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Debating “Intrinsic Evil”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2014

James T. Bretzke SJ
James T. Bretzke SJ*
Affiliation:
Boston College
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Abstract

Recent US election cycles, debates about the Affordable Care Act, and a variety of so-called culture war issues have placed the term “intrinsic evil” into public discourse. This issue's roundtable affords readers the opportunity to probe deeply various dimensions of the concept, such as the pedagogical effectiveness of the term, its current use in virtue ethics, and the rhetorical effectiveness of competing moral discourses. The authors' explorations range from consideration of classical questions about the substance and circumstances of acts to a taxonomy for “intrinsic evil” to how social processes affect the discourses available to ethicists.

Keywords

intrinsic evilvirtue ethicsproportionalismhuman rightsVeritatis Splendorexceptionless moral normsdouble effect
Type
Theological Roundtable
Information
Horizons , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , June 2014 , pp. 116 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © College Theology Society 2014 

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References

1 The in se of the traditional axiom requires a hermeneutical process that will necessarily involve an interpretation of both the intention and circumstances, even though the emphasis is still maintained on the gravity of the action itself. Proper attention to this process helps avoid the moral conundrum of positing morally evil actions that would be totally abstracted from the agent, who is always and only a social, contextualized being. For a fuller discussion of this key point, see Demmer, Klaus, Deuten und handeln: Grundlagen und Grundfragen der Fundamentalmoral (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1985), chap. 5Google Scholar.

2 For a fuller discussion of how intrinsic evil and the natural law intersect with the language employed in Veritatis Splendor, see especially Bretzke, James T. SJ, “The Natural Law and Moral Norms: Moving along the Rational Claim Axis,” in A Morally Complex World: Engaging Contemporary Moral Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004), 43–77Google Scholar. Also helpful are Hoose, Bernard, “Circumstances, Intentions and Intrinsically Evil Acts,” in The Splendor of Accuracy: An Examination of the Assertions Made by “Veritatis Splendor,” ed. Selling, Joseph A. and Jans, Jan (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 136–52Google Scholar; and Porter, Jean, “The Moral Act in Veritatis Splendor and in Aquinas's Summa Theologiae: A Comparative Analysis,” in “Veritatis Splendor”: American Responses, ed. Allsopp, Michael E. and O'Keefe, John J. (Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1995), 278–95Google Scholar. A somewhat contrary view is put forward by Rhonheimer, Martin in “‘Intrinsically Evil Acts’ and the Moral Viewpoint: Clarifying a Central Teaching of Veritatis Splendor,” Thomist 58 (1994): 1–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, though this article's central purpose is to give an exposition of the notion of intrinsically evil acts in such a way as to deny theories of proportionalism, and the actual references to Veritatis Splendor are used in a rather proof-texting fashion.

3 Schreiter, Robert, The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), 38Google Scholar.

4 By “morally relevant features” I mean aspects of a concrete situation that must (or should) be taken into consideration in the moral analysis of the act(s) that come out of the situation. A morally relevant feature is not necessarily “morally determinative” but could be. For example, the situation of a woman suffering from prolonged domestic abuse who kills her husband would include as “morally relevant” the aspects of the abuse. The homicide may well still be “murder” (or not), and while these features do not necessarily change the status of the act, they do present important considerations that should be taken into account in the total analysis of the act. Compare this above-mentioned scenario with, for example, the killing of someone like Matthew Shepard or the killing of a rival drug lord. All of these could constitute murder or homicide, but the morally relevant features in each case give us a thicker description of what is in play. I develop the notion of morally relevant features in my book A Morally Complex World: Engaging Contemporary Moral Theology.

5 See the entries for actus hominis and actus humanus in Bretzke, James T., Consecrated Phrases: A Latin Dictionary of Theological Terms, 3rd ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013)Google Scholar, 5; and Bretzke, Handbook of Moral Terms (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013)Google Scholar, 5.

6 An abbreviated version of this paper was presented on May 31, 2013 at the College Theology Society 59th Annual Convention held at Creighton University, Omaha, NE; I am grateful to my respondent, Michael Jaycox, for reminding us that intrinsece malum is not a term employed by Thomas Aquinas either. Instead in the analysis of every moral act Aquinas highlights the indispensable roles played by intention and circumstances: “Now moral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is beside the intention, since this is accidental as explained above” (ST II-II, q. 43, a. 3; see ST I-II, q. 12, a. 1); “A circumstance makes a moral action to be specifically good or bad” (ST I-II, q. 18, a. 10); “And [a] circumstance gives the species of good or evil to a moral action, in so far as it regards a special order of reason” (ST I-II, q. 18, a. 11).

7 Catechism of the Catholic Church 1755 states: “A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances together. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself (such as praying and fasting ‘in order to be seen by men’). The object of the choice can by itself vitiate an act in its entirety. There are some concrete acts—such as fornication—that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil.” Catechism 1756 highlights concern that we not mistakenly conclude that circumstances and intention alone could furnish the moral meaning of an act: “It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.”

8 This online study aid can be found at https://www2.bc.edu/james-bretzke/VeritatisSplendorAndMoral%20ObjectsTextAndCommentaryByBretzke.pdf. Bretzke's web-page index, which contains much helpful material, including research bibliographies and PowerPoint presentations, can be found at https://www2.bc.edu/james-bretzke/BretzkeWebIndex.htm.

9 Schreiter, New Catholicity, 15; the qualifying phrase enclosed in brackets is my own interpretive gloss.

10 For a broader look at some of these issues, see Klemp, Nathanial, The Morality of Spin: Virtue and Vice in Political Rhetoric and the Christian Right (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012)Google Scholar. Klemp identifies three different types of political rhetoric used in a “moral” mode, namely, deliberative persuasion, strategic persuasion, and manipulation. I would suggest that Pavone, Morlino, et al. might be exemplars of this third form of rhetoric.

11 Fr. Pavone's Priests for Life website can be found at http://www.priestsforlife.org/. He has been involved in several controversies both within the church and outside ecclesial circles. For a relatively sanitized and irenic overview of these, see the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Pavone. A more detailed articulation of Fr. Pavone's political approach can be found in his article “Elections and the Parish,” Homiletic and Pastoral Review, August/September 2008, 16–22.

12 Bishop Morlino's column entitled “Subsidiarity, Solidarity and the Lay Mission” is dated August 16, 2012, just five days after Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate. The column was published in the Madison Catholic Herald and can be found online at http://www.madisoncatholicherald.org/bishopscolumns/3366-bishop-column.html. All quotations from Bishop Morlino's column are from this online version.

13 As is well known from a number of my other writings and pastoral experience, I stand quite opposed to a position that holds elective abortion to be either morally indifferent or good. The other issues raised by Fr. Pavone and Bishop Morlino, I would contend, fall into the area of prudential judgment, in which legitimate disagreement can be voiced that does not telegraph a position of dissent with the magisterium of the Church.

14 Several theologians have engaged this issue directly; see, e.g., M. Cathleen Kaveny, “Intrinsic Evil and Political Responsibility: Is the Concept of Intrinsic Evil Helpful to the Catholic Voter?” America, October 27, 2008, 15–19. This article and many other helpful pieces are found in Voting and Holiness: Catholic Perspectives on Political Participation, ed. Cafardi, Nicholas (Mahwah. NJ: Paulist Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

15 “Voter's Guide,” Priests for Life, http://www.politicalresponsibility.com/voterguide.htm.

16 Ibid.

17 Bishop Morlino (b. 1946) entered the Society of Jesus after graduating from Scranton Prep, the Jesuit high school in his hometown, went through the normal course of Jesuit formation, and was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1974. He left the Jesuits in 1981 and completed a doctorate in moral theology under Ivan Fucek, SJ, at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in the late 1980s. Appointed bishop of Helena, Montana, in 1999, he was transferred to Madison, Wisconsin, in 2003, where he has served ever since. Most of the biographical information comes from Bishop Morlino's website found at http://www.madisondiocese.org/DioceseofMadison/OfficeoftheBishop.aspx. Being myself a doctoral student in the late 1980s in Rome, I attended Morlino's public dissertation defense.

18 While the congressional district that Paul Ryan represents falls both in the diocese of Madison and in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, his canonical domicile is within the Madison diocese headed by Morlino.

19 The bishops' letters to Congress and their statements were widely reported in the press. I cite the highlighted bullet points from the National Catholic Reporter article, http://ncronline.org/news/politics/congress-needs-eucharistic-consistency-its-new-budget.

20 I use Bishop Morlino's column as one of many magisterial documents we analyze in my course on contemporary issues in Christian ethics. The temptation to use an ecclesial, liturgical, or professorial role to encourage support for one's political views is obviously a challenge for us all!

21 See David Cloutier's analysis of Bishop Morlino's column in “‘Intrinsic Evil’ & Public Policy: A Partisan Abuse of the Church's Moral Teachings,” posted October 31, 2012, on the Commonweal website, http://commonwealmagazine.org/%E2%80%98instrinsic-evil%E2%80%99-public-policy.