Church teaching is not constant
In my letter (‘Conservative Catholics need to think again,’ Irish Examiner, May 17), I was not offering a prescription for how the church might go about attracting new members by introducing a new liberal code of ethics.
In fact I did not even use the word liberal.
I was stating that people within the Catholic Church who are conservative in their opinions about the morality of abortion, divorce, contraception, homosexuality, etc., would do well to examine the church’s own teaching on these subjects, and recognise how it has changed its own moral viewpoint considerably during its history.
What the church believes today is in many cases considerably different from what it believed in the past, and those who maintain that the teachings of Rome are constant and unchanging are simply mistaken.
Historical circumstances, scientific information and human judgement are what inform the morality of actions and practices, and as circumstances change so, too, do moral standards.
A cursory glance at the history of any moral issue will show how people’s attitudes have changed over time.
For example, in Ireland in the 19th century the political career of Charles Stewart Parnell was ruined by his affair with a married woman.
By contrast, the fact that our current Taoiseach is separated from his wife barely raises an eyebrow and has not impeded his political career.
Some people might decry that fact by claiming that the influence of liberalism has altered social and moral attitudes to a point where actions which should be condemned are now considered acceptable.
However, the reality is that circumstances of society have changed because of many complex historical, political, cultural and economic reasons, and consequently the morals, mores and laws that were appropriate for the 19th century are no longer as appropriate today.
If a code of ethics is have any relevance in people’s lives, then it has to take the facts and circumstances of human nature and human behaviour into account.
The Catholic Church has often been very insensitive to human circumstances when deciding what it wants to promote as right and wrong, and consequently its teachings on matters of personal and sexual morality have often had little relevance in the lives of its followers.
Any religious institution needs to be informed by the vast canon of human, scientific and cultural knowledge when determining its moral standards, as only then can their moral rules and regulations have genuine relevance for people’s lives.
Such an openness to change is not liberalism. It is simply realism.
John McSweeney
Rose Arch
Old Blackrock Road
Cork
