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Veritatis Splendor says Moral Evaluation is Sin
 

What it says.

Veritatis Splendor (or The Splendor of Truth) is an Encyclical by Pope John Paul II issued in 1993.

The document says church authorities produce perfect truth on morality, being inspired by God; and no one else should be allowed to add reason to the subject, because they can only corrupt it. Not only that, but they would destroy their souls if they tried to, because it would be "eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of kowledge of good and evil."

Therefore, all moral study by professors, Protestants, or individuals is supposedly sinful and is supposed to be shunned by Catholics. Catholics are supposed to do no more than support the moral theology produced by the Church.

Supposedly, the point was that some persons manufacture their own morality instead of adhering to God's law. But manufacturing is not eating, and knowledge is not law. And the context indicated that the pope acquires perfect moral knowledge.

When a child disobeys its parents, is it "eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil?" Not hardly. It demonstrates the gulf between implying an absurdity and then rationalizing it.

The evaluation process can never be perfect. If imperfect evaluation is eating the forbidden fruit, then all human evaluation is a sin. That was the net effect of the pope's argument.

The main problem with the official theology (the humanly synthesized elements) is that it replaces the morality which Christ taught with a synthesis based upon "Natural Law" which moves morality out of the domain of the objective realities of life and into a subjective domain which has to be arbitrated by authorities.

The resulting theology is quite inadequate and in need of being criticized. Major areas are missing, particularly in regard to socialized morality, and contrivances are used to rationalize and protect the inadequacies. The over-all effect is to use theology to justify corruption rather than overcome it. But no one is supposed to produce alternatives or criticism, according to Veritatis Splendor.

Certainly church authorities should attempt to explain the religion, but as humans, not as infallible gods. And certainly they should create church rules, but limited to church rules, not universal truisms, which they are incapable of producing.

Veritatis Splendor demonstrates, as do all other church documents less visibly so, that church authorities are nothing but corrupted humans incapable of producing infallible truth. Their reversal on the principle that no one but Catholics get saved demonstrates that they are not infallible. The only reason why their limitations have to be mentioned is because the corruptions supposedly represent God, while God does not have those characteristics or realities. Church authorities are misrepresenting God and truth, just as the Pharisees did. In fact, the only reason why Christ mentioned the Pharisees is because he was saying that future church authorities would be just like them. He was teaching moral principles which would be broadly applicable.

Some Telling Quotes.

(5) ...the Catechism of the Catholic Church, ...contains a complete and systematic exposition of Christian moral teaching.

Absolutizing the adequateness of church theology is a prevalent standard in the document. It is supposed to indicate that any alternatives or criticisms are unnecessary and detrimental.

(27) ...the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether in its written form or in that of Tradition, has been entrusted only to those charged with the Church's living Magisterium...

Magisterium is defined as teaching authority. The statement says no one but church authorities is supposed to be interpreting the word of God (Bible).

(27) The same Spirit who is at the origin of the Revelation of Jesus' commandments and teachings guarantees that they will be reverently preserved, faithfully expounded and correctly applied in different times and places.

This statement (and the net effect of the others) says that church authorities not only produce flawless results and are above criticism, but that it is God's reality which they represent. They are claiming that their perversions are God's reality, which is blasphemy. They want people to assume God is as corrupted as they are. Satan's work is portrayed as God's work.

(7) ...the Church ``wishes to serve this single end: that each person may be able to find Christ, in order that Christ may walk with each person the path of life.''

Finding Christ is a euphemism for supporting church theology. A person supposedly cannot find Christ apart from the Church.

(21) Having become one with Christ, the Christian becomes a member of his Body, which is the Church.

This statement indicates that Christ and Church are supposed to be synonyms, which is supposed to mean that there cannot be valid religious activity, such as writing moral philosophy, outside the Church.

(12) natural law...is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man at creation.

A totally psychological version of morality is concocted in the document, as elsewhere. A person simply accepts church teaching, and God does everything else in the person's head. Morality as a path where things are done was not significantly described in the document.

The natural law concept, with its related psychology, is in conflict with the characteristics of minds. It says God implanted moral awareness in minds when they were created, and contact with formal religion is needed to "awaken" it.

Minds cannot have corners in them where something perfect is stored, while everything else in the mind is imperfect. Minds integrate realities, values and attitudes.

(29) ...the origin and end of moral action are found in the One who 'alone is good'...

This point and many others indicate that morality was created by God and does not have objective origins. And if it does not have objective origins, it supposedly cannot be determined through study. A large amount of rationalization of this point is produced in the document. One of the primary purposes of my moral philosophy is to develop the objective origins of morality.

(29) Certainly the Church's Magisterium does not intend to impose upon the faithful any particular theological system, still less a philosophical one.

That statement is strange, because Thomas Aquinas certainly seems to have created a "theological system," and it is imposed upon Catholics. Apparently, the statement is an attempt at self-justification without regard for its accuracy.

(35) The Lord God commanded the man, saying, `You may eat freely of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die' '' (Gen 2: 16-17).

With this imagery, Revelation teaches that the power to decide what is good and what is evil does not belong to man, but to God alone.

Taking the second point first, it says that God created morality. Since morality was created by God, a psychological relationship to God (through church authorities) is supposed to be the essence of being moral, in contrast to a study of objective reality.

The first point was repeated several times in the document. The story of Adam and Eve was used to indicate that "eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil" is the same as individuals attempting to determine what morality is apart from church authorities. An unexplained implication is that church authorities must be able to eat from the tree without dying, while individuals cannot. Theologians and Protestants must supposedly die when they evaluate morality apart from the pope.

The pope is not referring to just any command. He says,

With this imagery, Revelation teaches that the power to decide what is good and what is evil does not belong to man, but to God alone. The man is certainly free, inasmuch as he can understand and accept God's commands. And he possesses an extremely far-reaching freedom, since he can eat ``of every tree of the garden.'' But his freedom is not unlimited: it must halt before the ``tree of the knowledge of good and evil,''...

The pope thereby takes the unprecidented step of interpreting Genesis to mean humans must not study morality, because it is eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In saying that man is not free to determine morality, because he is not free to eat the forbidden fruit, the pope is saying that to eat the forbidden fruit is to determine morality.

How then does one explain the Scriptural passage? A literal interpretation is not possible, because knowledge does not grow on trees. Also, the Old Testament was copied many times by scribes who made numerous alterations. So only general concepts can be used, and they must be interpreted in relation to logic and evidence.

As explained on the web page pertaining to the spirit world, the story in Genesis pertains to spirit cannibalism. Satan and evil spirits acquire their power by stealing spirit substance from the minds of vulnerable persons. The Genesis story says to not do that. The tree in the center of the garden is the mind, and the forbidden fruit is spirit substance within the mind.

The intended meaning in Genesis obviously does not apply to the study of morality, because Adam and Eve did not have the means of opening their eyes through a study of morality. The pope's application of the passage to the study of morality was demonstrated by a statement a few sentences down:

(35) ...present-day cultural tendencies have given rise to several currents of thought in ethics... These doctrines would grant to individuals or social groups the right to determine what is good or evil...

The pretense of the pope is that moral truth can be replicated without error or uncertainty from God to pope and from pope to people. But there is never agreement on the meaning of the pope's documents. So which opinion is the correct one? How is the truth determined without evaluation?

The pope is talking about authoritative decisions on morality. But authority is seldom relevant to morality. The document has a strange undercurrent which assumes that authority is the only question about morality, while in reality, the entire subject consists of knowledge and decisions.

(97) ...only a morality which acknowledges certain norms as valid always and for everyone, with no exception, can guarantee...

The pope repeatedly absolutizes moral concepts, which removes them from the process of reason, since the absolutes do not exist, and they prevent differentiation. For example, the Catholic Church issues marriage annulments for some persons but not others; it allows abortions to save the life of the mother; it promotes birth control as "natural family planning;" it allows terminally ill persons to die without applying extraordinary resuscitation; it allows "just" wars; it allows the death penalty; and it allows Catholics to go to church on Saturday night instead of Sunday.

The point is not to determine whether such policies are sin but that they demonstrate an absence of moral absolutes. It is impossible to determine what an absolute would be. That's why absolutes destroy the ability to add reason to a subject. The promoters of absolutes subconsciously use absolutes to break down the rationality of their opponents.

The pope described the social situation as follows:

(106) Dechristianization, which weighs heavily upon entire peoples and communities once rich in faith and Christian life, involves not only the loss of faith or in any event its becoming irrelevant for everyday life, but also, and of necessity, a decline or obscuring of the moral sense. This comes about both as a result of a loss of awareness of the originality of Gospel morality and as a result of an eclipse of fundamental principles and ethical values themselves.

He claims that the deterioration results from false ethical concepts generated outside the Magisterium. However, forces do not move that way. People do not give up something of greater value in exchange for something of lesser value. There seems to be quite bit of evidence that organized religion deteriorated due to loss of real meaning and corruption within it.

The primary corruption of organized religion is one of omission. The subject of sin has nearly disappeared from religion, particularly at the public level. But this fact is blotted out by continuous harping on a few isolated examples of sin, which does nothing to develop the subject of morality.

Conclusions:

The primary purpose of the document was to summarize the moral theology of the Catholic Church, particularly in view of recent problems with dissenters. For example, a group of theologians said that they should determine morality, because the pope is unqualified. To a large extent, the pope was using the document to produce a counter-argument to that claim. But he didn't make the right arguments, he dredged up the worst of theological absolutism to bolster his position, and he added absurdities unheard of in theology.

The primary problem with both sides is that they are hung up on authority, while authority is not usually relevant to morality. God himself cannot change morality through authority. All he can do is describe it.

There are, however, secondary effects to authority. It is wrong to defy authority which is necessary and constructive. This fact creates an appearance of an ability to dictate morality at God's level, but only to the extent that he is objectively right. If he were wrong, he could not turn sin into virtue anymore than satan can. And proper authority applies to control of actions, not realities, though there is certainly supposed to be respect for sources of greater knowledge.

The absurdity in basing morality on authority is that almost none of the moral decisions one must make have ever been described by authorities, and a person could not look them up while making decisions if they were. It is absurd to assume that morality consists of a few listed items. There is a morality to every decision a person makes. One of the real tragedies of theology and religious authority is that it reduces morality to so few concerns that almost everything in life is left without moral implications.

Christ was crucified for breaking the Ten Commandments by blaspheming. A list of commandments was not enough for determining morality, and his purpose was to show how to apply morality to everything in life.

To create the rationalization of church authority as producing perfect moral truth, the pope focused on divine influences acting upon human minds, which supposedly perfects the critical results of church authorities and leaves everyone else imperfect.

So the entire document was extremely psychological. It had no significant relationship to the morality which Christ taught, which is defined, tested and produced in relation to the objective realities of life.

Theologians and church authorities are hung up on the question of authority, while religion and the world disintegrate due to sin. The essence of morality is being ignored, because religious authorities assume that it consists of nothing but a few mindless points about authority. The fact is, morality is an extremely complex subject consisting of the constructivity of all thoughts, attitudes, values and actions.
Web Link for Veritatis Splendor.

   http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/jp2/vs.html