ARTICLES

No Recipe for Morality

Says Bay-Area Jesuit

BY ROSEANNE SULLIVAN

Jesuit priest James Bretzke is the author of a book called A Morally Complex World: Engaging Contemporary Moral Theology (2004, Liturgical Press, Collegeville). This article reports on some problematic aspects of the author's moral theology that this writer encountered when reading Father Bretzke's book and taking his class at San Jose's Institute for Leadership in Ministry last winter. The Institute trains lay people to be parish leaders in the San Jose diocese.

Father Bretzke's class and his book teach complex methods for evaluating the moral rightness of actions. His moral theology is well worth examining because he influences the minds and morals of many Catholic college students, future diocesan priests, and lay people in training for parish leadership roles. Besides teaching at the University of San Francisco and the Institute for Leadership in Ministry, Bretzke also teaches at Loyola School of Theology in the Philippines and the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. Father Bretzke also instructs Bay Area seminarians.

The following story told by Father Bretzke at an Institute for Leadership in Ministry class last winter encapsulates his attitudes about the teachings of the Church's magisterium on moral issues. When teaching seminarians, Bretzke said, he instructs them that there are only three people in the confessional: God, the penitent, and the priest. With a not-so-highly-veiled reference to disputed moral issues like contraception, Bretzke reported that he tells his seminary students that they need to remember that neither the pope nor Cardinal Ratzinger are there with them in the confessional and that the individual's conscience is primary.

Father Bretzke's positions are known and seemingly respected by Anne Gryczk, the Institute for Leadership in Ministry's director, as evidenced by the thanks that Father Bretzke gives to Gryczk in his book's introduction as one of his colleagues who read drafts of parts of his manuscripts and offered valuable input.

The book's introduction also quotes an e-mail correspondence from a former student in the Philippines, which Father Bretzke uses as a way to frame his main theses. The student asked Father Bretzke to answer one broad question, "how are we to live the Gospel of Life?" and several specific questions about the morality of cloning, euthanasia, abortion, and contraception. Father Bretzke writes in response that "these are complex questions." He evades the first question about how to live the Gospel of Life by replying that "the moral life is not a simple task for which precise step by step directions can be given." Father Bretzke goes on to use another favorite phrase of his that "morality is not like mathematics."

In another part of his book, Bretzke continues this theme. "To sit back and wait for a clear-cut response from any outside moral authority, even if it be the Pope, would result in a sort of moral infantilism," he writes. At the Institute, his students are repeatedly given to understand that they need to prove they are not immature by informing themselves as best they can without relying on the magisterium, in order "to grow into moral adulthood."

The book's overview chapter, "Mapping a Moral Methodology," develops Father Bretzke's suggested model for a new governing paradigm for moral theology. The author reviews and rejects what he refers to as the manualist pre-Vatican II methodology, which was based on three sources: scripture, tradition, and the magisterium.

Bretzke wants to replace the manualist model for doing moral theology with a new personalist one that would not be identified solely with the Roman Catholic tradition -- not only because he thinks the older model no longer works but also to avoid obstacles to ecumenical dialogue. The model that Bretzke suggests is based on the work of a Protestant ethicist, James Gustafson.

Bretzke proposes four sectors of sources for practicing moral theology: "Sacred Texts," "Human Experience," "Rational Reflection on the Normatively Human," and "Tradition of the Community." Think of these terms arranged on a piece of paper divided into four. "Sacred Texts" and "Normatively Human" are on the top left and top right, while "Human Experience," and "Tradition of the Community" are on the bottom left and bottom right. A diagonal arrow from "Sacred Texts" on the top left connects with "Tradition of the Community" on the bottom right, and these two sectors make up what Bretzke calls the "sacred claim" axis. Another diagonal arrow connects "Rational Reflection on the Normatively Human" to the "Human Experience" quadrant, and this axis is called the "rational claim" axis. A footnote in the book states that the sectors correspond to the four sectors associated with Methodist ethics, called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. The terms used in the Methodist diagram are simpler while close in meaning to Bretzke's terms: scripture, reason, tradition, and experience.

In his examples in the mapping chapter, Bretzke takes aim against several Catholic Church teachings. In one example Bretzke uses for his "Human Experience" sector, he challenges the teaching that life begins at conception and introduces the modern moral theologian's objection to the Church's claim that some acts are intrinsically evil. He quotes the late theologian Karl Rahner, who cited the scientific claim that 50 percent of fertilized human eggs are not implanted in the womb and thus die. Rahner's point seems to be that the definition of when life begins was made by non-experts (Church leaders) without enough evidence, and that in the light of human experience (the above-quoted statistics), the Church should be willing to change the definitions. Neither Rahner's quote nor Bretzke's exposition makes it clear why the Church should consider changing the definition only because many conceived humans do not survive.

In examples elsewhere in the overview chapter, Bretzke challenges the Church's positions on ordaining women and on contraception.

Bretzke often uses rhetorical tricks to put across his points. He posits that artificial birth control might actually be the only moral choice to be made by two couples that don't want to conceive for differing reasons. In his class, he named the couples Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (evoking the '70s movie about wife swapping). One of the couples in this example doesn't want to have children simply because a child would interfere with their lifestyle. Father Bretzke's sympathetic reaction to their personal choice includes a speculation that the Norplant contraceptive might be ideal for them, since it lasts so long

In another example, Bretzke erects a straw man by quoting a Catholic theologian from the 1960s who idiosyncratically defended the Church's position against artificial birth control by stating that it is wrong because it doesn't allow a man to master his woman. The value of the Church's consistently held position against artificial contraception is not presented in Bretzke's book. Father Bretzke does not give weight to the reasoned arguments against artificial birth control and the affirmation that the magisterium cannot redefine as good an act that is known to be evil, which are found in Pope Paul VI's encyclical, Humanæ Vitæ. And Father Bretzke's book does not take notice of the writings of others who set out to defend the Church's teaching on these matters, most prominently Pope John Paul II. Even though Bretzke proposes a replacement for manualist ethics with personalist ethics, he does not mention or credit the pope's personalist philosophy, in which he reaffirms and explains the Church's doctrines on sexuality and contraception in the light of the dignity and well-being of the human person and the importance of married love as a mystery that proclaims the self-giving love of Jesus for His Bride, the Church.

Father Bretzke refers to Pope John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor often in the book. But this encyclical can be read in a way that criticizes the kind of moral theology that Bretzke espouses. For instance, the pope writes: "certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values.... [T]he traditional doctrine regarding the natural law, and the universality and the permanent validity of its precepts, is rejected; certain of the Church's moral teachings are found simply unacceptable; and the Magisterium itself is considered capable of intervening in matters of morality only in order to 'exhort consciences' and to 'propose values,' in the light of which each individual will independently make his or her decisions and life choices." But Father Bretzke, in what seems a thinly-veiled-reference to Veritatis Splendor, writes, "certain moral authorities do seem to present themselves as if the full splendor of the truth were contained in their utterances" [Emphasis added].

The pope makes specific references to abortion, artificial contraception, homosexual acts, euthanasia, and many other acts as examples of intrinsic evils that can never be justified. Father Bretzke, however, teaches that making a moral analysis of any such acts requires that we consult all four sectors of his moral map, evaluating what we learn from the "sacred claim" axis against what we can learn from the "rational experience" axis. If by following this method we realize later that we have done the wrong thing, Bretzke teaches that we can use this realization as an opportunity to reconsider and reform our decision. He admits that his approach has its weakness because it assumes an upward spiral of improvement in everyone's moral decision-making, whereas for many people moral decision making revolves in a downward spiral.

Looking at Bretzke's pastoral examples, in which he tries to model the application of his moral map to specific cases, he does believe that some acts are intrinsically evil. In discussing acts which he seems to think are intrinsically evil, like abortion (within his definition) or what he calls "not letting women have their rightful leadership role," Bretzke is unequivocal. But when he is providing guidance about other issues that he doesn't believe are morally evil, such as artificial birth control or homosexual practice, he appeals to the individual's conscience.

One night after class, when I tried to explain why I trust the pope's teaching on contraception, Father Bretzke said that for me to be justified in my trust, the popes would have to have never taught anything incorrect. He told me that if I follow the popes' teachings I would be morally "infantile."

Bretzke's students are told that before they take any Church documents as guidelines, they should weigh how binding they are, using the principles described in his essay: "Reading, Exegesis, Interpretation and Application of Magisterial Documents." (www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/bretzkesj/MagisterialExegesis.pdf)

Besides being assigned the book, Institute students were pointed to several other Bretzke articles, including one that makes a case against the "fundamentalist" use of Scripture in supporting the Church's teachings against homosexual practice. (You can download notes for his classes and all the documents referenced in this article -- except for the book -- at: www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/bretzkesj.)

Father Bretzke (along with other moral theologians) has taken a valid Catholic teaching about the primacy of conscience and has stretched it to make it a justification for individual disobedience. But in Veritatis Splendor, the pope admonishes his fellow bishops to make sure that correct moral teaching is preserved. "We have the duty, as Bishops, to be vigilant that the word of God is faithfully taught," writes John Paul. "My Brothers in the Episcopate, it is part of our pastoral ministry to see to it that this moral teaching is faithfully handed down and to have recourse to appropriate measures to ensure that the faithful are guarded from every doctrine and theory contrary to it. In carrying out this task we are all assisted by theologians; even so, theological opinions constitute neither the rule nor the norm of our teaching. [Their] authority is derived, by the assistance of the Holy Spirit and in communion cum Petro et sub Petro [with Peter and under Peter], from our fidelity to the Catholic faith which comes from the Apostles. [Emphases added.]

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