The
Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for
the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in
extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will
not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell
one willful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.
St John Henry Newman
Certain Difficulties Felt
by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, Volume 1, Lecture 8
Reflection – I ran across this quote from Newman on Mark Shea’s blog, and
immediately knew I wanted to blog about it. What a radical statement this is.
What a horror, a detestation, an utter rejection of sin this entails. And how…
utterly at variance with how most people, even most Catholics, I would say,
actually think about the matter.
We are very
quick, most of us, to excuse not only venial sins but grave ones, on the basis
that to follow the moral law would entail suffering on the part of the person.
We fornicate and commit adultery or sodomy, or tacitly approve these actions in
others, because the worst possible thing we can imagine is to be lonely.
We cheat and
steal, practice dishonesty in our businesses and work lives, horde the world’s
goods to ourselves while others starve, or again tacitly approve these actions
in others, because the worst possible thing is to be poor, and we must do
whatever it takes not to be poor.
Lying, too – we
tell lies to avoid suffering, embarrassment, or inconvenience, because what is
the harm of a lie compared to those tremendous evils? What is the harm of any
of this stuff—silly old moral rules!—compared to our temporal happiness, our
prosperity, our immediate gratification of desire?
Newman is
throwing down a tremendous challenge for us, then. Better that the sun and moon
fall from the heavens and millions die in agony than one venial sin be committed! Wow. What do you all think about that?
I am really interested in hearing from people, so much so that I just changed
my comments setting so that people can comment unmoderated.
Personally, I
think this is a matter of strict and unavoidable theo-logic. When we admit that
any sin, even venial ones, weaken if not sever our union with God, and that (as
I said yesterday) this union with God is the whole purpose of the entire cosmos,
then it is clear that even a single venial sin is a more serious matter, with
more riding on it, than any amount of events and calamities that are not sin.
So all of this
is a grand and sweeping condemnation of and a pretty strong theological
argument against the moral theory of consequentialism.
This theory, which is the ruling operative ethical theory in society at
large, is that when evaluating the moral status of an action we do not first
look at whether this action is intrinsically good or evil, but on what the
results of the action will be.
So if we see a
bunch of results that are all rainbows and sunshine and happy happy joy joy—go
ahead! Tell that lie! Steal that money! Sleep with that person! And if the
results we foresee are all storm clouds and desolation and starving to death in
a garret somewhere, well then, don’t let a bunch of old men in skirts tell you
there’s anything wrong with breaking them rules! Do what ya gotta do, baby.
The fact is, of
course, that the results of any single action we perform are like ripples in a
pond, and we cannot foresee any of them beyond the immediate and obvious.
Consequentialism fails as a moral theory right there, since the data one must
use to evaluate morality is simply not available to us. But Newman goes much
further, and argues that the consequence of a single venial sin, insofar as it
is a sin, outweighs a universe of temporal benefits.
Of course, moral
heroism, which we are all called to, says it is far better to starve to death
on the streets than to tell a single lie or break even the least of the
commandments of God. We just had this in the Gospel yesterday—if your right
hand causes you to sin, cut it off… better to enter heaven with one hand than
hell intact.
Serious stuff,
serious challenge, seriously controversial in our modern day of government
surveillance, drone killings, torture, abortion, pollution, and sexual
libertinism. (Notice how I include issues bound to offend both conservatives
and liberals there!). So… what do you all think of that?
