Latest / Catholic Spirit Radio / Being Catholic #402: Does Moral Truth Change? Historicism vs. Catholic Dogma

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Being Catholic #402: Does Moral Truth Change? Historicism vs. Catholic Dogma · Catholic Spirit Radio

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This is Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston, and you're listening to Being Catholic right here
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We're going to have a great show for you today. I'm here with my wife, Lynn.
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And we're going to talk a little bit today about historicism.
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And an article in the New Oxford Review, the May issue, the 2026 issue, and it's by Richard A.
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Spinello, and he is an associate professor of the practice and assistant chair
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of the management and organization department in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College.
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He's also a member of the adjunct faculty at St.
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John's Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts. He is the author of many books and
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articles on philosophy and ethics, including a book called Four Catholic Philosophers,
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Rejoicing in the Truth, and it's about Jacques Martin.
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Edith Stein, Dietrich von Hildebrand, and Carol Watla, our former pope, of course.
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John Paul II. Before we start, I'll turn this over to my wife and see if she has anything to say.
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Hello out there. Everything's fine here.
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Kind of warm and humid, but, you know, can't have everything just right.
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We've had some beautiful weather the last couple weeks.
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Yeah, the last week for sure, but other than that, Easter season is over,
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and the Pope, as you probably all know, has come out with the new encyclical about the,
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AI. I haven't read it yet. Just haven't had the opportunity.
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We've got a daughter here from Texas, from Georgetown, Texas.
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She's back home here visiting and just been a little busy here.
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So it sounds like what you've got planned for today, Bob, is pretty interesting. It is.
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It's about historicism. In other words, the idea is truth, does truth and does
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dogma, do conditions and so forth change with time, with history?
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Or are there certain things such as the dogmas of the church and so forth that
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are always the same and never change?
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Are there eternal and moral truths that are always true for all human beings
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from the very beginning of humanity to the present day? And we will consider
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that they would continue on after that.
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Or does truth change with time? Is truth a historical factor?
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And does moralism and so forth change with time?
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Is it part of history? And when the theory that dogmas and so forth are not propositional,
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that is that they're not something that's stated once and for all in a clear
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and proposed way and that they can change with time and with history and according to the laws.
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Mores and so forth of the times, that is called historicism.
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And that is a theory also in which, you know, theory is true.
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And so we're going to read an article here by that Richard A.
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Spinello in the New Oxford Review, and it's entitled, Is Moral Truth Immutable
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or Is It Historically Conditioned?
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In other words, do things change over the years with time? So we'll read that article.
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And you'll see, of course, where I stand and where people who hold to orthodoxy
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and dogma and so forth in the church stand.
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And there's a very strong dichotomy between the two.
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And I think the case can be made for one or the other.
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And you'll see the case that I make as this article also makes as we read through it.
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So anything further you want to say, Lynn? No, no.
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Okay. Okay, what is truth? And, of course, that question has been asked throughout the centuries.
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And it was asked by, of course, Pontius Pilate asked that, you know, what is truth?
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And I was very, very cynical about it as if there was no such thing as truth.
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The truth varies from one person to another, from one time to another,
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one culture to another, and so forth.
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And Christ, I think, did not propose things that way. but we'll get into this
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article. It says, what is truth?
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Is it objective and permanent, or is it historical and mutable?
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That is, you know, that can be changed.
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And what are the criteria for discerning truth?
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These foundational questions have overshadowed Catholic theological discourse
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for the past several decades, and they have been very much in discussion in the church.
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Many progressive theologians in the post-conciliar era have opted for some version of historicism.
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In their opinion, it is virtually axiomatic that Catholic dogmas and doctrines
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conceived under the guise of revelation are an historical reality,
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always evolving and subject to reinterpretation.
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This, of course, this is, of course, a recipe for moral relativism,
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and that is a problem that we have today in our society, and it's also a problem,
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of course, that we have in our church.
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And it says here, as novel moral truths are often conditioned by shifting social conventions.
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Many members of the hierarchy are also convinced that moral precepts should change over time.
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It was recently reported that 90% of Germany's bishops support modifications
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to the church's traditional teachings on sexual morality. And you can see may be where this is going.
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Bishop Peter Kalgroff of Mainz, for example,
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has indicated that scriptural statements about homosexuality should not be interpreted
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as timeless truths based on the presumption that the moral norms in St.
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Paul's epistles and the gospels are historically and culturally conditioned.
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And Bishop Heinrich Kimerevers of Dresden Meissen is seeking changes to church
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teaching on gender identities as sexual orientations to keep pace with scientific
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and cultural developments.
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Again, you can see the direction that some of these, especially in Germany, bishops are going.
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Scientifically, it has nothing to change. They try to make that days, we'll see.
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These German bishops can find reinforcement for their heterodox views,
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and they are heterodox, not orthodox, in Fr.
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Mark S. Mass's controversial new book, Catholic Fundamentalism in America,
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which revives the debate about the nature of truth.
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Mr. Mass's principal task is to expose Catholic Fundamentalism,
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and the article has Catholic Fundamentalism in Quotes,
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in the United States, he describes sometimes with unabashed irreverence what
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he considers the emblems of fundamentalism, such as the Eternal Word Television Network, EWTN.
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Christendom College, and Crisis Magazine.
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In other words, what our radio program is based on, EWTN, Eternal Word Television, some of these bishops,
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this Father Massa in particular, considers sort of a simplistic fundamentalist
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take on Catholic dogma and Catholic teaching and on the dogmas of the Bible
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handed down from the time of Christ,
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that we are looking at these according to him from a very simplistic point of view.
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In other words, we're the rubes, I guess, out in the countryside is one way of putting it.
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His harsh polemic singles out EWTN for particular scorn for trying to construct
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an alternative church by fashioning something like an alternative authentic magisterium.
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According to his way of thinking, many other Catholic organizations could be
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added to this list due to the defective ways they witness to the gospel.
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And of course, those defective ways would mean that they cling to or stick to
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the truths that have been handed down from the time of Christ and the past on as the church,
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as we understand it here at EWTN, is supposed to do from time immemorial.
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The traits of fundamentalism, so the thinking goes, include a sectarian aversion
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to ecumenical dialogue.
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In other words, we're not ecumenical enough. We're not willing to engage in
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dialogue and so forth and engage in understanding the other Christian religions
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or perhaps even the other non-Christian religions around us.
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The frequent use of extreme political rhetoric to castigate opponents.
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In other words, I guess that we are extremists, and in particular,
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an ahistorical and primitivist understanding of Catholic dogmas and doctrines.
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In other words, we're some kind of babes in the woods, I guess,
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and interpreting everything from some very primitive church understanding,
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not as advanced and as intellectually understanding as all of these enlightened
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people are, according to their particular understanding.
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According to Father Masa, those doctrines are not preserved in amber, as many presume.
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Fundamentalist Catholics fail to apprehend that truth is not ahistorical.
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In other words, truth is not outside of history. History changes the truth as it goes along.
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It sounds more and more to me like pretty much what the Marxist Communist Party
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used to preach, especially in its earlier days. Doesn't it to you, Lynn?
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Oh, they're from Germany.
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Hence, they remain trapped in the old paradigm of orthodoxy.
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So I guess here at EWTN and here
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at this radio station, we unwashed and unenlightened people are trapped.
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In our orthodoxy and in our simplistic understanding of the world.
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On the contrary, Catholic institutions must accept the new paradigm that began
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to take shape at the Second Vatican Consul, 1962 to 1965.
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And there it comes, the Second Vatican.
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And it always seems to get in there somehow in some way.
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Oh, yeah. And that paradigm insists on the historical character of dogma.
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That is, again, historical character, meaning that dogma and.
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The dogmatic teaching changes with time.
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Things don't stay the same, and morals and so forth all change as time goes
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on, depending on the time of the day.
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There are some problems with that that I'll point out as we go along here a little bit later.
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Yeah, the biggest problem being natural law does not change.
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No, but I'm sure that they would insist that it does, or that natural law,
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there is no such thing as natural law, that natural law is something that we
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no longer are bound by. Yeah, right.
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That natural law is just something that we make up according to,
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you know, the historical trends.
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That's what they would say. We'll see.
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And now it goes on. It says, and that paradigm insists on the historical character
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of dogma, which is not fixed and propositional, but mutable and often ineffable.
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And the word ineffable there means too great for words, you know.
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To me, it really means that their dogma has a nose made of wax,
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meaning that you can take their particular statue of dogma, if that's the way
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we want to characterize it,
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and twist the nose any which way we want and make it go in any direction we want,
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or they want, as far as that goes.
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So it's mutable means it can be changed, and it's not propositional means it's
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not stated in some nice, clear, absolute way that people can understand,
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but it's general and can be adapted to the times.
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It goes on and says, In the past, progressive Catholic theologians like Fathers
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Richard McBride and Richard Gula referred to the influential philosophy of Bernard Lonergan,
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S.J., 1904-1984, to defend their views on the primacy of historical consciousness.
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So too does Father Massa. Father Lonergan's 1967 address to the Canon Law Society of America,
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quote, The tradition from a classic worldview to historical mindedness offers
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the perfect foundation for masses' conclusions.
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As the title of Lonergan's speech suggests, he distinguishes between historical
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consciousness and the more classical static worldview consistent with the scholastic
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philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.
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So you can see who these people are going up against. They're going up against St.
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Thomas Aquinas, and of course they're going up against what we understand today as scholasticism.
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It was a school of thought and so forth during St.
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Thomas Aquinas' time, and according to them that school of thought is no longer
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relevant and is over, and historicism has won the day.
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And we need to be modern and up-to-date and look at things from the historical point of view.
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The classicist position is conservative and traditional, while the other is
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modern, liberal, historicist.
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These differences are not just relevant to theology, but affect a person's total mentality.
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Classicism sees the world in terms of unchanging laws, shaped by the reality
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of a supernatural order.
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And historical mindedness, on the other hand, sees the world as caught up in
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an endless sequence of changes and upheavals that sometimes require the revision
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of well-established truths.
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And we're going to stop here and take a break. So stay with us. We'll be right back.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston, and you're listening to Being Catholic right here
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on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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We're back from our break, and we're talking about the difference between historicism
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and classicism in understanding dogma and understanding history.
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And we're understanding that the classicist position says that there are certain
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eternal, unchanging truths, especially that always apply to human beings.
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That there's such a thing as the natural law that we can always know.
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And that law is the same.
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It doesn't change from person to person or from culture to culture or from time to time.
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There are certain things that we can know for sure.
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And those things don't change, whereas the historicist position says that things
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do change and morality itself changes over time depending on the culture,
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depending on the times and.
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What's going on in any particular era.
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It emphasizes the empirical over the metaphysical,
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That is the historical position does, the empirical meaning that which can be
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verified by facts and science and so forth,
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and not the metaphysical that is above the physical, and the lived experience over tradition.
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In other words, tradition is not something that we can use to live from era
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to era, that tradition changes with the times.
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Classicism represents the philosophy of being, while historicism affirms the
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anti-Platonic philosophy of becoming, the not yet.
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And this is very, very important to grasp because this, in my opinion at least,
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and I think others' opinion as well,
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is what so many people, This is the nose of wax that I'm talking about,
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what so many people who want to change things and want things to go their way
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love to believe in because it's always the new era and the wonderful world is
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always just over the horizon.
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We haven't quite arrived there yet.
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And it's, in other words, we can wipe out the foundation of the world that we
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live in now, and it has to be destroyed and changed and so forth in order so
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we can make the not yet come into existence.
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And if you take a look at what's been done in the name of the not yet,
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there's been a lot of destruction of societies in the world in the name of that
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wonderful 2B utopia just over the horizon.
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That's my opinion anyway, and I think the facts bear me out.
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Lonergan's address also underscores that these sharply contrasting worldviews
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constitute two different apprehensions of man. They certainly do.
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The classical perspective conceives of the human person abstractedly through
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a universal definition that captures his immutable essence.
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Accordingly, human nature transcends history and culture.
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The other's perspective regards mankind as a concrete aggregate developing over time.
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There are certain things I think about human beings that do not develop over time.
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And we can look at the nature of human beings as far back as we can look and
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find that there are certain truths about people that don't change.
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And the historicism in a non-classical perspective.
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Is a plastic reality that can be redefined in many ways unconstrained by an
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antecedent order of creation.
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This way of thinking could easily lend credence to the current anthropological
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revolution that severs the connection between human nature and bodily identity.
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And of course, we have that. We have this idea that people can become whatever
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they want to become, that men can become women and women can become men and who knows what else.
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Maybe people can become horses and dogs and cats as well.
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But we need not stop people from being whatever they want to identify as and
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that they should be free to do so.
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And the times have changed and what was forbidden in the past now is no longer
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forbidden, and now people can be different than they were before,
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and all of this will work out for the good for human beings.
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And the classical position is that such kinds of things lead to destruction
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and disaster, and they lead to that whether it's today, yesterday, or tomorrow.
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Lonergan's notion of historical consciousness, which has become a hallmark of
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Catholic progressivism, and this is he's talking here, Catholic progressivism,
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is what a lot of these bishops in Germany profess,
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that they are progressive and modern and so forth as compared to the old stick-in-the-muds
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like EWTN and its radio station.
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And it says that Lonergan's notion of historical consciousness is consistent
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with the views of German philosophers Hegel and Heidegger,
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who insisted on the intrinsic relation between truth and history.
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According to Massa, this viewpoint has become normative, not only in Western
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culture, but also among Catholic scholars who recognize that historicism rescues
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us from the tyranny of the past.
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And where have we heard that before? Certainly in Marxism.
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Marxism is always preaching about the tyranny of the past.
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But the fact is that whatever could ever occur, Glenn.
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To these people, that whatever they are preaching today will soon be part of
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the past, and somebody else can come along and tell about what they think is the truth and so forth,
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the same thing as they're telling about the past today.
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In other words, that their theories and so forth will be pushed into the dustbin
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of history, and that's what they always seem to refer to as the dustbin of history,
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just as much as the ideas that they're pushing into the dustbin of history.
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And then there'll be another dustbin of history and the dustbin of history.
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And if it's constant change, what do you do then? You can only change so much.
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You go around in circles and come back to what you started with.
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I think they feel they've reached the pinnacle of thought or something. Yeah.
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That, you know, things will always remain that way.
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That's what they think, or at least they don't long down. They seem to think that.
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I think that a lot of times they simply don't worry about that.
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They want what they want today.
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Yeah. And so they want, in my opinion, to invent or make up or,
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you know, a something that will justify their having what they want today.
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And what they're driving at is they would like to especially to have homosexuality
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become normative, become normal.
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And we have a lot of that becoming normal in our society. And they want it to
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become normal within the bounds of the church.
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And they want, I think, transgender and so forth and everything to become normative
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and all of that, not only out in this regular society, but also within the bounds of the church.
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And they think all of this is good, and they don't worry about the fact that
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somebody else might come along, you know, 25 or 30 years or 10 years or whatever
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it might be and say the same thing about what they're preaching today,
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that all of those things are destructive and no good and have to be gotten rid
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of, and a new paradigm is coming into existence.
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I don't think they worry about that. What they want is an excuse for their behavior.
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The irreconcilable dichotomy Lonergan proposed has particular relevance for
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moral theology and is often invoked in books and articles that address moral issues.
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Moral doctrines must evolve over time to keep pace with the inexorable march of history.
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And you hear all of these highfalutin and high-sounding, the march of history and so forth going on.
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And we can take a look at the past and see how a lot of this march of history
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turned into total disasters for the people that lived through some of these
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so-called marches of history,
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especially through what communism has done to a lot of the world in the past
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and what Nazism and so forth has done.
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And a lot of these use the same exact justification.
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This is a new age, and we have to get with the new historical reality.
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As a result, the new paradigm prioritizes an historical and flexible approach
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to moral questions. Amen.
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Flexible, notice that. Technological and cultural transition demand the creation
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of a new moral order, where have we heard that before, that supersedes the old.
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The new paradigm also calls into question the transcendent order of human nature
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as the ground of moral norms.
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In other words, there's no such thing as transcendent human nature.
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What we mean by that is there's no such thing as a human nature that exists
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through all periods of time and transcends the changes of history.
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As Lonergan implied, and I've got something written down here I want to take a look at.
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Yeah, dogma is determined by history, I guess, is what I got written down.
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In other words, but if the dogma is determined by history and history is constantly
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changing and going on, then there really is no such thing as dogma in the first
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place is what these people basically are saying. There is no God?
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Is that what they're saying? Well, that the implication would be,
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that's a good point, Lynn.
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The implication would be that God is constantly changing, that God constantly
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approves of the historical changes.
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Maybe that God is the one that's making all those changes.
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They might even suggest or charge that God doesn't stay the same.
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God is not, his nature is not unchanging as the church teaches.
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As Lonegan implied, what's needed is a far more dynamic vision of the human person.
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In other words, what's needed is all those things that they would like and needed
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in order to make their theory plausible and justify making all the changes to
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fit their particular theories and to fit what they want,
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which is basically that homosexuality,
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homosexual marriage, and so forth are all okay.
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Along these lines, Father Kenneth R. Himes and Dr.
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Ronald M. Hamill argued in Introduction to Christian Ethics,
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a reader, in 1989, that the time-conditioned nature of human existence has influenced
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contemporary theology through a revision of what it means to be human.
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In other words, what the Church teaches, what it means to be human, needs to be revised.
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Father Massa refers to moral theologians like Joseph Fuchs, S.J.,
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and Bernard Herring, who understood that legalistic,
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propositional theology yielded too many anomalies to remain a useful framework
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for working out complex moral dilemmas,
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in other words, because there are.
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Too many problems with legalistic propositional theology, then somehow or another, it must be wrong.
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And it causes all kinds of moral dilemmas.
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Yeah, I guess a moral dilemma would be a person could be a very good person and so forth.
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At the same time, he could have homosexual tendencies. So what is wrong with
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that person then living out his homosexual tendencies?
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And if he can't, that's a moral dilemma. I'm just, you know,
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making this up as I go along. But that would seem to me be a particular moral dilemma.
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The church would teach simply that the tendencies to be something,
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the tendency, for example, to, say, be a kleptomaniac or want to steal is not
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something that's evil in itself.
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It's only if you actually practice it and work it out that it is wrong.
30:53
And so that's what the church would teach and say, and it's always taught and said that.
30:58
And these people are wanting to somehow get around things like that.
31:01
In order to do that, you have to have some kind of theory, human beings always
31:06
do, to justify different behavior.
31:09
Pope Francis extolled Father Herring's work because it helped moral theology
31:15
flourish after the demise of scholasticism.
31:19
His scholasticism has been sort of like abandoned.
31:23
A lot of times these people will say that something has been proven wrong or overshadowed.
31:29
It hasn't. A lot of times it's just been abandoned because people want something
31:33
that will let them believe or do what they want to do.
31:37
Well, yeah, it's in human nature. but he wants to believe what they do is right
31:43
and justified. Exactly.
31:46
It goes on here, it says, But Herring has always been an especially controversial
31:50
figure because of his strident opposition to magisterial teachings in the papal
31:56
and silicles Humanae Vitae and Veritatis Splendor.
32:02
In other words, he disagrees with those.
32:04
He believes both are symptomatic of the reductive moralism that infected the
32:09
old paradigm of moral theology.
32:11
And notice the words reductive moralism and the word reductive and infected
32:17
the paradigm of moral theology.
32:20
And notice the choice of words and automatically branding these things as bad.
32:27
Goes on here, it says, Father Herring also deserted from many other Orthodox
32:32
Catholic teachings, such as the indissolubility of marriage.
32:37
In other words, there's another one that they don't like, that marriage is indissoluble,
32:42
and once married, you're always married, and the only way you can get out of
32:47
a marriage is to show that marriage, you know, through an annulment,
32:51
that the marriage never took place, and that's the Catholic Church.
32:54
It's not a divorce, And an annulment in the Catholic Church is a demonstration
32:59
that a marriage never really took place.
33:02
But a lot of people don't like that because if you can't demonstrate that,
33:06
the marriage is permanent.
33:07
And he argued for the authority of conscience over moral doctrine.
33:12
In other words, your conscience should always be prime, but your conscience,
33:16
according to the church, has to be properly formed.
33:20
It has to be formed according to the teaching of the church.
33:23
And if the church teaching varies from time to time and place to place and culture
33:28
to culture, then how is your conscience to be properly formed?
33:32
That's a question you have to ask. He rebuked the moral principle of the natural
33:37
law because, he argued, they were based on a static vision of history.
33:43
Why they're based on a static vision of history, he doesn't say.
33:47
History can change. That doesn't mean that there aren't things that can stay
33:50
the same through history.
33:52
History can change, but it doesn't mean that human nature changes.
33:56
We can see human nature in all different historical periods,
33:59
and we can see that it reacts in the same way to a lot of the same kinds of things,
34:04
even though same kinds of things are caused, you know, by different particular
34:09
applications of forces and so forth.
34:12
One era is different from another, but the effects on people are often the same.
34:17
It goes on here, he says, so why when he talks about a static version of history?
34:22
We're not talking about a static version of history.
34:24
He claimed that moral theologians must be guided by a passage from Godium et Spies,
34:33
Vatican II's pastoral constitution of the church in the modern world,
34:37
proclaiming that history itself speeds on so rapid a course that an individual
34:43
person can carefully keep ahead of it.
34:46
But that's not an explanation at all.
34:49
We're going to stop here and take a break, so stay with us. We'll be right back.
34:52
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Hello, this is Steve Gleason with your One Minute Tool for Catholic Evangelism.
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We all struggle with expectations like, take up your cross and follow me.
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We just can't skirt it. This is a very real part of Christianity.
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37:23
Hi, this is Bob Johnston. You're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic Spirit Radio.
37:28
We're back from our break, and we're talking about the differences between historicism,
37:34
that is the idea that there are no dogmas that remain unchanged,
37:39
that dogma and teachings of the church and so forth change with time,
37:45
from culture to culture and time to time, as opposed to the position that there
37:49
are certain classical things about human nature, especially,
37:54
and about the church and about God and so forth that are always the same,
37:59
that always apply to human beings in every age, and that you can draw...
38:04
Dogmas from those kinds of things that carry through all the different ages
38:09
and always apply it to human nature.
38:11
Human nature itself doesn't change.
38:14
That a person in the first century is no different in many, many respects than
38:19
a person in the 20th century.
38:22
It might be that people have different sets of specific knowledges of the world
38:27
and how it works and so forth.
38:29
But by and large, they're affected by that world in the same way.
38:33
Their feelings, their loves, their needs, their value as a human being and so forth do not change.
38:40
That human nature is the same back in one era as it is in another.
38:45
And the dog was that applied to human beings do not change.
38:49
And the teachings that Christ handed on to the apostles have been handed down through the ages.
38:55
And those teachings are still correct and that they do not change.
38:59
And to try to change those is not permissible and that the duty of the church
39:08
is to hand on things in the same manner that they were handed on to the first apostles.
39:13
So these are the differences that we're talking about.
39:17
And a lot of times, in my opinion, the people who make these cases for historicism,
39:21
are simply wanting to try to make a case for things that they want changed that
39:26
they can't find a reason otherwise to do.
39:30
And it goes on here, it says about Vatican II, it says, these tangled issues
39:35
invite many remarks and reflections.
39:39
Father Mass's definition of fundamentalism is open to dispute.
39:43
In other words, he may not think so, but it is.
39:46
Even as his criticism of institutions like EWTN is unbalanced and unnuanced.
39:53
But let us continue our discussion about the debate.
39:56
Mass's book has reignited to two questions.
40:00
First, is there any warrant to claim that a major paradigm shift began at the
40:06
Second Vatican Council?
40:07
So that's the first thing he says is that Vatican II taught these ideas of historicism,
40:15
that things and dogmas and so forth change over time. Did it really do that?
40:19
That's the question we need to answer.
40:21
And did Vatican II actually change any of the conditions of the church? A lot of people think so.
40:28
They act that way. And Vatican II was a problem on account of that.
40:33
And I think a lot of Vatican II allowed and let people think that that was the
40:39
case, but that's not actually the case of what it did teach in the first place.
40:44
So let's go ahead and look at that.
40:48
And second, does the argument proposed by theologians like Lonergan and Rahner
40:54
that human nature changes essentially along the historical continuum withstand critical scrutiny?
41:01
In other words, they assert that human nature changes with time,
41:05
changes with history, changes from culture to culture and time to time.
41:09
Is that really true? Does it really change?
41:12
And does that withstand critical scrutiny? So let's look at those two questions.
41:17
Father Massa contends that Vatican II affected a seismic shift to an historically
41:22
sensitive understanding of moral doctrine that is superior in guiding conduct
41:28
under complex and varied circumstances.
41:31
Did it do that? Father Herring would have concurred.
41:36
This new beginning to which the church should aspire consists in accepting a
41:42
dynamic and antinomian view of morality.
41:46
An antinomian would be, you know, without church rules, for example,
41:52
and that it really teach an antinomian view of things without church rules.
41:58
On the contrary, the documents that directly address moral issues affirm a universal
42:04
and immutable natural law.
42:06
So, this article is saying here that on the contrary to what these German priests
42:12
are saying, Vatican II did not do these things.
42:16
It did not teach things that are contradictory to the dogmas of the church or
42:22
church history or the theories of the church and its history.
42:28
For example, Dignitatis Humanae, the consul's declaration on religious liberty,
42:33
states that the supreme norm of human life is the divine law itself,
42:39
eternal, objective, and universal.
42:42
The divine law that had been handed down from Jesus Christ to the apostles or from the apostles on to.
42:49
The priests and so forth, all the way to this day.
42:53
Elaborating on that statement, the Declaration refers to St.
42:57
Thomas, who explains in the Summa Theologiae that the eternal law is the unchangeable
43:04
truth, and all men know the truth to some extent, at least as to the general
43:10
principles of the natural law.
43:12
In other words, St. Paul himself said that the natural law is written on people's
43:17
hearts. people can know the natural law almost instinctively by themselves.
43:22
There are certain things you can know.
43:23
You can know that it is wrong, for example, to torture a baby.
43:30
That it is wrong to transgress against the dignity of human beings.
43:35
You might do these things for various reasons, but a person can know that you
43:40
shouldn't do those things.
43:41
And a person can know by the way they feel themselves that there are certain
43:46
injustices that are wrong.
43:48
When somebody steals from you and takes what you've said, suppose you work for
43:51
something very hard and you spend a lot of effort in acquiring it,
43:56
and then that is taken from you, you feel a sense of injustice.
44:00
Even a little kid does. He becomes angry and hurt.
44:03
He understands that there's something wrong, physically wrong.
44:08
He can understand the natural law, even though nobody's told him about theft
44:12
or stealing or anything else.
44:14
He still understands there's something wrong with doing that.
44:17
There are lots of things that you can understand about the natural law simply
44:21
by the fact that it's done.
44:23
And there is no doubt, therefore, that the eternal or divine law includes the
44:30
morally binding and objective presets of the natural law.
44:35
Dignitatis Humanae goes on to explain that these unchangeable principles of
44:41
the moral order derive from human nature itself.
44:44
In other words, your nature actually reacts to things like that in any time in any history.
44:50
A little kid feels the same way if he's abandoned by his parents in the first
44:55
century as he does in the 20th century. It hurts.
44:59
A little kid feels the same way if somebody steals something from him,
45:03
and even an adult feels the same way.
45:06
If somebody pretends to be your friend, and then they steal something valuable
45:11
from you and take it and so forth without your permission, something you worked
45:15
hard for, you feel a sense of injustice.
45:18
All of these things also hurt, and they affect your psyche, and they affect
45:22
your outlook on the world and so forth.
45:27
You don't have to have some law that you have to read or somebody declare it to you.
45:31
And human beings feel the same way, whether it's the first century.
45:35
And it doesn't make any difference what that object might be.
45:39
In one century, it might be something like a smartphone.
45:43
And in another century, it might be something, you know, like a toy.
45:49
Right. It could be a toy. It could be something. The point is,
45:53
it's not what it is or how it's made and so forth, but it's the value to you.
45:57
And human beings are the same in both centuries in that respect.
46:01
So this idea that all these things change over time is simply not true.
46:05
Some things do, but there are a lot of things that do not, and human nature
46:09
is one of those. And it goes, it says.
46:13
And nowhere in the document of Vatican II is there even an intimation that the
46:19
laws of morality must be rewritten to accommodate new historical or social realities.
46:25
In other words, a lot of people use Vatican II to justify a lot of things that
46:30
it doesn't justify at all.
46:32
And that doesn't mean that there aren't problems with Vatican II,
46:36
because I think there are.
46:37
And the very fact that people began to think along these lines and were allowed
46:44
to think that Vatican II was going to overturn and change all kinds of things
46:48
in the way people talked about it and also the way it was presented and the emphasis that was made.
46:53
I think there was a lot of emphasis made against for— I think a lot of emphasis
46:59
was made in favor of ecumenism and against the idea of the Catholic Church being exclusive.
47:09
And a lot of these things were implied, and people took them further than the
47:14
Vatican II actually really went.
47:16
And I think that was a bad thing about it happening. But the fact is it did
47:20
not teach a lot of the things that people say it taught.
47:23
Thus, there is no evidence of a paradigm shift at the Second Vatican Council,
47:28
or rather a persistent conviction regarding the primacy of eternal moral truth
47:33
that transcend time and history.
47:36
Is there a plausible case to support the argument for the historically conditioned
47:40
nature of human existence?
47:42
Lonergan's speech, which cites the work of Rahner, declares the need for a more
47:49
concrete apprehension of human nature, while Herring objected to the Church's
47:53
static vision of human nature.
47:55
Rahner believed that the person and his concrete nature, understood as the ground
48:00
of normativity undergoes an extensive process of change.
48:04
However, as moral theologian Germain Grisez explained,
48:09
while human nature in its historical and cultural actuality can change over
48:14
time for better or worse, human nature as the standard for moral norms is not subject to change.
48:21
According to Grisez, nature must be understood not in terms of a formal essence,
48:27
but as the basic possibilities or opportunities for fulfillment as outlined
48:33
in Aquinas' treatment of the natural law and the Summa.
48:36
We cannot find throughout the course of human history any community or persons
48:41
who were not bodily intelligent beings for whom the fundamental goods of life
48:46
and health, marriage, knowledge, friendship, and so on,
48:50
were not the source of their fulfillment and hence their basic reasons for action.
48:54
In other words, he's saying if we look at human beings throughout history and
48:58
how they acted and how they reacted to their environment,
49:02
we find that their actions and reactions are based on the same things and the
49:07
same kinds of things in every age as they are in any other age.
49:12
In other words, those kinds of things did not change.
49:15
Moreover, Lonergan, Rahner, Harry, and others who propose the possibility of
49:19
changes in human identity offer no examples to support their argument.
49:24
In other words, try to find examples in history where people acted for different
49:29
kinds of reasons than they act today, and they don't.
49:33
I mean, the surroundings around them may be different,
49:36
the kind of things and so forth that they act and so forth on behalf of may be different,
49:41
but it's the same kind of action to fulfill the same kind of desires and the
49:51
same kind of needs in any age.
49:54
Pope St. John Paul II skillfully addressed these issues in veritatis splendor,
49:59
demonstrating that historical contingencies cannot be the basis for the creation
50:05
of new moral norms that contradict the truth about man.
50:09
Rather, cultural transitions and upheavals demonstrate that there is something
50:15
in the human person that transcends time and transcends culture. And you can see that.
50:21
You go and you watch a movie about the Middle Ages, and you feel the same kinds
50:26
of things for the people acting then as you feel when you watch a movie in a modern movie.
50:31
You see human beings confronting the environment around them and so forth,
50:36
and you cheer and boo and so forth for the same kinds of things in every age.
50:41
And this something is precisely human nature.
50:44
This nature is itself the measure of culture and the condition ensuring that
50:48
man does not become the prisoner of any of his cultures, but asserts his personal
50:54
dignity by living in accordance with the profound truth of his being.
50:58
And he does that in every culture for all the same reasons, even though the
51:03
circumstances around him are different.
51:05
Thus, progressives like Father Massa, who endorsed the preeminence of historical
51:10
consciousness and immutability of human nature, cannot find confirmation for
51:16
their heterodox views in Vatican II and they can't find it in real life.
51:21
In addition, they must contend with the magisterial teaching of Veritatis Splendor,
51:26
which insists that there are intrinsically evil acts that are prohibited always
51:31
and without exception, in every age.
51:35
Historicism and normative flexibility are also incompatible with Scripture and
51:41
the Church's immense tradition, which includes the witness of countless martyrs
51:46
to eternal moral truths.
51:48
If we embrace the new paradigm, Father Massa proposes, the validity of many
51:53
moral teachings of the New Testament, such as those St.
51:57
Paul expresses, are jeopardized whenever they conflict with the social conventions
52:02
of liquid modernity, and that's a good term, liquid modernity,
52:06
you know, something that you can't put your finger on.
52:10
When scriptural authority is challenged in this way, the Church becomes detached
52:15
from the faithful teachings of the apostles.
52:18
Moreover, as Pope Pius XII pointed out in his Address to Young Catholic Women
52:22
in 1952, the mother of the Maccabees and her sons, St.
52:29
Perpetua and Felicity, Maria Goretti and thousands of other men and women the
52:35
Church venerates are the most direct witnesses of the truth against the new morality.
52:40
The new morality Pius had in mind was precisely the rejection of a fixed moral
52:47
order from which are derived true moral precepts that exclude certain actions in all circumstances.
52:56
Catholic theologians striving for fidelity to the teachings of Vatican II should
53:01
encourage the faithful to conform to those eternal principles of morality reaffirmed
53:08
in documents like Dignitatis Humanae.
53:12
They should not be deceived by the beguiling mystique of history that beckons
53:16
us constantly to overcome the past, even if it means contradicting the deposit of faith.
53:23
And a pope should be faithful, a faithful promoter of that same eternal moral
53:29
doctrine that is part of the Church's apostolic inheritance.
53:33
Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI made great strides in this regard,
53:39
especially through their encyclicals and other writings.
53:43
One wonders, of course, what Pope Leo XIV thinks about these matters.
53:48
How he answers the questions at the beginning of this discussion will help determine
53:54
the future of Catholicism as it struggles to sustain a coherent moral vision
54:00
amid the shards of postmodernism and the tidal wave of the sexual revolution.
54:07
So, I think the conclusion, of course, of the article is the same conclusion
54:12
I make, is that human nature doesn't change, and there are certain moral truths
54:17
to the church, hands down,
54:19
that must be perpetuated throughout all of history because they apply to that
54:24
human nature that doesn't change. And you can see...
54:28
Well, we're getting short on time. These bishops have what they call an elastic conscience.
54:36
They can adapt to anything. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
54:42
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
54:45
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.
54:48
And do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God,
54:52
stress in hell, Satan, and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruined souls. Amen.
55:01
You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit
55:04
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