Another Look at The Splendor of Truth

by William J. Cork

Reading only the newspaper accounts, one might easily come to the conclusion that John Paul II's recent encyclical, Veritatis Splendor ("The Splendor of Truth"), is obsessed with sex (especially masturbation and contraception), and amounts to little more than an iron-fisted attempt to quell dissension in the Catholic Church.

After reading through the encyclical twice, however, the only statement on sex I've been able to find is just one short paragraph that's a quote from Humanae Vitae.

Once more, it would seem, alarmists within the church (and over eager apologists), as well as secular reporters who are either benignly ignorant or decidedly anti-Catholic, have all missed the point.

Sure, the pope comes down hard on contemporary moral theologians who are in favor of moral relativism (the notion that there are no absolute standards of morality). He opposes those who would argue that "the end justifies the means." But is that such a bad thing?

Forget for a moment the whole controversial subject of sexual ethics and concentrate on just this one point. There is, he argues, an absolute standard of right and wrong (remember the Ten Commandments?). There are some acts that will always be wrong, regardless of the good intentions that may underlie them. Even if the outcome we desire is arguably good, there are some paths to that end that we are never free to choose.

Such acts are "intrinsically evil," and include, according to the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, which he cites:

Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat laborers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons . . . .

Rather than this being simply an indictment of Catholic moral theologians, I think that this encyclical can also be seen, like his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, as a post-Cold War reflection on how human beings must live in order to maintain justice. And if you grant what he says about the existence of absolute standards governing human interaction in all times and places, which critique not simply individual behavior, but the actions of societies as well, then this becomes a powerful tool to indict the assumptions of all points of view along the political spectrum.

Taken seriously, with that list from Gaudium et Spes as a starting point, the implications of this encyclical should infuriate both left- and right-wing ideologues. Consider the possibilities.

You cannot argue (as do economic conservatives) that low wages and poor working conditions are but a small price to pay for the greater good of the free market system. Neither can you argue (as did the communists) that it may be necessary, during the present transitional era of socialism, to limit certain freedoms in order to attain the complete equality of the communist utopia.

You cannot excuse the beating of a white truck driver by appealing to the history of racist oppression of African-Americans. But neither can you say that Rodney King's crimes in any way justified the savage beating inflicted by L.A. cops.

All are held to the same standards, and the rightness or wrongness of one's ultimate purpose neither excuses nor justifies individual acts of wrong-doing. It is never right to destroy a village in order to save it. Nothing can justify a Holocaust--or a Hiroshima.

The moment you suggest that truth is relative, or that a lesser evil may be tolerated to obtain a greater good, you open the door to totalitarianism. Quoting from Centesimus Annus, John Paul says, "If there is no transcendent truth, in obedience to which man achieves his full identity, then there is no sure principle for guaranteeing just relations between people."

It was just this insight which drove both the abolitionist movement of the nineteenth century and the civil rights movement of the twentieth. Both justified "civil disobedience" by appealing to a higher law than human statutes--God's law--arguing that there are some things that are always wrong, even though they may be legal, and some things that are always right, even though they may be crimes.

Rather than being a restriction on freedom, John Paul's insistence on Absolute Truth is the very guarantor of freedom. No wonder extremists within the Church and without, on the left and on the right, want us to think that this is simply the ravings of an aging celibate against certain sexual acts.