrine can seem to be about papal longing for the restoration of
monarchy, for a return to the glory the papacy had before the world
was remade by the French revolution, for the ancien régime and the
Church’s privileges therein, and for a maintenance of social paternalism
that can seem to be a kind of human rights neglect, if not outright
		The literature on the nineteenth century is vast, and the literature on the
Catholic Church in the nineteenth century only a little less so. For useful
introductions to the Catholic Church’s situation in the nineteenth century,
see: Roger Aubert et al., The Church in the Age of Liberalism, trans. Peter Becker
(New York: Crossroad, 1981); Aubert et al., The Church in the Industrial Age
(New York: Crossroad, 1981); Aubert et al., The Church in a Secularized Society,
trans. Janet Sondheimer (New York: Paulist Press, 1978); Owen Chadwick,
The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1975), esp. chapter 5, on anticlericalism. For
a thorough and fascinating investigation of the French Revolution and its
aftermath, see François Furet, Revolutionary France: 1770–1880, trans. Antonia
Nevill (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1988). For an international perspective on the
Church and society in Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Spain, Latin America, the United Kingdom, and the United
States, see Church and Society: Catholic Social and Political Thought and Movements
1789–1950, ed. Joseph N. Moody (New York: Arts, Inc., 1953).

1

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abuse.2 The reason for such an impression—in part—is our reasonable
concerns about the Church’s nineteenth-century desire to see an end
to the tumult of an age dominated by political revolution. The Popes
of the nineteenth century proposed a vision of social order designed to
restore peace and stability in a time of violent upheaval, and from our
vantage point, that proposal has more to do with a restoration of the
ancien régime than it does with any enduring insight into the nature of
social and political life.
But the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are dominated by a revolutionary spirit that challenges the Church’s social
doctrine in a new way. This challenge suggests that the nineteenth-century social magisterium possesses insight still necessary
for a Catholic vision of social and political life in the twenty-first
century. As Russell Hittinger has recently argued, Catholic social
doctrine is now struggling to respond to a revolutionary spirit that
has brought to the fore a critical disparity between the Church’s
social tradition and contemporary Western society.3 Hittinger high		Below, I will engage the work of the philosopher Michael Rosen on the
history of the concept of human dignity. Rosen attempts to make the case
that Leonine thought regarding dignity and social order effectively occludes
the personal dignity of individual human agents.
3
		Russell Hittinger, “The Three Necessary Societies,” First Things, June 2017,
accessed October 29, 2017, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/06/
the-three-necessary-societies. Hittinger here picks up something Pierre
Manent has been developing since the 1990s. See Manent, “On Modern
Individualism,” in Modern Liberty and Its Discontents, ed. and trans. Daniel
J. Mahoney and Paul Seaton (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998),
151–59, at 152: “The communities to which people belong in the democratic
world no longer command them. In the domestic sphere, the law has abolished the power of the head of the family. . . . In the national sphere, even a
government that is legitimately . . . elected dares not order citizen-soldiers to
die for their country. . . . In the Catholic Church, the Roman magisterium,
even while maintaining intact the place of ‘ultimate ends’ in its authoritative
teaching documents, has since the end of the Second Vatican Council ceased,
in its ordinary pastoral ministry, to insist upon the urgency of salvation and
the imperious necessity of obeying the church’s commandments in order to
obtain it. . . . Finally, the past itself, understood as the community of those who
are dead, has lost all authority to command . . . and is no more than a collection
of ‘memorable places’ thrown open to historical tourism.” The more polemical
edge of Manent’s criticism of deinstitutionalization can be found in his recent
book on the place of Islam in a “secular” France: Beyond Radical Secularism:
How France and the Christian West Should Respond to the Islamic Challenge, trans.
Ralph Hancock (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2016). There, Manent
2

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 175

lights how the Catholic social doctrine tradition has been committed
to speaking of human happiness in terms of the necessity of three
great societies—Church, state/polity, and family/matrimony—and
the ideal of their complementary order. But, whereas the revolutionary spirit animating nineteenth-century nationalisms could inspire
liberal legislatures to revise ideas of complementarity and of order
among these three societies, the contemporary revolutionary spirit
Hittinger identifies offers a new temptation: to completely overhaul
our vision of the nature and purpose of the societies themselves. This
revolutionary work seems necessary to us on account of the oppressive nature of the hierarchies built into the societies.4 So, if we are to
allow the societies to survive, they must supposedly be reimagined,
not as the necessary conditions of human happiness, but rather as
subsequent to and optional for personal fulfillment. This is nowhere
more obvious than in contemporary debates about matrimony in
Western societies. In Hittinger’s estimation, however, the magisterial
suggests that secularism and individualism are ill-equipped to deal with Islam
as an authoritative institution to which its adherents gladly submit, and out
of which secularism does not seem capable of drawing them (any time soon).
4
		One can observe the Church’s response to this revolutionary work in Gaudium et Spes. The Council Fathers, after giving pride of place to the sublimity
of the human person, turn to the great social institutions: Church, family,
culture, economy, society, and political association (in that careful order). The
treatment of each institution is marked by a modern concern for the defense
and preservation of personal dignity, autonomy, and conscience. The human
person and the needs following on his dignity are the center around which the
institutions orbit and from which they derive their life and meaning. Regarding the Church, Gaudium et Spes §41 does not teach on the nature of the
Church (reserved for Lumen Gentium), but on how she can enhance human
life. She possesses the unique ability to “raise the dignity of human nature
above all fluctuating opinions which, for example, would unduly despise or
idolize the human body.” In a deft moment, the fathers write that only the
Gospel entrusted to the Church can truly liberate the person and protect him
from “all traces of false autonomy.” Each of the other great social institutions
perform, mutatis mutandis, a similar task. The document is perhaps overly
soft-spoken regarding the disjunctures we might identify between the human
person’s search for meaning and fulfillment, on the one hand, and the Gospel’s
unique and strident demands, on the other. The possibility of disjuncture is
surely what the fathers have in mind by distinguishing between a true and a
false autonomy, which difference the Church alone is competent to identify
and navigate. (English translations of Gaudium et Spes here are from Vatican
Council II, vol. 1, The Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery,
O.P. [Northport, NY: Costello, 1998], 903–1001).

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response to these new social realities—especially as that response is
recorded in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church—has
lacked the synthesis and coherence of the nineteenth-century social
magisterium.
Indebted to Hittinger, I suggest here that, among scholars of
Catholic social doctrine, a revision of our perspective on the nineteenth-century social magisterium is critical. This revision is critical because it provides a contemporary Catholic response to social
change with the philosophical and theological precision necessary to
defend a vision of human nature and human sociality rooted both
in Sacred Scripture and in the tradition of Church. I consider this
defense necessary in the face of novel forms of deinstitutionalization
and social revolution: namely, the de-institutionalization and social
revolution made possible by the consonance in our day of modern
individualism and modern statism. It is becoming clearer that this
consonance further authorizes the state with the power to manipulate, redefine, re-create, and even dismantle other nonstate societies,
always in the name of the liberty and equality of persons.5
		From at least 1789 onward, Catholic social and political inquiry has dealt
with a Janus-faced issue in modern individualism and statism. Though putatively opposite, as we live further into the end of modernity, it seems that the
distance between individualism, on one end of the spectrum, and statism, on
the other, is being shortened. Or perhaps there never was a spectrum. For his
part, Manent laments the consequences of a secular and individualist culture of
rights and liberal procedures that effectively dismantles the political will of the
nation-state and leaves us without authentic political life. This would appear
to be a post-political, post-social hyper-individualism. But Douglas Farrow
has asked provocative questions about the distance between such individualist
contractarianism and statism. Following in a tradition of trying to preserve
marriage and family from the undue influence of the state—a tradition that
stretches back to Leo XIII and Louis de Bonald before him (among many
others)—Farrow wonders whether contemporary judicial activism in Canada
and the United States has licensed the state to take a more paternalist role
deep within the inviolable jurisdiction of the family and the matrimonial unit.
Following the thought of the Canadian legal scholar F. C. DeCoste, Farrow
worries about contemporary iterations of a “redemptive politics” whereby the
state enjoys the final prerogative in imprinting its moral vision on its citizens—
especially when they are young. De Bonald, responding to 1789, and Leo XIII,
responding to liberal Italian legislation, would recognize Farrow’s anxieties.We
are seeing more clearly the mutual dependence of modern, methodical individualism and statism inasmuch as modern individualism is now more openly
put to the service of aggrandizing the state rather than being imagined as a
bulwark or refuge against it. Farrow draws out the possible consequences in his

5

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 177

A key piece of this revision of our perspective is a retrieval of Pope
Leo XIII’s social magisterium in its historical, philosophical, and
theological context. This contextualization is necessary for at least
three reasons. First, post-conciliar inquiry into the Leonine magisterium has typically focused on only two of Leo’s ninety-plus letters:
Aeterni Patris (1879) and Rerum Novarum (1891).6 This narrow focus
collection of essays on marriage, Nation of Bastards: Essays on the End of Marriage
(Toronto: BPS Books, 2007). For a more direct treatment of individualism and
statism as pathologically codependent, see Patrick J. Deneen, Conserving America: Essays on Present Discontents (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2016),
esp. the chapter “Community and Freedom OR Individualism and Statism”
(169–80), wherein Deneen explores some of Robert Nisbet’s (and, arguably,
Christopher Dawson’s) insights into dependencies between individualism
and collectivism. See Christopher Dawson, Enquiries into Religion and Culture
(Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1968), esp. “The New Leviathan”
(3–19); Nisbet, The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), esp. 45–74, on community
as a modern problem, and 98–120, on the state as the “revolution” possessing
the “single most decisive influence upon Western social organization” (98).
Manent treats state power in relation to individualism throughout his oeuvre,
but with particular force and with special care for the fate of migrants and
religious others in Beyond Radical Secularism.
6
		Interest in Aeterni Patris is rooted in historical research into the fate of Thomistic theology and philosophy in the twentieth century. See: James J. Hennesey, S.J., “Leo XIII’s Thomistic Revival: A Political and Philosophical Event,”
Journal of Religion 58 (Supplement, 1978): S185–S197; Gerald A. McCool,
Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century, (New York: Seabury, 1977), esp.
1–16 and 216–40; and Pierre Thibault, Savoir et Pouvoir: Philosophie thomiste et
politique cléricale au XIXe siècle (Québec City, QC: Les Presses de L’Université
Laval), esp. 123–40, on Leo himself, and 141–58, on the encyclical. Interest in
Rerum Novarum is rooted in various presentations of Catholic social doctrine
as either (a) essentially pro-capital (because pro–private property), (b) essentially pro-labor (because pro-union), (c) essentially ahead of its time (because
anti-totalitarian), or (d) essentially behind the times (because hopelessly paternalistic). One need only consult the myriad introductions to Catholic social
doctrine, in which Rerum Novarum is always reprinted or summarized alongside commentary. For a representative sample, see: Brian J. Benestad, Church,
State, and Society: An Introduction to Catholic Social Doctrine (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 2010); Donal Dorr, Option for the Poor:
A Hundred Years of Vatican Social Teaching (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 198); Modern
Catholic Social Teaching: Commentaries & Interpretations, ed. Kenneth R. Himes
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005); Mary Hobgood,
Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Theory: Paradigms in Conflict (Philadelphia,
PA: Temple University Press, 1991); and Michael Novak, Freedom with Justice:
Catholic Social Thought and Liberal Institutions (San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1984).

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is a disservice to our own inquiry inasmuch as these two letters are
but particular determinations of Leo’s broader social doctrine, which
makes them possible in the first place.7 Second, the lack of attention to
the Leonine social magisterium is insufficient to the historical import
of the Leonine pontificate in relation to Leo’s own context. Leo
inherited a very difficult social and political situation for the Church.
This was especially true with regard to the “Roman Question” in
young Italy.8 But it was also true with regard to the Church’s position in France, Germany, and other European nations going through
processes of liberal nationalization prior to the great wars of the early
twentieth century.9 The Holy See’s navigation of these difficulties is
impressive in its own right.10 So, thirdly, Leo’s response provides us
		Notable recent exceptions to this focus on Aeterni Patris and Rerum Novarum
exist in Hittinger’s work and in the debate about religious liberty between
Fr. Martin Rhonheimer and Thomas Pink. See: Hittinger, “The Coherence
of the Four Basic Principles of Catholic Social Doctrine: An Interpretation,”
Nova et Vetera (English) 7, no. 4 (2009): 791–838; Hittinger, “Social Roles and
Ruling Virtues in Catholic Social Doctrine,” Annales Theologici 16 (2002):
295–318; and Hittinger, “Toward an Adequate Anthropology: Social Aspects
of Imago Dei in Catholic Theology,” in Imago Dei: Human Dignity in Ecumenical
Perspective, ed. Thomas Albert Howard, (Washington, DC: Catholic University
of America Press, 2013), 39–78; Rhonheimer, “Benedict XVI’s ‘Hermeneutic
of Reform’ and Religious Freedom,” Nova et Vetera (English) 9, no. 4 (2011):
1029–54; Pink, “The Interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae: A Reply to Martin
Rhonheimer,” Nova et Vetera (English) 11, no. 1 (2013): 77–121; Rhonheimer,
“Dignitatis Humanae—Not a Mere Question of Church Policy: A Response to
Thomas Pink,” Nova et Vetera, (English) 12, no. 2 (2014): 445–70; Pink, “Jacques
Maritain and the Problem of Church and State,” The Thomist 79 (2015): 1–42.
8
		Useful documentary history on the Roman Question can be found translated
in: Church and State through the Centuries, ed. Sidney Ehler and John Morall
(Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1954), and J. F. Maclear, Church and
State in the Modern Age: A Documentary History (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995). For interpretation, Luigi Sturzo’s work more than suffices: Church
and State, trans. Barbara Barclay Carter (New York: Longmans, Green and Co.,
1939), esp. at 421–33 and 439–44. See also Joseph Moody, “The Church and
the New Forces in Western Europe and Italy,” in Church and Society, 23–92, esp.
at 23–49.
9
		See Aubert et al.. The Church in the Age of Liberalism and The Church in the
Industrial Age.
10
		Leo’s navigation of diplomatic situations, let alone his grasp and analysis of
social and political realities, was conditioned, of course, by other theologians and philosophers. Chief among these influences were Luigi Taparelli,
Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, Matteo Liberatore, and Joseph Kleutgen.
Whatever other intellectual influences may be discerned in the contours of
Leo’s thought and in the output of his social magisterium, these four men
7

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 179

with critical historical and conceptual background to the way the
magisterium envisioned political and social life prior to the Second
Vatican Council.11 For, it fell to Leo to synthesize into a coherent
whole his predecessors’ anxieties about overweening nation-states
and their appetite for authority in nonstate societies like marriages,
families, schools, religious orders, and of course, the Church.
The core of this synthesis is Leo’s social anthropology, which I am
proposing as a critical resource for a clearer articulation of the Catholic response to social changes today. In this essay, I will examine
Pope Leo XIII’s social anthropology as a response to the nation-state’s
inordinate desire for authority. In the first part of the essay, my interest is in the Roman Question as the proximate background for Leo’s
response to the nation-state. Then, in the second part of the essay,
I draw our attention to Leo’s social anthropology itself. My focus
is on a key passage of an early encyclical and the role of analogical
relations in Leo’s vision of both human nature and the social order.
In the final part of the essay, I respond to a recent portrayal of Leo’s
social anthropology by arguing against the dismissal of his social
doctrine as little more than an ideological commitment to a paternalistic social ethics held over from the ancien régime. Instead, I draw
contribute to the most fundamental formation of Leonine theological and
philosophical perspective. For a useful introduction in English to the work
and influence of Taparelli, see: Thomas C. Behr, “Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio,
S.J. (1793–1862) and the Development of Scholastic Natural Law Thought
as a Science of Society and Politics,” Journal of Markets and Morality 6, no. 1
(2003), 99–115; Behr “Luigi Taparelli, the Scholastic Revival, and Catholic
Economics,” Journal of Markets and Morality 14, no. 2 (2011), 607–11; and Behr,
“Luigi Taparelli on the Dignity of Man,” paper at the Congressa Tomista Internazionale at the L’Umanesimo Cristiano Nel III Millenio: Prospettiva di Tommaso
D’Aquino, Rome, September 21–25, 2003. Paul Misner’s Social Catholicism
in Europe: From the Onset of Industrialization to the First World War (New York:
Crossroad, 1991) is an indispensable guide to von Ketteler’s influence in the
mid-century German context and on later Leonine social teaching. For a
useful introduction to Liberatore and Kleutgen, especially with regard to
the influence of their Aristotelian-Thomistic method on papal teaching, see
Gerald A. McCool., S.J., Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century (New York:
Seabury, 1977).
11
		Leo’s social magisterium appears to play a very limited role in the conciliar
treatment of social and political matters. For example, Gaudium et Spes cites
Leo four times, thrice from Rerum Novarum and once from Libertas. Dignitatis
Humanae cites Leo three times, referring obliquely to Immortale Dei, an encyclical on Church–state relations that does not make the conciliar fathers’ job
any easier.

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attention to how Leo’s analogical social anthropology functions as
a sophisticated indictment of liberal nationalism’s inordinate desire
for authority. I will close with some suggestions regarding Leonine
social anthropology’s enduring relevance in a time when Catholic
Social Doctrine searches for ways to defend the humanum in new and
difficult contexts.
Pius IX, Leo XIII, and the Roman Question
Russell Hittinger notes that the French Revolution’s creed of “liberty,
equality, and fraternity” carried with it a dual vision of the human
person: (1) as “a being of nature, having natural liberties and rights
which had been obscured or broken by the historical order”; and
(2) as a citizen possessed of political equality.12 In order to restore
the liberty obscured and broken, and in order to protect the equality newly secured, the Revolution proposed state membership as the
preeminent form of fraternity, for it was supposed to reconstitute “the
broken relations of nature and history.”13 By associating human fraternity with citizenship in the nation-state, the Revolution created the
unique conditions in which “other social memberships claiming their
origins in nature, history, or divine revelation” had to seek legitimacy
elsewhere.14 Nature, history, and even revelation legitimated only the
human person and the state he created. All other social bodies—matrimony, family, Church—were “deemed legitimate only insofar as they
were either the private choice of individuals, or insofar as they were
permitted or ‘conceded’ by the state.”15 This revolutionary proposal is
a feature of what John Milbank has called the “chronotope of enlightenment.” That is, the implicit claim made in 1789 and throughout
Europe thereafter is that only now, here in these blessed modern days has
it become “apparent, after the decay of complex and exotic mythical
hierarchies, that political reality is a ‘simple space’ suspended between
the mass of atomic individuals on the one hand, and an absolutely
sovereign centre on the other.”16 As Western history after 1789 shows,
modern nation-states see the creation of modern citizenship as essential
to the maintenance of this simple space, which is the venue in which
		Russell Hittinger, “Toward an Adequate Anthropology,” 40.
		Ibid.
14
		Ibid.
15
		Ibid.
16
		John Milbank, The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, Culture (Cambridge,
MA: Blackwell, 1997), 275.
12
13

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 181

those same states sought to aggrandize themselves beyond imagination
after the supposed demise of the ancien régime.
In what follows in this section, I will situate our subsequent
examination of Leo’s social anthropology within a confrontation
between, on the one hand, liberal Italy’s efforts to simplify social
space via nationalization and, on the other hand, the Holy See’s
response to this process of simplification. Though I will not detail
all of the Church’s practical efforts to maintain complex social space
against the state’s jurisdictional aggressions, I will work to deepen our
understanding of what liberal Italy and the Holy See both felt was at
stake for their respective vocations. This confrontation creates what
we now call the “Roman Question” and enables us to understand the
mandate behind Leo’s extensive and nuanced social magisterium and
how it would treat the critical issue of social order in a world where
nation-states sought to dominate that order.
In the nineteenth century, the Roman Question in Italy is a
metonym for conflict between the Holy See and nations throughout
Europe: how will the state abide the sovereign voice of an international authority in the lives of its own citizens? In Italy, the question
was doubly pressing, as that international authority occupied a tract
of land that physically divided the peninsula’s northern and southern
ends but also united the peninsula in a shared Catholic faith that
transcended (to some degree) local cultural and linguistic differences.
Thus, the Holy See’s temporal and spiritual power prevented Italy
from making the unified territorial and cultural claim thought to be
essential to modern statehood. But this question of the pope’s Rome
and its relation to the rest of the peninsula has a unique career in
history and can be framed in different ways.
In 1848, Italian nationalists were agitating for war against Metternich’s Austria in the hopes that the Italian peninsula could be rid of
Austrian authority and become an autonomous national unity. The
nationalist faction was hopeful that their fellow Italian, the recently
crowned Pius IX,17 would bless their efforts. After all, his first year
		Cardinal Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti became Pope Pius IX at a critical
moment in Italy’s national history. He is often remembered as a potentially
progressive pope that very quickly lost confidence that liberalizing Italy would
be good for the Church. Prior to his unexpected election, Mastai-Ferretti had
become friends with the liberal Pasolini family—especially the young Conte,
Giuseppe, and Contessa, Antonietta. The Pasolinis introduced Mastai-Ferretti
to Gioberti’s Del primato and to other texts of the Italian nationalist/unification movement (the risorgimento). G. F.-H. Berkeley suggests that, through the

17

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as pope was characterized by a raft of political, social, and economic
reforms—promising signs that the Papal States were finally to be
modernized.18 The situation thus seemed ripe for Pius to bless the
campaign for Italian nationhood. With the entrance of Piedmont
into war with Austria, the nationalists thought that Pius would send
papal troops to fight. Here, early on in Pius’s long pontificate, with
Piedmont’s forces and Pius’s spiritual leadership seemingly on the
cusp of a more perfect unification, the neo-guelph hopes seemed justified: a federally unified peninsula of Italian citizens governed under a
constitution granted by a modern, liberalizing pope.19 For a moment,
Italian nationalists asked a version of the Roman Question with great
influence of the Pasolinis, liberal and reforming ideas became more and more
attractive to the “broad-minded and patriotic” cardinal. These developments
prior to his pontificate directly contributed to his national popularity in his
first years as Pius IX (G. F.-H. Berkeley, Italy in the Making, vol. 1 [New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1968], esp. 257–66).
18
		One need only catalogue Pius’s famous reforms begun in the first year of his
pontificate: the controversial but widely popular amnesty granted to political
prisoners; the schematics for a railway; inquiry into the connection between
crime and unemployment; plans for an educational/trade institute in Rome
to address unemployment; the abolition of some criminal law courts and the
consolidation of others; setting firmer criteria for the training of the personnel
of the criminal courts; improvement of the prison system; reforming the Code
of Law; establishment of an Agricultural Institute for the improvement of
cultivation and raising livestock; establishment of a gas distillery outside Rome;
granting freedom to the press (along with a council of censors consisting of
four laymen and an ecclesiastical presider); and the regulation of grain tariffs.
Given this energetic spirit, it is little wonder that, by September of 1846, just
months after his election, Romans in the Piazza del Popolo placed an inscription on the triumphal arch: “He conquered discord by clemency; he conceded
public audiences; he made preparations for railways; he disclosed a fount of
civilisation and riches; Applaud, ye nations. Pius is the beloved name which
will be blessed by all centuries” (G. F.-H and J. Berkeley, Italy in the Making,
vol. 2 [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1968], 54–71).
19
		These hopes are articulated most famously in Vincenzo Gioberti’s classic, Del
primato morale e civile degli Italiani. For my purposes here, it does not matter that,
after the publication of Del primato in the 40s, Gioberti in the 50s came to
advocate for a more liberal understanding of the relations between Church and
state in Italy. His Del rinnovamento civile d’Italia in 1851 expresses the following: “In our day times have changed; civilization has grown; public opinion is
master; and the absolute separation of the spiritual from the temporal is about
to be established among the most civilized peoples. These are the best guarantees and the most efficacious safeguards of ecclesiastical autonomy” (quoted
in S. William Halperin, The Separation of Church and State in Italian Thought from
Cavour to Mussolini [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937], 4).

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 183

hope that it could be resolved by unifying the entire Italian peninsula
under the Vatican.
But, given Pius IX’s spiritual authority over Catholics on both sides
of the conflict with Austria, the Pope was bound to be conflicted
regarding his duties as a spiritual father and as an Italian son. In an
infamous speech given on April 29, 1848, we see this conflict. In the
first version of the speech, Pius said two things: that he could not
intervene against his children in Austria and that he fully sympathized
with the Italian nationalists. But it is likely that Pius’s secretary of
state, Cardinal Antonelli, edited the speech so that the final draft
emphasized Pius’s spiritual duty to Austria and eliminated Pius’s
empathy with the Italian cause. The neo-guelph hopes were crushed.
As Roger Aubert suggests, it is at this moment that the “liberal pope”
became the “antinational pope.”20
After this fallout between Pius IX and the Italian nationalists, Italy
and the Holy See were forced to negotiate a variety of jurisdictional
questions as the nationalization process proceeded without the papal
blessing. Between 1848 and 1871, negotiations proceeded along lines
set by Count Cavour’s doctrine of separatism—usually represented
by his famous phrase “a free church in a free state.” The diplomatic
ideal expressed in Cavour’s doctrine was that the Church and the
state would both achieve a more perfect liberty by remaining sealed
within their separate jurisdictional spheres. All indications suggest
that Cavour himself believed that this was good both for the Church
and for Italy. Indeed, Cavour’s separatism, in theory, was designed to
decrease state influence in society and to augment religious liberty.21
Despite young Italy’s desire to disentangle itself from the temporal
power of the Holy See, Catholicism remained the official state religion throughout the period.
Despite the principle of separatism active as an ideal during
Cavour’s tenure and following, civil legislation regarding the Church
		See Aubert’s study of the redactions of the text in “The First Years of the
Pontificate of Pius IX: From the Neoguelf Mythos to the Roman Revolution,” in The Church in the Age of Liberalism, at 61–62.
21
		See Halperin, The Separation of Church and State in Italian Thought, 7–8. This
speaks to Cavour’s sensitivity to the actual local, civic situation on the peninsula. Of the liberals, Cavour’s moderation is notable. See Pier Carlo Boggio,
La chiesa e lo stato in Piemonte: sposizione storico-critica dei rapporti fra la S. Sede e
la corte di Sardegna dal 1000 al 1854, 2 vols., (Turin, IT: S. Franco e figli, 1854),
esp. book IV in vol. 1, where Boggio treats his own context and gives the
Cavourian doctrine its fullest exposition.
20

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throughout Italy remained practically wedded to eighteenth-century
modes of jurisdictionalism whereby the state refused to remain sealed
in its own jurisdiction and, instead, gradually crowded the Church
out of a variety of social spheres in order to claim the Church’s
prerogatives as its own.22 So, despite the Cavourian emphasis on the
liberty of the Church, Italy’s various attempts to negotiate features of
the Roman Question demonstrated that Cavourian freedom for the
Holy See was an entirely spiritual freedom separated from all matters
of temporal sovereignty. The Holy See’s temporal sovereignty was
increasingly imagined as properly belonging to the civil authority. In
other words, in practice, Cavourian separatism liberated the Church
to be precisely the sort of Church a liberal nation-state required it to
be: one separated from the social and political implications of its own
existence as a real social body in time.
As the state’s authority continued to grow, Pius felt pressed to
protest and famously proclaimed himself a “prisoner of the Vatican.”
His early reforming zeal was gone. And whatever diplomatic energy
he may have had was hardened into immovable protest.23 And then,
in 1871, the Italian parliament sought an end to the Roman Question by passing the Law of Guarantees.24 Despite whatever good
		See ibid., 10n26.
		See Wilfrid Parsons, S.J., The Pope and Italy (New York: The America Press,
1929), 35–37: “By refusing the Law of Guarantees, Pius IX created an ‘entirely
novel situation’ for the papacy.” Parsons notes that “there are three means by
which an independent sovereignty might safeguard that sovereignty: possession
of force to repel invasion, international agreement to protect sovereignty, and/
or ‘free, juridical status before international law.’ Here was the Pope possessing
none of these, and yet remaining a sovereign. The explanation of the anomaly is that a fourth mode of national existence had come into being, that of
protest. For by protest, and not by any other means, did the Popes protect their
precious sovereignty for fifty-nine years. That they did protect it is evidenced
by the fact that in the year 1928, twenty-seven countries had full-fledged
diplomatic representatives, ambassadors or ministers plenipotentiary, at the
court of the Holy See. Since the Pope could not be called a plenary subject of
international law, the lawyers invented a new and exclusive term for his status:
they denominated him a subject sui generis of international law, and as such he
was entitled to entertain diplomatic relations” (emphasis original).
24
		The law included the following stipulations: that the pope’s person is sacred
and inviolable, akin to the person of a king; that the pope be given an annual
endowment of over 3 million lire; that papal property consist of the Vatican and
Lateran palaces and Castel Gandolfo; that the pope and cardinals enjoy liberty
in exercising their spiritual government in these properties; that clergy may
assemble freely; that the Italian government adjust its role—even in terms of
renunciation—in nominations of bishops and in relation to other ecclesiastical
22
23

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 185

intentions we might discern in the parliament’s efforts, the law was a
unilateral promulgation rather than a treaty or concordat bilaterally
negotiated. It treated the Holy See’s sovereignty as a supposedly “Italian” issue. Thus, the Law bore within its structure and content the
fundamental rationale of Cavourian separatism as it had developed
throughout post-1848 Italy. From our contemporary vantage point,
in which religion has been disestablished and we have been taught
that disestablishment is essential for everyone’s liberty, it is difficult
to appreciate how condescending the parliament’s promulgation
appeared to Pius. And, even in 1871, perhaps the condescension was
muted by a certain naïveté on the part of the Italian government.
But Pius seems to have appreciated exactly what was at stake. From
the Pope’s perspective, the Roman Question could not be asked, let
alone resolved, within the national valence as the Law of Guarantees
attempted to do. In political terms, the Law of Guarantees neglected
the international valence of the Roman Question. Moreover, this
international valence was further situated within the divine mission
of the Catholic Church, set for her by Christ himself. Pius’s letter,
Ubi nos, promulgated two days after the 1871 Law of Guarantees, is
explicit on both these points. Regarding the properly international
scope of the Roman Question, Pius writes in response to the Law of
Guarantees that the Lord has willed that the pope’s civil rule would
“be protection and strength for the Apostolic See. . . . For if the
Roman Pontiff were subject to the sway of another [read: Italian]
ruler, but no longer possessed civil power, neither his position nor the
acts of the Apostolic ministry would be exempt from the authority
of the other ruler. This ruler could be either a heretic or a persecutor
of the Church or constantly at war with other rulers.”25 By passing a
affairs, including spiritual and civil matters in the courts (Maclear, Church and
State in the Modern Age: A Documentary History [New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995], 256–59).
25
		Pope Pius IX, Ubi Nos, §7: “quo divina Providentia Sanctam Sedem Apostolicam munitam et auctam voluit, quemque Nobis confirmant tum legitimi
inconcussique tituli, tum undecim et amplius saeculorum possessio. Plane
enim cuique manifesto pateat necesse est quod, ubi Romanus Pontifex alterius
Principis ditioni subiectus foret, neque ipse revera amplius in politico ordine
suprema potestate praeditus esset, neque posset, sive persona eius sive actus
Apostolici ministerii spectentur, sese eximere ab arbitrio illius, cui subesset,
imperantis, qui etiam vel haereticus vel Ecclesiae persecutor evadere posset, aut
in bello adversus alios Principes vel in belli statu versari” (Acta Sanctae Sedis
6 [1871]: 260; English translation accessed October 28, 2017, https://www.
ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P9UBINOS.HTM ).

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Law of Guarantees rather than negotiating a treaty or concordat, the
Italian parliament asked Pius to obey an authority that had reached
very far beyond its jurisdiction. Despite language ostensibly to the
contrary, the parliament spoke to Pius not as to a fellow sovereign,
and not even as to a fellow son of the peninsula, but as to an Italian
citizen.26
But this is not all. In addition to the matter of the Church’s
liberty and autonomy in temporal relations with sovereign nations,
Pius must also consider the redemptive mission of Christ’s Church,
given directly to the Church by the Lord along with “all rights of
authority” and with every liberty necessary for the commission of the
Church’s duty. The Church’s rights and liberty “were produced and
acquired by the blood of Jesus Christ and must be valued in accordance with the infinite value of His divine blood. So We would not
be valuing the divine blood of Our Redeemer if We borrowed Our
rights from the rulers of the earth, especially in the curtailed and
defiled condition in which they now want to present them.”27
From Pius’s perspective then, the highest stakes are involved in the
Roman Question. A distortion of the temporal relations between the
Holy See and the nations bespoke a distorted understanding of the
spiritual nature of the Church and her divine mission. The Catholic
Church exists and accomplishes its mission according to the divine
will and not at all by state permission. It is difficult to overestimate
the importance of this link between the temporal and the spiritual for
Pius and his successors. Again and again, the Holy See’s position is
that stripping the Church of her temporal authority is of a piece with
depriving her of the wherewithal to accomplish her spiritual mission
		In this respect, the Law of Guarantees is thoroughly Cavourian and in line
with his famous ideal of “a free church in a free state.” According to Halperin, Cavour envisaged “the conferment upon the church of the same juridical status enjoyed by all other associations within the state—a status which
allowed the maximum freedom consistent with the requirements of public
order” (The Separation of Church and State in Italian Thought, 13, 19–22).
27
		Pius IX, Ubi Nos, §8: “Quod autem ad habitudinem pertinet inter Ecclesiam
et Societatem civilem, optime nostis, Venerabiles Fratres, praerogativas omnes
et omnia auctoritatis iura ad regendam universam Ecclesiam necessaria Nos
in persona Beatissimi Petri ab ipso Deo directe accepisse, immo praerogativas
illas ac iura, aeque ac ipsam Ecclesiae libertatem, sanguine Iesu Christi parta
fuisse et quaesita, atque ex hoc infinito divini sanguinis eius pretio esse aestimanda. Nos itaque male admodum, quod absit, de divino Redemptoris Nostri
sanguine mereremur si haec iura Nostra, qualia praesertim nunc tradi vellent
adeo deminuta ac turpata, mutuaremur a Principibus terrae.”
26

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 187

in history. And interfering with the Church’s spiritual mission is not
simply a frustration to the Holy See, but rather a sin against the people
for whom the nation-state is supposed to care most: its citizens.
If, in 1871, the Law of Guarantees diplomatically deployed the
separatist logic of the Cavourian doctrine, by the time Archbishop
Pecci was crowned Pope Leo XIII in 1878, a more explicitly
anti-Catholic regime was managing negotiations.28 Consider prime
minister Francesco Crispi’s spectacular condescension and wild
misrepresentation of both the Holy See’s interests and the Catholic conception of religion in a speech given to parliament in 1895.
In his speech, Crispi argues for separation but roots it in his own
psychological and political definition of “religion” as a “comfort” to
believers who hope in “an eternal future.” Crispi suggests that Italian
separatism is now a sort of “fortress in which the Supreme Pontiff
can take refuge” so that he can remain “immune from all attacks.”29
What is more, Crispi suggests that such sovereignty as the pope has
under the new Italian dispensation is a sovereignty that is, mysteriously, conferred by the Italian parliament. Thus does Crispi redefine
the purpose of Catholicism as a private comfort and then resituate
it within the national valence as a state-sponsored service offered to
those humans who desire it. Then, in a moment of apparent confusion coupled with unprecedented paternalism, Crispi suggests that:
“[The] Pope is subject only to God, and no human power can touch
him. Surrounded by all the honours and privileges of a monarch,
freed from the embarrassment of the temporal power and from all
		See John Pollard, Catholicism in Modern Italy: Religion, Society and Politics since
1861 (New York: Routledge, 2008), 39–43, for a summary of anticlerical
animus under the ministries of Agostino Depretis and Crispi (whom Pollard
calls a “fire-eating anti-clerical” and a “mangia prete” [‘priest eater’]) during
Leo’s pontificate. As Pollard puts it: “Governments of the Sinistra [left] pursued
their legislative campaigns against the Church for two main reasons: first,
they were afraid of being outflanked by the Estrema [radical left]; and second,
especially under Crispi who became prime minister for the first time in 1886,
they sought to reduce the influence of Catholicism in Italian society and
politics, which they judged to be dangerously excessive” (40). See also David
I. Kertzer, “Religion and Society, 1789–1892,” in Italy in the Nineteenth Century
1796–1900, ed. John A. Davis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000),
181–205, esp. at 191–203.
29
		Given in the Italian Chamber, November 28th, 1895, on the occasion of an
unveiling of a statue of national military hero, Garibaldi, and quoted in A. C.
Jemolo, Church and State in Italy 1850–1950 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1960), 69–70.
Elsewhere in the speech, Crispi suggests that Italy is a “shield” for the papacy.
28

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the hatreds, resentments and anxieties that go with it, he exercises a
sovereign authority over those who put their trust in him. . . . No
prince on earth resembles him or is his peer. . . All the world forms
part of his celestial empire; and with that he should be content.”30
So, whereas Pius IX dealt with an articulation of the Roman
Question that remembered the neo-guelph hopes of mid-century, his
successor, Leo XIII, would deal with an articulation of the Roman
Question that viewed papal authority as somehow both from God
and little more than a matter of the personal preference of those who
choose to pay attention to the pope at all. For, though Crispi mentions
the pope’s “empire,” he nevertheless has in mind the individual
consent of the persons who choose to put their trust in the pope. One
can almost see Crispi winking as he says, “he exercises his functions
in complete independence, he communicates with all the world, he
prays, he dominates men’s consciences.”31 In a relatively short amount
of time, liberal Italy goes from wondering whether or not the pope
could rule a federated Italy to relegating the pope’s sovereignty to the
private sphere of an individual believer’s conscience. Of course, from
our perspective, the neo-guelph hopes of mid-century seem hopeless
and perhaps even dangerous. The philosophy of religion articulated
in Crispi’s speech has become our norm. But, in the midst of the
Roman Question, it was not clear to the Holy See that Crispi’s position was inevitable, rational, or feasible.
None of this would be lost on Leo XIII. It fell to him to address in
a more systematic and nuanced manner the ways in which the liberal
state’s desire to deprive the Church of temporal power expressed
more profound disorders in modern social and political imaginations
and how these disorders threatened human well-being. Leo’s task
was to articulate a rational justification for the Holy See’s prerogatives: the proper unity of the temporal and spiritual powers, and the
Church’s jurisdiction in social and political interests. Along the way,
as Leo developed a systematic way of speaking about the spiritual and
temporal power of the Church, he reached further in order to articulate the concordia that ought to obtain among the various societies
that constitute the theater of human action and flourishing. Through
historical, philosophical, and theological argument, Leo rooted the
Holy See’s defense of its temporal power in a broader social anthropology that sees not only the Church and the state, but all spheres or
		Ibid.
		Ibid.

30
31

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 189

levels of society, as intimately related to each other in a complex social
space that necessarily escapes the jurisdictional appetites of liberal
parliaments. Within this complex of societies, all social unities exist
in both unity and distinction for the array of goods that comprise
the flourishing of the rational animal created in the image of the
Lord and destined for communion with the Blessed Trinity. These
were fighting words in the liberalizing and nationalizing context, for
without explicitly saying so, Leo proclaimed the Church an expert
in humanity, natively competent to restore the broken relations of
nature and history through the ultimate fraternity of membership in
Christ’s body.
Leo’s Analogical Social Anthropology
Now that we have a clearer view of the sociopolitical difficulties Leo
inherited, I want to move on to examine Leo’s social anthropology
as a response to his context. I will show that his social anthropology
is best described as analogical and that an analogical social anthropology is valuable as a critique of deficient social anthropologies in the
liberal-nationalist context. I will treat in the third section how Leo’s
anthropology withstands certain criticisms that are relevant in our own
context. In the present section, I will show how Leo’s social magisterium is programmatically committed to an analogical predication of
sociality to both individual persons and the groups they comprise. As
a shepherd of souls, Leo is attentive to the personhood of the individual human as a creature uniquely willed by the Creator, tasked with
the pilgrimage toward sanctity, and destined for communion with the
Triune Lord. But Leo consistently attends to the individual in terms of
the individual’s membership in an array of societies. The relationships
that obtain between the societies in this array are of greater moment
to Leo than the relationship of individual to group,32 or of individual
to individual.33
I propose to examine a single passage in Leo’s 1878 encyclical Quod
Apostolici Muneris34 as representative of Leo’s entire social anthropol		A relation that will come more to the fore in papal doctrine during and after
the advent of twentieth-century totalitarianisms.
33
		A relation that will come more to the fore in papal doctrine during John Paul
II’s pontificate.
34
		Promulgated eight months after Leo’s inaugural encyclical, Inscrutabili Dei
Consilio, 1878’s Quod Apostolici Muneris is Leo’s statement against the manifold
errors of socialism. For Leo, the chief error of socialism is that it works to
eliminate the natural hierarchy of divinely ordained sociality. John Milbank is
32

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ogy and as containing the justification for every foundational element
in that anthropology. I quote Leo at length:
For, He who created and governs all things has, in His wise
providence, appointed that the things which are lowest should
attain their ends by those which are intermediate, and these
again by the highest. Thus, as even in the kingdom of heaven
He hath willed that the choirs of angels be distinct and some
subject to others, and also in the Church has instituted various
orders and a diversity of offices, so that all are not apostles or
doctors or pastors, so also has He appointed that there should
be various orders in civil society, differing in dignity, rights,
and power, whereby the State, like the Church, should be one
body, consisting of many members, some nobler than others,
but all necessary to each other and solicitous for the common
good.35
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this passage for
interpreting Leo’s social magisterium. The passage contains several
elements that are essential to our appreciation of the way Leo
perhaps correct in criticizing Leo for caricaturing socialism: “The caricatures
of socialism presented by Rerum Novarum—that it abolishes all private property and threatens the institution of the family—are indeed caricatures even in
the case of German social democracy, yet could be applied to the latter with
somewhat more plausibility. (It should be added that much papal suspicion of
socialism had the character of dislike of a quasi-religious grouping—which
socialism was, as much as a political organization—outside the aegis of the
official Church; hence the desire for explicitly Catholic trade unions etc. more
subject to hierarchical control)” (The Word Made Strange, 272–73). For all of
Milbank’s dependence on Gierke in his analysis of Catholic social doctrine,
it is remarkable that his criticisms of Leo’s caricatures in Rerum Novarum rest
themselves on caricatures of Leo’s social vision. If my interpretation of Leo
is correct here, Leo’s criticisms of socialism are not firstly concerned with the
abolition of private property or the escape of quasi-religious groups from the
aegis of the Vatican. Instead, Leo’s criticisms of socialism are principally that it
exempts a fundamental human social form (polity) from the pluriform society
donated to rational creatures by the Creator. Oddly enough, this reading of
Leo would only strengthen Milbank’s case, as he seeks to reinsert the social
and political into a richly Christian metaphysical context.
35
		Leo XIII, Quod Apostolici Muneris, §6. All citations, unless otherwise noted,
come from the Vatican website’s translations of the Leonine corpus, accessed
October 29, 2017, https://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals.
index.html.

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 191

envisions human personhood in a social context and the way that
social context is structured in an analogical array. By drawing these
elements out, we see how Leo contextualizes citizenship (along with
all other social relations) in a “complex space” that corresponds to the
nature and needs of human persons and groups.
Human Sociality Is an Effect of the Divine Wisdom Created in
Creatures for the Proper Ordering of Their Flourishing.
If we track Leo’s reference to the Christian doctrine of creation
throughout his corpus, we find that his use of Aquinas helps him negotiate what we would now call the nature–grace debate. This debate
does not tidily map onto questions of the Church’s relationship to the
state or to society. Nevertheless, the Christian negotiation of the several
jurisdictions traced out by the authoritative social spheres does require
an ability to articulate the relationship between the Lord’s creating and
sustaining of a providentially ordered world and the presence of morally
culpable agents and societies enjoying a participated integrity that is
truly their own, even as it is gift. In describing the essential office of
the Catholic Church, Leo is ever insistent that grace perfects nature
and that the presence of a divine authority articulated by the Church
in society is not a threat to that society’s flourishing, but is rather its
very condition.
Modern political philosophies describe human sociality as a
concession made by previously/primordially individual or isolated
humans in a “state of nature.” From this perspective, human sociality
is an artifact of the human will that has not so far devised another way
of tempering power and creating peace. But, from Leo’s perspective,
human sociality escapes human deliberation and is more accurately
described as a human endowment or power that images the Lord.36
		Because my interest in this essay is to examine Leo’s estimation of the analogical social array in time, it would take me too far afield to provide complete
justification for an analogy between human sociality per se and the Lord’s life/
attributes. That justification belongs in a subsequent article. Here, suffice it
to say that I am persuaded so far by Hittinger’s account of the relationship
between human sociality and its divine cause (“Toward an Adequate Anthropology: Social Aspects of Imago Dei in Catholic Theology,” 53: “Following
Thomas Aquinas, Leo XIII and his successors took [the] Aristotelian rubric of
a social unity of order and grafted it onto Pseudo-Dionysius. Dionysius held
that creatures imitate God in a twofold manner: first insofar as each creature
has its own perfection in the order of substance; second insofar as creatures
cause good in others. Thus the famous dictum: bonum sui diffusivum est, the

36

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Jason A. Heron

Human Sociality and the Flourishing That Redounds therefrom
Is Naturally Hierarchical.
Sociality is properly a participated activity expressed in hierarchies:
angelic, human, and nonhuman. Within human sociality, Leo is most
concerned with the hierarchy of Church–State–family. In such a
scheme, the participatory nature of sociality is readily apparent in terms
of the offices occupied by every member of the hierarchy and in terms
of the interdependence of these offices for the complete care of human
persons. But, even within the societies that constitute the hierarchy,
hierarchical participation is the norm. Given that hierarchy is the principal mechanism by which a society reconstitutes itself from generation to generation in history, and given that hierarchy is the principal
mechanism by which a society forms the social imagination of its
members, the normativity of hierarchy resists even the most strident
dismissals of hierarchy as pure hegemony. As Leo notes in his discussion
of intermediaries and of the choirs of angels, hierarchy is the structural
complement of natural difference, or in his terms, “inequality.”
By way of justification of hierarchy’s natural status, Leo points
to societies of the angels and of the Church in order to argue that
hierarchy is not simply domination. Leo refers to the angelic hierarchy precious few times in his social magisterium. But we should not
dismiss this characterization of the angels. Leo is on the receiving
end of a confrontation between varying conceptions of politics and
its relationship to fallen human nature. One tradition, often labeled
the Augustinian, typically characterizes politics—and so hierarchical
order and the presence of authority in a society—as concessions to
a fallen human nature. Were humans to have remained in paradise,
no political authority would be necessary. But, since humans have
become disordered, they require the strictures of order and authority.37 Distinct from this line of reasoning is what is often labeled
good is diffusive of itself. The greater the good, the more it is communicable
and shareable”).
37
		It is worth noting that Rowan Williams questions this presentation of Augustinian politics as purely concession to human fallenness; see Williams, “Politics
and the Soul: A Reading of the City of God,” Milltown Studies 19/20 (1987):
55–72. Williams’s read of De civitate Dei is in fact an argument, against Hannah
Arendt, that Augustine does not repudiate politics, but rather introduces us to
a more authentic politics that proceeds according to truth, justice, and most
of all, humility, rather than according to the superbia that characterized ancient
politics. On Williams’s read, politics is, for Augustine, a natural good corresponding to the exigencies of human nature inasmuch as politics is supposed

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 193

the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, which characterizes politics as
a natural good corresponding to the exigencies of created human
nature—fallen or not. So, if hierarchy, order, and authority obtain
among the perfect angels, then what hierarchy, order, and authority
we observe among fallen humans cannot be described solely in terms
of a concession to our sinfulness. Instead, it must be imagined as a
created good providentially ordered to the flourishing of rational
creatures.38
Moreover, the Church is not accidentally hierarchical. St. Paul’s
analogy of the body eliminates any doubt that hierarchical order
within an historical community of humans is somehow an artifact
of our fallenness. Leo is making his argument for hierarchy’s natural
status in the strongest manner possible. Hierarchy, order, and authority are here conceived as essential to human salvation, to the accomplishment of the final end of human nature.39
The Proper Metaphor for Hierarchical Order is the Bodily Metaphor
in which Parts of the Whole Are Considered Members of the
Organically Unified Body.
Though it is our predisposition to conceive of hierarchy language in
terms of stratification, power exertion, dominance, and subversion and
to conceive of contractual relationships as the condition of human
liberation from such abuses, Leo’s predisposition is almost thoroughly
conditioned by the Pauline notion of an organic unity. We must say
“almost,” for Leo’s deployment of Paul’s ecclesiology in speaking of
social bodies is not simply an application of Christian Scripture to
institutional forms. Rather, Leo’s use of an organic/corporeal metaphor
for all institutions hearkens back not only to Paul, but to the medieval
reception of Pseudo-Dionysius and the effort to develop a doctrine
to be a school of virtue. That politics is corrupted in history by the libido dominandi does not exempt it from its high calling to minister to humans.
38
		For one among many useful introductions to these two streams of thought
in the Christian tradition, see Wilfrid Parsons’s two articles, “The Influence
of Romans XIII on Pre-Augustinian Christian Political Thought,” Theological
Studies 1, no. 4 (December 1940): 337–64, and “The Influence of Romans
XIII on Christian Political Thought II,” Theological Studies 2, no. 3 (July 1942):
325–46.
39
		See Otto Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, trans. Frederic William
Maitland (Boston: Beacon Hill, 1958), 22–30, to see how the corporeal metaphor of Pauline thought is at work in medieval concepts of social organization.
The influence of Paul’s ecclesiology on Western social forms cannot be overestimated.

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of human sociality that comprehended both the Church and the civil
power. Leo’s vision of hierarchical order is the product of centuries of
Christian legal philosophy using Scripture, patristic thought, Augustine,
Aristotle, local custom, canon law, and Roman law.40
This work of philosophy creates interesting opportunities and
challenges in developing a social ontology. I will return to this topic
below, but here, I would only point out that, on the one hand, the
emphasis on organic unity is a suitable antidote to the “simple space”
created by modern political monism. And Leo deploys the idea of
organic unity with just this sort of antidotal work in mind. On the
other hand, for Christians, organic unity par excellence is found in the
supernatural Body of Christ. The translation of ecclesial unity into
terms that may apply to other forms of social unity is not impossible,
but neither is it a simple task. The socialities at play here do not differ
in degree, but rather in kind. In other words, the human sociality
being completed or perfected by the Church is itself a unique created
good possessing a dignity rooted in the Divine Wisdom. So, for Leo,
the mediation of salvation to society through the sacramental ministry of the Church is not the introduction of more or better sociality
to an aggregate of beasts who have decided to contract a polity with
each other. Neither is it the introduction of yet one more social form
destined for eventual nullity. Rather, the mediation of salvation to
society perfects natural sociality by drawing it toward a supernatural
completion.
What hierarchical order we find in civil society and in the state is
thus analogously related to the hierarchical order that obtains among
the choirs of angels and in the Church.41 As the hierarchy of the heav		See Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, 1–2: “And then to all that was
obtained from these various sources Jurisprudence added the enormous
mass of legal matter that was enshrined in Roman and Canon Law, and, to a
smaller degree, in the ordinances of the medieval Emperors, for Jurisprudence
regarded what these texts had to say of Church and State, as being not merely
the positive statutes of some one age, but rules of eternal validity flowing from
the very nature of things.”
41
		See Leo XIII, Quod Apostolici Muneris, §6: “Sicut igitur in ipso regno caelesti
Angelorum choros voluit esse distinctos aliosque aliis subiectos; sicut etiam in
Ecclesia varios instituit ordinum gradus, officiorumque diversitatem, ut non
omnes essent Apostoli, non omnes Doctores, non omnes Pastores; ita etiam
constituit in civili societate plures esse ordines, dignitate, iuribus, potestate
diversos; quo scilicet civitas, quemadmodum Ecclesia, unum esset corpus,
multa membra complectens, alia aliis nobiliora, sed cuncta sibi invicem necessaria et de communi bono sollicita [Thus, as even in the kingdom of heaven
40

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 195

enly choirs is distinct from but related to the hierarchy of ecclesial
offices, so are civil and political hierarchies distinct from but related
to heavenly and ecclesial hierarchies. In a world where society is
dominated by a political imagination that would see all distinctions
leveled to the simple space of the State/citizen dyad, Leo sees society as constituted by a complex plurality of hierarchical institutions,
“differing in dignity, rights, and power.” This trio of properties
emphasizes the natural integrity and irreducible necessity of these
institutions—their reality, in other words.42
Leonine Paternalism and National Desire
Leo’s social anthropology is thus freighted with hierarchical language
and imagery that is easy to characterize as quaintly outdated or paternalistic at best and implicitly exploitative and violent at worst. How
could anyone confuse Leonine social anthropology with a case for the
human against the state (let alone any other social authority)? By way
of response to this reasonable question, I want to consider Michael
Rosen’s historical-philosophical work on the concept of human
He hath willed that the choirs of angels be distinct and some subject to others,
and also in the Church has instituted various orders and a diversity of offices,
so that all are not apostles or doctors or pastors, so also has He appointed that
there should be various orders in civil society, differing indignity, rights, and
power, whereby the State, like the Church, should be one body, consisting of
many members, some nobler than others, but all necessary to each other and
solicitous for the common good]” (Acta Sanctae Sedis 11 [1878]: 375; English
from Vatican website).
42
		A complete study of Leo’s social magisterium would not limit attention
to Church/state/family, especially when Leo is so attentive throughout his
pontificate to educational institutions, workers’ guilds and unions, religious
orders, and other non-state, non-Church, and non-family institutions. A
complete study of Leo would also have to incorporate the work of Gierke
on the fate of social unities of order in Western political theory and Hittinger’s on whether or not it is possible to speak coherently of social orders as
real unities capable of imitating the Lord. My work depends on Hittinger’s
analysis of the social ontology developed by the modern popes. Three works
of Hittinger’s already cited above are critical for understanding his treatment
of the neglected scriptural, theological, and philosophical underpinnings of
this social ontology: “Toward an Adequate Anthropology,” “The Coherence
of the Four Basic Principles of Catholic Social Doctrine,” and “Social Roles
and Ruling Virtues in Catholic Social Doctrine.” They are also critical for
recognizing the gravity of one of Gierke’s fundamental question: why did
Western political theorists opt for a contractual vision of society rather than
an organic/corporate vision?

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dignity. Rosen illuminates, to a certain extent, the way Leo imagines
the social concepts of hierarchy and function and how these concepts
relate to the inherent dignity of the individual human person. Getting
clear on what Leo means—and how a modern interpreter like Rosen
reads Leo—can help us appreciate how an analogical and hierarchical
social anthropology is not simply papal desire for the restoration of the
ancien régime, but rather a way of countering a corrosive individualism
underwriting liberal accounts of society.
Rosen’s insight is that, when Leo speaks of human “dignity,” he
does not mean it in the modern, egalitarian sense of the dignity of
individual human persons. Rather, Leo uses the word to speak of the
rights, duties, and relative autonomy of social orders/groups within
the larger social whole. From Rosen’s perspective, the “dignity”
of which Leo speaks signifies the “value” of “subordination itself,”
inasmuch as Leo is interested in keeping all of these social orders in
their proper, subordinated place within a strict hierarchy. In treating
the same critical passage of Quod Apostolici Muneris we just examined,
Rosen identifies an “Aquinian [sic] conception of ‘dignity’ as the
value something has in virtue of occupying its proper place within a
divine order. . . . For the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century,
all members of society have dignity, but their dignity consists in their
playing the role that is appropriate to their station within a hierarchical social order, one in which some are ‘nobler than others.’”43
And in reference to Rerum Novarum, Rosen writes: “The idea of
the ‘dignity of labor’ . . . should be understood less as an assertion of
equality [of persons] than an expression of the view that labor should
be given its proper place within a social order, all of whose members
are ‘necessary to each other, and solicitous of the common good.’”44
Thus, from Rosen’s contemporary perspective, a Leonine doctrine of
human dignity is focused on social bodies and their proper relations
to each other, and Leonine doctrine is inattentive to the position of
the individual human person and her rights within those social bodies
and within the broader social whole. To be a member of the whole
belongs to small societies and not, strictly speaking, to individual
human persons. This is a valuable insight into the way Leo imagines
parts, wholes, and watchwords like “dignity” and “rights.” But the
insight goes only so far.
		Michael Rosen, Dignity: Its History and Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2012), 47–49 (emphasis added).
44
		Ibid., 49.
43

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 197

Rosen’s description of a Leonine conception of dignity illuminates
the necessity of appreciating the ways Leo conceives of the human
person considered in her social relations. This is critical, for Leo is
concerned precisely with the integrity of these social relations in the
face of a nation-state that would see its authority increased within
the formation and maintenance of marriages, families, educational
institutions, and religious bodies. But Rosen also gives the impression
that Leo imagines human dignity as relative to the function or office
one occupies with others in the social body. And he gives us this
impression by subtly transferring Leonine doctrine on social orders to
Leonine doctrine on individual human persons. Unfortunately, this
is inconsistent. If Leo is as inattentive to individual human dignity as
Rosen suggests, and if Leo is as focused on the dignity of social orders
as Rosen suggests, then it is a mistake45 to suggest that Leo envisions
individual human dignity as indexed to the function an individual
person serves in a broader whole. For, as Rosen himself admits, when
Leo speaks of dignity, order, and function, he is speaking of the relative dignity of social orders and their function within the whole, not
of individual human persons. Rosen thus attempts to persuade the
reader that Leo’s focus on the membership of the social orders, rather
than on the membership of individual human persons, amounts to
Leo’s deficient understanding of, and consequent inability to defend,
the dignity of those individual human persons. But, by Rosen’s own
inadvertent admission, Leo’s treatment of the dignity of social orders
is not the place to look if you want a Leonine vision of the dignity of
the individual human person.
Rosen’s case against Leo would be strengthened if he could find a
place where Leo attends closely to the individual human person and
somehow obscures her dignity. But Rosen does not attend to Leo’s
thoroughly consistent doctrine of the individual human substance
and the dignity it owns on account of its relation to the Creator.
Elsewhere in the same letter Rosen uses to indict Leo, the Pope is
careful to delineate the fundamental core of Christian anthropology
and its doctrine of human dignity: “The equality of men consists in
this: that all, having inherited the same nature, are called to the same
most high dignity of the sons of God, and that, as one and the same
end is set before all, each one is to be judged by the same law and
		For my purposes, it does not matter whether Rosen makes this mistake deliberately (for ideological reasons) or accidentally (as a philosopher with limited
competence in the history of Catholic Social Doctrine).

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will receive punishment or reward according to his deserts.”46 Thus,
from a Leonine perspective, pace Rosen, human dignity is not rooted
solely in functional participation in the orders that constitute the
broader social whole. Rather, the source of human dignity is twofold,
rooted both in a social participation with one’s fellow creature and
in the primal gift of one’s own creation by the Blessed Persons. If
Rosen were accurate in presenting Leonine doctrine concerning
human dignity as simply more hierarchical oppression, then it would
appear that a more individualist account of human dignity would be
the appropriate antidote. But, in order to accurately present Leonine
doctrine, the social hierarchy has to be understood in its proper
conceptual and historical context.
I have already introduced important elements of the historical
context in the first section of this essay. The conceptual context of
the Leonine doctrine here is both philosophical and theological. Philosophically, the Leonine doctrine of human dignity is grounded in
several related propositions about reality: (1) that all reality is derived
from a single Creative source; (2) that rational life is unique in this
reality; and (3) that rational life is inherently relational. Theologically, the Leonine doctrine of human dignity is grounded in several
related propositions about this philosophical position: (1) that the
single Creative source is the Triune Lord revealed in Jesus Christ; (2)
that every human life is not only unique but also precious and peculiarly willed by the Triune Creator’s love and desire to communicate
the Divine Goodness; and (3) that human relationality is an imaging
or imitation of or a participation in this communication of goodness.
The notion that humans image their Creator by communicating
goodness raises the provocative question of whether and how social
relations may have a role to play in the human creature’s imaging
of the Lord. Do social relations function in any way analogous to
the manner in which individual human persons are said to image
the Lord?47 This is a provocative question in our time because, as
I mentioned in the introduction to this essay, in the late modern
context of ongoing social revolution, social membership often
appears to us either as a voluntary, contractual partnership or as the
unjust domination of external forces.48 In either case, the notion that
		Leo XIII, Quod Apostolici Muneris, §5. See also Humanum Genus (1884), §26.
		See Hittinger, “Toward an Adequate Anthropology,” 39–78.
48
		See ibid., 42: “Genesis 1:26 teaches that the individual member of the species
is a sacrament [making an invisible reality visible]. . . . In the visible order of the
hexaemeron, it is the individual . . . who is made unto the image and likeness
46
47

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 199

membership would be a vocation analogous to the vocation to be an
individual person standing before the Creator, replete with the high
dignity of our rational faculties—such a notion sounds foreign, if not
suspiciously fascist.
But in light of the Leonine doctrine we have been considering, the
question is worth considering. According to the social imagination
flowing from our suspicion of the old orders of authority (marriage,
family, state, Church), “membership without consent” is suspected as
a sort of “servitude.”49 But our assumption that membership is servitude obscures the richness and consistency of the Christian position
articulated in what Hittinger calls Leo’s “social ontology.”
By “social ontology,” Hittinger refers to a philosophical account
of the nature of “social unities of order.” A “social unity of order” is
not a substantial unity, like a horse, or a human person, or an angel.
Neither is it an aggregation of substantial unities, like a herd of horses
grazing or a group of human persons shopping in a store. Rather, we
find a “social unity of order” in a marriage, a family, a college, an
orchestra, a sports team, a theater troupe, a parish, and so on: “Each
individual retains his own identity and operations; yet the social
whole is more than the sum of its parts. It counts as a subject, person,
and agent in its own right.”50 Were we to ask what these various
bodies have in common, we could say they all embody analogous
forms. Whether we are speaking of spouses, infielders and outfielders,
or winds and strings, in every case, we are affirming that the body’s
form is defined by a certain order that makes a common action possible. The end of this common action is a twofold good: internal and
external. That is, social unities of order accomplish discrete goods
in time and place (children, wins, performances), and their common
action itself is a good (procreation, cooperation, harmony).51 Both
internal and external goods are indivisible (hopefully!). One cannot
own percentages of these goods. One cannot consume these goods
of God, and thus the individual member of the species is a locus of sacrality
in the visible world. This idea, so familiar to Jewish and Christian theology, is
much contested, even detested, in the secular world of late modernity. Our
culture separates the value of the individual as self-determining from the
individual’s membership in a certain natural species or kind. A ‘person’ is a
pure thisness . . . in his liberty, and is counted as a ‘member’ only by his own
choice or consent.”
49
		See ibid.
50
		Ibid., 51.
51
		See Ibid., 51–52.

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such that there is not enough for others. And so, the more the individual gives to the common action of the whole, the more the good
of the whole redounds to the individual.
So, we ask again, do “social unities of order” make visible an invisible, divine reality in a manner analogous to the human substance’s
imaging of the Lord? According to Hittinger’s reading of the theological and philosophical sources informing Catholic social doctrine,
the fact that “social unities of order” are formed so as to accomplish
common goods provides us with the answer: “Following Thomas
Aquinas, Leo XIII and his successors took this Aristotelian rubric of a
social unity of order and grafted it onto Pseudo-Dionysius. Dionysius
held that creatures imitate God in a twofold manner: first insofar as
each creature has its own perfection in the order of substance; second
insofar as creatures cause good in others. Thus the famous dictum:
bonum sui diffusivum est, the good is diffusive of itself. The greater the
good, the more it is communicable and shareable.”52
The key verb here is “to imitate.” The affirmation that human
persons are created in the imago Dei is not only an acknowledgement
of the transcendent ground of human dignity, important as the identification of that ground is in our world. Rather, it is also an acknowledgement that the human vocation is imitative. We image the Lord
in creation—like the Law, or the Temple, or Christ himself—in order
to represent or manifest in creation the Lord’s truth and goodness.
Hittinger puts it this way: “What exists simply in God is communicated to creatures in a multiform manner. Thus, a double imitation
or portrayal. First, a diversity of created things, each having a good
according to its participated being. Second, a diversity of created
things imitating God insofar as they cause goodness in others—
insofar as they bring into existence, through secondary causality,
additional modes of participation among themselves and others. The
superabundance of what exists in God simply is, in creation, most
perfectly expressed in a varied manifold.”53
According to this reading of the imago Dei as the transcendent
ground of human dignity, the many social forms of which one is a
member are vital contexts in and through which one lives out the
		Ibid., 53.
		Ibid., 54 (emphasis original). Hittinger continues: “The creature possesses
(imperfectly and from afar) a likeness of image in the order of substantial
form (the unity of the soul’s operations), as well as an additional perfection
or similitude insofar as he or she communicates with others in a social form”
(ibid., 56).

52
53

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 201

human vocation: to communicate and share with others, not only
for pragmatic social and political ends, but in order to bring about
goodness and, thus, make manifest the Creator’s goodness in history.
As Hittinger’s analysis suggests, the first aspect of the imago Dei is
substantial and static (hopefully!): the human person is always already
created in the imago Dei. But the second aspect of the imago Dei is
accidental, contingent, and dynamic: the human person is engaged
in acts of causation, and so she is engaged in something perfectible.
In and through their relations with others, human persons both
acknowledge and cultivate the imago Dei.54 So, from a Leonine
perspective, society is not so much a tool for subordinating the lesser
to the greater as it is a created gift in which humans can learn to
participate in the Divine Life.
Rosen and others55 have presented Leonine doctrine with an
emphasis on the cosmological and hierarchical tenor of nineteenth-century Catholic social thought. As I have shown, this is
insightful as far as it goes. But along with this reasonable characterization of the Leonine doctrine is an assumption that, because the
social hierarchy is envisioned as cascading from the eternal will of the
Creator, the hierarchy must be static, fixed, immutable, and so on.
This assumption seems fair enough, but it does not do justice to the
Thomistic synthesis of Aristotle and Pseudo-Dionysius. This synthesis, so important to the Leonine doctrine, presents the cosmological,
hierarchical social order as the necessary context of human action,
moral formation, and spiritual aspiration. From within our many
memberships within the hierarchy, we are tasked not with staying
quiet and doing our part to maintain the function of the whole, but
with becoming good and with causing goodness in the lives of others.
Hittinger puts it well: “Charity perfects a social principle embedded
in the creation of angels and men: namely, one loves the good not
only as it is possessed and owned, but even more as it is poured forth
and communicated to many.”56
		The Cappadocians spoke of this dual aspect of imaging in terms of the human
person’s being an “artisan” of the image.
55
		Cf. Michael J. Schuck, That They Be One: the Social Teaching of the Papal Encyclicals (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1991), ch. 2 (on the
Leonine period of social doctrine). One of Schuck’s insights is that the pre-Leonine social magisterium tended to use pastoral metaphors when speaking of
society. The Leonine period, however, moved towards a broader cosmological
vision of social order.
56
		Hittinger, “Toward an Adequate Anthropology,” 54.
54

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Conclusion
Leo is thus best read as a critic of modern liberal democracies and
nationalisms, who engages the undergirding social and political theories of liberalism in terms of the vocation to image the Lord in society. What paternalism is present in Leo’s practical recommendations
for marital and family life, for capital and labor relations, or for the
maintenance of social order in a given context should not obscure the
animating spirit of his overarching social doctrine. When we read Leo
as asking critical questions about his own time, they turn out to be
provocative questions in ours: can or do liberal regimes contribute to
the human vocation to cause goodness in others and, so, cultivate the
imago Dei? If they can, we can describe them in terms of a (relatively)
authentic sociality and politics, for they support the fundamentals
of human personhood, and so defend individual dignity. But, if they
cannot, then such sociality and politics as are practiced in them are so
insufficient as to be described as privative and a threat to the freedom
of the human person. At this point in the story of liberal regimes,
it seems that liberal regimes cannot contribute to this fundamental
human vocation. Where and when we see this vocation lived within a
liberal regime, it is despite the regime and not because of it.
Nowhere is this reality clearer than in those areas of life that manifest the modern quandaries about personal liberty and its relationship
to membership. The Leonine doctrine is peculiarly penetrating with
regard to these quandaries. In the current American context, we have
a serious choice to make when we speak of membership. On the one
hand, we may choose to accent the individual’s rights, asking whether
such memberships are not really just optional resources for optimizing individual happiness. Or, on the other hand, we may choose to
accent the community’s rights, asking whether such memberships are
not really fixed givens designed for the ordered function of larger
wholes. Put more colloquially, it seems today that one can support
personal liberty or family values, but not both. Above, I noted an
analogous binary between “individualism” and “statism.” Both
words raise social and political specters we rightly fear. And it is easy
to imagine the possibilities of individualism and statism to be mutually exclusive—even bulwarks against one another. After all, is not a
robust doctrine of individual rights the surest defense against fascisms
and theocracies?
But I suggested above that perhaps this binary is not finally a binary
at all. As Patrick Deneen remarks so incisively, when one’s definition
of human liberty “consists of doing as one likes through the conquest

Leonine Social Anthropology: Analogy, Hierarchy, and Liberalism 203

of nature, rather than the achievement of self-governance within the
limits of our nature and the natural world,” it makes less and less
sense to pit individualism against statism57 (not to mention “liberal”
against “conservative”). Instead, it becomes clear that they feed off
of one another. The desire to see given memberships as resources for
optimizing individual happiness leaves us scrambling for protection
against the external and prior claims those memberships rightly make
on us. The liberal political regime on which Leo set his sights is only
too eager to be that protection for us.58 The terminus of modern
liberty on this reading is thus not the continual aggrandizement of
personal power and autonomy. Instead, it is the augmentation of the
state’s power to protect us from anything we consider a threat to our
personal power and autonomy.
Leonine social anthropology is a vital resource for accurately
perceiving the intimate relationship between the premium we place
on personal liberty and our willingness to tolerate illiberal politics in
the name of that premium. For, ingredient within Leonine anthropology is a vision of a peculiar liberty: that of a person who is free
precisely because she is created in the imago Dei and, thus, destined
with her fellows for communion with the Triune Lord. By characterizing our many memberships as gracious gifts for the life-long task of
freely pursuing this communion, Leonine social anthropology—far
from reinstantiating the nineteenth-century theocratic monarchies
feared by popular imagination—enriches Catholic Social Doctrine’s
N&V
ability to defend the liberty of the human person.

		See Deneen, Conserving America, 180.
		See Ibid., 184. Deneen puts it well: “We begin to see this with ever-growing
clarity in our own times—a new, kinder and gentler totalitarianism. It promises its citizenry liberty at every turn, and that liberty involves ever-greater
freedom from the partial institutions of civil society, or ones remade in accordance with the aims of the State. As . . . Daniel Henninger pointed out . . . ,
the states as sovereign political units have been almost wholly eviscerated, and
are now largely administrative units for the federal government. Satisfied with
that victory, we now see extraordinary efforts to ‘break’ two institutions that
have always been most resistant to totalitarianism: churches and family.”

57
58

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205

The Virtue of Sobriety:
Integral Ecology in Its Full Flourishing
Jennifer E. Miller
Notre Dame Seminary
New Orleans, Louisiana

Introduction

Pope Francis’s 2015 social encyclical entitled Laudato Si’ (LS)

introduces a new term into Catholic social teaching, “integral ecology,”
and with it, gives an impetus to the further development of theologically based virtue ethics, or virtuous morality, as found in the virtue
of sobriety. In order to understand the term “integral ecology” and its
implications in sobriety properly, it is necessary to situate it within the
context of earlier social encyclicals. Thus, I will first review the social
encyclicals to show how integral human development forms the background for integral ecology.Then I will further investigate the meaning
of integral ecology by following the pontiff ’s Scriptural exposition of
the natural moral law. Finally, I will conclude by demonstrating how
the praxis of integral ecology, rooted within the natural moral law,
comes to maturity in the virtue of sobriety. Although there has been
a suggestion that proportionalist moral reasoning might be one way
of understanding the moral implications of integral ecology,1 through
		This suggestion is made by Christopher J. Thompson in the conclusion of his
article regarding the Thomist nature of Laudato Si’; he notes that while “as
criteria for assessing intrinsically evil acts concerning human life and related
matters, the method was declared out of bounds in Veritatis Splendor, . . . as
a method of assessing the prudential use of creatures and created goods, it is
likely to experience a renewal” (“Laudato Si’ and the Rise of Green Thomism,” Nova et Vetera [English] 14, no. 3 [2016]: 755–56). This seems to ignore
the presence of virtue ethics within the text itself, as well as to discount the

1

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careful examination of the text, Pope Francis’s call for integral ecology
can then be understand as the summons to a full flourishing of the
natural moral law in the virtue of sobriety, needed by society especially
to realize this broadened idea of integral human development within
the context of all of Creation.
The Context of Integral Ecology
“Integral human development,”2 meaning “the context within which . . .
an adequate approach to ecology can be conceived,”3 was first introduced by Blessed Pope Paul VI in 1967, two years after the close of
the Second Vatican Council.4 In contrast to earlier methodology: “[Paul
VI] did not take the current conception of economic development as
a starting point and then modify it. Instead, he laid down certain basic
criteria by which we can measure to what extent any changes brought
about in society deserve to be called authentic human development, . . .
[thus providing] a heuristic notion of development, a framework or

reality of the interconnected relations between the human, or social, and
environmental dimensions of integral ecology: one cannot be altered without
affecting the other.
2
		David L. Schindler elaborates thus: “‘Integral human development’ is rightly
called the central principle of Catholic social teaching, from Populorum
Progressio through Sollicitudo rei socialis and Caritas in veritate, and now taken
up by Pope Francis in Evangelii gaudium and especially Laudato si’” (“Habits of
Presence and the Generosity of Creation: Ecology in Light of Integral Human
Development,” Communio: International Catholic Review 42 [Winter 2015]:
575). The inclusion of Evangelii Gaudium here is certainly interesting, but since
it was not a social encyclical and Pope Francis clearly delineates two distinct
goals for these two documents (“In my Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I wrote to all the members of the Church with the aim of encouraging
ongoing missionary renewal. In this Encyclical, I would like to enter into
dialogue with all people about our common home” [Laudato Si’, 2015, §3]), it
will not be included in this brief survey of documents preparatory to Laudato
Si’ [LS].
3
		Schindler, “Habits of Presence,” 574.
4
		“During the Council, the attention of the Church was jolted by the comparative economic stagnation of Latin America, Africa, and Asia [in comparison
with Europe]. This is the problem that Paul VI addressed in Populorum Progressio. He had become the first ‘pilgrim pope,’ and had been deeply impressed, as
he notes, by what he had seen on his worldwide trips” (Michael Novak, “The
Development of Nations,” in Aspiring to Freedom. Commentaries on John Paul
II’s Encyclical “The Social Concerns of the Church,” ed. Kenneth A. Myers [Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988], 73).

The Virtue of Sobriety: Integral Ecology in Its Full Flourishing 207

anticipation of the ‘shape’ of genuine development.”5 This framework
of genuine development, christened by the Pontiff “integral human
development,” insisted upon promoting the good of every man and of
the whole man6 in the “transition from less human conditions to those
which are more human.”7 In order to ensure the integral nature of
such development, it enumerated four aspects of progress that required
respect and promotion: economic, social, cultural, and spiritual.8 Paul VI
saw the elaboration of these four interrelated aspects of human development as constitutive of the Church’s contribution to society: “The
Church, . . . which ‘seeks but . . . to carry forward the work of Christ
himself under the lead of the befriending Spirit,’ . . . wishes to help
[men] to obtain their full flowering and that is why she offers [them]
what she possesses as her characteristic attribute: a global vision of man
and of the human race.”9
This global vision of the development of the human person,
emphasizing the relationship of the various aspects of integral human
development, as well as that between the development of each individual person and that of society as a whole, became a constant reference point elaborated in later encyclicals. St. John Paul II’s 1987 social
encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (SRS), written to coincide with the
twentieth anniversary of Populorum Progressio (PP),10 begins by stating that “the aim of the present reflection is to emphasize, through
a theological investigation of the present world, the need for a fuller

		Donal Dorr, “Solidarity and Integral Human Development,” in The Logic of
Solidarity. Commentaries on Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical “On Social Concern,” ed.
Gregory Baum and Robert Ellsberg (New York: Orbis Books, 1989), 145.
6
		 Paul VI, Populorum Progressio [PP] (1967), §14.
7
		Ibid., §20.
8
		Ibid., §13.
9
		Ibid.
10
		In fact, although “the text did not appear until the end of February 1988, it
was backdated by fifty-one days so as to be dated in 1987 (30 December), in
time to mark at least the year of Paul VI’s encyclical, Populorum Progressio (26
March 1967)” (Novak, “The Development of Nations,” 67). This is significant, as Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (1891), the document that marks the
beginning of the modern social encyclical tradition, is the only other social
encyclical to be commemorated on anniversaries by further social encyclicals
(by Pope Pius XI’s 1931 Quadragesimo Anno, Bl. Pope Paul VI’s 1971 Octogesima
Adveniens, and St. John Paul II’s 1981 Laborem Exercens and 1991 Centesimus
Annus). This highlights the importance of integral human development in
Catholic Social Doctrine.
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and more nuanced concept of development.”11 The idea of integral
human development here becomes more Scripturally, and thus more
theologically, rooted. It emphasizes the revelation of the “specific
nature of man”12 in the Creation story of Genesis and reveals and
establishes the importance of the virtue of solidarity in having and
being for such development.13 Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI’s
2009 social encyclical, also written to commemorate PP, continues
to insist that “progress of a merely economic and technological kind
is insufficient.”14 He highlights the importance of civil society in the
education for, and the diffusion of, virtues and attitudes such as the
spirit of gift and communion.15 When this sphere is given its due,
it prevents the “exclusively binary model of market-plus-State, . . .
[which is] corrosive of society,”16 and helps to maintain the close bond
between the virtue of solidarity and the principle of subsidiarity.17
The brief retracing of these social encyclicals indicates some of the
key points necessary for us to develop an understanding of integral
ecology. In fact, although referenced only briefly at the beginning of
LS,18 the inclusion of the phrase “human development” at the beginning of the document, as well as in Francis’s declaration during his
outline of the document in §15 that, “convinced as I am that change is
impossible without motivation and a process of education, I will offer
some inspired guidelines for human development to be found in the
treasure of Christian spiritual experience,” highlights the importance
of integral human development as the context for the encyclical.
		John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis [SRS] (1987), §4.
		Ibid., §29.
13
		See Ibid., §§28, 38–40.
14
		Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (2009), §23.
15
		See especially Ch. 3, “Fraternity, Economic Development and Civil Society,”
§§34–42.
16
		Ibid., §39.
17
		See especially, Ibid., §§58–59.
18
		In fact, it may not be immediately clear to the reader that this integral
human development is key to the understanding of integral ecology, since the
phrase “human development” occurs only six times in LS (§§5, 15, 18, 109,
128, and 191), and Populorum Progressio is referenced only once, in LS §127.
Furthermore, the references to previous social encyclicals with which Pope
Francis begins highlight previous references to ecology, rather than the setting
of integral ecology within the context of integral human development. See
references to Octogesima Adveniens, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Centesimus Annus, and
Caritas in Veritate in LS §§4–6. However, even if the term may not be emphasized throughout the document, the concept is clearly present.
11
12

The Virtue of Sobriety: Integral Ecology in Its Full Flourishing 209

Integral human development as the context within which integral
ecology is best understand is then confirmed in three diverse ways.
Most clearly, there are constant references throughout the encyclical
to the economic, the social, and the cultural, especially within the
subtitles.19 Moreover, the encyclical is permeated by the omnipresent
influence of Christ, Creation, and the spiritual, as it begins with the
Laudato Si’ hymn and ends with a prayer to the Trinitarian God.
Finally, there is the call for an education and lifestyle characterized by
the virtue of sobriety,20 and such a call for the flourishing of integral
human development in virtue is consistent with the social encyclicals
as a whole, and even more so with the theological development of
solidarity as found in SRS, as we will soon see.
What then is this integral ecology, and how does it fit within
such a context? Chapter 4 of the encyclical, which treats specifically
of this idea, begins thus: “Since everything is closely interrelated,
and today’s problems call for a vision capable of taking into account
every aspect of the global crisis, I suggest that we now consider some
elements of an integral ecology, one which clearly respects its human
and social dimensions. . . . Ecology studies the relationship between
living organisms and the environment in which they develop; . . .
everything is interconnected.”21 What this means is that: “We are
faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other
social, but rather with one complex crisis. . . . Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach.”22 The term “environment,”
however, cannot be understood merely as a reference to a material
substance capable of use or manipulation,23 nor is it meant to conjure

		See especially LS, ch. 4, section I, “Environmental, Economic and Social Ecology” (§138–42), and section II, “Cultural Ecology” (§§143–46).
20
		References to virtue occur throughout the encyclical, beginning with §9,
which highlights the contribution of Patriarch Bartholomew to the ecological discourse: a request “to replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with
generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing, an asceticism which ‘entails
learning to give, and not simply to give up.’ ” However, ch. 6, “Ecological
Education and Spirituality” contains the paragraphs that are most focused and
most explicit in their treatment of the virtues (§§216–32).
21
		LS, §§137–38.
22
		Ibid., §139. Other paragraphs emphasizing the interrelated nature of the social
(which here seems to be used not as distinct from the economic, cultural, and
spiritual, but rather as pertaining to the human person and thus encompassing
all four of these established categories) are §§79, 91, 117–118, and 124.
23
		See, for example, ibid., §159.
19

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up images of a divinization of the earth.24 Rather, Pope Francis’s use
of the term within the concept of integral ecology is meant to refer
primarily to Creation: “The word ‘creation’ has a broader meaning
than ‘nature,’ for it has to do with God’s loving plan in which every
creature has its own value and significance. Nature is usually seen as
a system which can be studied, understood and controlled, whereas
creation can only be understood as a gift from the outstretched hand
of the Father of all, and as a reality illuminated by the love which
calls us together into universal communion.”25 Situating this call for
an integral ecology within the context of integral human development recognizes then that to the integration of the economic, social,
cultural, and spiritual aspects of the human person at the core of
human flourishing must be added another aspect: the environment,
understood as Creation and, thus, as a gift from God, from which
these previous aspects are also developed. In “Habits of Presence
and the Generosity of Creation,” David L. Schindler notes: “Pope
Francis, following Paul VI, says that integral development concerns
all human beings and the whole human being. According to Francis, this principle—the principle of universality—is intrinsic to the
Gospel, which involves the salvation of every man and woman and
includes ‘gathering up all things in Christ, things in heaven and on
earth’ (Eph 1:10; cf. EG, 181).”26
Integral Ecology and the Natural (Moral) Law
How then does Pope Francis seek to explain this integral ecology as
essential to the human flourishing sought by integral human development? What is the basis for the virtue of sobriety in which integral
ecology and the encyclical culminate? The answer begins with a theological, scriptural understanding of the natural moral law that highlights
“issues that are at once theological and anthropological, . . . whether
we speak of the order of nature, the Covenant, or the Gospel.”27 In the
		Ibid., §90.
		Ibid., §76.
26
		Schindler, “Habits of Presence,” 575.
27
		In his discussion of the theological foundation of the natural law, as participation in the eternal law, Russell Hittinger notes the terminological change
introduced by Veritatis Splendor, present also once in Humanae Vitae (1968) and
used in Donum Vitae (1987) and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992),
in which the natural law is referred to as the natural “moral” law; see Hittinger,
The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003), xxxix–xli. He suggests: “As I see it, the rubric
24
25

The Virtue of Sobriety: Integral Ecology in Its Full Flourishing 211

line of patristic theologians such as Tertullian,28 as well as John Paul II’s
scriptural idea of natural law rooted in the first chapters of Genesis,29
Pope Francis uses the Creation account to illuminate an understanding of the natural law that gives primacy to its theological origin as a
participation in the eternal law.30 Hence, as the world has been created,
we recognize that: “We are not God. The earth was here before us and
it has been given to us.”31 Therefore, the dominion given to man in
Genesis 1:28 is not “absolute.”32 Rather, in line with the earlier thought
of John Paul II, Francis states: “We must forcefully reject the notion that
our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth
justifies absolute dominion over other creatures. The biblical texts are
to be read in their context, with an appropriate hermeneutic, recognizing that they tell us to ‘till and keep’ the garden of the world (cf. Gen
2:15). ‘Tilling’ refers to cultivating, ploughing or working, while ‘keeping’ means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving.”33 The earlier
‘natural moral law’ highlights issues that are at once theological and anthropological.
Whether we speak of the order of nature, the Covenant, or the Gospel, the creature
is not in a condition in which morals and law have to be brought together
ab initio by the human mind—fiat lex . . . The terminology of Veritatis . . . is
somewhat novel, but the definitional scheme is virtually the same as that of St.
Thomas, who, relying on St. Augustine, distinguished all law proceeding from
the divine mind from laws promulgated by the human mind. The moral order
remains within the setting of divine wisdom, though our location in, and
participation in, this order differs in each case” (ibid., xl–xli; emphasis mine).
28
		Ibid., 5–6.
29
		John Paul II’s development of the natural moral law as rooted in Genesis is
clearly present in Laborem Exercens §47, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis §§30, 34, Veritatis Splendor §§40–44, and the theology of the body catecheses that develop
the meaning of “in the beginning.” See St. John Paul II, Man and Woman He
Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline
Books & Media, 2006), 131–23. The theological development of natural law
that recognizes “all three foci . . . (1) an order of nature (‘the truth about man’),
(2) the rudiments of which are ‘in principle accessible to human reason,’ and
(3) are expressions of divine providence,” (Hittinger, The First Grace, 26) and
that emphasizes the last has been pursued in a notable way by Hittinger in
the aforementioned work and by Matthew Levering in Biblical Natural Law: A
Theocentric and Teleological Approach (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
30
		St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica [ST] I-II, q. 91, a. 2, resp. (all English
of ST will be from the translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican
Province, 5 vols. [Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1981]).
31
		LS, §67.
32
		This term is used eleven times in the document, usually negatively, to indicate
that absolute dominion is not the meaning of this verse.
33
		LS, §67. See also SRS, §30: “The task is ‘to have dominion’ over the other

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reason given for an integral ecology, that Creation is understood as gift
from God, becomes even more urgent when we realize that: “All creatures are moving forward with us and through us towards a common
point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the
risen Christ embraces and illumines all things. Human beings, endowed
with intelligence and love, and drawn by the fullness of Christ, are
called to lead all creatures back to their Creator.”34 This invocation of
the rational faculties in regard to the “very good” Creation of God35
highlight man’s “inclination to the good,36 according to the nature of
his reason, which nature is proper to him: a natural inclination to know
the truth about God, and to live in society.”37 Pope Francis continues
to recall this first natural inclination, that to the truth about God, who
is Creator, and thus our recognition that we are not the Creator, but
made to be provident in his image,38 by constant references to man
being made in the image and likeness, man’s dignity, which flows
therefrom, and the creativity with which he is called to respond to the
challenges of an integral ecology. These references, such as that to “our
unique dignity and our gift of intelligence, [by which] we are called to

created beings, ‘to cultivate the garden.’ This is to be accomplished within
the framework of obedience to the divine law and therefore with respect for
the image received, the image which is the clear foundation of the power of
dominion recognized as belonging to man as the means to his perfection (cf.
Gen 1:26–30; 2:15–16; Wis 9:2–3).” See also St. John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae
(1995), §52: “Man’s lordship however is not absolute, but ministerial. . . . Hence
man must exercise it with wisdom and love, sharing in the boundless wisdom
and love of God. And this comes about through obedience to God’s holy Law.”
34
		LS, §83.
35
		Ibid., §65.
36
		Levering sees the natural inclinations clearly present in the Genesis account
(Biblical Natural Law, 58–59). The first principle of practical reason, to do good
and avoid evil, is indicated as God’s beholding Creation, “and it was very
good” (Gen 1:31).
37
		ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, resp. Pope Francis is clear about this at the beginning of ch.
2, “The Gospel of Creation,” when he states, “I would like from the outset to
show how faith convictions can offer Christians, and some other believers as
well, ample motivation to care for nature and for the most vulnerable of their
brothers and sisters” (LS, §64).
38
		ST I-II, q. 91, a. 2, resp. Levering points to Gen 1:26, “Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness,” as indicative of the natural inclination to know the
truth about God: “Created in the image and likeness of God, human beings
possess a natural inclination toward knowing truth, the fulfillment of the spiritual capacity to know” (Biblical Natural Law, 59).

The Virtue of Sobriety: Integral Ecology in Its Full Flourishing 213

respect creation and its inherent laws,”39 leave no doubt that it is the
natural moral law to which he refers in his exposition of Genesis.
Along with the natural inclination to the truth about God, understood as the truth about man in relationship to God, Pope Francis
makes appeal to the natural inclination of man to live in society,
and he does so in a way that relates it with knowing the truth about
God as Creator and leads to giving special preeminence to the poor
and to our children, to future generations. The first mention of
man’s inclination to life in society is found in the same phrase that
emphasizes man’s inclination to the truth about God: “The Bible
teaches that every man and woman is created out of love and made
in God’s image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26).”40 This reference to the
creation of the first man and woman refers to the first society,41 as
“It is not good that the man should be alone (Gen 2:18).”42 Man is
thus capable of and called to “freely giving himself and entering into
communion with other persons.”43 The story of Cain and Abel and
the Jubilee laws are used to further highlight the “duty to cultivate
and maintain a proper relationship with my neighbor, for whose care
and custody I am responsible.”44 Within this context, the Leviticus
laws regarding reaping highlight the preeminence given by the Lord
to the care of the poor and vulnerable: “When you reap the harvest of
your land, you shall not reap your field to its very border, neither shall
		LS, §69. See, in a similar vein, §§68, 61 (whose presumably Spanish original
reads “los fines de la acción humana,” or “the ends of human action,” rather
than “the goals of human activity,” as the English has translated it, about
which “we have stopped thinking”), and 155 (which most explicitly declares,
“Human ecology also implies another profound reality: the relationship
between human life and the moral law, which is inscribed in our nature
and is necessary for the creation of a more dignified environment”). (I say
“presumably” for §61 above because the Post-Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii
Gaudium was known to have been written first in Spanish, translated into and
then corrected in Italian, and then translated into the other languages. Thus,
looking at the Spanish and the Italian at certain points can give us some insight
into the pontifical bent of mind that the English may not make so evident.)
40
		LS, §65.
41
		Russell Hittinger, “The Coherence of the Four Basic Principles of Catholic
Social Doctrine: An Interpretation,” in Pursuing the Common Good: How Solidarity and Subsidiarity Can Work Together, ed. M.S. Archer and P. Donati (Vatican
City: The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, 2008), 85.
42
		Levering, Biblical Natural Law, 59.
43
		LS, §65.
44
		Ibid., §70.
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you gather the gleanings after the harvest. And you shall not strip
your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your
vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner (Lev
19:9–10).”45 Further description and warning against the pretense
of an “absolute” dominion of man over Creation then continue to
highlight the impact that nonprovident interventions have on the
poor: the lack of access to safe drinking water,46 the depletion of fishing reserves, rises in the sea level, premature death in conflict over
scarce resources,47 the export of solid and toxic liquids to developing
countries,48 and the lack of housing.49 The connection here between
the social and environmental crises—in truth, the one crisis of integral ecology—becomes clear: “The deterioration of the environment
and of society affects the most vulnerable people on the planet.”50
Moreover, the “notion of the common good also extends to future
generations.”51 The section on “Justice Between the Generations” (in
chapter 4, on integral ecology) addresses both intragenerational and
intergenerational solidarity: “Once we start to think about the world
we are leaving to future generations, we look at things differently;
we realize that the world is a gift which we have freely received and
which we must share with others.”52 In other words, in the acceptance of the world as gift of the Creator, the particular dignity of the
human person in the order of Creation must guide man’s “tilling”
and “keeping.”53

		Ibid., §71.
		Ibid., §30.
47
		Ibid., §48.
48
		Ibid., §51.
49
		Ibid., §152.
50
		Ibid., §48.
51
		Ibid., §159.
52
		Ibid.
53
		Ibid., §119. As John Cuddeback notes, “Francis seems especially intent on
emphasizing that, in our relationship with the natural world around us, as in
the moral life in general, man has received from God the gift of an order that
should govern all our actions” (“Reflections of a Green Thomist on Pope
Francis’s Laudato Si’,” Nova et Vetera [English] 14, no. 3 [2016]: 738).
45
46

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Integral Ecology and the Virtue of Sobriety54
What then does this look like concretely? How is the natural moral
law, the basis for integral ecology, or an expanded notion of integral
human development, to be lived fruitfully in society? Since “the rational soul is in every man a natural inclination to act according to reason
. . . to act according to virtue,”55 it is clear that the natural moral law,
lived fruitfully, flourishes in virtue. That this is true in regard to integral
human development, as understood in the earlier social encyclicals, is
clearly manifest in the theological definition of the virtue of solidarity
as found in SRS. While it is traditionally one of the four principles of
Catholic Social Doctrine, along with subsidiarity, common good, and
the dignity of the human person,56 this virtuous elaboration of solidarity augments its significance. Looking at the pertinent section in some
detail will prepare us to better understand the flourishing of the virtue
of sobriety in LS.
John Paul II’s SRS addresses authentic human development by first
indicating certain extremes in regard to development: underdevelopment, characterized by misery, and superdevelopment, the excessive
use and waste of goods, or “consumerism.”57 These extremes have
their origin in the interconnection between “having” and “being.”58
The human person must “have” certain goods in order to “be,” in
		This is not the only time that the virtues have played an important part in
Pope Francis’s pontificate. See also the 2015 Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, ch. 4, “Love in Marriage” (§§89–164), which performs an
exegesis of 1 Cor 13:4–7 in terms of love and its associated virtues as well as
the 2014 and 2015 Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia, which first listed
the vices, or “curial diseases,” that weaken service to the Lord (2014 Address,
accessed October 30, 2017, https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/
speeches/2014/december/documents/papa-francesco_20141222_curia-romana.html) and then listed needed virtues for the Curia, which corresponded
to the word misericordia, or mercy, in Italian (2015 Address, accessed October 30, 2017, https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/
december/documents/papa-francesco_20151221_curia-romana.html).
55
		ST I-II, q. 94, a. 3, resp.
56
		Although the term “principle” is not used systematically in Catholic Social
Doctrine, these four primary principles are consistently found to structure
its presentation and elaboration. See Hittinger’s “The Coherence of the Four
Basic Principles of Catholic Social Doctrine” and the United States Council
of Catholic Bishops’ section on “What Does the Church Say About Catholic
Social Teaching in the Public Square?—Four Principles of Catholic Social
Teaching,” in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (2015), §§40–62.
57
		SRS, §28.
58
		Ibid.
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order to realize the vocation to which he is called. However, obstacles to his “being” arise from the “lack,” or ill use, of the goods he
“has.” There is both the danger that, having kept the importance of
“being” always before him, he will not “have” the goods necessary
to “be,” and the danger that “possessions eat us up”59 or consume
the human person if he focuses on the possession itself and not on its
creative use for his vocation or his “being.” As “contrary to what is
true and good happiness,”60 the extremes of underdevelopment and
superdevelopment, corresponding to either an intentional deprivation or accumulation of “having” at the expense of “being,” must
be diagnosed as moral evils—in fact, as social evils or structures of
sin—“in order to identify precisely, on the level of human conduct,
the path to be followed.”61 While such structures are always rooted in
personal sin, within the culture, they begin to become consolidated:
“They grow stronger, spread, and become the source of other sins,
and so influence people’s behavior.”62 In order to combat such social
structures rooted in individual human persons and working against
the common good,63 people acting morally, making moral decisions,
or converting is necessary.64 These moral decisions must be rooted in
		Gabriel Marcel, “Outlines of a Phenomenology of Having,” in Being and
Having: An Existentialist Diary, trans. Katherine Farrer (New York: Harper &
Row, Publishers, 1965), 165. Although I have found this noted only in Derek
S. Jeffrey’s “A Deep Amazement at Man’s Worth and Dignity: Technology and
the Person in Redemptor hominis,” in The Legacy of John Paul II: An Evangelical
Assessment, ed.Tim Perry (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 47–49,
John Paul II’s use of “having” and “being,” while he explicitly references its
roots in PP §14 and in the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et Spes, §35
(see SRS §28), is clearly influenced in its use and definition of these terms by
that of Marcel: “ ‘Our possessions eat us up,’ . . . and it is truer of us, strangely
enough, when we are in a state of inertia in face of objects which are themselves inert, but falser when we are more vitally and actively bound up with
something serving as the immediate subject-matter of a personal creative
act, a subject-matter perpetually renewed. (It may be the garden of the keen
gardener, the farm of a farmer, the violin of a musician, or the laboratory of a
scientist.) In all these cases, we may say, having tends, not to be destroyed, but
to be sublimated and changed into being” (Marcel, “Outlines of a Phenomenology of Having,” 165). My great thanks to James Jacobs for having pointed
out this connection between Marcel and John Paul II.
60
		SRS, §28.
61
		Ibid., §36 (italics original).
62
		Ibid.
63
		Ibid.
64
		See, for example, ibid., §§33, 35, and 38.
59

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the natural law, in “all the demands deriving from the order of truth
and good proper to the human person,” whom the Christian recognizes as made in the image of God.65
John Paul II then begins to characterize in detail this conversion or
these moral decisions, and he does so specifically in terms of virtue,
“that which makes its possessor good and his work good likewise.”66
He writes: “It is above all a question of interdependence, sensed as
a system determining relationships in the contemporary world, in
its economic, cultural, political and religious elements, and accepted
as a moral category. When interdependence becomes recognized in
this way, the correlative response as a moral and social attitude, as a
‘virtue,’ is solidarity.”67
This characterization of solidarity as a virtue is key to understanding the flourishing of the natural law in integral human development.68 In fact, this moral and social attitude, or habitus,69 is meant
to combat the moral evils, or perhaps vices, of underdevelopment
and superdevelopment.70 As these vices take hold in structures of sin
“rooted in personal sin, and thus always linked to the concrete acts
of individuals who introduce these structures, consolidate them and
make them difficult to remove,” 71 they are not just personal, but also
social vices, or social expressions of vice. It follows, then, that, just
as sin is personal but can also lead to the creation of structures of
sin and manifest itself socially, so also virtue, which is also personal
and rooted and flourishing in concrete human persons, can lead to
the creation of virtuous structures, or the social expression of such a
virtue. Therefore, solidarity, as “a firm and persevering determination to
		Ibid., §33 (italics in the original).
		ST I-II, q. 55, a. 3, resp.
67
		SRS, §38.
68
		Solidarity, understood as a reality and a duty, was already present in the social
encyclicals. See, for example, PP §17, 44, and 48, and Laborem Exercens §8,
which use this term, and the use of “friendship” by Pope Leo XIII, the use of
“social charity” by Pope Pius XI, and the use of “civilization of love” by Bl.
Pope Paul VI. John Paul II sees these latter as identical to solidarity (Centesimus
Annus, §10). It was also a part of the work of Cardinal Wojtyla, specifically
in The Acting Person, who wrote about this attitude or “commitment . . . to
participate in the life of [the] community in a way that promotes the common
good” (Dorr, “Solidarity and Integral Human Development,” 152). However,
it was not until SRS that solidarity was defined as a virtue.
69
		See the Latin of §37 found in Acta Apostolicae Sedis 80 (1988): 565.
70
		SRS, §39.
71
		Ibid., §36.
65
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commit oneself to the common good . . . that is to say to the good of all
and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all,” 72
can be considered a social virtue, or a social expression of virtue.
As John Paul II notes in his characterization of solidarity, “attitudes
and ‘structures of sin’ are only conquered—presupposing the help of
divine grace—by a diametrically opposed attitude: a commitment to the
good of one’s neighbor with the readiness, in the gospel sense, to ‘lose
oneself ’ for the sake of the other instead of exploiting him . . . (cf.
Matt 10:40–42; 20:25; Mark 10:42–45; Luke 22:25–27).”73
However, what would it mean to speak of a social vice, or better
yet, a social virtue, especially when this precise terminology is not
used in the encyclical? Such a social virtue or a social expression
of a virtue, we could posit, would refer to the way that a virtue is
lived by each person in regard to others and society as a whole, as
well as a virtue characteristic of a society and its structures.74 This
interrelationship between the personal and the social in regard to
authentic human development is rooted in “the transcendent reality of
the human being, a reality which is seen to be shared from the beginning by a couple, a man and a woman (cf. Gen 1:27), and is therefore
fundamentally social.” 75 For this reason, John Paul II writes that
development is given to the first man and woman as “a special task
to be accomplished by each individually and by them as a couple.” 76
This emphasis on the interrelationship between the personal and the
social, then, characterizes the treatment of development and, thus,
solidarity throughout the section: it is “our personal and collective
effort”;77 it “obliges each and every man and woman, as well as soci-

		Ibid., §38 (italics original).
		Ibid., §§38–39 (italics original)
74
		In fact, the term “social virtues” seems to be present in this sense in John Paul
II’s Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in America (1999), §13. While
the term “social virtues” is also used in the English, the Spanish of the Acta
Apostolicae Sedis 91 (1999): 750, most closely emphasizes the interrelationship
of the personal and social nature of these social virtues and sins: “Como los
pecados y las virtudes sociales no existen en abstracto, sino que son el resultado de actos personales, es necessario tener presente que América es hoy una
realidad compleja, fruto de las tendencias y modos de proceder de los hombres
y mujeres que lo habitan. En esta situación real y concreta es donde ellos han
de encontrarse con Jesús.” See also Gaudium et Spes, §30.
75
		SRS, §29.
76
		Ibid., §30.
77
		Ibid., §31.
72
73

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eties and nations”;78 and it is meant to change our attitudes toward
ourselves and our neighbors and our relations “with even the remotest human communities, and with nature itself; and all of this in view
of higher values such as the common good.” 79 This solidarity thus moves
those who “have” more goods, which are necessary for “being,” to
aid and be aided by those who desire ardently to “be” and yet do not
“have” enough,80 both in personal interactions and in the institutions
that make up society.
To better expound on this virtue of solidarity, John Paul II then
explicitly states that is a Christian virtue similar to charity.81 If we
understand solidarity as charity, we see that it is best understood as a
virtue of the will,82 “a firm and persevering determination to commit
oneself ” by which we love God and our neighbor, “that he may be
in God.”83 Solidarity and charity are so similar, as seen above, that
the definition of charity can easily be substituted for that of solidarity. However, as a virtue that regards the common good, we may
say that solidarity is a social expression of the virtue of charity and
how charity is best lived in society. In fact, solidarity, understanding
one’s neighbor as the image of the living God,84 is both “to mark . . .
and [to be] the final destiny of . . . the human community,”85 the
communion inspired by the “supreme model of unity . . . a reflection of
the intimate life of God, one God in three Persons.”86 Hence, integral
human development, carrying forward the work of Christ, requires

		Ibid., §32 (italics original).
		Ibid., §38 (italics original).
80
		See ibid., §38–40.
81
		Ibid., §40. This may also be another point where John Paul II’s reading of the
earlier social encyclicals, and their various names for the reality that he will
call solidarity, corresponds with his understanding of “having” and “being”
in Marcel. Marcel indicates love as the bridge, or as the means of transcending, the possession of what I have over and against another: “The man who
remains on the plane of having (or of desire) is centred, either on himself or
on another treated as another. . . . But we know very well that it is possible to
transcend the level of the self and the other; it is transcended both in love and
in charity” (“Outlines of a Phenomenology of Having,” 166–67).
82
		ST II-II, q. 24, a. 1, sc.
83
		ST II-II, q. 25, a. 1, resp.
84
		SRS, §40.
85
		Richard John Neuhaus, “Sollicitudo Behind the Headlines,” in Aspiring to
Freedom: Commentaries on John Paul II’s Encyclical “The Social Concerns of the
Church,” ed. Kenneth A. Myers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988), 142.
86
		SRS, §40.
78
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and flourishes in virtue, specifically the social virtue of solidarity.
However, for Pope Francis, this virtue perfecting the will necessitates as well a moral virtue, a virtue that specifically concerns the use
of temporal goods, in order to render it efficacious. This can be seen
as early as Evangelii Gaudium, his programmatic encyclical in which
he encourages the Church, in the footsteps of He who took the first
step (cf. 1 John 4:10), to “take the initiative” and to go out in love.87
Social charity, or solidarity, must so perfect the will as to move the
person to action. This impetus takes a particular form in a society
in which consumerism and greed, despite the warnings of John Paul
II, continue to flourish and threaten not only the economic, social,
cultural, and spiritual aspects of integral human development but also
Creation itself as a gift. The constant and gnawing desire to acquire
and possess newer and more deafens the human person to the call to
live in solidarity with others. The exercise of this solidarity through
the moderation of one’s purchases and the use of one’s goods, the
“being” and the “having” for the benefit of others as understood in
the context of Creation as a gift from God to man and woman, is
even more insistently a demand of integral ecology. These desires
to possess require a specific virtue, or better again, a moral virtue
expressed in a social way. Sobriety, or the social expression of the
virtue of temperance, solidly rooted in his earlier theological engagement with the natural law, is such a virtue for Pope Francis. Thus,
just as charity, the form of all the virtues, directs the moral virtues of
prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude in regard to human acts
and temporal goods,88 it follows that solidarity, the social expression
of charity, will also inform and make use of sobriety. The necessity
		Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (2013), §24. In fact, Francis invents here a
neologism to speak about this “taking the initiative.” Found in both the original Spanish and then the Italian, but completely absent in the English, the
second line of this paragraph reads, “‘Primerear’: sepan disculpar este neologismo.”
88
		ST II-II, q. 23, a. 8, resp. See, as an earlier example of this concept, St. Augustine’s De moribus ecclesiae 1.15, which defines each one of the cardinal virtues
in terms of a diverse aspect of love: “Now since this love, as I have said, is not
love of things in general, but rather love of God, that is, of the supreme good,
the supreme wisdom, and the supreme harmony, we can define the virtues
thus: temperance is love preserving itself whole and unblemished for God,
fortitude is love enduring all things willingly for the sake of God, justice is
love serving God alone and, therefore, ruling well those things subject to man,
and prudence is love discriminating rightly between those things which aid it
in reaching God and those things which might hinder it.”
87

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for such a virtue was already hinted at in John Paul II’s exhortation toward “the practice of virtues which favor togetherness, and
which teach us to live in unity, so as to build in unity, by giving and
receiving, a new society and a better world.”89 In fact, Donal Dorr,
commenting on SRS, notes: “[The Pontiff ] speaks of ‘the urgent
need to change the spiritual attitudes which define each individual’s
relationship with self, with neighbor, with even the remotest human
communities, and with nature itself ’ (SRS, no. 38.3). This indicates
that the moral dimension of genuine human development involves a
sense of responsibility for the whole cosmos; such moral responsibility
is either a part of the virtue of solidarity itself or else it is a sister virtue that
has very much in common with it.”90 What then is precisely this virtue
of sobriety, and how is it the flourishing of the natural law in integral
ecology?
First mentioned in regard to the poverty and austerity of Saint
Francis91 and the ora et labora of St. Benedict of Norcia and his
monks,92 this sobriety is a necessary part of conversion in the face
of a “constant flood of new consumer goods.”93 The social vice of
consumerism, taken up again as in SRS, leads the human person
to become self-centered: “In this horizon, a genuine sense of the
common good . . . disappears.”94 Greed, compulsive buying and
spending, and the need to consume are all used to characterize this
vice not just as personal but as social, and thus endemic to society as
a whole.95 However, “no system can completely suppress our openness to what is good, true and beautiful, or our God-given ability to
respond to his grace at work deep in our hearts.”96 The educational
challenge to respond to this vice is not merely a question of the
transmission of information, since even those who know that such a
lifestyle does not bring them joy feel unable to renounce such habits.97
Education in terms of mere information partnered with adequate
laws, even if well-enforced, is insufficient; it is rather “good habits”

		SRS, §39.
		Dorr, “Solidarity and Integral Human Development,” 151 (emphasis mine).
91
		LS, §11.
92
		Ibid., §126.
93
		Ibid., §222.
94
		Ibid., §204.
95
		See Ibid. §§203, 204, and 209.
96
		Ibid., §205.
97
		Ibid., §209.
89
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or “sound virtues” that are necessary to counter such a vice.98 Sobriety is the fruit of that response to the call to conversion,99 away from
this social vice and the passivism that reinforces it.100
To be distinguished from the more particular Thomistic definition
of sobriety, which focuses upon the moderation of strong drink,101
this sobriety seems rather to be a social expression of the virtue of
temperance. In fact, the definition of sobriety given by Francis, “a
growth marked by moderation and the capacity to be happy with
little, . . . to be spiritually detached from what we possess, and not to
succumb to sadness for what we lack, . . . [which] implies avoiding
the dynamic of dominion and the mere accumulation of pleasures,”102
appears to mirror the Thomistic definition of temperance: “a kind
of moderation . . . chiefly concerned with those passions that tend
towards sensible goods, . . . and consequently with the sorrows that
arise from the absence of those pleasures.”103 This can be seen in the
examples Pope Francis provides of this virtue lived out daily, such

		Ibid., §211. This, of course, does not deny the importance of these laws (see
ibid. §177).
99
		See especially ch. 6, Section III, “Ecological Conversion” (LS, §§216–21).
100
		Pope Francis speaks in LS §217 also about the need for conversion for those
who either ridicule concern for Creation or are passive in its regard. The need
for conversion to a life of virtue is evident also here when we see that virtues
increase and are maintained through deliberate acts of equal and greater intensity, while they are corrupted through acts of diminished intensity (ST I-II, q.
52, a.3, resp.) or the lack of such acts (ST I-II, q. 53, a. 2, resp.).
101
		ST II-II, q. 149, a. 1, resp.
102
		LS, §222. This understanding of sobriety is also present in some of Francis’s
discourses, notably his Homily at Midnight Mass on December 24, 2015, in
which he proclaims, “In a society so often intoxicated by consumerism and
hedonism, wealth and extravagance, appearances and narcissism, this Child calls
us to act soberly, in other words, in a way that is simple, balanced, consistent,
capable of seeing and doing what is essential” (accessed October 30, 2017,
https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2015/documents/
papa-francesco_20151224_omelia-natale.html), as well as during his Angelus
on November 27, 2016, in which the Advent Angelus examines the light
that the Incarnation shines up our lives, indicating that “from this perspective
there also comes an invitation to sobriety, to not be controlled by the things
of this world, by material reality, but rather to govern them” (accessed October 30, 2017, https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/angelus/2016/
documents/papa-francesco_angelus_20161127.html). Obviously, this is not an
exhaustive list, but merely a summary confirmation that Francis’s understanding of sobriety as a virtue is distinct from that of Aquinas.
103
		ST II-II, q. 141, a. 3, resp.
98

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as moderating the use of heating,104 air-conditioning,105 plastic and
paper, and water, engaging in car-pooling, and “cooking only what
can be reasonably consumed.”106 While the use of the term “reasonably” points specifically once more to temperance, inasmuch as it
moderates the use of these pleasurable goods,107 all of these examples
presuppose a lack of ultimate comfort or pleasure on the part of the
acting person, who is sacrificing this pleasure for others. Pope Francis also notes that “happiness means knowing how to limit some
needs which only stupefy us,”108 which is another way of phrasing
the ill effect of a lack of temperance. It is important to keep in mind,
however, that the Christian understanding of temperance is not a
rejection of the world and of its pleasurable goods.109 Creation, as gift,
is first good, before it is a good! For this reason, Pope Francis can
speak of a priority “of being over that of being useful.”110 Sobriety, then,
		LS, §211.
		Ibid., §55.
106
		Ibid., §211 (italics mine).
107
		The use of the term “reasonably” leads us once more to think of virtue, and
specifically of temperance, since “sensible and bodily goods . . . are not in
opposition to reason, but are subject to it as instruments which reason employs
in order to attain its proper end” (ST II-II, q. 141, a.3, resp.).
108
		LS, §223. The English translation reads here “diminish us,” but the Spanish antontan and the Italian stordiscono, both translating as “stun,” “daze,” and
“stupefy,” seem to justify a stronger reading of the term.
109
		“Its rarity in the [Bible seems to be] a clear indication that it does not play an
important part in the thinking of biblical wisdom. . . . When it does occur, its
meaning must be determined in the light of the whole biblical outlook. The
Greek ideal [that] looked towards [self-perfection, and temperance] was the art
of keeping all one’s natural drives and instincts under one’s command in order
to produce a well-rounded personality” (The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible,
An Illustrated Encyclopedia, ed. George Arthur Buttrick et al. [New York: Abingdon Press, 1962], 268). However, “belief in creation . . . saw in the world with
its gifts the hand of the Creator” (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed.
Gerhard Kittlel, ed. and trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, vol. 2 [Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1964], 342), gifts that “were to be enjoyed and appreciated” (The
Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 268). Thus, for example, the act of fasting by
Jesus in Luke 4:1–13 is not considered to be a rejection of the goods of the
earth or an end in itself, since his eating and drinking has led to the accusation
that he is a glutton and a drunkard (Luke 7:34), but instead, as preparation for
His testing by the devil, it was to allow “the mind [to] arise more freely to the
contemplation of heavenly things” (ST II-II, q. 147, a. 1, resp.).
110
		LS, §69 (emphasis original). Other references to the rejection of a utilitarian
mindset that sees Creation as a good to be used, rather than first and foremost
a good with an intrinsic meaning as gift to be respected and then developed
104
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or “poverty,”111 “voluntary simplicity,”112 and “responsible austerity,”113 as Pope Francis has called it in other places, is thus clearly
likened to a social expression of the virtue of temperance, while the
consumerism and indifference he denounces are easily likened to the
vice of intemperance.
The effects of this sobriety are also plainly that of temperance. The
section under which Pope Francis develops this social virtue as rooted
and flourishing in the human person in chapter 6 of LS is entitled
“Peace and Joy,” and the initial paragraphs emphasize the joy and
the tranquility that follow from living such a virtue. The enjoyment
that comes from living such a lifestyle, from resting in this good,114 is
in accord with that intrinsic meaning, can be found in §§82, 115, 132, 140,
155, 159, and 161.
111
		This idea, at the forefront in Pope Francis’s pontificate, as indicated even by the
choice of his name, is well-developed theologically in his Lenten Message for
2014. Using as his meditation the words of St. Paul in 2 Cor 8:9, he focuses
upon the meaning of the phrase “that by his poverty you might become rich.”
Pope Francis writes: “God did not let our salvation drop down from heaven,
like someone who gives alms from their abundance out of a sense of altruism
and piety. . . . So what is this poverty by which Christ frees us and enriches
us? It is his way of loving us, his way of being our neighbor, just as the Good
Samaritan was neighbor to the man left half dead by the side of the road (cf.
Luke 10:25ff). . . . Christ’s poverty which enriches us is his taking flesh and
bearing our weaknesses as an expression of God’s infinite mercy to us.” He
persists: “In every time and place God continues to save mankind and the
world through the poverty of Christ, who makes himself poor in the sacraments,
in his word and in his Church, which is a people of the poor. God’s wealth
passes not through our wealth, but invariably and exclusively through our
personal and communal poverty, enlivened by the Spirit. . . . In imitation of our
Master, we Christians are called to confront the poverty of our brothers and
sisters, to touch it, to make it our own and to take practical steps to alleviate it”
(Lenten Message 2014, “He Became Poor So That by His Poverty You Might
Become Rich,” December 26, 2013, accessed October 30, 2017, https://
w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/lent/documents/papa-francesco_20131226_messaggio-quaresima2014.html).
112
		Pope Francis, General Audience, “The Family, 17: Family and Poverty,” June
3, 2015, accessed October 30, 2017, https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/
en/audiences/2015/documents/papa-francesco_20150603_udienza-generale.
html.
113
		LS, §214. In Spanish, this virtue enjoined specifically upon the clergy and
religious is not the “responsible simplicity” of the English, but rather “una
austeridad responsable.”
114
		Ibid., §222. Cf. ST II-II, q. 23, a. 4, resp., and the passion of joy or delight from
obtaining the good.

The Virtue of Sobriety: Integral Ecology in Its Full Flourishing 225

accompanied by “serenity”115 and “peace.”116 “An integral ecology,”
he notes, “includes taking time to recover a serene harmony with
creation, reflecting on our lifestyle and our ideals, and contemplating
the Creator.”117 This harmony or peace recalls the tranquility of soul,
most excellent in temperance, which moderates the concupiscible
passions.118 The passions, or the reaction of the person to a perceived
good, such as an object to be bought or possessed, are always initially
concupiscible, either love or hate in regard to a perceived good or lack
thereof, such as the latest high-tech gadget, the newest theological
work, or an incredibly outrageous pair of red Prada shoes. The person
who longs after or loves this good immoderately, incessantly trolling
the web for the best prices and constantly discussing or posting on
social media with the latest updates, when she encounters the obstacle
of her minimal budget, may perceive even more strongly the irascible
passion of daring and then stretch her budget past believability or
acquire evermore debt to possess these new goods. (This is obviously
a foreign experience to most of us academics, with our well-stocked
libraries!) However, instead of bringing peace, the acquisition of the
gadget, tome, or shoes will actually lead to a greater desire for more
goods; this kind of “having” does not contribute to one’s “being.” As
Aquinas notes, “the desire for artificial wealth is infinite, for it is the
servant of disordered concupiscence, which is not curbed.”119 When,
instead, the exercise of the virtue of sobriety, exercised in solidarity
with those who have no shoes, no education, or no electricity, has
helped the person to moderate the attraction or pull of the concupiscible nature of the good, then, despite the absolutely delightful nature
of the product, the daring in regard to their exaggerated expense is
also thereby moderated.120 It becomes easier to buy necessary goods at
sensible prices, as a gesture of solidarity, and to use any excess to aid
others in the acquisition of their necessary goods to “be.”121 Thus, if
the vices of greed and compulsive buying consume the human person
		See LS, §§222, 225, and 226.
		See Ibid., §§225, 230, and 246. In this latter paragraph, part of the closing
prayer, peace is connected specifically with life in society.
117
		Ibid., §225.
118
		ST II-II, q. 141, a. 2, ad 2.
119
		ST I-II, q. 2, a. 1, ad 3.
120
		ST I-II, q. 141, a.3, ad 1.
121
		See ST II-II, q. 141, a.6, in which Aquinas discusses the two meanings of
“necessary” in regard to goods: both those that are necessary for one’s bodily
health and those that are so for one’s station in life.
115
116

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and deafen his ears to the call to solidarity, sobriety, in its moderation
of the buying and use of these goods as part of our relationship with
others, brings a much-desired peace. In fact, this harmony or peace,
for Pope Francis, becomes part of a virtuous cycle: the moderation of
the use of sensible goods leads to peace and harmony, and a sober life
is also possible when one possesses inner peace.122
Finally, sobriety is explicitly associated with humility,123 one of the
potential parts or secondary virtues of temperance.124 It is in this association that Pope Francis specifically indicates that to speak of sobriety
and humility is to speak of “a certain virtue in personal and social
life.”125 Hence, similar to the relationship between solidarity and charity, the definition of temperance could be substituted for Francis’s definition of sobriety, but with one exception: its explicit orientation to the
common good, or society as a whole. While such a possible orientation
is implicit in Aquinas’ treatment of temperance, especially inasmuch as
he connects it with the precepts regarding love of neighbor,126 it is only
here in Laudato Si’ that such implications are drawn out. This “attitude
of the heart,” this approach to life,127 is indicated as “a certain virtue
in personal and social life [whose lack of exercise] ends up causing a
number of imbalances, including environmental ones,” although “it is
not easy to promote this kind of healthy humility or happy sobriety
when we consider ourselves autonomous, when we exclude God from
our lives or replace him with our own ego, and think that our subjective feelings can define what is right and what is wrong.”128
This virtue, then, is substantially rooted in Pope Francis’s earlier
engagement with a theological understanding of the natural moral
law. The “tilling” and “keeping” of Creation, which affirms the
unique dignity of man, allows “the human person . . . through his
acts of knowing (intelligence) and loving (freedom), to deepen and
amplify non-human beings’ own inherent giftedness: to magnify the
generosity that is already inscribed in . . . nature as created by God.”129
		LS, §225.
		Ibid., §224.
124
		ST II-II, q. 143, a. 1, resp.
125
		LS, §224.
126
		See ST II-II, q. 170, a. 1, resp., and q. 170, a. 2, resp.
127
		LS, §226.
128
		Ibid., §224.
129
		Schindler, “Habit of Presence,” 580.This is also seen clearly in those paragraphs
addressing the universal destination of goods and private property, such as LS
§§71, 82, 93–95, 158.
122
123

The Virtue of Sobriety: Integral Ecology in Its Full Flourishing 227

In this understanding of the world as gift, given from the hand of
the Creator, who has written “into it an order and a dynamism that
human beings have no right to ignore,”130 its meaning as gift must
also be lived in our relationships with others, those with whom we are
meant to share both this world and the next. Hence, as a flourishing
of the natural inclinations, while it is a moderation of the concupiscible appetite, sobriety flourishes in a way particular to life in society,
especially concerned with the weak, the vulnerable, and our children,
since being provident as parents—or, we could say, as members of the
same family, united in solidarity—means that the respect of others
through the virtue of sobriety is seen in a “much stronger light when
considered in relation to man’s social and domestic obligations.”131
This importance of sobriety in social life is more deliberately spelt
out in the section of LS entitled “Civic and Political Love,” a title
reminiscent of solidarity as the social expression of charity: “Along
with the importance of little everyday gestures, social love moves us
to devise larger strategies to halt environmental degradation and to
encourage a ‘culture of care’ which permeates all of society. When
we feel that God is calling us to intervene with others in these social
dynamics, we should realize that this too is part of our spirituality,
which is an exercise of charity and, as such, matures and sanctifies
us.”132 The living out the virtue of sobriety, then, is integral to
the living out of solidarity, as already hinted at in the relationship
between “having” and “being” in John Paul II’s SRS.133 This occurs
		LS, §221.
		Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, §12. Like solidarity, which had already found a
place in the social encyclicals before it was defined as virtue, the importance
of sobriety in regard to others is also a thread present in the social encyclical tradition. See especially Rerum Novarum, §§43–48, on just wages and the
frugality of the worker, and PP, §§18–19, 21, and 49, with warnings against
the greed of the rich in the face of the poor and a “turning toward the spirit
of poverty,” as a more human condition.
132
		LS, §231.
133
		See SRS §§28–31 and 39, especially the statements that “development cannot
consist only in the use, dominion over and indiscriminate possession of created
things and the products of human industry, but rather in subordinating the
possession, dominion and use to man’s divine likeness and to his vocation to
immortality” (§29), and that “part of the teaching and most ancient practice of
the Church is her conviction that she is obliged by her vocation—she herself,
her ministers and each of her members—to relieve the misery of the suffering,
both far and near, not only out of her ‘abundance’ but also out of her ‘necessities’” (§31).
130
131

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both in personal actions of virtue and in society as a whole. In fact,
while the corresponding paragraphs precede those on the virtue of
sobriety and offer indications to be further developed, Pope Francis
does place a strong emphasis on the solidarity and subsidiarity that
structure social life in tripartite society, as illuminated and envisioned
in Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate.134 Pope Francis’s insistence is
especially incisive in LS §206, which proclaims that such community networks, through “social habits”—or, we could read, “social
virtues,” such as the virtue of sobriety—can influence the way social
institutions are run.135 Politics and the economy are called, in view
of their particular roles, to work together according to the principle
of subsidiarity, inseparable from the virtue of solidarity,136 in order to
realize a society of sober institutions. Such solidarity, as already indicated in SRS, culminates and participates in “that global solidarity
that flows from the mystery of the Trinity,” in whose image and like		Caritas in Veritate, §§38–39. Benedict XVI indicates that such a structure of
society was already envisioned by John Paul II in Centesimus Annus, §35. The
tripartite society has drawn considerable engagement from various scholars
such as Russell Hittinger (see “The Problem of the State in Centesimus Annus,”
Fordham International Law Journal 15, no. 4 [1991]: 952–96); Michael Novak
(see Catholic Social Thought and Liberal Institutions, Freedom with Justice, 2nd ed.
[Oxford, UK: Transaction, 1989], 207, and The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism [New York: The Free Press, 1993], in which he identifies such a
system in Gaudium et Spes [275], Centesimus Annus [172ff], and Heinrich Pesch,
the father of the school of Solidismus [72ff]); and Stefano Zamagni (see his
elaboration of its grounding principles in L’economia del bene comune [Rome:
Città Nuova, 2007] and Dizionario di economia civile, ed. Luigino Bruni and
Stefano Zamagni [Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, 2009]). See especially LS
§213, which indicates that the family is the place of integral education, as well
as §157, which reiterates its place as the basic cell of society.
135
		This paragraph begins by stating, “A change in lifestyle could bring healthy
pressure to bear on those who wield political, economic and social power,” and
then focuses specifically on consumer movements in regard to businesses by
indicating, “When social pressure affects their earnings, businesses clearly have
to find ways to produce differently.” The English “social pressure” is read in
the Spanish as “los habitos de la sociedad” and the Italian as “abitudini sociali,”
indicating that we are speaking of social operative habits, or social virtues.
136
		See LS §§157, 189, 196, and 198. The inseparable nature of the virtue of
solidarity and the principle of subsidiarity is highlighted in Caritas in Veritate,
§58, as the manner in which the extremes of social privatism and paternalism
are avoided. This is highly reminiscent of the school of the economia civile, an
important part of the background to Caritas in Veritate. For an English publication on this school, please see Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni’s Civil
Economy: Efficiency, Equity, Public Happiness (Oxford, UK: Peter Lang, 2007).
134

The Virtue of Sobriety: Integral Ecology in Its Full Flourishing 229

ness man is made.137 Thus, rooted in each person and characteristic of
society as a whole, sobriety informed by solidarity becomes a way of
living out the virtues in society so as to contribute to the flourishing
of each man and of all men, in the transition from less human to more
human conditions.
Conclusion
This article, in order to better understand Pope Francis’s newly coined
term, “integral ecology,” and its implications for a virtuous moral theology, has relied upon its insertion in the social encyclical tradition, and
specifically within the context of integral human development, which
originates in Populorum Progressio, so as to better understand its implications. Seeing integral ecology in the light of the natural law tradition
that highlights its theological origin in Genesis, such as is done in SRS,
allows us to realize that Creation is a gift from God and that man, made
in his image and likeness, is called to be provident in his use of Creation
for others, especially the poor, the weak, and future generations. The
specific virtue in which Pope Francis sees the natural moral law flourish is sobriety, a social expression of temperance, which is informed by
the virtue of solidarity. In line with Caritas in Veritate, this virtue is best
learned within civil society, from which it is meant to permeate and
transform the society as a whole. It is in this way that integral human
development, as social, economic, cultural, and spiritual, embraces the
Creation given to man and finds its evolution in integral ecology, and
N&V
in the full flourishing of the virtue of sobriety.

		LS, §240.

137

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231

Securing the Foundations:
Karol Wojtyła’s Thomistic Personalism in
Dialogue with Natural Law Theory
Petar Popovi ć
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Rome, Italy

Introduction

Any attempt to exhaustively present the contribu-

tions of Karol Wojtyła’s Thomistic personalism as elaborated in his
pre-pontifical philosophical writings to the theory of natural law is
surely not a task that can be easily reduced to a summary overview of
Wojtyła’s ready-made arguments. In his writings, John Paul II did not,
in fact, reflect extensively on the topic of “natural law” as an immediate
object of his philosophical enquiries. We can find only a few explicit
references to it in his 1969 magnum opus The Acting Person, while a
substantial philosophical argumentation on this subject in the immediate textual context of these references is virtually nonexistent. In his
only philosophical text explicitly dedicated to the topic of natural law,
entitled “The Human Person and Natural Law,”1 also from 1969, a
more extensive elaboration on brief references to St. Thomas Aquinas’s
definitions of natural law is completely absent. Even in his later pontifical documents, John Paul II hardly ever extensively referred to natural
law in its classic Thomistic formulation until his 1993 encyclical letter
Veritatis Splendor.2 However, such a notable absence of explicit refer-

		Karol Wojtyła, “The Human Person and Natural Law,” in Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans.T. Sandok, ed. Andrew N.Woznicki (New York: Peter
Lang, 1993), 181–85.
2
		A reference to the classical Thomistic formulation of natural law is perhaps
found to be most notably missing from his 1991 social encyclical Centesimus
1

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ences to natural law did not discourage Kenneth L. Schmitz, the author
of one of the most significant studies of Wojtyła’s philosophical project,
from repeatedly highlighting the importance of Wojtyła’s “personalist
approach to natural law” and of his underscoring the “personal dimension within the metaphysics of natural law.”3 How can an author who is
so reluctant to avail himself of classical natural law discourse be, at the
same time, celebrated as an important contributor to its more adequate
comprehension?
In this paper, we will aim to postulate that Wojtyła enters into an
enriching dialogue with the Thomistic theory of natural law, in both
its classical and its contemporary formulations, on a specific systematic level that does not directly engage the classic elements of natural
law theory (such as natural inclinations, first precepts of natural law,
etc.). We will show that Wojtyła, rather, grounds his most important
contributions to this theory within the framework of his specific
methodology of Thomistic personalism,4 which he held to be essenAnnus, to the perplexity of contemporary Thomists, who note how Pope John
Paul II addressed human rights issues (and appealed to their foundation) either
by relying on the concepts of “correct anthropology” and “natural rights” or
by using an innovative personalistic philosophical or theological discourse to
engage with these topics without relinking this language to the tradition of
using conceptual tools of Thomistic theory when invoking natural law. Such
a terminological shift was found even more surprising when set against the
historical context of the fact that the encyclical Centesimus Annus celebrated
the centenary of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, which, indeed,
represents a systematic pontifical treatise on social doctrine that grafts the idea
of natural rights extensively onto the foundations of the Thomistic concept
of natural law. See Russell Hittinger, “The Problem of the State in Centesimus
Annus,” Fordham International Law Journal, 15, no. 4 (1991): 952–96.
3
		Kenneth L. Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical
Anthropology of Karol Wojtyła/Pope John Paul II (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 1993), 113 and 137.
4
		The term “Thomistic personalism” has already taken root in literature as the
terminological designation that most accurately encompasses all of the essential characteristics of Wojtyła’s philosophical project. The term was coined by
Wojtyła himself and used as the title of his 1961 article (“Thomistic Personalism,” in Wojtyła, Person and Community, 165–75). Thomistic personalism,
at least in its Wojtyłean manifestation, would represent a philosophical way
of thinking that posits the primacy of the human person and his dignity as
the center of the philosophical project by seeking to secure the foundations
of this primacy in a Thomistic metaphysical framework, while at the same
time qualifying this framework with the categories pertaining to personalistic
philosophy. According to some commentators on this philosophical method,
this school of thought represents one of the most creative and fruitful areas of

Karol Wojtyła and Natural Law Theory

233

tial to secure more completely the foundations5 that natural law and
its adequate understanding offer to the moral and legal normative
“grammar” of the humanum.
The Personalistic Value of the Human Act as the
Immediate Conceptual Context of Wojtyła’s
Contributions to Natural Law Theory
In order to present Karol Wojtyła’s contributions to natural law theory,
we will first have to delimit the immediate conceptual context of his
arguments on the topic. In his writings, he touches upon the topic of
natural law in three distinctive ways. First, he sometimes only incidentally refers to some general topics of natural law theory while pursuing
his personalistic line of argumentation, only to arrive at the already
firmly established conclusions within the theory itself.6 Second, he
sometimes, though seldom, explicitly refers to the concept of “natural
law” (Polish: prawo naturalne) in order to invoke elements of the classical
theory of natural law and to touch upon elements of his philosophical
contribution to the theory from the perspective of Thomistic personalism.7 Finally, Wojtyła, at times, and without explicitly invoking the
Thomistic thought in today’s philosophical world, and Wojtyła’s thought has
signified only a starting point in its development. On the concept of Thomistic personalism and Wojtyła’s role in its definition, see: Adrian J. Reimers,
“The Thomistic Personalism of Karol Wojtyła (Pope John Paul II),” in Atti del
IX Congresso Tomistico Internazionale, vol. 6, ed. A. Piolanti (Vatican City: LEV,
1992), 364–69; Thomas D. Williams, “What is Thomistic Personalism?” Alpha
Omega 7, no. 2 (2004): 163–97; Matthew Schaeffer, “Thomistic Personalism: A
Vocation for the Twenty-First Century,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 86, no. 2 (2012): 181–202.
5
		The idea to use the expression “securing the foundations” in the title of and
throughout this article came directly from a subtitle of the first part of George
Weigel’s biography of John Paul II, in which Weigel presents the content and
context of Wojtyła’s book The Acting Person. We also thought Weigel’s general
claim that Karol Wojtyła was extremely aware of how anthropology “had to be
put on a more secure philosophical foundation” suited some general ideas of
this article. See George Weigel, Witness to Hope (New York: Harper Perennial,
1999), 172–76.
6
		Exemplary here is his argumentation on the relationship between freedom
and self-determination; see Karol Wojtyła, The Acting Person, rev. Anna-Teresa
Tymieniecka, trans. A. Potocki (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979), 115–18.
7
		We can identify at least three relevant textual loci where Wojtyła explicitly
refers to “natural law” in his writings. The first is his 1969 article “The Human
Person and Natural Law” (see note 1 above). Then, in the seventh and final
chapter of The Acting Person, entitled “Intersubjectivity by Participation”

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term, provides arguments that represent his genuine, more developed
contributions to the theory of natural law from his own specific philosophical perspective of Thomistic personalism.
The first approach to the concept of natural law is not taken into
consideration in this paper, while the second has already been thoroughly researched at length by other authors.8 Instead, this paper
seeks to present the key elements of Wojtyła’s third approach to the
understanding of natural law—namely, his arguments on the enriching potential of viewing natural law from the perspective of the
analysis of the personalistic value of the human act as the immediate
object of philosophical analysis.
We have elaborated at greater length on Wojtyła’s concept of “the
personalistic value of the human act”—as, indeed, one of the fundamental and unifying concepts of his philosophy—elsewhere.9 Here it
is sufficient to note that he attributes to the human act a specific and
distinctive value that is not exclusively reflected in the realization of
a moral good through an act—that is, through acting in accordance
with the relevant intrinsic moral norm (he has in mind, of course,
the precepts of natural law). Rather, he relocates the fulcrum of his
analysis to a different axiological level and postulates the simultaneous existence of a personalistic value that is essentially connected to the
fact that the act is performed, and performed in such a way that, through
it, man acts in a way that is proper to him as a person.10 The personalistic
value of the human act, therefore, is structurally posited as a substratum inherent to moral values, one upon which they take root and
are developed,11 indeed, as their structural “cocoon” that reveals and
(261–300), he only incidentally refers to the concept of “natural right” within
the context of “acting together with others.” Finally, there is the third part of
his work Man in the Field of Responsibility, entitled “The Natural Law and the
Personalistic Norm”; see Karol Wojtyła, Man in the Field of Responsibility, trans.
and ed. Kenneth W. Kemp and Zuzanna Maślanka Kieroń (South Bend, IN:
St. Augustine’s Press: 2011), 57–79.
8
		For an exhaustive analysis of Wojtyła’s article “The Human Person and Natural Law,” a view of his concept of natural law within the context of “acting
together with others,” and a general overview of the place of natural law in
Wojtyła’s writings gathered from explicit textual loci in his works, see Jerzy
W. Gałkowski, “Prawo naturalne w ujęciu Karola Wojtyły—Jana Pawła II,”
Roczniki Filozoficzne 39/40, no. 2 (1991–1992): 85–110.
9
		Piotr Maj and Petar Popović, “The Personalistic Value of the Human Act in
the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyła,” Anthropotes 32, no. 2 (2016): 357–84.
10
		Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 320.
11
		Ibid., 322.

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235

confirms them while, at the same time, allowing us to understand
them better in their strict correspondence with the person.12 The
specific structures of the personalistic value, Wojtyła argues, have
been unable to come to the forefront in the Thomistic, predominantly metaphysical method of observing the human philosophical
reality, at the possible cost of a failure to provide a deeper insight as
to whether, and how, the objectivity of moral values is linked to the
“lived experience” of the human person in his consciousness.13 In this
sense, Wojtyła explicitly affirms that his philosophical view seeks to
complement (or, as he says, “to supplement it and in a way to rethink
it to the end”) the traditional metaphysical postulate of the reality of
the person and his act.14
Wojtyła does not, therefore, directly contextualize his argumentation as systematic apologetics of natural law ad extram in response to
those among his contemporaries who declare themselves completely
unconvinced of the possibility of predicating normativity to nature.15
He does not enter into a direct dialogue with his other contemporaries who are prepared to subscribe only to a “minimalist natural
law” that could or should be accepted through a kind of overlapping
consensus by all participants of various debates on the foundations
		Ibid., 323.
		See Wojtyła, “Thomistic Personalism,” 170–71.
14
		Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 322.
15
		See, for example, these clusters of arguments put forth only a decade before
Wojtyła started his first year as a Professor of Catholic Social Ethics at the
University of Lublin: “There is no end set for the human race by an abstraction called ‘human nature.’ There are only ends which individuals choose, or
are forced by circumstances to accept. There are none which they must accept.
. . . In short, ‘natural rights’ are the conditions of a good society. But what those
conditions are is not given by nature or mystically bound up with the essence
of man and his inevitable goal, but is determined by human decisions. . . .
Assertions about natural rights, then, are assertions of what ought to be as the
result of human choice” (Margaret MacDonald, “Natural Rights,” in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 47 [1946–1947]: 225–50, at 237–38 and 242). See
also the following statements by Karl Popper: “By saying that some systems of
laws can be improved, that some laws may be better than others, I rather imply
that we can compare the existing normative laws (or social institutions) with
some standard norms which we have decided are worthy to be realized. . . .
Nature consists of facts and of regularities, and is in itself neither moral nor
immoral. It is we who impose our standards upon nature, and who introduce
in this way morals into the natural world, in spite of the fact that we are part
of this world” (Popper, Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1, The Spell of Plato
[London: Routledge, 1945], 52).
12
13

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Petar Popović

of rights.16 Nor does he explicitly address the claims put forward by
certain reformers of the lex naturalis tradition that natural law has
been broadly conceived in a way that is too distant from and extrinsic to the concrete experience of the human person, while human
nature has, at the same time, been understood as too “static” to be
adequately linked to the moral “ought.”17 There is no evidence that
Wojtyła had direct insight into all the texts of the authors we quote
here at the time that he wrote his main philosophical works. Nevertheless, in his writings from the 1960s and 1970s, while developing
his studies on the acting person, he did collaterally address most of
the ad extram claims put forth by the aforementioned authors. On the
other hand, beyond the particular ad intram Thomistic disputes of
the time, Wojtyła tried in his writings to show to what extent any
contemporary position on classic natural law theory could benefit
from the integration of the personalistic level, or suffer from the lack
of such an integration:
		See, for example, the following views on natural law from one of the prominent proponents of the “minimalist natural law”: “Indeed, the continued
reassertion of some form of Natural Law doctrine is due in part . . . to the
fact that despite a terminology, and much metaphysics, which few could now
accept, it contains certain elementary truths of importance for the understanding of both morality and law. These we shall endeavour to disentangle
from their metaphysical setting and restate here in simpler terms. . . . Such
universally recognized principles of conduct which have a basis in elementary
truths concerning human beings, their natural environment, and aims, may be
considered the minimum content of Natural Law, in contrast with the more
grandiose and more challengeable constructions which have often been proffered” (H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961], 188
and 193). On the variety of attempts (and their systematic critique) to reform
classical Thomistic natural law by reducing its foundations to “some minimal
goods which are not reducible to conventions and individual decisions, and
which provide a common source for deriving reasons and precepts for law”
in order to present the theory of natural law in a way that could somehow
secure a broader consensus on its basic ideas, see Russell Hittinger, “Varieties
of Minimalist Natural Law Theory,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 34 (1989):
133–70, at 148.
17
		Some of the first critiques of the Scholastic tradition of the presentation of
natural law and attempts to reform this understanding by relinking the concept
of natural law from “static” nature back to the concrete moral experience of
the person date from the years when Wojtyła was writing The Acting Person.
See Germain Grisez, “The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary
on the Summa Theologiae, 1–2, Question 94, Article 2,” Natural Law Forum, 10
(1965): 168–201 (an explicit mention of “static” nature at 182).
16

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We can see . . . how very objectivistic St. Thomas’s view of
the person is. It almost seems as though there is no place in
it for an analysis of consciousness and self-consciousness as
totally unique manifestations of the person as a subject. . . .
In any case, that in which the person’s subjectivity is most
apparent is presented by St. Thomas in an exclusively—or,
almost exclusively—objective way. He shows us the particular
faculties, both spiritual and sensory, thanks to which the whole
of human consciousness and self-consciousness—the human
personality in the psychological and moral sense—takes shape,
but that is also where he stops. Thus St. Thomas gives us an
excellent view of the objective existence and activity of the
person, but it would be difficult to speak in his view of the
lived experience of the person.18
Wojtyła’s insistence on bringing the Thomistic concept of natural
law closer to the personalistic ground of philosophical argumentation indicates his certainty that such conceptual proximity would
contribute to a more accurate, integral, and existential comprehension of natural law. We will now present the structural loci where, in
his opinion, the natural juridicity of the human person is theoretically and experientially better secured if the Thomistic teleological
“intrinsicity” of natural law is underscored by the perspective of
man’s distinctive “personalistic” structures.
The “Subjectivation” of Natural Law in the Personal
Structure of the Cognition of Natural Law
What we call here the “subjectivation” of natural law in the personal
structure of its cognition originates in Wojtyła’s analysis within the
broader context of what he understands to be the revelatory aspect of
personal agency and of the personalistic value of the human act: “The
title itself of this book, The Acting Person, shows that it is not a discourse
on action in which the person is presupposed. We have followed a
different line of experience and understanding. For us, the action reveals
the person and we look at the person through his action. For, it lies in
the nature of the correlation inherent in the experience, in the very
nature of man’s acting, that action constitutes the specific moment
whereby the person is revealed.”19
		Wojtyła, “Thomistic Personalism,” 170–71.
		Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 11 (italics original)

18
19

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The whole of his analysis within this context shows that what
Wojtyła understands as the revelatory aspect of the action (whereby
the person is “revealed” in action) is more than just a theoretical
abstraction or a purely methodological choice arising from his continuous reference to the phenomenological method.20 Rather, it is the
philosophical result of his investigations. The revelatory aspect of
the human act is essentialy twofold, following two main directions:
personal agency reveals the person to himself, and at the same time,
but with a different mode of insight, it reveals the person as such to
the external world—to other persons. As we focus here only on the
first mode of this revelatory aspect of human agency, on the concrete
existential and personal content of the experience that the person
has of himself,21 Wojtyła brings us to the junction where this experience parts ways with the experience a person has of the other person.
He highlights that this revelatory aspect of a person’s experience of
himself does not render the experience “transferable by and out of
the ego”22 because in no other object of experience are the elements
of subjectiveness given in such a direct and evident way as within my
own “ego.”23 This incommunicable experience, as Wojtyła under		The fundamental postulate of phenomenology, the methodological approach
of Wojtyła’s personalistic philosophy, is to be understood along the following
lines: by concentrating on the phenomenon, and through a method of critique
and constantly repeated verification, a philosopher of the phenomenological
approach seeks to reveal the essence of the phenomenon, as well as, if possible, its whole reality. The basic methodological tool of this approach is the
so-called method of epoché, which consists in suspending all philosophical and
personal presuppositions at the beginning of the cognitive process in order
that the phenomenon alone may “speak to the person.” For a synthetic overview of Wojtyła’s incorporation of the phenomenological postulates within his
own postulate, see Jarosław Kupczak, Destined for Liberty: The Human Person in
the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 6–24 and 58–65.
21
		For the revelatory aspect of human agency that reveals the person to the world
of other persons and the qualification of the possibility of having the experience of other persons, see Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 7–8. For a synthesis of
the effect of this revelatory aspect, which Wojtyła sometimes speaks of in terms
of a specific “personalistic imprint,” see Maj and Popović, “The Personalistic
Value of the Human Act,” 362–63.
22
		Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 7.
23
		This is not to say that Wojtyła intends to establish an argument for the “subjectivation” of natural law by isolating the experience of oneself as the exclusive
source of his analysis of the personal structure of the cognition of natural law,
detached from the experience the person has of other persons or of external
20

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stands it, consists in a “subjectivation” of the revealed reality of the
person. By the term “subjectivation,” he does not in any way imply
some process of subsuming the personal reality under a relativistically
construed concept of subjectivity, but, on the contrary, he delineates
a subjective “lived experience” of one’s objectivity, made possible by an
experiential and “essential ability of an object to manifest or visualize
itself.”24
In order to better understand the full meaning and significance
of what we here term the revelatory aspect of human agency, and to
grasp Wojtyła’s argument on the “subjectivation” of natural law as an
essential element of the personal structure of its cognition, we now
turn to the moment of his philosophical project in which he begins
to develop his argument containing an important contribution for the
theory of natural law. The person is revealed to himself in a structural
locus that our author highlights as the subjective element of consciousness of an action: “Whereas in the Scholastic approach, the aspect
of consciousness was on the one hand only implied and, as it were,
hidden in ‘rationality’; . . . on the other hand it was contained in the
will (understood as appetitus rationalis) and expressed by voluntarius.
The task set out in this investigation is to go farther and to exhibit
consciousness as an intrinsic and constitutive aspect of the dynamic structure,
that is, of the acting person. Indeed, . . . [man] has the awareness of the
action as well as of the person in their dynamic interrelation.”25
A significant aspect of consciousness consists in its “accompanying
presence,” through which man internally experiences his agency.26 This
is very significant with regard to a specific kind of human agency,
which Wojtyła calls acts of “self-cognition.” The acts of self-cognition are acts through which the person cognitively penetrates the
object that “I am for myself.” The dynamics of the acts of self-cognition are not as clearly distinguished and integrally structured as those
of other types of human acts on a lower and more delimitable scale
of complexity, such as, for example, drinking a glass of water. This
reality. On the contrary: “[Although] I experience my own self as existing and
acting differently from how I experience others, . . . when I construct an image
of the person as subject on the basis of the experience of the human being,
I draw especially upon the experience of my own self, but never in isolation
from or in opposition to others” (Karol Wojtyła, “The Person: Subject and
Community,” in Wojtyła, Person and Community, 221).
24
		Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 6–7 and 10.
25
		Ibid., 30–31 (italics original).
26
		Ibid., 31.

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is because the structural unity of these acts “proceeds as if in cycles”;
it is simply more disperse and consists in constantly moving from the
personal “I” to the person as the object of self-cognition, and then
back to the “I.”27 Still, self-knowledge introduces “a specific continuity to the diverse moments or states in the being of the ego” in
order to grasp what constitutes the primary unity of these moments.28
In short, acts of the cognition of natural law surely fall within the
scope of what Wojtyła here analyzes according to the rubric of acts
of self-cognition. In these acts, therefore, the human person enters
into cognitive contact with himself, and the objective givenness of
his ontic structure not only enters within the reach of the cognitive
powers of his intellect but also, through the role of consciousness,
becomes an object of his concrete experience of himself.
To give more detail on how this objective givenness (i.e., the
normative content that can be predicated of nature) “enters” the
structural realm of consciousness, Wojtyła distinguishes two functions of consciousness as aspects of its “accompanying presence” to
human agency, and in a particular way to acts of self-cognition. The
first—reflecting—function of consciousness consists in its reflecting the
objective givenness grasped through acts of self-cognition; indeed, in
its mirroring and safeguarding this givenness as a permanent presence.29
Consciousness, then, does not cognize by itself; nor is it understood
by Wojtyła as similar to a hypostatic or substantive mode of predicating an autonomous subjectivity to consciousness (as conceived by
the philosophical current of idealism and the whole stream of the
so-called philosophy of consciousness). It is rather conceived from
the point of view of the person and his agency as a structural terrain
where the person, cognized in his objective givenness, “subjectivizes”
the content (i.e., natural law) provided to him by acts of self-cognition, and possesses this content in the form of a mirrored image,
unified under the structure of “this is the truth of who I am.”30
		Ibid., 50.
		Ibid., 36.
29
		Ibid., 34–43.
30
		Ibid., 33–34 and 42. It is hard to find a harsher critic of the philosophy
of consciousness than Wojtyła. As is well known, he dedicated his habilitation thesis to the discernment of the possibility of constructing a Christian
ethics upon Max Scheler’s system of values, a system that embodies all the
ontological errors of the philosophy of consciousness. It is our strong belief
that precisely his analysis of the twofold function of consciousness reveals
the definitive results of this discernment. On the one hand, it constitutes his
27
28

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Closely attached to and inseparable from this function is the
second—reflexive—function of consciousness. Within this function
of its actualization, consciousness interiorizes the objective givenness
it previously mirrored and incorporates it into the experience of the
subjective “I” in such a way that what was mirrored as “the cognized
truth of who I am” now becomes “mine”: it becomes a part of the “I.”
If we focus on the elements of the acts of self-cognition that have as
their immediate object the cognizing of natural law, the person will
mirror in his consciousness this normative givenness and “permeate”
it reflectively as the manifestation of the normative dimension of “the
truth of who I am.” Furthermore, in its reflexive function, consciousness will constitute the givenness of natural law in its entirety as the
subjective “I,” as the person’s “lived experience” of this givenness as
his own self—“this” (normativity—moral and juridical—pertaining
to the givenness of my ontic identity) “is me”: “Hence not only am I
conscious of my ego (on the ground of self-knowledge) but owing to
my consciousness in its reflexive function I also experience my ego, I
have the experience of myself as the concrete subject of the ego’s very
subjectiveness. Consciousness is not just an aspect but also an essential
dimension or an actual moment of the reality of the being that I am,
since it constitutes its subjectiveness in the experiential sense.”31
Consciousness, in its twofold function, illuminates how natural
strongest structural critique of any form of the hypostatization of consciousness that, in all its manifestations, destroys the unity of the human person
and, in Scheler’s case, reduces the person to a mere dynamic unity of living
ethical experiences without any reference to the person’s underlying ontic
structure (including any reference whatsoever to natural law). On the other
hand, Wojtyla’s analysis of consciousness includes a strong recognition of the
necessity to develop Scheler’s intuition on the experience (or “co-experience”)
that the person has of himself in every experience of the act in order to include
this structural moment within a broader Thomistic metaphysical framework.
Harvested from Scheler’s erroneous ontology and grafted onto Thomistic
metaphysics,Wojtyla’s development of the concept of the “experience a person
has of himself ” is central to his philosophical project: “First of all, Max Scheler
helped me to discover that specific experience which lies at the basis of the
concept ‘actus humanus,’ and which must be identified there always anew.
The entire exposition of mine is also a certain attempt at identification of this
experience. Is this identification phenomenological? I believe that it is, and at
the same time I am convinced that this experience ‘carries being within itself,’
if it can be expressed that way” (Karol Wojtyła, “The Intentional Act and the
Human Act, that is, Act and Experience,” Analecta Husserliana 5 [1976]: 278).
31
		Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 45–46.

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law, already cognized as an intrinsic givenness of the nature of the
human person, is being perceived by the person as the normative—
moral and juridical—dimension of the being that I am, the being
that is me. It explains how a person can have a “lived experience”
of the normative dimension of his nature, first by “inwardly disclosing” through the reflective function of consciousness the cognized
elements of natural law, and then, owing to the reflexive function
of consciousness, by the constitution of this objective content as the
subject that “I am.”32 Without including a reference to the personal
structure of the cognition of natural law through this distinctive role
of consciousness, the person would appear deprived of such an experience. At the same time, the person would be left with only intellectually cognized, objective manifestations or actualizations of the
normative dimension of his ontic givenness, intrinsic but not lived
experientially as constituting the subjectivity of his “I.”33 Because of
its specific “accompanying presence” of the acts of cognition of the
natural law and its becoming “modified” as the subject cognizes,
consciousness, in its unique role of constituting the person as the
concrete “I,” interiorizes the normative reality of the person that is
objectively inherent in his ontic substantiality.34 Its specific experiential structure accompanies the acts of the cognition of natural law in
the following way: the person reaches from “inside” himself toward
the discovery of the normative truth of his ontic reality, mirrors
the discovered content along the way, and then brings this specific
uniqueness of self-knowledge, untouched, back to the personal “I,”
where it reflexively becomes a subjective “lived experience” of his
own objective self.35 This is exactly the experience that, as Wojtyła says,
carries being within itself.
The “Lived Experience” of the “Moment of Truthfulness”
of the Norm of Natural Law as an Essential Element of the
Personal Structure of Cognition of the Natural Law
It is not only the objective givenness of ontic normativity (i.e., natural
law) to be “subjectivized” within the constitution of the concrete “I”
		Ibid., 46.
		Ibid., 47.
34
		See also Josef Seifert, “Truth and Transcendence of the Person in the Philosophical Thought of Karol Wojtyła,” in Karol Wojtyła: Filosofo—Teologo—Poeta
(Vatican City: LEV, 1984), 101.
35
		Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 50.
32
33

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that the person is. “Subjectivation,” in a certain way, also reaches the
very structural modality through which the natural law is cognized as an
integral whole within the person. When the object of self-cognition
is the normative—moral and juridical—dimension of the givenness
of nature, the personal “I,” by acts of self-cognition later processed
through “subjectivation” in consciousness, not only grasps specific
content of the natural law as cognitive axiological material detached
from his person, but also structurally grasps, in and through this axiological data, the basic value of his person.36
Here we reach the core of Wojtyła’s underlying preoccupation
regarding the contemporary problem of natural law. In an important
personal letter to his theologian friend Henri de Lubac, from the time
when he was finishing the first draft of The Acting Person, Wojtyła
states that, in his view, the true philosophical “debate today is being
played out” on the level of the “metaphysical sense and mystery of
the person”: “The evil of our times consists in the first place in a
kind of degradation, indeed in a pulverization, of the fundamental
uniqueness of each human person. This evil is even much more of
the metaphysical order than of the moral order.”37 Within the domain
of natural law theory, this debate does not just regard academic and
cultural dissenters or skeptics as regards the existence of natural law,
to which one could then respond with an adequate natural law apologetics, reaffirming the concrete content of natural law. A significant
part of the problem lies also, according to Wojtyła, in the fact that
human persons in the contemporary age live mostly in a realm of
true cultural obliteration regarding the very possibility of having the
concrete lived experience of the content of natural law as a normative
reality of their own selves, as something that belongs to their own
fundamental personal structure.
It is precisely this structural moment—the quality of having
a “lived experience” of the truthfulness of the norm within the
personal structure of the cognition of natural law—that represents
the second contribution of Wojtyła’s Thomistic personalism to
natural law theory. This structural moment is located in the context
of Wojtyła’s textual analysis of “transcendence” as a specific value
included in the personalistic value of the human act (along with the
values of self-determination and integration). By “transcendence,” to
		Ibid., 161.
		Wojtyła’s personal letter to Henri de Lubac, cited in Weigel, Witness to Hope,
173–74.

36
37

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summarize at least one fifth of The Acting Person in one sentence,38 our
author understands the grasping of the aspect of the fulfillment of the
person as a constitutive element within the dynamism of the cognition
of a moral value as true.39 With this context in mind, we can delve
into the structural moment where he formulates an enriching contribution to natural law theory. When developing an argument on how
the person cognizes values (i.e., natural law) as something constitutive of his own fulfillment, a cognition that he structurally situates
under the dynamism of “moral conscience,” identified entirely with
the traditional Thomistic concept of synderesis,40 Wojtyła analyzes
what he calls “the creative role of moral conscience.” We will follow
our author in leaving a more detailed determination of what is meant
by the concept “moral conscience,” or synderesis, outside of the scope
		“Transcendence” is a recurring concept in almost all of Wojtyła’s texts. With
this in mind, we can only conditionally attempt to delimit the exact textual
place in his writings that he dedicates exclusively to this concept. See Wojtyła,
The Acting Person, 119–86.
39
		Wojtyła would continue to develop his understanding of the value of “transcendence” in the subsequent years of his pontificate. In an earlier formulation
of the implementation of this value in natural law theory, from his 1978 article,
he claims: “The indispensable objectivism of the ethical order . . . must be . . .
essentially united with the dimension of personal subjectivity, such that man
can see himself as the author of his act and of its meaning, that is, of its significance.” See Karol Wojtyła, “The Anthropological Vision of Humanae Vitae,”
trans William E. May, Nova et Vetera (English) 7, no. 3 (2009): 731–50, at 742. In
a later, more detailed view on the same argument, he affirms: “It is in the light
of the dignity of the human person—a dignity which must be affirmed for its
own sake—that reason grasps the specific moral value of certain goods towards
which the person is naturally inclined,” and especially, “to give an example, the
origin and the foundation of the duty of absolute respect for human life are
to be found in the dignity proper to the person and not simply in the natural
inclination to preserve one’s own physical life. Human life, even though it is
a fundamental good of man, thus acquires a moral significance in reference to
the good of the person, who must always be affirmed for his own sake” (John
Paul II, Veritatis Splendor [1993], §§48 and 50). For a more extensive overview
of Wojtyła’s value of “transcendence,” see Maj and Popović, “The Personalistic
Value of the Human Act,” 373–78.
40
		Wojtyła, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 234. Still, Wojtyła, in his
analysis of the function of moral conscience in The Acting Person, does not
repeat the traditional course of the Thomistic approach in its teleological
perspective of the epistemology of moral value (although he presupposes it
in his argumentation). Rather, he concentrates on the dynamism of moral
conscience within the aspect of transcendence in the personalistic perspective.
See Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 152–53.
38

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of this analysis while embracing his own complete subscription to
the classic Thomistic doctrine on the conceptual identity, structural
place, and role of synderesis within the cognitive structure of natural law. We shall concentrate exclusively on the line of arguments
moving within the personalistic level, as he does.
Wojtyłholds that moral conscience is not legislative in the sense
of creating norms. Rather, it discovers and recognizes them in the
objective order of morality or law. He warns against the advocates
of the opposite view on account of their attempt to introduce, by
“rejecting the natural law” (one of the truly rare instances where he
explicitly uses the term), a module of arbitrary individualism into the
way in which the person cognizes the moral and juridical dimension
of his ontic structure.41
Even if the whole of the cognitive structure of natural law (“moral
conscience” or synderesis) does not create normative, moral or juridical, content predicable of nature, Wojtyła highlights that the personal
aspect of this structure is still not reduced to a purely mechanical
deduction or to the mere automatic application of norms perceived
as “abstract formulas.” Already in the first sentence of his brief line
of argumentation on the creative role of moral conscience, he introduces the very core of his argument: “For all the fitness and adequacy
of the attributes right and wrong with reference to norms, it seems that
they tend to leave in the shadow the moment of truthfulness, of the
experience of truth as value, and (as associated with this experience)
the transcendence of the person in an act of conscience.”42
The cognitive structure of natural law thus includes a special
experiential dynamic that pertains to the “moment of truthfulness”
of the norms as principles that form “the objective core of morality
or law.”43 This dynamic inhabits a distinctive, personalistic aspect
of the cognitive structure of natural law (“the creative role of the
conscience coincides with the dimension of the person”). It consists
		Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 165. The warning is very significant in this
context, because it seems that Wojtyła is aware of the possibility of not only
an academic but also an existential substitution of a “lived experience” of the
natural law norm with a module of a radically different and anthropologically
erroneous content that, regardless of its being defective, could also be “subjectivized” in the constitution of the personal “I,” and of which a person could
have some type of defective “lived experience.” The drama is parallel to that
of human freedom.
42
		Ibid.
43
		Ibid.
41

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in the fact that moral conscience “shapes the norms into that unique
and unparalleled form they acquire within the experience and fulfillment of the person.”44 In the whole of the structure of the cognition
of natural law, the truthfulness of the norm sufficiently elaborated
within the Thomistic tradition is, as Wojtyła says, molded within
the personal dimension through the “lived experience” of the norm
as an intrinsic expression of the fulfillment of the human person.45
To summarize: when the Thomistic natural law theory presents the
realization of the normative dimension of nature as “perfective” and
“fulfilling” of human nature itself, this “truthfulness” of the personal
normative identity is cognitively experienced (“lived experience”) on
a personalistic level, through what Wojtyła calls “the creative role of
moral conscience,” as the person’s fulfillment.
Wojtyła’s Contribution to the Natural Law Theory
and the So-Called “New Natural Law Theory”
According to Wojtyła, the objective content of natural law—norms
instilled in the order of human nature and their structural relation to
the person’s fulfillment—is not the only element that forms a person’s
perception of the normative dimension of his own ontic givenness.
Consciousness also mirrors and permeates, in its reflexive function, the
specific quality of the very acts of self-cognition. Although the structure of
natural law ontologically precedes human choice (the classic theory
of natural law has already sufficiently replied to those who claim the
exact opposite, like Margaret MacDonald and Karl Popper), its cognition does not precede agency as such. The significance of the acts of
self-cognition is not exclusively attached to their objects, to the sole
data of the person’s ontological and normative identity. The acts of
self-cognition also have their own specific relevance, owing to the very
fact that they are “human acts” and, indeed, specific types of “acts of
objectivizing penetration of the ego with all its concreteness and its
concomitant detailedness” with “direct orientation” to the “cognitive
intention” of the personal “I.”46
Writing about “the creative role of moral conscience,” Wojtyła
affirmed with sufficient clarity that, in experiencing the moral values,
the person is not a mere recipient, or a passive mechanical observer.
On the contrary, the dynamism included in “the creative role of moral
		Ibid. (italics original).
		Ibid., 165–66.
46
		Ibid., 40–41.
44
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conscience” has the structure of a particular “agency” that surely does
not amount to creating the normative content in any way, but rather,
is limited only to “what concerns the truthfulness of norms” for the
person’s “lived experience” of it.47 This shows how the very modality,
and not just the resulting content, of the cognitive structure of the
natural law constitutes an important element of the person’s normative self-knowledge. If the content of natural law and the imperative
of its realization depend upon a cognitive dynamism that is wholly
imparted through a structure that is essentially a “non-agency” or
“passivity,” more resembling the structure of “something happens in
man” than “man acts,” then the person could have only an a posteriori
experience of the content of natural law—no “lived experience” of
its cognition or “moment of truthfulness” whatsoever. The structure
of self-cognition would then be dynamized without any participation
in the personalistic value of the human act.
Within the structure of each act, Wojtyła generally identifies
the specific moment—he calls this “the experience of efficacy”—in
which the person has a “lived experience” of his own acting as an
“I-act” dynamism while, at the same time, also experiencing himself
as the agent responsible for this particular form of the dynamization
of himself as subject.48 With regard to the cognition of natural law,
this would mean that the structure of agency in self-cognition is not
transformed into the pure passivity of a “something happens in man”
structure only because the content is not chosen, but “discovered.”
The “experience of efficacy,” and generally the “lived experience”
of the “moment of truthfulness” that is dynamized alongside the
“discovery” of the normative content is completely absent in the
opposite “something happens to man” structure, which Wojtyła
calls “activation.”49 In short, according to Wojtyła, “the moment of
truthfulness” in the discovery of the moral value (of the content of
natural law) has an essential structural place in the “lived experience” of the person only if the person’s agency is not cancelled out.
If someone were to postulate that “the moment of truthfulness” of
the moral value occurred in a structural context that fell outside of
personal agency, the direct consequence would be that this moment
would have to be relocated into a structure of which the person has
no “lived experience.” According to our author, this simply cannot
		Ibid., 165.
		Ibid., 66–67.
49
		Ibid., 69.
47
48

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be the case, because, as said before, “the creative role of conscience
consists in the fact that it shapes the norms into that unique and unparalleled form they acquire within the experience and fulfillment of the person.”50
In other words, the “lived experience” of the person’s agency is an
essential element in shaping the “subjective conviction” and the
personal “certitude” of the truthfulness of the norm.51 A theory of
the cognition of natural law that adopts the cancelling out of such a
“lived experience” brings its author to the threshold of postulating
a deprivation of the “lived experience” to the “discovery” of the
content of the person’s normative ontic identity and of evacuating
the “moment of truthfulness” of natural law to some other structural
moment.
Somewhat surprisingly, it seems that one particular theoretical
attempt to relocate the content of natural law to the person’s experiential realm makes a similar move. John Finnis, an Oxford philosopher of law, moving along the theoretical proposals of Germain
Grisez within the philosophical framework later labelled as the “new
natural law theory,”52 seems to interpret Aquinas’s understanding of
the first principles of practical reasonableness (which he takes to be
the root of the cognitive structure of the precepts of natural law) as
“self-evident” in a way that resembles introducing into the personal
structure of the cognition of natural law a module of dynamics very
similar to Wojtyła’s concept of “something happens in man.” Finnis’s
argument, by which he interrelates his claim that Aquinas’s practical reasoning begins not by understanding human nature “from
the outside, as it were, by way of psychological anthropological or
metaphysical observations and judgements defining human nature,
but by experiencing one’s nature, so to speak, from the inside, in the
form of one’s inclinations,” with the claim that “by a simple act of
		Ibid., 165 (italics original).
		Ibid.
52
		This term, which delineates a main cluster of ideas shared by various authors
(a cluster to which some of the authors usually associated with the “new natural law” theory subscribe in a lesser degree than others as regards particular
issues of the natural law theory), was coined by Professor Russell Hittinger.
See Russell Hittinger, A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), 5. The proposed common term
was rejected on various occasions by proponents of the theory, perhaps most
notably by John Finnis in “Reflections and Responses,” in Reason, Morality
and Law: The Philosophy of John Finnis, ed. John Keown and Robert P. George
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 468n31.
50
51

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non-inferential understanding one grasps that the object of the inclination that one experiences is an instance of a general form of good,
for oneself (and others like one),”53 has alreadly been extensively
criticized from within the Thomistic tradition itself. In his important 1987 book A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory, devoted
entirely to the critique of the Finnis-Grisez philosophical framework
of the cognitive structure of natural law, Russell Hittinger indicates
that Finnis and Grisez introduce into the cognitive structure of
natural law elements resembling “natural categoricals” in a way that
hopes to “overcome the limitations of the conventional natural law
theory (which stressed the ‘natural’), the utilitarian tradition (which
stressed the goods, but shortchanged them), and the deontological
tradition (which had the categoricals, but an insufficient appreciation
of the goods).”54 While advocating results of a natural law theory,
Hittinger insists, Finnis and Grisez alter the theoretical apparatus
classically considered necessary to sustain it. That is, they fail to
take into consideration what the contemporary Thomist Stephen
L. Brock elsewhere identified as the understanding that the natural
inclinations actually follow upon the understanding of the true human
good and are indeed movements of man’s rational appetite—that is,
the inclinations of the will—and not prerational dynamisms.55 Such
classical Thomistic structure of the cognition of natural law allows
one to postulate, as did professor Henry B. Veatch, that “the very ‘is’
of human nature has been shown to have an ‘ought’ built into it.”56
Grisez and Finnis, however, wholly replace this element of the classic
Thomistic natural law theory with, according to Hittinger, a Kantian
account of practical reasonableness built into the structural locus of
Aquinas’s understanding of the self-evidence of the first principles of
natural law,57 almost entirely sidestepping the theoretical insight into
human nature in normative moral epistemology.
We wish to highlight here that the “new natural law theory”
might not take into sufficient consideration the personalistic implications of the inclusion of a module that Hittinger labels “natural
		John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1980), 34.
54
		Hittinger, A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory, 163.
55
		Stephen L. Brock, “Natural Inclination and the Intelligibility of the Good in
Thomistic Natural Law,” Vera Lex 6, no. 1/2 (2005): 57–78, esp. at 59–65.
56
		Henry B.Veatch, “Natural Law and the ‘Is’–‘Ought’ Question,” Catholic Lawyer
26 (1980–1981): 258.
57
		Hittinger, A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory, 27–30.
53

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categoricals” in the cognitive structure of natural law. To postulate
such a Kantian-like module in the cognitive structure of natural law
amounts to, as we saw earlier, the cancelling out of personal agency in
acts of self-cognition, consequently depriving the person of a “lived
experience” of the normative dimension of his ontic identity (“the
moment of truthfulness”) in its discovery. In other words, on the
level of the classical Thomistic approach, Grisez’s and Finnis’s philosophical framework amounts to, for example, considering contraception as something wrong not because it involves the perversion of
a biological function, but solely (and strangely) because it is a deliberate suppression of the procreative good, and hence a “volitional
absurdity”—the act is practically irrational because practical reason
violates itself.58 Transposed to the specific personalistic level, wherein
Wojtyła makes his own contributions to natural law theory, however,
the person is simply “struck” by the existence of values that are truly
good but has absolutely no “lived experience” of the dynamics of
the rational and volitional process of “discovering” this normative
dimension of his ontic identity. The structure he experiences is
equivalent to “something happening in him,” and his agency did not
accompany this discovery through what Wojtyła calls the “creative
role of conscience.”
Professor Hittinger, in his above-quoted book on the “new natural
law theory,” hints at the existence of a problematic aspect in some
of the Finnis-Grisez claims in a way that is very congenial to our
own presentation of Wojtyła’s line of argumentation. Throughout
his study, Hittinger repeatedly criticizes one aspect (among others)
of the new natural law theory, Finnis-Grisez’s systematic “shifting of
the focus from persons to goods,” and identifies the problem when
he affirms:
Is moral agency, for instance, something more than the sum of
the parts of the goods with which practical reason is interested?
In other words, is there something of value to personhood that
needs to be affirmed in terms quite different from merely our

		Ibid., 163. In a similar way, to give another example, Hittinger wonders
whether it corresponds to the correct personal structure of cognition of
natural law if “a person who grieves over a departed loved one is described
as focusing upon the good of life rather than upon the person who is loved”
(ibid., 72 and 77).

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concern for goods which fulfill persons? 59
In summary, we will not find in Grisez’s anthropology a
coherent explanation of how to speak of a teleological and
ontological unity of the human being. There is a teleology for
each basic good, to which the moral self is obligated, but there
is no corresponding teleology of the moral self. Put more sharply, we
are dealing with a homo absconditus.60
Hittinger diagnoses the problem of the “new natural law theory”
as, among other aspects, its focusing primarily on basic goods as
“natural categoricals,” as finalities in themselves, rather than working out how to present persons as finalities. From the perspective of
Wojtyła’s Thomistic personalism, such an anthropology is inadequate
and reveals insufficiencies regarding the personalistic structure of the
cognition of natural law. Hittinger himself comes very close to what
we postulate in this article when he highlights that, in the Finnis-Grisez account of natural law, “the self is bound to certain goods
before we have an adequate idea of what the self is, in terms of its
structure, meaning, and value,” and that “the dimension of human
subjectivity is immediately bound to the axiological dimension in
order to generate a system of obligations.”61
Wojtyła’s Contribution to Natural Law Theory
and “Integration”
There is yet another important topic pertaining to the personal
structure of the cognition of natural law that represents our author’s
genuine contribution to this theory and possesses what we might call
the value of pointing out the inadequacies of certain approaches to
natural law and constituting an enriching element to the classic natural law theory in its contemporary reaffirmation. Wojtyła’s thoughts
on the topic, which we are about to present, are not contributions in
that sense of the newness and originality of his two above-presented
contributions—namely, the “subjectivation” of person’s normative
reality and “lived experience” of the “moment of truthfulness” of the
norm. Rather, in this case, Wojtyła approaches a topic that is already a
thoroughly debated and well-explored area within natural law theory,
adding his own distinctive arguments to the subject, from the stand		Ibid., 29–30.
		Ibid., 74 (italics original).
61
		Ibid., 186.
59
60

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point of Thomistic personalism, in order to get a deeper glimpse of the
inside of the human subject and to secure even more comprehensively
the foundations of normativity predicated to nature.
The topic centers on the value of the so-called pre-rational structural realities and dynamisms of human nature for the cognition of
the precepts of natural law. In order to grasp Wojtyła’s contribution
to the subject, we could again take as a starting point Finnis’s position expressed in the claim that the role of the so-called “natural
inclinations” and their connected physical, biological, and psychological preconditions in the cognitive structure of natural law is no
more than that of “facts” or “factual possibilities,” an “assemblage of
reminders of the range of possibly worthwhile activities and orientations open to one,” of which the person has “an awareness” as a
“necessary condition for a reasonable judgment.” From these “facts,”
or “factual possibilities,” the person in no way “derives” or “infers”
the precepts of natural law,62 but merely and necessarily receives the
experiential “data” to grasp the basic goods.63 On the other side of
the debate, Stephen L. Brock holds that the “natural inclinations”
are structurally rational and that they have quite a different identity
from the one assigned to them by the proponents of the “new natural law theory.” According to Brock, reason does not engage in the
dynamism of the natural inclinations as pre-rational data. He argues
that Aquinas distinguished, from the group of nonrational inclinations (e.g., physiological inclinations), inclinations that he labeled
“natural inclinations” because they are derived from reason’s previous
apprehension of their object as good and are, thus, as we summarily
		Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, 65–66, 73, and 81. Elsewhere, Finnis
will clarify that the structural realities and dynamisms of natural inclinations
and their factual substructure, indeed, are ontologically “more proximate to
nature,” because we come to know nature “by knowing its potentialities
and capacities.” But on the cognitive, epistemological level, a full knowledge
of human nature is derived from a “self-evident” knowledge of the human
goods—this is what Hittinger calls “natural categoricals.” The natural inclinations, according to Finnis, are not merely “a rabble waiting for a leadership to
be imposed upon them ab extra,” nor are they more than “experiences” that
“include not only the stirrings of desire and aversion, but also an awareness
of possibilities, likelihoods, ut in pluribus outcomes.” See John Finnis, “Natural Inclinations and Natural Rights: Deriving ‘Ought’ from ‘Is’ According to
Aquinas,” in Lex et Libertas: Freedom and Law According to St. Thomas Aquinas,
ed. L. J. Elders and K. Hedwig (Vatican City: LEV, 1987), 44–47.
63
		For a synthesis of this argument as presented in the Finnis-Grisez approach,
see Brock, “Natural Inclination and the Intelligibility of the Good,” 59–60.
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mentioned before, “movements of man’s rational appetite,” inclinations of the will.64
We have no intention to enter here into further details of this
dispute within the Thomistic tradition of natural law theory; what
is summarily presented above should be sufficient to engage with
Wojtyła’s argumentative position in the debate. His texts provide
insight into his understanding of the significance and role within the
cognitive structure of natural law of those elements (and not, therefore,
the whole structure) of the natural inclinations that certainly pertain to
the pre-rational level, such as physical, biological, and psychological
personal substructures. In his brief article “Human Person and Natural Law” (published in 1970; original not only for its singular ideas
but also because of its almost complete lack of the classic natural law
discourse), he outlines how his contribution to this particular debate
is moving on a separate, personalistic level in order to enter into
dialogue with the Thomistic tradition. In this article, he dismantles
the arguments for the existence of putative conflicts between the
concepts of “nature” (when understood exclusively as the basis for
“instinctive actualization” of pre-rational human dynamisms) and
“person,” conflicts that, transposed to an erroneous understanding
of natural law, attempt to claim that the “natural” structures of
the human person (which he will later refer to as the “pre-rational
personal sub-structure”) are in no way interrelated with the concept
of the “person.”65
In The Acting Person, Wojtyła addresses the issue within his philosophical treatment of a concept he calls “integration,” which he
understands as a specific aspect of the personalistic value of the act,
realized when nature—embracing the whole of the dynamization
proper to man, both “operative” (“man acts”) and “activational” (the
“pre-rational personal sub-structure” that has a “something happens
in man” structure)—is integrated, in the act, into the dimension of
the person.66 He understands the dynamisms that possess the “activational” structure of “something happens in man” as the already
“prepared” reality of man caught in the moment of pre-operative
		Ibid., 61–62. Professor Hittinger explicitly acknowledges Brock’s view in this
particular matter. See Russell Hittinger, “Legal Renaissance of the 12th and
13th Centuries: Some Thomistic Notes,” Doctor Communis 7, no. 1/2 (2008):
61–87, at 79n34.
65
		Wojtyła, “The Human Person and Natural Law,” 182.
66
		Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 83–84.
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givenness. What he adds to the traditional Thomistic account of this
pre-operative givenness is the claim that the final dimension proper
to pre-rational dynamisms is not situated exclusively on the teleological level of their natural ends,67 but rather, these dynamisms are also
essentially integrated into the level of the person, where the personalistic
value is realized.68 According to Wojtyła, then, these dynamisms are
integrated precisely as essential components of nature, which is not, at
this pre-rational level, merely factual and value-neutral, but rather
represents the natural potential of the human person,69 ordered to be
integrated. The “activational” structure represents, therefore, “a basis,
an underlayer, or a sub-structure for what determines the structure
of the person,” and it “by no means contradicts man’s personal unity;
on the contrary, in its own way it is a characteristic of this unity.”70
On the other hand, in the “operative” (“man acts”) moment of his
dynamization—whereby the value of self-determination is realized—
the person consciously “posits” himself into the integrated substructure of these dynamisms.71 Wojtyła thus restates the traditional
Thomistic account by including an analysis of the integration of both
“operative” and “activational” levels of personal dynamisms into the
dimension of the person.72 Integration, of course, includes the whole
process of the origination of the inclinations of the will, as described
by Brock. Wojtyła affirms that the appetitive act of reason in which it
		Professor Brock recognizes in these pre-rational dynamisms the essential
(surely not exclusive) elements of the necessary substructure of rational
apprehension of the good. When speaking about “pre-rational sense-appetite”
(or “pre-rational desire”), for example, Professor Brock very precisely shows
that Aquinas is very clear in his claims that the experience of sense appetite
does not provide the sole basis for grasping the good but does pertain to the
cognition of natural law inasmuch as this experience is penetrated by reason to
discern and discover a natural order and to form natural inclinations as inclinations of the will. This is surely more than merely ascribing to this pre-rational
substructure an “assemblage of reminders” in the cognition of natural law. See
Brock, “Natural Inclination and the Intelligibility of the Good,” 67–68. See
also Stephen L. Brock, “Natural Law, Understanding of Principles and Universal Good,” Nova et Vetera (English) 9, no. 3 (2011): 688n34 and 699n60.
68
		Wojtyła, The Acting Person, 197–98.
69
		Ibid.
70
		Ibid., 211.
71
		Ibid., 212.
72
		For a more complete account of the value of “integration” in Wojtyła’s philosophical project, see Maj and Popović, “The Personalistic Value of the Human
Act,” 378–82.
67

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grasps the ratio boni is not a subjective interference of reason in objective reality in the sense that “reason would impose its own categories
on reality, as was ultimately the case in Kant’s anthropological view”
but, rather, bespeaks a completely different orientation of discovery
and comprehension in relation “to an order which is objective and
prior to human reason itself.” 73
Conclusion
Throughout this article, we have sought to present how Wojtyła’s writings reveal his philosophical preoccupation that securing the anthropological foundations of the mystery of the human person should include
an adequate presentation of the moral and juridical dimension of
natural law. At the same time,Wojtyła was convinced that these foundations include a clear reference to a distinctive, personalistic level of this
normative dimension of a person’s ontic “identity,” where the “subjectivation” and “lived experience” of the truthfulness of this “identity”
take place in its cognitive structure. It is sufficiently clear that Wojtyła
understood the crisis of the understanding of the human person, a
crisis he mentions in his letter to de Lubac, and which exists to this day
(though in metamorphosed manifestations), to be devastating to the
theoretical presentation of the reality of natural law. However, having
inherited Aquinas’s conceptual approach to natural law in its entirety,
along with its central claim that this normative dimension of the
person’s ontic “identity” cannot be altogether obliterated (because it is
the law “higher” than the sole personal reality and, indeed, participative
of its divine source),74 Wojtyła focused his philosophical attention on
a distinct feature of the reality of natural law—namely, the possibil		See Wojtyła, “Human Person and Natural Law,” 184. As a further line of
development of John Paul II’s argument, there is a very pertinent admonitory
note in the 2009 document of the International Theological Commission,
according to which some contemporary natural law theories have wrongfully
neglected or altogether rejected the moral significance of the pre-rational
natural dynamisms and identified, once again, wrongfully, the rationality of the
natural law with a univocal ideal of rationality generated by practical reason
alone without taking into account the rationality immanent in nature. See
International Theological Commission, In Search of a Universal Ethic: A New
Look at the Natural Law (2009), §79, especially footnote 75.
74
		Wojtyła, “Human Person and Natural Law,” 184. On the impossibility of the
“obliteration” of natural law within the human person, see Russell Hittinger,
The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003), 10–11.
73

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ity that the person’s “subjectivation” and “lived experience” may be
interfered with or completely distorted by defective anthropologies,
with the most tragic of consequences. Leaving the discussion of the
classic features of the Thomistic natural law theory to its contemporary proponents, Wojtyła understands that part of the retrieval of the
natural law theory, from his philosophical standpoint, includes as its
central thesis the reaffirmation of a systematic openness of natural law
to subjective personal experience as one of its essential elements.
Perhaps, though, contemporary Thomistic proponents of exposition of natural law theory will also recognize Wojtyła’s contributions to the theory as its essential complement. Hittinger’s critique,
addressed to some aforementioned reformers of natural law theory,
that “we never get a glimpse of the inside, as it were, of the human
subject” seems to be very congenial to the theoretical background
of Wojtyła’s perspective and to a fruitful dialogue between classical
Thomistic natural law theory in general and personalistic insights
compatible with it. Elsewhere, Brock, while elaborating his position
on the centrality of the inclinations of the will as a fulcrum of the
cognitive structure of natural law, affirms that “the talk of intellect
apprehending ‘itself ’ desiring is striking” because, in a way, “it is only
shorthand for the person apprehending himself desiring.” 75 Although
Brock does not further develop the theme of the place of the person
as subject to the cognitive structure of natural law, we cannot help
but see a link between this theme and an openness for its integration
with a distinct personal dimension that is characteristic of Wojtyła’s
own contributions to natural law theory.
Wojtyła was convinced that such an openness to subjective personal
experience is an integral part of the anthropological (and theological)
mystery of the human person in such a way that excludes the risk of
losing the objectivity of natural law while, at the same time, showing more closely how the intrinsic nature of this objectiveness and
concrete personal existence are interwoven.
It could be argued that the renewal of the personalistic link
between natural law and human experience that Wojtyła proposes
to develop in its full theoretical and practical consequences in a
synthesis of Thomism and personalism is one of the main reasons that
Pope John Paul II insisted on personalistic language in his magisterial writings. This could be why, on certain occasions, he preferred
		Brock, “Natural Inclination and the Intelligibility of the Good,” 68 (italics
original).

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this language to the classic natural law discourse, which, as his 1993
encyclical Veritatis Splendor clearly shows, he completely presupposed,
considered perennially valid. This leads us to conclude that, according to Wojtyła, the universal recovery of natural law in its classical
Thomistic exposition could be achieved through the mediation of its
N&V
content to human experience by way of personalistic insight.

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259

On Love and War: Reflections on the
Abuse of Technical Rationality
Michael S. Sherwin, O.P.
University of Fribourg
Fribourg, Switzerland

“Militat omnis amans.”
—Ovid, Amores 1.9
“El amor y la guerra son una misma cosa.”
—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha 2.3.21

“M ilitat omnis amans : Every lover battles, and Cupid holds

his fort; Atticus, believe me, every lover battles. The age that’s good for
war, is also right for love.”1 Ovid expresses an ancient insight when he
describes the affinities between love and war (artistically represented in
song already by Homer and later in the many classical and Renaissance
images of the attraction between Ares and Aphrodite, between Mars,
the god of war, and Venus, the goddess of love).2 Cervantes expresses
		
“Militat omnis amans, et habet sua castra Cupido; Attice, crede mihi, mili-

1

tat omnis amans. quae bello est habilis, Veneri quoque convenit aetas.”

Ovid, Amores, 1.9.
		See Homer, Odyssey 8.266–366 and Ovid, Ars Amatoria 2.559–94 and Metamorphoses 4.167–92. For the secondary literature, see: Annette Teffeteller,
“The Song of Ares and Aphrodite: Ašertu on Skheria,” in Brill’s Companion to
Aphrodite, ed. Amy C. Smith and Sadie Pickup (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 131–49;
Maureen J. Alden, “The Resonances of the Song of Ares and Aphrodite,”
Mnemosyne 50 (1997): 513–29; Bruce Karl Braswell, “The Song of Ares and
Aphrodite: Theme and Relevance to Odyssey 8,” Hermes 110 (1982): 129–37;
Rachel Kousser, “Mythological Group Portraits in Antonine Rome: The

2

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Michael S. Sherwin, O.P.

this even more succinctly when he has Quixote exclaim, in defense
of a young lover’s behavior in winning the hand of his beloved: “love
and war are one and the same thing.”3 In both quotations, the poets
are affirming that the ways of love are like the ways of war. If this is
the case, might the study of one help us better understand the other,
especially in the American context?
The ways of love and the ways of war: a striking feature of the
last fifty years is that Americans are becoming less and less successful
at both. During these past fifty years, our wars have rarely attained
the stated goals for which they were undertaken and have wreaked
cultural, economic, environmental, and human havoc on friend
and foe alike.4 The American way of love has fared no better. The
marriage rate in the United States is now at an all-time low, while the
divorce rate, although down from its record levels, is still troublingly
high (around 45% of all US marriages now end in divorce).5 CohabPerformance of Myth,” American Journal of Archaeology 111 (2007): 673–91;
Diana E. E. Kleiner, “Second-Century Mythological Portraiture: Mars and
Venus,” Latomus 40 (1981): 512–44.
3
		Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha 2.3.21: “El amor y la guerra
son una misma cosa.”
4
		Research on this topic is vast and varied; I wish only to point out that concern
for why America has fared so poorly in war over the last fifty years and for the
human costs of these wars transcends distinctions between the political left or
right. Authors as diverse as Tom Engelhardt, on the left, and Jon Basil Utley,
on the right, have drawn readers attention to this issue. See, for example: Tom
Engelhardt, “America at War: A Record of Unparalleled Failure,” The Nation,
June 10, 2014, accessed November 3, 2017, https://www.thenation.com/
article/america-war-record-unparalleled-failure; Jon Basil Utley, “12 Reasons
America Doesn’t Win Its Wars,” The American Conservative, June 12, 2015,
accessed November 3, 2017, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/12-reasons-america-doesnt-win-its-wars; James Fallows, “The Tragedy of
the American Military,” The Atlantic Monthly, January/February 2015, accessed
November 3, 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/
the-tragedy-of-the-american-military/383516; Peter R. Mansoor, “Why Can’t
America Win Its Wars?” The Hoover Institution, March 10, 2016, accessed
November 3, 2017, http://www.hoover.org/research/why-cant-america-winits-wars. See also Andrew J. Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle East:
A Military History (New York: Random House, 2016) and The Limits of Power:
The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008).
5
		Center for Disease Control / National Center for Health Statistics, National
Vital Statistics System: “Provisional Number of Marriages and Marriage Rate:
United States, 2000–2014” and “Provisional Number of Divorces and Annulments and Rate: United States, 2000–2014,” accessed November 3, 2017,
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm. For analysis,

Reflections on the Abuse of Technical Rationality

261

itation has not proved to be a panacea, either: only about thirteen
percent of those couples stay together.6 Perhaps the most disturbing
statistics concern the growth of American solitude: over the last half
century the number of Americans living alone has doubled, with
almost a third of our country living alone.7 And when it comes to
raising children, if in 1960 less than 10 percent of our children were
raised in single parent homes, that number has now reached a staggering 34 percent: one third of our children.8 Clearly, Americans are
having difficulty pursuing the ways of love and family life.
Thus, in the pages that follow, I will offer some reflections on
the American way of war and suggest how they might help us better
understand the current limitations in the American way of love. I
wish to do so by focusing on one war in particular, the Vietnam war,
and to suggest that the way we fought that war also has important
things to teach us about the way we make love. Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate the point I wish to make is by focusing on the
example of one particularly influential actor in that war, because
of how well he illustrates the issue I wish to address: the abuse of
technical rationality to solve human problems. The person in question is Robert McNamara, who was secretary of defense during the
Kennedy and Johnson administrations.9
see Ana Swanson, “144 years of Marriage and Divorce in the United States,
in One Chart,” Washington Post, June 23, 2015, accessed November 3, 2017,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/23/144-yearsof-marriage-and-divorce-in-the-united-states-in-one-chart.
6
		Sharon Sassler, “The Higher Risks of Cohabitation,” The New York Times On
Line, December 20, 2010, accessed October 5, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/
roomfordebate/2010/12/19/why-remarry/the-higher-risks-of-cohabitation.
7
		United States Census Bureau, “America’s Families and Living Arrangements,
2013: Households (H table series), Table H1,” accessed November 4, 2017,
https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/tables/families/2013/
cps-2013/tabh1-all.xls; Tim Henderson, “More Americans living alone, census
says,” Stateline: Journal of the Pew Charitable Trusts, September 11, 2014, accessed
November 3, 2017, http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/
blogs/stateline/2014/09/11/growing-number-of-people-living-solo-canpose-challenges.
8
		Gretchen Livingston, “Fewer than Half of U.S. Kids Today Live in a ‘Traditional’ Family,” Factank: News in the Numbers, Pew Research Center, December
22, 2014, accessed November 3, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2014/12/22/less-than-half-of-u-s-kids-today-live-in-a-traditional-family.
9
		In what follows, the biographical sketch of McNamara is draw from several
sources, but principally from Deborah Shapley, Promise and Power: the Life and
Times of Robert McNamara (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993).

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Michael S. Sherwin, O.P.

Although it would be tempting to give a detailed biography of
Secretary McNamara, these facts will suffice: when President-elect
Kennedy tapped him to serve in his cabinet in the autumn of 1960,
Robert McNamara was already a distinguished public figure, He
began his professional career as the youngest and highest paid assistant professor at Harvard Business School. Then, during the Second
World War, he played a key role in the Army Air Corps’ Office of
Statistical Control, applying systems analysis technics developed at
Harvard to help the Air Corps efficiently bomb its targets in both
Europe and Japan. Upon returning from the war, he was part of
an elite group of Statistical Control veterans hired by Ford Motor
Company to help turn the ailing company around. They were known
as the Whiz Kids. Within fourteen years, McNamara was president
of the company, which he had helped make financially successful
once again. McNamara made the transition from Whiz Kid to New
Frontiersman with ease, and was quickly regarded as one of the most
gifted and interesting members of Kennedy’s remarkable collection of
the best and the brightest of his generation.10
What I wish to consider in these pages, however, is McNamara’s
remarkable belief that he did not need to know the language,
history, or culture of Vietnam—indeed, he admits that he did not
know these things at the time—in order to defeat the Vietnamese
Communist Nationalists who were attacking the South Vietnamese government. Instead, McNamara viewed warfare as a problem
analogous to those faced in business management, which required
the efficient application of resources and technology and the rational
use of game-theory to attain victory. As James William Gibson has
observed, McNamara’s approach contained three stages.11 The first
entailed reducing the conflict to the level of what could be measured
and quantified. As Gibson notes, McNamara viewed warfare as “a
problem of organizing quantities.”12 Quantification then enabled the
war managers to treat warfare as analogous to a classical managerial
problem of costs and benefits in the production of their product,
which in this case, was warfare. Without getting too technical, the
		See David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest: Twentieth Anniversary Edition
(New York: Random House, 1992), and Robert Dallek, Camelot’s Court: Inside
the Kennedy White House (New York: HarperCollins, 2013).
11
		 James William Gibson, The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000), 79–80.
12
		Gibson, The Perfect War, 79 (emphasis original).
10

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goal of the second step in McNamara’s managerial approach was to
determine the point beyond which production of warfare became too
costly for yourself and for your competitor, the enemy. The third step
entailed developing models of enemy behavior that viewed the enemy
as an agent who would follow the same logic of cost–benefit analysis.
This third step was crucial, because, by means of game theory, it
would enable planners to predict how the enemy would respond to
the government’s actions.
Warfare was thus like corporate competition: victory would come
to the competitor who could produce the highest quality product at
the lowest cost. As in business, the key to a swift victory would be to
engage in practices that would demonstrate to the competitor that he
could not win and that, therefore, he should negotiate a deal. In the
business world, for example, when your competitor can consistently
produce the product at a higher quality and at a lower cost, the rational executive will either sell out to the competition or withdraw from
the market. Thus, as General H. R. McMaster has noted, McNamara
“defined military action as a form of communication, the object of
which was to affect the enemy’s calculation of interests and dissuade
him from a particular activity.”13 McNamara and his war planners
believed that, in their use of military force in Vietnam, they could
convince the Vietnamese communists to stop their attacks on the
South Vietnamese government and to negotiate a lasting peace. (For
example, as Gibson has observed, one of the reasons that the war
planners were obsessed with body counts, kill ratios, and establishing
the “crossover point”—the point at which the Viet Cong were losing
troops faster than they could replace them—is that they believed this
would communicate to the North Vietnamese that they were losing
the war.) As McNamara himself would later explain, “The objective
[was] to bend an opponent’s will via the threat to continue on up the
ladder of escalation.”14 McNamara believed deeply that the escalation
of military force was demonstrating that a negotiated peace was in the
interest of the Communist Vietnamese themselves.
McNamara would become increasingly frustrated that the Viet		H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (New York: Harper, 1997), 326.
14
		Robert S. McNamara, James Blight, Robert Brigham, Thomas Biersteker, and
Colonel Herbert Schandler, Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the
Vietnam Tragedy (New York: Public Affairs, 1999), 160 (quoted by Gibson, The
Perfect War, ix).
13

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Michael S. Sherwin, O.P.

namese never saw this. Years later, when he organized a meeting with
his former enemies, who were now the leaders of a united Vietnam,
McNamara continued to make this point. He argued that one of
the reasons the Vietnam war should be considered a tragedy stems
from the failure of the North Vietnamese to see that a negotiated
settlement in 1967 would have been possible and would have been
in their interest. Not surprisingly, the Vietnamese officials rejected
every element of this claim. For them, the war was not a tragedy,
but a victory—a costly victory, but a victory nonetheless: they had
united Vietnam and, for the first time in centuries, they had liberated it from foreign occupation. From the Vietnamese perspective,
the postwar discussions did, however, have one helpful outcome. As
one Vietnamese official explained, “We understand better now that
the U.S. understands very little about Vietnam.”15 Without doubt,
McNamara had understood very little during the war, and not just
about Vietnam, but about war in general. As General McMaster
explains, McNamara’s managerial approach “ignored the uncertainty
of war and the unpredictable psychology of an activity that involves
killing, death, and destruction.”16 Specifically, with regard to the
Vietnam war, General McMaster adds: “To the North Vietnamese,
military action, involving as it did attacks on their forces and bombing of their territory, was not simply a means of communication.
Human sacrifices in war evoke strong emotions, creating a dynamic
that defies systems analysis quantification.”17
McMaster here articulates a view that was already in circulation in
the early 1960’s. Indeed, as early as 1961, many who knew Vietnam
well believed that the conflict in that country could not be resolved
through military means. Here, for example, is how Daniel Ellsberg,
who at the time was a RAND Corporation analyst doing research for
the Government, describes his first encounter with the country: “In
the fall of 1961 it didn’t take very long to discover in Vietnam that
we weren’t likely to be successful there. It took me less than a week,
on my first visit. With the right access, talking to the right people,
you could get the picture pretty quickly.”18 Ellsberg explains that he
		McNamara et al., Argument Without End, 254 (quoted by Gibson, The Perfect
War, x).
16
		McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 326.
17
		Ibid.
18
		Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York:
Penguin, 2003), 3. Ellsberg is a former Marine officer who at the time was a
committed cold warrior working hard to find ways to check Soviet advances
15

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had go-anywhere-see-anything clearance and interviewed American military advisors who spoke Vietnamese and knew the country
well. He also spoke with South Vietnamese officials and studied the
files developed by the American advisors. Their conclusions were
the same: the Diem government of South Vietnam would fall to
the communists in one or two years unless Diem was overthrown,
in which case South Vietnam would probably fall sooner. The only
thing that could delay this outcome would be the massive insertion
of American ground troops, but even this, they all believed, would
only delay a communist takeover: once the ground troops were
withdrawn, the government of South Vietnam would soon fall to the
communists.19 This was not an isolated view: it was French President
de Gaulle’s view (communicated to the American Ambassador in
1963); it was also the view of the Army’s own Chief of Staff at the
time, General George Decker.20 How, then, could McNamara and
throughout the world. Here, for example, is how Ellsberg describes his reaction
to the situation he discovered in Vietnam in 1961:
This was not good news to me. I was a dedicated cold warrior, in fact a
professional one. I had been anti-Soviet since the Czech coup and the
Berlin blockade in 1948, my last year of high school, and the Korean
War while I was a student at Harvard a couple of years later. For my
military service I had chosen the Marine Corps and spent three years
as an infantry officer. After the Marines I returned to Harvard as a
graduate fellow and then went to the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit
research organization whose entire focus was the military aspects of
the cold war. My own work up to 1961 had been mainly on deterring
a surprise nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. I should have liked
nothing better than to hear that South Vietnam was a place where
Soviet-backed Communists were going to be defeated, with our help.
(Ibid., 4)
		It was frustration with both the Johnson and Nixon Administrations’ refusal
to reveal to the American public the Defense Department’s own pessimistic
assessment of the history and situation in Vietnam that led Ellsberg to release
to the press the documents that became known as the “Pentagon Papers.” He
had decided on this course of action as early as the Fall 1969, but did not
succeed in getting them published until the Summer of 1971 (Ibid., 290-295,
365-386).
19
		Ibid., 3.
20
		See McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 22 and 164. General Decker’s remarks are
worth quoting. In April of 1961, Decker had told McNamara that “we cannot
win a conventional war in Southeast Asia” (quoted bid., 22). See also Thomas
Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today
(New York: Penguin Press, 2012), 228.

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his team of war managers be so blind? Did it perhaps stem from their
conception of rationality (and of technology) and their way of applying them to human problems? The question is especially germane
to the topic of this essay because, when Robert McNamara resigned
as Secretary of Defense in 1967 and became president of the World
Bank the following year, he surprised everyone by shifting the focus
of the World Bank from infrastructure projects to an issue at the
heart of love: family planning. Specifically, he identified world overpopulation (along with hunger and illiteracy) as the greatest obstacles
to development in the Third World and used the Bank’s resources
to distribute and promote the use of contraceptives throughout the
Third World.21 The ways of love and the ways of war: “Believe me,
Atticus, every lover battles, and the age that’s good for war, is also
right for love.” Did the blindness that led him astray in war also lead
him astray in his efforts at family planning on a global scale? Was
he employing a false understanding of technical rationality in both
cases? To answer this twin question, we must look more closely at
McNamara’s understanding of rationality.
Shortly after the debacle in Vietnam, McNamara looked back
over his methods and offered the following reflection: “It is true
enough that not every conceivable complex human situation can be
fully reduced to lines on a graph, or to percentage points on a chart
or figures on a balance sheet. But all reality can be reasoned about,
and not to quantify what can be quantified is only to be content
with something less than the full range of reason.”22 Much later on,
as he approached his eightieth year, McNamara reflected on his first
encounter with higher mathematics as an undergraduate: “My mathematics professors taught me to see math as a process of thought—a
language in which to express much, but certainly not all, of human
activity. It was a revelation. To this day, I see quantification as a
language to add precision to reasoning about the world. Of course, it
		William Clark, “Robert McNamara at the World Bank,” Foreign Affairs 60,
no. 1 (1981): 170. See also Shapley, Promise and Power, 471–81 and 498–526.
For critical assessments of McNamara’s and the World Bank’s family planning
policies, see Jessica Einhorn, “The World Bank’s Mission Creep,” Foreign Affairs
80, no. 5 (2001): 22–35, and Andrew M. Essig, The World Bank: How It Compromises Economic Development by Promoting a Population Control Agenda (New York:
Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, 2007).
22
		See Gregory Palmer, The McNamara Strategy and the Vietnam War: Program
Budgeting and the Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978), 58
(cited by Gibson, The Perfect War, 79).
21

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267

cannot deal with issues of morality, beauty, and love, but it is a powerful tool too often neglected when we seek to overcome poverty, fiscal
deficits, or the failure of our national health programs.”23
This all sounds very reasonable. McNamara is admitting that
certain aspects of human experience fall through the sieve of quantification: he affirms that the language of math “cannot deal with issues
of morality, beauty, and love.” McNamara saw his method as simply
“quantitative common sense.”24 In practice, however, when it came
to making concrete practical decisions (whether this was at Ford,
the Defense Department, or the World Bank), McNamara wanted
to see the numbers. As one student of his days at Ford has observed:
“[McNamara] thought that truth could be quantified. And if something could not be quantified, it couldn’t be true. . . . He wanted
to measure everything, trying to bring quantification to even sales,
marketing and advertising.”25
In the final analysis, McNamara’s approach calls into question the
role of qualitative considerations in rational analysis and practical
judgment. Do things have natures? Are there qualitative aspects of
reality, aspects that touch the heart and the emotions as well as the
intellect and, thus, imply that our emotions should have a role in
practical judgments? Or is everything reducible to quantities, and is
practical judgment simply a utilitarian calculus of costs and benefits?
Importantly, McNamara strove not only to base his own judgments
on quantitative data: he believed that, in the heat of battle, this is
what everyone does, that any rational agent or potential enemy will
make his decisions according to a self-interested calculus of costs and
benefits. Not surprisingly, when the North Vietnamese failed to act
as predicted, their behavior was viewed as irrational. For example,
looking back on the war, one of McNamara’ lieutenants affirmed:
“The trouble with our policy in Vietnam has been that we guessed
wrong with respect to what the North Vietnamese reaction would
be. We anticipated that they would respond like reasonable people.”26
In other words, like people who share the American war managers’
views on costs and benefits.
But how can such a reductionist view of rational judgment take
		Robert S. McNamara and Brian VanDeMark, In Retrospect: the Tragedy and
Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Vintage, 1996), 6.
24
		John A. Byrne, Whiz Kids: the Founding Fathers of American Business—and the
Legacy They Left Us (New York: Currency/Doubleday, 1993), 400.
25
		Byrne, Whiz Kids, 254.
26
		Gibson, The Perfect War, 98.
23

Michael S. Sherwin, O.P.

268

into account of key events in our own military history, let alone in
the histories and actions of other nations? How can one calculate a
people’s desire for freedom or their love of hearth and home, or a
warrior’s commitment to valor in battle? What sense can war managers make of John Paul Jones’ refusal to surrender his sinking ship,
Bonhomme Richard, in his battle with the H.M.S. Serapis, or of General
McAuliffe’s refusal to surrender his dwindling and surrounded troops
in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944? Indeed, by the
standards of the war managers’ analysis of costs and benefits, almost
all of George Washington’s actions from 1776 until the French
entered the war two years later become incomprehensible: the acts of
an irrational man.
In this regard, McNamara’s early difficulty at Ford with the
mysterious character of car sales is instructive. John Byrne, author of
the classic study of the Whiz Kids at Ford, describes the situation as
follows:
Detroit could not explain exactly how a car was sold and why,
measuring it so you could control the process. In the sale of a
car, there was a mixture of persuasion and emotion, of impulse
and irrationality, of a salesman’s sincerity and a customer’s
enthusiasm, things that you could not count nor measure. To
McNamara, however, the car was simply a product to transport
a person from here to there. It provided transportation, not
status, nor prestige or even fun. It was a product more complex
than a hula-hoop, a television set or a tube of toothpaste, but
really nothing more than just another consumer product. So
he could never understand why his men couldn’t break down
the sale of the car to look at the process as a science. “We don’t
know how to count sincerity,” explained an executive ordered
by Bob to figure it out. “We don’t have a sincerity meter. We
don’t have an enthusiasm meter.”27
Sincerity, enthusiasm, honor, self-sacrifice, love of the true, the good,
and the beautiful—indeed, the true, the good, and the beautiful as
such—these do not surrender to a utilitarian calculus, although they
shape the behavior of families and nations. The lesson of Robert
McNamara would seem to be that when we try to fight wars without
taking into account these aspects of human life, we not only fail: we
		Byrne, Whiz Kids, 255.

27

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sow tragedy also into the lives of all concerned. If this is true of war,
might this also be true of the contemporary Western way of love? Are
we trying to solve the challenges of love and family life through a utilitarian calculus of costs and benefits that misuses technology and does
not take into account the rich qualitative aspects of our lives?
Perhaps no one has confronted these twin questions more directly
than the British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. Anscombe was
arguably one of the most important moral philosophers of the twentieth century. A student and later professor at Oxford who attended
Wittgenstein’s courses at Cambridge, becoming his principal literary
executor, chosen by Wittgenstein to translate and publish his manuscripts, she is perhaps best known for her 1958 essay “Modern Moral
Philosophy,” which has rightly been described as one of the most
important papers in ethics of the last hundred years. David Solomon,
in his tribute to Anscombe’s achievement, reminds us of the context
of that essay’s composition: in 1956, while she was a research fellow
at Oxford University, she was appalled to discover that the University was preparing to grant former U.S. President Harry Truman an
honorary doctorate, a man whom she regarded as a mass murderer
because of his authorization of the dropping of the atomic bombs
on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The greater
shock, however, was that only four of her colleagues at Oxford
supported her in her efforts to have the doctorate blocked. Shortly
after this, Anscombe was invited to teach an ethics course for a
friend who was departing on sabbatical. Her daughter, Mary Geach,
explains what happened next.
My mother settled down to read the standard modern ethicists
and was appalled. The thing these people had in common,
which had made Truman drop the bomb and the dons defend
him, was a belief which Anscombe labeled “consequentialism.”
I believe she invented the term; it has come to mean much the
same as “act utilitarianism,” but without the view that the good
is to be equated with pleasure and evil with pain. As Anscombe
first explained it, however, consequentialism is the view that
there is no kind of act so bad but it might on occasion be justified by its consequences, or by the likely consequences of not
performing it.28
		Mary Geach, “Introduction,” in G. E. M. Anscombe, Human Life, Action and
Ethics: Essays by G. E. M. Anscombe, ed. Mary Geach and Luke Gormally

28

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Michael S. Sherwin, O.P.

In preparing her class, Anscombe came to the conclusion that the
only way to offer a more adequate account of the moral life was by
returning to the ancient question of human flourishing. Elizabeth
Anscombe was perhaps the most gifted of a remarkable group of
women philosophers at Oxford (along with Iris Murdock, Philippa
Foote, and Mary Midgley) who had come—each in their own
way—to the conclusion during their wartime studies that there was
such a thing as human nature, as well as the true, the good, and the
beautiful, and that human happiness and fulfillment depended upon
living in harmony with these realities. Instead of seeking certitude
and precision in the reductive language of mathematics, Anscombe
invited us to turn our attention to the way we use everyday human
language in the rich and varied events of ordinary daily life. Following the lead of her mentor, Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his later work,
she invited us to return to the “rough ground”29 of normal human
language as we use it in the rich embodied events of human life,
which is an animal life, a life embedded in a community and its
history. Mary Midgley, in her autobiography, describes the effect of
Anscombe’s thought on Midgley and her contemporaries:
Repeatedly and carefully she spelt out how our thought about
language has to be rooted in the complexities of real life, not
imposed on it from outside as a calculus derived from axioms.
The special importance of language does not, then, flow from
its being a particularly grand isolated phenomenon. It arises
because speech is a central human activity, reflecting our whole
nature—because language is rooted, in a way that mathematics
is not, in the wider structure of our lives. So it leads on to an
investigation of our whole nature.30

(Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic Press, 2005), xvii (cited by David Solomon,
“Elizabeth Anscombe’s ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’: Fifty Years Later,” Christian Bioethics 14 [2008]: 110).
29
		Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations: The German Text, with a
Revised English Translation, 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition 3rd Edition,
trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001) I, no. 107 (p.
40). See also Joseph Dunne, Back to the Rough Ground: Practical Judgment and the
Lure of Technique (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993).
30
		Mary Midgley, Owl of Minerva: A Memoir (London: Taylor and Francis, 2005),
159.

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Any consideration of the whole of human nature eventually
comes to the study of marriage and family life. By the mid-1960s,
Elizabeth Anscombe became increasingly concerned that the same
consequentialist logic that had led to atrocities in the Second World
War was now influencing views concerning the use of technology in
family planning, views that she regarded as introducing a profoundly
reductionist conception of sex into the heart of the rich reality of
Christian marriage. In her provocative essay from 1966 entitled “You
can have sex without children, Christianity and the New Offer,” she
sounded the alarm that Catholic Moral Theology needed to address
the moral status of contraception (that is to say: of artificial means of
controlling fertility and of blocking conception during sexual intercourse) because of the rapid development of technologies that were
making new forms of contraception possible. She further argued that
theologians needed an adequate philosophy of action and intention
that would allow them to consider contraception in the context of
human life as it is actually lived.31 Ten years later, in an essay entitled “Contraception and Chastity,” she would apply her own earlier
groundbreaking insights into human action to the problem of contraception. Specifically, she would address the indissoluble link between
the unitive and the procreative aspects of sexual intercourse.
A full account of Anscombe’s analysis would explain her understanding of an intentional act and its relationship to an act’s intrinsic character. It would also present her view that, just as an acorn
remains intrinsically ordered to becoming an oak even if it never
becomes one, so too the act of sexual intercourse remains intrinsically
ordered to procreation even if it does not lead to it. For our purposes,
however, what is especially interesting is her belief that, once you
employ technology to separate the unitive from the procreative in
sexual relations, it will become difficult to understand why sex should
occur only within marriage and why it should only be between a
man and a woman. Writing in 1975, Anscombe asks:
If you can turn intercourse into something other than the
reproductive type of act (I don’t mean of course that every act is
reproductive any more than every acorn leads to an oak-tree but
		G. E. M. Anscombe, “You Can Have Sex Without Children: Christianity and
the New Offer,” in Ethics, Religion, and Politics, The Collected Philosophical Papers
of G. E. M. Anscombe, vol. 3 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1981), 91.

31

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Michael S. Sherwin, O.P.

it’s the reproductive type of act) then why, if you can change it,
should it be restricted to the married? Restricted, that is, to partners bound in a formal, legal, union whose fundamental purpose
is the bringing up of children? For if that is not its fundamental
purpose there is no reason why for example “marriage” should
have to be between people of opposite sexes. But then, of course,
it becomes unclear why you should have a ceremony, why you
should have a formality at all.32
Contraception is a fraught issue that has divided hearts and troubled consciences in the Catholic world over the last fifty years. From
the perspective of this theologian, however, who grew up on the
shores of the San Francisco Bay in the 60 s and 70s and who had the
privilege of studying moral theology with protagonists from both
sides of this debate, it seems that discussions of sexual ethics too often
have focused on the pastoral concern to not place couple’s consciences
in jeopardy and on debates about freedom versus obedience to law.
Yet, for those recent generations whose motto has been “if it feels
good do it; if it tastes good chew it,” our consciences have never
been troubled (let alone been in jeopardy) about these questions: we
were, however, confused. Perhaps, therefore, Miss Anscombe’s call
to consider family life in the larger context of human flourishing
has merit. Moreover, since she so accurately predicted the confusion about marriage that has emerged since her essay first appeared,
perhaps she is indeed correct that the incoherence stems from treating
sexuality reductively according to the same utilitarian calculus that
has sown confusion in our wars. This would imply that our reductionist manner of applying technology to solve human problems
is leading to a twofold blindness concerning human nature and its
natural, social, and animal environment.
As with every form of moral blindness, Miss Anscombe would
have us return to the rough ground of the rich practices of ordinary
human life. Shakespeare, when his characters have become blind
about themselves and their true vocations, sends them into the dark
		Elizabeth Anscombe, “Contraception and Chastity,” in Why Humanae Vitae
Was Right: A Reader, ed. Janet Smith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 123.
This essay was originally published as a pamphlet of the Catholic Truth Society in 1975 and was based on a talk that Anscombe had given several years
before. See Mary Gormally, “Forward,” in Elizabeth Anscombe, Contraception
and Chastity (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2003), 3–5.

32

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273

green of the forest, where they rediscover truths about nature and
their own animality, as well as about their spiritual dignity. Thus, for
example, when Touchstone, the court fool in As You Like It, encounters Corin the shepherd in the Forest of Arden and asks whether there
is any philosophy in him, Corin responds with truisms such as: “the
property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn. . . . and that a great cause
of the night is lack of the sun.”33 The speech traditionally has great
comic effect, but it is nonetheless true that many of us have had to
rediscover—sometimes very painfully—these simple but tenacious
truths about the natural world, about our own natures and the world
in which we find ourselves: stones are hard, water is wet, fire burns—
oh, how it burns.34
Perhaps one reason we fear to see the whole context of who we
are in our natural world, one reason we flee to a reductionist view—a
reason that explains why we fear entering the forests of Arden or of
Arcadia—is that we will also find death there: Et in Arcadia ego—“I
too am in Arcadia,” death reminds us.35 Death: the mystery where
war and love truly embrace. But Miss Anscombe is one of those who
was confident that death is not the only thing that awaits us in the
forest. The contemplation of nature and a return to the fuller, richer
practices of family life place us in proximity to something that is
more than nature and stronger than death: they place us in the bower
of “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”36 These groves
may be fallen, but they still contain the paths along which the God
		William Shakespeare, As You Like It 3.2.1143–49.
		It is George Orwell who has his protagonist say, at the end of chapter 7 of part
1 of 1984: “The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended.Truisms
are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones
are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre. . . .
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted,
all else follows” (1984, Everyman’s Library Edition [New York: Knopf, 1992],
84). See John Senior, The Death of Christian Culture (Norfolk, VA: IHS Press,
2008), 33 and 41. Although Professor Senior explicitly quotes only from
Orwell, he apparently often began his courses with the quotation from Corin
in As You Like It (see David Allen White, “Introduction,” in Senior, Death of
Christian Culture, 10).
35
		Bruno Mario Damiani and Bárbara Louise Mujica, Et In Arcadia Ego: Essays
on Death in the Pastoral Novel (New York: University Press of America, 1990),
and Harry Morris, “As You Like It: Et in Arcadia Ego,” Shakespeare Quarterly
26 (1975): 269–75.
36
		 Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, canto 33.145: “l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stele”
(concluding line of Divina Commedia).
33
34

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Michael S. Sherwin, O.P.

of love delights to walk. More enchanting than any forest sprite,
the Spirit of God delights to reveal the way of the Cross as leading
from death to eternal life. The way is Christ. It is in Christ Jesus,
the eternal Son of the Father, and through the action of his Spirit
that we advance toward the joy of the Father’s house. The return to
nature, therefore, does not lead only to death, for the Spirit is active
in nature, animating it, elevating it, and revealing Christ Jesus as the
true way in whom all ways are united, even the ways of love and the
ways of war. Christ is indeed a battling lover who makes war on death
and reveals the Father’s conquering love.37
N&V

37 An earlier version of this essay was given as the Randall Lecture on October
6th, 2016 at Providence College, Providence, Rhode Island.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2018): 275–309 

275

The Formation and Exercise of Conscience in
Private and Public Matters
Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem.
St. Michael’s Abbey
Silverado, California

Introduction

The importance of conscience in human life, at the

levels of both personal and public morality, is obvious from the fact
that the right to act according to one’s conscience is often invoked
as the justifying reason for many private and public acts. The role of
conscience is apparent in private matters, in the intimacy of one’s own
moral life. Conscience is at work in the hidden recesses of the human
heart: it speaks in intimate conversation with God;1 it is consulted in a
choice of vocation; it is the stimulus to repentance from a hidden sin.
Conscience is the one who watches when no one else is watching, the
one who speaks with the voice that only you can hear.Yet it would be
a mistake to think that conscience is exercised only in private matters.
Acts that have public consequences must also be weighed in the human
heart and judged according to one’s conscience: conscience is invoked
as the reason that someone must go to war or cannot go to war, as the
reason for the right to freedom of religion, as the reason for freedom
from public compulsion to act, and so on. Conscience speaks in the
recesses of each heart, but it often speaks about how to act in very
public matters. In short, the role of conscience in morality is universal
and necessary.
		“[Conscience] is the most secret core and sanctuary of a person. There each
one is alone with God, whose voice echoes in the depths of the heart”
(Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, §16).

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But there are times when, due to circumstances, conscience is
forced to weigh acts that have both a private and a public aspect. And
sometimes it happens that there appears to be an opposition between
what conscience dictates about the private and public aspects of an
act. For example, can a secret told in confidence be made public if
revealing it will help someone? Can a lawyer who knows his client is
guilty still argue for his innocence before a court? 2 Can a priest who
knows from confession that a certain person is guilty of a serious sin
still administer communion to him? Can a judge or jury member
who knows from confidential information or legally inadmissible
evidence that someone is innocent pass a guilty sentence, since his
sentence must be based upon the evidence before the court? Each of
these acts has both private and public aspects, and what conscience
dictates in the private realm seems to contradict what conscience
dictates in the public realm. For example, due to his private knowledge, the conscience of the lawyer seems to dictate that he not make
the guilty appear innocent, yet his conscience also seems to dictate
that his public duty before the law is to make as compelling a case
as he can for his client’s innocence based upon the publicly available
evidence.
This article aims to expose and apply the moral principles by
which one can rightly judge how to inform and exercise conscience
in such matters. The thesis that I intend to demonstrate is the
following: If the judgment of conscience based upon public knowledge is opposed to the judgment of conscience based upon private
knowledge in a public act, then the judgment of conscience based
upon public knowledge must be followed instead of the judgment of
conscience based upon private knowledge. To show this, I will (1)
first examine the nature of conscience and certain of its properties
following therefrom, (2) then examine the distinction between a
common and a private good, (3) then show that the consideration
of conscience about public acts pertains to the common good while
		Peter J. Henning has commented: “Lawyers must deal with a conundrum
because they are required to act as officers of the court—presumably working
to advance the truth—while providing loyal representation to clients who may
have little to gain from its ascertainment, particularly in criminal cases. Neither
goal can be fully achieved in every representation, and it is from the competition between these two principles that much of the criticism of the legal
profession arises” (“Lawyers, Truth, and Honesty in Representing Clients,”
Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy 20, no. 1 [Symposium on Law
& Politics as Vocation], Article 8 [February 2014]: 211).

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its consideration about private acts pertains to the private good, (4)
then argue that conscience binds one who acts as a representative of
the community to act for the common good in a public act, and (5)
then argue that one who acts as a member of the community should
prefer the good of the community to his private good in a public
act. Finally (6), I shall apply this conclusion to some contemporary
difficulties in ethics and moral theology, specifically to the question
about whether and under what circumstances communion should be
administered to those who are in manifest, objective grave sin but
who are subjectively certain of their innocence (for example, the
divorced and remarried who are unable to outwardly manifest their
own innocence).
I: The Nature of Conscience and the
Properties Following from its Nature
Conscience, in the proper sense, is the act of applying universal
knowledge to some particular thing to be done through some act.3
Conscience is an act of the habit of first practical principles (synderesis), principles about what is to be done or avoided. For example, one
first principle is “do not harm others.” When someone comes upon a
neighbor and feels like striking him, conscience applies knowledge of
this principle “do not harm others” to the desired act of striking the
neighbor and judges that the neighbor is not to be struck.4
What does it mean to “apply” knowledge to something to be
done? The word “application” is taken first from physical things. For
example, one applies a ruler to a board in order to measure the board.
Application therefore means bringing two things together that were
apart so that they can be known or considered together. Similarly,
application of knowledge of a first principle means considering the
thing to be done together with the principle so that the knowledge
can serve as a kind of measure of the thing to be done. So conscience
is essentially an act of uniting knowledge to a thing to be done. After
		 Thomas Aquinas, In II sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 4, corp.: “Conscience is spoken of as
if ‘with another knowledge’ [cum alio scientia] since it applies universal knowledge of some particular act.” Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae [ST] I, q. 79, corp.
All citations from Aquinas are my own translations taken from the Latin of the
Busa edition of the Opera Omnia (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1980).
4
		Sometimes, less properly, the habit of synderesis is called by the name
“conscience,” since acts are better known than habits and a habit often receives
the name of its proper or most known act. In this article, we will consider
conscience insofar as it names an act.
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this union has taken place a judgment can be made about what is to
be done, much as when two premises are brought together in the
mind, a conclusion can be drawn from them. This practical conclusion is the term of deliberation and immediately leads to a choice.5
Conscience Binds One to Do Some Good or Avoid Some Evil
When our universal knowledge of what ought to be done or avoided
is applied to some particular act, then our will is presented with an
evaluation of the goodness or evil of that particular act. In some cases,
we understand from the evaluation of conscience that either to do or
not to do this act would be sinful. For example, our conscience may
inform us that to fornicate in this case would be sinful or that to not
assist a person in dire need in this case would be sinful. This is what it
means for conscience to “bind” us to do or not do an act. In contrast,
if our conscience merely informs us that some act is good, but not
obligatory, then we are not said to be bound by our conscience, since
we are always bound to do good but we are not always bound to do the
better good: “Conscience is said to bind insofar as one sins if he does
not follow his conscience, but not in the sense that he acts correctly if
he does follow it. . . .Therefore, conscience is not said to bind in the
sense that what one does according to such a conscience will be good,
but in the sense that in not following it he will sin.”6
Even When Conscience Binds, It Is Not Infallible
Although conscience binds in certain cases, it does not follow that it
is infallible in those cases. Moral certitude is not the same as the certitude reached in a science such as mathematics. The possibility of error
in human knowledge exists even in cases where moral certitude has
been reached.7 For example, someone might be morally certain that
taking an oath is forbidden by God. In such a case, he would be bound
in conscience not to take an oath even if his conscience has been
informed by a false principle.
		
In II sent., d. 39, q. 3, a. 3, corp.: “Since the act of the will is specified by its
object, it is necessary that according to the judgment of reason and conscience,
the will proceed to act.”
6
		Aquinas, De veritate, q. 17, a. 4, corp.
7
		Joseph Ratzinger commented: “Subjective conviction and the lack of doubts
and scruples which follow therefrom do not justify man” (Conscience and Truth,
§1, presented at the Tenth Workshop for Bishops, Dallas, TX, February 1991,
accessed October 27, 2017, http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/ratzcons.
htm).
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Therefore, due to some error, the conclusion reached through
conscience may sometimes be a judgment to act in a morally bad way.
How does this happen? Conscience is the application of universal
knowledge to some particular thing to be done. And just as a carpenter might make a faulty measurement of something to which he
applies a ruler, so too conscience may falsely evaluate the goodness or
badness of a particular act. For example, if a carpenter were to apply
a ruler to a board crookedly instead of straightly or were to hold the
ruler at some distance, such that the exact length of the board could
not be discerned, we would say that he has not applied the ruler
well to the board. Universal knowledge is badly applied when the
knowledge of first practical principles is not united to a thing to be
done. This happens, for example, when the universal principle is not
considered at the same time as the particular act to be done. Therefore, to the extent that this union is made badly, the act of conscience
has not been done well:
Just as in the demonstrative sciences conclusions are not demonstrated from common principles except through the mediation
of proper principles determined to that genus containing the
power of the first principles, so also, in doable things in which
reason, deliberating by means of a kind of syllogism, is used to
finding what is good, . . . reason comes from common principles to a conclusion of this determinate act by the mediation
of certain proper and determinate principles. But these proper
principles are not naturally known through themselves as are the
common principles, but they are known either through the
inquisition of reason or through the assent of faith. And since
not all have faith, as is said in 2 Thessalonians 3, and also since
reason is sometimes deceived in its deliberations, it follows that,
about these principles, someone can err (as when a heretic errs
by thinking that all oath-taking is forbidden). And this determinate principle pertains to superior or inferior reason, yet the
truth of the conclusion depends from either of the principles.
And, therefore, since conscience is a certain conclusion judging
what good is to be done or omitted, . . . it happens that there
can be error in conscience on account of the fact that reason
can be deceived in the proper principles.8
		
In II sent., d. 39, q. 3, a. 2, corp. (emphasis added).

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Consequently, it happens that conscience can be exercised well or
badly. And even a binding conscience may be in error: “Whether
reason or conscience judges rightly or not, the will is obliged in this
way: for if an act of the will does not follow the judgment or dictate
of reason (that is, conscience), it is disordered. And this is to oblige,
to constrain the will so that it is not able to tend into something else
without the harm of deformity, just as someone bound is not able
to move.”9 It further follows from this that, in following an erring
conscience, one may still be blameworthy, unless his ignorance is
entirely through no prior fault of his own.10
It Is Not Possible for the First Practical Principles to Be Wrong
Just as a measurement of a board by a carpenter may be false for two
reasons—either because his ruler is faulty or because he misapplies the
ruler such that it is not possible to see the true measurement—so also
it seems that a moral judgment can be faulty, in principle, because of a
faulty ruler (a faulty knowledge of first practical principles) or because
of the misapplication of those principles to the thing to be done.
However, while it is possible to misapply the universal principles of
moral action to some particular act, it is not possible to have a faulty
knowledge of these first, universal principles.11 The general reason
		
In II sent., d. 39, q. 3, a. 3, corp.
		 Cf. Ps 19:13:“Who can detect heedless failings? Cleanse me from my unknown
faults” (NAB). The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains more clearly: “A
human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If
he were to deliberately act against it, he would condemn himself. Yet it can
happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous
judgments about acts to be performed or already committed. This ignorance
can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man
‘takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is
by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin.’ In such cases,
the person is culpable for the evil he commits” (CCC, §§1790–91, quoting
Gaudium et Spes §16). See also Ratzinger, Conscience and Truth, §3: “The fact
that the conviction a person has come to certainly binds in the moment of
acting, does not signify a canonization of subjectivity. It is never wrong to
follow the convictions one has arrived at—in fact, one must do so. But it can
very well be wrong to have come to such askew convictions in the first place,
by having stifled the protest of the anamnesis of being. The guilt lies then
in a different place, much deeper—not in the present act, not in the present
judgment of conscience, but in the neglect of my being which made me deaf
to the internal promptings of truth.”
11
		The knowledge of these most universal principles is called synderesis, and such
knowledge remains always free from error: “In the soul there is something that
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for this is that moral precepts are more or less certain, and since the
certitude of the more particular precepts is derived from the certitude
of the more universal precepts, then the most certain precepts must
be the most universal principles of moral action.
Nature intends the good in all its works and the conservation
of those things which nature accomplishes through its activity. And therefore, in all the works of nature, there are always
permanent and immutable principles and things conserving
rectitude. For, it is necessary that the principles remain, as is
said in the first book of the Physics. For, there cannot be some
firmness or certitude in those things that are from the principles unless the principles themselves were firmly established.
And thence it is that all changeable things are led back to
some first immobile thing. Thence it is also that all speculative
knowledge is derived from some most certain knowledge about
which there cannot be error, which is knowledge of the first,
universal principles, in respect to which all that knowledge is
examined and from which every word is approved and everything false is rejected. If some error was able to occur in these
[universal principles], it would follow that no certitude would
be found in any subsequent knowledge.
Hence, also in human works, in order that it is possible
that there be some rectitude in them, it is necessary that there
be some permanent principle that has immutable rectitude in
respect to which all human works are examined, so that that
permanent principle resists all evil and assents to all good. And
this is synderesis, whose office is to repel from evil and incline
toward the good. And therefore, we concede that, in it, there
is not able to be sin.12
is of perpetual rectitude, namely synderesis, which is not higher reason, but is
related to higher reason just as the understanding of principles is to reasoning
about conclusions” (In II sent., d. 24, q. 3, a. 3, ad 5).
12
		De veritate, q. 16, a. 2, corp. Nevertheless, synderesis can be “extinguished”
in some respect, insofar as it is unable to proceed to actual consideration of
universal knowledge due to some impediment such as a damaged brain or
excessively strong emotion: “That synderesis be extinguished can be understood in two ways: In one way with regard to the habitual light itself, and in
this way it is impossible that synderesis be extinguished. . . . In another way
with regard to the act, and this can be done in two ways. In one way so that it
is said that the act of synderesis is extinguished inasmuch as the act of synderesis is altogether interrupted. And thus it happens that the act of synderesis is

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In other words, the rule by which we measure moral acts is infallible so that, for one capable of deliberation, the only source of error
in matters where conscience binds is in the application of this rule
to the particular act: “Synderesis is never overthrown in the universal. However, in the very application of the universal principles to
some particular, error can happen on account of a false deduction or
of some false assumption. And therefore, it is not said that synderesis
simply is overthrown, but that conscience is overthrown, which
applies the universal judgment of synderesis to particular deeds.”13
Therefore, it is essential that a conscience be well formed in order
to make morally good judgments. This formation especially involves
coming to know more perfectly the more proper and specific principles of human action, as well as the circumstances of any given act.
The formation of conscience also benefits from taking into account
divinely revealed truth, which more powerfully and clearly presents certain moral principles and conclusions: “In the formation of
conscience, the Word of God is the light for our path.”14
The Role of Prudence in Conscience
The cardinal virtue of prudence plays an essential role in the act of
conscience. Universal truth is not a sufficient principle for determining right action in the particular. A further principle that bridges the
gap between the universal and the particular is necessary, and this
principle is the virtue of prudence.15 Prudence is right reason about
things to be done. Therefore, prudence is in the practical intellect as
a subject but has the particular doable thing as the term of its action.
extinguished in those not having the use of free will, nor some use of reason,
because of an impediment due to an injury to the bodily organs from which
our reason needs assistance. In the second way on account of the fact that the
act of synderesis is deflected to its contrary. And in this way it is impossible
that synderesis be extinguished in its universal judgment. However, it is extinguished in particular doable things whenever there is sin in choosing. For the
force of concupiscence or of another passion so absorbs the reason that, in
choosing, the universal judgment of synderesis is not applied to the particular
act. But this is not to extinguish synderesis simply speaking, but only in some
respect” (De veritate, q. 16, a. 3, corp.).
13
		De veritate, q. 16, a. 2, ad 1.
14
		CCC, §1785.
15
		In VI eth., lec. 2, no. 9: “The practical intellect has its beginning in the consideration of the universal, and according to this it is the same in subject with
the speculative intellect. But its consideration is terminated in the particular
doable thing.”

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As such, the virtue of prudence perfects the particular reason16 so that
it rightly judges singular practicable intentions.17 This means that not
only the intellect is engaged in a prudent act, but also sense knowledge
and sense appetite, which help determine what is to be done in the
particular circumstances of an act. And so, two things are necessary for
a prudent act: practical truth and rectified appetite.18 If either one is
missing, prudence is lacking. For example, in giving a thirsty man a
glass of water, it is not enough that you do the deed in conformity with
the truth about his condition, for if you do it motivated from hatred,
hoping he will choke, the act is not virtuous. But neither is right appetite enough. If a parent instructs his children that sex before marriage
is good so long as it is safe, even though he undoubtedly cares about
his children and desires their good, he has failed in virtue, since the
advice he gave to his children was not conformed to the truth about
what will make them truly happy. Prudence presupposes the truth of
right reason19 and specifies the action according to right appetite so
that both are preserved.
Although they are intimately bound together, the act of prudence
is not the same as the act of conscience.20 The act of conscience
respects more the cognitive aspect of a moral choice: a bad man can
have a correct act of conscience (indeed, this is what accuses him
when he sins), but he cannot perform a prudent act. Yet a correct act
of conscience is presupposed to a prudent act, as the true is presupposed to the good.
Therefore, prudence should not be understood as a kind of intuition in the particular that may, in the here and now, judge that
virtue is contrary to truth, as if sometimes a rectified appetite could
		The “particular reason” is another name for the interior sense power known
as the cogitative power (see ST I, q. 78, a. 4).
17
		In VI eth., lec. 7, no. 21: “Prudence more pertains to this interior sense, through
which particular reason is perfected for the sake of rightly estimating about
singular intentions of things that can be done.”
18
		Thus Aristotle points out that the good of the practical intellect is truth
conformable to a right appetitive faculty (Nichomachean ethics 1139a31). See
Aquinas, In VI eth., lec. 2, no. 6: “It is necessary that reason be true and the
appetite be upright so that the same thing that reason says (i.e., affirms) the
appetite will pursue. For it is necessary if there is to be perfection in an act
that none of its principles be imperfect.”
19
		In II eth., lec. 7, no. 8: “The entire goodness of moral virtue depends upon the
uprightness of the reason.”
20
		See Ralph McInerny, “Prudence and Conscience,” The Thomist 38, no. 2
(1974): 291–305.
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desire something contrary to what reason knows is truly good.21
Nor is prudence merely a practical calculation about what will best
ensure conformity to a given social group.22 Prudence and reason
in accord with the truth are not parallel paths to virtue, each acting
independently. Rather, each contributes to the whole truth about the
good in coordination. St. Thomas accounts for this by distinguishing
the complementary roles that right appetite and right reason play in
a prudent act: “The rectitude of the appetite with respect to the end
is the measure of truth in practical reason. And according to this, the
truth of practical reason is determined according to its agreement
with right appetite. But the very truth of practical reason is the rule
of the rectitude of the appetite about the means. And, therefore,
according to this the appetite is called upright inasmuch as it pursues
those things that reason says are true.”23
In other words, the uprightness of appetite presupposed to a
prudent act is a correct estimation and love for the good that truly
perfects a man (the end).24 But, when it comes to the means of
acquiring happiness, the reason must guide the appetite each step of
the way.25 Hence, any account of conscience that purports to permit
		Joseph Pieper comments: “The pre-eminence of prudence means that the
realization of the good presupposes knowledge of reality. He alone can do
good who knows what things are like and what their situation is” (Prudence:
The First Cardinal Virtue, trans. Richard and Clara Winston [New York:
Pantheon Books, 1969], 25).
22
		Joseph Ratzinger describes this erroneous view of conscience as “the faculty
which dispenses from truth”: “It thereby becomes the justification for subjectivity, which should not like to have itself called into question. Similarly, it
becomes the justification for social conformity. As mediating value between
the different subjectivities, social conformity is intended to make living
together possible” (Conscience and Truth, §1). Later on, he adds: “Conscience
cannot be reduced to social advantage, to group consensus or the demands of
political and social power” (ibid., §2).
23
		In VI eth., lec. 2, no. 8.
24
		See McInerny, “Prudence and Conscience,” 302: “The moral ideal, if it is only
known, cannot function as a moral ideal. I need those acquired dispositions
of appetite which are called temperance, courage, and justice in order to be
related to the moral ideal, the human good, as good, as moral.”
25
		See Pieper, Prudence, 39–40: “The meaning of the virtue of prudence, however,
is primarily this: that not only the end of human action, but also the means
for its realization shall be in keeping with the truth of real things. This in turn
necessitates that the egocentric ‘interests’ of man are silenced in order that he
may perceive the truth of real things, and so that reality itself may guide him
to the proper means of realizing his goal.”
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action contrary to the truth about what is good is a false understanding of conscience: conscience means “with knowledge,” and so it is
not compatible with ignorance or error.26
The Difficulty We Are Trying to Resolve
Now that we have examined the nature of conscience and certain
properties flowing from that nature, we can formulate the question we
are addressing more distinctly. We are not considering whether there
can be error about the first principles of practical reason. Nor are we
considering whether the very act of prudence in the particular determines what is to be done independently from truth. Neither of these
are possibilities. Instead, we are considering what is the truth about one
of the more particular precepts of practical reason that must come into
play in the act of conscience. That is, we are considering the truth of
one of the “proper and determinate principles” that St. Thomas teaches
are necessary middles between the common principles held by synderesis and the particular act to be done. The questions about this proper
and determinate principle can be formulated as follows. In cases where
a public act is to be made and some of the specific truths that bear
upon the moral evaluation of an act are not publicly known, should
the conscience be informed only by the public knowledge, or also by
the private knowledge? Moreover, in such a case, does conscience bind
according to the public knowledge or according to the private knowledge? For example, if inadmissible evidence (e.g., evidence obtained
through torture or entrapment) is presented to a jury that manifests
the guilt of the defendant, should the jury member take that legally
inadmissible evidence into account when making a public judgment
about the guilt or innocence of the defendant?
		This is not to say that any speculative error whatsoever is incompatible with
an upright conscience. Error about a universal in moral matters does result
in an erroneous conscience, but error about a singular thing, so long as it is
not due to negligence, may well be compatible with an upright conscience.
Charles De Koninck makes this point: “Practical truth is quite compatible not
only with a great deal of speculative ignorance, but even with a speculative
error. If you gave a man dying of thirst a glass of water and it turned out to
be poison, you would be speculatively in error, since you thought it was plain
water and it was not. Yet under the circumstances you may have performed
an act of mercy. This does not mean that knowledge is irrelevant—that it may
be safely neglected; it means merely that knowledge alone is not the reason
why an action is good” (“The Moral Responsibilities of the Scientist,” Laval
Theologique et Philosophique 6, no. 2 [1950]: 354 [emphasis original]).

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There seem to be reasons to answer these questions both affirmatively and negatively. For example, it seems that the judgment of
conscience about public acts should take into account privately known
truths as well. For, not to take into account a known truth (whether it
is privately known or not) seems to violate our conscience, since one
should not pretend not to know what he does know. Moreover, the
purpose of conscience is to conform human actions to the truth, and
the more truth that is taken into account, the better will the judgment
be.27 Error and ignorance are never causes of good actions, as such.
Again, it seems that the judgment of conscience about public acts
should take into account privately known truths for another reason:
namely, it is purely incidental to the moral evaluation of someone’s
act that others happen to be ignorant of those truths by which he
informs his conscience. Why should one person’s ignorance prevent
another person from acting in conformity with the truth he knows?
On the other hand, it seems that great harm can come to the
community if public actions are based upon merely private knowledge. For example, if all the publicly available evidence makes it
reasonable to conclude that someone is innocent but that person
is condemned anyway, the effect on the public will be a sense that
injustice has been committed. This destroys the community’s confidence in those who ought to guarantee public justice and harms the
common good. Moreover, the position that all private knowledge
relevant to a case must be revealed in a public proceeding implies
that those under judgment ought to incriminate themselves or be
		This view has often been argued in matters of jurisprudence, especially as
relating to the doctrine of privileged information or when relevant evidence
can be judged inadmissible. For example, Jeremy Bentham, an early philosopher of jurisprudence wrote: “Let the law adviser say every thing he has heard,
every thing he can have heard from his client, the client cannot have anything
to fear from it” (Rationale of Judicial Evidence, ed. John Stuart Mill [London:
Hunt and Clarke, 1827], no. 301). An echo of this is found in an article by
Judge Marvin Frankel: “Counsel should be under a duty in civil litigation to
disclose all material evidence favorable to the other side. This requirement
should not be obstructed or limited by either the professional rule protecting
client confidences or the attorney–client privilege. I make this proposal in an
effort to support and implement the broader thesis that we lawyers should
be pursuing the truth more than we do–and concealing it less than we do”
(“The Search for Truth Continued: More Disclosure, Less Privilege,” University
of Colorado Law Review 51 [1982]: 51–52). The U.S. Supreme Court expressed
this principle succinctly: “The public . . . has a right to every man’s evidence”
(United States v. Bryan, 339 U.S. 323, 331 [1950], cited in Trammel v. United
States, 445 U.S. 40, 50 [1980]).

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incriminated by family members, and so on, which seems to violate
other moral principles.28 Therefore, there seems to be a knot that
must be untied in order to determine whether or not the judgment
of conscience based upon public knowledge must be followed instead
of the judgment of conscience based upon private knowledge.
II: Distinguishing and Ordering the Common Good
and the Private Good
Since an important reason for not basing public actions upon private
knowledge is the possible harm that might come to the community,
we must first understand the relationship between the common good
and the private good in order to determine whether or not private
knowledge must be taken into account in judgments of conscience
about public acts.
Common Good versus Private Good
Since the word “common” and the word “good” are both analogously
used terms, the verbal expression “common good” is susceptible to a
plurality of meanings.29 The common good as it is taken here is called
common because it is able to be shared by many persons at the same
time without being diminished.30 For example, peace in the social
		For example, the Supreme Court of the United States justified the right not to
self-incriminate on account of the “respect for the inviolability of the human
personality” (Murphy vs. Waterfront Commission, 378 U.S. 52, 55 [1964]).
David W. Louisell argues for maintaining relevant information confidential
based upon the need to preserve greater goods: “There are things even more
important to human liberty than accurate adjudication. One of them is the
right to be left by the state unmolested in certain human relations” (“Confidentiality, Conformity and Confusion: Privileges in Federal Court Today,”
Tulane Law Review 31 [1956]: 110). Daniel Northrup also enunciates a similar
position: “A fundamental principle of our legal system—that in the pursuit of
truth and justice, all evidence should be discoverable—is forsaken for other
important social goals” (“The Attorney-Client Privilege,” Fordham Law Review
78, no. 3 [2009]: 1484). This position is also assumed in the United States
Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 403.
29
		See Gregory Froelich, “The Equivocal Status of Bonum Commune,” The New
Scholasticism 63 (Winter 1989): 38–57, especially footnotes 14 and 15. For a
survey of a number of the most significant usages of the expression “common
good,” see Sebastian Walshe, The Primacy of the Common Good as the Root of
Personal Dignity in the Doctrine of St.Thomas Aquinas (Rome: Pontifical University of St. Thomas, 2006), 214–48.
30
		In a secondary or imperfect sense, the common good can be defined as a good
that is able to be shared by many but either (1) not at the same time or (2)
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order is a common good for each of the persons in that society and
truth is a good common to those who acquire it but neither peace
nor truth is diminished when more persons partake of it. God is also
a common good in this sense: he can be known and loved by many at
the same time without being diminished.31
In contrast to a common good is a private good: a good that can
belong to only one individual at a time. Bodily goods are of this
sort: if I am wearing my socks, you cannot wear them. If I am eating
this piece of pizza, you cannot eat it. Private goods, as opposed to
common goods, have a limited goodness that is exhausted by a single
individual or entity.
While private goods are wholly exhausted by an individual,
common goods are not, since their goodness is more diffusive and
abundant. A common good penetrates more profoundly into the
being of the single person than does his private good: “The common
good differs from the singular good by this very universality. It has
the notion of superabundance and it is eminently diffusive of itself
insofar as it is more communicable: it extends itself to the singular
more than the singular good; it is the greater good of the singular.”32
The common good as we have defined it here is not merely an
aggregate or sum of private goods (as the common wealth of a household is the sum of the wealth of the individual members). If it were, it
would still be essentially a private good, since it could not be shared
without being diminished. Nor is it a good belonging only to the
at the same time but not without diminishing. A common reservoir of water
can be shared by many at the same time, but not without being diminished.
The part of the highway I am using right now can be shared by many cars,
but not at the same time. However, the sense of common good I am primarily
investigating here is a common good in the perfect sense.
31
		It should be appreciated that the good of a person can be understood either
as a perfection inhering in the person itself or as an object that stands to the
person as an end extrinsic to the person. Examples of the former are health,
joy, the act of understanding some truth, and so on. Examples of the latter are
civic peace, the order of the universe, truth, God, and so forth. When we speak
of the common good in this article, we are referring to a good of the latter
sort, namely, a good that, though extrinsic to the person, is able to be shared
by the person as an object: it is said to be a good as something perfective of
another in the manner of an end (per modum finis). Thus, a common good is
able to perfect the person as an end, or to use traditional vocabulary, as a final
cause.
32
		Charles De Koninck, De la Primauté du Bien Commun, trans. The Aquinas
Review 4, no. 1 (1997): 16.

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whole, not to any of the individual persons within that whole. The
common good is not merely the good of an impersonal group of individuals without being the good of the members of that group. Such
a good would be an alien good, not properly one’s own good. This
would be akin to the communist notion of common good, the good
of a whole machine in which each part is merely a cog or tool for
the good of the impersonal whole but does not truly enjoy this good
as their proper good. A common good is truly your good. When
a number of students together learn some truth, the truth is not
possessed by “the class” as if it did not belong to any of the individual
students, only to the whole class. In fact, in such a case, it belongs to
the class only in virtue of belonging to each of the students.33 So, a
truly common good is not opposed to one’s proper good. Rather, it
is opposed to one’s private good.34
Finally, common goods are goods that, in some sense, causally
preexist the persons for whom they are goods. A common good
draws the persons whose good it is into its own perfection. Consequently, while a common good is a good for each individual person,
it is not correct to say that it is a good for the sake of each individual
person, as if the common good were ordained to and subordinated to
each person as to an end. On the contrary, when a good is common
in the sense we have outlined above, it is the individual persons who
are ordained to the common good as to their end and perfection.

		Sometimes it is true that the common good more properly belongs to the
whole than to any individual member. For example, victory belongs more
properly to the team than to any one member of the team. But each and every
member of the team is truly victorious: victory belongs to each of them as
their good too.
34
		The “proper good” and the “private good” are similar in many ways, and since
similarity is often a cause of confusion, people often confuse a “proper good”
with a “private good.” Both are goods that can belong to an individual person.
Yet a “private good” belongs only to one person and is incapable of belonging to anyone else at the same time. In contrast, a “proper good” can belong
fully to multiple persons at the same time. Some examples may be helpful to
manifest the difference between “proper good” and “private good.” A child is
the proper good of its parents but is not the private good of either one: for
the child belongs to both parents, not only to one. Peace in a society is a good
belonging to each person in that society, so it is a proper good of each person
in that society. But it is not a private good of any of them, since it does not
belong exclusively to one of them. Truth is the proper good of someone who
knows that truth. Yet it is not their private good, since it can easily belong to
others too.
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The Order between an Individual’s Common Good and Private Good
In virtue of its very superabundance and communicability, a truly
common good is a greater good for each person who partakes of it
than are the singular goods that belong to the individuals as such:
The common good is not better insofar as it comprehends the
singular good of all the singulars; [if that were so,] it would not
have the unity of the common good that is from the fact that
the common good is universal according to a certain manner;
but it would be merely a collection; it would be only materially
better [than the singular good]. . . . When we distinguish the
common good from the particular good, we do not intend to
say by this that it is not the good of the particulars: if it were
not the good of the particulars, then it would not be truly
common.35
When a common good and a private good of an individual come
into conflict, the common good should be chosen instead of the
private good. This is an obvious fact of our moral experience, as
several examples will illustrate. A man or woman knows that it is
better for them to sacrifice their private good of being free to do what
they want on their own in order to live together in a loving family
in which everyone lives and does things together. Again, it is better
for people to sometimes make public promises that they are expected
to keep so that the members of that society can share in common the
good of a sense of security, a sense that they will be able to count on
one another. For example, it is good for people to promise to remain
in a marriage and that society expects this of them even if it means
great personal sacrifice at times so that the greater good of stable families can exist. This societal expectation that couples remain married
acts as an external assistance for struggling marriages and their children, much as a splint or cast externally assists healing of a broken
bone. A musician knows that it is better to conform himself to the
notes of a given piece and to the playing style of the conductor and
orchestra than to play his own notes in his own style, and otherwise,
there could be no beautiful orchestral music. A citizen knows that it is
better to live under laws that sometimes restrict individual freedoms
for the sake of living in a community where common action leads to
		De Koninck, De la Primauté du Bien Commun, 16.

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the possibility of human perfection. Again, if someone has a serious,
communicable disease, he should choose to quarantine himself and
give up his freedom rather than expose others to the disease. Even
nature teaches the preferability of the common good over the private
good: the hand instinctively sacrifices itself to defend the head from
a blow, and animals sacrifice their own lives to protect their young.
This principle even extends to the good of one’s own life. If you must
choose between risking you life to defend your country and saving
your own life, you should prefer the common good of your country
to even your own life. This is a common theme in the writings of St.
Thomas: “The common good of many is more divine than the good
of one. Therefore, for the sake of the common good of the republic,
whether spiritual or temporal, it is virtuous that someone even expose
his own life to danger.”36
And, just as a common good is to be preferred to a private good,
similarly, a more universal common good is to be preferred to a less
universal common good. For example, the common good of one’s
country ought to be preferred to the common good of one’s family.
And the common good of the whole human race is to be preferred
to the common good of one nation.
However, it is important to notice that the principle that the
common good is preferable to the private good is applicable only
when the goods are of the same order:
St. Thomas argues for the primacy of the speculative order
based upon the excelling dignity of the object attained by the
act of speculation. This latter case is not a denial of the primacy
of the common good but rather a denial that the primacy of the
common good extends outside a given order of goods. This is
because the good of the whole exceeds the good of the parts
precisely insofar as a part is considered as a part of that whole
and not some other. That is to say, so long as the goods in
question belong to the same order and depend from the same
principle, the dictum holds true, but when goods from independent orders are compared, there is no reason why a private
good from a higher order could not exceed a common good
from a lower order.37

		ST II-II, q. 31, a. 3, ad 2.
		 Sebastian Walshe, Primacy of the Common Good, 94–95.

36
37

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For example, the grace that is a perfection in the soul, and hence
a private good, is greater than the natural common good of a family
or country. This is because grace belongs to the supernatural order
while the common good of a country or family belong to the natural
order. But, if the grace that is a private good in the soul be compared
to the common good in the supernatural order, the common good
still holds precedence. The famous passage of St. Paul bears witness
to this: “I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie; my conscience joins
with the Holy Spirit in bearing me witness that I have great sorrow
and constant anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were
accursed and separated from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my
kin according to the flesh.”38
St. Paul, speaking in the Holy Spirit, asserts that he would prefer,
if possible, the loss of the private good of grace in his soul so that
the common, supernatural good of his brethren might be attained.
Therefore, a common good is better and is to be preferred to a private
good of the same order, but not necessarily of different orders. Many
of the objections to the primacy of the common good are due to a
confusion between different orders of goods.
III: Exercising Conscience about Public Acts
Pertains to the Common Good
A Public Agent Looks to the Common Good
Some actions bear only upon the good of the individual agent (e.g., a
private act of temperance in eating), but some actions bear per se upon
the good of the community. Actions of the latter sort happen when: (1)
the agent acts on behalf of the community, as a public representative
(e.g., a judge, a police officer, etc.), or (2) when an agent acts formally
as a member of the community (e.g., as a citizen observing the laws of
the community).
Whenever a person acts as a representative of the community
or as a member of the community, his act is formally a public act 39
directed to the common good of the community.40 For example,
		Rom 9:1–3 (NAB).
		By a “public act” I mean one that is, in itself, ordered to being known by the
community, regardless of whether every member of the community actually
knows of the act. Thus, a marriage vow made before a single witness representing the community would be considered a public act.
40
		 See Aquinas, Super I Tim 5, lec. 3.: “Because the judge bears the public person,
therefore, he ought to intend the common good.”
38
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when an elected representative enforces a law, he does so not for his
private advantage (e.g., to get revenge on an enemy or increase his
personal wealth), but for the common good, even if this turns out
to his private disadvantage. Similarly, when one obeys the laws as a
member of the community (e.g., by paying taxes), he does so looking
not to his private interests, but to the common welfare. The reason
for this is that every agent acts for an end. But the end of each agent is
determined by the nature of the agent.41 For example, rational agents
act for ends known by reason while irrational agents act for an end
unknown to them. Animals act for ends known by sensation, while
other living beings act for ends not known by sensation. For, the
good of each thing is that which is perfective of its nature. But, when
one acts as a public agent, the end he acts for is a public end (i.e.,
a common good), since a common good is perfective of the whole
community. And, whether an agent acts on behalf of the whole
community as a representative of the community or as a member of
the community, in either case, the good perfective of that agent is the
good perfective of the community. For, the good of the whole is the
good of the part as well, just as the life that is a good for the whole
body is also a good for every part of the body.
An Agent Acting on Behalf of a Community
Acts from Public Knowledge
Not only does one who acts as a representative of a community aim
for a good common to the community; he also acts from knowledge
common to the community. For, free and rational agents act in virtue
of knowledge that they possess. Otherwise, their actions would not be
free. But if an agent acts as representative of some whole, its principle
of action must be a principle common to the whole. Similarly, since
a free agent must act from knowledge, in order for a free agent to act
on behalf of a community, the principle of his motion must be some
knowledge common to the community. For example, in enforcing a
law, the law enforced must be promulgated and known by the public.42
		 See Aquinas, In II phys., lec.10, no. 15: “The action of an agent tends to something determinate, just as it proceeds from a determinate beginning. For every
agent does what is befitting to itself.”
42
		See ST I, q. 90, a. 4, corp.: “Law is imposed upon others as a rule and measure.
But a rule and measure is imposed by the fact that it is applied to those who
are ruled and measured. Hence, in order that the law acquire the power of
obliging, which is a property of law, it is necessary that it be applied to men
who ought to be ruled according to it. Moreover, such an application is made
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Private knowledge is not shared by the community, and therefore, it
cannot be a principle of an act formally done on behalf of the community. Insofar as one acts from private knowledge, he does not act as a
representative of the community, but rather as a private agent. Thus,
it belongs to the very definition of a public agent that such an agent
act in virtue of public knowledge.43 In such a case, it is not enough
to choose the common good as it is knowable by someone’s private
knowledge.
Even when a member of the community is not acting as a representative of the whole community, but simply as a part of that
community, he must in some way act from public knowledge. For,
in order to act in unison with the other members, there must be
some common ordering principle known to all, such as public laws.
Certainly, an action for the sake of the common good based upon
one’s private knowledge is possible. For example, if a man is the sole
witness to a theft and, for the sake of the common good, he stops
the thief and returns the stolen goods, then he can be said to act as a
member of the community for the sake of the common good. Nevertheless, he acts precisely as member of the community due to the fact
that he follows a law that is common to the community (i.e., “do
not steal”). And therefore, at least some principle from which he acts
must be common to the community in order for him to act formally
as a member of the community.
Exercising Conscience in Public Matters
From the above, it follows that, when conscience is exercised in the
context of a public act, this implies that the knowledge one uses in
making a judgment of conscience is public knowledge. This means
that, when a person acting as a public agent makes a judgment of
conscience, the knowledge that is applied to the thing to be done or
avoided is public knowledge. If a person were to use private knowledge
in making a judgment of conscience, he would, by that very fact, be no
longer acting as a public agent. Thus, he would no longer be acting as a
through the fact that it is brought into the knowledge of [those to be ruled]
from the very promulgation. Hence, promulgation is necessary in order that
the law have its power.”
43
		Even in the case where information is not shared with the general public (such
as information relating to security), the information must still be communicated to a body representing the general public (such as a security council).
Such measures are taken primarily so that persons outside the community
cannot use the information to harm the community.

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representative or member of a community, but only as a private person.
However, there is a difference between one who acts as a representative of the community and one who acts as a member of the
community. The one who acts as a representative of the community
is making a judgment about how the whole community is to act.
Therefore, his power to act is determined by the conditions under
which he represents the community. For example, the executive
powers of a president are determined by the laws that define his
authority. On the other hand, the one who acts as a member of a
community is not determining how the community as a whole is to
act, but only how he is to act in unison with the community. Therefore, such a one acts on his own authority, but in doing so, he must
seek the common good as it is manifested by public knowledge.
IV: One Who Acts as a Representative of the Community
in Public Acts Should Choose to Prefer the Common Good
of the Community
Whenever a person acts as a representative of the community, he should
exercise his conscience so that it seeks first the good of the community.
The reason for this is that conscience is the application of the rule of
right moral action to the particular act to be done. And, in the case of
an act that bears per se upon the good of the community, it is a universal rule of right moral action that one’s common good is to be chosen
in preference to one’s private good (see II above). As a consequence,
when an individual acts as a representative of a community, if a choice
is between a common good and a private good of the same order to
which it is opposed, then conscience binds one to the common good,
not the private good. If one who has care of the community were to
order his public actions toward his private good to the exclusion of the
common good of the community, he would make the community an
instrument of his private good.
Take the following example: a governor is bound by his office
to defend a law in the event that it is challenged in court, yet he
personally disagrees with the law because he or a member of his
family would be harmed by it. If he refuses to defend the law before
the court, he would make the law and the common good subject to
his personal appetite or the private good of his family. But consider
a more difficult case, for example, when a public representative is
not faced with choosing between his own private good and the
common good of the community he represents, but rather between
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to a member or members of the community. St. Thomas considers
just such a case: “The name ‘conscience’ implies the application of
knowledge to something doable, as was held in the first part. But to
act against conscience is a sin. Therefore, a judge sins if he issues a
sentence, according to the allegations, against the truth of conscience
which he possesses.”44
To resolve this difficulty, it is not enough to simply refer to the
primacy of the common good. One must also distinguish between
public and private knowledge as principles of authority: “A man in
those things that pertain to his private person ought to inform his
conscience from his private knowledge. But in those things that
pertain to public power, he ought to inform his conscience according
to those things that are able to be known in public judgment.”45 If a
public representative were to enforce laws or render judgments based
upon how his conscience applies his private knowledge to a case, this
implies that he would be acting from his own authority when judging, rather than as a representative of the people. But it is precisely
this kind of authority that he does not possess. To claim such authority for himself would be a usurpation, a form of tyranny.
Yet how is this conclusion to be reconciled with the fact that the
purpose of conscience is to conform human actions to the truth? It
seems that error or ignorance is never the cause of good actions as
such. Therefore, the more truth that is taken into account, the better
will the judgment be. Besides, it seems purely incidental to the moral
evaluation of someone’s act that others happen to be ignorant of those
truths by which he informs his conscience. Why should someone
else’s ignorance prevent someone from acting in conformity with the
truth he knows?
St. Thomas considers questions similar to these:
		ST II-II, q. 67, a. 2, obj. 4.
		ST II-II, q. 67, a. 2, ad 4. St. Thomas is so insistent that this is necessary for
the common good that he says that, even if a judge has to pronounce a death
sentence on a man he privately knows is innocent, he should do so if the
public evidence for his guilt is sufficient and there is no way to publicly manifest his innocence or send the judgment to a higher authority (See ST II-II, q.
64, a. 6, ad 3). Legal scholars in modern times have recognized and expressed
the same timeless insight of Aquinas, though perhaps with less precision. For
example, substantially the same reality is expressed in the pithy and paradoxical
statement that “trials search for truth by excluding certain truths” (Andrew J.
Wistrich, Chris Guthrie, and Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, “Can Judges Ignore Inadmissible Information? The Difficulty of Deliberately Disregarding,” University
of Pennsylvania Law Review 153 [2005]: 1252).

44
45

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In judging, a man ought to be conformed to the divine judgment, since judgment is God’s according to Deuteronomy
(1:17). But the judgment of God is according to the truth, as is
said in Romans (2:2); and in Isaiah (11:3–4), it is said of Christ
that: “He will not judge according to the vision of the eyes, nor
according to the hearing of the ears will he argue, but he will
judge the poor in justice, and will argue in equity on behalf
of the meek of the earth.” Therefore, a judge ought not to
pronounce a sentence according to those things that are proved
before him contrary to the truth that he himself knows.46
In response, he points out that the public representative does not exercise his own authority:
“It befits God to judge according to his own authority. And,
therefore, in judging, he is informed according to the truth that he
himself knows, not according to that which is accepted by others.
And the same reason holds for Christ, who is true God and true man.
But other judges do not judge according to their own authority. And
therefore, they are not similar cases.”47
The authority to enforce a law or render a judgment does not
belong to the representative of the community as his own authority
or as a private individual with private knowledge, but rather insofar as
he bears the authority of the community. So, he must be conformed
to the truth accepted by the community based upon evidence known
to the community. Obviously, if it is possible to make his private
knowledge available as public evidence, he should do so. If this is
done, then he can make a public decision based upon this publicly
available evidence. But sometimes such publication of private knowledge is not possible (e.g., if doing so would result in a greater injustice
or harm the common good). Of course, in certain cases, a representative of a community may have recourse to resigning his office to
meet the demands of his conscience, for in this way, he ceases to act
as a public agent.
However, another objection remains: it seems that pronouncing a
sentence that is contrary to the truth is not acting for the common
good, but rather violates a common good of a higher order. For
example, following a civil law in this case seems to conflict with the
demands of conscience to follow the divine law that the innocent
		ST II-II, q. 67, a. 2, obj. 2.
		ST II-II, q. 67, a. 2, ad 2.

46
47

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should not be punished. Recall that the principle about the common
good states that, if a choice is between a common good and a private
good of the same order to which it is opposed, then conscience binds
one to the common good.
It is clear that such a conflict can take place. For example, if a
head of state is instructed by law to initiate a nuclear war that would
destroy the human race, it is clear that he cannot do so because he
would act contrary to a higher common good than the good of the
state—namely, the good of the whole human race. But the case of an
innocent person being punished is not a conflict between the civil
law and the divine law, nor between the political common good and
the divine common good. For, both natural and divine law teach that
just civil law ought to be followed, that judgments ought to be made
based upon the most certain evidence available, and that one should
not attempt to exercise authority he does not possess. In fact, there are
two distinct conflicts: one for the public representative and another
for the innocent person.
The conflict with which the public representative is faced is this:
should I usurp an authority I do not have, or should I condemn one
I know to be innocent? It seems as though he can only choose evil.
But this is only an apparent conflict: it is a case of the fallacy of the
accident,48 since one of the evils is only accidentally connected to the
choice.49 If he chooses to usurp authority, then he himself is the cause
		This fallacy was identified by ancient Greeks as one of the sources of error in
reasoning. Aristotle mentions it in his book on Sophistic Refutations (166b28–
36). A clear example will help to illustrate this fallacy. If someone promises
to feed my starving children on the condition that I kidnap someone else’s
child, then I should choose not to kidnap the child. For, kidnapping the child
would not be the true cause of my children being saved: it would be accidental
to their salvation. Rather, the will of the person who has the means to feed
my children is the cause, and he may or may not choose to feed my children
if I kidnap someone else’s child. So, ultimately, choosing what is accidentally
connected to a good means choosing something that, in itself, has no reason
to be connected to that good, which is another way of saying that there is
not a reason for choosing it, but only what seems to be a reason. Therefore,
someone who chooses what is only accidentally connected to some good is
not following reason. In any case, it is good to be aware of this distinction to
avoid faulty moral reasoning. But sometimes it can be very difficult. Plato once
said that this distinction is so difficult to see that it sometimes deceives even
the wise.
49
		Therefore, not only is it not incidental to the moral evaluation of someone’s
public act that others happen to be ignorant of those truths by which he
48

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of the evil he has done. Therefore, by doing this, he has committed
a moral fault. But, if he passes a sentence punishing the innocent, he
is not the true cause of the unjust punishment, but rather some other
cause (such as a false witness) is the per se cause of the injustice, and
therefore he has not committed a moral fault. He is simply passing
judgment in the name of the community based upon the evidence
before the community. Therefore, it is clear that the public representative ought not to usurp authority he does not possess.
Another conflict different from that faced by the public representative faces the innocent person who is, nevertheless, condemned to
punishment. Resolving this conflict is the task of the next part.
V: One Who Acts as a Member of a Community
in a Public Act Should Choose to Prefer the
Common Good of the Community
For an innocent person subject to a just law erroneously applied, the
conflict is between his private good and his common good insofar as
he is a member of the society. Arguing against his friend who is trying
to persuade him to escape an unjust death sentence, Socrates says:
If the laws and the community of the city came to us when we
were about to run away from here, or whatever it should be
called, and standing over us were to ask: “Tell me, Socrates,
what are you intending to do? By attempting this deed aren’t
you planning to do nothing other than to destroy us, the laws,
and the civic community, as much as you can? Or does it seem
possible to you that any city where the verdicts reached have no
force but are made powerless and corrupted by private citizens
could continue to exist and not be in ruins?”50
If someone decides that his own judgment about his guilt (rather
than a public verdict) is to be the determining factor about how he
should act or be disciplined, then he must hold this is true for all in
informs his conscience (since the public evidence is essentially connected with
a public judgment), but to the contrary, it is incidental to his choice not to
usurp authority that he has private knowledge about one upon whom he is
passing sentence.
50
		Crito 50a-b, trans. Hugh Tredennick, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith
Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Bollinger Series 71 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 35.

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the society. Thus, whoever disagrees with a public verdict can do as
he wants, and laws will bind only those who agree with them. But
very few, if any, will agree with being punished. Such a disposition
toward law, that each man is the judge of their application, would
certainly destroy the society. And the good of membership in a
well-ordered society would be lost not only for Socrates, but for all.
Therefore, it is better for Socrates to love the common good of his
society and lose his life than to save his own life and lose his love for
the common good of his society.
The fact that obeying a just law (even one that is erroneously
applied) is choosing one’s common good over one’s private good
indicates not only that public representatives should rely upon public
evidence in making decisions in a public act but also that persons who
perform a public act as members of a community ought to choose to
obey a sentence based upon public evidence.
This same truth is found in divine revelation. The Scriptures give
many examples in which someone who is guilty of no fault still
chooses to submit himself to a penalty or prescript of law for the sake
of the common good. The Lord Jesus submitted himself to both the
divine and human law though he was exempt. He submitted himself
to the divine law upon coming into the world, as St. Paul teaches
(Gal 4:4), and in his death (Phil 2:8). He submitted himself to human
law when he accepted the sentence of Pontius Pilate ( John 19:11) and
chose to pay the temple tax though he was exempt (Matt 17:24–27)
to avoid scandal. The Blessed Virgin Mary also submitted herself to
the common divine law, though she was exempt (Luke 2:22). St.
Paul enjoined the Romans to abstain from eating meat sacrificed to
idols to avoid scandal (Rom 14:13–15:1) and had Timothy undergo
circumcision for the sake of avoiding scandal (Acts 16:3).
In summary, public action must consider not only the subjective
condition of the agent but also the outward and objective conditions
of the action. Conscience, therefore, must take both into consideration whenever a public act is performed. And, if the judgment of
conscience based upon public knowledge is opposed to the judgment
of conscience based upon private knowledge in a public act, then
the judgment of conscience based upon public knowledge must be
followed instead of the judgment of conscience based upon private
knowledge.

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VI: Application to Contemporary Moral Dilemmas,
Especially Questions of Administering and Receiving
Communion When There Is Objective (Manifest) Grave Sin
but Subjective Innocence
At the beginning of this article, a number of hypothetical cases were
raised concerning the potential for conflict in judgments of conscience.
At this point, we are in a better position to resolve the difficulties raised
by these cases.
Can a lawyer who knows his client is guilty still argue for his
innocence before a court? Can a judge or jury member who knows
from confidential information or legally inadmissible evidence that
someone is innocent pass a guilty sentence because his sentence must
be based upon the evidence before the court? Conversely, if they
know by inadmissible evidence that someone is guilty can they reach
a verdict of innocent? In all these cases, based upon the principles
set forth above, it is clear that, in order to respect the judgment of a
rightly informed conscience, they ought to act in public according to
the publicly available evidence. The lawyer can and should argue for
his client’s innocence. The judge and jury should reach a verdict on
the evidence before the court rather than on private evidence.
Analogous cases take place in the context of internal and external
form in ecclesiastical matters. It is well established that the distinction between internal forum (matters known in private) and external
forum (matters known in public) is essential for the correct formation
of conscience and the application of Church law.51 St. Thomas applies
		This distinction features prominently in the reasoning of St. Thomas. See, for
example, In IV sent., d. 18, q. 2, a. 2, corp.: “In the forum of conscience, a cause
is treated between man and God; but in the forum of external judgment, a
cause is treated between man and man. And therefore, absolution or binding
that obligates one man as regards God only pertains to the forum of penance,
but that which obligates a man in comparison to other men pertains to the
public forum of external judgment.” See also In IV sent., d. 28, q. 1, a. 2, corp.:
“Concerning matrimony, we are able to speak in two ways: In one way with
regard to the forum of conscience, and in this way in the truth of things carnal
copulation does not have what is required to complete matrimony (for which
a betrothal has preceded with words expressing a future promise to marry) if
the interior consent be lacking. For even words expressing present consent do
not make a matrimony if the consent of the mind be lacking. In another way,
we can speak of matrimony with regard to the judgment of the Church. And
since, in external judgment, the judgment is made according to those things
that lay in the open forum, since nothing is able to more expressly signify
consent than carnal copulation, according to the judgment of the Church,

51

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Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem.

this distinction when a minister of the Eucharist makes judgments
of conscience about giving the Eucharist to a sinner who asks for it:
If a priest knows the sin of someone who is asking for the
Eucharist, either through confession or in some other way, a
distinction ought to be made. For either the sin is hidden or
manifest. If it is hidden, then the one asking either asks in secret
or openly (in public). If he asks secretly, then the priest ought to
deny him, and admonish him lest he ask [for the Eucharist] in
public. But if he asks publicly, then he ought to give it to him.
First, because, if he were to punish him publicly for a hidden
sin, he would be a revealer of confession or manifestor of
crime. Second, because every Christian has the right in receiving the Eucharist unless he lose it by mortal sin. Hence, since,
before the Church, he has not lost this right, it is not necessary
to deny him before the Church: otherwise, this would give the
faculty to evil priests by their own choice to punish with the
greatest penalty those whom they will. Third, because of the
uncertainty of the state of the one receiving: since the Spirit
blows where he will ( John 3:8), so that suddenly he is able to
be contrite, and to come to the sacrament by divine inspiration.
Fourth, because it would be a scandal, if [communion] were
to be denied. But if the sin is manifest, [the minister] ought to
deny him if he asks either secretly or openly.52
Most pertinent for the purpose of this article is the second reason
St. Thomas gives. One who has lost a right to receive the Eucharist before God still retains that right before the Church if his sin is
hidden from the public knowledge of the Church. St. Thomas makes
this point even more forcefully in an objection and response to the
same question: “The lesser of two evils ought to be chosen. But it
would be a lesser evil for the sinner if he were to be defamed than if
he were to eat the Body of Christ unworthily. Therefore, the priest
ought more to deny him [communion] in public, even if his crime
should be made known, than to give him [communion].”53 But St.
Thomas responds: “According to Innocent III, since no one ought
carnal copulation following a betrothal is judged to make a matrimony, unless
some express signs of fraud are apparent.”
52
		In IV Sent., d. 9, q. 1, a. 5, corp.
53
		In IV Sent., d. 9, q. 1, a. 5, obj. 3.

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to commit one mortal sin so that his neighbor not commit another
[mortal sin], it ought rather be chosen by the priest not to make the
sinner known than that he not sin [by unworthy communion]. But
the sinner ought rather to choose to be rendered suspect by abstaining
than to choose to eat unworthily by communicating.”54
The choice that the minister of communion has to make is not a
choice for the one who is approaching communion to sin or not sin.
It is a choice about his own actions, whether he should sin or not sin.
And, for him, it is a sin to reveal the hidden sin of another. These
same distinctions come into play when the situation is reversed: when
someone innocent of sin, but who appears to have sinned gravely
in the public knowledge of the Church, approaches a minister for
communion. The minister of communion, even if he know through
private knowledge that someone who approaches him is innocent,
must still take into account the public appearance of grave sin. For,
as shown above, in a public act, one who represents the community
must act according to public knowledge (III above). And in making a
judgment of his own conscience in such a matter, he is not making a
choice for the one approaching communion, but rather a choice about
his own actions (IV above).
This is reflected in Canons 915 and 916 of the 1983 Code of
Canon Law:
Canon 915: Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and
others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to
be admitted to holy communion.
Canon 916: A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to
celebrate Mass or receive the Body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and
there is no opportunity to confess; in this case the person is to
remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition
which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible.
These canons speak of the separate duties, binding in conscience
for each, of the minister of communion and the communicant.
The minister of communion cannot accept the responsibility of the
conscience of the one who approaches communion, but neither can
		In IV Sent., d. 9, q. 1, a. 5, ad 3.

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the one who approaches communion accept the responsibility of the conscience
of the minister of communion. Each must act in accord with his own
conscience. One who believes in good conscience that he has a
right to receive communion cannot compel a minister to give him
communion contrary to the demands of his conscience, nor can
anyone else. These canons are not simply a matter of human laws
dispensable by human authority, but rather of divine law: 55 they
instruct the consciences of minister and communicant alike and
protect the inviolability of each conscience.
Notice also that the question of the subjective moral culpability of
the person is not the determining consideration here. The denial of
the sacramental order is made at the objective level, not merely the
subjective level. If someone outwardly indicated they intended to
persevere in a sinful life, they would not be a candidate for baptism,
or even absolution. This is true even if inwardly they intended to
repent.56 Similarly, a candidate for priestly ordination might inwardly
believe in the teachings of the Church but, for whatever reason, insist
on using words that outwardly and objectively deny those teachings. This objective denial of the teachings of the Church would
be a reason for not admitting such a person to Holy Orders in the
Church.57
Along the same lines, Gerhard Cardinal Müller also says that
the attempt to discern between those who are subjectively guilty
“The prohibition found in the cited canon, by its nature, is derived from divine
law and transcends the domain of positive ecclesiastical laws: the latter cannot
introduce legislative changes which would oppose the doctrine of the Church.
The scriptural text on which the ecclesial tradition has always relied is that of
St. Paul: ‘This means that whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord
unworthily sins against the body and blood of the Lord. A man should examine himself first only then should he eat of the bread and drink of the cup. He
who eats and drinks without recognizing the body eats and drinks a judgment
on himself ’” (Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, Declaration Concerning the Admission to Holy Communion of Faithful Who Are Divorced and
Remarried, June 24, 2000, in Communicantes 32 [2000]: 159–62).
56
		In a similar context, St. Thomas teaches: “In the sacramental signs there ought
not to be some falsity. But a sign is false if it does not correspond to the
thing signified. But from the fact that someone presents himself to be washed
through Baptism, it is signified that he has disposed himself for interior cleansing, which does not happen to one who has the intention of persisting in sin”
(ST III, q. 68, a. 4, corp.).
57
		Indeed, it would be a reason for not admitting someone to visible membership
in the Church in the case of a catechumen.
55

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and those who are not for purposes of receiving communion is not
possible: “This discernment would ultimately be impossible because
only God examines hearts. Moreover, the economy of the Sacraments is an economy of visible signs, not of internal dispositions or
subjective culpability. A privatization of the Sacramental economy
would certainly not be Catholic. This is not a matter of discerning a
mere interior disposition, but rather, as St. Paul says, of ‘discerning
the body’ (cf. Amoris Laetitia 185–186), the concrete visible relations
in which we live.”58 The Church is not merely an invisible union
of souls known to God alone, but a visible sign: a sacrament. A
sacrament is, by its very nature, a visible sign, and it is this visible
and public dimension of the Church that demands that the public
celebration of the sacraments conform to their outward significance.
This teaching, valid for all the sacraments, has particular application to the sacrament of holy Matrimony. A 1994 instruction by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith taught:
Marriage, in fact, because it is both the image of the spousal
relationship between Christ and His Church as well as the
fundamental core and an important factor in the life of civil
society, is essentially a public reality. . . . Thus, the judgment of
conscience of one’s own marital situation does not regard only
the immediate relationship between man and God, as if one
could prescind from the Church’s mediation, that also includes
the canonical laws binding in conscience. Not to recognize this
essential aspect would mean in fact to deny that marriage is a
reality of the Church, that is to say, a sacrament.59
Thus, the minister of communion cannot reduce the sacramental
order to a nonsacramental order: an invisible order of the relationship of souls to God. To attempt to do so would ultimately involve
		“What Can We Expect from the Family? A Culture of Hope for the Family
Starting from Amoris Laetitia,” speech at the Metropolitan Seminary of Oviedo,
Spain, accessed October 27, 2017, http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351295bdc4.html?eng=y.
59
		Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Letter to the Bishops of the
Catholic Church concerning the Reception of Holy Communion by the
Divorced and Remarried Members of the Faithful,” September 14, 1994,
§§7–8, accessed October 27, 2017, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/
congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_14091994_rec-holycomm-by-divorced_en.html.
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the usurpation of the authority of God, who alone probes the mind
and tests the heart. The duty of the minister of the sacraments is
to act in conformance with the visible sacramental order, making
public judgments about objective realities, not states of conscience
of others, for to do so would be to violate his own conscience.
The minister of communion is not making a judgment about the
worthiness of the one approaching communion to receive: that evaluation belongs to the conscience of the communicant alone. Rather,
the minister of communion is making a judgment, on behalf of
the community whose representative he is, about the fittingness to
administer communion.
The communicant, on the other hand, must attend to his own
duties of conscience. Even in the case where one is convinced and
certain of his own innocence in the internal forum, assisted by the
judgment of a confessor, he must consider first and foremost the will
of God and the common good before his private good (V above). It
sometimes happens that, without their fault, God permits his faithful servants to be deprived of certain goods for which they might
otherwise have a just claim. For example, a man or woman may be
abandoned by their spouse without a just reason, and so might be
unjustly deprived of the comforts and use of marriage. Their vow and
the common good demands that such persons refrain from seeking
the goods of marriage from another. And, while this entails a great
sacrifice, it would entail the loss of a greater good if they were to
seek remarriage. For, the common good is truly their personal good,
not an alien good, and it is an even greater good than their private
good.60 For example, if abandonment by a spouse were accepted as a
sufficient reason to remarry, this would require that marriage vows
are merely conditional: “If you are faithful to me, I will be faithful
to you.” Such a conditional love would destroy the true meaning of
marital love and reduce every marriage to a kind of contract, rather
than a communion established by a covenant. It is true that unconditional love expressed by unconditioned vows involves a risk, but it
		See above on the preferability of the common good over the private good. As
stated above in part V, the Scriptures often testify to this truth and give many
examples in which someone who is guilty of no fault still chooses to submit
himself to a penalty or prescript of law for the sake of the common good.
Even reason without the light of faith can see this truth, as Socrates willingly
accepted the unjust sentence of death for the sake of respecting the laws of
the state (Crito 50a–b). All of these sacrificed their own private privileges for
the sake of a higher good.

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is a greater good for everyone that such a love is what is expected in
every sacramental marriage. Similarly, it may happen that a faithful
Catholic is deprived of the Eucharist through no fault of their own.
In such cases, they should not seek to receive the Eucharist by illicit
means.61 Rather, they should offer this as a pleasing sacrifice to God
for the sake of the common good that they still share with the whole
Church. Indeed a spiritual communion made in such circumstances
can be even more meritorious than a sacramental communion, since
God sees not merely the outward reception of a sacrament but also the
great desire of the heart both for the Eucharist and to do God’s will
as manifested by the objective circumstances of one’s life. Indeed, at
every Mass, immediately before the distribution of communion, we
use the words of the centurion to profess our faith in the power of a
spiritual communion: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter
under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”
Just as the servant of the centurion was healed without Jesus’s physical
presence, so too the soul can be healed without Jesus coming sacramentally. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has spoken beautifully and
compassionately of this in his book Behold the Pierced One,62 written
while he was a cardinal.
In a passage of Scripture particularly apt to the question at hand,
the second book of Maccabees records that Eleazar was offered the
opportunity to eat meat that was according to the law but, to others,
appeared contrary to the law:
Those in charge of that unlawful ritual meal took the man
aside privately, because of their long acquaintance with him,
and urged him to bring meat of his own providing, such as
he could legitimately eat, and to pretend to be eating some of
the meat of the sacrifice prescribed by the king; in this way he
would escape the death penalty, and be treated kindly because
of their old friendship with him. But he made up his mind in a
noble manner, worthy of his years, the dignity of his advanced
		It should be appreciated here that this judgment pertains to the question of
public reception of the sacraments. I do not intend to settle the question of
whether someone who is certain of their innocence in the internal forum but
has an objectively imputable grave fault can receive the sacraments privately.
Nor have I addressed the question of whether it is ever truly possible to
receive a sacrament privately (since there seems to be a public dimension to
every sacrament).
62
		Joseph Ratzinger, Behold the Pierced One (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984).
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age, the merited distinction of his gray hair, and of the admirable life he had lived from childhood; and so he declared that
above all he would be loyal to the holy laws given by God.
He told them to send him at once to the abode of the dead,
explaining: “At our age it would be unbecoming to make such
a pretense; many young men would think the ninety-yearold Eleazar had gone over to an alien religion. Should I thus
dissimulate for the sake of a brief moment of life, they would
be led astray by me.”63
Subjectively, in his conscience, Eleazar knew that the meat could be
eaten without contravening God’s law, but because this was not public
knowledge, his conscience instructed him that a higher law was to be
followed for the sake of the common good.64 Likewise, both the one
administering communion and the one receiving communion must
look first to this higher common good.
Conclusion
The difficulty in resolving moral dilemmas often comes about due to
the multitude of principles involved in particular human actions. But
this difficulty should not beget despair of coming to moral certitude
about what is truly good. Such despair would have the same practical
		2 Macc 6:21–25 (NAB).
		Cf. Rom 14:12–15:2: “So (then) each of us shall give an account of himself
(to God). Then let us no longer judge one another, but rather resolve never
to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. I know and
am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; still, it is
unclean for someone who thinks it unclean. If your brother is being hurt by
what you eat, your conduct is no longer in accord with love. Do not because
of your food destroy him for whom Christ died. So do not let your good be
reviled. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of food and drink, but of
righteousness, peace, and joy in the holy Spirit; whoever serves Christ in this
way is pleasing to God and approved by others. Let us then pursue what leads
to peace and to building up one another. For the sake of food, do not destroy
the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to
become a stumbling block by eating; it is good not to eat meat or drink wine
or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. Keep the faith (that) you
have to yourself in the presence of God; blessed is the one who does not
condemn himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned
if he eats, because this is not from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin.
We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak and not to
please ourselves; let each of us please our neighbor for the good, for building
up” (NAB).

63
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effect as moral subjectivism and relativism, in which the determining
factor of what is done is ultimately not truth, but power.65 Rather, what
is needed to face such difficult moral questions is docility to the wise
and holy persons who have carefully considered the more particular
principles of moral action and handed these on to us as an inheritance
of immense value. Of special importance are the Sacred Scriptures
and the writings of the saints, especially St. Thomas Aquinas. Coming
to certitude about the proper principles involved in making a good
choice when the public and private aspects of a choice seem to conflict
requires that we stand upon the foundations so carefully laid before us
rather than abandon them as too abstruse and difficult. Difficult moral
questions require careful investigation into truth, not simplistic solutions that amount to despair of finding the truth.
It is my hope that this argument has faithfully brought together the
foundations wisely laid beforehand and brought greater clarity to a
very difficult moral question about the responsibilities of conscience
for members and representatives of a community. For, only by fidelity
to truth can the human person attain true peace of soul and a right
N&V
relationship with God.

		See Ratzinger, Conscience and Truth, §2: “Man’s capacity for truth is a limit
on all power and a guarantee of man’s likeness to God.” See also ibid., §1:
“Conscience’s reduction to subjective certitude betokens at the same time a
retreat from truth.”

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311

An Examination of the Role of Faith in
Matrimonial Consent and the Consequences
for the Sacrament of Marriage1
Lawrence J. Welch
Kenrick-Glennon Seminary
St. Louis, Missouri

Perry Cahall
Pontifical College Josephinum
Columbus, Ohio

Introduction

The desire to clarify the relationship between personal
faith and the sacrament of Matrimony arose in part from a renewed
understanding of the sacraments as sacraments of faith. This renewal
was spurred on especially in light of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, which stated in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,
Sacrosanctum Concilium, that sacraments “not only presuppose faith,
but by words and objects they also nourish, strengthen, and express it;
that is why they are called ‘sacraments of faith.’”2 Subsequent to the
Council, theologians tried to articulate how to understand the role of
faith in marriage as a sacrament of faith without making the sacrament
dependent on the subjective faith of the couple. This question has
most recently reemerged in the 2014 and 2015 synods on the family.
This paper provides a brief overview of the post–Vatican II history
		A shorter version of this paper was delivered at the annual conference of the
Academy of Catholic Theology on May 25, 2016.
2
		
Sacrosanctum Concilium [hereafter, SC], §59, accessed October 28, 2017,
www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_
const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html.
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of the state of the question regarding the role of faith in the act of
consent to sacramental marriage, an issue about which there is more
clarity than people may realize. We will then comment on one
recent essay by José Granados, who proposes to offer a way forward
in developing our understanding of the relation of faith to the valid
celebration of the sacrament of Matrimony. We contend that, while
Granados offers some valuable insights regarding the role of faith in
matrimonial consent, his proposal is problematic as a potential way
forward for doctrinal development with regard to the sacrament of
Matrimony. After presenting a summary and assessment of Granados’s
proposal, we will offer some of our own reflections on the role of
faith in the valid administration of sacramental marriage, highlighting some aspects of the question that often receive too little emphasis.
History of the State of the Question
It is often pointed out that the question of the relation of faith to
the sacrament of Matrimony emerged with pressing concern in the
years following the Second World War.3 In this period that witnessed
the secularization of Western society, many theologians and pastors
began noting the phenomenon of the “baptized nonbeliever,” a term
designating those who were validly baptized but lived lives apart from
the Church and whose personal faith was all but nonexistent. This led
some to ask what degree of faith is necessary in order to validly confect
the sacrament of Matrimony, of which the spouses are the ministers,
according to the Latin tradition.
The statement of the Second Vatican Council that the sacraments
are “sacraments of faith” that presuppose, nourish, strengthen, and
express faith4 further caused speculation regarding the level or degree
of faith necessary to exchange valid consent to sacramental marriage.
The 1969 introduction to the Rite of Marriage for the Roman Rite,
citing Sacrosanctum Concilium §59, stated: “Priests should first of all
strengthen and nourish the faith of those about to be married, for the
		Peter Elliott provides a good, brief summary of the emergence and history
of the question of the relation of faith to valid matrimonial consent in the
section entitled “Faith and Sacrament” in his What God Has Joined: The Sacramentality of Marriage (New York: Alba House, 1990), 192–99. Updated pieces
of this history can also be found in David Schindler, Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., D.
C. Schindler, and Adrian J. Walker, “Faith and the Sacrament of Marriage: A
Response to the Proposal of a New ‘Minimum Fidei’ Requirement,” Communio
42 (Summer 2015): 309–30.
4
		
SC, §59.
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sacrament of marriage presupposes and demands faith.”5 In the 1970s,
a number of theologians argued for the need to demand explicit faith
for a couple to enter sacramental marriage, or at least for a minimal
level of faith that would be necessary to administer the sacrament.6
In 1977, the International Theological Commission (ITC) published
a document entitled Propositions on the Doctrine of Christian Marriage, in
which the problem of personal faith and the sacrament occupied the
concern of commission members. This document maintained that,
like the other sacraments, matrimony confers grace “by virtue of the
action performed by Christ.” 7 It also noted, “according to classical
principles,” the difference between the validity of a sacrament and
its fruitfulness, pointing out that “faith is presupposed as a ‘disposing
cause’ for receiving the fruitful effect of the sacrament.” However,
the ITC went on to comment on the “new theological problem” and
“grave pastoral dilemma” of “baptized nonbelievers” for whom lack
of or rejection of the faith seems clear. The Commission affirmed,
“the problem of the intention and that of the personal faith of the
contracting parties must not be confused, but” it noted, “they must
not be totally separated either.” The understanding here seems to
be that intention stems from personal faith, at least partly. Then the
commission appeared to be divided and of an uncertain mind when
it stated:
In the last analysis the real intention is born from and feeds on
living faith. Where there is no trace of faith (in the sense of
“belief ”—being disposed to believe), and no desire for grace or
salvation is found, then a real doubt arises as to whether there
is the above-mentioned general and truly sacramental intention
and whether the contracted marriage is validly contracted or
		
Rite of Marriage, “Introduction,” §7, in The Rites of the Church, vol. 1 (New York:
Pueblo Publishing Company, 1990), 721.
6
		Examples of such studies include Edward Kilmartin, “When is Marriage a
Sacrament,” Theological Studies 34 (1973): 275–86, and Walter Cuenin, The
Marriage of Baptized Non-Believers (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1977).
Susan Wood evaluates some of this scholarship in “The Marriage of Baptized
Nonbelievers: Faith, Contract, and Sacrament,” Theological Studies 48 (1987):
279–301.
7
		 International Theological Commission, Propositions on the Doctrine of Christian
Marriage, §2.3, accessed March 1, 2016, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/
congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_1977_sacramento-matrimonio_
en.html. All citations from this ITC document are from §2.3.
5

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not. As was noted, the personal faith of the contracting parties
does not constitute the sacramentality of matrimony, but
without any personal faith the validity of the sacrament may
be compromised [sed sine ulla fide personali validitas sacramenti
infirmaretur].8
This rather ambiguous statement of the ITC about the lack of personal
faith potentially compromising the validity of the sacrament of Matrimony manifested the uncertainty of the Commission and promoted
furthered speculation on this question, which, not surprisingly, surfaced
in the 1980 Synod of Bishops on the Family. In the propositions that
were forwarded to Pope St. John Paul II, the bishops called for an
investigation into the question regarding what level of faith is required
for the validity of the sacrament.9
John Paul II provided guidance and clarification on this issue in
his Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (hereafter,
FC), in which he noted that the faith of those “asking the Church
for marriage can exist in varying degrees” and addressed the issue of
admitting “to the celebration of marriage those who are imperfectly
disposed.”10 Noting the uniqueness of marriage among the sacraments, in that it was present from the very beginning of creation,
John Paul stated:
Therefore the decision of a man and a woman to marry in
accordance with this divine plan, that is to say, the decision to
commit by their irrevocable conjugal consent their whole lives
in indissoluble love and unconditional fidelity, really involves,
even if not in a fully conscious way, an attitude of profound
		The English translation of the last clause of this sentence has been slightly
altered to more faithfully reflect the Latin text. The English translation on
the Vatican website reads: “but the absence of personal faith compromises the
validity of the sacrament.”
9
		§12: “Like the other sacraments, marriage not only presupposes faith but also
nourishes, strengthens and expresses it (cf. Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,
§59). That is why we must investigate to what extent the validity of the
sacrament requires the faith of the contracting parties as the expression of the
covenant and as a personal, conscious affirmation of the baptismal vocation.”
The Tablet, January 31, 1981, 117. For the Latin original see Synod Secretariat,
“Le 43 proposizioni,” Il Regno-Documenti, 1981, 386–97.
10
		John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiiaris Consortio, §68, accessed October
28, 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/
documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio.html.
8

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obedience to the will of God, an attitude which cannot exist
without God’s grace. They have thus already begun what is in
a true and proper sense a journey towards salvation, a journey
which the celebration of the sacrament and the immediate
preparation for it can complement and bring to completion,
given the uprightness of their intention.
Thus, John Paul II pointed to a type of implicit faith present in anyone
who truly desires marriage according to its natural properties. He
acknowledged the situations in which couples ask to be married in the
Church for social rather than religious motives, but he emphasized the
implicit faith of these individuals when he stated:
It must not be forgotten that these engaged couples, by virtue
of their Baptism, are already really sharers in Christ’s marriage
Covenant with the Church, and that, by their right intention,
they have accepted God’s plan regarding marriage and therefore at least implicitly consent to what the Church intends to
do when she celebrates marriage. Thus, the fact that motives
of a social nature also enter into the request is not enough to
justify refusal on the part of pastors. Moreover, as the Second
Vatican Council teaches, the sacraments “by words and ritual
elements nourish and strengthen faith” [SC, §59]: that faith
towards which the married couple are already journeying by
reason of the uprightness of their intention, which Christ’s
grace certainly does not fail to favor and support.
John Paul then warned against requiring criteria concerning the level
of the faith of those seeking marriage that would inevitably involve
the risk of making arbitrary discriminating judgments against many
Christians and calling into question the validity of many marriages,
especially the marriages of those who are validly baptized but not in
full communion with the Catholic Church. Thus, John Paul effectively
responded to concerns about the level of personal faith in relation to
the administration of the sacrament of Matrimony, emphasizing that
what is necessary for the exchange of valid consent is that a baptized
couple intend to do what the Church does when she celebrates
marriage, which is to join a couple in a union that, according to God’s
plan, is permanent, faithful, and open to children.
Two years after Familiaris Consortio, the 1983 Code of Canon Law

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(hereafter, CIC)11 specified what it means to intend to do what the
Church does when it celebrates marriage in canon 1096, which states:
“For matrimonial consent to exist, the contracting parties must be at
least not ignorant that marriage is a permanent partnership between
a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of offspring by means
of some sexual cooperation.”12 Canon 1099 further specifies: “Error
concerning the unity or indissolubility or sacramental dignity of
marriage does not vitiate matrimonial consent provided that it does
not determine the will.”13 Thus, in order to confect the sacrament
of Matrimony, the requisite intention of a baptized couple is that
they will natural marriage. This consent is valid even if the couple
does not fully understand the natural properties of marriage, as long
as this error does not determine their wills. Additionally, the 1983
Code states that “a valid matrimonial contract cannot exist between
the baptized without it being by that fact a sacrament.”14 This canon
affirms the inseparability of the matrimonial contract and the sacrament, a teaching that has been explicitly taught by the magisterium
since 1852 (by Blessed Pope Pius IX).15
		Code of Canon Law, accessed October, 2017, http://www.vatican.va/archive/
ENG1104/__P3Z.HTM.
12
		CIC, can. 1096, §1.
13
		The kind of error that determines the will is not a speculative, theoretical
falsehood existing only in the mind. It is an error that is a practical habit that is
manifested through a person’s attitudes and behavior. The canonist Juan-Pedro
Viladrich explains: “While the speculative intellect seeks to the know the truth
of an existing object (which in the present case is the abstract notion of the
institution of marriage), the object of the practical intellect is a truth which
not yet existing in the person’s vital reality is to be brought about by the person’s
own action (namely the particularly conjugal union that is desired in actual
practice, as devoid of indissolubility, unity or sacramentality). For example, a
woman or man may consent to marriage thinking that the Church should
permit divorce and remarriage and in the consent to their marriage they want
and intend a union with their partner in which they reserve a right to divorce.
In this case, the error does not simply remain on a theoretical and speculative
level by a proper act of knowing by the intellect, but rather the will brings
the error into a practical living reality” (“Canon 1099—Commentary,” in
Exegetical Commentary on the Code of Canon Law, ed. Angel Maroza et al., vol.
3/2, [Chicago: Midwest Theological Forum, 2004], 1311).
14
		CIC, can. 1055, §2.
15
		See Allocutio Acerbissimum Vobiscum, September 27, 1852, found in George
Joyce, Marriage: An Historical and Doctrinal Study (London: Sheed and Ward,
1948), 205. See also: Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, in Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum: Compendium of
Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals[hereafter, DS],
11

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However, even after the promulgation of the new Code of Canon
Law and the preceding clarification contained in FC, some theologians continued to raise questions about the requisite level of faith for
valid matrimonial consent.16 Some even suggested that the Church
reconsider whether or not for baptized nonbelievers, the contract
of marriage can be separated from the sacrament, allowing them to
enter into natural, nonsacramental marriages.17 Thus, the question
regarding the relation of faith to the sacrament of Marriage continued
to circulate.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, as Prefect for the Congregation of the
Doctrine of the Faith, encouraged further study of the question. In
a 1998 essay titled “The Pastoral Approach to Marriage Should Be
Founded on Truth,” Cardinal Ratzinger expressed the need to study
further the relationship between personal faith and valid matrimonial
consent:
Further study is required, however, concerning the question
of whether non-believing Christians—baptized persons who
never or who no longer believe in God—can truly enter into
a sacramental marriage. In other words, it needs to be clarified
whether every marriage between two baptized persons is ipso
facto a sacramental marriage. In fact, the Code states that only
a “valid” marriage between baptized persons is at the same
time a sacrament (cf. CIC, Can. 1055, §2). Faith belongs to the
essence of the sacrament; what remains to be clarified is the
juridical question of what evidence of the “absence of faith”
would have as a consequence that the sacrament does not come
into being.18
ed. Heinrich Denzinger and Adolphus Schönmetzer, 43rd edition ed. Peter
Hünerman, Latin-English edition ed. Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund
Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), at nos. 2966 and 2973; Pope Leo
XIII, Arcanum, at DS, nos. 3145–46; and Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, at DS,
nos. 3713.
16
		See Ladislas Orsy, “Faith, Sacrament, Contract and Christian Marriage:
Disputed Questions,” Theological Studies 43 (1982): 379–98.
17
		See Denis O’Callaghan, “Faith and the Sacrament of Marriage,” Irish Theological Quarterly 52.3 (1986): 161–179; see also Michael G. Lawler, “The Mutual
Love and Personal Faith of the Spouses as the Matrix of the Sacrament of
Marriage,” Worship 65.4 (July 1991): 339–361.
18
		Joseph Ratzinger, “The Pastoral Approach to Marriage Should Be Founded
on Truth,” accessed October 28, 2017, http://www.ewtn.com/library/
Marriage/ratzpastmar.htm.

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Thus, in this essay, Cardinal Ratzinger expressed a need to further
clarify whether a lack of personal faith could invalidate consent to
sacramental marriage.
In February of 2001, John Paul II again took the opportunity
to address the relation between personal faith and valid matrimonial consent in an address to the Tribunal of the Roman Rota: “I
would like to dwell briefly on the relationship between the natural
character of marriage and its sacramentality, seeing that there have
been frequent attempts since Vatican II to revitalize the supernatural
aspect of marriage which include theological, pastoral and canonical
proposals that are foreign to tradition, such as the attempt to require
faith as a prerequisite for marriage.” John Paul then referenced his
treatment of this issue in FC by stating:
Shortly after the start of my Pontificate, following the Synod
of Bishops on the family which discussed this topic, I addressed
it in Familiaris Consortio, writing in 1980: “The sacrament of
Matrimony has this specific element that distinguishes it from
all the other sacraments: it is the sacrament of something that
was part of the very economy of creation; it is the very conjugal covenant instituted by the Creator” [FC, §68]. Consequently, the only way to identify the reality that was linked
from the beginning with the economy of salvation and that in
the fullness of time is one of the seven sacraments of the New
Covenant in the proper sense is to refer to the natural reality
presented to us by Scripture in Genesis (1: 27; 2: 18–25).
After noting how the sacrament of Matrimony uniquely links the
economy of creation and the economy of redemption, John Paul
emphasized that the sacrament is founded on natural marriage: “Matrimony, moreover, while being a “sign signifying and conferring grace,” is
the only one of the seven sacraments that is not related to an activity
specifically ordered to the attainment of directly supernatural ends.”
He then highlighted the danger of subjectivizing the sacrament of
matrimony by making it contingent upon the level of faith of the
spouses: “A different viewpoint would consider the sacramental sign to
consist in the couple’s response of faith and Christian life; thus it would
lack an objective consistency allowing it to be numbered among the
true Christian sacraments.” John Paul then brought into relief further
dangers of requiring more than a desire for natural marriage in order
to confect the sacrament of Matrimony:

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To introduce requirements of intention or faith for the sacrament that go beyond that of marrying according to God’s plan
from the “beginning”—in addition to the grave risks that I
mentioned in Familiaris Consortio [§68]: unfounded and discriminatory judgements, doubts about the validity of marriages
already celebrated, particularly by baptized non-Catholics—
would inevitably mean separating the marriage of Christians
from that of other people. This would be deeply contrary to
the true meaning of God’s plan, in which it is precisely the
created reality that is a “great mystery” in reference to Christ
and the Church.19
Thus, John Paul explained that to make the valid celebration of the
sacrament of matrimony somehow dependent upon the couples’ level
of subjective faith would rupture the unity of creation and redemption,
making Christian marriage somehow foreign to nature itself.
John Paul addressed the issue of faith and the sacrament of Matrimony again in January of 2003, in another speech to the Tribunal of
the Roman Rota. Once more, he addressed this issue by stressing the
unity of the orders of creation and redemption. He discounted the
idea that there are two marriages, “one profane and another sacred.”20
He noted that the image of God is found in the duality and interpersonal communion of man and woman and that, as a result, “transcendence is inherent in the existence of marriage, right from the start, because
it belongs to the natural distinction between man and woman in
the order of creation.”21 He noted that, in their “one flesh” union
(Gen 2:24), man and woman “participate in something sacred and
religious” and that, from the beginning, the union of Adam and Eve
prefigured the Incarnation: “The intrinsic link, between marriage,
established at the beginning [of creation], and the union of the Word
		Pope John Paul II, “Address of John Paul II to the Prelate Auditors, Officials
and Advocates of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota,” February 1, 2001, §8,
accessed October 28, 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/
speeches/2001/february/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20010201_rota-romana.
html.
20
		Pope John Paul II, “Address of John Paul II to the Prelate Auditors, Officials and Advocates of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota,” January 30, 2003,
§3, accessed October 28, 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/
en/speeches/2003/january/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20030130_roman-rota.
html.
21
Ibid.
19

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320

Incarnate with the Church is shown in its salvific efficacy by means
of the concept of sacrament.”22 He posited that “the sacramentality of
marriage is a fruitful way to investigate more deeply the mystery of
the relationship between human nature and grace,”23 noting that,
in the sacrament of Marriage, we can see that “the human and the
divine are interwoven in a wonderful way.”24 Based upon the unity of
the orders of creation and redemption, especially evident in marriage,
John Paul then directly addressed the role of faith in the valid administration of the sacrament:
The importance of the sacramentality of marriage, and the
need of faith for knowing and living fully this dimension,
could give rise to some misunderstandings either regarding the
admission to the celebration of marriage or judgments about
the validity of marriage. The Church does not refuse to celebrate a marriage for the person who is well disposed, even if
he is imperfectly prepared from the supernatural point of view,
provided the person has the right intention to marry according
to the natural reality of marriage. In fact, alongside natural
marriage, one cannot describe another model of Christian
marriage with specific supernatural requisites.25
Thus, John Paul made it clear that, for a baptized man and woman to
administer the sacrament of Matrimony, they need only intend natural
marriage and that the level of their subjective commitment of faith
does not compromise the validity of the sacrament. He clarified this
point further by stating: “It is crucial to keep in mind that an attitude
on the part of those getting married that does not take into account the
supernatural dimension of marriage can render it null and void only
if it undermines its validity on the natural level on which the sacramental sign itself takes place.”26 Thus, a lack of faith will compromise
the validity of the sacrament of Marriage only if it impacts the couple’s
intention to will a natural marriage.
Although John Paul II addressed on three different occasions (in
FC and in two separate addresses to the Roman Rota) the relation		Ibid., §4.
		Ibid., §5.
24
		Ibid.
25
		Ibid., §8.
26
		Ibid.
22
23

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ship between personal faith and the valid administration of sacramental marriage, Pope Benedict XVI again urged further study of
this question. Three months after being elevated to the papal throne,
in an address to the diocesan clergy of Aosta, while responding to a
question asked by a priest about communion for the faithful who are
divorced and remarried, Benedict said:
I would say that those who were married in the Church for the
sake of tradition but were not truly believers, and who later
find themselves in a new and invalid marriage and subsequently
convert, discover faith and feel excluded from the Sacrament,
are in a particularly painful situation. This really is a cause of
great suffering and when I was Prefect of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith, I invited various Bishops’ Conferences and experts to study this problem: a sacrament celebrated without faith. Whether, in fact, a moment of invalidity
could be discovered here because the Sacrament was found to
be lacking a fundamental dimension, I do not dare to say. I
personally thought so, but from the discussions we had I realized that it is a highly-complex [sic] problem and ought to be
studied further. But given these people’s painful plight, it must
be studied further.27
Although Benedict stressed the necessity to further study the question of the relationship of personal faith to valid matrimonial consent
in his essay from 1998 as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith and in his papal address at Aosta,28 by the end of his
papacy, and one would presume as a result of the further study he had
called for, he reaffirmed the teaching of John Paul II on this matter.
During the year of faith, Benedict offered his own address to the
Tribunal of the Roman Rota on January 16, 2013. On this occasion,
he said he wanted to take the opportunity “to reflect in particular on
		Pope Benedict XVI, “Meeting with the Diocesan Clergy at Aosta,” July 25,
2005, accessed October 28, 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/
en/speeches/2005/july/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20050725_diocesi-aosta.html.
28
		It is unclear whether Benedict encouraged further study of the question of
the ability of baptized nonbelievers to administer the sacrament of Marriage
because he thought a lack of personal faith could itself invalidate the sacrament or because he thought a lack of personal faith could evidence a lack of
intention to will a natural marriage.
27

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several aspects of the relationship between faith and marriage.”29 He
states clearly, “the indissoluble pact between a man and a woman does
not, for the purposes of the sacrament, require of those engaged to
be married, their personal faith; what it does require, as a necessary
minimal condition, is the intention to do what the Church does.”30
He then comments, “however, if it is important not to confuse the
problem of the intention with that of the personal faith of those
contracting marriage, it is nonetheless impossible to separate them
completely.”31 Benedict then cites the 1977 document of the ITC
that questioned whether a true lack of faith would invalidate consent
to sacramental marriage.32 In response to this question raised by the
ITC, Benedict next cites John Paul II’s 2003 address to the Roman
Rota in which he clarified that a lack of faith can render consent null
and void only if it undermines validity on the natural level.33 Offering further reflections, Benedict notes the difficulty of living out the
commitment to marriage without faith, stating: “Closure to God or
the rejection of the sacred dimension of the conjugal union and of
its value in the order of grace certainly makes arduous the practical
embodiment of the most lofty model of marriage conceived by the
Church according to God’s plan and can even undermine the actual
validity of the pact, should it be expressed . . . in a rejection of the
principle of the conjugal obligation of fidelity itself, that is, of the
other essential elements or properties of matrimony.”34
Benedict goes on to explain that he does not want to “disregard
the consideration that can arise in the cases in which, precisely
because of the absence of faith, the good of the spouses is jeopardized,
that is, excluded from the consent itself,” and thus consent is invalidated.35 However, he also states that he does “not intend to suggest
any facile automatism between the lack of faith and the invalidity of
the matrimonial union, but rather to highlight how such a lack may,
		Pope Benedict XVI, “Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI for the Inauguration of the Judicial Year of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota,” January 26, 2013,
§1, accessed October 28, 2016, http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/
en/speeches/2013/january/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20130126_rota-romana.html.
30
Ibid.
31
		Ibid.
32
		Ibid.
33
		Ibid.
34
		Ibid., §2.
35
		Ibid., §3.
29

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although not necessarily, also damage the goods of the marriage, since
the reference to the natural order desired by God is inherent in the
conjugal pact (cf. Gen 2:24).”36 With these comments, Benedict, in
line with John Paul II, made clear that a lack of faith on the part of the
baptized couple undermines validity only if it results in the rejection
of the natural goods and properties of marriage.
Nevertheless, the place of the role of faith for the validity of
marriage resurfaced most recently in the preparations for the 2014
and 2015 synods of bishops. In discerning a possible fresh response to
those suffering in difficult marital situations who wish to reconcile
with the Church, both the Relatio Synodi of the 2014 synod and the
Instrumentem Laboris of the 2015 synod suggested that: “Among the
proposals, the role which faith plays in persons who marry could
possibly be examined in ascertaining the validity of the sacrament
of Marriage, all the while maintaining that the marriage of two
baptized Christians is always a sacrament.”37 With these words, the
synodal documents seemed to suggest reopening the question regarding to what extent the faith of a couple is necessary for the validity
of the sacrament.
The 2015 synod did not take up this suggestion. However, just
prior to convening the Fourteenth General Synod of Bishops on the
Family, Pope Francis issued his motu proprio Mitis Iudex Dominus
Iesus in August of 2015. In this document that reforms the canons
of the Code of Canon Law pertaining to cases regarding the nullity
of marriage, Francis addressed circumstances that allow bishops to
annul a marriage without a formal tribunal proceeding. One of these
circumstances is “the defect of faith which can generate simulation
of consent or error that determines the will.”38 Thus, Francis maintained
		Ibid. (emphasis added).
		Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (October
5–19, 2014), Relatio Synodi: The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context
of Evangelization, §48, accessed October 28, 2017, http://www.vatican.va/
roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20141018_relatio-synodi-familia_en.html; Fourteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of
Bishops (October 4–25, 2015), Instrumentum Laboris: The Vocation and Mission
of the Family in the Church and the Contemporary World, §114, accessed October
28, 2017, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_
doc_20150623_instrumentum-xiv-assembly_en.html.
38
		Pope Francis, Apostolic Letter Motu Proprio Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus (15
August 15, 2015), art. 14, §1, accessed October 28, 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/
content/francesco/en/motu_proprio/documents/papa-francesco-motu-proprio_20150815_mitis-iudex-dominus-iesus.html (emphasis added).
36
37

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continuity with the statements of John Paul II and Benedict XVI,
who clarified that a lack of faith can invalidate consent to sacramental
marriage only if it influences the person’s will.
Additionally, subsequent to the synod, in his own address to the
officials of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota on January 22, 2016,
Pope Francis stated:
It is worth clearly reiterating that the essential component of
marital consent is not the quality of one’s faith, which according
to unchanging doctrine can be undermined only on the plane
of the natural (cf. CIC, Can. 1055 §§ 1,2). Indeed, the habitus
fidei is infused at the moment of Baptism and continues to have
a mysterious influence in the soul, even when faith has not been
developed and psychologically speaking seems to be absent. It
is not uncommon that couples are led to true marriage by the
instinctus naturae and at the moment of its celebration they have
a limited awareness of the fullness of God’s plan. Only later in
the life of the family do they come to discover all that God,
the Creator and Redeemer, has established for them. A lack
of formation in the faith and error with respect to the unity,
indissolubility and sacramental dignity of marriage invalidate
marital consent only if they influence the person’s will (cf.
CIC, Can. 1099). It is for this reason that errors regarding the
sacramentality of marriage must be evaluated very attentively.39
Thus, at the end of this brief historical survey, it is clear that
the magisterium of the most recent Popes clearly teaches that the
subjective faith of the couple is not, in the words of Pope Francis,
“an essential component of matrimonial consent.” What is essential,
“according to unchanging doctrine,” is that the baptized couple
intend to do what the Church does when it celebrates marriage,
which is to enter into a union marked by indissolubility, faithfulness,
and openness to children. This intention itself evidences an implicit
faith on the part of the couple to accept God’s plan for marriage,

		Pope Francis, “Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Officials of the
Tribunal of the Roman Rota for the Inauguration of the Judicial Year,”
January 22, 2016, accessed October 28, 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/
francesco/en/speeches/2016/january/documents/papa-francesco_20160122_
anno-giudiziario-rota-romana.html.

39

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which is, for the baptized couple, simultaneously a sacrament of
creation and one of redemption.
An Assessment of the Proposal of José Granados
Having presented a brief survey of the history since the mid-twentieth
century of the question of the relationship of faith to the sacrament of
Matrimony, we would like to draw attention to one recently proposed
answer to this question. One recent attempt to elaborate the role of
faith in the celebration of marriage is a 2014 article by José Granados
entitled “The Sacramental Character of Faith: Consequences for the
Question of the Relation between Faith and Marriage.”40 The work
of Granados, who is the vice-president of the Pontifical John Paul II
Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Lateran University
in Rome, is important because it aims to explain the inner relationship
between the sacrament of marriage and faith while avoiding a subjectivism that “would call into question the validity of many marriages
and would run the risk of discriminating against many Christians who
are arbitrarily judged to be not well-prepared, as Familiaris consortio,
§68 points out.”41 At the same time, Granados still wants to speak of a
minimum of faith that is needed for the sacrament, not in terms of the
subjective faith of the couple but in terms of their intention to belong
to the faith of the Church. He seeks to reframe the question of the role
of faith in the act of matrimonial consent by pointing out the ecclesiological roots of marriage. He makes a distinction between what he
calls a full sacramental character and incomplete sacramental character
in marriage based on the various degrees of incorporation into the
Body of Christ, the Church. Granados believes that, if this distinction
were accepted it would, in his words, amount to a “development of
doctrine.”42 Furthermore, for Granados, the incomplete sacramental
character of Protestant marriages would make it questionable as to
whether these marriages are absolutely indissoluble.
Granados also has a wider concern. He believes that the question
of the relation between faith and sacrament is important not only
for sacramental theology but also for the theology of faith. In Lumen
Fidei, Pope Francis affirms that, “while the sacraments are indeed
		José Granados, “The Sacramental Character of Faith: Consequences for
the Question of the Relation Between Faith and Marriage,” Communio 41
(Summer 2014): 245–68.
41
		Ibid., 257.
42
		Ibid., 260.
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sacraments of faith, it can also be said that faith itself possess a sacramental structure.” 43 Granados maintains that the faith itself has this
structure because “it prefigures and anticipates, in the matter of a
real symbol, the full definitive encounter with God.”44 This understanding is important for avoiding a subjectivist viewpoint that sees
faith in terms of an autonomous belief of an individual. Granados
aims to discuss the consequences of the relation between faith and
sacrament in order to shed light on the question of what the role of
faith is in the celebration of marriage. To accomplish this aim, he
argues that two aspects of marriage shed light on the act of faith: the
relation between marriage and creation, and the ecclesial dimension
of marriage. Faith, by its very nature, will be rooted in the truth of
creation and “will have features in common with the structure of
conjugal love.”45 Faith should be authentic, permanent, and fruitful.
The marriages of baptized Christians who, as members of the body
of Christ, become one flesh in the Lord and the Church show that
faith exists in close relation with ecclesial communion. Granados
says that this perspective can address cases of baptized persons with
a poor faith life who wish to be married, but his broader interest
is to highlight the relationship between faith and marriage that he
believes is essential for the new evangelization. We cannot and do
not intend to summarize the full content of Granados’s essay. Rather,
our purpose is to examine his contribution to understanding the
relation of faith to the valid celebration of marriage if marriage is a
sacrament of faith.
Consistent with the teaching of John Paul II, Granados maintains
that, by committing themselves to marriage in creation, natural
marriage, the couple “open themselves to a mystery that precedes
them, embraces them, and elevates them beyond themselves.”46 So,
natural marriage itself contains a reference to God. Those who accept
the natural, creaturely properties of marriage are open to the mystery
of God in their lives and, from that time on, are on a journey of
faith in some sense. We know from revelation that it foreshadows the
fullness of the manifestation of the mystery of God in Christ. If the
		Pope Frances, Encyclical Letter Lumen Fidei, §40, accessed October 28,
2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/
papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei.html.
44
		Granados, “The Sacramental Character of Faith,” 245–46.
45
		Ibid., 247.
46
		Ibid., 251.
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faith life of the fiancés is poor or nonexistent, care should be taken
in order to ascertain that they affirm the natural truths of marriage.
Granados insists on the traditional understanding of the Church
that a matrimonial contract cannot exist between validly baptized
persons without also being a sacrament. Once one has been baptized
into Christ and been touched and transformed by him who is the
unsurpassable event of God’s salvation history, it is impossible to
turn back and act as though Christ is not the foundation of one’s
life. It is not possible to return to a previous time and live a merely
creaturely and natural reality as though this existence were not put
in relationship to Christ at every level. To say otherwise would be
to deny that Christ affects the totality of one’s life. One cannot undo
one’s Baptism. Granados maintains that, even if a baptized couple
wishes to approach marriage apart from the perspective of Christ,
they could not contract even a natural marriage because they would
be explicitly rejecting the connection of marriage with Christ.47
Therefore, they would reject the natural dimension of marriage in its
openness to God that Christ himself confirmed. Granados observes
that what is traditionally called the inseparability of the contract of
marriage and the sacrament is firmly rooted in Christ’s affirmation
of the natural creaturely dimension of marriage and his elevation of
the natural reality to the level of a sacrament without requiring a
special rite.
Central to Granados’s presentation is his insistence on the importance of upholding an understanding of sacramental marriage viewed
as a reality rooted in ecclesiology. At every level, the sacramentality
of marriage must always be firmly linked with its ecclesiological
dimension, whether one is talking about the exchange of consent
or about the bond. Granados maintains: “The marriage of baptized
persons, their act of making themselves one flesh, is transformed
by the fact they are members of Christ. Configured to the body
of Christ’s flesh by baptism, they can be united in one flesh only if
they unite according to Christ’s standard.”48 Marriage is a certain
modification of being a member in Christ because now the spouses
are incorporated in a new way in the ecclesial one flesh and assist
in building it up as they live out their participation in the love that
unites Christ and the Church. For this reason, Granados observes,
		We comment on the problematic nature of this claim of Granados toward the
end of this article.
48
		Ibid., 255.
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some in the Middle Ages described matrimonial grace as “becoming
members of Christ.”49
With the ecclesial nature of marriage in mind, Granados argues
that there are degrees or levels of sacramentality in Christian
marriage and, so, two degrees of indissolubility. From the moment of
the exchange of canonical consent between the couple, there comes
into existence a sacrament in the true sense (a ratified marriage), but
not yet a full sacrament due to the fact that the spouses “do not yet
fully belong to one another in the incarnate way in which Christ and
the Church belong to one another.”50In other words, it is not until
consent is enacted bodily in consummation that the spouses become
one flesh according to the manner of the one flesh of Christ and the
Church. It is only in the participation in this one flesh that the sacramental union between the spouses becomes fully sacramental and
therefore absolutely indissoluble.
Granados argues that that the ecclesial nature of marriage and the
understanding that marriage incorporates a couple in a new way in
the ecclesial one flesh has implications for the traditional understanding that the couple must intend to do what the Church does in order
for there to be a sacramental marriage. Granados contends that the
question of intention needs to be examined in greater depth in the
case of the sacrament of Matrimony because it is unlike other sacraments. “The spouses are the ministers but their human acts are also
the matter of the sacrament; therefore, a minimum of personal acceptance of the sacramental meaning of the act that they are performing
and therefore a minimum of faith seems necessary, besides the intention to do what the church does.”51
Granados seeks to walk a fine line here. He wants to uphold the
teaching of FC §68, which warns against new requirements involving
judging the subjective level of the faith of couples seeking marriage.
Granados means to avoid this danger by arguing that marriage should
be understood as a sacrament of faith because of the larger faith of
the Church that the couple participates in through their Baptism. He
believes that keeping in mind the ecclesial roots of marriage enables
a reframing of the question of the relation of faith and marriage in a
		Ibid. Granados cites the anonymous treatise of the School of Laon: Conjugium
est secumdum Ysidorum, ed. F. Bliemetzrieder, Recherches de théologie ancienne et
médiévale 3 (1931): 273–91, at 275.
50
		Granados, “The Sacramental Character of Faith,” 256.
51
		Ibid., 257.
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better, more convincing way. He proposes to measure the minimum
of faith as the intention to be included in the Church and belong to
the faith of the Church. In other words, what should be required of
the couple is that they intend to marry as Christians, as people who
belong to the Church and who are conscious of the fact that their
marriage is not simply a private matter. Granados draws an analogy
between his proposal and infant Baptism. Although the infant is not
capable of making an individual act of faith, Baptism is still possible
through a certain participation of a baptized person in the larger faith
of the Church. Admittedly, the comparison with infant Baptism goes
only so far. Since personal consent is required for marriage, unlike
infant Baptism, there should be required of the couple personal
consent in order to belong to the Church’s faith. For Granados, what
is required for Christian marriage is something more than a mere
intention to do what the Church does. What is required of the couple
is a willingness to enter “into that great subject of the faith which is
the Church.”52 The term “minimum of faith” does not refer to the
subjective faith of the couple or different degrees of their faith, but
rather to what Granados calls “a central nucleus of faith, to an essential
dimension of the faith, which is one’s insertion into ecclesial faith.”53
The acceptance of canonical form would be proof of this necessary
minimum of faith.
For Granados, three things seem to be required to explain the role
of the faith in marriage: (1) acceptance of the creaturely and natural
truth of marriage, (2) incorporation into the spousal Body of Christ,
and (3) the couple’s acceptance of being inserted into ecclesial faith
of the Church, expressed in acceptance of canonical form. With this
understanding of the relation between marriage and ecclesial faith,
Granados makes an additional claim and proposal. He believes that
the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on ecumenism invites us
to look differently at the sacramental character of the marriages of
baptized persons separated from the Catholic Church. To be sure,
the marriages of Protestant Christians are sacramental. As baptized
Christians, they cannot somehow return to an earlier state without
Christ and contract a valid marriage apart from him. Granados asks,
though, whether the sacramental nature of the marriage of these
Christians has attained its fullness. What is decisive here is not the
lack of faith in the sacramentality of marriage but the couples’ imper		Ibid., 258.
		Ibid., 257.

52
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fect incorporation into the Church. The Second Vatican Council
taught that it is possible to belong to the Church in various degrees,
in a communion that is real but imperfect. Lumen Gentium §14 makes
clear that, in order to be fully incorporated into the Body of Christ,
other sacred realities or bonds of communion besides Baptism are
required. A complete profession of the faith of the Church and full
communion with the Church’s pastors, the pope and the bishops,
are also necessary.54 Separated Christians, then, are not fully incorporated into the Body of Christ because of what is lacking in the
ecclesial communities to which they belong. Granados argues that
there can be varying degrees of sacramentality in these marriages
according to the various degrees to which these Christians belong to
the Body of Christ. These degrees are determined objectively by the
profession of faith and other means of salvation that are only partially
present in the ecclesial communities of the bride and bridegroom.
Granados believes that this distinction between full and incomplete
sacramentality could potentially be understood as a development of
doctrine analogous to the one that took place in the medieval debate
about the consummation of marriage that identified two degrees of
indissolubility based upon the significance of the corporeal unity
between Christ and the Church in which the couples come to participate through consummation.55 He argues that, if it is the case that
Protestant marriages are sacramentally incomplete owing to the lack
of full unity with the Church, the Body of Christ, then it at least
raises the question regarding whether these marriages are absolutely
indissoluble. Granados asks whether it might be possible that the pope
could annul the incomplete sacramental bond of Protestant marriages
		“They are fully incorporated in the society of the Church who, possessing
the Spirit of Christ accept her entire system and all the means of salvation
given to her, and are united with her as part of her visible bodily structure
and through her with Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff
and the bishops. The bonds which bind men to the Church in a visible
way are profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical government
and communion” (Lumen Gentium, §14, accessed October 28, 2017, http://
www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_
const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html).
55
		It is this distinction which explains why the pope cannot dissolve a consummated marriage but can dissolve a ratified but nonconsummated marriage
that is sacramental because it does not participate in the full corporeal unity
between Christ and the Church. Something similar can be said for nonsacramental marriages that can be dissolved in favor of the faith according to the
Pauline Privilege (see CIC, can. 1143).
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in favor of the fullness of faith? If the pope can dissolve ratified but
nonconsummated marriages that are not fully sacramental because
they do not participate fully in the bond of unity of Christ and the
Church, might he also be able to annul the incomplete sacramental
bond of Protestant marriages? He does not believe that this proposal
runs afoul of the definitive teaching of the magisterium that ratified
and consummated marriages cannot be dissolved by anyone, even the
pope, because this clear teaching “does not consider the particular
case of those who are not fully incorporated into the body of Christ
because they belong to other ecclesial communities.”56
Evaluation
Although Granados wishes to avoid the danger of subjectivism warned
about in FC §68, it is hard to see how his proposal does not involve
a more sophisticated version of what is being criticized there. To be
sure, Granados sees the sacrament of Matrimony as a sacrament of
faith mainly due to the larger faith of the Church, but he still requires
the baptized couple to have more than the intention to do what the
Church does. As we have seen, they are required to have a “minimum
of faith” understood as a willingness to be inserted into ecclesial faith.57
While the couple’s acceptance of canonical form is said to be proof of
this minimum, Granados’ explanation of what this means goes beyond
simple acceptance of canonical form. He says that, because the human
acts of the couple are the matter of the sacrament, there must be a minimum of personal acceptance of the sacramental meaning of the act and
the acceptance of the presence of the Church in their marriage. But
does this not fall into the problem that FC warned against about laying
down further criteria for admission to the celebration of marriage that
would concern the level of faith of those who seek marriage? Does
not this minimum of faith, even if it is defined as the willingness to
be included into ecclesial faith, amount to a certain measurement of
the subjective faith of the couple—something that Granados wants to
avoid? Some baptized Christians, under-catechized Catholics among
them, who otherwise accept the natural properties of marriage may
have no real intention of acknowledging that, in contracting marriage,
they are entering into the great subject of integral faith that is the
Church. In effect, the proposal of Granados asserts that, without this
willingness, the human acts of the couple (presumably the mutual offer
		Granados, “The Sacramental Character of Faith,” 260.
		Ibid., 258.

56
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and mutual acceptance of married life) would not be apt matter for the
sacrament of Marriage. It would mean that the failure of one or both
of the parties to accept the presence of the full faith of the Church in
marriage would make their exchange of consent null. However, this
would require something more for the sacramental sign of marriage
than the Church has ever required.
John Paul II spoke to this point in his 2003 speech to the Roman
Rota: “It is crucial to keep in mind that an attitude on the part of
those getting married that does not take into account the supernatural dimension of marriage can render it null and void only if it
undermines its validity on the natural level on which the sacramental sign itself takes place.58 The Pope’s remarks are very helpful for
understanding the relation of sacramentality to marriage. First, John
Paul points out that the sacramental sign of marriage is to be found
in the conjugal pact itself. He draws attention to the uniqueness of
marriage as a sacrament in so far as it is the elevation of a natural
reality in creation ordered to natural ends. To think of the sacramental sign as also requiring the willingness of the couple to be inserted
into ecclesial faith would be to undermine the objective basis of the
sacramental sign itself—the conjugal pact instituted from the beginning of creation. Intended or not, this would involve an implicit
denial of sacramentality, because there would be lacking a consistent,
stable objectivity that makes marriage capable of being raised to a
sacrament.
Secondly, the Pope’s remarks amount to a call for a rigorous
upholding of the inseparability of the marriage contract and the
sacrament in all its implications. In effect, his words remind us that
we should take great care not to treat sacramentality as a reality that
is substantially different from the marriage contract. We ought not
to think that the couple makes a twofold act of the will toward two
objects: marriage willed by the act of consent and sacramentality by
the act of faith. Rather, the sacramentality consists in the same and
only natural marriage that has been elevated to the order of supernatural grace configured to Christ in his union with the Church,
thereby acquiring a firmness in all its properties. For marriage to be
a sacrament, nothing else is required of the baptized couple than for
them to will, with the right intention, the one and the same marriage

		John Paul II, Address to Prelate Auditors, Officials and Advocates, January 30,
2003.

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instituted by God at creation.59 To require something more would be
to fail to uphold the inseparability of the marriage contract and the
sacrament.60
Intended or not, any proposal that requires something more than
the intention to contract natural marriage ends up falling into this
kind of failure. If the baptized couple is required to affirm the minimum of faith understood as the intention to enter into the great
subject of faith that is the Church, then sacramentality is treated as
something substantially different from the marriage contract itself. It
is to imagine that this minimum of faith is added to natural marriage
in order for the marriage to be a sacrament. On the contrary, the
inability to receive the sacramental configuration of the union of
Christ with the Church can be brought about only by baptized
partners who voluntarily destroy the essential structure of natural
marriage and, thus, its aptness for sacramentality. In intending a
relationship that is devoid of the essential properties of marriage, the
baptized parties so corrupt the natural nuptial union that it cannot
signify the union of the Christ with his Church. But a lack of willingness in a couple to insert themselves in the full ecclesial faith of
the Church does not demolish the essential structure of marriage,
provided this lack does not lead the couple to exclude the essential
properties of marriage.
This brings us to the second part of Granados’ proposal with regard
to the sacramentality of the marriages of Protestant Christians. As we
have seen, he claims that, because Protestants are baptized members
of the Body of Christ, there is no doubt about the sacramental nature
or character of their marriages. The inseparability of the marriage
contract and the sacrament is valid for the marriages of these sepa		In speaking of God’s institution of marriage in creation, we understand this
to mean that, as a reality of creation, marriage is ordered toward the covenant
with God in Christ. On this point, see Carlo Caffarra, “Marriage as a Reality in the Order of Creation and Marriage as a Sacrament,” in Contemporary
Perspectives on Christian Marriage, ed. Richard Malone and John Connery,
S.J. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1982), 161–75. See also John Paul II,
“Marriage as the Primordial Sacrament,” General Audience of October 6,
1982, in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, ed. Michael
Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006), 503–7. In addition, see the
discussion of marriage as the “primordial sacrament” in Perry J. Cahall, The
Mystery of Marriage: A Theology of the Body and the Sacrament (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2016), 101–8, 291–93.
60
		See Juan-Pedro Viladrich, “Canon 1099—Commentary,” 1313.
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rated Christians. But the “minimum requirement of faith” would
seem to put into doubt the validity of these marriages at least in some,
if not many, instances. For, there are separated Christians who, while
they may regard marriage as instituted by God at creation, nevertheless do not regard marriage as involving an intention to be included
in the faith of the Church and the intention to marry “as persons
belonging to the ecclesial community.”
What about the claim that Protestant marriages have an incomplete sacramental character and may not be absolutely indissoluble
due to the lack of full incorporation into the Church? Intentions to
the contrary, this claim of Granados would also call into question
the marriages of baptized Catholics who are not fully incorporated
or not in full communion with the Church because of a defect of
faith. Even within the Catholic Church, there can be some degree of
variation of incorporation into Christ according to the criteria articulated in Lumen Gentium §14. A particular example to consider is the
case of Catholics who approach marriage having been baptized but
not confirmed. In the Code of Canon Law, canon 1065, §1, urges that
the couple should be confirmed before being admitted to marriage if
it can be done without serious inconvenience. Although all baptized
Catholics should be confirmed, and although this sacrament is
undoubtedly important for a fully fruitful reception of the sacrament of Matrimony, confirmation is not an absolute requirement for
marriage. There are military personnel who, because of deployment,
are not able to be confirmed in time for their marriage, but they still
have contracted marriage validly and indissolubly. There are also
those Catholics who approach the Church for marriage but do not
have a complete profession of faith because they reject some part of it.
In this way, there is missing one of the elements identified by Lumen
Gentium §14 as necessary for full incorporation, but the Church has
never called into question the absolute indissolubility of the marriages
of Catholics who fail to profess the integral Catholic faith.
If the absolute indissolubility of Protestant marriages can be called
into question due to a lack of full incorporation and full communion
with the Church, then the marriages of baptized Catholics who may
not be fully incorporated and are not in full communion with the
Church would be called into question as well. However, the doctrinal
and canonical tradition is clear that the ratified and consummated
marriages of all validly baptized Christians are absolutely indissoluble. Granados does not intend to call into question the marriages of
validly baptized Catholics, but nevertheless, in effect, he opens the

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way for this difficulty by maintaining that the lack of full incorporation into the Church calls into question the full sacramental reality
of marriages.
We believe that Granados is right to call attention to the ecclesial dimension of marriage and that sacramental marriage involves a
special and new participation in the Body of Christ. Certainly he is
correct in emphasizing that marriage is first and foremost a sacrament
of faith because of the faith of the Church and not because of the
subjective faith of the couple. He is also right to draw our attention,
theologically, to the fullness of the sacramentality in marriage that is
effected in and through bodily consummation, and this is an area that
stands in need of deeper theological reflection and is passed over too
easily, often as a distinction that is thought of as mainly juridical.61
Nevertheless, we conclude that to distinguish between marriages
that are completely sacramental and others that are thought to be
incompletely sacramental—and therefore not absolutely indissoluble
because of a lack of full incorporation into the Church—is not a way
forward for a deeper understanding of the relation between faith and
marriage or a way forward for doctrinal development with regard to
the sacrament of Marriage.
Concluding Reflections on the Role of Faith in
the Sacrament of Matrimony
The Importance of Ex Opere Operato
Perhaps the reason why the question of the relation of faith to the valid
celebration and confection of sacramental marriage has recurred as a
topic of discussion for the past several decades is the uniqueness of the
sacrament of Matrimony, for it is in this sacrament alone that the ministers of the sacrament are simultaneously the recipients. Yet, given this
uniqueness, it needs to be emphasized that, like the other sacraments,
marriage is effected ex opere operato, meaning it is Christ himself who is
acting in the sacramental actions of the Church.
It needs to be emphasized that, regardless of the worthiness of the
ministers, a worthiness that includes the level of the ministers’ faith,
Christ is the one who effects the sacrament. In order for a sacrament
to be administered by virtue of the human work that is performed,
what is required of the minister is that he or she intends to do what
		See the discussion of “The Sign of the Sacrament” in Cahall, The Mystery of
Marriage, 301–8.

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the Church does in the celebration of a sacrament. Thus a priest can
validly confect the Eucharist as long as he intends to do what the
Church does, even if he should have doubts regarding the Real Presence or lose his faith in the Real Presence entirely. In cases of emergency anyone, even a nonbeliever, can administer Baptism as long
as she intends to do what the Church does when she baptizes.62 It is
clear that the Church has established the parameters within which we
should discuss the relation between personal faith and the intention
necessary to validly administer sacramental marriage: the subjective faith of a couple is not an essential component of matrimonial
consent, and a lack of subjective faith can invalidate consent only if
it affects the couple’s intent to will natural marriage. Willing natural
marriage is enough to validly administer the sacrament of Matrimony
because marriage unites in a unique way the orders of creation and
redemption. The uniqueness of marriage is that Christ “did not institute a completely new liturgical ceremony or give new significance to
an existing ritual; he adopted a natural human institution as a sacrament of his Church.”63 Marriage, in fact, is a created reality, always
bearing some reference to God, but never a merely “secular reality.”64
Therefore, by willing natural marriage, which is willing marriage
according to God’s design, the baptized couple shows obedience to
God’s will and intends what God and the Church intend marriage to
be, evidencing at least implicit faith, as John Paul II noted in FC §68.
This intention is enough for the couple to administer the sacrament
of Marriage and for the sacrament to be effected ex opere operato.
The Centrality of the Baptismal Character
That the sacrament of Marriage is administered validly and works
ex opere operato, even when a couple’s subjective faith is minimal or
even non-existent, is due first and foremost to their baptismal dignity
and character as Christian spouses. It is the baptism of the spouses
that “is the criterion for the essential distinction between sacramental and non-sacramental Marriage.”65 This means that any two validly

		See Catechism of the Catholic Church [hereafter, CCC], 2nd ed. (Washington,
DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2000), §1256.
63
		Coleman O’Neill, Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, rev. ed. (New York: Alba
House, 1991), 235.
64
		Elliott, What God Has Joined, 10–11.
65
		Ibid., xvi.
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baptized spouses66 who exchange valid consent enter into a sacramental
marriage67 and not just a natural marriage, whether they are baptized
in the Catholic Church or in some other ecclesial community. Baptism
enables spouses to administer the sacrament of Matrimony to each
other because, by virtue of their Baptism, Christian spouses have been
re-created in Christ and have been organically inserted into his Mystical
Body, the Church.68 Baptism is “being-in-Christ,” and it is the necessary
condition for the spouses’ love to be taken up into Christ’s marital bond
with the Church and to become an effective sign of this bond. As the
spouses have been incorporated into Christ through Baptism, when
they contract their marriage, they are placed within the new and eternal
spousal covenant between Christ and his Church.69 Through Baptism,
Christ has claimed them for himself, and it is now impossible for them
to be and act outside of Christ. As Baptism consecrates and transforms
the spouses and incorporates them into Christ, it is therefore impossible
for baptized spouses to contract natural marriage without administering
the sacrament. This is shown most clearly by the fact that the marriage
of two non-Christians becomes a sacrament the moment that both
spouses have received baptism. Assuming they committed to natural
marriage before baptism, no renewal of vows is necessary because their
marriage has now been taken up into Christ. No matter their “degree
of faith,” the baptized spouses “draw upon their shared Baptism, on the
character which places them within the Mystical Body of Christ, on
that permanent consecration which makes their consent the cause of
a permanent union.”70 All of the sacraments are “human actions where
God acts,”71 and by virtue of their Baptism, it is Christ who gives the
spouses to each other and empowers them to live out their call. To hold
otherwise would be to renounce the Catholic understanding of the
indelibility of the character conferred by the sacrament of Baptism, a
character that José Granados rightly points out “is present in all the acts
of the baptized person, even when he is unaware of it or rejects it.”72
		Baptism “is validly conferred only by a washing of true water together with
the proper form of words” (CIC, can. 849), “with the right intention” (CIC,
can. 861, §2), which means intending to do what the Catholic Church does
when it baptizes (CCC, §1256).
67
		CIC, can. 1055, §2.
68
		CCC, §§1265 and 1267.
69
		See FC, §68.
70
		Elliott, What God Has Joined, 124.
71
		Ibid., xxxi.
72
		José Granados, “The Sacramental Character of Faith,” 264.
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“It should be noted that because the couple’s Baptism has organically incorporated them into the Mystical Body of Christ, their
exchange of consent is an ecclesial act.” 73 As the baptismal character
of the spouses makes their consent an ecclesial act, we can rightly
emphasize the ecclesial dimension of their faith. The ecclesial
dimension of the faith of the baptized in relation to the sacrament of
Marriage has recently been highlighted by the editors of Communio in
a Summer 2015 article entitled “Faith and the Sacrament of Marriage:
A Response to the Proposal of a New ‘Minimum Fidei’ Requirement.” 74 The authors of this article “argue that the personal faith that
all recognize in some respect as a conditio sine qua non for the validity
of the sacrament is not first and most essentially the subjective disposition of the individuals involved; rather, it is principally their participation, through baptism, in the faith of the Church.” 75 The authors
point out that the personal faith necessary to confect the sacrament of
Matrimony is first of all the faith of the Church, in which the spouses
participate through baptism.76 Thus, the implicit faith of a couple that
is evidenced by submitting to the reality of natural marriage is joined
to the perfect faith of the Church into which they have been organically inserted through baptism.77 In this way, following Pope Francis,
we can see that “the habitus fidei [that] is infused at the moment of
Baptism and continues to have a mysterious influence in the soul,
even when faith has not been developed and psychologically speaking
seems to be absent” can in fact be operative to perfect the instinctus
naturae that leads couples to marriage even if, “at the moment of its
celebration they have a limited awareness of the fullness of God’s
plan.”78 This highlights the indispensable importance of emphasizing
the baptismal character of the spouses when discussing the relation of
faith to the sacrament of Matrimony.

		Cahall, The Mystery of Marriage, 302.
		David L. Schindler, Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., D. C. Schindler, and Adrian J. Walker,
“Faith and the Sacrament of Marriage: A Response to the Proposal of a New
‘Minimum Fidei’ Requirement,” Communio 42 (Summer 2015): 309–30.
75
		Ibid., 312.
76
		Ibid., 322–23.
77
		Ibid., 323.
78
		Pope Francis, Address to the Officials of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota,
January 22, 2016.
73
74

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339

The Importance of the Distinction between Validity and Fruitfulness
The discussion of the relationship between faith and the sacrament
of Matrimony could also be aided by emphasizing the distinction
between the validity of the sacrament and its fruitfulness.79 Although
briefly mentioned in the ITC’s 1977 Propositions on the Doctrine of
Christian Marriage, this distinction was not given sustained attention or
emphasis there. While a sacrament is valid because it is celebrated by
the minister who intends to do what the Church does (with the proper
matter and form and according to ecclesial law), the effect on the
recipient of the sacrament depends on how well-disposed the recipient
is to receive sacramental grace. The recipient of a sacrament can pose
an obstacle (traditionally called an obex) to receiving sacramental grace
that “arises from the free will of the recipient, such as lack of faith or of
sorrow for sin.”80 Thus, it is important to bear in mind this distinction
between validity and fruitfulness when speaking about the requisite
intention and faith for administering the sacrament of Matrimony.
In the case of marriage, where the ministers and the recipients
of the sacrament are one and the same, it is possible for the spouses
to confer the sacrament validly but not fruitfully. “Judgment that a
marriage is valid neither affirms nor denies that the married couple
have received the graces of marriage.”81 A baptized couple, as ministers of the sacrament intending to do what the Church does, can
receive the sacrament in a state of mortal sin and still validly administer the sacrament of Matrimony to each other, even though the
grace of the sacrament will be rendered unfruitful in its effect on
them as individuals. As “baptized nonbelievers,” the couple can even
be unconcerned about or disinterested in the sacramental nature of
marriage and still administer the sacrament of Matrimony validly to
each other as long as they intend to enter into a natural marriage.
It is true that a sacrament will not be valid, and in fact will not be
effected, if the recipient is opposed to receiving it.82 Yet, in reality
		The distinction between validity and fruitfulness of the sacraments was first
made by Augustine in his disputes with the Donatists. See On Baptism, Against
the Donatists 1.12.18–20.
80
		Bernard Leeming, Principle of Sacramental Theology (Westminster, MD: Newman
Press, 1956), 6.
81
		Ibid., 277.
82
		That the sacraments are not effected if the recipient is opposed to receiving
it was first articulated by Pope Gregory IX when he addressed the effect of
Baptism in his Letter Maiores Ecclesiae Causas to Archbishop Humbert of Arles
in 1201; see DS, no. 781.
79

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Lawrence J. Welch & Perry Cahall

“baptized nonbelievers” are not completely opposed to receiving
the sacrament of Marriage if they will to enter into a true natural
marriage. Not wanting Christ to be part of their life as a married
couple or rejecting the sacramental understanding of marriage, in the
case of validly baptized non-Catholic Christians, does not corrupt
the sacramental sign of natural marriage that Christ himself elevates
to the level of a sacrament.83 The reason that a couple qualified as
“baptized nonbelievers” can still validly administer the sacrament of
Marriage is that, by virtue of the indelible character of their Baptism,
they are united to each other by Christ ex opere operato. Thus, even
though the spouses may pose an obstacle (obex) to receiving the grace
(res tantum) of the sacrament of Matrimony, an indissoluble bond (res
et sacramentum) is still forged between them that has a real effect on
the life of the Church. Additionally, it is possible that the couple may
repent of their sin or respond in faith to what God has effected, at
which point, the validly conferred sacrament of Matrimony would
bear fruit in their lives. Thus, the grace of the sacrament can revive
due to the abiding bond that was effected between them by Christ.84
Although, through sin or a lack of subjective faith, a couple can at
any time in their married life render unfruitful their participation in
Jesus’s love for his Church, this love can be reenlivened throughout
		Thus, we disagree with José Granados when he claims: “If baptized persons
approach marriage as a merely natural reality, explicitly rejecting its connection with Christ, their understanding of their wedding differs from that of
non-believers. Indeed, it is one thing to live one’s nature with a possible openness to Christ, before finding him; it is something else entirely to approach
nature in opposition to Christ. A direct rejection of Christ would make it
impossible for the contracting parties to experience marriage in its natural
dimension, precisely because it would deny an intrinsic element of natural
marriage: its openness, albeit perhaps unconscious, to its definitive fullness in
Jesus” (254). A direct rejection of Christ could render a marriage invalid if,
by this rejection, the couple also rejected one of the essential properties of
natural marriage. However, by virtue of their baptism, even should the couple
abandon or reject Christ, he has not rejected them, and if they intend natural
marriage, he acts through their consent to elevate this natural sign to the level
of a sacrament.
84
		According to St. Augustine, the grace of certain sacraments that are received in
an unfit state, and thus with no effect on their recipient, can revive and have an
effect on the recipient after repentance takes place (see On Baptism, Against the
Donatists, 1.12.18–20). Other sacraments in which the “reviviscence” of grace
is possible are Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Orders, and Anointing of the Sick.
For further comments on “reviviscence,” see Leeming, Principles of Sacramental
Theology, 266–67 and 278–79.
83

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341

the course of the couple’s life together. Even if the sacrament is not
fruitful for the couple at the time they administer the sacrament of
Matrimony to each other, the sacrament can still be valid and have an
effect on the Church because it “is truly a ritual prayer of Christ and
his Church”85 that expresses her faith and that has indissolubly united
two members of the Body of Christ. This distinction between validity and fruitfulness again highlights the importance of the ecclesial
context for understanding both valid matrimonial consent and the
sacrament of Matrimony itself as a “sacrament of faith” that presupposes, nourishes, strengthens, and expresses, by words and objects, the
faith of the Church, and not some vague or elusive personal faith.86
Pastoral Implications of the Question Regarding the Role of Faith
in the Sacrament of Marriage
Peter Elliott, auxiliary bishop in Melbourne, Australia, in his 1990 book
What God Has Joined . . . The Sacramentality of Marriage, notes, “the
Catholic Church is for all people, for the weak and sinful, all of us who
need sacraments and who receive them imperfectly, relying on the God
who acts in the sacraments.”87 This is certainly true of the sacrament
of Matrimony, which John Paul II said in FC can assist a couple with
upright intention and implicit faith to bring to completion their journey toward salvation.88 He noted that, if the couple has upright intention, Christ offers the grace in the sacrament of Matrimony to support
their journey in faith.89 Requiring any level of subjective faith beyond
the faith implicit in the intention to contract a natural marriage would
run the risk of denying weak and sinful couples, which are all couples,
the opportunity to receive the grace that Christ wants to bestow upon
them in the sacrament of Matrimony.
This does not mean, however, that there is not a greater need
than ever to properly prepare couples not only to administer the
sacrament of Matrimony validly but also to receive it fruitfully. The
valid administration of the sacrament can no longer be presumed in
a culture that no longer accepts the indissoluble, faithful, and fruitful
goods of natural marriage, let alone the unique complementarity of
		Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (New
York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), 82.
86
		See SC, §56.
87
		Elliott, What God Has Joined, 198.
88
		FC, §68.
89
		Ibid.
85

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Lawrence J. Welch & Perry Cahall

a man and a woman that makes possible the pursuit of these goods.
Couples must be explicitly catechized to understand these defining
characteristics of conjugal love and natural marriage. The importance
of this period of catechesis was emphasized in the final report from
the most recent synod on the family.90 Even more recently, Pope
Francis, in his Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia,
emphasized the importance of marriage preparation that “should be a
kind of ‘initiation’ to the sacrament of matrimony, providing couples
with the help they need to receive the sacrament worthily and to
make a solid beginning of life as a family.”91 This preparation should
seek to provide the opportunity for couples to overcome any obstacles
that would prevent them from participating fully in the love that the
One Bridegroom shares with his Bride, a love that strengthens and
N&V
elevates their own natural marital love.

		Fourteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, “The Final
Report of the Synod of Bishops to the Holy Father, Pope Francis,” October
24, 2015, §57, accessed October 28, 2017, http://www.vatican.va/roman_
curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20151026_relazione-finale-xiv-assemblea_en.html#Marriage_Preparation.
91
		Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, §207, accessed October
28, 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_
en.pdf.
90

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2018): 343–359

343

Book Reviews
Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law by J.
Budziszewski (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 475 pp.

St. Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law takes up questions
90–107 in the prima secundae partis of his Summa theologiae. It concerns
not only the nature of law in general (rational, for the common good,
and promulgated by he who has care of the community), but also the
four specific types of law (eternal, natural, human, and divine) and
questions concerning their natures, causes, and effects. Although discussions of Aquinas’s view of natural law are not difficult to find—especially in the debates in recent years over the new natural law and its
application to contemporary issues—no one, until now, has published a
line-by-line commentary of the Angelic Doctor’s Treatise on Law.
Most philosophers are exposed to Aquinas’s work in law by way
of selections found in anthologies, rather than by direct acquaintance
with the full panoply of St. Thomas’s philosophical and theological
corpus. For this reason, these readers oftentimes approach the Angelic
Doctor with a cluster of modern assumptions that make it difficult
for them to truly understand Aquinas’s thought. In this book, J.
Budziszewski provides these readers with the epistemic, metaphysical, and theological infrastructure that is nearly always missing
from contemporary “textbook” accounts of the Treatise on Law. As
Budziszewski points out in his introduction, so many of the contemporary critics of St. Thomas assess his view of law while ignoring
the rest of the Summa theologiae, the work from which the Treatise is
derived and with which it is organically connected. Thus, to many of
these critics, Aquinas’s position seems naïve and simplistic, and thus
not worthy of serious consideration by contemporary philosophers
of law. Unfortunately, this mistaken understanding gets repeated and
recycled by generations of scholars who are not aware of what they

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Book Reviews

do not know. Budziszewski’s book is an important remedy to this
exegetical negligence.
After the acknowledgements, a republication of Aquinas’s prayer
before study, and a diagram of the architecture of law, Budziszewski
begins this volume with a wonderful introduction. As one would
expect, he provides an overview of what he is trying to accomplish
in this book. But he also offers an introduction to Aquinas’s life and
work, as well as to the Summa and how to read it. It is clear that
Budziszewski is not writing just for the guild, but as he puts it, for
“students, general readers, and other serious amateurs” (xxiii). For
this reason, he situates Aquinas historically, explains the disputational structure of the Summa (prologue, ultrum, objections, sed contra,
respondeo, etc.), and responds to questions and concerns about Aquinas’s approach that contemporary readers often raise: that it is dry,
lacks warmth, relies too much on authority, ignores issues important
to present day scholars, and so on. (I have no doubt that this last point
is a result of Budziszewski having, for many years, taught a graduate
seminar on the Treatise on Law at the University of Texas, where he
serves as professor of philosophy and government.)
The book covers only questions 90–97, which is the portion of
the Treatise that is most often anthologized. In a free online-accessible volume meant to accompany the book—Companion to the
Commentary—Budziszewski offers commentary (and reflections) on
questions 100, 105, and 106, which concern the Divine Law, both
Old and New. The Companion is 239 pages in length and addresses
many questions that are not addressed in The Commentary. Among
the over sixty issues (or topics) he addresses are the following: “What
is the common good, anyway?” “Does the eternal lawmaker really
exist?” “What counts as harm to others?” “Shared private goods,”
“Do even sociopaths and psychopaths know the natural law?” and
“Conscience, conscience, and conscience, revisited.” (In my judgment, the publisher should have fully integrated The Companion with
The Commentary.)
The Commentary is divided into two parts. The first part—“Law
Itself, In General”—covers questions 90–92, and the second part—
“The Parts of the Law”—covers 93–97. Each question begins with
some introductory comments (e.g., “Before Reading Question
93”), and this is followed by commentary on the prologue and then
commentary on each article. Using the Dominican Fathers’ translation, Budziszewski includes Aquinas’s text along with his own
paraphrase in a column to the right of it. So, what the reader gets is

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345

the standard translation (which, as Budziszewski points out in several
places, has its drawbacks) accompanied by the author’s interpretation
for those of us who are Dominican-Fathers-translation impaired.
Following each section of the text (prologue, ultrum, objections, sed
contra, respondeo, etc.) is Budziszewski’s commentary. Because it is lineby-line, sections of the commentary are numbered to correspond to
the portions of the text on which Budziszewski is commenting. So,
for example, in Aquinas’s text, we read: “[1] Objection 1. It would
seem that law is not pertaining to reason” (12). And below in his
commentary, Budziszewski writes: “[1] To say that ‘law is pertaining
to reason’ is to say that it pertains to the very essence of law to be
reasonable rather than arbitrary, to address itself to the intellect rather
than merely the will, to be something that the mind can recognize
as right. The objections deny that this is essential to true law” (13).
Sometimes Budziszewski breaks up the sections of Aquinas’s
text—mostly when it is a lengthy respondeo—in order to properly
walk the reader through some difficult passages that require detailed
attention. So, for example, when commenting on the precepts of
the natural law in question 94, article 2, Budziszewski is careful
in explaining what Aquinas means by self-evidence in theoretical
and practical reason and how modern understandings of nature and
rationality often impede the uninitiated reader from grasping what
Aquinas is actually saying. This is where Budziszewski is at his best.
He is exceptionally gifted in presenting difficult ideas in a readable
and winsome fashion. There are, of course, those who think that to
say that a book is accessible is the same as saying it is “popular” or
“nonscholarly.” That may be true of some works, but not this one.
Budziszewski’s clarity of word does what all good writing on difficult
texts is supposed to do: it illuminates, while not diminishing, the
sophistication and complexities of its subject matter.
By providing what, I believe, will soon be recognized as the standard work from which readers can derive an accurate and sympathetic rendering of Aquinas’s Treatise on Law in language they can
understand, Budziszewski has given us a unique and important
contribution not only to the literature on Aquinas but also to the
N&V
conversations in contemporary legal and political philosophy.
Francis J. Beckwith
Baylor University
Waco, TX

346

Book Reviews

The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification According to St.
Thomas Aquinas by Daria Spezzano (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press,
2015), 390 pp.

Recent scholarship on deification has been
ecumenical. Far from being an exclusively Eastern doctrine, it arguably
plays a central role in Western theology. Anna Williams argued, for
example, that Thomas Aquinas was much closer to Gregory Palamas
than traditionally supposed, even suggesting that his mature thought
was moving toward the Eastern view that grace is fundamentally
uncreated.1 Daria Spezzano’s new book, by contrast—originally her
dissertation at Notre Dame directed by Joseph Wawrykow—focuses
exclusively on Thomas’s mature account of deification. Since, by Spezzano’s lights, Thomas understands deification as salvation, the bulk of
the book is spent summarizing sundry soteriological topics.
After the introduction, chapter 1 discusses the doctrine of God,
covering participation, the divine ideas, predestination, the beatific
vision, and the divine missions. Chapter 2 discusses the image of God
in connection with the divine missions. Human action, grace and free
will, and sanctifying grace are covered in chapter 3. Chapter 4 focuses
on Christology, including the Incarnation and the grace of Christ.
Chapter 5 summarizes Thomas’s questions on charity, and chapter
6 summarizes his view of wisdom and charity in connection with
Christ’s Passion and priesthood, as well as our deification through
the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. Chapter 7 recapitulates the
book, and two appendices briefly cover the history of deification and
the question of created grace, respectively.
Chapter 1 begins with the basics of Thomas’s view of nature and
grace. Human beings are created for an end beyond their grasp. We
must be transformed by grace and receive the theological virtues of
faith, hope, and love to advance to eternal life, participation in God.
At the most basic level, participation is when “something receives in
a particular fashion what belongs to another in universal or total fashion” (24). All creatures participate in God to some extent, as God is
being itself. Rational creatures participate according to intellect and
reason and are thus capable of “true deification” (30), culminating
1

Anna N. Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). This reading of Aquinas has not
gone unchallenged; see Bruce Marshall, “Ex Occidente Lux? Aquinas and Eastern Orthodox Theology,” Modern Theology 20, no. 1 (2004): 23−50.

Book Reviews

347

in the beatific vision. In the vision—our ultimate deiformity—the
essence of God becomes the intelligible form by which we know
God, thus making us like God, who knows himself through himself.
Most of chapter 2 is a commentary on Summa Theologiae [ST ] I, q.
93, on the image of God. All creatures bear at least a trace of God,
but rational creatures are properly said to “image” God, as they share
a specific likeness of God’s intellectual nature. Thomas conceives
the image in Trinitarian terms. The rational creature’s intellectual
production of the word and love represent the eternal generation of
the Word and Spiration of the Holy Spirit. Spezzano concludes by
linking the image to Thomas’s treatment of the divine missions: the
divine persons are sent to human beings to lead them to the beatific
vision. To receive the persons in time, however, we must be transformed by grace.
Chapter 3 begins with a discussion of human action and the relation between grace and free will. All creatures have secondary causal
powers and their actions are simultaneously caused by God, the
primary cause; rational creatures have free will and are directed by
providence. No creature has the power to reach beatitude unless God
gives the grace of the Holy Spirit. Spezzano deftly explains Thomas’s
view of sanctifying grace in the second half of chapter 3 (129−51),
which can be read in conjunction with appendix B, on created grace.
These are two of the most helpful sections of the book. Spezzano’s
treatment of Thomas’s views goes a long way toward dispelling the
objection that, if grace is created, deification is impossible. Created
grace, as the intermediary between creature and creator, blocks
genuine union with God. Instead (so the objection goes), we should
say with the Orthodox tradition that grace is uncreated. Spezzano
shows that, pace Williams, the vocabulary of created grace is found in
Thomas’s mature works. (She suggests that Thomas usually describes
grace as “habitual” rather than “created” because the former term
is more specific, linking grace to the activities it enables [365]). As
Thomas argues in ST I-II, q. 110, a. 1, grace can be said with reference to God’s gracious will toward his creatures or with reference to
the transforming effect it has on them. Without the latter, sanctifying
grace (gratia gratum faciens), we could not be deified; we would be
stuck in sin. Grace is the means by which we participate in the divine
nature and—as the subsequent chapters show in detail—in Christ’s
sonship and the Spirit’s spiration.
Drawing heavily on Thomas’s biblical commentaries, chapter 4

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Book Reviews

shows that deification is given only through Christ. Indeed, every
reference to 2 Peter 1:4 in the commentaries is Christologically
oriented. By participating in the divine nature, we participate as
adopted sons in Christ’s natural sonship. Jesus Christ, who fully
possesses grace as man, both models grace and dispenses it to us.
Chapter 5 focuses on charity, the theological virtue enabling us to
love God above all things as the source of beatitude. By charity, we
become friends with God and participate in the Holy Spirit, whose
proper name is charity. Chapter 6 begins by discussing wisdom, the
virtue enabling one to judge things according to their highest causes.
The wisdom of metaphysics and sacra doctrina can be acquired through
study, but the wisdom that is a gift of the Holy Spirit is given to
all believers. It perfects their charity so that that they can judge, by
way of inclination, what to do for salvation. Though the image of
God in human beings is Trinitarian by nature, charity and wisdom
conform us to the Trinity in a higher way. The chapter culminates
with a discussion of how Christ, full of charity and wisdom, leads us
to salvation through Baptism and the Eucharist: “By the Eucharist
especially, one might say, we participate in the likeness of the Holy
Spirit by being conformed to the charity of Christ’s passion” (323).
Chapter 7 recapitulates previous chapters.
The book is somewhat repetitive. The same summary of Thomas’s treatment of the divine missions is found in both chapter 1 and
chapter 2. Appendix A, a brief survey of deification before Aquinas,
overlaps with the introduction. With the exception of created grace,
engagement with objections to Thomas’s thought is precluded by the
study’s very broad scope. It would have been interesting to see the
author’s response to the common objection (voiced even by some
prominent Thomists) that Christ cannot have enjoyed the beatific
vision uninterruptedly in via.2 If the objection holds, it would seem
Thomas’s view of our participation in the fullness of Christ’s grace
would need to be rethought.
Despite these structural issues, the book is meticulously researched
and provides a wealth of helpful material for scholars interested in
Thomas’s view of deification. The extensive citations from the biblical commentaries throughout the book are especially helpful, as are
the fairly frequent references back to the Scriptum. Moreover, future
2

See, for example, J.-P. Torrell, O.P., “S. Thomas d’Aquin et la science du
Christ,” in Saint Thomas au XXe siècle, ed. S. Bonino (Paris: Éditions St. Paul,
1994), 394−409.

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349

ecumenical research will need to reckon with Spezzano’s robust articulation of Thomas’s view on the created effects of God’s grace. N&V
Daniel W. Houck
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX

Benedict XVI’s Reform: The Liturgy between Innovation and
Tradition by Nicola Bux, translated by Joseph Trabbic (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2012), 165 pp.

A return to Roman liturgical tradition was a key aspect
of the pontificate of Benedict XVI. This included ritual sobriety, the
increased employment of Latin, the restoration of formerly abandoned
vesture and practices, and the liberalization of the use of the Roman
rites as celebrated in 1962 (the Extraordinary Form, including the
Mass of John XXIII). It is noteworthy that Pope Francis has continued
the general lines of this Benedictine “reform.” The current pontiff has
not nullified or placed general restrictions upon Benedict’s 2007 motu
proprio Summorum Pontificum. Francis continues to use a version of the
so-called Benedictine altar arrangement, having, most importantly, an
upright crucifix on the altar between himself and the congregation as
they face each other. One could even say that, despite Francis’s clear
attempt to celebrate the liturgy in a simpler fashion than did Benedict
XVI, Francis is maintaining the Benedictine return to a more sober, less
exuberant, less creative style, a hallmark of Roman liturgy over the ages
as compared to Eastern liturgies. Experientially, I would hold as well
that Benedict’s approach has led to and continues to typify the overall
trend in American parish life toward a more traditional style. Nicola
Bux’s study of Benedict’s liturgical theology and legislation thus retains
its pertinence.
Bux, a professor of Eastern liturgy and sacramental theology at the
Pugliese Theology Faculty of Bari, Italy, is an unabashed proponent
of Pope Benedict’s liturgical options. His book serves as a presentation and defense of the former pontiff and, more generally, of the
Extraordinary Form of the Mass. Some of the book’s material explicitly meditates on texts from Ratzinger, while other sections are more
independent, although always in a Ratzingerian spirit.
Chapter 1, entitled “The Sacred and Divine Liturgy,” identifies
how Catholic religious ritual, the liturgy, is ultimately a gift from
God to man, an encounter that should involve us responding to God

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Book Reviews

in devoted worship. For Bux, a contemporary retrieval of the sense
of the sacred requires the Extraordinary Form of the liturgy, for it
expresses preeminently the sacred. Furthermore, due to its divine
origin, the liturgy is not changeable at man’s whim. The liturgy is
formed by and forms tradition. In this, Bux describes the liturgy as
“rational,” an intermittent theme of the book. One thinks of the
Roman Canon’s preconsecration petition that the oblatio be made
rationabilis, rational, reasonable, spiritual. This focus on the liturgical
ratio is inspired by Ratzinger himself (see his The Spirit of the Liturgy
[San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000], 50). Although not mentioned
by Bux in his book, one thinks here of Pope Benedict’s Regensburg
defense of human reason in the service of religious faith.
The second chapter draws upon Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity, establishing how the liturgy is more God-centered than
man-centered. Furthermore, in the liturgy’s relationship between
God and men, the dynamic flow is from God to men via Christ and
his Passion and Resurrection.
While the first two chapters of the book are meditations upon large
liturgical themes, chapter 3 begins a shift to the more detailed discussion of recent liturgical reforms. Herein, starting with Pope Pius XII,
Bux presents various steps in the adaptation of the liturgy. He uses
some traditionalist argumentation but generally gives a conservative
critique. He presents the familiar distinction between a prudent
reform requested by the Second Vatican Council and an imprudent
one enacted by the post-conciliar Consilium. Bux upholds some of the
changes as reasonable: “liturgical reform, . . . according to Pius XII,
results from the necessity of things, because the liturgy itself is a form
that continually tends to re-form itself in the sense of organic development” (61). Bux supports, for instance, the 1965 missal revisions
of Pope Paul VI (61), a surprising position given Bux’s promotion of
the 1962 missal. He laments much else of the post-conciliar reform
as unreasonable, afflicted by the particular disease of “antiquarianism
(archeologismo)” (61 and 73).
Chapter 4 presents and defends Summorum Pontificum, insisting that
the motu proprio is entirely about ecclesial and liturgical unity and
that it does not represent a rupture. Bux identifies the initiative as
“a cease-fire . . . in the battle” (75). Benedict attempted to emphasize divine worship, not to distinguish the relative value of varying
liturgical rites. Bux raises the interesting point that a single Eastern
Church sui iuris can have multiple rites for the Divine Liturgy. Thus,

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diversity within the Roman Church can be a good development.
Bux’s fifth chapter opens with concerns about how the unity and
doctrine of the Church can be preserved in an environment of multiple liturgical forms. His overall intent is to illustrate that liturgical
plurality should not and, indeed, does not threaten ecclesial unity.
The chapter gets diverted, however, by the thorny question as to
whether the liturgical rites promulgated in 1962 were ever officially
abrogated by Paul VI. Bux marshals much material upholding the
irrevocable character of the Mass of Pope John XXIII. The most
convincing evidence that Bux raises is the thwarted request of the
Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship (including Archbishop
Annibale Bugnini) to have a declaration of abrogation issued for the
1962 missal by the Pontifical Commission for the Interpretation of
the Decrees of the Second Vatican Council, a request that the Vatican
secretary of state refused to forward to the latter dicastery “on the
grounds that [such a declaration] would constitute persistent hatred
of the liturgical tradition” (102). Overall, this chapter is one of the
more unsatisfying of the book, for it is too simplistic and polemically emotional, often in self-contradictory ways. To say that “no
liturgical book or part of a liturgical book has been abrogated unless
it contained errors” (100) is difficult to harmonize with St. Pius V’s
Quo Primum, the bull that instituted the “Novus Ordo” of 1570 and
that prohibited the use of many rites. To say that Summorum Pontificum
“did not cause any confusion” on the matter of abrogation (105) is
difficult to accept historically and sociologically. Bux’s impassioned
defense alone proves that this issue has been a concern among Catholics. Part of the problem turns on the definition of the term “abrogation.” Bux makes oblique reference to this fact (104) but should
have elucidated the matter more clearly. Furthermore, Bux should
have admitted the complexity of justifying how an ordinary priest
could have virtuously used the 1962 Missale Romanum in the 1970s
and early 1980s and how the laity could have virtuously participated
at such Masses. This would have allowed for a clearer recognition
of the pastoral sensitivity and broadmindedness of John Paul II and
Benedict XVI.
Chapter 6 reflects on how the liturgy should lead us to the adoration and worship of God. The discussed features are the servant
quality of priests, the liturgical activity and devotion of the laity,
the attention that should be given to a physical image of the Cross
(including a unified ad orientem posture), and architecture that

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elevates the soul. The seventh and final chapter offers an assortment
of liturgical reflections, many based upon Benedict’s 2007 post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist, Sacramentum Caritatis.
Concerning the book’s contents, the overlap between Ratzinger’s
ideas and Bux’s is strong. Perhaps because it is more of a commentary
and defense of Ratzinger, Benedict XVI’s Reform does not substantially
advance the overall subject of how to understand the liturgy and its
recent changes or how to move the situation forward. Rather, Bux
catalogs the major elements of the nontraditionalist, conservative
critique of contemporary liturgy. In one innovative twist, he alleges
at various points that the liturgical reforms after the Second Vatican
Council possess a Rahnerian character (e.g., 31, 73, 95). This is an
interesting opinion that Bux does not develop at length but that could
bear further investigation.
This book would be most suitable for a liturgically interested,
nontechnical audience already inclined to or at least open to a more
traditional liturgy. Stylistically, Bux sometimes paints with broad
strokes, asserting points as part of a meditation rather than establishing them via careful, structured argumentation. It is not written
in a dispassionate, “ecumenical” style that may more readily entice
progressives to abandon their positions. A more serene, broadminded style may have helped Bux to garner a greater percentage of
the readers who have been captivated by the penetrating wisdom of
N&V
Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy.
Dominic M. Langevin, O.P.
Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception
Washington, DC

Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, &
William of Ockham by Thomas M. Osborne, Jr. (Washington DC:
Catholic University of America, 2014), 250 pp.

Thomas Osborne’s Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John

Duns Scotus, & William of Ockham provides a helpful comparative
analysis of three key medieval thinkers with respect to their distinct
accounts of human action or theories of “moral psychology” (xvi).
These thinkers, Osborne states, “are arguably the three most significant
philosophers and theologians of the central period in the development
of Scholastic thought” (xiii). His work is written in an accessible style
that renders it useful not only as a resource for specialist researchers in

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the medieval era but also as a supplemental text for course instruction
at the graduate level. While the exact focus and content of this study
is unique, it is comparable in approach to other recent volumes in
medieval ethics and moral theology such as M. V. Dougherty’s Moral
Dilemmas in Medieval Thought: From Gratian to Aquinas (2013), or to
the comparative medieval studies of Marilyn McCord Adams, Richard
Cross, or Russell L. Friedman.
Osborne states that his study aims to provide an overview of the
issues with which medieval moral psychology grappled and that
this, in turn, will serve to illuminate key philosophical questions in
ethics, as well as to provide historical background for understanding
Reformation and early modern thought (xvi). While Osborne states
that his primary goal is to provide a systematic overview of the three
thinkers under consideration, his study also illustrates a contextual
historical understanding of the authors in question. For example, at
times, he provides occasional contextual references to other important medieval ethicists such as Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard,
Peter Lombard, and Albert the Great. Osborne is explicitly conscious
of the methodological need to avoid conforming the authors under
consideration to a superficial historical narrative in which Scotus is
construed as reacting to Aquinas, and Ockham in turn to Scotus
(see 222–23, where Osborne briefly critiques two common historiographical trends). On this point, Osborne recognizes that Aquinas
in the era prior to his canonization did not have as significant an
intellectual import for Franciscan thinkers as contemporary scholars
might expect (xix). Overall, Osborne indicates that his comparative
studies should serve to provide his reader both with basic familiarity
with the moral psychology of each thinker and with a cognizance of
the doctrinal currents that proved to be influential upon subsequent
Western thought (xxv). In this respect, Osborne points to three
main themes that he indicates establish a reliable historical narrative
concerning the doctrinal developments in fundamental ethics from
Aquinas to Ockham: “(1) a developing separation between nature
and will, (2) an increased emphasis on the will’s activity, and (3) a
changing view of mental causation” with respect to elicited exterior
acts (xxiv–xxv, cf. 227). These themes collectively provide a helpful
orientation for continued study of these thinkers, a framework that
other scholars will benefit from exploring and evaluating.
Osborne’s work is organized into five chapters enveloped by an
introduction and a conclusion. Each of the five chapters is focused on

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a particular ethical topic, such as the causes of a moral act (viz., an
agent’s intellect and will), the stages of a moral act, or the specification
of a moral act. Regarding the structure of the book, Osborne states
that it “develops thematically” (xxii). The topical arrangement of the
study is intended generally to follow the ordo doctrinae found in questions 6–21 of the prima secundae of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, which
Osborne maintains is the most complete and systematic treatment of
moral psychology found among the works of the three thinkers under
consideration (xvi). Each of Osborne’s chapters is further divided into
four parts. This schema for the most part follows a common pattern
of first expositing Aquinas’s position on the ethical topic at hand and
then the positions of Scotus and Ockham and closing with a synopsis
that compares and contrasts the main positions of these thinkers.
The work provides an extensive bibliography, including reference
to a few non-English secondary sources. In contrast with the bibliography, however, the index of the book entails a shortcoming in that it
does not extend to the footnotes and, thus, omits almost all secondary
sources cited in the work. This is unfortunate, since Osborne’s work
is well-documented. The only way to determine quickly whether
Osborne assesses other important secondary studies (for example,
Pinckaers on moral freedom in Ockham) is to skim through all of
the footnotes. In such notes, however, Osborne’s engagement with
secondary literature is concise and strictly limited to specific issues
that arise during the course of his primary exposition (there is no
distraction of his reader with long excursuses). Regarding primary
sources, Osborne takes care to cite the current critical editions of the
Latin texts where such are available (see his introductory note on xi–
xii). Osborne’s closing contrasts at the end of each chapter communicate helpful summative analyses to the casual reader and invite
closer engagement with the more in-depth preceding sections that
supply precise documentation. Osborne’s brief concluding chapter to
the book serves to provide a similar summary for the entire work.
This outlines his main observations and contains his exposition of the
three main developmental themes mentioned above (see 221–28, as
well as the summary at the end of his introduction, xxiv–xxv).
I found of particular interest and import Osborne’s assessment of
the thinkers under consideration with respect to their common position regarding the moral status of acts construed to involve intrinsic
evil. Unlike other contemporary Catholic moral historians, Osborne
recognizes that all three thinkers affirm that there are indeed certain
kinds of human acts that involve intrinsic moral evil, and also that

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there are biblical, medieval, and Aristotelian precedents for this
doctrine (xvii–xviii, cf. 193 and especially the reference to Dedek
on 151n11). Likewise, Osborne highlights how Aquinas and Duns
Scotus both affirm that exterior acts have moral characters (188–89),
whereas Ockham (like Abelard) does not differentiate between exterior acts and physical acts (177–78 and 191–92). The result here is that,
for Ockham, the interior act of the will receives all “moral weight”
in the examination of conscience (178, cf. 198). Osborne’s observations in this regard serve to indicate that proportionalist readings of
Aquinas (for example, Janssens) confuse Aquinas’s moral theology
with that of Ockham. In this and other respects, Osborne’s work is
invaluable. It is not only a helpful and needed resource for scholars
who conduct medieval research. The book also will serve contemporary instructors of moral theology who recognize the importance of
ongoing historical investigation for illustrating the doctrinal narraN&V
tives that unify the Catholic intellectual tradition.
Matthew R. McWhorter
Divine Mercy University
Arlington, VA

Verbum Domini and the Complementarity of Exegesis and
Theology, edited by Fr. Scott Carl (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015),
vii + 176 pp.

This volume is a collection of essays that emerged from
conferences sponsored by the Msgr. Jerome D. Quinn Institute of Biblical Studies at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity at the University of St. Thomas in 2009 and 2011. As the editor, Fr. Scott Carl, states
in his introduction: “The overarching goal of these conferences has
been to think about the implications of these acts of the magisterium
[i.e. the 2008 Synod of Bishops on the Word of God and the promulgation of Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini in
2010] for our lives as biblical scholars teaching in Catholic seminaries”
(xii). Accordingly, the essays in this volume exhibit a vibrant concern
for the interpretation of the Bible in concert with the Church’s faith
and life, as well as the teaching of such theologically attuned exegesis
in seminary formation.
The essays in this volume are collected into two major parts, each
of which has a distinct theme. The essays in part I, “The Complementarity of Exegesis and Theology” (1), deal in various ways with

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Ratzinger’s / Benedict XVI’s directive to better integrate biblical
exegesis and Church doctrine (or theology more broadly), and thus
overcome the so-called “hiatus” (41) between them (referencing
Ratzinger’s 1988 Erasmus Lecture). Abbot Denis Farkasfalvy, O.Cist.
(“Inspiration and Incarnation”) argues that a Ressourcement-style
renewal of the theology of biblical inspiration would serve the reintegration of biblical exegesis and theology. Crucial for such a project,
according to Farkasfalvy, is the place of Scripture as a theological
reality within the economy of salvation, culminating in the Incarnation of the Word. Fr. Francis Martin (“Spiritual Understanding
of Scripture”) frames his presentation by referencing the ancient
Judeo-Christian exegetical tradition that Scripture mediates the
source of revelation to faith-filled readers. Martin goes on to identify
certain modern philosophical ideas pertaining to the understanding
of history (e.g., the rejection of transcendent causality in the world)
and human cognition (e.g., the influence of Kantian epistemology)
that obstruct conceptually our access to that source of revelation.
Brant Pitre (“Verbum Domini and Historical-Critical Exegesis”)
focuses on Verbum Domini §§29–49 and discerns five major principles
in this section to guide Catholic biblical interpretation. He notes
Benedict’s positive (though not uncritical) appraisal of historical-critical exegesis and the need to overcome the split between biblical
exegesis and theology by putting into practice the full interpretive
program given in Dei Verbum §12. Fr. Pablo Gadenz (“Overcoming
the Hiatus between Exegesis and Theology: Guidance and Examples
from Pope Benedict XVI”) provides a very substantive essay that
focuses on two major ideas of Ratzinger/Benedict: “Dogma as Interpretation of Scripture” (45) and “The Church as the Living Subject
of Biblical Interpretation” (52). Instead of seeing Church dogma as
a movement away from the plain sense of Scripture, Gadenz notes,
Ratzinger encourages scholars to think of it as a movement into the
depths of Scripture (61). Gadenz’s essay also complements nicely
that of Farkasfalvy by documenting how the inspiring Holy Spirit is
active within the faith community both as the Scripture’s past context
of composition and as its present context of interpretation. Christian D. Washburn (“The Catholic Use of Scriptures in Ecumenical
Dialogue”) argues for the incorporation into ecumenical dialogue of
modes of theological exegesis, such as those methods inspired by the
Church Fathers, to supplement the accepted use of historical-critical
exegesis. The incorporation of theological methods of exegesis is

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357

befitting ecumenical dialogue, since it presumes what the dialogue
partners already agree on—“the Bible is the inspired Word of God”
(71)—and provides insight into the Christian reception of biblical
texts prior to the disputes of the sixteenth century (77–78).
Part II of the collection, “The Word of God in the Formation of
Seminarians,” takes up some various aspects of teaching Scripture
in seminaries. Peter S. Williamson (“Preparing Seminarians for the
Ministry of the Word in Light of Verbum Domini”) draws out five key
principles from Verbum Domini (supplemented by St. John Paul II’s
Pastores Dabo Vobis) pertaining to the biblical formation of clergy. He
goes on to outline a series of goals and strategies for providing seminarians with the requisite spiritual and intellectual formation to be
effective ministers of the Word. Fr. James Swetnam, S.J. (“Searching
for the Obvious: Toward a Catholic Hermeneutic of Scripture with
Seminarians Especially in Mind”), sets forth the major features of
Catholic biblical interpretation in light of the Catechism of the Catholic
Church. He argues that the Catholic approach to Scripture involves
a return to the original meaning of the text and a bringing that
meaning forth into contemporary application. Such an interpretive
move is possible, Swetnam argues, “because of the common elements
[e.g., faith, Eucharist, the Holy Spirit, life of holiness] involved in the
lives of both generations [i.e., the first Christian generation and the
contemporary generation]” (106; cf. 102).
In an outstanding contribution, Mary Healy (“Verbum Domini and
the Renewal of Biblical Preaching”) takes up the bland and largely
nonscriptural character of much contemporary Catholic preaching
and offers some strategies for improvement in light of Verbum Domini.
Healy cites in particular the need for a renewed sense of biblical
authority, a direct homiletic proclamation of the Christian kerygma
through an exposition of the Mass readings, and the recovery of the
fourfold sense. Such a renewal of biblically centered preaching is vital,
Healy argues, because the initiatives such as the New Evangelization
and the “revitalization [of faith] will begin with good preaching or it
will not begin at all” (109).
Fr. Stephen Ryan, O.P. (“The Word of God and the Textual
Pluriformity of the Old Testament”), offers the most exegetically
sophisticated essay in the collection. He focuses on the notion of
textual pluriformity: “the theory that a significant portion of the Old
Testament has been transmitted in two or three different and irreducible versions” (123). In addition to illustrating this with examples

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of multiple readings of specific biblical texts, Ryan documents how
Catholic tradition has had a high tolerance for the concurrent existence and use of different versions of the same biblical books. Part of
the theological payoff of textual pluriformity is to recognize that the
Word of God is mediated through different “authentic” versions of
the biblical books (132; referencing the Council of Trent’s description
of the Vulgate). The Church has canonized books of the Bible, not
specific textual versions (e.g., Hebrew, Greek, Latin) of those books
(see 148), and the theology of inspiration should attend more to the
former than to the latter.
Kelly Anderson (“How the Liturgy of the Hours Provides an
Effective Means for Teaching the Book of Psalms”) addresses the
many challenges that accompany teaching the Psalter in a seminary.
As a helpful way forward, Anderson proposes (quite creatively)
teaching the Psalter to seminarians through the Liturgy of the
Hours and incorporating relevant, contemporary scholarship into
its horizon. Through this pedagogical approach, Anderson writes,
“the seminarian could learn how to read the psalms by employing
modern methods, but pray the psalms to encounter Jesus Christ”
(161). Similar to Anderson’s focus on the Psalter, Fr. Michael Magee
(“Combining Synchronic and Diachronic Methodology in Teaching
the Pentateuch”) focuses his essay on the teaching of the Pentateuch
by recounting some of his own pedagogical experiences. Magee
commends as a most helpful strategy the embedding of the diachronic
analysis of specific texts within a larger synchronic approach to the
larger Pentateuchal narrative. Such a blending of approaches will help
equip seminarians for their priesthood, wherein “they will be called
upon to unfold for God’s people, not the prehistory of the biblical
text, but rather its divine unity and its everlasting message” (172).
Despite a possible construal of the volume’s title, the essays in this
collection are not primarily about Verbum Domini in a strict sense
of commentary on or analysis of Benedict’s text. The essays engage
Verbum Domini to varying degrees, and they all exhibit a concern
(whether overtly stated or not) for its teachings. What holds this
collection together very well is a concern in each of these essays for
the ecclesial, pastoral, and faith-filled aspects of biblical interpretation.
The study and interpretation of the Bible as Sacred Scripture cannot
be the privileged domain of specialists whose work is primarily
directed to other specialists and apart from the Church and its faith.
Rather, if we believe that the Bible truly mediates God’s Word to
God’s people, then biblical interpretation must ultimately be directed

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toward a transformative end. The work of believing exegetes is to
help facilitate the intellectual, moral, and spiritual transformation of
the people of God. Exegetes can do this effectively only if they have
first been touched by the Word of God themselves.
In Evangelii Gaudium §133, Pope Francis writes, “the Church and
theology exist to evangelize, and [theologians should] not be content
with a desk-bound theology.”1 The Holy Father’s words are, I think,
equally applicable to biblical interpretation and its practitioners. The
essays in this volume do an admirable job of encouraging biblical
scholars and other seminary educators to continue on this transformative, evangelical road in service of the people of God and their
N&V
ministers.
William M. Wright IV
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, PA

1

Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel—Evangelii Gaudium (Washington, DC:
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2013), 67.