Lesson 6: Tradition

AGENDA

• Review From Last Time

• Discussion of Case #5: Tradition, Authority, and Freedom at Notre Dame

• Quiz (last 15 minutes of class)

REVIEW FROM LAST TIME

1. The Form of Law
1. Law is first form of God’s revelation (both in the form of God’s directives to the primeval couple and in God’s first revelation to the community of God’s people at Sinai)
2. Law is an expression of God’s love which cannot be understood apart from some sense of orderliness of the universe. This law is revealed, in part though not completely, through nature (properly interpreted)
3. Precepts of God’s laws are intended not to be burdensome but to guide us in the free exercise of love
1. First and foremost, love of God
2. Second and complementary, love of other people
3. Note, however, that there does seem to be some ambivalence (or imprecision) in interpreting laws when we are called to rank or prioritize our commitments to our families and our commitments to other people who suffer injustice throughout the world
4. The most basic characteristic of human beings, aside from our existence (under a creation ordered by God’s law) is that we are fundamentally free—with the choice to obey or disobey the law
5. If we obey it, we are realizing our freedom properly and will learn to love God and abide peacefully with others.
6. If we disobey the law, we will not realize happiness, no matter the genius of our own plans and best intentions.
7. However, the proper path of obedience to God’s law is not always clear, as we live in a world where we must constantly be attentive to conflicting goods and commitments that may prove to be mutually exclusive (we will return to this question later when we discuss the responses to John Paul II’s letter, Veritatis Splendor).
2. Creation as Good
1. While all created things are good, we can either use them properly or love them excessively.
1. In other words, we always live with the danger of idolatry (making any lower or subordinate good into the ultimate object of our love).
2. Passing Question: Do you suppose this is a particularly dangerous tendency for Notre Dame students and their families? Have you ever felt as if you have become your parents’ idol? What would you do to prevent idolatry from taking over the life of your future families?
2. This danger exists because we all live with a two-fold vision and vocations human beings (as Paul VI says) to our creation: we are both living in this world and also ordered to something beyond it. (natural/earthly and supernatural/eternal)
3. To be created then means two things:
1. One is not the ultimate arbiter of one’s own freedom. We do not create our purpose from nothing, rather, we discover it.
2. Whatever our particular callings in life, we are still called to realize both the natural and eternal aspects of our vocation.
4. Freedom is a necessary precondition to any real choice (we do not impute responsibly or blame to someone that has no choice but to do something)
1. But freedom can be used in accordance with one’s final end (love of God) or against that final end.
2. When we consistently chose lower goods over higher goods, we form habits that actually diminish what we see as our own possible free choices in the future.
3. Marriage as the First Moral Community
1. For such writers as Augustine of Hippo and Pope Paul VI, marriage is the proper human fulfillment of that vocation
2. For Augustine, this means recognizing that the particular goods of marriage (the procreation and education of children, fidelity and union) must be ordered to the final end and not taken as ultimate goods.
3. For Paul VI, this means recognizing that marriage must be ordered primarily toward the production of new generations, but that in each act of marriage love, the unitive and the procreative dimensions must joined
4. In each case, while the family is the first moral community (one’s primary focus), that community must be directed in each act to love of God which transcends that community.

DISCUSSION OF Case #5: Tradition, Authority, and Freedom at Notre Dame

1. Transition to our next case:
1. Recall that in our last case, the issue was how scripture was being employed as a source for moral thinking, illustrated by the specific case of Catholic teachings on marriage, sex and family life.
2. We noticed that thinkers in this tradition (Augustine, Aquinas, Paul VI), were building from basic scriptural themes and stories, yet they were advancing them in ways that sought to provide stronger theoretical foundations for certain moral norms.
3. This is a fundamentally different approach to ethics than an unconsidered obedience to the laws or regulations of a community because it requires us to think what goods or forms of virtuous behaviors the tradition is trying to preserve and advance.
4. In looking at scripture as a source for moral thinking, we noticed that it can serve a diagnostic or descriptive function (highlight what is wrong or at least “not quite right” about the world or particular human behaviors), but it can also present us with a model for how we ought to live and how we ought to think through difficult moral questions.
2. The next case, which brings us back to a recent debate on campus about whether Notre Dame should sponsor the play “The Vagina Monologues” and allow it to be performed on campus, calls us to think about the appropriate relationship between the authority of tradition and invidual freedom..
1. As we discuss this case, we need to be attentive to how the notion of “the Catholic tradition” is being used as well as how, if at all, a “tradition” of thought and practice can function as a source for moral thinking.
2. The case also lets us build on our understanding of Catholic teaching on marriage, sex and family by asking how, or under what conditions or through which means, can one learn about these teachings. Does “tradition” as a source for ethical thinking, or put differently as a means of education, require that we interpret this tradition broadly or narrowly? On what basis do we judge what is inside and outside of a particular tradition? Is it possible, as some have argued, that we can only understand the way a tradition thinks morally if we are first schooled sufficiently by it? What does this mean for a University that wants to embrace both academic freedom and “the Catholic intellectual tradition"?