Lesson 3: Does Notre Dame Have a Moral Theology?

AGENDA

• Review from Last Class
• Method of Case Analysis (with examples from last class)
• Discussion of Case #2: The Notre Dame Paradox

REVIEW FROM LAST CLASS

1. In order to understand what moral theology is, we need to consider the possibly that much of what we are doing when we undertake this activity is making our own implicit values and decisions explicit. This kind of critical thinking is what, broadly speaking, we mean by ethics (the critical reflection on the goods, principles and behaviors at work in our community). This is why we start the class with a few warm-up cases that are near to us as members of this community.
2. I also mentioned that our exercises in moral theology is always structured by two inter-related kinds of thinking: teleological thinking (in which we look to identify real [as opposed to false or illusory] goods or ends [telos] proper to us as human beings, and deontological thinking (in which we look to obey the rules that emerge from our duties [deon]). To this point, we talked about explicitly religious or non-religious forms of each kind of thinking. I also suggested to you that in trying to determine both the goods and the rules that ought to govern our lives, in either the religious or non-religious mode, we are always relying on multiple sources when we are asked to give reasons why we follow one form as opposed to another form. In this class we will discuss four of these sources:
1. scripture (or more broadly, sacred narratives or texts),
2. tradition,
3. reason, and
4. experience.
3. My initial argument to you, which is something I would like you to test for yourselves throughout the semester, is that, because we live in a complex world, full of conflicting goods and relationships that are always imposing duties on us and pulling us in multiple directions (think of the person who is married with children but also has obligations to her or his job and community), we always risk reducing or constricting our values, duties, and moral decisions in one way or other.
1. Sometimes, we think the moral life is only about the goods we ought to pursuer (divinely sanctioned or in the image of our own desires) and to hell with the laws or the obligations we have to other people.
2. Sometimes, we think the moral life is only about the rules (do this or do not do that), either because we fear final damnation or we are just afraid of getting caught (think of this campus' alcohol or parietals policy
3. Sometimes we look for reasons to act in one way or another only by searching scripture, or only by listening to church leaders, or only by referencing our common sense, or only to our own personal experience, while neglecting other sources.
4. Basic Problem: How to live a moral life in world that always seems to be presenting us with the good things we want (indeed, that we ought to want) and yet these appear to be in conflict? In the next couple of classes, we are going to be looking at some of these situations of conflicting goods, and we are also going to be looking at how prioritizing or balancing multiple sources is one way of carrying on responsible moral discernment.
5. A note to Catholics and non-Catholics in the class:
   
   The moral teachings of the Catholic Church attempt to address the full range of modes of thinking and issues that people confront in attempting to live a moral life. To those of you who are Catholic, we will be spending a good deal of time coming to terms with what our tradition says about the good life and moral behavior. Each of us will need to examine whether or not the teachings of the church, as formulated in the documents we read, are adequate interpretation of our own faith lives and experiences. Yet we must also consider that these same teachings might actually challenge us that our own interpretations and experiences are clouded or self-justifying and in need of revision. This is the level of intellectual openness and goodwill that I expect of you in this class.
   
   To those of you who are not Catholic, you will be presented with a more or less coherent vision of the good life as taught by the Roman Catholic bishops, and you should ask yourselves in what ways this vision agrees with or departs from that of your own faith tradition or personal sense of right and wrong.
6. A note about our Bishop and his relationship to this class:
   
   Some of you might know about recent discussions concerning the relationship between theologians working at Catholic universities and local bishops. For those who feel they need to know about such things as pertains to our work here, I have talked with our local Bishop, John D'Arcy (some of whose writings you will read in a few days), discussed with him the content of the class, and he agrees that is impossible for ethics to be taught in a University classroom without some real difference of opinion being expressed. This is, for him, the only way to come to a responsible, mature Catholicism—that is, a life of faith that one really makes one's own and not just something handed on from one's parents.
   
   However, he also thinks (as I do)that is important for students to appreciate the teaching of the Popes and other Catholic bishops based on a solid understanding of their argument, and not just based on caricatures or dismissive attitudes. That is all he asks of us, and that is what we as a community of learners at a Catholic university are obligated to give him.

OUR METHOD FOR CASE ANALYSIS (AND OUR RECENT CASE)

1. You will notice on the handout from last time, I provided you with five categories for analyzing the case in question. So I want to look at each of these and, in the process, revisit some of the points that we raised in our discussion last time.
2. Descriptive Dimension:

   Deals with the question of why, if at all, we should care about the issue at hand. How we describe the issue influences what goods we identify and what principles we judge to be relevant in helping us think through the situation. Reveals how our past prejudices (our "effective histories" to use Gadamer's formulation) influence how we think about the moral issues that confront us.

   Examples from last time:

1. Is Notre Dame basically a school? Or a business? Or a "Catholic Disney Land" or "Catholic country club" as some have called it, or basically an arm of the Vatican in the American Midwest?
2. Are the people whose pay is in question in the CLAP case best described as workers whose pay should be linked to the market value of what they produce? Or should they be described as people whose work is entitled the same respect as the highest paid (that is, that their work resides in the fact that through it they express themselves and their individuality)? [John Paul II on the nature of human work and its subjective value
3. Is this basically a case about market efficiency and the supply and demand for labor, or is it basically about the obligations that the head of a family has to all the members of that family?
3. Normative Dimension:

   The normative dimension deals with the question of the goods that we ought to pursue and the rules or laws we ought to use to guide our lives. We call it normative because it is difficult to think about what our lives would look like if we had absolutely no sense of what is good, or proper or obligatory. In other words, we live as if we are guided by some norms or standards. The difficult part is examining whether what we let guide our lives is really what ought to guide our lives. In this dimension of analyzing a case or situation, we are looking to sort out the difference between real goods and binding laws and only apparent or illusory goods or conventional and unjust laws. [Example: Consider anorexia or bulimia-is thinness of body a real good or is it really just a socially constructed and illusory good which actually destroys people; or think about the meth addict (or in the less extreme case, casual drinker--is the drug a real or false good?] On what basis does one argue that something is a real as opposed to a false good? Is it arbitrary preference? Or intensity of delight? Or the result of a life spent pursing such goods (resulting in happiness or self-destruction)? Or the closeness of one's friends or family? Or how much suffering one has helped to eliminate from the world?

   Examples from last class:

1. Is the living wage a real good or an illusory good? Is the University's strategic plan for its development a real good or an illusory good? Something we should sacrifice for or something that should be sacrificed for higher goods?
2. Is the ideal of the ND "family" a real or illusory good? Is the real good the campus family or the wider local community of which it is a part? So for example, when the local bishop thinks of the Church in the diocese, he thinks of Notre Dame as a part of the Church family and not an institution that carries on a voluntary association and commitment to the diocesan family.
3. In terms of rules that ought to guide our common life here and the institutional policies, should we aim at paying above minimum wage? What is "fair" for the Michiana market? Living wage (even if it hurts us a little)? Should the principle of fairness hold pride of place? If so, what counts as fairness? Pay linked to education level? Performance? Is it ever proper to lay off workers so that others can be paid more
4. Is Catholic mission a real good or just an illusory good? Is education in the liberal arts real or illusory? Science or business? How about football weekends? Catholic Mass? Dining hall food?
4. Practical Dimension:

   Here, the overriding concern is how we move from a judgment about what we ought to value and what we ought to do in general (that is, given ideal circumstances) to what we ought to do here and now. How, if at all, should the particular situation affect our choice of action, or should our prior judgments about the good and the right always be realized in our actions, even if these hurt people to some extent? Is it even possible to measure the results of our moral decisions? What would such a measurement look like? (More money? More smiling faces? More charitable action in the world? More agency for the oppressed?) What constitutes practical wisdom in this situation?

   Examples from last class:

1. Are the teachings of the Catholic Church on social ethics reasonable or feasible?
2. What kinds of results could the University measure were a living wage to be instituted? Worker satisfaction? Number of people employed? Respect for all work on this campus? The quality of the lunch room
3. Would unionization help or hurt L2 workers?
5. Fundamental Dimension:

   We call this the fundamental dimension for the following reason: any decision we make, any action we undertake, must be free if it is to qualify as moral. So fundamental to any moral analysis is whether we are free to choose one option instead of another. So for example, even though we speak of natural disasters sometimes as natural evils or acts of God, and label them good or bad, helpful or harmful, these are not moral strictly speaking because nature is not free to make choices.

   The problem is that even when we think we are free to make a decision, we are always in many ways we do not recognize influenced by our past history and our habits. So we can speak of the freedom of an alcoholic, but more likely than not the person is not free to choose not to drink, but only what to drink. Similarly, one who has been sexually abused might think they are free with respect to their own choices, but more likely than not they are actually affected by events that happened to them.

   Freedom that is compromised in various ways goes to the issue of moral culpability-that is, even if we analyze an action and pronounce it to be immoral, we might want to say that the person is only partly to blame (moderately culpable). Or if one is in a situation of conflicting goods, we might not agree with their choices but we can at least understand the pressures that led to a decision.

   So too, institutions, based on their past policies and actions, have different degrees of freedom.

   Examples from last class:

1. Given the University's commitments, and its programs, is it really free to do other than what it is doing with respect to wages?
2. Are workers who don't like it here really free to quit? Are workers who are not unionized really free to express just grievances against their employer?
3. Does the University have a responsibility to the community to grow, so that it can employ more people in the future
4. Does the University's "Catholic identity" compromise or enhance its freedom?
6. Sources for Discernment:

   We are going to be returning to this in more detail over the next four classes, but a few comments on how these work in the case analysis. People are probably familiar with the notion of "proof-texts". This category is intended to take you back through the previous four dimensions to ask what sources are being used to formulate those judgments. Do these sources provide adequate reasons? Why are these sources convincing or why not? How are sources for discernment different from proof-texts?

   Analyze and Discuss Case #2: The Notre Dame Paradox