Summary of a paper given to the Hull & District Theological Society on Wednesday 17 February 2010 by Dr Ann Marie Mealey (Dept of Theology & Religious Studies, Leeds Trinity University College)
Summary prepared by Ann Eccleston and David Bagchi
Dr Ann Marie Mealey began by explaining that, in today’s secular society, Christian contributions to discussions about ethics are seen as irrational and therefore less valid than, say, the contributions of philosophers. As a Catholic theologian, she believes that the Christian contribution to moral debates is worth listening to because it combines faith with reason. But what makes Christian morality ‘Christian’?
It should be noted that Catholic moral theology has undergone a radical revolution since Vatican II. To illustrate her point, Dr Mealey passed around among the audience her own copy of a Latin manual for priests, published in 1922. Manuals such as this focused on the act of sin and the penance which could be imposed for that act, and had she taught moral theology in a Catholic institution before Vatican II, this would have been the class text book. The approach taken by the manuals was mechanical and based on the Church’s judicial authority, with little reference to Jesus and the resurrection. Nowadays, however, it is acknowledged that the person of Jesus as revealed by the Bible needs to be the focus in moral discipline, and that the litmus test of all Christian action is the extent to which it centres on and reflects God’s self-giving love as shown by Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross.
Despite this revolution within Catholic theology, the debate over what makes Christian morality specifically Christian is still determined by two main approaches, that of the faith-ethic (or, in German, Glaubensethik) school, and that of the autonomy school. Adherents of the faith-ethic school would argue that faith makes all the difference: some hold that it gives Christians norms that are not available to non-Christians, others that it instils in them the imperative to ‘go the extra mile’, which issues in such choices of action as self-sacrifice, priesthood, virginity, and celibacy. Adherents of the autonomy school would put stress upon natural law, and conclude that the same norms are available to non-Christians through the exercise of reason, as are available to Christians through revelation: Christian morality is therefore the same as the morality common to all humans.
Dr Mealey wants to go beyond this old debate, and believes that the key lies in applying the insights of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005). His theory of ‘narrative identity’ holds that individual and communal identities are determined by narratives, which are embodied in ‘texts’ (the range of stories, symbols, and metaphors that we all use to make sense of our place in the world). According to Ricoeur, what set the early Christians apart was not any special teaching – like their Jewish neighbours they followed the Mosaic Law – but rather their apprehension of a new identity, a new sense of self, as the people of Jesus Christ. Everything else followed from that new sense of identity.
The same narrative identity holds true for Christians today. Their identity is not something fixed, but is constantly evolving and developing. Narratives are an archive of the formation of our identity, they are ‘the laboratory of the self’. So what is unique about Christian morality is that it stems from Christian identity. It is not therefore to be deduced from an apparently unchanging moral code delivered once for all (as the old manuals tried to do), but arrived at by a process of constant change and revision in the light of different moral sources, just as our identity as individuals is formed by constant engagement and interaction with others. The moral sources Christians use include the virtues articulated through story and narratives.
(It could be objected that the Ten Commandments do give us exactly the unchanging moral code being challenged here. But it must be remembered that the laws of the Mosaic covenant came after Moses’s and the children of Israel’s direct experience of God: the experience of a new identity, as God’s people, was primary; the terms of the covenant merely sealed and confirmed that experience.)
Christians see their actions as an outpouring of God’s love. They are not told how to, but they want to as an expression of freedom and faith. The relationship is entered into freely and the individual can leave at any time. It is not the ethics of duty, but one of responsibility. Virtuous people aim at the good life; their desire is to do good with and for others in just institutions.
Further reading: Ann Marie Mealey, The Identity of Christian Morality (Ashgate, 2009)
It is marvellous for someone of my generation to see a Catholic woman theologian of this calibre contributing to our understanding of what is happening in the Church’s post Vatican II development.