The Quarrel over Morals in the Catholic Church

Extract

More than half of this book is taken up with the complete text of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter on ‘certain fundamental questions of the Church’s moral teaching’, Veritatis Splendor, dated 6 August 1993. The rest reprints the set of eleven comments published in The Tablet, together with a brief introduction by the editor, John Wilkins.

According to John Wilkins, ‘people feel that something is wrong’—‘there is a widespread moral unease’—but ‘the task of establishing a pluralist society which yet acknowledges shared values as the condition of that pluralism is proving beyond the capacities at present being brought to it’ (page ix, my italics). In the judgment of many worried people (not only Catholics), that would seem an unduly optimistic statement. It suggests that, while the task is beyond our intellectual powers ‘at present’, we may be better off in days to come. But what if the ‘shared values’ which would be the condition of the moral pluralism of Western culture are already as substantial as they ever could be—and are diminishing all the time? What if a pluralist society is, by definition, irreconcilably divided over deep moral issues? Where there are ex hypothesi radically conflicting conceptions of the good life which are never going to converge, let alone be unified, what content would there be to ‘shared values’ beyond temporary alliances, occasional trade-offs, and the kind of tolerance that has marked Western societies since people wearied of the religious wars?