"I want to know for sure." I
just want to do the right thing." These words might have been said by any one
of us at one time or another. You and I prefer to have the facts: we want to be
objective; we want to know the Truths pertinent to our lives.
Many of us were raised with
so-called "truths" in the good old days. Our schools taught us solid
information, as did our churches. There they were, objective certainties laid
out in black and white. We were sure that our school and our
church had it right. This was a secure situation, one that offered
confidence and practical guidance. We could march into all circumstances armed
with clarity, certitudes, solutions, and authority. Or, if we were unsure, we
could ask our teachers, clergy, physicians, lawyers, counselors for THE answer,
and get It!
A few years ago a professor
from Yale Medical School offered a seminar in medical ethics for the physicians
connected with a Connecticut hospital. At some point he mentioned a moral issue
that could be argued in more than one way and with more than one reasonable
solution. One physician remarked, "If a doctor doesn't know the right thing to
do in the situation you've described, he shouldn't be practicing medicine." The
well-known and highly respected professor of medicine responded, "Then, I
shouldn't be practicing medicine, because I'm not sure what's morally right in
this case."
In last Wednesday's NEW YORK
TIMES a full page and about a third of another contained an advertisement
sponsored by 4505 Roman Catholics calling for reform in their Church. Many
issues of morality and doctrine need to be readdressed, the authors claimed.
Not crackpots, the signers included prominent Roman Catholic laypeople,
bishops, priests, deacons, nuns, and theologians in good standing.
What's gone wrong? When I was
growing up, my family physician always knew everything! So did my Episcopal
rector. So did the Roman Catholic Dominican nuns, my elementary school teachers
who were especially "truthful" about morality! A definitive list of mortal sins
was available; just one mortal sin on one's soul earned eternal hell-fire;
itemized venial sins merited a punitive stay in purgatory, until one was ready
to enter heaven.
Perhaps we can gain some
perspective from the past. About the year 1500 A.D. a cathedral canon,
physician, and scientist Dr. Nicolas Copernicus proposed a radical notion for
which he was ridiculed. His writings were placed on the Church's "Index of
Forbidden Books," where they remained until 1757. His views challenged common
sense as well as a literal interpretation of the Bible. Copernicus' proposal,
jolting for his day, was that the earth is NOT the center of the universe;
instead, the planets (including Earth) circle the sun! The Copernican
Revolution shattered an accepted "truth" of his era, a "truth" believed for
hundreds of years by scientists, theologians, and ordinary people. He was
preceded and followed by other investigators who shattered (and continue to
shatter) scientific certainties.
I now want to talk with you
about an historical, ethical "truth," a particularly grave moral matter, a sin
so mortal that to commit it would secure a sure place in hell. Both Aristotle
and Aquinas denounced it, and it was condemned formally by a Church Council in
1179 A.D. This terribly wrongful act was - [please forgive me for bringing up
such a sensitive and tasteless matter from a pulpit] - this terribly wrongful
act was USURY, that is, charging any interest whatsoever on a loan. Its
condemnation survived into the 18th Century. Today, however, many dioceses of
the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches charge interest on loans to their own
congregations: a mortal sin no longer!
Well before Copernicus,
centuries before usury was regarded as a mortal sin, in fact, about a thousand
years before Christ, the Hebrew author of today's First Reading told a story in
which there is reference to a tree of knowledge, also called the tree of
knowledge of good and evil. Many explanations of the Genesis trees have been
offered, but one has struck home most with me. The folklore characters Adam and
Eve are forbidden by their Creator to eat of the tree of knowledge, because
perfect and complete knowledge belongs to God
alone. Human beings cannot know with god-like certitude about good and
evil, or, indeed about much else, either. To yield to the temptation to be
like God (to eat of the forbidden tree) is to be excluded from community
with God.
Instead, you and I are created
such that our knowledge of Truth is an unfolding process throughout human
history. One generation builds upon another's foundations, upon their enduring
knowledge and their errors. Furthermore, there are degrees of tentativeness and
probability about all that we believe we know.
Yet, so much brutality -
intellectual, emotional, and physical brutality - continues to be caused by
human beings who play God, individuals who claim to know so much so perfectly
and completely. Their arrogant blasphemies have caused persecutions of pioneers
later honored. Various know-it-alls have burned suspected heretics as well as
rebelled prematurely; because they're so sure they're correct, the "other side
of the story" is not given a fair hearing: little or no attempt is made to
"agree to differ."
As I teach such topics as world
religions, ethics, and theories of knowledge, I am painfully aware of abundant
human intolerance. Claiming to know God's mind, some Christians (and others)
have excluded and even killed their fellow creatures for believing differently.
Liberal and conservative God- players ignorantly impose as "truth" their own
experiences and understandings of doctrines; of abortion, euthanasia,
sexuality, economics, and of so many other life issues engaging us.
Today's Readings from Scripture
raise profound issues of temptation; the Gospel confronts us with the trap of
envisioning human needs as only material problems ["bread alone"]; we hear also
of enticements to personal privilege and power. We have focused upon the
temptation to know as God knows, the allurement to ignore our creaturely
limitations, one to which we yield more frequently than we might admit. During
the current "Moral Revolution," second only in significance to the Copernican,
you and I need frequent reminders that we don't have all the answers to moral
and other questions: history should have taught us that we're on an awesome,
sometimes clumsy, human journey toward greater knowledge and
understanding illumined by God's Word in Christ; at this time on the human
pilgrimage, we know a little. We are exploring much. We may by
grace believe thoughtfully and carefully. We ought also gracefully agree
to differ - with our hearts and minds open to moth correction and unfolding
wisdom - secure and bonded together in Eucharistic fellowship by Him who
is the Truth.