I wrote yesterday about the confessional and how I think a call to mercy means a particular call to Christian communities to practice mercy. Today, I discuss what I think that might mean for our writing and teaching as Catholic moral theologians.
The stories that are told of our discipline, Catholic moral theology, tend to be told in this way: in the beginning, the “Catholic moral theologians” were all priests, and were all interested in the field of moral theology because what they said in the confessional to penitents depended very much on how they named and identified individual sins. The manualist tradition was particularly steeped in questions of individual cases, to the point of scrupulosity.
But in the aftermath of Vatican II and Humanae Vitae, as well as significant historical events like the Holocaust, the Civil Rights movement, and various revolutions against communist governments and powerful dictators who maintained a hegemony of power and money over impoverished citizens, and in an era of low numbers of priests but rising numbers of lay theologians, naming individual sins becomes less important. Naming systemic sins and systemic accounts of ethics, and the ways individuals perpetuate and participate in those systemic sins or systems of ethics, becomes far more important for most moral theologians.
In short, after World War II, I think we wanted to know how we could avoid being the Nazis, especially as a society – or whomever the bad guys on the wrong side of history are. We wanted to know how we could promote freedom, especially in relation to democracy. Good in themselves – but I worry also not ultimately hitting the right pressure points.
I know what I’m about to say is a broad sweeping generalization, made all the worse for having published it online. (Mea culpa…I’ll maybe offer it at my next confession….) But it is this: We write books about virtue theory and utilitarianism and law and ethic of care; we write about environmental issues and war and marriage and sexuality and race; we write more besides. All dealing with questions we care about and see a vital need to address, in the service of justice, love, making the world a better place, and so forth.
But if we were to think in context of mercy, and especially the need for forgiveness, how much of that writing would get us to mercy, especially the kind of mercy encountered in the confessional, the personal focus? Would our classroom lectures and discussions get us there? I wonder about this – not because I think any of us are against mercy, any more than we’re against justice or love or God – but because in the course of doing this meditation on mercy and the confessional, I started down this windy rumination road, leading to a two-part blog post of all things.
Smarm versus mercy?
Consider students, for example. My students come to my classes thinking that ethics is all about learning “right from wrong” – and while there is some of that, my hope is that students leave my courses realizing that ethics is about the way they live their whole life, and for Christians, that’s about witnessing to who Jesus is.
When it comes to the final course assessment, disappointingly, they tend to leave my ethics courses with pretty much the same attitude they had when they started. I might have changed their minds on, say, water use in the West – but they leave believing they know the “right answers” and especially the “right groups” to support, just as much as they came in knowing the “right answers.” Just, now they know my right answers.
And, they know that the real right answer is to be open and tolerant and nice. As long as everyone smiles and gets along with each other, all will be well with the world. That’s right.
But if that is true, there is no need of forgiveness, mercy, or humility.
In other words, they’re good people armed with the “right answers” and therefore will never sin – just like all of us are. If a person hints otherwise -at the possibility of sin – well, that person simply isn’t nice. That person is the real sinner!
Ergo, we tolerant kind smiley ones don’t need the sacrament of Reconciliation; that’s just for the people who do the really nasty stuff, out of sync with the “good people” in society.
Tom Socca’s essay on smarm in The Gawker diagnoses some of these tendencies.
What is smarm, exactly? Smarm is a kind of performance—an assumption of the forms of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the substance. Smarm is concerned with appropriateness and with tone. Smarm disapproves.
Smarm would rather talk about anything other than smarm. Why, smarm asks, can’t everyone just be nicer?
As Socca goes on to discuss, citing Harry Frankfurt’s essay On Bullshit, smarm doesn’t really seek truth. Whether the smarmist’s statements are true (in any sense of the word “true”) matters little; what matters more is a surface tone, a question of whether we’re being “civil”.
Contemporary American politics is full of smarm. Socca gives the following examples:
[A]t the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, I witnessed an unforgettable performance: Windy Smith, a 26-year-old with Down syndrome, was brought out onstage before the cameras to tell the American public that she, personally, wanted George W. Bush to become the next president. A Bush presidency, she said, “will be a happy time for America.”
Was it? Did it turn out to be a happy time for America? Is that a mean or disrespectful question? If it is, whose fault is that?
And:
The New York Times reported last month that in 2011, the Obama Administration decided not to nominate Rebecca M. Blank to be the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, because of “something politically dangerous” she had written in the past: In writing about poverty relief, she had used the word “redistribution.”
The Times quoted a passage from the dangerous work, which was written 19 years before Blank was in position to be treated as a political liability:
“A commitment to economic justice necessarily implies a commitment to the redistribution of economic resources, so that the poor and the dispossessed are more fully included in the economic system.”
Socca goes on to point out that Blank’s statement is a tautology – that money does, in fact, need to be tendered to those who are poor, even if the methods for giving that money differ. Then he notes: “But to admit the fact is to imply that someone ought to spend that money, which implies a conflict between the desires of the people who have the money and the people who do not. “
So, tellingly, there are other examples of unacceptable political discourse, including this one that Socca mentions:
God’s people are directed to tend to the needs of these most marginalized groups and to be sure that they receive their just share of the community’s resources [Deuteronomy 10:17-18]. There is to be a regular redistribution of property and the forgiveness of past debts [Leviticus 25:1-55; Deuteronomy 15:1-11].
Economics doesn’t get a pass, either:
Market reasoning is deeply, essentially smarmy. We live, it insists, in a world that is optimized by the invisible hand. The conditions under which we live have been created by rational needs and preferences, producing an economicist Panglossianism: What thrives deserves to thrive, be it Nike or sprawl or the finance industry or Upworthy; what fails deserves to have failed….Immense fortunes have bloomed in Silicon Valley on the most ephemeral and stupid windborne seeds of concepts, friends funding friends, apps copying apps, and the winners proclaiming themselves the elite of the newest of meritocracies. What’s was wrong with you, that you didn’t get a piece of it?
Smarm emphasizes YOU, the brand – and the chance to believe that we can be anything we want to be, so long as we’re not The Haters. We should love everyone who wins, on the principle that we, too, can be them.
Initially, niceness sounds nice. My students love it. Just yesterday, several of my students suggested that no one could say or decide anything at all without “having been there or been personally touched.” For them, that meant abortion was off-limits for discussion and so was gay marriage. They liked that, because they’re tired of arguing about it.
But doesn’t that logic also mean that we can’t touch racism or rape, ultimately, issues with which my students would absolutely abhor, in ways that they don’t abhor abortion. (After all, I haven’t been a rapist, so….) Doesn’t it even mean, in some way, we can’t also do something that we hope, with well-meaning hearts, is positive, even if ultimately it fails – something like invent cochlear implants or heart transplants?
Thus, as Socca notes: “Sympathy begets sympathy, to the benefit of things that don’t deserve to be sympathized with.” And, “A civilization that speaks in smarm is a civilization that has lost its ability to talk about purposes at all. It is a civilization that says ‘Don’t Be Evil,’ rather than making sure it does not do evil.”
Niceness/smarm is a dangerous mentality to have, all the more so as sociologists have suggested the ways in which our decision making and understanding of what is “good” is affected by all kinds of social cues and the all-encompassing peer pressure. Genocide cases might be precisely such situations where we can see that what is named as “good” is not at all “good”.
Back to the Future: A New Manualist Tradition?
What Socca utterly neglects is that truth-telling doesn’t stand well on its own. How can a person tell truth in a vacuum, when no one else seems to be doing it? Indeed, how could we even get to the point of knowing what is a truthful way of naming a situation? And finally, how can a person tell truth especially about one’s self, when no one is assured of anything other than a smarmy, superior response?
In the current culture, the one who really – really – aims at truth telling – is the one who becomes the sacrificial offering at the altar of niceness.
That’s why the pope’s focus on mercy in relation to confession is spot on. It seems strange to me to say it, but in a world where niceness reigns but where people secretly feel pained and betrayed by the things their friends or family did or said (and then not-so-secretly dress down everyone’s lack of niceness on Facebook, Twitter and SnapChat) – the sacrament of Reconciliation offers a counter practice.
It’s a point where the smarm can stop, and where kindness and mercy and, yes, justice have some space.
But here’s where I wonder about our role now, as lay theologians. How could we help in the endeavor to name individual sins? Because I think, in the degree that we need mercy, we ought at least be able to take a stab at this kind of naming, even with the full knowledge that our accounts might be wrong, that we might be lying to ourselves, that we’ve neglected large parts of where we sin.
That’s not to negate the importance of many of our current modes of writing. But (again, with mea culpas for making generalizations) does it help us name sins?
Much of our writing as a guild involves textbooks on metaethics and ethical theories and development of an array of social issues. Yet I worry that the textbooks may help students learn a bit of philosophy and see where some of their decision-making processes originate but I’d venture to say they don’t often help students grapple much at all with what it means to name individual sins – either their own or others’. Nor do they help students make careful discernments about what to do, especially when faced with an array of apparent good actions.
I suspect many of us write about systemic sins and social issues because we understand this concern. And there is, indeed a connection – of course! Yet I fear, again, that it has meant that in the classroom and in Catholic preaching and public writing, that this focus has meant the individual thinks it is merely a matter of their choosing the good (that is to say, the winning) side without having to invest much in naming ways they are complicit.
All of this is a long way around to saying that I think we need accounts of individual sin, alongside mercy, especially in the form of forgiveness. To refer back to what I said yesterday, that requires, I think, specific embodied relationships between people, and difficult communal practices. But we especially need to know how to name sins, as individual Christians. We need also to be able to look at an array of potential possible goods and name what will be better – and that requires the kind of robust task of description that naming sins does.
What would it mean, as a guild, for us to discuss naming individual sins, to take up in some kind of altered form, a kind of manualist tradition? Could we even do that, in light of the important theological concern that confession not be simply about naming laundry lists of sins? What are other ways we might help ourselves and our students name sins? How do we currently do this work? Have we any part in extolling mercy in relation to confession?
I’m interested in hearing about others’ works, especially if you see yourself doing what I have suggested is missing – and whether the picture I describe is at all a truthful one.
Jana,
I really appreciate this call to help people name sins and choose among competing goods. I continue to think the manualist tradition on cooperation can be retrieved for this purpose, though I realize it’s a flawed tradition and will need adaptation.
Some questions I’m wrestling with are: How can we fully appreciate newer understandings of social sin and complicity that help us see our unconscious and unintentional participation in sinful systems and still names ways that individuals may cooperate with evil or good? How can we become appropriately conscious of sin without prioritizing guilt over mercy? How can we respect individual differences while still saying meaningful things about individual moral choices?
I am planning more study of the manuals that, as you rightly point out, are part of the bad old days in the story of our discipline. It’s not something I ever thought I’d be doing, but, like you, I feel a need for a different kind of framework, not to replace the new one, but to develop it further.
Jana– I really appreciate this post, for multiple reasons, and I have long thought many of the things you articulate very well here. And I think Julie’s comments also indicate the kind of nuance one would need to pay attention to in this kind of revival. In a sense, my luxury project is trying to do exactly what you are recommending: I realize that it is too easy to reduce discourse about economic ethics to structural or policy debates, without attending to our own personal choices – and the more I understand the economics, the more I am able to see how the personal and the structural really cannot be separated. I would just briefly comment on two things. One, when I read some of the pre-1950 manuals stuff (or even stuff from John Ryan) on economic issues, I am struck by what a small, personalist economic world they lived in. True, one can’t idealize the late 19th century, railroad and steel barons and all – but the manuals are not really talking to these people. They are talking to peasant farmers, small proprietors, and the like – and so they continue to be able to bring language of personal sin and responsibility to these matters. How one adapts this to contemporary society, I’m not sure – it’s so easy to feel disempowered, and the rare structure (I think about my food co-op) that makes a person feel empowered just seems so small. Two, I’ve had a paper floating around (I did a version of it at CTSA last year) where I’ve been trying to connect the discourse about social sin with Aquinas’ account of sin in the Summa… and in particular, his account of sins of malice, which involve choosing a lesser good at the expense of a greater good. Our tendency to see sin in terms of good vs. evil – related to an obsession with so-called moral absolutes and intrinsic evil – is a great problem. Aquinas is pretty clear that when we sin, we’re not choosing an evil per se, but choosing a lesser good at the expense of a greater good. Structures of sin can of course distort the passions and create ignorance – but often enough, once we are aware of these structures, I worry that we go on choosing against what we know to be the greater good (the common good). John Berkman and Charlie Camosy on factory-farmed meat is a great example – once I realize this, and come to see that it is wrong, what possible excuse can I have for continuing, say, to eat the meat served by the food service on campus? Frankly, there is no excuse. If/when I eat it, it’s a sin of malice, and I should recognize that and confess it. Such examples of social systems where we are aware of problems but go on about our business – they are all too common, and these spaces – whether it’s issues of race or climate change or investing – really seem to me to be the spaces where we could drill down and name sin better, even as we conitnue to see how these problems are bigger than any individual… and also how we do not want to turn into self-righteous perfectionists, either! Indeed, these issues make me much MORE aware of my own sinfulness and need for mercy.
Julie –
I was thinking, in part, of your recent post relating to manuals when I was writing this. But exactly – it be a careful retrieval.
Dave – The sin of malice is a great one to think about. But you’re hitting on the conundrum I’m thinking about – which is whether, in a world where so many things are interconnected, and we know this and intuit it, how would we go about naming sins? But then this is related to the problem I described in my first post, where the priest had no concept of the sin I named as a sin. Maybe it wasn’t – fair enough – but maybe (much more likely) we haven’t figured out good ways to describe sins.
Jana,
Thanks for this thought-provoking exploration. Having experienced the same confessional and classroom conundrums you’ve mentioned, I very much appreciate the insights you’ve offered.
I find, though, that I experience a certain ambivalence when I think about the project of naming sins. The ambivalence is rooted in a conviction that naming sins is a second order concern. Prior to naming sin is the discovery of love. Any effort to name sin apart from a robust understanding of love’s nature, requirements, and possibilities seems to me to run the risk of trivializing sin and rendering ourselves blind to the more serious sinning that we do. Of course, when this happens, we have no serious need for mercy or forgiveness.
My sense of things is that we’ve lost a way to name sin because we’ve become less adept in our ability to talk about love. I won’t pretend to be able to provide an analysis of why this is so. Rather, I’ll simply suggest that the effort to educate our understanding and practice of love has to be habitual. I think this is a key insight of Caritas in Veritate. Because charity has become marginalized in contemporary thought, we need to attend quite deliberately to the task of cultivating a broader awareness that “love is rich in intelligence and intelligence is full of love” (CiV, 30). Apart from this awareness, it’s quite difficult to name the sins within our structures and social practices, much less to find leverage to address them.
It seems to me that the need to educate love habitually is very much appreciated by folks who read spiritual autobiography. I suspect that many of today’s moral theologians have learned a great deal about love—and correlatively about sin—by reading such texts as Confessions, The Life of Teresa of Jesus, The Long Loneliness, etc. Yet for a variety of reasons, many of us neglect such texts in our teaching of moral theology. There is a real loss here. The saints are, in a sense, explorers and pioneers in the field of love; to study and contemplate their stories is to stand before mirrors that disclose our own invitations to love, as well as various ways we resist these invitations. Such experiences attune one to the reality of sin in a way that the mere reading of theologies of sin cannot do. They humble us, and they help us to mourn what we have done, who we’ve become, even as (or precisely because) they are able to awaken us to God and to each other. Moreover, they give us a taste for the saints, and in so doing, they incline us to seek out the saints in our own communities who can help us visualize what we are all called to become and inspire us to do so. Were I able to ignite these desires within my students, I would not be terribly worried about their ability to name sins, as it would come along in time.
That’s not to dismiss the importance of the tasks that you, Julie, and David have identified. These are important tasks. It’s simply to say that the development of a new manualist tradition has to safeguard the post-manualist conviction of the primacy of love.