IMMORAL INTEGRITY
“While it is sometimes used virtually synonymously with ‘moral,’ we
also at times distinguish acting morally from acting with integrity. Persons of
integrity may in fact act immorally—though they would usually not know they are
acting immorally. Thus one may acknowledge a person to have integrity even
though that person may hold what one thinks are importantly mistaken moral
views.”
—“Integrity,”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
April 9, 2001
The person who acts with integrity acts according to conscience. Yet
conscience itself may be erroneous. As Benedict XVI has argued (before he
became pope), a person who acts with integrity according to an erroneous
conscience is culpable because of some past decisions that have led them
astray.
“It is never wrong to follow the convictions one has arrived at—in
fact, one must do so. But it can very well be wrong to have come to such askew
convictions in the first place, by having stifled the protest of the anamnesis
of being. The guilt lies then in a different place, much deeper—not in the
present act, not in the present judgment of conscience but in the neglect of my
being which made me deaf to the internal promptings of truth. For this reason,
criminals of conviction like Hitler and Stalin are guilty. These crass examples
should not serve to put us at ease but should rouse us to take seriously the
earnestness of the plea: ‘Free me from my unknown guilt’ (Ps 19:13).”
—Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger, 1991 keynote address titled “Conscience and Truth”
—“How does
Pope Benedict XVI reconcile conscience and authority?” Christianity Stack Exchange, Asked 10 years, 7 months ago
We could say of John Paul II, for example, that he managed the clerical
sexual abuse crisis according to a longstanding institutional policy of denial,
secrecy, and cover-up. That policy is today widely acknowledged to have been
mistaken, so that even if John Paul II acted with integrity, he is culpable,
even if in a small degree, for his erroneous decisions in this regard.
I suppose the extent to which we affirm the integrity of a person in a
positive way depends on the extent to which we evaluate their culpability in
having arrived at an erroneous judgment. According to this understanding,
integrity at some unspecified point cannot be regarded as virtuous, something
good. If the error is minor, it might perhaps be so. If the error is major, it
cannot be regarded in a positive way. As the Stanford article argues, there is
such a thing as “immoral integrity.”
The opposite of integrity is hypocrisy. That is, hypocrisy occurs when
a person acts in a manner inconsistent with the values and principles they have
professed and continue to hold. Presumptively, they act contrary to their
conscience.
What then do we say about someone who acts with integrity but
immorally, that is, with “immoral integrity”? We might perceive it as hypocrisy
when it is actually something else—immorality, perhaps?
Photo courtesy of Dr. Meierhofer
ReplyDeletePhoto link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Johannes-Paul_II_(1987).jpg
Gonzalinho
“Should a pope who turned his back on the worst crisis in modern Catholic history be exalted as a saint? Lawsuits by victims, numerous prosecutions and news coverage of bishops who enabled abuse are the shadow story of John Paul’s twenty-six-year pontificate, during which time he responded to continuing allegations of clergy abuse with denial and inertia. American dioceses and religious orders alone have spent nearly $2 billion on legal actions and treatment of sex offenders, an aching scandal at incalculable cost to the church’s stature.
ReplyDelete“…on the greatest internal crisis facing the church, the pope failed, time and again, to take decisive action in response to clear evidence of a criminal underground in the priesthood, a subculture that sexually traumatized tens of thousands of youngsters. Despite a 1984 warning memo from the Rev. Thomas Doyle, then a canon lawyer in the Vatican Embassy in Washington, and a ninety-three-page report on the problem co-written by Doyle in 1985, which was sent to every American bishop, John Paul ordered no outreach to victims, no binding policy to rid the priesthood of deviants. In 1989 the US conference of bishops sent experts in canon law to Rome, seeking a streamlined process for defrocking child molesters rather than waiting for the byzantine Vatican bureaucracy and final word from the pope. John Paul refused. Litigation and prosecutions spread, but the pope remained passive.
“…On John Paul’s role in the church’s long nightmare, the Rev. Richard McBrien, a distinguished University of Notre Dame theologian, wrote, ‘Indeed, he had a terrible record, full of denial and foot-dragging, on the greatest crisis to confront the Catholic Church since the Reformation of the 16th century.’”
Link: https://www.thenation.com/article/shame-john-paul-ii-how-sex-abuse-scandal-stained-his-papacy/
Gonzalinho
THE REDEMPTION OF SINÉAD O'CONNOR?
ReplyDeleteShe was canceled by pop culture in 1992 after she tore a picture of John Paul II in half on Saturday Night Live. In retrospect her outrage was justifiable and makes sense - John Paul II enabled clerical sexual abuse. She claims she was a victim.
“Amid today’s stan culture, there’s too often a lack of curiosity when it comes to understanding the context around a pop culture phenomenon. Some artists are ’canceled’ without having the full information around their alleged offense, while others are propped up with little regard for their offenses.
“It wasn’t much different years ago. For Sinéad O’Connor, the singer-songwriter who became an icon in the early ’90s, it was a relentless pile-on by media, celebrities and ’fans’ alike after she had the audacity to criticize the Catholic church and Pope John Paul II on live television.
“Some context that people dangerously disregarded at the time was that the church had been enabling and perpetuating the abuse of children across the world, including in O’Connor’s native Ireland. Also: O’Connor herself was a victim.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sinead-oconnor-nothing-compares-documentary-interview_n_6335dab4e4b0b7f89f3ef123
—Candice Frederick, “Sinéad O’Connor Documentary ‘Nothing Compares’ Reexamines Her Complicated Story,” HuffPost, September 30, 2022
Gonzalinho