Paradigm Shifts and the End of Catholic Moral Doctrine

The Church’s mission is not a matter of abstractly proclaiming and deductively applying principles that are set out in an immutable and rigid manner, but of fostering a living encounter with the person of the risen Lord Jesus, by engaging with the lived experience of faith of the People of God in its personal and social relevance, in relation to the diverse situations of life and the many cultural contexts. Only the fruitful tension between what has been established in the Church’s doctrine and Her pastoral practice and the practices of life in which what has been established is verified, in the exercise of personal and communal life in the light of the Gospel, expresses the generative dynamism of Tradition: against the temptation of the sterile and regressive ossification of principles and statements, of norms and rules, regardless of the experience of individuals and communities. As Jesus taught, “the Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).

This quote above is taken directly from the Synod on Synodality Study Group No. 9’s Final Report focused on Theological Criteria and Synodal Methodologies for Shared Discernment of Emerging Doctrinal, Pastoral and Ethical Issues. This quote gives readers just a taste of the jargon employed throughout Study Group No. 9’s Final Report with special emphasis on what is called “a paradigm shift.” Can a Catholic Be a So... Catherine R Pakaluk Check Amazon for Pricing.

The paradigm shift articulated in the above quote namely is this: The “immutable” Church’s propositions regarding Catholic morality deemed “rigid,”…“sterile and regressive ossification of principles…regardless of the experience of individuals and communities” is now replaced by discerning the “lived experience of faith” with attention to the “situations of life” with “particular care…given to those who find themselves living on the existential, social, and cultural peripheries.”

So instead of an authoritarian Church pronouncing moral doctrine, the People of God together must listen to “life experiences” and discern together, “in conversation with the Spirit,” as Part I, I.I headlines: “A Paradigm Shift that is faithful to the journey of the Christian experience.” The point being that “lived experience” is at least equal to if not even more ecclesially and spiritually foundational for Catholic morality than a Church “abstractly proclaiming and “deductively applying” her moral doctrines. This is why Report No. 9 will climax with the “lived experience” of two homosexuals”—according to one who discovered, based on his experience: “that sin, at its root, does not consist in the (same-sex) couple relationship, but in a lack of faith in a God who desires our fulfillment.”

The Synod on Synodality began in October 2021. However, the paradigm shift was already established in 2016 when Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia as the new head of the Pontifical Academy for Life and grand chancellor of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences—posts he held until his retirement at the age of 80 in 2025. Under new statutes put in place by Pope Francis, the Institute departed from its original focus and a majority of its staff and professors faithful to the teachings of the Church were dismissed.

The Institute’s redirection came into sharp focus when, under Archbishop Paglia, its mission was now to be geared toward what Paglia described as a “new pastoral theology” that tended to the “concrete reality of situations.” Dismissed staff were replaced by scholars with dissenting views on homosexuality and contraception, such as Msgr. Gilfredo Marengo and Fr. Maurizio Chiodi, who respectively expressed a willingness to revisit Humanae Vitae, St. Pope Paul VI’s encyclical banning artificial contraception and questioned the Church’s doctrine on homosexuality—in direct opposition to John Paul II’s teaching on moral theology which defended Catholic teaching on marriage and the family.

Natural Law Out—Personal Experience In

In a  May 26th interview with the Italian outlet Settimana News, Paglia revealed, in keeping with Francis’ vision, that Catholic moral teachings would no longer rely on natural law—which he described with derision (similar to Synodal Report No.9) as “static,” “immutable,” “essentialist” and “ahistorical.” He admitted that a “very profound reform was at stake.” Ultimate Guide to Home... Editors of Creative Ho... Check Amazon for Pricing.

Indeed, this author seeks to explain what exactly is at stake for the Church in this absolutely revolutionary so-called “paradigm shift.” The overthrow of natural law as the foundation of morality ultimately amounts to a denial of God’s good creation as revelatory of His divine will.

To understand the crisis, we need to have a proper understanding of natural law. It is very interesting to note that even before the giving of the Ten Commandments, the first order of God’s revelation is actually creation itself. This is taught, for instance, in Dei Verbum, the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: “God, who through the Word creates all things (see John 1:3) and keeps them in existence, gives men an enduring witness to Himself in created realities (see Rom. 1:19-20).”

Note that the document cites the teaching of St. Paul where we may find the earliest Christian affirmation of natural law as the basis for morality. For, while the Jews were directly aided by divinely revealed law, the Gentiles, according to St. Paul, also knew that same law by recourse to nature:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against the irreligious and perverse spirit of men who, in this perversity of theirs, hinder the truth. In fact, whatever can be known about God is clear to them; he himself made it so. Since the creation of the world, realities, God’s eternal power and divinity, have become visible, recognized through the things he has made. (Romans 1:18-20)

And Paul goes on to teach, contrasting the Jews and Gentiles:

Sinners who do not have the law will perish without reference to it; sinners bound by the law will be judged in accordance with it. For it is not those who hear the law who are just in the sight of God; it is those who keep it who will be declared just.

When Gentiles who do not have the law keep it as by instinct, these men though without the law serve as a law for themselves. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts. Their conscience bears witness together with that law, and their thoughts will accuse or defend them on the day when, in accordance with the gospel I preach, God will pass judgment on the secrets of men through Christ Jesus. (Romans 2:12-16)

St. Paul very clearly teaches that all people, even pagans, have God’s law revealed to them by reference to the demands of human nature, that law “written in their hearts.” And how weighty is the keeping of natural law? It even impacts a person’s eternal destiny. Thus no “paradigm shift” can replace natural law as the foundation of morality as natural law has to do with exactly what it means to be human—and thus the meaning of human dignity itself. The Off-Grid Living Bl... Rockwell, Jim K. Check Amazon for Pricing.

Aquinas’ teaching on natural law is found in the Summa Theologica “Treatise on Law” (ST I-II, Q. 90-97).  In the natural law teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas there is a unity of mind, body, and divine wisdom—the latter synonymous with God’s eternal law. The Angelic Doctor’s very definition of natural law emphasizes the unity between eternal law and natural law:

[A]ll things subject to divine providence are ruled and measured by the eternal law…it is evident that all things partake in some way in the eternal law, in so far as, namely, from its being imprinted upon them, they derive their respective inclinations to their proper acts and ends. Now among all others, the rational creature is subject to divine providence, by being provident both for itself and for others. Therefore, it has a share of the eternal reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end; and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law. (Emphasis Added, ST I-II, Q. 91, a. 2,)

God created all things according to His divine wisdom. Everything God has created is His art. Things bear inner truth in relation to God’s eternal law, and the rational creature’s participatory relationship with the eternal law is called natural law.

For St. Thomas, natural law is a moral foundation that directs the human race to its ultimate end. It is anything but the rational mind imposing order and structure upon the world arbitrarily and from the outside, so to speak. Order, including moral order, already exists in the world because it was put there by God. And human happiness is bound up with it.

According to Aquinas, the human being is ruled by human “ends”: natural inclinations that, when followed, perfect human nature. Acting contrary to these ends is to act “against reason,” violating the intelligible unity between the bodily world, man’s reason, and God’s eternal wisdom. For even the human body bears an inner rationality of its own, provided by God’s divine wisdom, that gives it meaning and guides it to its perfection.

The Self-Sufficient Ba... Johanna Melchiore Check Amazon for Pricing. This is important to remember because a common misinterpretation of Aquinas is that “animal nature” must be humanized by coming under the control of reason, which can sound not-dissimilar to the neo-gnostic view. Instead, there is, in St. Thomas, a marvelous understanding and appreciation of the inherent relation, one could even say unity, between man’s rational faculties, the moral order rooted in human corporeal nature, and divine wisdom. All things have meaning and order given by God. Human reason would be incapable of discovering any real meaning if “things” were not already imbued by divine wisdom with an intelligibility. Let us quote the Angelic Doctor again!

The human intellect is measured by things, so that a human concept is not true by reason of itself, but by reason of its being consonant with things, since an opinion is true or false according as things are or are not. But the divine intellect is the measure of things, since each thing has its truth in it in so far as it is like the divine intellect… Consequently, the divine intellect is true in itself, and its exemplar is truth itself. (Emphasis Added, ST I-II, Q. 93, a. 2)

For Aquinas, there is no mere biology! Yes, the Angelic Doctor does place emphasis on the primacy of the intellect, as the faculty peculiar to humanity. But equally important in Aquinas’ natural law ethic is that all things have an inherent order and truth in themselves, toward which the intellect itself is ordered. The truth in things—and the intellect’s ordering to this truth—saves the Thomist system of ethics from dualism.

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