Berkley Center

Although he disclaims—somewhat disingenuously, given his early training and wide learning—any specific theological competence, José Casanova, in his Berkley Center Lecture and commentary, clearly addresses himself to each of the audiences—academy, society, and church—famously identified by David Tracy as the three publics of the theologian. He speaks, first, as a committed scholar, a social theorist engaged in the project, shared with Hans Joas and others, of shedding light on the historicity of the moral fundaments of modern society. He also speaks as a concerned citizen, troubled at the prospect of the Catholic Church frittering away the moral credibility that has allowed it to make prophetic contributions to the public realm in the past. But most importantly, he speaks as a Catholic layperson deeply disturbed by the growing disjunction he perceives between ongoing ethical advances in society and the obdurate traditionalism of magisterial teaching, especially in regard to a nexus of issues Casanova calls “the gender question."

It is this third role that casts his intervention as an instance of “faithful dissent,” an act of speaking truth to the powers-that-be in the Church. In this act Casanova, making common cause with Charles Taylor and others reacting to prevailing disjunctions between societal and Church morality, stakes his own considerable credibility and ecclesial influence as an authority on “public religion” in an effort to prompt discussion and, if possible, renewal in the Church.

The mere fact that some of the characteristic attitudes and official teachings of the Catholic Church regarding sex and the sexes are out of step with widespread mores and practices in the broader society does not in itself support the contention that the Church ought to change. But Casanova presents a strong case that the Catholic hierarchy, by resisting the modern march of freedom, equality, and human dignity, has occasioned its own crisis of legitimacy. He limns the current status of Church morality in powerful strokes: after some centuries of haltingly following the lead of moral impulses from secular society on major issues such as slavery, human rights, and religious freedom, the Church has reached a stumbling block in connection with the central ethical issues of our day, namely sexual morality and gender equality. The obstructionist stance of the magisterium in these matters threatens to alienate women, the very lifeblood of the Catholic community—a development that could devastate the Church.

There are, naturally, elements of this brief sketch that need to be further refined. Casanova is much too sophisticated a sociologist to rest content with a picture that reduces the complex interaction of religious values and cultural mores to a unidirectional relation between “evolving secular morality and resisting Church morality.” Despite its revolutionary pedigree, the philosophically problematic notion he employs of “self-evident truths” is probably not the best idiom to use in describing the evolution of moral perceptions of liberty and equality. And his characterization of the Church’s reliance on an ahistorical, physicalist version of natural law for its moral positions is a bit out of date. But the thrust of his analysis remains clear and persuasive: for the good of the Church, ecclesial teaching—and action—needs to open itself up to the wisdom and insights emerging from secular, or at least extra-ecclesial, processes of moral reflection and learning.

Now if, as Casanova recognizes, “secular” morality is itself derived in significant part from Christian sources, then we must ask what is distinctive to a secular moral outlook. We don’t have to read too much between the lines to identify some major components of the ethical challenge the world poses to the Church. One is a principle of democracy that, while flowing from early Hellenistic practices and Christian spiritual egalitarianism, has hardened in the crucible of liberal political orders in a manner bound up with the modern construction of secularity itself. Another is a spirit of pluralism, rooted in an acknowledgment of the diversity and interdependence of various types of human community—including culture and cult. Such values provide the impetus for efforts to renew the process of doctrinal development on issues related to sexual morality and the status of women.

If the institutional Church is to rise to the challenge that Casanova identifies, it needn’t start from scratch. Yet it will have to revive its attention to some of its theological resources that have been ignored or underdeveloped in recent years. The integration of insights attached to historical consciousness into the Church’s ethical understanding is an incomplete process which, if carried further, could sharpen sensitivity to the dynamics of the evolution of moral perceptions, especially with regard to a value that has assumed increasing prominence in Catholic thought: human dignity.

Much the same could be said of the incorporation of various dimensions of human experience—including the natural and social sciences—into the methodological nexus of scripture, reason, and tradition from which the Church’s teaching authorities derive ethical judgments. On this point, the tendency in several recent official documents to reduce the entire concept of “gender” to an obfuscating term serving as the basis for a deviant, sinful ideology is a particularly egregious instance of failing to engage scientific perspectives. The fact that gender can be linked to ideological assertions in no way obviates the need for the Church to come to terms with the observable ways in which features associated with masculinity and femininity (and, indeed, with the male and female sexes) are shaped by social and cultural relations and structures.

Perhaps the most fruitful means at the Church’s disposal of responding to the exigencies of the “gender question” is the practice of divining the “signs of the times” that emerged, as Casanova reminds us, in the key documents of Vatican II. This approach was never adequately theorized, and it has not often been invoked in recent papacies. Still, its foundations remain preserved in official teaching, along with its potential to serve as a medium for a new “aggiornamento” in relation to issues of gender and sexuality.

The phenomenon Casanova alerts us to of women leaving the Church in increasing numbers—even in Latin America!—is sobering indeed. The election of a new pope brings with it at least some hope that this tide might be stemmed. For that to happen, however, we will need much more of the sort of witness that Casanova delivers.