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MORAL DEVELOPMENT AND FAITH:
A FEW SUGGESTIONS FROM BERNARD LONERGAN
Louis Roy, O.P.
The cultural ambiance in which college students live poses
difficult problems of ethical development. In our Western world,
the separation between facts (to be recognized by everybody) and
values (left to individual preferences) has generated what has
been called "emotivism." (1) Emotivism is typical of an
individualistic conscience, for which values are a matter of
personal choice and cannot be rationally discussed. This stance
entails ignorance of relevant information, unexamined principles
of conduct and hidden agendas in the minds of many students,
especially with respect to their goal of quickly becoming
successful and wealthy.
To face these issues, Bernard Lonergan's approach can be
very useful. This distinguished Canadian Jesuit, who died ten
years ago, has elaborated a philosophy of the human subject, and
indeed of the acting person. In this talk, I shall present two
interesting suggestions he makes regarding the challenge of
personal moral development. First, he urges us to discover and
cultivate our own human spirit, namely, the basic moral dynamism
that the Creator has given us. Second, since this human spirit
stands in need of healing, he highlights the kind of religious
experience that fosters moral recovery.
1. The Discovery of our Human Spirit
Most young people feel a need for personal authenticity.
Lonergan recognizes that full development as a human being can
become--and rightly so--one's "most prized achievement." (2) In all
ages and cultures, good educators have spotted their best ally:
the desire to excel, which is so prominent in a healthy youth.
Writing about the "good choices and actions" thanks to which a
person does excel, Lonergan uses a suggestive metaphor, taken
from the field of book-publishing, when he characterizes such
achievement as "the work of the free and responsible subject
producing the first and only edition of himself." (3)
Moreover, Lonergan offers guidelines for authenticity.
Walter E. Conn, a commentator on Lonergan's works, observes that
"authenticity itself is not a criterion . . . but rather an ideal
which stands in need of a criterion." (4) And he explains: "the
criterion of human authenticity, of the responsible person, is
the self-transcendence that is effected through sensitive and
creative understanding, critical judgment, responsible decision,
loyal commitment, and genuine love." (5) Self-transcendence is the
opposite of subjectivistic self-enclosure. It is the movement
whereby someone reaches out to the real world of persons and
things, knows them objectively, and endeavors to respect and
enhance them.
Lonergan lists the cognitional and affective acts that make
for authenticity and situates them along five successive levels.
He characterizes the movement of human progress as going "from
below upwards." (6) First, it starts with experiencing the data;
secondly, it asks questions for understanding; thirdly, these are
followed by the need to check the truth of one's hypotheses;
fourthly, there emerge questions for deliberation regarding one's
values and courses of action; and fifthly, religious questions
concerning ultimate meaning and validity can be raised.
However, being a self that continually develops in the right
direction proves to be extremely difficult. Important as this
upward movement surely is in Lonergan's eyes, he nonetheless
considers it to be hindered by several kinds of bias: the bias
that results from a malfunctioning of the psyche; the individual
bias of egotism; the group bias of social and economic self-interest; and finally the general bias associated with the short-term goals adopted by common sense. (7)
In the light of such threats to its ideal development,
Lonergan concludes that the upward movement to human maturity
encounters a radical "moral impotence." (8) It is impossible to find
in oneself the motivation required in order to implement fully
the five basic precepts: be attentive, be intelligent, be
rational, be reasonable, be in love. Not only are the psyche and
the will inadequate to the task, but the intellect, having
absorbed a lot of false ideas during the process of its
socialization, easily falls prey to a wrong estimation (or
sometimes even denial) of ethical issues, of sin, and of moral
impotence.
2. The Gift of Faith
Given the ambiguities that mark the upward movement of
self-transcendence, a second movement is needed, which can rescue
the first. It is the movement "from above downwards." (9) Unlike
the first, it does not go from the data through acts of
understanding, judgments of fact and judgments of value to moral
decisions and religious commitment. Instead, this second
movement proceeds from a summit, namely, religious love, which
makes it possible to accept the judgments of value and of fact
handed on by tradition, to try to understand the meaning of these
judgments, and eventually to arrive at expressing them in new
words, symbols, artifacts, that is to say, data. Such is the
movement of grace; such is the general way Christian salvation is
granted. If we pay attention to this movement of grace and love,
we shall more easily understand how religious faith can
contribute to moral development.
Faith seems to be very difficult to communicate. Even sons
and daughters of Catholic parents often show little understanding
of the core doctrines professed by the Church. They tend to be
selective: they choose the beliefs they find interesting and
discard the others. Emotional or practical relevance rather than
truth becomes the criterion for one's religious ideas. In an age
of individualism, how can members of the young generation
honestly accept traditional religious doctrines?
The movement from above downwards, which has just been
described, sheds some light on this issue. Strictly speaking
faith cannot be communicated by humans. Only God can communicate
faith and he does so by pouring an unrestricted lovingness into
people's hearts. Lonergan situates this God-given love at the
top level of the human spirit. Faith is the awareness that
accompanies such being-in-love. It is defined as "the knowledge
born of religious love." (10)
Lonergan also distinguishes between belief and faith. He
sees belief as an outer word, as the explicit knowledge handed on
by a religious tradition. He sees faith as an inner word, as the
conscious and yet implicit knowledge derived from unrestricted
loving. Anyone who sincerely loves has received from the Holy
Spirit this inner word or implicit knowledge. Thus the link
between faith and belief is the following: "Among the values that
faith discerns is the value of believing the word of religion, of
accepting the judgments of fact and the judgments of value that
the religion proposes." (11)
So far as the downward movement is concerned, there is a
dynamic that operates as follows. On the fifth and highest level
of the human spirit, God grants love and faith. On the fourth
level, the eye of love discriminates between values and
disvalues, and greets the judgments of value that are offered by
an authentic tradition. On the third level, the heart invites
reason to accept the judgments of fact that the Bible presents as
words of God and that are passed on by a trustworthy Church. On
the second and first level, it challenges the intellect to
appropriate as much as it can the meanings transmitted by
Christianity.
It seems to me that this vision entails at least two
consequences for the education of faith. In the first place, a
distinction between meaning and truth may help to differentiate
two aspects of Christian pedagogy. Meaning is on the level of
understanding. When students ask about the meaning of Christian
texts, narratives, beliefs, practices, rituals, forms of art,
etc., they raise questions for understanding these data. There
must be ample room in Catholic catechesis and theology for this
quest, in which sound information is offered and relevant
questions are posed regarding Christian teachings, in relation to
the students' life experience.
On the other hand, it is incumbent upon religious educators
to make it clear that such apprehension of meaning cannot settle
the question of whether Christian doctrines are true or not.
Students should be guided towards raising this question for
themselves and consider the option of responding affirmatively in
the light of their awareness of the movement from above
downwards. That is to say, if they have an experience of a
transcendent love, brought home to them by Christian mediators
and by the greatest of mediators--Jesus Christ--, then faith as the
knowledge born of religious love will allow them to discern the
value of believing in the judgments of value and of fact proposed
by the Church. They will have to face squarely the dilemma of
assenting to divine revelation. They will make a decision which
is based, not only on the meaningfulness of what they understand,
but, more significantly, on the credibility of God.
Assuredly nothing in this intricate and engaging process can
be automatic or easy. What is at stake is the most important
option in a person's life: the decision to believe or not to
believe in the God of Jesus Christ. And this difficulty brings
us to the second educational aspect to be underlined. Catholic
educators must foster the development of questions and feelings.
According to Lonergan, questions constitute the dynamism of the
upward ascent from experiencing to understanding and to judging.
In mathematics, in the various sciences, in literature, history,
philosophy and theology, the right questions must be hit upon in
connection with the appropriate information. Questions matter
more than answers, norms and rules, because without the
questions, the latter do not make sense. Only by starting with
questions can students develop their mind. And if they possess a
well-trained mind, they will be more likely to greet the
illuminating power of Christian teachings.
However, if their heart is to develop as well, an education
of feelings is required. According to Lonergan, both values and
disvalues are apprehended in feelings. Therefore, one should
foster sound feelings and correct aberrant feelings. (12) Educators
can help students take fuller cognizance of their feelings. As a
consequence, students will be in a better position to deal with
their religious experiences, in which feelings of love are
offered to them. Furthermore, cultivating the feelings that open
them up to values will allow them to engage more fully in the
great challenge of a moral development inspired by faith.
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1. Alasdair MacIntyre,
After Virtue (University of Notre Dame Press, 1984, 2nd
ed.).
2. Method in Theology (University of Toronto Press, 1992), 254.
3. A Second Collection (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975), 83.
4. Conscience: Development and Self-Transcendence (Birmingham, AL: Religious
Education Press, 1981), 5.
5. Conscience, 6. Italics his.
6. A Third Collection (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 180.
7. See Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1978),191-206, 218-242.
8. See Insight, 619-633.
9. See A Third Collection, 181.
10. Method in Theology, 115.
11. Method in Theology, 118. Emphasis added. 12.
See Method in Theology, 30-34.
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