5A. A MORAL CENTER: A METAPHOR:

Today, members of the Catholic Hierarchy demand that all Catholics embrace their narrow focus on the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage.

From the perspective provided by an incarnational theology, however, their strident prohibitions echo a doctrine of exclusive election which voices a clear denial of God’s all-inclusive love. That denial dramatizes a significant distinction between preachers of the Word who pretend that the moral judgments they seek to impose on others are grounded outside of human reality (in the will of a rational and purposive Creator or a natural order) and prophets whose moral proclamations and protests issue from a moral center.

My metaphorical reference to “a moral center” is woven from many biblical and literary themes:  (1)  I.e., the Exodus-theme which lends coherence to the Judaic-Christian Scriptures depicts human existence as a perpetual journey into the unknown which is full of promise and peril.  (2)  The moral discourse forged by the western literary tradition presents this journey as a quest for both an ever more fully human and uniquely personal existence and for deepening person-to-person involvements.  (3)  Since those who undertake this journey are immersed in inter-personal, social, economic, political and religious dimensions of life, moral issues lie, inextricably, at the core of every human action and assertion. (4)  Israel’s great prophets encoded this insight in their insistence that God spoke in and through the cries of anyone oppressed or marginalized by the powers-that-be in any of these dimensions of life,  (5)  And, finally, since ethical theories (such as Aquinas’ natural law theory) and biblical fundamentalism ground moral discourse outside of human reality, they are inherently dehumanizing and depersonalizing.   

Here and elsewhere, these themes frame my analysis of the moral discourse encoded in everyday English.  My awareness that the language I acquired in my early years interweaves forms of life designed to realize distinctive purposes is indebted to Wittgenstein’s analyses of the workings of everyday languages.  In the form of life generated by the metaphor of intimacy, the quest involves transforming the longing for intimacy into a realizable purpose.  In forms of life generated by the metaphor of power and judgment, one finds many purposes conducive to the quest for a fully human existence.  But the judgments and strategies which ensure the realization of many of these purposes can also be put to inherently dehumanizing and depersonalizing uses.  And since everyday English blurs distinctions among many purposes, preachers and politicians who ground their one sermon in only one purpose can use it to silence prophetic voices who speak from a moral center.

In a contention between those who speak from a moral center and those who ground their moral judgments in a purportedly definitive description of human reality, the latter can too easily accuse the former of subjectivism.  However, since judgments are designed to impose closure on questioning and hence on dialogue, they implicitly deny that human existence is a perpetual journey into the unknown.  In marked contrast, those who commit themselves to a journey to deepening person-to-person involvement soon discover the need for passionate, vulnerable, respectful and faithful interactions which expose lapses into a narcissistic subjectivism.  In turn, these interactions expose the hidden ways that the repertoire of emotional reactions we acquire through a pervasive process of socialization obstruct or abort the quest.  In short since we are not socialized to intimacy, the process of socialization is not designed to help us discern our own moral centers.

The conclusion is obvious:  Without the vulnerable self-revelations that promote intimacy, it is quite impossible to discern one’s own moral center.  I.e., as adults, we enter person-to-person involvements as fitfully socialized individuals marked by previous reactions to significant events in our personal histories.  Deepening person-to-person involvements soon reveal that there is no formula for love.  In and through this discovery, we glimpse the import of the prophetic insistence that God’s moral will speaks in and through the cries of the oppressed, dispossessed, abused, marginalized, silenced and outcast, not through theophanies which impose universally binding laws, an objective moral order, or some purportedly literal reading of the Scriptures.  And if we remain faithful to the commitment, we become sensitive to the tangled moral issues which lie, inextricably, at the core of every human action and assertion.

On the one hand, this sensitivity reveals that judgments and strategies dictated by forms of life generated by a metaphor of power and judgment abort or distort the quest for deepening intimacy.  On the other, it evokes the sympathetic imagination that inspired the metaphors of intimacy projected by Israel’s greatest prophets.

This understanding of the workings of a moral center frames my conviction that those who politicize the abortion issue are acting immorally.  This accusation does not imply a tacit approval of abortion.  I grieve profoundly over any abortion.  But the Father’s providence has involved me with women who initially regarded abortion as the only option.  And through too many instances in which I did violence to wounded individuals who poured from their struggles in vulnerable self-revelations, I became aware that I would enable them to encounter Jesus, the Wounded Healer, if (and only if) I was willing to process their inner turmoil with them without judgments or agendas.

Sadly, I see no evidence of a willingness to hear the cries of these women on the part of the Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops who insist that I must vote for politicians who are against abortion, regardless of their stands on other issues of social justice.  In my more cynical moments, I react with outrage against both the politicians they support and the members of the Hierarchy who are seduced by the false promise that their agenda will work like a leaven transforming American culture.  In my more cynical moments, I want to point out the idolatrous features in the rhetoric of right-wing Republicans.  Quite explicitly, they put their faith in a fictive “invisible hand” which is supposed to guarantee that a laissez faire Capitalism will ultimately transform the world into a virtual Garden of Eden in which the desires of all will be fulfilled, and they use this rhetoric to dismiss the cries of those who are exploited shamelessly by an economic system which validates greed as a virtue.

For rhetorical purposes, I have focused my protest against the one sermon preached by members of members of the American Hierarchy on their determination to politicize the abortion issue.  But their judgments on Catholic politicians are only one facet of their obsession with sex.  Thus, the only edict issued by a recent meeting of the Bishops’ Conference was a reiteration of the prohibition against the use of contraceptives.  And with increasing stridency, bishops repeat the homophobic thesis that homosexuality is an intrinsic disorder and insist that allowing same sex-marriages would undermine the natural institution of marriage.

To justify the many ways that they insulate themselves from the cries of the wounded, they invoke a natural law theory which is philosophically untenable and inherently dehumanizing and depersonalizing.