In our conversation, Schindler argued that Jesuit Fr. John Courtney Murray, the American theologian who was a driving force behind the decree Dignitatis Humanae of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which recognized a strong distinction between church and state, in some ways muddled the waters.
In effect, Schindler said, Murray wanted to argue that the principle of human dignity means the state must remain neutral before competing value systems, allowing each person to choose, without acknowledging that basing all this upon human dignity is already a claim about values.
"The question is, did the church make its peace with the juridical state?" he said, meaning a state conceived basically in terms of free choice, regulated only by the rule of law. "That's left unresolved in Dignitatis Humanae, but I don't think Benedict XVI accepts it."
In other words, Schindler said, the pope believes that some values are so primordial that they can't legitimately be the object of free choice, and the state can't be neutral on them -- for example, the right to life.
"There aren't two ends to the human being," Schindler said, "as if there are two orders of existence. Politics has to be subordinated to the single ultimate end of human life."
Friday, May 19, 2006
Schindler on Murray
Excerpt from John Allen's Word from Rome (19 May 2006)
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2 comments:
I remember when I had just "come back" to the Church and got all excited by the thought JC Murray because he seemed to be in real conversation with the American political order -- from a Catholic perspective.
Then I read Schindler's HEART OF THE WORLD, CENTER OF THE CHURCH and I realized that Murray was proposing a kind of neutral ontology based upon a form of autonomous reason. I thought then, as I do now, that Murray's heart was in the right place. But I think what Schindler adds to the conversation is a primacy of the theological that Murray lacked. Perhaps it is a generational thing. Murray lived at a time when Catholics were "into" acceptance; today, I think Catholics realize that despite all the comforts acceptance might give us, it is fickle and secondary or tertiary to fidelity to Christ. We also live in an age where certain values cannot be taken for granted.
From Roe v. Wade to the War on Terrorism, we see that theological questions loom large and the myth of the state's "religious neutrality" is a myth -- and a dangerous one at that.
Matt McG, aka PPB
Is Schindler's criticism of Murray similar to the Romantic critique of (Kantian/Protestant) moral rationalism? Kant believed that moral and political convictions issued from reason as such. He hoped, by this door, to give his notions of moral duty and political liberty a warrant that no rational person could contest. But can one really draw such important principles from reason alone and a general knowledge of the human situation? Can you derive principles of duty and liberty without already assuming the validity of these or any other moral principles? Charles Larmore, in "The Romantic Legacy" asks: Is reason really a faculty whose results can be incontestable and substantive at the same time? He suggests that principles that are incontestable can't simultaneously be substantive; in other words, anything incontestable is morally abstract and immaterial. If reason is the way we withdraw from a given (say religious) practice to evaluate its merits, then withdrawing from our way of life as a whole, in order to listen to what reason as such can say about the conduct of life, is to find ourselves without any real guidance or compass at all. Reason, Larmore suggest, draws inferences and tests for consistency; it tells us how to continue with the allegiances we already have. But it can't replace a sense of belonging, of identifying with a way of life or a tradition, as the source of our moral guidance and substance.
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