Duluth, MN (OpEdNews) October 25, 2010 -- Once again, the Catholic bishops have spoken about sexual morality in a new public document. You remember the Catholic bishops they are the fellows whose dubious moral reasoning about allegations of sex abuse by priests contributed enormously to the priest sex-abuse scandal. As is well known, Catholic bishops and priests have been inciting antiabortion anguish ever since the Supreme Court ruling that legalized certain forms of abortion. Remember that moral theory regarding sexual morality is at the heart of the debate about legal abortion in the first trimester, and at the heart of the different debates concerning same-sex marriage and gays in the military.
Thus the sexual morality advanced by Catholic bishops has become a focal point of public attention. Therefore, the American public might be interested in the emerging conflict between the Catholic bishops and two Catholic theologians -- both are married laypersons, not priests -- regarding sexual morality. This conflict may sound reminiscent of the biblical story of David versus Goliath. But will Todd A. Salzman lose his job at Creighton University in Omaha, as the moral theologian Charles Curran lost his job at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC? (But Salzman's co-author, Michael G. Lawler, will not be fired from Creighton because he has already retired.)
Do you support the Catholic bishops in their defense of traditional Catholic sexual morality? Or do you support the two Catholic revisionist theologians? Or do you support another approach to sexual morality -- such as the approach taken in deontological moral theory, or some other approach?
For many Americans, including many Catholics, the terms of this conflict may be heady stuff. But because Catholic moral teachings loom so large in our public discourse, the stakes in this conflict are far too high for the American public to ignore the conflict just because it involves heady stuff. After all, sexual morality is a topic that arguably should concern all of us. Because of its importance, I will undertake to elucidate some of the heady stuff in the bishops' statement. I do so in the hope that the conflict will attract public attention and concern regarding a topic all of us should think about carefully. In short, this conflict is more than just an intra-church conflict.
Go Away Revisionists
On September 15, 2010, the nine-member Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops posted at the USCCB website a 24-page critique of a revisionist way of thinking about Roman Catholic teachings regarding sexual morality: "Inadequacies in the Theological Methodology and Conclusions of THE SEXUAL PERSON: TOWARD A RENEWED CATHOLIC ANTHROPOLOGY by Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler." Their book was published by Georgetown University Press in 2008. (The term "anthropology" in the subtitle refers to a theory of being human.)
The nine bishops on the Committee on Doctrine are cagey. For example, if you were to disagree with their inflated claims about their view of natural-law theory, they will shuck you aside by saying that your epistemology is too skeptical. (Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that concerns how we know.) So it will be hard to debate with them, even if you hold a nonskeptical and nonrelativist epistemology, as Salzman and Lawler do. You either agree with the nine bishops' inflated claims, or they declare you to have an epistemology that is too skeptical. In short, the nine bishops already have all the answers, so no revisionist approaches are needed or welcome. Go away revisionists.
The nine bishops claim that they are undertaking to examine and criticize "the basic presuppositions of the alternative theology proposed in THE SEXUAL PERSON" in the hope that their criticism "could thus serve the broader purpose of helping Catholic moral theologians more generally to continue rediscovering a more adequate basis for addressing contemporary moral questions" (page 2). In short, theologians may be allowed to think out new rationales for old positions, but not to re-think the old positions regarding sexual morality in ways that open the door to overthrowing them at long last. Go away revisionists.
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