Authority and Reason/Faith and Reason

I begin by thanking the contributors and commentators to the useful and engaging discussion that has been going on these past couple of days in which Eduardo’s initial posting on “Authority and Reason” was the catalyst.

I would like to begin by saying that this is the kind of discussion that is and has been, I believe, characteristic of the Catholic intellectual tradition. The discussion and the debate have been spirited, collegial, and enlightening. Could the same be said about other discussions on university campuses—be they religiously affiliated or not—today? For those who might critique this assertion, I point to the debates of the 16^th and early 17^th centuries in which the “Two Francises”—de Vitoria and Suárez—participated about the important issues of the day. Sometimes their arguments likely annoyed others, including the civil authorities, when they addressed the status of the native peoples in the lands that Europeans were entering in those times. These two individuals were men of faith who exercised reason in abundance. First and last they were men of the Church—one a Dominican, the other a Jesuit. But they also were people who exercised the gifts of reason and the intellect. Aquinas, another Dominican, did the same three hundred years earlier. Perhaps by our standards of today, they were not always correct; but, given the context of their times, did they not make important contributions to the tradition we have inherited?

In the exercise of our faith and reason today, I think we need to exercise some modesty on our part—a modesty that makes us realize that we do not have the knowledge of God entirely at our disposal. Progress has been made since the days of Aquinas, de Vitoria, and Suárez, but we should not assume that ours is the age of the mastery of wisdom. We, too, need a bit of humility lest we be judged by the standards of future generations as we sit in judgment of Aquinas and other intellectuals of earlier generations.

With that bit of background, I would like to respond to some of the points made about authority, which a few others have addressed in earlier postings. I would like to begin by reminding ourselves and our readers that we think, write, discuss, and debate our views in the context of Catholic legal theory. In short, we are lawyers who are also people of faith and, for the most part (I believe that one member of our group is a Christian but not a Catholic), Catholic. The authority that has been debated so far is that of the Church. But, we ought not to forget that we are also subject to Caesar: we are lawyers. As such, we live, teach, and practice within a system of the rule of law in which the law is also an authority with which we must deal. We may or may not like what the state legislatures and Congress do, but the statutes they promulgate are the law. We may or may not care about how the courts decide particular cases, but their decisions are the law. We may or may not agree with the policies of the governors or the President, but, in appropriate contexts, their views are the law. As a people who claim to live under the rule of law, we are subject to its authority—whether we agree with its particulars or not—and we should not forget this. Simply put, authority is a part of our lives, and we have freely chosen this as lawyers and as Catholics.

I agree with those who contend that much of what the Church teaches is based on bedrock truth to appropriate Mark’s terminology. But why? Are these teachings blindly endorsed without further thought, or are they subscribed to after thought that is hopefully rigorous and extensive? I believe the latter description applies to the participation I claim as my own. I have made my decisions to accept the Church’s authority on those issues on which it has take a position, and I can see the merit of what the Church says conscious of the conflicting views held by other people who are intelligent and do think. But it is also clear that thought processes that divide us are different. It is also clear that the Church has developed its views over time that called for the contribution of a variety of and usually many thinkers. One can think about this in the context of the hot button issues of the day which we see debated in the American democracy: abortion; homosexual unions/marriages/adoption; human cloning/embryonic stem cell research. I’ll take the first issue, abortion (which has some common denominator with the last issue, by the way). As lawyers, we study, we think, we argue about “persons” before the law. There are different views about whether an embryo is a person, but we need to remind ourselves that the legal concept of “person” does not necessarily reflect the reality. I think a rigorous thinker who claims that he or she is Catholic wants to go beyond the purely “legal” and investigate whether the entity of which we speak is human. That certainly was at the center of the debate in Dred Scot v. Sanford even if was not the question addressed by the Supreme Court, and it is, at least for me, the issue in the legal considerations about abortion. As Michael Scaperlanda’s and John Breen’s essay on the Stenberg case demonstrates, the majority decisions on the abortion question avoid the issue of what is the embryo; the Church’s teaching does not and takes it head on and, with the exercise of reason, reaches a conclusion that becomes a teaching that is authoritative.

On the point about learning, I would like to go back to an earlier discussion that Eduardo and I had last December on the slavery issue. Eduardo properly raised and discussed the 19^th century instruction from the Holy Office on slavery. The document was issued, and it exists. But neither of us discussed why it was issued. That has a bearing on what it means when we discover that it conflicts with other Church pronouncements that preceded and succeeded its publication. Subsequent to Eduardo’s introduction of the text, I did some research. While my research remains incomplete by my standards, I did pursue an investigation of why it was issued. Slavery still existed after our Civil War, as it still tragically exists today. My present and preliminary conclusion about the Holy Office statement is this: it was not issued to countermand or contradict earlier and subsequent statements issued by popes and the Holy See condemning slavery. Rather, it was issued, I think, to minimize the impact of slavery in certain regions of the world where it still existed; it was not issued to condone or justify it but to minimize its effect in the hope of sparing some from its misery. Slavery, as I said, was then a tragic reality in some parts of the world. I believe the Holy Office was exercising what influence it could to minimize the impact of something that it could not eliminate.

A matter related to learning (and I, for one, keep learning) is whether the Magisterium changes (Mark’s “Noonanites” might be interested in this), evolves, or grows? From my standpoint, it grows. Why? Because human wisdom and knowledge continue to expand. Let me go back briefly to the embryonic stem cell debate. Fifty years ago, no one was discussing the issue because medical science and research had not gotten to the point where it is today. Therefore, there was not Church authority because there was no issue. Today there are both. Will the Church’s teaching continue to grow? I think so because science is also expanding. I think if this growth continues (and all evidence so far points in this direction), our civilization is going to have to address the enormous ethical/moral issues surrounding genetic engineering and manipulation. Science is not there yet, but it appears to be getting closer to doing this. Will it be a good thing to see if science can eliminate inclinations to disease and infirmity? That seems to be attractive for many people including Catholic intellectuals, some of who hold and some of who do not hold authoritative positions in the Church. But as this scientific growth expands, should the moral voice be heard on whether it is proper to use these advances to generate “designer babies”, which I believe could very well become the harbinger of a “super race” of humans? What should the world think about this? What should Catholic intellectuals think about this? What should the Church think about this? What should Church authority say about this?

Perhaps they, we can begin from this point. Being a part of the Catholic intellectual tradition is one way of exercising the discipleship to which we were called through our baptism. Discipleship can manifest itself in a wide variety of forms, but we have chosen the Catholic intellectual tradition as our venue, our part of the vineyard, if you will. No one has compelled us to do this; we have chosen this work and the continuation of our membership in the Church. I emphasize the word chosen because it is important to take stock of the fact that we have exercised our free will to be disciples and to use the gifts God has given us—including our thought and methods of expression—to serve God, His people, and the Church. We participate in a very long tradition in which the deposit of faith, promoted by an intellectual tradition and fidelity, has grown. The authority to which we freely subscribe is that which permeates this communion. It is not the authority of one person, one group, or one era. It is the authority of the Church—yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If I may borrow from an old commentary on the series of French republics: perspectives come and perspectives go, but the Catholic intellectual tradition, which has long been a part of the Church strengthening its authoritative teaching, goes on—forever.

Some in the “elite professoriate” to which Mark referred may question, even ridicule this tradition, but it has been around for a long time. I tend to think that it will survive the “elite professoriate” when others realize the limitations of many of the perspectives on life, human nature, and the world which they assert. For ten years a part of my discipleship has been to take the reasoned positions of the Church into the world. There are many critics of the Church out there, in case you are interested. The only way they will listen to and, perhaps even learn from, the Church is through the exercise of solid and reasoned justification. This was and is my mission that I feely chose from the Church authorities who sent me into some tough parts of vineyard. I think I survived and continue to do so with the Grace of God and the strength of the arguments I presented—arguments not mine alone but arguments built upon a strong foundation of much careful reflection. The popularity of the views to be expressed was and is not a factor. The use of reason to get closer to the truth of the matter—God’s truth—did matter.

John Paul II once commented, faith that is devoid of reason runs the “grave risk” of withering into superstition or myth. By the same token, reason devoid of adult faith, he said, also runs a risk: misunderstanding the complete nature of the human person and the accompanying reality of being. I will now end this posting with the opening of his encyclical Fides et Ratio. These words have long been a source of help to me in my modest attempt to be a part of the Catholic intellectual tradition. They might help others, too:

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know Himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”    

RJA sj