By JAMES MONTI
Several years ago I had the curious misfortune of having to listen to several homilies regarding St. John the Baptist in which this great Forerunner of the Christ was cast as somewhat of a villain.
The homilist claimed that John was being too judgmental in condemning Herod for his adultery and incest, and thus senselessly brought about his own ruin at Herod’s hands. Moreover, according to this same homilist, the real reason that while in prison John sent several of his disciples to ask Christ whether or not He was the Messiah was that John, aflame with pharisaical, self-righteous indignation, was so scandalized by Christ welcoming sinners and violators of the law that he began to doubt Him.
By this absurd analysis, the man chosen by God to bear witness to the coming of our Savior by his words and by his martyrdom is reduced to little more than a religious fanatic.
I have related this anecdote because it demonstrates where the centuries-old accusation of Pharisaism made against those who firmly adhere to and defend Church doctrine can lead when taken to its logical extreme. Surely our Lord’s confrontations with the Pharisees as recorded in the Sacred Scriptures should be taken as a warning to us all that Pharisaism is a pitfall to which none of us is immune. Yet it must also be said that since the time of the Reformation, and especially from the 1960s onward, orthodox Catholics have repeatedly found themselves unjustly caricatured as modern-day Pharisees for holding fast to doctrines like the indissolubility of marriage.
In reality it was the Pharisees who took the part of divorce advocates when they came to Christ to confront Him on the issue of divorce and remarriage (Matt. 19:3-12; Mark 10:1-12). Upon hearing our Lord’s reply, “. . . whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matt. 19:9), His disciples were aghast. How very rigid, they thought. How unpastoral! How could the Master be so judgmental? But our Lord did not back down. Instead He declared to them another challenging precept — the calling of some to a life of celibacy for the Kingdom of God (Matt. 19:11-12).
For the many orthodox Catholics that I know, the battle for Church doctrine has never been about hurtling scornful personal accusations or fiery condemnations at people in “irregular” marital situations or in any other manner away from the sacraments. Rather, orthodox Catholics, including myself, feel that in the face of several decades of widespread dissent from radical theologians the Church needs to continue reaffirming her teachings with clarity and without compromise — with charity, mercy, and discretion of course, but nonetheless without compromise.
In light of this I decided to look back at Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), 1993, a fairly recent papal document with magisterial authority, in an effort to answer the question as to whether it is really pharisaical to defend and uphold without compromise Church doctrine.
At the outset of his encyclical, Pope John Paul confirms that there has indeed been cause for concern that the teachings of the Church have been under siege: “. . . a new situation has come about within the Christian community itself. . . . It is no longer a matter of limited and occasional dissent, but of an overall and systematic calling into question of traditional moral doctrine. . . . Thus the traditional doctrine regarding the natural law, and the universality and the permanent validity of its precepts, is rejected” (n. 4).
Pope John Paul speaks of how the Church as a whole has been attacked for what the secular world and dissenting theologians view as an obstinate doctrinal rigidity lacking in compassion; he explains that by proclaiming the immutable truths taught by Christ the Church is in fact offering her maternal compassion to a broken world:
“The Church’s teaching, and in particular her firmness in defending the universal and permanent validity of the precepts prohibiting intrinsically evil acts, is not infrequently seen as the sign of an intolerable intransigence, particularly with regard to the enormously complex and conflict-filled situations present in the moral life of individuals and of society today; this intransigence is said to be in contrast with the Church’s motherhood. The Church, one hears, is lacking in understanding and compassion. But the Church’s motherhood can never in fact be separated from her teaching mission. . . .
“In fact, genuine understanding and compassion must mean love for the person, for his true good, for his authentic freedom. And this does not result, certainly, from concealing or weakening moral truth, but rather from proposing it in its most profound meaning” (n. 95).
Significantly it is not firm adherence to Church doctrine that Pope John Paul identifies as pharisaical, but rather the modern attitude of rejecting moral norms and of refusing to admit one’s responsibility for his or her sins. Citing the parable of the contrasting prayers of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14), the Pontiff observes:
“All people must take great care not to allow themselves to be tainted by the attitude of the Pharisee, which would seek to eliminate awareness of one’s own limits and of one’s own sin. In our own day this attitude is expressed particularly in the attempt to adapt the moral norm to one’s own capacities and personal interests, and even in the rejection of the very idea of a norm” (n. 105).
Invoking the inerrant authority of Sacred Scripture, Pope John Paul teaches definitively that there are intrinsically evil acts that can never be rendered good or appropriate moral choices by any supposedly good intention or special circumstances:
“In teaching the existence of intrinsically evil acts, the Church accepts the teaching of Sacred Scripture. The Apostle Paul emphatically states: ‘Do not be deceived: neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the Kingdom of God’ (1 Cor. 6:9-10).
“If acts are intrinsically evil, a good intention or particular circumstances can diminish their evil, but they cannot remove it. They remain ‘irremediably’ evil acts; per se and in themselves they are not capable of being ordered to God and to the good of the person. ‘As for acts which are themselves sins (cum iam opera ipsa peccata sunt),’ St. Augustine writes, ‘like theft, fornication, blasphemy, who would dare affirm that, by doing them for good motives (causis bonis), they would no longer be sins, or, what is even more absurd, that they would be sins that are justified?’
“Consequently, circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act ‘subjectively’ good or defensible as a choice” (n. 81).
But just how far should a Catholic be prepared to go in upholding the teachings of the Church? Pope John Paul cites the examples of the many martyrs who down through the centuries were willing to suffer death rather than compromise the truths of our faith:
“The unacceptability of ‘teleological,’ ‘consequentialist,’ and ‘proportionalist’ ethical theories, which deny the existence of negative moral norms regarding specific kinds of behavior, norms which are valid without exception, is confirmed in a particularly eloquent way by Christian martyrdom. . . .
“Martyrdom rejects as false and illusory whatever ‘human meaning’ one might claim to attribute, even in ‘exceptional’ conditions, to an act morally evil in itself” (nn. 90, 92).
The Pontiff adds that the martyrs and saints “are a living reproof to those who transgress the law (cf. Wisdom 2:12),” and that these witnesses to “God’s holy law” make the words of the Prophet Isaiah resonate anew: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20) (n. 93). While most of the faithful will never face the prospect of martyrdom, there is nonetheless a universal calling always to be ready to bear witness to moral truth even to the point of sacrifice and heroism (cf. n. 93).
Of course, in affirming the “hard sayings” of the Gospel, orthodox Catholics will always run the risk of having their intentions misunderstood.
In this, William Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear can be instructive. As many of you know, this play tells of an aged king with three daughters. He is well pleased with two of them, because they tell him what he wants to hear; but he is blissfully unaware that their flattering words mask the treachery hidden in their hearts as they secretly conspire against him.
His third daughter, the youngest, Cordelia, displeases him to no end, because rather than telling him what he wants to hear she simply speaks the truth, unpleasant though it may be. When Lear rebukes her, saying, “So young, and so untender?,” she replies, “So young, my lord, and true” (Act 1, Scene 1 — emphasis added). It is only toward the end that Lear finally realizes that Cordelia is in fact the only daughter who has been true to him.
By no means do orthodox Catholics consider themselves better than others. They feel themselves just as much in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness as anyone else inside or outside the Church. And they too have relatives, friends, or acquaintances in “irregular” situations that they want to help and counsel with genuine compassion and understanding. But it is only the truth that can set any of us free. As His Holiness Pope Francis has said in his 2013 encyclical Lumen Fidei, “Genuine love, after the fashion of God’s love, ultimately requires truth. . . . Since faith is one, it must be professed in all its purity and integrity” (nn. 47-48).
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