Moral Absolutes
March 2003
Catholicism always has an intellectual aspect. Consider the debates in early Christianity
on the nature of the Trinity, or in the Middle Ages on Transubstantiation. Sometimes, in
order to preserve a simple faith, the Church has to take a stand on what seems to be an
abstraction. This has happened in our own time, in the Church’s rejection of a theory of
morality known as ‘proportionalism.’ It’s important for all educated Catholics to know
what ‘proportionalism’ is, and why it is wrong.
We can distinguish between morality, and a theory of morality. Morality is what
things are right or wrong to do: it is wrong to kill an innocent person; it is wrong to steal; it
is right to treat others as you would want to be treated by them. A theory of morality tries
to explain why some things are right and others are wrong to do.
Proportionalism is a theory which tries to explain morality in this way. It says that
the right action to do, in any circumstance, is the one that brings about the greatest
proportion of good over bad results. For instance, you are trying to decide whether to tell a
lie. Proportionalism says that, to determine whether you should tell that lie, simply
identify and weigh up the good or bad results of telling the lie, including the ‘disvalue’ of
misleading someone. If telling the lie would yield the best proportion of good over bad,
then, according to proportionalism, you should tell that lie.
Proportionalists would insist that if someone really does consider all the results of
his action, including whether the action promotes or hinders various higher principles,
such as the principle to serve and respect others, then almost always it will turn out to be
wrong to tell a lie.
‘Almost always’—that’s the catch. The big and obvious objection to
proportionalism is that, on proportionalist grounds, it will never be always wrong to lie, to
steal, or even to kill an innocent person. In principal there can always be unusual
circumstances where things are so weighted that, as far as we can tell, the best proportion
of good over bad results will follow from doing something that would otherwise be wrong.
That is to say, proportionalism denies that any actions are intrinsically wrong (or
per se malum). Proportionalism denies that it is possible to identify, in advance, certain
kinds of actions that are simply never to be done, whatever the consequences. If
proportionalism is true, there are no moral absolutes, and everything is at bottom open to
calculation.
Someone might immediately object: ‘Well then, so much the worse for
proportionalism, because there are moral absolutes. Back to the drawing board: come up
with a better theory of morality!’ This would be the correct response. The Ten
Commandments give us a fairly good guide to intrinsically wrong actions. It is never right
deliberately to worship an idol, or to curse one’s parents, or to cause the death of an
innocent person, or to commit adultery. Lusting after one’s neighbor’s wife could never be
justified by any supposed good results.
It is not simply a Catholic view, of course, that some actions are intrinsically wrong.
‘Noble pagans’ such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle thought the same: there are some sorts
of actions, they held, that are ‘base and shameful’ and never to be done. The view recurs
in all cultures and all moral codes.
It is essential to living a good Christian life that we rule out some actions
beforehand absolutely. Without that attitude, we cannot be successful in fighting
temptation. Sex with anyone besides one’s spouse is always wrong, period. But suppose a
married man does not accept this. Then he thinks it is possible that adultery will not be
wrong, in some circumstances. Now suppose his marriage is a wreck; and he’s deeply
unhappy; but this other woman treats him well and would make him happy… You get the
picture. Adultery will begin to seem right to him, or at least not wrong.
This point is important if one considers that—shockingly—the dominant theory of
morality in Catholic seminaries in the U.S. for the last 40 years has been proportionalism.
Probably the majority of Catholic priests, in their training, were taught a theory of morality
which cannot account for intrinsically wrong actions.
So change the image and now consider a priest struggling to keep his vow of
celibacy. He was taught proportionalism in seminary and has no reason to think that any
actions are in all circumstances wrong. And now people are suggesting that it’s good for
one’s psychological health to find a release for pent up urges; and certainly, he thinks, he
can’t function well as a priest if he’s always struggling with the strong inclinations he feels;
and maybe, after all, intimacy can be an expression of real love …Again, you get the picture.
How did an obviously wrong theory such as proportionalism come to be the
dominant view of the theological establishment? It all goes back to Humane Vitae: in order
to oppose the teaching that artificial contraception is intrinsically wrong, dissenting
theologians embraced a theory of morality that would deny that any action is intrinsically
wrong. They threw out the baby, indeed, with the bathwater. Our bishops were not
sufficiently vigilant in correcting this error. And now all of us are dealing with the
consequences.
Michael Pakaluk is a Visiting Scholar in Philosophy at Harvard University.