The Catholic good
By Mark Vernon on Tuesday, March 2 2010, 06:42 - In the news - Permalink
The Catholic Church is about to issue guidance on how its flock might vote in the forthcoming UK election, in a document called Choosing the Common Good. It's the pro-trad-family line that's been trailed, which is being interpreted as steering Catholics to voting rightwards. (Quite why is beyond me. I can't but think the Conservative fuss about marriage and taxation is a kind of displaced guilt from the real reason marriage is weakening: individual freedom, which in its neoliberal form has powered the policy of right for the last three decades.)
In some coverage of Citizen Ethics parallels have been drawn between some of the contributions in our pamphlet and Catholic social teaching. There is a common root that shapes my thinking, at least, namely Aristotle. He finds his way into Catholic social teaching via Thomas Aquinas. But our project is really very different.
We're not, of course, offering advice or guidance. We want to stimulate serious debate in a plural world. I'm not much aware this is something the Catholic Church encourages, 'debate' for the magisterium being about the problem of re-representing its 'timeless truths'. Doctrine works top-down. Debate works bottom-up. The document's appeal to the common good could be questioned too. It carries the implication that Catholicism speaks for the good of humanity, when in reality, pluralism forces any absolutist institution on the defensive. For common good it's hard not to read what's good for Catholic self-interest.
That said, I think there is an issue about ethics in a culture that marginalizes religion - not in the sense of whether you can be good without God (always a facile debate), but in the sense of the philosophical and imaginative resources from which a virtue ethics approach can spring. Virtue ethics doesn't look to timeless principles for a steer on life - such as maximising happiness or following categorical imperatives - but rather sees the ethical life as a question of practical intelligence that can only be learned in life, much like the skill of an artist. This means that institutions, culture and traditions matter, in the same way that they matter to the artist. So it interests me what religious thinkers have to say about ethics: they are peculiarly sensitized to certain issues that matter. However, there's no turning back. Inasmuch as religion is marginalized, it's usually for good reasons - good ethical reasons, one might add. The future requires a remaking not a restatement.
Comments
Mark, a very interesting post. I particularly like; "Doctrine works top-down. Debate works bottom-up."
Quick defence of Kant... While it's less clear to anyone other than Kant that his reformulations of the categorical imperative are equivalent, the third formula - which I term communal autonomy - necessitates debate... the "Realm of Ends" that Kant speaks of cannot be determined by reason alone. One must talk to other people if one hopes to uphold the categorical imperative in this form.
Best wishes!
Hi Mark
As a remedy for its many ills, what the plural world needs is not more debate but an investigation of truths which are genuinely universal. Such an investigation does not require debate in order to occur, although it also does not prohibit dialogue from taking place or in any way limit anyone's capacity to discuss what they find.
Contrary to widespread belief, debate is not inherently good; this is because whether or not it is good depends upon other things. Truth is not a debate, not a product of debate and not arrived at through debate. It stands to reason that truth must transcend reason, otherwise reason will go from being anchorless to entirely groundless - and this has been the trajectory of modernity since reason pronounced itself autonomous. Travelling in the other direction, the joy of philosophy is that the mind can not only approach truth but can build its house in that unchanging domain, as though upon a rock.
Granted that doctrine is top-down, the 'top-' part of any doctrine must be rooted in an essential, supra-mental truth or be condemned as simply inauthentic. Debate being bottom-up, the '-up' part of any exchange can only be a deliberate orientation towards truth, otherwise it's just a nice chat. The chat may be dressed-up in fine philosophical hand-me-downs but the words will be made of air and will contain no intellectual fire. Where the upward movement of intelligent inquiry meets the graceful descent of permanent wisdom, there we find a fertile place in which all doctrine can be properly evaluated and every debate fully illuminated.
With regard to the marginalisation of religion, it's true that there is no longer any possibility of turning back but this is because people are now so completely disoriented they have no idea of which way they are facing, or indeed, where it is that they are or what anything is. Blunt restatements of 'timeless principles' are undoubtedly maladaptive; remakings, along the lines you seem to suggest, are productive of counterfeit goods. What the future really requires is a host of rediscoveries; what it will get, however, is much more chaos and much more confusion, because that is the road we are on.
'Virtue ethics doesn't look to timeless principles for a steer on life - such as maximising happiness or following categorical imperatives - but rather sees the ethical life as a question of practical intelligence that can only be learned in life, much like the skill of an artist. This means that institutions, culture and traditions matter.' This is a great way of putting it, it seems to me.
There are other bits in this post, however, that seem less well thought out (or, at least, if they reflect opinions you have thought out before, then the thinking behind them is not so apparent in this post). For instance 'For common good it's hard not to read what's good for Catholic self-interest.' This reads to me like the trotting out of some dogma about how 'absolutist institutions' work. What, in Catholic thinking on the 'common good', can you see as being determined by 'Catholic self-interest'? (This is a genuine, not a rhetorical question. I don't claim to be an expert on Catholic thought on the common good. But, to take the example of the 'pro family' teaching you mention: how is that in the interest of an 'absolutist' institution? I would have thought that totalitarians were not generally in favour of strong, independent familites?) And the laziest statement on here - 'inasmuch as religion is marginalized, it's usually for good reasons - good ethical reasons, one might add'. It seems to me that if you are genuinely giving reasons not to believe in a particular religion, then you are engaging with religion; if you are just 'marginalizing' it, you are refusing to give any reasons for what you are doing at all, or you are giving reasons not to listen to someone else, to shut down dialogue. How would that statement read if you replaced 'religion' with 'philosophy'? It seems a very anti pluralist statement to me: you don't get sweet reasonableness all round if you try to suppress religion; you just get suppression.
BR - It seems to me that the Catholic church uses every opportunity to promote its teaching, and I can't think of a single example when it changes that teaching as a result of debate. Perhaps there are one or two examples, but it's notion of the common good leads inexorably towards the full set of Catholic moral teaching on the family, contraception etc: with Catholic moral teaching - or its insights into the common good - you're supposed to take, or perhaps one should say submit to, the full system. As to the marginalization of religion being good, I'm not 'refusing' to give reasons, just not saying everything in a single post! Just one example, it seems to me that the separation of church and state, which is a marginalization when viewed in terms of history, is an ethically good thing since it saves religious organisations the ethical risks of political power-wielding - to Caesar what's Caesar's; to God what's God's etc. That's not the same as suppression at all. I'm all for religion in the public square. In fact, I think that the separation of church and state actually encourages all flowers to bloom - witness the US.
Fair enough (and I appreciate the difficulty of cramming in all your ideas into a blog meant to be a collection of impressions and sketches). I'm with you, re. the separation of church and state (and I think that the Catholic church, and Gregory VII, got there before either of us! - it is an idea flowing out of Christianity, I would say). I guess I just took exception to the term 'marginalise', but I wouldn't necessarily use 'marginalisation' for what you are talking about. I reckon, too, that it might be interesting to explore the difference between the substance of Catholic thought on the common good (which - from what I know of it - is a million miles away from giving any support to any totalitarian/absolutist currents of thought) and the way that the church can present/impose that teaching (and whether it lives up, in practice, to all the implications of its teaching). But maybe not in the confines of a blog... Again, there might be an interesting question about the difference between first principles that enable debate, and debatable points (like the hypothesis of 'limbo' etc.).
I am a fan of the blog - always interesting and insightful. Re. your latest post, there's always Thomas Merton as an example of someone for whom writing was an essential part of their spritual vocation. And if you don't fancy becoming a monk, I'm sure there are plenty of other examples...
BR - I kinda hope there are parallels between the monk's lectio divina and the writer's practice.
Well, it seems to me the church understands its influence on people. There are a lot of examples of elections where the Church also influenced the results. And no election campaings or marketing could not convince people to change their opinion. This is a nice video: http://www.videorolls.com/watch/Ele... but God and politics shouldn't be connected.