Moral Reasoning & the Catholic Church

In his recent book The Critical Calling: Mor­al Dilemmas Since Vatican II, Richard McCor­mick, S.J., writes: “Authoritative assertions can never replace moral arguments. That is why moral positions asserted authoritatively against a prevailing consensus of moral analysis be­come simply incredible…. When ‘loyalty to the Holy See’ becomes the test of the legitimacy of a moral argument, then things are upside down.” Thomas Shannon and Lisa Sowle Cahill, in their Religion and Artificial Reproduc­tion, proclaim, “Statements about what mar­riage and parenthood require [in the Vatican’s instruction Donum Vitae] do not constitute arguments.” Writing in America, Fr. Thomas Kopfensteiner applauds this apercu of Shannon and Cahill’s, adding that “the persuasiveness of the arguments advanced” in the instruction does “not depend solely on the authority of the one who proposes them, but on the rea­sons used to support them.”

Of course, what Shannon and Cahill say is correct if it means only that no mere statement that marriage or parenthood requires some­thing can by itself constitute an argument that it does. Nor should any contend, against Kop­fensteiner, that the persuasiveness of an argu­ment can depend (let alone depend “solely”) on the authority of “the one who proposes” it, even if that “one” is the Holy See’s Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The trivial truisms of these latter statements are not unusual these days, however, and I am con­cerned lest they be thought to support Mc­Cormick’s depreciation of the place of authori­ty in moral reasoning. What I say here is fo­cused on the teaching authority Catholics be­lieve is entrusted to the Church. I wish to show that in the most important ways appeals to authority can “replace” arguments, and that the moral statements affirmed by the Church’s teaching office can have a reasonable claim on our assent, regardless of whether the argu­ments she offers in their support are persua­sive.

Although an authoritative assertion is not an argument, appealing to such an assertion can do the same work as offering an argument — i.e., can provide a reason for belief. Indeed, citing authorities who attest to the truth of a position is a way of arguing for it. Thus, the contrast, which our authors assume, between arguments (or reasons) and authority simply falls apart. A few decades ago, when many logicians were still under positivism’s spell, it was common for textbooks of informal logic indiscriminately to classify arguments from authority as fallacious. However, even the logicians eventually realized that nobody today could hope to hold educated opinions about a wide range of matters without relying heavily on better informed sources, and so the text­books changed accordingly.

The root idea behind an appeal to authori­ty is accepting something because of who says it — i.e., because of its authorship. There are two main types. When a person has directive authority he or she has authority over another, can give orders which the latter may be bound to obey. When a person has assertoric authority he or she speaks authoritatively in some sphere in which he or she may offer instruction and guidance that others may have reason to follow.

The Church does claim some directive authority, as in the catechisms’ talk of the “commandments of the Church” to attend Sunday Mass, but the Church exercises assertoric authority when she speaks on moral topics. Thus, we more readily say that Catho­lics ought to conform their lives to what the Church teaches authoritatively in matters of morals than that they consider themselves bound to obey the Church’s moral orders. Moral instruc­tion primarily involves the exercise of her mission to educate, not her mission to govern. When the Church offers moral instruction, she is not just ordering people about. Rather, she is telling them that some attitudes and acts are corrupt and others fulfilling. Since Catholics have reason to believe what they are taught, they act accordingly. For this reason, doing something that the Church teaches is immoral is likely to be both moral and intellectual vice, not simply a breach of discipline. We can sometimes speak of disobedience here, but only insofar as the one who ignores the Church’s moral instruction also defies her governance.

Assertoric authority involves telling some­one that something is the case; directive authority involves telling someone to do something. The difference may not be easy to discern in the moral sphere, for when a moral authority tells us that something is the case we ought to act accordingly. Still, there is a salient difference. Since what is believed must be something that is independently true or false, assertoric au­thority, even in the moral sphere, is essentially tied to questions of truth and knowledge in a way that directive authority need not be. When you try to get people to do something, you may either (A) simply command them to do it, or (B) point out to them some respect in which their doing it would be good. It doesn’t take a logician to see that these are not the same.

Let us look more closely at the sort of privileged position involved in assertoric au­thority. Plainly, when the Church teaches on moral issues, the authority she exercises is different in kind from that exercised by a geologist speaking on plate tectonics. The lat­ter’s authority, but not the former’s, is based on schooling. Reflection on this difference, however, points to a mare important and basic resemblance: each is in a privileged position to say that such-and-such is the case because each is in a privileged position to know it. The geologist occupies such a position because of his or her education, the Church (if Catholics are right) because of the Holy Spirit’s guid­ance.

An argument from authority that some statement is true will normally do nothing to explain why that statement is true. Suppose that from the fact that the supporters of a certain candidate work much harder than do those of his opponent, I conclude that it is he who will win the election. In that case I have some understanding of why he will win. Such reasoning is quite different from my concluding that he will win based simply on the predominant views of the pollsters, which tell me only that he will win without necessarily telling me why. Nonetheless, it would clearly be fallacious to infer that I don’t have a justi­fied belief about whether something will happen from the fact that I don’t have a justi­fied belief about why it will.

One might be tempted to think that this failure to answer the “why”-question renders any reliance on authority suspect. However, we can show that this is wrong by noting that the same failure occurs in appeals to sense observation. Our eyes can give us ample reason to believe that Jack Nicholson’s The Jok­er sports green hair and a purple suit while leaving us with no idea at all about why he does. This is because reliance on authority and reliance on the senses are both a posteriori modes of acquiring knowledge. When we believe something on the basis of sense obser­vation or on the basis of its authoritative asser­tion, we believe it on the basis of what follows upon it. The hair is green, so my eyes cause me to see it as green, so I believe it is green. (At least, when all is going well.) Similarly, marriage and parenthood (to return to the quoted example) require certain things, so the Spirit guides the Church to teach that they do, so I believe that they do.

In each case my belief that a statement is true is grounded upon something which, if all is going properly, is so because the statement is true. In both these cases I come to believe a statement because of what comes from that statement’s being true. Following this kind of path leaves me in the dark about how it came to be true. In contrast, when I believe that a candidate will win based on information about his supporters’ zeal, the path by which I come to this belief is a priori, in that my belief comes from what precedes his winning, specifically, from (some of) those factors because of which he will win. In this latter kind of case my ground for believing is also the ground of the truth of what I believe, so following this kind of path to knowledge does give me some understand­ing of why what I know is so. (I am using a posteriori and a priori in older senses, before Kant turned them to his own purposes.)

So far I have urged that even though we may fail to understand why something is true when we believe it on the basis of the testi­mony of either an expert source or a divinely guided one, this need not undermine that source’s authority. At this point a critic may object that I have overlooked a crucial differ­ence between the expert authority and the divinely guided one: the expert, even if he does not, on a given occasion, offer a convinc­ing rationale for his statement, always could offer one. But the Church, according to this critic, can sometimes, even after repeated ef­forts, manage only unconvincing rationales for her teachings, say, against in vitro fertilization or artificial contraception in Donum Vitae, such that even many Catholic moral theologians dissent. The critic concludes that the Church’s authority, however real, must differ not only in kind from that of the expert, but be of lesser quality as well.

That there is a difference in kind here I do not contest. Indeed, I affirmed it in distin­guishing the kind of assertoric authority the Church holds from that of the expert. How­ever, I definitely reject any claim that this marks a diminution in quality. The most important respect in which authorities differ in quality is that one can be less trustworthy than another. I see no reason to think that any such inferiority would follow even if, for the sake of argument, we conceded to the critic that those who exercise the Church’s teaching mission are sometimes unable to offer convincing ra­tionales for what she affirms. The Church’s authority, remember, is based upon the presumed guidance of the Holy Spirit. To guide something is to lead it in a certain direction, to steer it toward a certain destination. This suggests that the Holy Spirit’s influence will be more evident in the “destination,” in the con­clusion of a piece of (moral) reasoning, than it is in the reasoning itself. The point of that guidance is to keep the substance of the Church’s teaching free from error, not to keep its thinking cogent.

Moreover, remember that a rationale for a position is just that — a rationale. That the Spirit guides the Church, especially by pro­tecting her conclusions from error, does not guarantee that the reasoning by which she actually comes to those conclusions, let alone the (sometimes different) lines of reasoning she promulgates to support them, will be cogent.

To trust in the Spirit to steer the Church, even while recognizing that she may some­times wander, is properly to trust that the Spirit will generally manage to get her back on the right path by the end of journey — i.e., in the termination of a piece of moral reasoning. Thus, to demand that the Church’s arguments always be convincing, and to withhold one’s assent from those teachings whenever one finds those arguments unconvincing, would be to demand that the Spirit turn merely human agents into masters of good philosophical and theological reasoning and into persuasive writ­ers as well. Those are patently extravagant demands.

God gives us the truth, not arguments; and insofar as that teaching mission is spe­cially entrusted to the Church, she is con­cerned with substance, not rationales. Ration­ales, of course, can help win acceptance for authoritative teaching, but the task of arguing for a position is not internal to the Church’s teaching mission (except perhaps to the extent that a particular argument helps clarify the position).

Providing rational defense for what the Spirit guides the Church to teach is not a part of her magisterial mission, even as it was not a part of Christ’s. This point should be ob­vious, but its disregard seems to be one of the problems underlying Kopfensteiner’s odd in­sistence that “the ‘reception’ of magisterial documents [by theologians and others] is a criterion of [the documents’] theological adequacy.” Magisterial teaching, like scriptural teaching, is not as such theology. Therefore, no question of its “theological adequacy” prop­erly arises. To be sure, Donum Vitae contains theological arguments. My point is that the document’s moral doctrines have a claim on our assent that does not depend upon the “adequacy” of those arguments.

If it is not part of the Church’s mission as teacher to develop intellectual defenses for her doctrines, who will do so? To support doctrine with argument is to engage in apologetics, and while apologetics may not be the professional task of the Catholic theologian or philosopher, nevertheless it will normally be part of their vocation.

Appeals to authority, then, can provide a reason for belief and therefore can serve to counterbalance opposing reasons. In the most important ways, then, such appeals, pace Mc­Cormick’s view, can replace arguments. In­deed, it would be better to say that they con­stitute a kind of argument (a testimonial ar­gument) that can replace other kinds (i.e., nontestimonial arguments). There is, thus, generally nothing improper in countering a nontestimonial argument for a moral position (say, a proportionalist argument) with an ap­peal to some authoritative Church teaching.

Authoritative teaching can provide a rea­son for belief even if it is proclaimed in doc­uments that present it as the outcome of a line of reasoning one finds faulty. As McCormick observed, loyalty to the Holy See is never properly a test of a moral argument’s adequa­cy. However, what needs to be added is that dissent from Church teaching, based upon the failure of the moral arguments she adduces in its behalf, does indicate a failure of rationality. One who faces up to the implications of acknowledging that the Church has an authori­ty, vested in the Holy See, to teach in moral matters will, to the extent that he or she is reasonable, see that no additional reason is required to legitimize belief.

“The persuasiveness of the arguments ad­vanced [by the Vatican’s teaching office] do not depend solely on the authority of the one who proposes them,” Kopfensteiner wrote. Indeed, the persuasiveness of an argument never so depends. However, now it is clear how we can respond: The claim on our belief which the conclusion of such an argument holds does not depend solely on the argument’s persuasiveness. If the Church genuinely has authority to teach, then it follows that the mere fact that she teaches something in itself provides reason to believe it.

Shannon and Cahill maintained that, “Statements about what marriage and parent­hood require do not constitute arguments.” We are in a position to see that, while this is true, it really doesn’t matter much. Such statements, when they are made by Church officials exer­cising her teaching authority, do not need to constitute arguments. They have a claim on our belief independently of any nontestimonial arguments in their favor, and we can appeal to the fact that the Church said these things as a testimonial argument in favor of the things she’s said.

How strong a claim do authoritative teach­ings have on our belief? That vexed question is beyond our scope here. All I will do is make one point: The sort of authority the Church holds, based as it is upon the guidance of the Holy Spirit, cannot be plausibly deemed inferi­or to other kinds of authority. Recognizing this fact can help subvert the rationalistic hubris that might otherwise tempt us to agree with McCormick’s statement that when authoritative teaching conflicts with “a prevailing consensus of moral analysis,” then the former becomes “simply incredible.” The Protestant Alvin Plan­tinga, probably the finest of today’s religious philosophers, has recently drawn our attention to the modernist prejudice that, “When faith and reason clash, ’tis faith must go to smash” (Plantinga attributes these words to one Wil­liam McGonagal). Curiously, even some theo­logians have succumbed to this view, and McCormick’s remark manifests such rationalist prejudice. It holds that a consensus of “ana­lysts” is entitled to such credence that, when­ever it should clash with magisterial teaching, the latter goes “to smash.” This is to elevate faith in the authority of what is, at best, a sort of academic expertise in morals over faith in the Church’s exercise of her magisterial mis­sion.

Assertoric authority, as we observed, flows from being in a position to know. So, if we should always believe the moral analysts when they are in conflict with magisterial teaching, then it must be that bearing the pedigree of a moral analyst (roughly, being smart, well-read, and degree-laden) better situates one to appreciate the sources of morality, to fathom the nature of human flourishing and of God’s creative and legislative will, than does being charged and guided by the Spirit to present God’s truth to the world. I should need to hear a good argument for that extraordinary position and I must confess that the prospects of anyone’s producing it are rather dim.

Even if a person is convinced, then, that the Church’s teaching has sometimes erred, he ought nonetheless take care that this not lead him to depend upon unaided reason and ignore the weakness of our rational powers — poorly informed, hurried by passion, swayed by prejudice, prone to self-deceptive rationali­zation, and pressured to conform to fashion­able opinion, as they are. This is not to en­dorse any form of irrationalism. We can agree with Aristotle that reason is our most God-like attribute. However, reason itself often leads us to accept arguments from authority over opposed arguments. (I may not have refuta­tions at hand against the charges of a conspir­acy buff, for example, and may even feel some inclination to believe him, but reasonably resist on the grounds that others, whom I think better informed than I and more reliable than he, take a different view.) In any event, testi­monial arguments (like all arguments) need to be rationally evaluated, and the statements of an authority (like the evidence of our senses) should be accepted only when it is reasonable to think their source dependable, and their content within that source’s competence.

My hope is that these thoughts might leave us with a clearer understanding of the task facing both the Catholic philosopher and the Catholic theologian. In different ways each is called to deepen, and thereby strengthen, our grasp of what the Church teaches by clari­fying how and why these teachings are true: how they respond to the needs of our com­mon nature, how they are implied by a correct understanding of divine and human love, and how they may play a role in God’s design for human life. This doesn’t mean it is the Catho­lic intellectual’s job to be a p.r. flack for the Vatican, of course. But it does suggest that he should go about his work with a humble appreciation of the way in which God’s gift of authoritatively taught truths can set us free.