This essay is the last in the series 'towards' a covenantal moral theology. Our aim was unsystematic: simply to take the idea of a covenantal moral theology seriously, and to follow that wherever it led. Hence
A meta-theoretic way in which these essays differ from Fr. Keefe's work is that they have with increasing obviousness emerged, and as a result, diverged. Though they try sincerely to respect logic and the rules of evidence, they are little meditations more than overarching arguments from gigantic Major to imperceptible minor. They are essays "towards," they are reflections. Perhaps at root they are songs: they owe more to Ephrem than Aquinas.
For 'songs', some might want to read, "irrelevant and indecipherable meanderings;" and for 'Ephrem,' "ignorance:"
Perhaps at root they are irrelevant and indecipherable meanderings: they owe more to ignorance than Aquinas.
But in these 'songs' we have tried always to leave at least some room for the sacraments to sing for themselves, prior to any philosophy or supposition, deeming all theory to be permanently unsettled, fundamentally non-definitive, of heuristic value only, and aiming to resort to heuristic devices themselves as sparsely as possible, so that insofar as was possible for us and for our purpose, the sacraments themselves are the very language of our inquiry.
In this we take our cue from Covenantal Theology itself, especially summarized in what Fr. Keefe wrote just below, which is a hard saying, indeed:
The objective truth of human existence is given in the liturgical freedom of the Church's mediation of her faith, and only if we stand there may we understand. This is a hard saying, but it is ancient in the Church, and Catholic theology exists only in the service of its truth.
[ CT II Epilogue, p. 652 ]
Is it just a bit humorous that the same Fr. Keefe who was prone to dissertation-length scholarly endnotes (let alone what happened in the body of the text), could write that? Yet he meant it.
Theology does not seek the truth: possessing the truth in ecclesia by gift, Catholic theology seeks to understand in ecclesia ever more fully the mystery mediated there, a mystery which we cannot comprehend, but from which we may learn forever.
[ ibid. p. 652 ]
Taking that with methodological seriousness has made for some very difficult sledding.
That was too broad. The dangers of admiratio are those more than once displayed by the enthusiast, the amateur: naiveté, ignorance, fecklessness, willfulness, imprecision, irresponsibility, self-contradiction, lack of system, and faithlessness.
Yet the dangers of the path of the quaestio are faithlessness (no method will prevent that), and fundamental, for the quaestio can only be derivative, not itself fundamental.
For when the method of the quaestio is taken to be fundamental, it instantly becomes anti-scientific. A system presumed to be prior to the object of the inquiry makes it methodologically impossible for the reality under study to put the system itself to the question.
Thus, out loud, we accuse ourselves of naiveté, ignorance, fecklessness, willfulness, imprecision, irresponsibility, self-contradiction, lack of system, and faithlessness. But we are not anti-scientific.
It was gratifying to take up the way of admiratio, which virtually guarantees surprises, in which at every moment you must say out loud, "Let Reality matter more than I," in which even you yourself are up for grabs, but the reality under study never is, such that the reality under study may freely correct you, even freely punish you for your own good, and thus freely tell you more and more what 'logical' means.
The path of the quaestio is helpful later on and in small doses, when more can -- provisionally -- be taken as read. But to start this project within the method of the quaestio, when Covenantal Theology makes such a deep and thoroughgoing critique of what has been taken as read in both Augustinianism and Thomism, seemed itself the height of naiveté, ignorance, fecklessness, irresponsibility.
Insofar as possible, we have chosen heuristic devices, fully provisional, over theory, over system, even over 'logic'.
On the other hand, not only have heuristics crept into these essays, as they must, but also, there is no way to tell in advance how ill-formed a heuristic can be, or how badly it can go wrong -- or how un-obvious those deficiencies can seem to their originator.
And however sound or flawed the logic and the heuristics used herein, have these been used logically and judiciously? The deep answer is No, inevitably No; and the trivial answer is No -- consider the source.
Not to mention the fact that these last essays have blithely sailed off, untethered, on their own. Thus they are by definition not "Oopsies" -- something that might have unwittingly contradicted what Fr. Keefe wrote. You can't "contradict" what Fr. Keefe never wrote about. These latest essays could be many things, but they can be called "Oopsies" only in the sense that they tried not to blatantly disregard what Fr. Keefe wrote. That scrapes the bottom of the barrel of the definition of an "Oopsie."
Oopsies or not, because we are beginning to be able not only to formulate but even to answer Actual Moral Questions, it is time to recognize that the project was 'towards', and that being able to formulate and answer moral questions is the operational definition of the end of 'towards'.
So this is the close of a five-year project. But if anything, these last few essays 'towards' don't know their place, even worse than before. They have not become autumnal, more cautious, less outrageous, than the essays we have been writing all along.
We have said that rationality is not prior to Jesus, Who alone is the Lord.
We have said that Law is not prior to Jesus, Who alone is the Most High.
We have noticed that saying such things is impossible for the Greeks, for whom a free responsibility is a contradiction in terms.
Catholic theology must be a theology of gift; for the responsibility of God is free. Nothing, neither Reason nor Law nor anything whatever, requires God to love us, or to be steadfast in His love.
And more recently we have said out loud that the very idea of restorative justice is nonhistorical, thus noncovenantal.
The death of the Lord may be a 'payment' in some sense, but in no way is the death of the Lord a 'payment' that restores a status quo ante. Only a nonhistorical worldview can imagine such a thing. The Way is not an endless cycle, in which a restoration literally means a return to what had been 'before'.
For covenantal moral theologies, in real life, it's never the way it was "before." In real life, there are no take-backs. Covenantal forgiveness is the desire of the Father to continue a kinship history with us, with no further harm to that history.
God does not give take-backs. He did not erase the consequences of the Fall. Instead, the Lord Jesus honored those consequences, to the death. God promised Noah [ Gen 9:1-19] that the world would never again be destroyed by flood; but He did not undo what had already been done.
Our Lord's death on the Cross, an Event inseparable both from the Last Supper and from this Eucharist offered in His Person on this day, affirms to the death our freedom, honors to the death the consequences of our sins, beginning with but scarcely limited to the sin of Adam and Eve, and, in the One Flesh in the One Sacrifice, gives the Spiritus Creator stronger than death, stronger than sin, into the concrete specific history of this day.
Similarly, covenantal moral theologies have found no "safe" God, Who brooks no opposition, Who will make his enemies not-to-be, Who will -- just you wait! -- annihilate evil, and erase its consequences.
And we have no record at all of the Lord Jesus actually extinguishing evil: to be blunt, not even our Lord's death on the Cross, not even His institution of the Eucharist, not even His resurrection, occurred for the purpose of killing Satan, or that would have been accomplished.
Our Lord opposes evil, He warns against evil, He identifies evil, He makes evil depart and go someplace else, He removes the consequences of an evil to (temporarily) restore health and life, He teaches His brothers to pray to be delivered from evil, He overcomes evil, He drives evil out, He puts the consequences of evil on His shoulders, He 'routes around' evil in holy gifts with no prior possibility; but there is no record even of a single time in which He annihilates evil.
Our Lord is not a nice safe protective god who destroys evil, who waves his powerful hand and annihilates evil, makes evil disappear, no-more-to-be. Instead, with His bride, He affirms, to the death, our concrete freedom in history, and hence He honors, to the death, the malign consequences of every single one of our sins.
Thus covenantal moral theologies find that God, while supremely responsible, is a dangerous, a reckless lover. And this has serious implications for how Catholics can consider the future.
It is not given to us to know the end; but the danger may be far greater than former moral theologies could even in principle envision, for in those moral theologies, the One God may be a wrathful God or a just God or even a merciful God, but He is a foundationally safe and regular God, bound by necessary Laws of His own making.
As a matter of method, there is no place in some moral theologies for a God Who loves incautiously; Who refuses to extinguish evil; Whose deeds are genuinely free as well as genuinely responsible; Who personally, in His very body, affirms our potentially catastrophic freedom, thus the malign consequences of our sin, to the death; Who loves beyond absurdity itself, Who gifts beyond sense, prior to all Law, recklessly.
...
But at times Catholics have allowed themselves to think that the crucified Lord will undoubtedly, as a matter of course, prevent the Gates of Hell from prevailing against His bridal Church in some way that spares the Mother of Sorrows from anything approaching the worst that He Himself experienced.
Yes, we went there. How could we not, if we would take Good Friday seriously? If we would take Tenebrae seriously? If we would take the Easter Vigil seriously?
In the next essay we identified covenantal Vengeance, "divine Vengeance, the only Vengeance that can fully satisfy the cry for Vengeance," which is the sole guarantee in Heaven and on Earth that the consequences of evil acts will not be the last word. And we have attested that
For covenantal moral theologies, certain sins cry out for the Vengeance that can only be delivered in the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. For only by the offering of the One Sacrifice can the consequentiality of these evils -- that they were suffered in real life by real people -- never recede into the past, never, ever be discounted, ignored, or forgotten, but rather be honored by our Lord Himself, to the death.
And in the same essay, because covenantal moral theologies regard the sacraments, the works of the crucified and risen Lord with His bride, as so inherently nuptial, so radically historical, and thus as so resolutely physical, not as 'examples' of some time-less ordo or Law but as causing what they signify ex opere operato, we were able to identify why homosexual acts (not "tendencies" or predilections) are intrinsically wrong, and indeed are sins that cry out to Heaven for Vengeance.
Homosexual acts are by definition, independent of circumstances, not heterosexual, thus not nuptial, even by reference. Unlike many other sexual sins, they cannot even in theory be a sad broken mirror of the sacrament of Matrimony; they are rather in themselves an attack upon it.
To say this as clearly as we are able: homosexual acts in themselves, independent of circumstances, annihilate to the bare naked ground, they physically displace, the corporeal sexual acts which are inseparable from the ordo of the sacrament of Matrimony and that are the consummation of that sacrament. Homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered -- they are inherently anti-order, anti-sacrament.
Our next essay was a very short one. In it we asserted that "Man has been gifted with both the clear responsibility and the clear glory of dominion over all the creatures of the earth."
Dominion -- not simply "stewardship," as if Man's responsibilities could be circumscribed within making sure that everything is kept just the same.
Instead, "having dominion also can mean carefully avoiding some creatures of the earth, actively resisting others, and wiping others clean out." As in, God might just possibly be OK with our eliminating the polio virus, or the mosquito.
And we said that
Catholicism is not pantheism. Nor is it nature-worship or any other related heresy. The fact that covenantal moral theologies assert that earth as well as heaven is "full of your glory," that every blade of grass has the capacity for worship, does not mean that men should worship blades of grass, but rather, that man should exercise his dominion.
Mirabile dictu, we had produced a 500-word essay. Shamefaced, we returned to standard, wondering all the while, "Is 11,000 words really enough?"
To be fair, in that 11,000 words, we did treat of the urgency of the evangelical commission from the perspective of covenantal moral theologies.
In the process we made at least a rhetorical defense of our position, that immersion in the death of the Lord is metaphysically prior to sacramental baptism, and that this fact needs to be taken more seriously.
We did so by pointing out that the rate of spontaneous abortion (which may occur without the mother even realizing she is pregnant) is 30 to perhaps 50 percent of all pregnancies.
In our view, this rather decisively puts former moral theologies to the question regarding how that relates to Trent's definition of the fate of unbaptized infants in DS §§ 925-6:
Therefore, if we read DS §§ 925-6 as it is traditionally read: that it is unimaginable that anything except the sacrament of Baptism, and that alone, remits original sin, then it is definitive that God has always consigned, and will always consign, 30 to perhaps 50 percent of all the infants he has ever created to Hell upon their deaths, there to eternally "undergo punishments," if "of different kinds."
And, moreover, we have never been able to do a thing about that, and (absent a host of utterly immoral interventions in sexual congress, conception, carrying an infant in the mother's womb, etc. etc), we will never morally be able to do a thing about it, either.
We also noted that Catholicism has radically altered former commonplaces regarding death, and the fate of the dead:
Christ the power of God has banished so many fearsome things from the world. We know that every single one of the saints who are asleep are alive abundantly, love us not only unflaggingly but also effectively, and are happy in Heaven. So much of the world -- not all, but so much of it -- now takes this for granted, which is a marked departure from much that was the "natural" opinion, before the Cross of Christ.
For instance
For much of the world much of the time, the dead may screech and wail and groan. They are restless and roam about, they haunt. Dead ancestors in one's family must continually be remembered, their needs tended to, they may even need to be fed, lest their existence fade, or be entirely extinguished (and thus we lose our access to them and to their aid in our weal and woe, the only ones of the dead who care even a whit about us): a family fire must constantly be kept burning, food and wine brought to them. The dead are potentially malign. They can become angry with us, cause trouble, inflict disease or death, curse, bring bad magic, torment the living.
Thus to greatly prefer the next world to this life, to regard the next life as far greater than this life, was an innovation in the commonplaces of much of the world.
And this wondrous truth practically demanded the invention of covenantal subsidiarity.
Covenantal subsidiarity ... does not at all mean that some "lesser" system or being "should" or is "allowed" to perform a task, assume a role, which the Greater could do; it refers to
...
And there is no question -- there has never been any question -- that Mary, a created being, is 'lesser' than her Lord. Jesus is the Head of the New Eve, who is His Glory.
Thus, since He is in a relation of covenantal subsidiarity with her, then not as a diminishment of His Headship of her but exactly as her true Head fully exercising His Headship, He is radically unable to be His Glory, who is His mother and bride, or to fulfill the role of His Glory.
It is not a question of whether He 'ought not' be her or fulfill her role: He cannot do so. Just as much as the Son is radically unable to be His Father, the Son is radically unable to be His mother, the Bridegroom is radically unable to be His bride.
Indeed, Mary can rightly be called co-Redemptrix, since salvation cannot happen without her. This gives the root meaning of extra ecclesiam, nulla salus.
So this life, though "lesser," has been gifted full dignity and meaning in the Eucharist, particularly in the sacrament of Matrimony which Images it:
...by the exercise in it of an authority which not only does not suppress equal authority in others, but actively invokes and requires it.
["Liturgy and Law: The Marital Order of Free Community," Church and State in America: Catholic Questions; Msgr. George A. Kelly, Ed.; ser. Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Proceedings, Fourteenth Convention, Denver, Co., 1991 (Jamaica, NY: St. John's University Press, 1992): p. 1.]
...
For covenantal moral theologies, God created this life and everything in it not only ex nihilo, out of nothing and out of no prior possibility, but also covenantally.
Hence God and His Creation are unified covenantally, within a covenantal subsidiarity in which God is radically unable to be His Creation or to fulfill the role of His Creation. Moreover, over us, God exercises "an authority which not only does not suppress equal authority in others, but actively invokes and requires it."
In the essay that follows, "...we do eventually stumble through to identify with clarity, from a historical, sacramental, eucharistic, covenantal perspective, the source and font, the nourishment and trellis, of morality...."
Morality is a praxis incapable of comprehension in any theory whatever. So, what is the infallible source and font, the nourishment and trellis, of this morality which just is a praxis?
Covenantal moral theologies find themselves methodologically unable to answer that question as formulated. Instead, they ask, Who is the infallible source and font, the nourishment and trellis, of this morality -- the sole real morality there is -- which just is a praxis? Then covenantal moral theologies are able to answer, thoroughly and completely: He is the Lord Jesus.
Thus, when our Lord Jesus was a darling little baby, His infant cries, His smiles, His suckling upon His Mother's breast, satisfied no 'principle', fulfilled no Law 'above', 'behind' themselves. But that does not imply that His infant blubberings were not moral. More than this: even then, even as a darling little baby, His "praxis," as it were, even His cooing, even His naps -- even His spit-ups and poops -- was morality per se, was blessedness per se, was holiness per se.
And similarly, the sacraments are the continuing work of the risen Lord with His bride, One Flesh in the One Sacrifice; thus they are not infallibly 'moral' -- they are morality. The sacraments are not instances, examples, 'accidents', of time-less ordering Law or 'principles' at all; they are a radically historical praxis that cause what they signify ex opere operato. They are morality; they are holiness.
Thus every breath of the Lord Jesus on this earth, and continuing with His sacraments with His bride, just is morality, just is holiness "in itself and not in anything else." They are a radically historical praxis with zero foundation in any dehistoricized cosmology, in any time-less necessary Law, in any kosmos whatever. They are gifts, the work, of a Lord Who with His bride is freely responsible. They are the continuing sure font and source, the nourishment and trellis, of all morality, of all holiness; for the gifts of the Bridegroom with His bride, One Flesh in the One Sacrifice, are meant not only to be shared but also to be multiplied.
...
...the lowliest Catholic is so important in the scheme of things that even the greatest saint cannot replace or subsume even one of that man's breaths, even a syllable of one of his Hail Marys.
We affixed the thesis of our next essay to the doorpost so vigorously that we made it the essay's title: The Catholic Church Has No Expertise, In Anything.
In it we argue that there is an underlying reason the Catholic Church knows "how to go to heaven," but not "how the heavens go."
What Mother Church knows is substantial reality, which she knows solely in her Eucharistic worship of her Lord. By contrast, Expertise is only (partial, incomplete, sometimes erroneous) knowledge 'about' things.
Mother Church doesn't even know how to change a light bulb; but by sharing her Eucharistic life with her Lord with us, she infallibly can get us to heaven.
Thus Mother Church freely offers to all men, not expertise, but her own substantial reality with her Lord, as "a life, not a theory," as Fr. Keefe wrote above. The Way cannot be imposed; it is free both in the donor and in the recipient.
Mother Church has no expertise of her own -- not even expertise in how best to defend her worship, her sacraments, and her children. Nor does she get to pick and choose what she is 'really' an expert in.
Nor does she require expertise to help us go to heaven. Expertise, as a function of Reason, is covenantally subsidiary to The Way.
Expertise is "lesser" than the substantial reality that Mother Church possesses as gift in her daily worship of her Lord.
But because the relationship of expertise to Mother Church's substantial reality is one of covenantal subsidiarity, then expertise is not subsumable into the "higher" reality: Mother Church is radically unable to be an expert or to fulfill the role of an expert. Expertise is not contemptible, not irrelevant, not dispensable; though "lesser," expertise has ineradicable authority and dignity of its own.
In our final essay but this one, we slunk ourselves down from Olympus and began to answer (semi)practical moral questions, such as the moral relationship between Catholics and The Children Of This World.
In the course of doing so, we noted that Fr. Keefe observed that the idea of a free, covenantal relation between the Authority of the Church and the Power of the State is in fact not entirely unknown to the Church, though for long centuries even the possibility of a covenantal relation between Authority and Power has been entirely disremembered by Church and State alike.
We also asserted that only by taking the Eucharist as theology's Prime Analogate is it possible to speak of a free, a covenantal, relation between Authority and Power. The 'natural' law, the law of the Fallen world, is fundamentally monist on the subject: absent the New Covenant, Authority 'wants' to be Power; Power 'wants' to be Authority.
And the Fallen world is very seriously Fallen. For covenantal moral theologies, even after the Fall, sticks and stones retain an ineradicable moral capacity to worship, which is given in their Good Creation in the grace of Christ, which even the Fall cannot gainsay.
Yet for covenantal moral theologies, unbaptized men "are bound exclusively within a fallen world that is so morally inconsequential as to be only as capable of worship as sticks and stones."
After the Fall, two things at least cannot be found, cannot even be sought: a substantial human solidarity -- more human solidarity than the solidarity of sticks and stones -- and a moral ordo grounded in that substantial human solidarity.
Those are gone. They ended with the Fall. In this fallen world, substantial human unity, and a substantial moral ordo, can neither be found, nor even sought, but can only be possessed as sheer gift in ecclesia, as given exclusively in the Eucharistic Event.
There is no 'we' who are 'naturally' one body. Far rather, we find our consubstantiality with each other only and precisely in the death of the Lord, in the Eucharistic One Sacrifice: because we eat the One Bread.
Thus there is nothing for it but to say it out loud: The Children Of This World are no more capable of sin than is a stick or a stone.
They are fallen, full stop.
For covenantal moral theologies, the Catholic Church can accuse no one of sin who is not already her son, already her kin. She cannot bind those to whom she can offer neither the sacrament of Penance nor the Bread of Life, the Medicine of Immortality.
This is why laws made in the social order do not and cannot bind The Children Of This World morally, or at least, such laws bind them morally no more than they morally bind sticks and stones; viz., they bind The Children Of This World only as coercive, solely as (changeable) political instruments.
For sin is not disobeying a Rule In The Sky; it is a refusal, small or great, of a man's kinship history with our Lord and our Lady and all their kin.
No kinship history, no sin.
And we reiterated that both all authority and all knowledge in the Church is entirely liturgical, sacramental. As a result, we found that Baptism and Matrimony give the fundamental moral Authority in the social order.
This means that a vast number of episcopal statements and demands regarding the social order have sizably less moral Authority than claimed, since compared to both Baptism and especially Matrimony, Holy Orders confers only a limited liturgical Authority in the social order.
The remainder of the essay broadly outlines the ways in which Mother Church and her sons can morally interfere in the affairs of The Children Of This World, with whom she has no liturgical, sacramental relation.
We cannot resist ending the entire project with a cautionary parable from that penultimate essay. In what ways has this series of essays 'helped'? The possible answers make us sore afraid.
A Samaritan came upon a man along the way. The man had been robbed and beaten half to death. The Samaritan approached the man, saying, "Friend, how can I help?", and turned the man over, thus puncturing his lung and breaking his neck.
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