By MSGR. MICHEL SCHOOYANS
Part 2
(Editor’s Note: Msgr. Michel Schooyans wrote the following essay for LifeSiteNews, which graciously granted reprint permission to The Wanderer. The essay is appearing in two parts because of its length; part one appeared in last week’s issue.
(John-Henry Westen, editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews, provided this background information about the essay:
(“Msgr. Michel Schooyans, a top adviser to Pope St. John Paul II who was also close to Pope Benedict XVI, has issued a dire warning about the current trajectory in the Catholic Church. [In this essay] Professor Schooyans, a member of several Pontifical Academies and Councils, writes that ‘the Synod on the Family has revealed a profound malaise in the Church.’
(“The retired professor from Belgium, now 86, speaks of the ‘crisis’ in the Church, saying, ‘it is futile to close our eyes: The Church is challenged in its very foundations.’
(“Credited with inspiring Pope John Paul’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae with his own book on abortion, Msgr. Schooyans is warning of what he says is an organized group in the Church that operates with ‘backing from some of the highest authorities in the Church’.”)
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LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE (LifeSiteNews) — Homicide is another matter which merits our attention. We are now going to focus on a matter of deviation of intention. According to the classic casuistry of the 17th century, homicide could proceed from a desire for vengeance, which is a crime.
To avoid this criminal definition, it was necessary to deviate from this criminal intention, the intention to avenge oneself, and assign to the homicide a different, morally permitted, intention. Rather than invoke vengeance as a motive, they invoked, for example, a desire to defend one’s honor, considered morally permissible.
We will now see how this deviation of intention is applicable to another matter, a contemporary matter. The argument runs as follows: Abortion is a crime. Mrs. X wishes to abort the baby she is expecting; the baby is not wanted. Yet abortion is a morally inadmissible crime. The intention is then deviated from, with the result that the initial intention is erased. Not with the intention of freeing oneself from an unwanted baby! Instead and in place of this initial intention, it will be argued that, under certain circumstances, abortion is morally admissible because, for example, its purpose is to save the lives of persons who are ill, by providing physicians with anatomical parts in good condition and to which a price is attached.
The intention defines the moral quality of the gift. Hence, it is possible to please a broad spectrum of beneficiaries, whose “generosity” and “freedom of spirit” the casuists lose no opportunity in flattering.
The teachings of the Church on abortion are well-known. As soon as the reality of a human being is established, the Church teaches that the life and dignity of that being should be respected until its natural death. The doctrine of the Church on this question is constant and attested to throughout tradition.
This situation troubles some neo-casuists. They have therefore coined a new expression: humanization of the embryo.
There is no — they say — humanization of the embryo unless a community wishes to welcome that embryo. It is society which humanizes the embryo. If society refuses this humanization, it will be able to legalize the elimination of the embryo. If there is no humanization by society, the embryo is a thing for which no right can be invoked, hence no legal protection. If society refuses to humanize the embryo, there can be no homicide, given that the human reality of this embryo is not recognized. For there to be homicide, it would be necessary for humanization to be made possible on the basis of a positive law. In the absence of which, there is neither murder, nor even homicide!
In the examples we cite here, salami tactics come to the aid of the neo-casuists. Initially, abortion is clandestine, then presented as exceptional, then rare, then facilitated, then legalized, then it becomes habitual. Those who oppose abortion are denigrated, threatened, ostracized, condemned. This is how the political institutions and the law are unpicked.
Let us note that, thanks to the casuists, abortion is first facilitated in the Church, and from there, in the state. The same now applies to “remarriage.” Positive law is taking over from the new morality! It finds its inspiration in the neo-casuists. This is observable, in France, during debates on legislation on abortion. This is a scenario which could spread throughout the world. With the impetus of the neo-casuists, abortion could be declared a new “human right” on a universal scale.
Euthanasia
mThe question of euthanasia also merits discussion. This practice is becoming more and more extensive in traditionally Christian Western countries. Demographers regularly draw attention to the aging population in these regions of the world. Life expectancy at birth is rising almost everywhere.
In principle, aging in itself is good news. For centuries, throughout the world, men have struggled against early death. At the beginning of the 19th century, life expectancy at birth was often 30 years of age. Today, life expectancy is 80 years of age.
However, this situation will generate problems of all kinds. Let us mention one: Who will pay the pensions? To euthanize burdensome and onerous elderly people would certainly make it possible to achieve major economies. It will then be said that it is necessary to help costly elderly people “die in dignity.”
Because it is politically difficult to defer the pension age, life expectancy will be lowered. The process has already begun in certain regions of Europe. Hence significant economies: a reduction in health care, pharmaceutical products. and, above all, a reduction in the pension bill. Because politically correct right-thinking people balk at a program which is so austere, the intention must be modified to be able to pass a law legalizing euthanasia.
How to proceed? By developing a pitiable argument on compassion. It is necessary to please all categories of persons affected by this program. These persons must be persuaded to subscribe to a plan whose objective is to give death “under good conditions” and “in dignity.” Death given in dignity would be the high point in quality of life!
Rather than recommending palliative treatment and surrounding the ill person with affection, his fragility will be abused; he will be misled as to the fatal treatment to be inflicted. Vigilant neo-casuists will be on hand to verify that the homicidal act “authorizing” the gift of death is in compliance with positive law. The cooperation of carefully primed chaplains will be especially appreciated to authenticate the compassion manifested in death given as a gift.
The Party Of The Casuists
Discussions during the Synod on the Family revealed the determination with which a group of pastors and theologians do not hesitate to undermine the Church’s doctrinal cohesion. This group functions in the manner of a powerful, international, well-heeled, organized, and disciplined party.
The active members of this party have ready access to the media; they frequently appear unmasked. They operate with backing from some of the highest authorities in the Church. The main target of these activists is Christian morality, criticized for having a severity incompatible with the “values” of our time. We must find ways which lead the Church to please, by reconciling its moral teaching with human passions.
The solution proposed by the neo-casuists starts by calling into question fundamental morality, then obscuring the natural light of reason. The original meaning of the references to Christian morality revealed in the Scriptures and the teaching of Jesus is distorted. The precepts of reason are regarded as indefinitely debatable: Probabilism prevails. Primacy should be accorded to the will of those who are powerful enough to impose their will. Disparate partnerships with unbelievers will be formed without hesitation (2 Cor. 6:14).
This voluntarist morality will have a free hand in placing itself at the service of political power, of the state, and also the market, high finance, the law, etc. In concrete terms, it will be necessary to please corrupt political heads, champions of tax fraud and usury, abortionist doctors, manufacturers who deal in pills, lawyers willing to defend the least defensible causes, agronomists enriched by transgenic products, etc. The new morality will hence insidiously penetrate the media, families, schools, universities, hospitals, courts.
This has led to the formation of a social body which refuses to accord first place to the search for the truth, yet is highly active where there are consciences to govern, assassins to reassure, malefactors to free, wealthy citizens with whom to curry favor. Through this network, the neo-casuists will be able to hold sway over the wheels of the Church, influence the choice of candidates for high office, forge alliances which imperil the Church’s very existence.
Toward A Religion
Of Compromise?
1. What is most troubling with regard to the casuists is their disinterest in the truth. In them, we find a relativism, indeed a skepticism, which means that, in terms of morality, one should act in accordance with the most probable standard. One should choose the standard which, in a given circumstance, is regarded as most pleasing to a given person, a given spiritual follower, a given public.
This applies to the city as it does to men. Everyone has to make their choice, not in terms of the truth, but in terms of circumstances. The laws of the city also have their origin in circumstances. The best laws are those which please the most and please the greatest number. Hence we are witnessing the expansion of a religion of compromise, indeed individualist utilitarianism, since the concern to please others does not extinguish the concern to please oneself.
2. In order to please, casuists must be up-to-date with current developments, attentive to things new. The Fathers of the Church of previous generations and the great theologians of the past, even the recent past, are presented as not adapted to the current situation in the Church; they are regarded as outmoded. For the casuists, the Church’s tradition needs, as they would put it, to be filtered and fundamentally called into question. As we are gravely assured by the neo-casuists, we know what the Church should do today to please everyone (John 9).
The desire to please is aimed at the winners in particular. The new social and political morality should handle such people with care. They have a lifestyle to be protected and even improved; they have to maintain their rank. So much the worse for the poor who do not have the same worldly constraints! Certainly, one must also please the poor, but it must be acknowledged that they are less “interesting” than the people with influence. Not everyone can be a winner!
The morality of the casuists ultimately resembles a gnosis distilled in select circles, a knowledge one might call esoteric, targeted at a minority of people who experience no need to be saved by the Cross of Jesus. Pelagianism has rarely flourished so much.
3. The traditional morality of the Church has always recognized that there are acts which are objectively wrong. This same moral theology also recognizes, and has long done so, the importance of circumstances. This means that, in the assessment of an act, account must be taken of the circumstances in which the act has been committed and the levels of responsibility; this is what the moralists call accountability.
The casuists of today proceed in the same way as their founders: They minimize the importance of traditional morality and overemphasize the role of circumstances. Along the way, conscience is led into self-deceit because it allows itself to be distorted by the desire to please.
Hence, one perceives in the media that casuists are frequently transfixed by a world destined to disappear. Too often, they forget that, with Jesus, a new world has already begun. We recall this central point in human history: “The old world has passed, now a new reality is here” (Rev. 21:5). We turn again to St. Paul:
“There must be a renewal in the inner life of your minds; you must be clothed in the new self, which is created in God’s image, justified and sanctified through the truth” (Eph. 4:2-3).
4. The actions of casuists today affect not only the Church’s moral teaching, but also the entirety of dogmatic theology, in particular the question of the Magisterium. This point is frequently insufficiently emphasized.
The unity of the Church is in peril where there are suggestions of biased, at times demagogic, proposals for decentralization, largely inspired by Lutheran reform. Better to be answerable to the princes of this world than to affirm unity around the Good Shepherd! The sanctity of the Church is in peril where casuists exploit man’s weakness and preach a devotion which is easy and neglectful of the Cross.
Catholicity is in peril where the Church ventures onto the path of Babel and undervalues the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the gift of languages. Is it not He, the Spirit, who brings together the diversity of those who share the same faith in Jesus, the Son of God? The apostolicity of the Church is in peril where, in the name of exemption, poorly understood, a community, a “party” is exempted from the jurisdiction of the Bishop and considered to be answerable directly to the Pope. Many neo-casuists are exempt. How can it be doubted that this exemption weakens the Episcopal body as a whole?
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Bibliographic Credits
Cariou, Pierre, Pascal et la casuistique, an essential work, Paris, PUF, Collection Questions, 1993.
Jean-Paul II, encyclical Veritatis Splendor, Vatican City, 1993.
Nouveau Testament, TOB, several editions.
Pascal, Les Provinciales, edited by Jacques Chevalier, Paris, La Pléiade, 1954.
Pascal, Les Provinciales, edited by Jean Steinmann, Paris, Armand Colin, 1962.
Pascal, Les Provinciales, Preface by Robert Kanters, Lausanne, Ed. Rencontre, 1967.
Wikipedia: excellent articles on Pascal, Casuistry, Provinciales.
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