I have just finished reading the dialogue between Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, when he was still head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Professor Jürgen Habermas, a neo-Marxist professor of Philosophy and Sociology. The book is called The Dialectics of Secularisation. It is interesting that Professor Habermas argues that the State has much to learn from the Church and its moral reasoning and any secular State that seeks to remove the Church’s influence completely from daily decision taking in politics make a cardinal mistake. Habermas makes reference to the State’s system of Kantian morality developed during the period of the enlightenment.
Cardinal Ratzinger refers to the rich deposit of morality that lies within the Church’s vast and long tradition. He acknowledges that religion if left to its own devices may arrive at the point of committing excesses. Mentioning the excesses of Al Qaeda to make his point, with a rejoinder that this is hardly representative of mainstream Islam, he also says however that the State left to its own devices without the support of the Church’s input can also produce its own excesses. He mentions the use of nuclear weaponry and the reduction of humanity to a commodified product in the form of the new scientific advances in biotechnology where man becomes a simple product.
They both agree that through continual dialogue, both State and Church may call each other to an objective mode of ethics as both may agree on points of convergence which prevents either of them moving away into the realm of excesses, subjectivity and relativity. They can both meet on ethical grounds of natural law if that is a tradition of the State as well, but if the State has no natural law tradition, Kantian ethical theory is perfectly super imposable and continuous with natural law as they both lend their support to human dignity, the type of human rights though that are discovered but not invented! Today, everybody tends to invent new rights that have no basis in natural reason!
The State never translates all morality into law. This has been a basic teaching of the Church itself since the times of St Thomas Aquinas and is still officially held today. The State only legislates on issues of morality that touch on public order and issues of the common good, leaving space for its citizens to form their own conscience on other matters as they see fit. This includes for example the choosing of sexual relationships and whether to bring children into the world outside marriage.
In the current IVF Bill in front of Parliament and up for general discussion, the State has concurred with the Church on important principles of natural law. First, there is to be a complete respect for the human rights of all the human beings involved in the IVF process. Nascent early human life is to be treated with the utmost respect and may not be destroyed or experimented upon, including the process of freezing except for the latter in very rare circumstances affecting their own chances of survival. Second, human life is to brought into the world with the medical assistance of medical third parties including the State, only if these children are to be brought into fruition within a stable relationship such as marriage or other legal partnership with the premise that the parents of the child are known and constitute the actual couple undergoing IVF without the child containing hidden genetic components from third parties. That is, the child would have one dad and one mum and there would be no other third parents involved in the child’s conception.
These two issues are not only based on natural law acceptable to both State and Church but are also moral objects of an absolute order, which means that the whole moral act may not ever compromise the guilt from contravening the moral object in any way! Innocent human beings have a right to life and they necessarily ought to be brought into the world within a stable relationship of love between two parents.
That leaves the issue that is morally important for the Church but cannot be made illegal by the State, the issue of not interrupting the unitive or sexual component of intercourse from the procreative component. It cannot be made illegal, otherwise IVF itself would not be possible as the male gametes have to be assisted by a third party to reach the ova or female gamete. The Church tradition itself derives this concept also from natural law. However, is the quality of the moral object absolute in this case? Could there be contingent circumstances or personal intentions of the couple that mitigate the guilt in the moral act even to the point where guilt may be nullified? Should not one deal with these issues in the privacy of counselling or the confessional? Should not the State allow its citizens the liberty to form their consciences on this issue?
On another note, in the light of recent scientific advances, cannot a new interpretation of the natural law involved be applied to the matter concerned in that the third medical party simply assists the couple to achieve the unitive act without interfering in any way with the flow of unity and procreativity? Would closing off this latter hermeneutic be considered as shutting the door aprioristically to scientific advancement and knowledge especially in the field of embryology?
Fortunately for those who care and might have contingent problems, the Church has long established structures to deal with issues of conscience, doubt and case or applied ethics, it is called confession. Fortunately what goes on in there is between oneself, one’s carefully chosen confessor and God. It is a meeting place between oneself and one’s God, the place where conscience is formed. Neither Church nor State can gain access there! I recommend it to all who care, as a virtuous habit!