A Path Forward for Catholic Theology - with Gabriel Moran

 A Path Forward for Catholic Theology - with Gabriel Moran

Just to warn you up front - this blog entry has some theology in it. I know, boring stuff, but some of us believe it is the most important thing in life. 

It is about this book: What Happened to the Roman Catholic Church? What Now?: An Institutional and Personal Memoir, by Gabriel Moran. The book was published on Oct. 4, 2021, and the author died on Oct. 15, 2021. His obituary is here: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/nytimes/name/gabriel-moran-obituary?id=30612365 

A list of his publications and articles is here: http://www.gabrielmoran.net 

He had been a Christian Brother, and a New England provincial for that community. He got a PhD from the Catholic University of America. He published more than 400 articles and 31 books.

Personal Note: I hereby apologize to the publishers for the amount of quotations herein. I can only defend it as a “fair use” to try to persuade readers to buy the book. I hope you agree.

WHY THIS BOOK?

I am a ‘recovering theologian’ - I spent 12 years studying theology - 4 of them in Rome. I have some credentials of the traditional church. After all of that, I discovered that the idea of deity no longer made any sense. But I was born and raised a Catholic, and a Catholic I would remain. This was 1969 just after Vatican II, and it appeared that our Church was finally on the road to a progressive version of itself. We seemed to understand the real message of the Carpenter from Nazareth. We had given up the fiction that the rest of humanity are all going to hell, and that we had the only version of truth. We realized that we are not about “saving souls” - we are about transforming humankind. I could support that.

Over the years, we “faithful” have put up with a lot of nonsense to remain Catholic. Our church does not recognize that women are full and equal partners. It does not understand that sexuality and gender have a much broader canvas than we had thought. It thinks it cannot make a mistake in doctrine and ethics. It acts as though clergy and bishops are the only members of the body of Christ that have a voice. And, not incidentally, those clergy abused thousands of child victims around the world and covered it up for decades, if not centuries. We will never know.

Since I do not hold to the need for a deity, I tend to just ignore what the church thinks are its “truths” or “doctrines”. But most of my family and many of my friends are still adherents to this version of Christianity. Some of them are current clergy who are more or less required to follow the doctrinal dictates. If at all possible, I would like to help them see a way forward for our backward Church. 

There is a fine review of the book here which initially got my attention: 

https://foranothervoice.com/2022/01/20/gabriel-moran-and-his-memoir/ 

You should read that and then you may not need to read this piece any further. BUT if you want to know more, if you want to understand what the faith of this Catholic church could be, based on absolutely solid research, exegesis, history and tradition by a true believer - then come back here for the rest of this.

A New Beginning

My thesis is that Moran has laid the foundation for a complete reinterpretation of Catholic tradition and belief that frees it from its old rigid framework. Or better, he returns it to the origins, stripping out the rigid linguistic craziness of more recent times. He does it with the very best scholarship and supportive philosophy that any educated Catholic theologian should respect.  If you want to remain a Catholic, and if you have a hope of moving our church forward at all - read on, and tell people about this. There are many more popular Catholic theologians, but IMHO they are all dancing around the real problem. Moran jumps right in and shows you how a truly traditional and “conservative” (in the real sense) Catholic can fully understand the historic traditions of this church.

As it is part memoir, the book is an excellent read. That said, it is possible that all of the research and scholarship may be a bit much for some readers. My goal is to simplify the message, so that anyone can pick up the thread and understand it. What is really needed is a populist, an excellent writer, who can extract these ideas and put them in NCR or The Atlantic or someplace similar. I am surprised that this book has not had a more enthusiastic following among theologians to this point. But then of course, I have not read anything in theology for over 50 years - I may be the one out of date.

A Theologian

First of all Moran is a theologian - not an essayist or commentator. He is well versed in Scripture, tradition, languages, history, church fathers, encyclicals, councils - the whole ball of wax. He has all of the credentials. To keep this piece simple there are no citations or references here - refer to the pages in his book for the research sources.

Linguistic Analysis - ideas and words

When this christian community became recognized as a “religion”, and was adopted as the official belief of the Roman Empire, the early church took on the trappings of the dictatorial monarchy that we have to this day. We made this up - and we can undo it. It kind of surprised me that the very idea or concept of  “religion” is relatively recent, developed in the 16th century, around European Christianity. Ancient texts and writings never refer to such an idea. That is kind of a key to this whole linguistic analysis. We create words - ideas - they are derived from some objective reality or experience. We try to describe something “out there”, but the ideas, the words are all created “in here”. A lot of the book’s scholarship revolves around ideas as expressed in many languages over time. This is important. Ideas, concepts are things that we literally create. The words persist, but the ideas change over time, they change in different languages, in different circumstances. Stating that something is TRUE does not mean the same thing in every time, in every place, in every language. 

This book, like my previous books, follows the words to get at the foundational ideas of the institution. If one goes looking for the ideas of revelation or natural law, it may not be clear whether or not one has found them. If one looks for the words “revelation” or “natural law” there is no ambiguity when one finds them. Page 13.

Clericalism - Clergy page 259

Moran treats this topic toward the end of the book, but I think it helps to understand this up front. We Catholics are so beholden to our priests that we literally cannot think for ourselves. “Clergy” here means priests, bishops, the whole hierarchical structure. There is nothing in the New Testament or the early Christian community that established anything like a priesthood. The Apostles had a leader - Peter seems to have been named in some fashion. But he was more fallible than most, as the community often told the story of how he denied Jesus three times. According to Paul, the Apostles had some leadership role, and the early christian communities around the Mediterranean adopted customs and roles of some sort. But there is no hint of any separate class of individuals empowered with “special powers'' of any kind. 

First we get rid of the clergy

Moran has several ideas about how to fix clericalism. Most religions have some sort of “prayer leader” - people well versed in the tradition and able to teach it to others. That role was given to priests for centuries because they were the only ones that could read and write. That is no longer the case with universal education in most of the world. He proposes that we name our leaders for temporary terms, much as we would judges. We should select people with the requisite skills, and give them a limited term. If they are good at their job, we might rename them to a second or third term. He has some ideas on how the church could transition to this state - but that is beyond my scope. No one thinks the current structure is infallible!

Scripture

For Moran, the real crux of change was one Papal pronouncement which started a revolution in Catholic scripture scholarship. 

If one were to pinpoint when this crisis began, a good choice would be November 1, 1950. On that day, Pope Pius XII declared that it was a “defined doctrine” of the Roman Catholic Church that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was bodily assumed into heaven.
. . . 

The story of the Assumption has no basis in the New Testament or in church tradition before the fourth century. Page 5

That statement initiated a 10 year dialogue between Catholic and Protestant scripture scholars in which the Catholics came to understand and respect the science and exegesis of their fellow scholars. Scripture is one source of our history and faith, but it is hardly infallible. It is the reflections of the early community, passed on by oral stories, written down in various ways, translated, etc. 

Revelation - scripture, councils, pope.

Moran did his masters and doctoral work on the topic: “revelation”. He was trying to understand the debate about the Council of Trent’s declaration that revelation had two sources - scripture and tradition, and all the claims of infallibility.. But, after all his work, he discovered that the actual question is: “What does the word revelation mean?” It is, in fact, not defined or understood well by anyone.

Revelation was not a central doctrine in the early church fathers. Page 95

When we came to Vatican II, the bishops commissioned a comprehensive document about revelation. But, as Moran says - it does not say what it is.

The result was a Vatican II document with beautiful biblical imagery that avoided asking if there is such a thing as divine revelation, and if so, what is it and where is it? The pope and the bishops continue to speak of revealed truth as if the year were 1950. Catholic theologians have not been willing to probe the consequences of the fact that church officials do not possess a divine revelation on which to base their teaching.  Page 11

The Constitution was received with great enthusiasm and has never received serious criticism. I was disappointed with the document, which seemed to me to miss the main point. The question was not how to describe revelation but whether the claim to possess a revelation from God makes sense. Biblical experts were not the group to raise such a question. Page 93

      Because - . . . 

Most scriptural scholars preferred to avoid conflicts with church authorities. They asserted that all the scripture is “inspired” by God but is not necessarily revelation. They left the theological debates about what is divinely revealed to other church people.
Page 101

 To sum up - there is no basis in scripture or history to think that any human organization or representative is the definitive spokesperson of divine truth. There - done with that.

Moran actually spends many pages on this topic, and he is not happy with the result. That said, I think this is a fair synopsis. Look at pages 87-104.

Natural Law
A considerable amount of Catholic teaching revolves around an idea called “natural law”. It is as though there is an innate morality in the way things are - we just need to discover it. But our understanding of nature and biology and cosmology is always changing and growing. There is nothing immutable in that knowledge. “Nature” is an abstract term which we created to describe some portion of our understanding of our reality. It does not generate any moral code of itself. 

In writing about the history of nature it is imperative to trace not an idea or ideas of nature but rather the meaning of the term nature. There is some control in speaking about what “nature” means, although it is still an extraordinarily complex undertaking. I have chosen to emphasize some of the major shifts in the meaning of “nature” for the purpose of clarifying the Roman Catholic Church’s use of “natural law.” Page 110

It seems unfortunate that Thomas did not jettison “natural law” as a way to talk about human morality. Christian moralists might have concentrated on learning what is and what is not destructive of human nature. Page 114

The above points provide an outline for the story of natural law and its place in the Roman Catholic Church. The full story starts with the ambiguities of the term natural. “Nature” is perhaps the most ambiguous word in the English language. Aristotle had already identified six meanings of nature.1 A study by two of the great scholars of the twentieth century found over six hundred meanings of “nature.”2 Obviously, some meanings proved to be much more important than others. Page 110.

For the full discussion, see pages 106-117.

The greatest disappointment for Moran is that the Church did not expand this idea of human nature to human rights, and to the ecological rights of all living things that make up our biosphere. “It is tragic that the Roman Catholic Church is widely believed today to be an opponent of human rights. It is obviously a tragedy for the church, but it is also a great loss for the human rights movement.” Page 138.  

Sexuaity 

It goes without saying that the Catholic church has an enormous preoccupation with sexuality. Sexual activity that is basically harmless or culturally based, is cast as evil personified. 

In the Vatican’s 1975 document on homosexuality, masturbation is named as a violation of natural law because it “contradicts the finality of the faculty.” Every act of masturbation is said to be a mortal sin.22 That statement is just plain cruel to every adolescent trying to figure out what is happening in his or her body. The statement is a painful example of the inability of the Roman Catholic Church leaders to come to terms with the fact that sexual activity has a range of human meanings that are separate from generating babies. 

For human beings, sex is not ultimately about biology but about the relations between women and men, women and women, men and men. All these relations can be called sexual although the term “sexual relations” has taken on a much narrower meaning. A revolutionary movement among women has been coming into existence around the globe during the past century. It has been upsetting a power arrangement that had existed for several millennia. The relation between women and men is the center of the story although questions about the other two relations, women-women, men-men, have accompanied that central change. These relations between human beings are in a context of changes in the human-nonhuman relation. P. 74

Birth Control
One of the co-inventors of the birth control pill, John Rock, was a devout Catholic. He was actually excited to think that he had found a way to manage fertility that his Church could approve. It was to him a “natural” regulation of fertility. As Moran says:

I cannot remember how I initially responded to the existence of the pill but as I later reflected on the question it seemed to me (and still does) that here was a way out of the dilemma that the church officials had created for themselves. I did not know at the time, but it seems to clinch the argument that Pope Pius XII had already said that the pill in question was acceptable for regulating a woman’s cycle.24 If birth control is acceptable and if the pill was safe, why wouldn’t church officials approve it? Women could plan pregnancies as integral to their lives. They could finally exercise “responsible family planning.” 

Church officials could have expressed some reservations about the pill’s safety for women. The Roman Catholic Church could have been aligned with women when health concerns were later raised about the pill. Instead, church officials simply pronounced that the pill was morally unacceptable. Page 76-77.

GLBT - Gender 

I personally find most Catholic theologian statements around gender and sexuality to be painful. Humans simply are not black and white, nor male and female. The spectrum is wide. The official doctrine holds that those of us who are outside the normal distribution are “perverted”, “broken”, somehow less than human. Our only path to salvation is celibacy. That is simply ridiculous - no teaching authority needed. 

A half-century ago a newly fashioned word, gender, borrowed from the world of grammar, was introduced to distinguish biological sex from a social role. I doubt that at the time anyone foresaw that a distinction between sex and gender would later generate a debate about such things as public bathrooms. People who have unimaginative views on sex get impatient with such discussions, but these new questions reveal how much the human race still does not understand about sexual diversity and the existing range of sexual practices. Page 74-75

The distinction between sex as a biological characteristic and gender as a social category has been so helpful that it seems incredible that the distinction had not previously been made. The term sex would best be used only for the restricted purposes of biology. “Sexual” describes characteristics that are primarily attributed to either the male or the female, but which characteristics are exclusive to either sex is a subject that requires study and human testimony. Page 75

The Sermon on the Mount

As I was in the process of writing this, my small prayer group was discussing the Gospel story from Luke 6:27-38, sometimes referred to as the “sermon on the mount”. The author sums up the contrast between the teachings of Jesus and those of the Jewish tradition. We are to “love” our enemies. Many scholars downplay the seriousness of the teachings - giving it a metaphorical tone. Moran does some linguistic analysis - and he thinks Jesus meant every word, in a larger sense than any of his listeners understood.

Critics often complain that telling people that they should love does not work. Jesus does not tell people to feel love instead of hatred. Jesus’ teaching of love to your enemies is a practical, long-range program of reducing personal and institutional hatred. Faced with hostility, we can perform actions that show we are not doomed always to be enemies. 

One’s actions can “de-hostilize” the situation so that over time we may find a way to live on the same planet or even in the same neighborhood. If you act in kindness, it will lead to an affirming of both your neighbor and yourself. There is no restriction of “neighbor” to a friend or someone who lives next door. The neighbor is anyone who is close by and is in need. This principle is not restricted to personal encounters; nations can also practice the same activities of “de-hostilizing” an enemy nation. Page 127

I encourage you to read the whole section. I found it inspiring. I am always puzzled as to where the carpenter from Nazareth came up with his ideas, and this one has always been the most puzzling. As Moran says: “The Sermon on the Mount is not a series of nice thoughts about love.” Page. 128

Abortion

In my opinion there is simply no way to rationally discuss the ethical issue of abortion with people who believe in an immortal “soul”. I find myself on both sides of the argument. But Moran managed it. He does an analysis of the history of science and theology using words and ideas to try to identify just when a human person is actually present. He is clear that we have created this idea of "soul" to represent that "personhood" presence that then accrues rights. 

I found it very insightful. I have always regarded ALL of life with great respect. I find it utterly amazing that anything is ALIVE, and that there are PERSONS is simply incredible. My moral code says it is always evil to hurt or limit a living thing - ANY living thing. A potential life also has value. as do a million sperm and a single egg. But the value is relative - and the harm I might do to it can be reasonable in some circumstances. I DO kill most mosquitoes I encounter - and some flies. But I do my best to limit the damage I do to all of these amazing creatures that share our planet. Exactly when the "person" is present - on both ends of life - is a question that we can only define by some form of agreement - not by science OR divine revelation. 

As a Roman Catholic who has been formed in my thinking by the church, I am profoundly affected by church tradition. But from the study of the past, I have concluded that the Roman Catholic bishops have radically changed church teachings. I am the traditionalist on abortion, agreeing with leading thinkers of the past who held that early abortions are not homicides. The bishops today are the radicals who have abandoned that position, ceding their authority to what they take to be scientific truth. Page 154  

Some wise words

Political organizations at the national level are threatened by authoritarian movements, which are sustained by violence. A religious organization can either offer more of that same authoritarianism or it can dare to follow the best lights of its tradition and listen for the truth in the hearts and minds of its members. Page 104

That is not to say that an early abortion is a good thing - far from it. But n the Catholic traditions the "person" has never been held to be present at conception.

Conclusion

SO. either that is all you ever want to know about the book - or it will entice you to read a bit more. I found it very insightful. Fine theology. But then I have not read much theology in the near term.  I think the current church is dying. Since there are a billion or so Catholics, it will be a while. We shall eventually  see if there is any potential for rebirth.