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:

A Libertarian Case Against Abortion

In celebration of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, I thought I would share an (unpublished) essay I wrote against the moral permissibility of abortion a few years ago. At the time, I was somewhat of a libertarian (this is no longer the case). Consequently, I approached the issue through a libertarian lens. If there is an apologetic advantage to this, it is that pro-choice arguments are, I think, strongest when evaluated against a libertarian backdrop. Thus, the essay seeks to refute the pro-choice position on its home turf, so to speak. Anyway, without further ado, the essay can be accessed HERE.

The Ethics of Mockery

Two fundamental questions:

1. Is mockery ever morally permissible?
2. If yes, under what conditions?

In answer to the first question, we must answer with yes. For our Lord Himself engaged in mockery (cf. Matthew 23:24). Since, therefore, our Lord is utterly without sin (cf. Hebrews 4:15), it follows that mockery is not intrinsically sinful and therefore can be morally permissible.

Answering the second question is more difficult, but if we follow the example of our Lord, we can identify various conditions under which mockery is morally permissible. When Christ engaged in mockery, the chief reasons for doing so were to combat error and to teach truth. Christ engages in mockery in order to repudiate the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees, and to teach the truth that the interior life is more important than the exterior (cf. Matthew 23:27-28). So, using mockery for these purposes is morally legitimate. Purposes for engaging in mockery that are obviously not morally legitimate would include, for example, wanting to calumniate someone or wanting to simply manifest cruelty by inflicting emotional pain on someone.

Lying in Extraordinary Circumstances: Some Biblical Considerations

Here are some thoughts on the morality of lying, particularly in extraordinary circumstances. Lying, as classically defined by St. Augustine, "consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving" (CCC 2482, quoting St. Augustine). And, according to Augustine, lying is intrinsically wrong, i.e., it is never permissible in any circumstances: “It seems to me, however, that every lie is a sin, albeit there is a great difference depending on the intention and the topic of the lie” (Enchiridion, Ch. VI, par. 18). The classic problem case for this conception of lying is the Nazis-at-the-door scenario. You are living in Germany during the Jewish Holocaust. You are hiding Jews in your attic to protect them. Some Nazis knock at your door and ask you if you are hiding Jews in your house. What to do? On the one hand, you might think that lying is intrinsically wrong, and lying consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving. So, you reason that you cannot licitly lie to the Nazis (i.e., you cannot licitly speak a falsehood to the Nazis with the intention of deceiving them). So, telling the Nazis that you do not have Jews in your house seems like it’s off the table. On the other hand, if you tell the Nazis the truth, they will arrest the Jews and send them off to a concentration camp. Needless to say, this would be very bad. So, we seemingly have a serious moral dilemma. One possibility to explore is to scrutinize the Augustinian conception of lying. There are substantive philosophical arguments both for and against the Augustinian view, but for this post I will restrict myself to some biblical considerations.

The Principle of Double Effect and the Atomic Bombings of WWII

Catholic moral theologians have consistently held that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States during World War II were gross violations of justice. The Church herself has taught this:

"Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation." A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons—especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons—to commit such crimes (CCC 2314).

The Church and human reason assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflicts. Practices deliberately contrary to the law of nations and to its universal principles are crimes (CCC 2328).

The Evangelical Counsels

In moral theology, there is a distinction between a precept and a counsel. A precept is a moral duty, i.e., a moral obligation. A counsel is not obligatory but is expressly recommended and is supererogatory (Moral Theology: A Complete Course, Vol. I, pg. 141). This distinction is present in the Law of Christ. For example, while celibacy is not morally obligatory—we are free to instead choose the married life—it is the better way of life, according to St. Paul (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:38). There are numerous counsels in the Law of Christ, but they can generally be reduced to three categories, which are often collectively referred to in moral theology as the evangelical counsels. These counsels are as follows:

Is it a sin to do a good work without referring it to the glory of God?

It seems that it is sinful to do a good work without referring it to the glory of God, for it is a precept to do all things for the glory of God (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:31). Furthermore, our Lord teaches us that one of the key objects of good works is the glorification of God (cf. Matthew 5:16, John 15:8). Now, if the glorification of God is an essential end of good works, then works without this end wouldn’t seem to be truly and completely good works. The Westminster Confession (a Reformed confession of faith) expresses this idea as follows:

Works done by unregenerate men, although for the matter of them they may be things which God commands, and of good use both to themselves and others; yet because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith, nor are done in a right manner, according to the Word, nor to a right end, the glory of God; they are therefore sinful, and cannot please God, or make a man meet to receive grace from God. And yet their neglect of them is more sinful and displeasing unto God. (Westminster Confession, XVI.VII).

However, it seems that it is psychologically infeasible to actually refer every good work to the glory of God. Thus, this precept would seem to constitute an intolerable burden that few, if any, could bear. And this fact seems incompatible with the teaching of Sacred Scripture that the commandments of the Law of Christ are not burdensome (cf. Matthew 11:30, 1 John 5:3).

Furthermore, if this principle is true, then one would sin in every good work unless the good work is referred to the glory of God. But this is incompatible with St. Paul’s teaching that Gentiles do in fact do good by following the natural law and in such a way that such conduct may excuse them on the day of judgement (cf. Romans 2:14-16). But nobody is excused by the commission of sinful acts but rather only by righteous ones. Hence, since Gentiles do not refer their good works to the true God (since they do not even believe in and worship the true God), it follows that such is not necessary in order for a good work to be without sin. So, we seem to be in a quandary. What to do?

Applying the Golden Rule

 “So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12).

The Golden Rule is a fundamental moral precept of the natural law and is also rooted in the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves (cf. Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, Luke 10:27, Romans 13:9). However, application of this principle can clearly go awry when carried out in a naïve manner. For we can imagine a masochist who enjoys people inflicting physical harm on him. Consequently, he desires people to inflict physical harm on him. Naively applying the Golden Rule, the masochist comes to conclude that he ought to inflict physical harm on others since this is what he would want them to do to him. (And assuming he takes pleasure in doing his perceived moral duty, our masochist would thereby become a sadomasochist!). This conclusion is clearly wrong. Not only does the masochist not have an obligation to inflict physical harm on others, but he is also positively prohibited from doing so. So, how should the Golden Rule be properly understood so as to not yield such obviously false moral conclusions?

When Laws/Duties Conflict: A Catholic Perspective

Sometimes in the moral life we find ourselves in a situation in which there seem to be two or more duties that are binding on us, and we cannot fulfill all of them. By fulfilling one, we would not be fulfilling another. For example, suppose that a pregnant woman is diagnosed with uterine cancer. She is told by her doctor that unless she undergoes a hysterectomy, she will die. However, if she does undergo the hysterectomy, the baby will die. So, it seems that she has conflicting duties: she ought to get the hysterectomy in order to save her life, yet she also ought to forgo the hysterectomy in order to preserve the life of her baby. Clearly, this woman cannot fulfill both of these duties in this situation.