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Bernhard Häring
From The Tablet, 30th June 1990, pp. 841 - 843.
Reprinted on the Internet with permission from
The Tablet. Address: 1 King Street
Cloisters, Clifton Walk, London W6 0QZ UK. Tel: 44-20-8748 8484; fax:
44-20-8748 1550; email: thetablet@the tablet.co.uk.
We
publish below in English translation a letter which the former professor of
moral theology at the Gregorian University in Rome sent to the Pope in November
1988. It first appeared late last year in Fr Häring’s book, Meine
Erfahrung mit der Kirche (My Experience with the Church). Fr Häring
then let it be known to The Tablet that he hoped it would appear there
in English.
Dear Father in Christ,
We
have many reasons for loving you not just because of your high office but also
because of your untiring enthusiasm for justice and peace, because of your
closeness to those in need, and for many other reasons.
Love
for your person, high esteem for your office and the responsibility we all
share for handing on the faith to the critically-minded generation of today and
to those who will come after us nevertheless compel me to express publicly my
reservations about what I regard as your over emphasis on too rigorously
interpreted norms in the field of sexual ethics.
Naturally like you we are aware of our duty to do what we can so that
Christians may love and foster chastity. But it is precisely in this field:
that the saying applies: “The bow is broken when drawn too tight”. If
in this difficult field we demand even an iota more than we can reasonably
justify from revelation or from reason inspired by faith, we lose credibility.
Quite simply, we are no longer listened to.
I was
shattered to read recently that among 6,000 readers of Weltbild, a
journal that is very loyal and devoted to the Pope (Nos. 23 and 24, 4 and 28
November 1988) only 12 per cent of the faithful under 50 and only 25 per cent
of those over 50 are ready to listen to the present papal teaching on questions
of sexual morality, while in general the same people are fully prepared to
value papal authority very highly on questions of faith and morals. Similar
findings have resulted from surveys in other parts of the world.
Recently I had to listen to a large group of highly-qualified teachers of
religion, men and women loyal to the Church, telling me how difficult it has
been and still is for them to calm the waves caused by your address to moral
theologians on 12 November 1988.
The
headline in L’Osservatore Romano of 13 November 1988 is something
one can and must agree with: “One cannot speak of a painstaking search for
the truth if one does not take into account what the teaching office
teaches.” But if this teaching authority of the Church becomes the
battle-cry of intransigent people who boast about standing particularly close
to the Pope, and if it becomes a weapon against those who resist far too strict
an interpretation only on secondary points, then one does no good service to
the Church, to its mission or even to the Petrine ministry.
I
have before me the text of the lecture “Who is like the Lord our
God?” given by Professor Mgr Carlo Caffarra to the congress of moral
theologians which you paid particular honour to by receiving and addressing its
participants. The level of scholarship is far below what is needed. It seems to
call radically into question any attempt to justify or analyse moral norms on
teleological grounds. On page 7 of the typescript we find: “That is why
once man has raised himself to the ethical level he is no longer interested in
detail or ultimately in the historical possibilities, consequences and results
of his action: he is raised above such calculation.”
The
first thing that has to be noted against a naive and indeed alarming
misinterpretation of the teleological approach is that what is involved is in
no way a calculation of utility but a careful weighing up of the consequences
with regard to healthy and healing relationships, with regard to bearing fruit
in love and peace in a context of solidarity. Caffarra’s statement comes
in a context in which he uses very abstract ideas that are remote from life and
unproved assertions concerning tradition in an effort to prove that the norm
laid down by Humanae Vitae (the ban on artificial methods of birth
control) does not admit of any exception in any case.
Along
with virtually the entire tradition of the Eastern Churches and a large part of
the Roman Catholic tradition, St Alphonsus Liguori taught that even in
questions of the natural law there is room for epikeia (looking for the
spirit of the law rather than the letter)(Theologia moralis l:I:tr.II,
c.IV n. 201) By this he does not of course mean the highest norms of the
commandment to love God and one’s neighbour that is inscribed in our
hearts. Nevertheless he applies the possibility of epikeia explicitly to
coitus interruptus, which at that time was the only non-magical method
of birth control, and the cooperation of the wife who knows her husband is
going to use this method. Like other moral theologians of that time he too
teaches that coitus interruptus in itself contradicts the procreative
sense of the marriage act and is therefore to be rejected. But he explicitly
mentions cases in which couples have good reason to want the marriage act not
to lead to conception. He too saw a high value in abstention, but nevertheless
left open the possibility of epikeia for a just cause (iusta ex
causa).
In
his lecture to the congress of moral theologians, as in earlier statements,
Carlo Caffarra does not distinguish whether in an actual situation procreation
would be desirable or whether it would be irresponsible. As an example let us
take the kind of case that I have repeatedly been faced with: because a woman
has already given birth to children with genetic defects, she suffers from a
pregnancy psychosis. Gynaecologists and psychiatrists are convinced that the
woman can once again become capable of living a married life and can be
restored to her family to help bring up her handicapped children if.through a
combination of sterilisation and psychotherapy she can be freed from her
psychotic fear. The strict moral theologian says “No”, on the ground
that the woman’s reproductive organs are not diseased. In other cases that
occur not infrequently, the rigorous insistence on the Church’s norms
brings a marriage to breaking-point: in the actual case “natural family
planning” is not applicable; the husband is alienated from his wife
through her obedience to the Church and also from the Church in anger at its
rigorism.
In
such cases are all artificial methods of birth control proven to be absolutely
immoral when what is ultimately involved is maintaining the mutual self-giving
of marriage and the bond of loyalty?
According to Caffarra, whatever the situation may be, what is involved is
nothing less than “an attack on God’s holiness” and the pride of
wanting to be like God, and so on. How can one argue so simplistically? That is
not the image of God which Jesus makes tangible and visible for us.
In
your papal address to the participants in the congress who are presented to you
by Mgr Caffarra, we find: “This moral norm does not allow of any
exceptions: no personal or social circumstance has ever been, is or ever will
be able to make such an act rightly ordered.” As far as I am concerned it
is beyond question that there are moral prohibitions which do not admit of any
exception. For example, torture can never ever be morally justified, especially
when it is used to extort statements and confessions. Pius XII said that with
great sorrow about an extremely inglorious earlier church tradition and the
doctrinal statements of popes that supported it. Similarly it is at first sight
obvious that rape and similar acts always offend against the moral law.
But
does this also apply to the norm that every marriage act must be open to
generation? To put it another way, are artificial means of controlling
conception worthy of condemnation in all circumstances? The majority of moral
theologians side with St Thomas Aquinas in teaching that the more complex and
more remote from the supreme principle of love a derived moral norm is, the
smaller is its degree of certainty and the less does it exclude the application
of epikeia.
In
the Augustinian tradition the norm of the actual openness of sexual intercourse
to procreation was an absolute norm; and this was indeed on account of his
pessimism with regard to sexuality. For him and his followers the sexual act
counted as something degrading and shameful and thus needed to be excused and
made moral (excusatio, cohonestatio) by the direct intention of
procreation. But today one can no longer appeal to this tradition. Rather, it
should make us careful about what we say.
How
can one expect the critically minded people of today and even devout Christians
to accept the statement that in the interpretation of the norm laid down by
Humanae Vitae every exception (all epikeia) must be absolutely
excluded, and then put forward the statement: “In reality what is called
into question by the rejection of this teaching is the very idea of the
holiness of God” (address of 12 November 1988)?
Furthermore, we are shaken to have to face the question whether one can really
say of the norm of Humanae Vitae when interpreted so strictly that
“it has been inscribed by the creative hand of God and has been confirmed
by him in revelation”. Where can such a confirmation be found? If indeed
we consider how many good and intelligent Christians inside and outside the
Catholic Church simply cannot join in deducing such a rigorous interpretation
and how they find scandalous, indeed offensive, the thought-models, methods of
argument and imputations of guilt proposed by Carlo Caffarra and others, then
one should not teach in so undifferentiated and simplistic a way: “To call
it into question is thus equivalent to refusing to God himself the obedience of
our intelligence” (the same papal address of 12 November 1988).
Immense questions concerning the history of the exercise of the teaching office
by the popes are thrown up by the following stricture against any analysis of
statements of this kind: “Because the Church’s teaching office has
been instituted to enlighten the conscience, any appeal to this conscience in
order to contest the truth of what has been taught by the magisterium involves
the rejection of the Catholic concept both of the magisterium and of the moral
conscience” (from the same address).
The
critically-minded person and indeed precisely the devout Christian who is very
devoted and loyal to the Church and to the successor of Peter needs to subject
such a statement to historical analysis and questioning, perhaps by trying to
put this question: “Has anyone who has subjected to analysis and question,
by appealing to conscience, the teaching of Boniface VIII and several of his
successors about the plenary powers of the pope over all secular realms and
spheres thereby rejected at least by implication the Catholic concept both of
the magisterium and of conscience?”
If
only one particular theological tendency is accepted in the Vatican, and indeed
with such severity as in the case of the congress of moral theologians
organized by Carlo Caffarra, then for all of us innumerable and very painful
questions are raised.
On
the other hand, the more collegially the Petrine ministry is able to encourage
the diversity of cultures and traditions and the quest of the different
theological cultures, the greater will be the trust the Petrine ministry
instils in us all. But if the pope is directly drawn into intransigent
interpretations and the most shocking kinds of argumentation, then we are all
plunged into a crisis and are compelled by our loyalty to the Church to express
our distress and agony.
The
shocking nature of the present crisis is demonstrated above all in the field of
papal teaching on sexual morality, where people react most sensitively. But in
my view much more serious is the danger that as a consequence of the present
intensification of polarisation, if the pope himself is primarily involved in
his own person, then the teaching office of the pope and the bishops can
ultimately no longer develop its full potential even on quite central questions
of our faith. And yet the present generation’s poverty of faith is already
so great!
Dear
Father in Christ,
I am
an old man who already has more than one foot in the grave. I love my Church
passionately and I also love the successor of Peter. And to my eyes there are
many reasons that make him worth loving. In order to be able to await
God’s mercy with confidence in the hour of death, I have throughout my
life been concerned to follow a compassionate and merciful moral theology and
pastoral practice. Married couples in their distress must be aware of the balm
of compassionate love. In thousands of letters and in hearing thousands of
confessions I have learnt the extent to which good Christians are grievously
hurt by rigorism in sexual matters.
Harsh
formulations such as those favoured by Carlo Caffarra and his allies hurt
people and reopen old wounds. They make the ministry of healing and saving love
more difficult for all of us. If, for example, we hear Carlo Caffarra say
triumphantly that at the ethical level one does not need to bother in any way
with foreseeable consequences, then we can only weep and pray when we are asked
what we have to say to that.
These
and other considerations have compelled me to pour my heart out to you. If you
should feel yourself injured by what I have said, I ask your pardon.
“The pope’s teaching office”, a phrase now so often used, should
not become a battle-cry of the Church’s intransigent hussars and as a
result become for many others an incomprehensible myth.
Thus
I remain in the love of the most sacred heart of Jesus your obedient servant.
Gars
am Inn, 1 December 1988
Bernhard Häring
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