On Fraternal Correction

ON FRATERNAL CORRECTION

“If your brother sins [against you], go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.” (Matthew 18:15-17)

While fraternal correction is a salutary idea in theory—Jesus himself advocates it—in practice it may be problematic for at least two reasons: moral ambiguity; and the abuse of religious or spiritual authority.

Who is to say that the agent of fraternal correction is in the right, or that he or she in a particular instance possesses the necessary moral ascendancy? In all too many instances, moral ambiguity exists.

begin In the year 1054 slavery was widely accepted; in 1854 it was widely, though not universally condemned; by 1954 it was universally condemned, yet the residual practices connected with slavery, such as segregation and racism, remained. Why were all of those practices tolerated, and even in many instances applauded, whether in 1054, 1854, or 1954? We have argued that at least in part this was due to the invincible ignorance of our culture at that time. Yet with time and considerable corporate effort, we have reached a level of insight on these issues which has lifted the veil of invincible ignorance on a particular issue. What will we see in 2054 as morally reprehensible that is tolerated today? How is this development in our cultural traditions of moral wisdom achieved? With lots and lots of effort and moral energy expended over time our moral vision has been and will continue to be corrected. So while ignorance may seem to be invincible, this is not absolutely the case for all time, as both individuals and whole societies can grow in moral wisdom. end

Source: James T. Bretzke, S.J., A Morally Complex World: Engaging Contemporary Moral Theology (Loyola Heights, Quezon City, Philippines: Jesuit Communications Foundation, Inc., 2004), page 137.

Fraternal correction so-called may be abused when in morally ambiguous situations this practice is instigated, perpetrated, or co-opted by religious or spiritual authority. Let us remember, for example, that for centuries it was the Roman Catholic Church that taught that the practice of slavery was morally acceptable under specific, commonplace conditions.

In contrast, by officially and categorically repudiating slavery in the eighteenth century, the Quakers showed themselves more progressive than Roman Catholics in this regard.

Fraternal correction is very easily abused as a means of enforcing social conformity in morally ambiguous, or worse, morally oppressive situations. Historically, for example, Roman Catholicism supported the practice of slavery. Clergy, religious, and even popes owned slaves. Teaching the moral acceptability of slavery might not be fraternal correction exactly, but the effect of wielding religious and spiritual authority to enforce alignment with questionable social values and norms is the same.

Let us not forget that the human being is homo socius. As a result, he or she readily succumbs to punitive injunctions inspired by the impulse to social conformity, in morally ambiguous situations especially so. Milgram’s experiment is a classic scientific demonstration that by ready extrapolation remains a testament to the moral frailty of social systems and institutions, including, remarkably so, that of the Roman Catholic Church.

We might add that activism in opposition to morally questionable beliefs and practices played an important role in the moral advancement of the polity, illustrated in the case of systemic slavery. With respect to the practice of slavery, still existing, activism continues to this day. We would observe that activism—action—has both merit and efficacy, even though the latter is necessarily limited. The point remains, however: action is morally good. Manifestly, in at least some important instances, silence is moral paralysis.

THE ERROR OF FRATERNAL CORRECTION

One of the most dramatic examples is narrated below. Observe the many “corrections” that Murray received from powerful, influential persons in the Roman Catholic Church.

begin Pope Pius IX made the point in no uncertain terms in 1846 in his encyclical Quanta cura and the accompanying Syllabus of Errors: “The state must recognize [the Catholic Church] as supreme and submit to its influence. . . . The power of the state must be at its disposal and all who do not conform to its requirements must be compelled or punished. . . . Freedom of conscience and cult is madness.” Catholics were told that they need not openly oppose a government that did not so recognize the church (as in the United States); rather, they should tolerate the existing situation until such time as Catholics formed a majority of the voting population.

Beginning in 1950 Father John Courtney Murray, a Jesuit theologian, argued that the old tradition must yield. In a series of articles in Theological Studies magazine and in public appearances, he contended that the state should not be the tool of the church and has no business carrying out the church’s will. Rather, he said, the civil government’s single yet profound obligation is to insure the freedom of all its citizens, especially their religious freedom.

“Every man has a right to religious freedom,” he wrote, “a right that is based on the dignity of the human person and is therefore to be formally recognized . . . and protected by constitutional law. . . . So great is this dignity that not even God can take it away.” Murray claimed the old doctrine as enunciated by Pius IX was not an absolute, static thing but a teaching that had been developing over the past 100 years-a development which Murray saw in the writings of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XII.

The reaction was vehement and instantaneous. The two most influential U.S. Catholic theologians of the day, Fathers Joseph Fenton and Francis Connell, called Murray’s argument “destructive, scandalous, and heretical” and engaged in lengthy, published refutations, especially in the American Ecclesiastical Review. Wrote Fenton, “The state is obligated to worship God according to the one religion [God] has established. This is so obviously a part of Catholic doctrine that no theologian has any excuse to call it into question.”

Murray did not back down. He continued to develop his dissenting interpretation and respond to his critics’ objections. His articles were sent to Rome where they became the subject of considerable concern. In a much-quoted speech in 1952, Cardinal Alberto Ottaviani, the head of the Congregation of the Holy Office, declared (without mentioning Murray by name) that the teaching of Pius IX was as valid now as it ever was, that the state must recognize the church, and that freedom of conscience is an illusion.

Murray was clearly shaken by this clear message to cease and desist. The following year he suffered a heart attack, but after recovery he continued to develop his theory.

By 1954 the Vatican’s patience had been exhausted. A Roman censor forbade the publication of an article that Murray had written and considered crucial to his case. Murray’s Jesuit superior ordered him to cease writing on the subject. When Murray inquired what he could write about, the superior said he might consider poetry.

During the next four, difficult years Murray did not wear the gag lightly. According to his biographer Donald Pilotte, he attempted to have the banned article published anonymously. But the attempt was unsuccessful, as were several other efforts to keep the debate alive. So for a time he wrote on related but less sensitive matters.

In 1958, when a new pope, John XXIII, was elected, Murray emerged from the closet. He pulled together the thrust of his arguments into a popular book titled We Hold These Truths, whose publication just happened to coincide with the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy. Public worries in the United States about what Kennedy, a Catholic, might do in office were greatly dispelled by Murray’s well-argued contention that religious freedom and separation of church and state were not mere tactics of toleration but valid expressions of a developed Catholic doctrine.

Murray and his book made the cover of Time magazine, and the Kennedy campaign relied on him for counsel concerning touchy church-state issues. Some historians contend that it was not Mayor Richard J. Daley’s delivery of the Chicago vote that got Kennedy elected but John Courtney Murray.

Still, top Catholic theologians and Roman officials regarded him as a dangerous dissident. When plans were underway for the Second Vatican Council in 1962, Murray was expressly “disinvited” to join the commission of experts, headed by Ottaviani and including Fenton, that was preparing a statement on human freedom. Although he was experiencing chronic heart problems, Murray would not accept the snub. He wrote to the American bishops on the commission, urging them to fight against any rubber stamp of the outmoded Pius IX doctrine. He was, in fact, so persistent that the U.S. bishops finally asked him to assist the commission in Rome.

Armed with all his scholarship, he publicly debated the issues with Fenton and Ottaviani and became a major drafter of the council’s Declaration on Human Freedom. In its final form, approved in a vote by the world’s bishops, 2,308 to 80, in 1965, the declaration said, “This synod declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals, social groups, or any human power . . . This synod further declares that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person, as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and reason itself.” The words reflect Murray’s thinking and may very well have been written by him.

He lived only 18 months after that vote, succumbing in 1967 to another heart attack at the age of 62, but his legacy is profound. His friend, Jesuit Father Walter Burghardt, noted on the occasion of his death, “Unborn millions will never know how much their freedom is tied to this man whose pen was a powerful protest, a dramatic march against injustice and inequality, whose research sparked and terminated in the ringing affirmation of an ecumenical council: The right to religious freedom has its foundation not in the church, not in society or state, not even in objective truth, but in the dignity of the human person.”

That John Courtney Murray was a dissident is undeniable. That his prolonged dissent was vindicated by the church at its highest level is equally undeniable.

Although the Murray experience is dramatic, it is not essentially different from the experiences of other scholars who have questioned the absolute nature of some church teaching. Theologians like Jean Danilou, Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, and Henri de Lubac all lived parts of their lives under dark shadows of suspicion and accusation. end

http://www.uscatholic.org/church/2008/07/catholic-dissent-when-wrong-turns-out-be-right

 

—Robert J. McClory, “Catholic dissent: When wrong turns out to be right,” U.S. Catholic, July 28, 2008 

There are other historically prominent examples of the “error of fraternal correction,” e.g. Theotokos controversy of the fifth century, Galileo Galilei, Cardinal John Henry Newman.

Many personal experiences also testify to the “error of fraternal correction,” less historically significant perhaps but no less compelling for the persons involved.