A Burkean Function for CST in the Face of Ethical Pluralism

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life raises the interesting problem of how Catholics should bring to bear Church teachings in a public square dominated by ethical pluralism:

A kind of cultural relativism exists today, evident in the conceptualization and defence of an ethical pluralism, which sanctions the decadence and disintegration of reason and the principles of the natural moral law. Furthermore, it is not unusual to hear the opinion expressed in the public sphere that such ethical pluralism is the very condition for democracy. As a result, citizens claim complete autonomy with regard to their moral choices, and lawmakers maintain that they are respecting this freedom of choice by enacting laws which ignore the principles of natural ethics and yield to ephemeral cultural and moral trends, as if every possible outlook on life were of equal value.

Those who see ethical pluralism as a justification for cultural relativism reject the notion that the truth of a moral norm can be established. At best, they regard moral norms as indeterminate “can’t helps.” Yet, the genuine immorality of an act is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the legitimacy of its legal prohibition. Because all conceptions of the good necessarily invoke non-derivable moral assumptions, we cannot avoid an inquiry into the morality of an act we propose to regulate.

To be sure, the truth of moral norms and their support in the community are necessarily intertwined. At the same time, however, truth and social support ultimately must be kept separate. Failing to do so leads inevitably the contractualist fallacy; namely, the position that moral norms are simply an agreement among members of society. Edmund Burke defined natural rights as not merely a matter of convention, but as “human custom conforming to divine intent.” Unconstrained contractualism, in contrast, makes lawmaking a mere popularity contest among competing political positions clothed in the language of rights. Inevitably, the lowest common moral denominator will prevail.

Catholic social teaching joins with other ethical systems in rejecting the contractualist approach to moral norms. As Pope John Paul II has observed, “if there is no ultimate guide truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power.” At its worst, John Paul explained, contractualism thus leads to the sort of totalitarianism exemplified by Revolutionary France in which the state, embodying the “general will,” subjugated both faith and conscience. The social contract degenerated into nothing more than an accord among those who had the power to impose their will on others.

How shall the truth of a moral norm be established? Here I think Catholic social teaching provides a mechanism for doing so that is consistent with, but not dependent on, revealed truth. (Put another way, human reason is a means by which we refine our understanding of divine instruction. Edmund Burke contended, for example, that there are “eternal enactments of divine authority which we can endeavor to apprehend through the study of history and the observation of human character.”)

Although reason is a useful guide, it flirts with a grave danger; namely, the triumph of individual reason. Burke contended that individual reason could never fully comprehend the divine intent, although we grope towards it through history, myth, fable, custom, and tradition. Of these, tradition and custom are by far the most important.

The methodology of Catholic social teaching strikes me as a very Burkean one. Like Burke, Catholic social teaching puts a high value on tradition. The teaching evolves over time, but rarely radically. Instead, each new major document in the social teaching literature builds on its predecessors.

The Burkean nature of Catholic social teaching is important because it provides a solution for the risk of value disagreement in an ethically pluralistic public square and the resulting claims of cultural relativism. The prudent statesman respects tradition precisely because the enduring truths of what Burke aptly called “original justice” are revealed slowly, with experience, over time. As John Randolph put it, providence moves slowly, but the devil always hurries. The individual is foolish, but the species is wise. We thus turn aside from ancient usage at our peril; far better to profit from the wisdom of our forbearers. Catholic social teaching is an important source of the traditions of the communities of Western civilization, but also is beginning to make substantial contributions to the traditions of many Third World cultures.

Catholic social teaching thus serves as one of the repositories of tradition by which we can evaluate value disagreements grounded on human reason. Individual reason in today’s moral climate too often leads to mere values, which are purely matters of personal preference, lacking the moral force to bind others. In contrast, tradition emphasizes standards grounded on preferences that have been widely accepted over a very long period.

If I’m right about all this, it has important implications for those of us who bring to bear our own reason on the teachings of the Church. The function of human reason within a moral tradition is not a critical one, seeking to expose the tradition’s faults, but rather a respectful one, seeking to learn what the tradition offers. Burke, for example, approved of those who “instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice [i.e., tradition or custom], with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice and to leave nothing but the naked reason.”

None of this is to suggest that Catholic social teaching should be interpreted as being a faith-based version of the Republican party platform. Respect for tradition requires neither blind resistance to change nor a return to some idyllic past. Burke, the father of modern conservatism, was known in his own time as a reformer. Burke’s conservatism was expressed in his limitation of reform to clear and present social dangers and his resistance to reforms premised on abstract reason. It is this methodology – rather than any particular policy outcome – that I am commending to my fellow laborers in the Catholic social teaching vineyard.