More on Authority, Reason and History

I’m back from a few days of vacation, and printed out the “authority and reason” thread for my subway ride home—it was so engrossing I almost missed my stop!  Here’s my two cents, colored largely by having just taught the sections of our Catholic Social Thought & the Law Seminar which focus on Evangelium vitae and war and peace. 

I wonder if we might identify a distinction between two large areas for discussion of the role of authority.  As Mark points out, there are enormous complexities that arise when one attempts to apply church teaching to concrete situations (or to the “real world,” as he says).  I wonder if there might be distinct questions that arise when we focus on the Church’s effort to respond and teach in the context of the shifting sands of history.  Perhaps the seismic shifts in teaching on a host of issues—eg, teaching about democracy, or particular questions such as whether Catholics could hold conscientious objector status to armed conflicts which would meet “just war” criteria—can also be understood as an effort to understand what does Church teaching mean for a given period of history.  It is only by putting the The Syllabus of Errors and Dignitatis Humanae into historical context that we understand what is authoritative in both. 

Perhaps this is a subset of Mark’s category, but I think it does provide and an important layer of complexity to discussions about continuity and change.  In response to Rob’s question, I think this might also cut against finding that the Catholic scholar’s proper course is to keep silent—because if we look at several issues as they unfolded over the course of the twentieth century, history seems to have shown that at least some of the dissenters were illuminating important dimensions for what eventually became official teaching.       

At certain points the CST documents contain clear cut statements of authority (eg, Evangelium vitae’s clarity on the moral evil of abortion is a case in point).  But it also seems that just as much effort is poured into understanding with depth the cultural context for a given social problem (see eg., EV 18, discussing circumstances that can mitigate “even to a notable degree subjective responsibility and the consequent culpability of those who make these choices which in themselves are evil").  I realize this is a different question than the one that Eduardo posed—but I wonder, how much of our work as legal theorists—especially when we are trying to work out practical and concrete proposals for policy—is precisely at this intersection, and caught up in the same dynamic? 

Thanks to all of you for a wonderful discussion!  Amy