COMING UP ON CATHOLICA: Moral Freedom – an essay from Andrew Kania (Main Forum)

Thanks James and Herbie for opening up the conversation. In Sydney today there has been another drive-by shooting. Apparently it arose from a couple of middle eastern gents involved in a political debate about events in Syria. One ended up slapping the other in the face .... and the next thing somebody shoots up a house in Roselands. I'm actually a bit confused about the story as there seem to be two ABC reports on two incidents so I might have things mixed up a bit in my brief summary above. (See the links below for the separate stories.)

The story — which I first heard on the radio when I was doing the layout for Andrew's commentary — had me wondering: what keeps the average yobbo in his tree in society and prevents a society breaking down to the point where everybody takes the law into their own hands? What, ultimately, drives, or forms, public morality? I have little doubt for some it is only the fear of the law and getting caught. In other words they have no internal moral compass. Behaviour is simply "driven" by the needs of ego, or dealing with one's insecurities and anxieties. In a so-called civilised society it is purely the existence of a strong police force, and a set of social mores that says "such and such behaviour is socially unacceptable", and the fear of getting caught or imprisonment or a fine that keeps the lid on outlaw behaviour. For some, it seems, given the rise in drive-by shootings in and around Sydney, that isn't enough.

My mind shifted to a wider canvas. There are many states in the world where corruption appears to be endemic. To do business in those places it seems graft and corruption is part of the "moral code". You can't do business in those places unless you grease the palms of some official or other. There have been high profile court cases in various countries, including our own (viz the AWB scandal or the case of the mining company official now languishing in a jail in China), that have highlighted this. We have friends who spent time in one of the Pacific Islands not so long ago and their tales of the endemic corruption are also in my mind. It exists as a general thing at the lowest levels of the society and extends right up into the highest offices in the land. Again some of that has come out in recent/continuing court cases.

Andrew presents the classic Catholic/Christian case for a morality that ultimately comes from a belief in a "Higher or Divine Power" who both "sets the moral law" and "watches over us (when the local policemen cannot)". It's the argument I was brought up on and I'm still not convinced ought be abandoned entirely. At the same time I hear your arguments, James, and before writing this post I just read Sandro Magister's report [LINK] on the Pope's Butler — which provides the best report so far on what's emerging from the current corruption or immorality happening right in the pontifical household. Fresh in my mind also is Neil Oliver's excellent documentary treatment just a few nights ago on SBS television of the thinking on morality of Adam Smith and his belief (later modified) that there was some "hidden hand of self interest" that would keep human society on the straight and narrow.

In your response you raise question marks over the term "Natural Law" — which Andrew uses in some kind of equivalence to "Divine Law". Personally I am coming to the view that "Natural Law", if anything, might be better equated to "The Law of the Jungle", or Charles Darwin's "Survival of the Fittest" — he or she with the loudest voice, the biggest muscles, or the most powerful pump action shotgun is the one who defines what is "moral"! (As I write this I hear in the background the hypocritical words of Cro-Magnon man, Tony Abbott, in the House of Representatives today over the Asylum Seeker debate and I was forced to get up and shut the sound off on the Lateline News so immoral do I feel that individual to be in the way he has been conducting himself for the past couple of years — using the lives of the most defenceless human beings in his quest for his self-belief in a Divine Right to be Prime Minister of this nation.)

Despite all of the above, I still come back to this fundamental question: what is the ultimate source of human morality and ethical behaviour?

I no longer believe in Adam Smith's "hidden hand" of self-interest. I am no longer convinced of the concept of a Creator-God up in the sky who is like some puppet-master controlling, or driving, human behaviour. The examples you cite, and the ongoing corruption I see in our church and in the behaviour of a Rhodes scholar "Captain Catholic" like a Tony Abbott, or Romney's new running mate "Paul Ryan", make me extremely sceptical that morality is any better in the Church than elsewhere in society.

The best I can come up with is that all of us contain within us somewhere some sense of both an "ideal" of human behaviour, and also some "ideal" of the human society we would like to be a part of. It's not "somewhere behind us" — as in the picture of a puppet-master God who created the world and its moral code — but it resides forever in front of us as some ideal we collectively strive for (but constantly fail to reach largely because of the forces of ego and personal anxiety and insecurity — I'm thinking there again of the individual today who pulled out a gun and shot up a house in Sydney because his little ego, or insecurities and anxieties, had been challenged).

I find myself wondering if the problem is not — don't laugh, wait for it — not fundamentally a "theological problem"? By that I mean it is a problem that comes down to our definition or understanding of "God" or this "Higher Power". There is a confusion about what we label as "God" or the "Higher Power". Some people place all their money on this "God" as some kind of "puppet master in the sky and judge" — the big bogey man who keeps us all in line with the threat of the "everlasting fires of hell" and a "final judgment". That belief is evidently breaking down in society evidenced by the fact that most people today are no longer afraid of the "everlasting fires of hell" for missing Mass on Sundays — and I suspect the Italians gave up that belief probably centuries ago before all the rest of us did — and it might be evidenced by the rise in drive-by shootings and the rise in outlaw gang activities locally.

Yet, I wonder, is there still not something buried deep down in the human psyche that ultimately shuns violence and the power of fists and guns as the way to create a peaceful and happy society? Echoes here of the "universal quest for happiness" in the American Declaration of Independence. Outlaws aside, I ask, is there not some universal quest in the human heart to live at peace with our neighbours and to give everyone in society a "fair go" and to ourselves believe that we can enjoy a "fair go"? I don't know what the ultimate origin of this idea of a "fair go" is or some "ultimate quest for happiness, or to live in a state of peace (rather than war) with our neighbours", comes from. I wonder, further, if this is not what we should be either labeling as "God" or as the "Higher Power" that sets some ideal of moral behaviour in human society? This is not some dictating, or judgmental "God" or "Higher Power". It is not some concept of "God" or a "Higher Power" modelled on some Big Brother picture of the "ever-watching eye-in-the-sky". It is a concept centred on some "shared universal ideal or objective for human behaviour" and our ideal of what we mean by "civilised society".

Whether institutional religion survives or not, my sense is that society needs some "moral standard" and "ethical standard". I am not persuaded that any secular legal system or parliament alone is capable of providing that. It requires something that even a parliament is subject to — perhaps the "collective will of the people"? Or perhaps this "collective consensus of the ideal of human aspiration and hope" that I am trying to point to?

Thanks to all of you, and to Andrew, for your thoughts on this subject. I don't have a sense that any of us yet have the "ultimate answer" — including George Pell, any of our bishops and cardinals, or the man in Rome!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-14/roselands-shooting/4197192
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-14/hairdresser-fight-turns-ugly/4197768?section=nsw

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

But "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife"? The first problem is that there is no prohibition on coveting thy neighbour's husband - irrespective of sexual orientation. Why this sexist discrimination?

The second problem with this commandment is that it is completely contrary to later Catholic theology that being tempted is not a sin. It is only the giving in to the temptation that is the sin. Here is a prohibition even on being turned on by the neighbour's particularly attracting little partner - as if one has any control over that.

The same problem arises with coveting the neighbour's house....even if you decide not to keep up with the Joneses, the very thought of doing so is sinful.

Isn't the problem, James, that we were taught the Ten Commandments more or less as ten, short, pithy sentences but all of them require considerable expansion to fully understand their meaning? Isn't that what tools like a Catechism, or even the secular law, endeavour to do? The problem of the emphasis on wives and excluding husbands can be put down to the patriarchal climate in which the story of Moses was written. Today it would be axiomatic as read that it also includes coveting another's husband wouldn't it (leaving aside those who do are not "cafeteria believers" and do not "pick and choose" and who read the bible literally LOL).

I also wouldn't be too heavy on the concept of covetousness. Jealousy is a pretty destructive thing in human behaviour and isn't that essentially what this command was pointing towards?

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

All (or mostly) true, James. (My reservation is about 'covet' = 'being tempted'.) What I really should have included is what you allude to: no mention of coveting husbands. For of course the Commandments are profoundly sexist. The Catholic no. 9 is about coveting thy neighbour's wife (the Catholic mined area of sexual desire), and no. 10 about coveting thy neighbour's goods; in the Hebrew (and Reformed) numbering, all no. 10 is about coveting (wife and or handmaid or camel or plough, aka, property of the patriarch.) I am sure the internet will answer the curious as to how both Catholics and Protestants manage to keep the list to 10.

JPII (the one with the pre-reformation theological mindset) was the one who insisted that all the moral teaching to be included in the Catechism would be within the boundaries of the 10 C/s. Anything more head-in-the-sand I can hardly imagine.