The Holiness of the Church as a Motive of Credibility and the "Argument from Meager Moral Fruits"

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven — Matthew 5:16

In Catholic apologetics, there are various motives of credibility that the apologist can appeal to in his defense of the Faith. The twentieth-century Thomist theologian Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, in his masterwork on fundamental theology and apologetics, defines and explains motives of credibility as follows:

According to the Catholic Church, the motives of credibility are the signs or notes by which revealed religion is made evidently credible to divine faith. They are called signs or notes inasmuch as they manifest the divine origin of revealed religion (or inasmuch as they are "arguments for divine revelation"). They are called motives in relation to the judgement of credibility, which is founded on them" (On Divine Revelation: The Teaching of the Catholic Faith, I.16.1.3; emphases in original).

One motive of credibility in particular is the holiness of the Church, particularly with respect to her many extraordinary saints and martyrs as well as the good works and general virtuousness of her ordinary practicing members (the latter will be my focus in this post). The Church herself draws attention to this motive of credibility in her official teaching:

For, to the Catholic Church alone belong all those many and marvelous things which have been divinely arranged for the evident credibility of the Christian faith. But, even the Church herself by herself, because of her marvelous propagation, her exceptional holiness, and inexhaustible fruitfulness in all good works; because of her catholic unity and invincible stability, is a very great and perpetual motive of credibility, and an incontestable witness of her own divine mission (Vatican I, Dei Filius, Ch. 3; emphasis added).

In other words, the (good) moral fruits of the Church provide evidence for her divine origins and thus also—and by extension—for the truth of Catholicism. Let's suppose that we adopt a Bayesian view of evidence (as I think we should) according to which E is evidence for H means that Pr(H | E) > Pr(H). (I discuss more details of Bayesianism HERE, and HERE, and HERE). Then, the claim of the Catholic apologist is that Pr(Catholicism | Moral Fruits) > Pr(Catholicism).

Will all of this having been said, there is a sort of inverse argument to this that has been popularized recently by, for instance, Ben Watkins of The Real Atheology Podcast, which Watkins dubs the "argument from meager moral fruits." The basic idea is that if the presence of moral fruits is evidence for Catholicism, then the absence of moral fruits is evidence against Catholicism. This fact is grounded in the following theorem of probability theory:

Pr(H | E) > Pr(H) if and only if Pr(H | ¬E) < Pr(H).

The upshot of this is that if Pr(Catholicism | Moral Fruits) > Pr(Catholicism), then Pr(Catholicism | ¬Moral Fruits) < Pr(Catholicism). The next step of the argument is the claim that there is a lack of moral fruits among Catholics. Consequently, the consideration of moral fruits is actually evidence against Catholicism rather than evidence for it. Therefore, if this argument is successful, then the consideration of the moral fruits of the Church will actually be a motive of incredibility.

Now, Watkins himself actually presents the argument in such a way that mere theism is the target rather than Catholicism specifically. He presents the argument in one place as follows:

1. The lives of theists are not discernibly more moral than non-theists nor do most non-theists experience positive witnesses or saints in their lives.
2. If theism is true, then the lives of theists are discernibly more moral than non-theists and most non-theists would experience positive witnesses or saints in their lives.
3. Therefore, theism is not true.

In this formulation of the argument, the lack of moral fruits entails the falsity of theism. However, in another formulation of the argument that Watkins gives, the lack of moral fruits is merely evidence against theism:

1. Non-theists are no less moral than theists in practice.
2. Theism is not more probable intrinsically than naturalism.
3. Fact (1) is more likely given naturalism than theism.
4. Therefore, ceteris paribus, theism is probably false.

It is this probabilistic formulation that I will focus on in this post. To begin, I think the focus on mere theism is actually a weakness of the argument. From a Catholic perspective, merely believing in the existence of God is not going to be morally transformative. As St. James teaches us, even the demons believe that God exists (James 2:19). As such, (3) seems a bit shaky to me. At the very least, Catholics have good reason to doubt its truth. Another point to be made is that even if (1) is evidence against theism, it does not follow that it is evidence against Catholicism, and this is despite the fact that the truth of Catholicism logically entails the truth of theism. In general, it does not follow from P → Q and Pr(Q | E) < Pr(Q) that Pr(P | E) < Pr(P).

Let us, then, for exploratory purposes, consider the argument from meager moral fruits as applied to Catholicism specifically rather than to mere theism. Even here, however, it is not clear that merely being Catholic (depending on how much we want to load into what it means to simply be Catholic) will—even assuming that Catholicism is true—result in great moral fruits. This is because, from the Catholic perspective, the way for Catholics to become holy is to use the means to holiness prescribed by the Church. The upshot of this is that we shouldn't expect Catholics who do not use these means to bear great moral fruits. Indeed, the opposite could take place instead. As Garrigou-Lagrange puts it:

Indeed, we cannot deny that vices and scandals are found in Catholic nations; however, those who are evil are such because they depart from the Catholic faith or do not keep the Church's precepts, not making use of the means of holiness offered by her. However, those who are holy are made to be such because they obey her commandments (On Divine Revelation, II.9.2.3).

The precepts of the Church that Garrigou-Lagrange is referring to are explained in, for instance, the Catechism of the Catholic Church as follows:

The precepts of the Church are set in the context of a moral life bound to and nourished by liturgical life. The obligatory character of these positive laws decreed by the pastoral authorities is meant to guarantee to the faithful the indispensable minimum in the spirit of prayer and moral effort, in the growth in love of God and neighbor (CCC 2041).

They are enumerated as follows:

• You shall attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation.
• You shall confess your sins at least once a year.
• You shall humbly receive your Creator in Holy Communion at least during the Easter season.
• You shall keep holy the holy days of obligation.
• You shall observe the prescribed days of fasting and abstinence.

It is Catholics who observe these ecclesiastical precepts that we should expect to produce moral fruits beyond that of non-Catholics (as well as beyond that of Catholics who do not observe these precepts). Further, we should not necessarily expect Catholics who do not observe these precepts to produce moral fruits beyond that of non-Catholics. Moreover, these precepts are centered around participation in the liturgical life of the Church—above all, the Mass and the sacraments. These are the primary means to holiness prescribed by the Church. As such, another observation we can make is that the more a Catholic participates in the Mass and the sacraments, the more moral fruits we should expect him to produce. Inversely, the less a Catholic participates in the Mass and the sacraments, the less moral fruits we should expect him to produce.

All this being the case, the evidential evaluation of moral fruits with respect to the truth (or falsity) of Catholicism is, it seems to me, far more complex than Watkins' argument from meager moral fruits envisions. It is not enough to survey the moral behavior of those who profess to be Catholic. Rather, the focus should be on surveying the moral behavior of Catholics who consistently follow the precepts of the Church. That is the relevant class to consider with respect to evaluating the truth of Catholicism on the basis of moral fruits. The question will then be this: As a matter of empirical fact, is it the case that Catholics who consistently follow the precepts of the Church tend to produce noticeably greater moral fruits than non-Catholics (or even Catholics who do not consistently follow the precepts of the Church)? If the answer is yes, then this is evidence for Catholicism; if instead the answer is no, then this is evidence against Catholicism. While I am personally optimistic that the answer is yes, this is not a question that can be settled from the armchair, nor is it a question that can be conclusively answered by appeal to anecdotal evidence. (This is not to dismiss the value of anecdotal evidence entirely. Anecdotal evidence is still evidence, but it seems to me that we must regard it as non-conclusive given, for instance, the so-called law of small numbers). Instead, we need an empirical study of the moral behavior of Catholics who consistently follow the Church's precepts and of people (whether Catholic or not) who do not.

There is a significant difficulty involving how we are to interpret the results of this hypothetical study should it be carried out, however. The difficulty is this: Given that Catholics and non-Catholics are bound to have moral disagreements (i.e., disagreements about what is and is not moral), Catholics and non-Catholics are also bound to disagree in at least some cases about whether something counts as good or bad moral fruit. This difficulty is brought out in Watkins' brief presentation of the argument from meager moral fruits. He cites as an example of the (alleged) meager moral fruits of Christianity the (alleged) fact that it can be observed "that Christian theists have been an obstacle rather than a means to LGBT equality." Now, it isn't entirely clear what Watkins has in mind by "LGBT equality." But if, for instance, he has in mind something like the legitimization of so-called "gay marriage," then the Catholic will regard this as a bad moral fruit rather than a good one. As such, that Catholics act as "obstacles" to this is actually a good moral fruit and therefore counts in favor of Catholicism. Watkins would likely disagree with this, however. He would view this as a bad moral fruit that counts against Catholicism. In the other direction, a Catholic will, for instance, regard the rejection of pre-marital sex as a good moral fruit, while an atheist might regard this either as neither good nor bad or as bad (in the latter case, an atheist might view the rejection of pre-marital sex as in some way oppressive or imprudent). Another example would be the prohibition of abortion. A Catholic will regard this as a good moral fruit, while an atheist might regard this as a bad (even a very bad) moral fruit.

I should note that Watkins himself recognizes this difficulty. Regarding the example he gives involving LGBT equality, he (correctly) observes that the example presupposes that "LGBT equality is a morally good end we ought to pursue" in the first place. This is illustrative of a basic fact of Bayesian epistemology: Whether E is evidence for H will often depend on one's background beliefs. In this case, it is one's background moral beliefs that will determine whether a particular fact about the behavior of Catholics versus non-Catholics will count as evidence in favor or evidence against the truth of Catholicism on the basis of the consideration of moral fruits. It would seem, then, that normative and applied ethical debates are unavoidable when considering the argument from the holiness of the Church and the argument from meager moral fruits.

One way to try to bracket off these debates is to only consider actions/behaviors whose moral status is agreed upon by all parties in the debate over moral fruits. This does not seem like a good approach to take, however. To see why, suppose, for instance, that non-Catholics regularly participate in abortions. Further, suppose that these non-Catholics believe that abortion is a completely morally legitimate medical procedure akin to getting one's appendix removed. By contrast, of course, Catholics (rightly) believe that abortion is actually akin to murder, which is, of course, a very grave evil. Now, if Catholics are in fact correct in their assessment, and these hypothetical non-Catholics are wrong in theirs, then this behavior on the part of these non-Catholics constitutes an extremely evil moral fruit and will thus have significant evidential weight in the evaluation of the moral fruits of Catholics versus non-Catholics. It thus does not seem sensible to ignore this piece of evidence just because there is disagreement about its evidential status. I think the conclusion that we should draw from this is that neither the argument from the holiness of the Church nor the argument from meager moral fruits will likely be dialectically effective in circumstances in which the parties in the debate have substantial and wide-ranging moral disagreements.

With this being said, I think that a useful way forward would be to evaluate the argument from the holiness of the Church while presupposing Catholic morality (or at least that subset of Catholic morality that is supposed to be accessible to natural reason apart from special divine revelation) as a set of background beliefs and to evaluate the argument from meager moral fruits while presupposing whatever morality the proponent of the argument subscribes to as a set of background beliefs. We could then get hypothetical conclusions such as that if Catholic morality is true, then the moral fruits of Catholics who consistently follow the precepts of the Church are evidence for the truth of Catholicism. This by itself would be a significant conclusion with great apologetical value. If we could get here, then we could focus our efforts on showing that Catholic morality is in fact true, and this would allow us to draw the categorical conclusion that the moral fruits of Catholics who consistently follow the precepts of the Church are evidence for the truth of Catholicism. In addition, Catholicism getting morality right in the first place would itself seem to be good evidence for the truth of Catholicism. Hence, we would thereby produce two pieces of good evidence for Catholicism.

I shall end this post here. With that being said, this is certainly a topic I would like to explore further in future posts. It seems like the argument from the holiness of the Church has been somewhat neglected in recent years, perhaps because of the public scandals that have afflicted the Church. It is my hope that there will be a renewal of interest in this argument among Catholic apologists as time goes on. This post has only barely scratched the surface of the argument. What I have offered here is but a brief and incomplete prolegomenon.