Suttee, or sati: a Hindu widow burning herself to death or being burned to death on the funeral pyre of her husband. Suttee has been at least a sporadic practice in India for thousands of years. The earliest of numerous suttee stones memorializing immolated widows has been dated to 510 BC. The last recorded instance was 1987; it was both publicly defended and publicly abhorred.
We find ourselves now able to respond to a question like the following: Is World Government the solution to suttee?
Later in this essay we will return to the question of what to do about suttee, because that will unpack some additional relevant implications for our investigations 'towards' a covenantal moral theology.
In the meantime, we say this: as a matter of method, covenantal moral theologies possess no theory of government. Any theory of government whatever can have only partial, temporary, heuristic value to covenantal moral theologies, if that.
Hence covenantal moral theologies cannot know with any certainty whether World Government is even a possible answer to suttee.
Moreover, the Catholic Church has never had, nor can she ever have, privileged, authoritative expertise regarding how best to deal with suttee.
Hence also the Catholic Church has no privileged, authoritative ability to know whether World Government is even a possible answer to suttee.
In sum, findings from some of our more recent essays have enabled us to arrive at a definite response to our question, though it is a response of a negative kind: it is definitely true that neither covenantal moral theologies nor the Catholic Church can know with certainty whether World Government is even a possible solution to suttee.
Conclusions from recent essays have also enabled us to make progress on questions we had brought up previously. Eight essays and over a year ago, we asked,
[M]ay the kin of Christ morally impose the Ten Commandments on The Children Of This World?
If both the authority and the knowledge of the Church is sacramental, to what moral extent may any power of the kin of the Church among The Children Of This World be exercised, to express, defend, and spread The Way?
When brothers -- her sons -- war, on whose side does their Mother stand?
We now seem to be capable of providing at least the outline of answers to questions like those.
To the question, May the kin of Christ morally impose the Ten Commandments on The Children Of This World? we respond in several parts.
No, the Catholic Church cannot morally impose the Ten Commandments on anyone, especially on The Children Of This World, with whom she has no liturgical, sacramental relation.
The kin of Christ -- members of the Catholic Church -- insofar as they possess influence in a social order that involves both Catholics and non-Catholics alike, do have the moral authority to make or participate in the making of binding laws in that social order. These laws may take the Ten Commandments into account, or even take the Ten Commandments as their foundation.
But such laws do not and cannot bind The Children Of This World morally; they bind The Children Of This World only as coercive, solely as (changeable) political structures.
However, the kin of Christ do possess the moral authority to influence The Children Of This World to observe the Ten Commandments.
To the question, To what moral extent may any power of the kin of the Church among The Children Of This World be exercised, to express, defend, and spread The Way? we also respond in several parts.
First, to spread The Way, temporal power must be exercised as free influence, never coercively, as otherwise, the Church would deny her very self.
Second, we have called "The Way" the Church's sacraments, professions, and gifts, works, and obligations which taken together constitute the kinship history of believers with the Bridegroom and His bride and with all their adopted kin.
Regarding to what moral extent Mother Church and her sons can be defended, and defend themselves, from direct, explicitly coercive attacks by The Children Of This World against The Way, we say this: not just spiritual power, but every power in the world of sticks and stones, may be used to every moral extent to resist and to overcome such attacks.
This is not to say that every available temporal power should be used as aggressively as possible -- or even at all ("Put your sword back into its place" [Mt 26:52]).
Nor is it to say that defense, if sought, is guaranteed to be easy, obvious, or successful: "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." [Mt 10:16]
(We note that our Lord refrained from saying, "I give you the ability to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.")
Third, regarding to what moral extent Mother Church's sons can be defended, and defend themselves, not from direct attacks but rather from baneful influences from The Children Of This World, we will have more to say shortly.
To the question, When brothers -- her sons -- war, on whose side does their Mother stand? we respond: as Authority in the Church is entirely liturgical, sacramental, the moral Authority to adjudicate anything whatever in the social order of sticks and stones, including war, subsists primarily in the sacraments of Baptism, and especially, Matrimony, not in the sacrament of Holy Orders.
Moreover, since Mother Church has no special or privileged expertise regarding anything whatever, she has no expertise in adjudicating any war, even if the war involves her own known and Named children.
Thus whether Mother Church's children engage in war -- or mistakenly do not engage in it -- the dread responsibility to war or not to war remains primarily theirs.
To explicate what is behind these judgments, we take a winding path. Our first step is the articulation of a covenantal relation between Power and Authority.
For covenantal moral theologies, the world is not ruled by a stasis -- an unending antagonism -- between King and Pope, between Power and Authority, between Might and Right, nor by a perpetual oscillation between these.
For there are "two cities," as Augustine said, but as Augustine did not say but covenantal moral theologies do say, God loves both cities, and desires the annihilation of neither, though the City of Man exists in covenantal subsidiarity to the City of God. For not even the greatest saint in heaven can replace a single one of our breaths on this earth.
Nor is there an "either-or" relation between power and authority, between the secular and the ecclesial, in which either power, or authority, ultimately governs the world. Such a conception is entirely monist, thus absolutely false. The world is not ruled by caesaropapism: the foundational obeisance of the Pope to the King; nor by papal caesarism: the foundational obeisance of the King to the Pope.
To be fair, for covenantal moral theologies, absent the New Covenant, the relation between power and authority would be -- could only be -- entirely monist.
Even a stasis is monist at heart, for each of the opposing forces 'wants' to be The One, The Only. Stasis just is a struggle for a monist supremacy; it is simply an agōnia continuing into perpetuity, with no conclusion.
As we have reiterated, even the idea of the free responsibility of the New Covenant is unknown to the schools, let alone to the rest of the world, though the Church has always known her free responsibility in her heart, in her worship of her Lord.
And we will return to this; but for now, we remind ourselves that a freely responsible relation, that is, a covenantal relation, between Power and Authority, has not always been intellectually, theologically, unknown in the Church.
Gelasius I, at the end of the fifth century, found it necessary to explain to a usurping Emperor that the latter's political governance of "the world" took place subject to the moral authority of the Church, which has no political, i.e., coercive, authority whatever. The bishops' authority is liturgical; it cannot be coercive. Because the truth the Church affirms is inherently free, faith in it cannot be imposed. The subordination of ecclesial authority to canonical rationality risks the caricature by which contemporary canonists liken the papal authority to that of the imperial dominus, which error speaks rather to their politicization of the faith than to the reality of the papacy.
Because the authority of the Church's Magisterium is liturgical, it cannot be politicized, cannot be exercised or understood as coercive. Doctrinal authority is radically liturgical, exercised by those whose episcopal orders render them, as teachers, responsible for the Church's worship in truth. Thus their authority presupposes and rests upon the freedom of the faith. Their exercise of their liturgical authority neither limits the freedom of the faithful, nor awaits their assent. Canonical penalties may be imposed by that authority, as in cases of heresy, but such sanctions presuppose the freedom of membership in the Church and of participation in her tradition. They have no bearing on those who choose to stand outside the Catholic Church, other than that of formally recognizing the departure of former Catholics from her tradition, a recognition that is simply defensive; it coerces no one.
[ CT Vol. IV ]
Here of course we must note that Fr. Keefe's statement that excommunication "coerces no one" might have been disputed by, for example, every Catholic who believed that an excommunication, if not lifted, was a one-way ticket to the everlasting fires of Hell.
There were also others who for other reasons entirely might have disputed Fr. Keefe's assertion that excommunication "coerces no one;" for example, Henry IV; for Henry's excommunication by Pope Gregory VII had the effect of releasing every single one of Henry's vassals from their feudal vows of fealty to him -- leaving Henry with no authority over them, and, he might have accurately feared, shortly thereafter with no power over them.
(This is also ironic; for it was precisely the relation of secular power to sacred authority that Henry had disputed with Pope Gregory. And it was the sacredness of the vows of his vassals, over which Henry had no authority, that brought Henry literally to his knees before the Pope.)
We should also remark, first, that Henry's own obeisance proved only temporary; second, that as the feudal system of vassalage began to unravel and therefore as the practical effect papal excommunications had on the powers of monarchs began to wither, the less these monarchs felt "coerced" by such excommunications, and the more they felt "free" to ignore them; and third, that the actions -- and the machinations -- of the medieval papacy itself, scarcely limited to but including the very Gregorian Reform that had sought to inhibit Henry, played its own part in the unraveling of the feudal system under which papal excommunication was powerful politically.
The perennial issue is that the devil himself counsels that particularity itself is an affront to 'freedom'. In short, the Church, simply by being the one-and-only bride and mother of her Lord, One Flesh with Him in the One Sacrifice, preaching the gospel in all its particularity to "all nations," calling them to a concrete and specific conversion to a concrete and specific Lord and a concrete and specific Way, celebrating her quite concrete and specific sacraments, legibly binding and loosing the particular historical acts of believers, and defending herself, her sacraments, and her faithful in history as best she can, will be considered "coercive" by someone, somewhere, sometime.
Covenantal moral theologies must draw wisdom from the distinction Pope Gelasius I made between Power among men and the Catholic Church's own moral Authority.
For Power exists among men, but it possesses zero Authority on its own; on its own, Power is founded entirely on itself. Authority belongs entirely to Christ with His bride -- but it does not belong only to them, since covenantal Authority actively invokes and requires equal authority in those who are "lesser."
Thus, regarding all those who sacramentally are His brothers and her sons, so long as those kin of the Bridegroom and His bride do not repudiate their kinship by denying Him with her, the authority of the New Covenant of the Bridegroom with His bride in the One Sacrifice actively invokes and requires equal authority in their kin -- though it does not at all invoke an identical authority in them, as if 'authority' were abstract, Ideal, and could (per impossibile) ever be freely expressible absent each believer's unique and personal Name as Baptized, as Ordained, as Married.
And, since God and His Creation are unified covenantally, authority is also freely gifted, though remotely and obscurely, not only also to men who are not yet the brothers of the Lord and sons of His mother, but indeed to the whole of Creation.
For how could salt, and sun and moon, bless the Lord, without first being created covenantally, as good, as freely gifted with their own small authority to worship, though they may "groan" that they have such little ability to do so?
And how else could fallen men, unfree by definition, freely seek to be baptized? The grace of Christ within which they were created still inchoately gifts them the freedom -- the moral authority -- to seek the true freedom of Baptism.
(A little while later, we will have something to say about how the Event of Baptism itself brings this inchoate freedom in a man to life, so that he possesses his full free responsibility, by which he can validly seek baptism, and thus then be baptized).
The Lord of history, Whose power is so great that through Him all things were made, Whom even the winds and the sea obey, never imposes His will on men.
For He would deny Himself, disavow Himself, deny covenantal subsidiarity, deny what He came to restore, a free historical covenantal reality, if He denied even one man the free authority to join or not with Him and His bride and with all their adopted kin in rite and belief and deed, radically in history.
This free authority even extends to a subsequent refusal of The Way -- of Himself -- by His known and Named brothers. Canonical sanctions, as we have noted, may also have effects in the world of sticks and stones; however, as Covenantal Theology rightly stresses [CT IV, above], even at the limit Mother Church's canonical sanctions are no more than "formally recognizing the departure of former Catholics from her tradition, a recognition that is simply defensive; it coerces no one."
Therefore, the compatibility between the auctoritas sacrata pontificum, the moral Authority of the Church, and the potestas regalis, the Power of the State, is entirely a free compatibility; it cannot be imposed by the Church.
The Catholic Church's sole substantial existence is nuptial, covenantal, sacramental, in her worship of her Lord as One Flesh with Him in the One Sacrifice; she has her very being within her freely responsible Covenant with her Lord.
To impose the auctoritas sacrata pontificum on the potestas regalis would be to deny the covenantal subsidiarity, the free historical covenantal reality, which was birthed into the entire world by its Good Creation in her Lord's grace, and which His sacrificial death restores even in that now-fallen world. For Mother Church to deny the free responsibility of the potestas regalis would be to deny substantial reality as covenantal à outrance, to deny her very self.
Pope Gelasius I clearly distinguished the character of the auctoritas sacrata pontificum from the potestas regalis -- a distinction that was practically unknown then and was soon forgotten by both Church and State.
Moreover, Covenantal Theology characterizes the Gelasian doctrine as that of a free compatibility -- a fully covenantal compatibility -- between the auctoritas sacrata pontificum and the potestas regalis.
These 'two' are to remain two. Their unity is free; they are not to be subsumed, one into the other, but remain distinct.
However, Gelasius's distinction between the character of the auctoritas sacrata pontificum and that of the potestas regalis rapidly became so disremembered that the opening phrase of Gelasius's letter, "Duo sunt quippe, Imperator," ("Two there are indeed, Emperor,") by which the world is governed, came to be perennially misrepresented, and thus perennially mistranslated, as "Two powers there are indeed, Emperor."
The Gelasian doctrine of the free compatibility of the moral authority of the Church, viz., the auctoritas sacrata pontificum, with the imperial potestas regalis, was in tension with the standing practice of a quasi-sacramental coronation of monarchs, and particularly of the Emperor, whose consequently religious standing could be understood to be his simply as the monarch, independent of any relation to the papacy. The ancient joinder of all authority-legislative, judicial, military and religious-in the monarch had confused Constantine at the Council of Nicaea early in the fourth century, nor had he been discouraged from regarding himself as the "bishop of those outside," by bishops such as Eusebius of Caesarea, nor even by the Pope, Sylvester I. Charlemagne's restoration five centuries later of a measure of the pax romana was not informed by the insight of Gelasius I into the indispensability to a free Christendom of the positive interrelation of the moral auctoritas sacrata pontificum and the political potestas regalis. Here it may be remarked that the tension between ecclesial authority and royal power, the subjects of Gelasius' "There are two by which the world is governed," are not "two powers:" It was not Emperor Anastasius' threat to dominate the Italian peninsula to which Gelasius objected, but his interference with the governance of the Church. Thus, although the Roman law made little or no distinction between authority and power, Gelasius clearly wrote in another context, that of the interrelation of civil government and the Church's sacramental and therefore public worship. Their overlap, their tension, is a constant in Augustine's theology of history, wherein the eschatological triumph of one or the other of the "two cities" is the telos of all human striving. Gelasius was an Augustinian: Anastasius was a caesaropapist by instinct: there was no Greek tradition to the contrary, as Justinian would soon demonstrate.
[ CT Vol. III ]
It is a vast understatement to say that both theologians and popes have often conflated Authority and Power, and that not only theological discourse but also magisterial teaching has very often run contrary to the argument given here.
For the whole world knew that Authority and Power meant the same thing; moreover, the words could in practice be used interchangeably: "the Roman law made little or no distinction between authority and power." [CT Vol. III, above]
To Rule was to have Authority; to have Authority was to Rule. Since all Authority in heaven and on earth [Mt 28:18] has been given to the Lord Jesus, then of course all Kingship, all ruling Power, not only in heaven but also on earth has been given to Him as well; that was obvious.
For how else could He manifest His Authority on earth, except by means of His Kingly Rule over the earth? How could His Authority be exercised even over the kings of the earth if He did not Rule them as "King of kings and Lord of lords?"
This was the theological price paid when a covenantal, hence free, relation between Authority and Power was philosophically, practically, and in every other way inconceivable.
And that created a difficulty, since Jesus manifestly refused any earthly Kingship; and (to Pilate, for example), He made a sharp distinction between His Authority and any possession whatever of secular Power, stating explicitly that His kingdom was not of this world.
For less subtle commentators, the 'solution' to a difficulty that covenantal moral theologies can only regard as self-generated was taken to be simple, even obvious: Christ is indeed the all-Powerful Ruler not only of heaven but also of this world, but during His earthly life He rarely deigned to exercise His Kingly Power -- He could have; but mostly, He chose not to.
Over centuries it became more than typical for popes to have forgotten Gelasius's distinction between the character of Authority and that of Power -- and, dare we say it, also Christ's distinction -- and to conflate Church Authority with Power per se.
It became a commonplace that God's Authority, which is inseparable from His Power, is manifested in heaven as His indivisible and thus unified Reign over all, but in this life God chose to divide His omnipotence into "two powers," the Power of the Church and the Power of the State; with the Church, in any conflict between them, divinely ordained to hold the whip hand.
For instance, Leo XIII's 1885 Immortale Dei (§13), states that "The Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, things."
Two powers -- not Gelasius's "two" -- by which the world is governed.
But in a conflict between the "two powers," who gets to decide? When the State says that the Church is intruding into matters belonging to the State, who gets to decide the right of it? When the Church says that the State is intruding into matters belonging to the Church, who gets to decide the right of that?
Why, God gets to decide, of course, and He will resolve any possible conflict perfectly; we have previously discussed how the schools eventually concluded that any true moral conflicts were impossible.
But who exactly can correctly interpret what God has ordained in the matter? Immortale Dei, as so many papal pronouncements before and after, simply takes for granted -- it does not even feel the need to directly state -- that the Church must be the Final Arbiter, since her Mission is directly from God, whereas the State's mission is from God only indirectly:
But, inasmuch as each of these two powers has authority over the same subjects, and as it might come to pass that one and the same thing -- related differently, but still remaining one and the same thing -- might belong to the jurisdiction and determination of both, therefore God, who foresees all things, and who is the author of these two powers, has marked out the course of each in right correlation to the other. "For the powers that are, are ordained of God."!
But as Covenantal Theology points out, this conflation -- this very longstanding conflation -- of Authority and Power is forgetfulness, confusion, not dogma:
George Weigel has persuasively argued [ George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: Cliff Street Books, 2001), 295-99] that the papal confusion of the auctoritas sacrata pontificum with the potestas regalis ceased only with the reign of John Paul II.
...
By the eleventh century the distinction between the Pope's moral authority, his auctoritas sacerdotum, and the Emperor's political governance of the empire, his potestas regalis, given its classic statement by Pope Gelasius in the last decade of the fifth century, had been forgotten; unknown to the Merovingian kings since the coronation of Clovis in 500 AD, it was similarly unknown to the Carolingians, and to their early medieval successors in interest.
[ CT Vol. III ]
The conflation of Power and Authority is, of course, monist. Since we have previously referred to suttee, the iconic tale of "General Napier vs. suttee" seems as good a place as any to notice the inherent monism of noncovenantal, fallen-as-normative ideas of Power and Authority.
Napier's encounter with suttee is instructive because the issue was presented to him, and he responded to it, not in terms of a moral debate to be resolved universally by the Authority of Right Reason, but simply as a conflict between the "customs" of different nations.
So what should you do when somebody plays the "religion card?" Regarding suttee:
The priests said it was a religious rite which must not be meddled with -- that all nations had customs which should be respected and this was a very sacred one.
[ Sir William Francis Patrick Napier. "History Of General Sir Charles Napier's Administration Of Scinde, And Campaign In The Cutchee Hills". ]
According to his brother William, Charles Napier's reply to the priests was this:
"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs!"
We observe that Napier, in 1840s India, did not play his own "religion card," but rather rephrased the dispute in terms of what actions he would take if the priests persisted in acting according to their "very sacred" custom.
Some theologians might have remarked that Napier was well within his rights to act as he did; some commentators might respond that Napier's 'right' just was his might, nothing more.
Former moral theologies might have had varying opinions about Napier's method. However, they would have asserted that Napier could also have appealed to the Authority of universal ethical norms given by God the Law-giver, by reference to which right reason informs us that the 'custom' of suttee is gravely wrong.
However, according to covenantal moral theologies, it would have been impossible for Napier to refer to universal ethical norms available to autonomous Reason. The Eternal Rulebook In The Sky does not exist.
But covenantal moral theologies do not agree that if time-less universal ethical norms available to 'Reason' do not exist, then Right does not exist, and therefore that "moral discourse" is merely a public relations device which attempts to disguise and to justify the hard simple truth that Might makes Right. Covenantal moral theologies do not agree with that at all.
In short, and as we have repeated over and over in these essays, any appeal by the former moral theologies to universal ethical norms simply available on the hoof to some putative ahistorical, a-sacramental, noncovenantal autonomous 'right reason' cannot withstand the theological fact that the Way is sacramental, covenantal, concrete, particular, historical, thus free, thus not imposed, not Ideal.
The Way is not a particularization of the "possible objects" of a time-less substantial ordo called the 'natural law', but far rather is a concrete specific praxis in history, a kinship history, a life, with the Bridegroom and His bride, and with all their adopted kin.
This kinship history just is the free taking up of the Catholic rites, professions, gifts, works, and obligations. The Way is neither illegible, nor arbitrary, nor irrational. Further, The Way is universal as historical, ecclesial, and freely chosen, not as time-less, impersonal, or imposed.
Some modern commentators, following longstanding tradition, take for granted a monist relation between Power and Authority: either Power or Authority can exist, but not both. These commentators begin by positing, as was traditional, that Authority is founded on universal ethical norms, but then observe that (at least according to them) Authority so conceived is over and again shown to be a chimera. Thus, Authority having vanished into the illusory mists, in the end, only Power is real.
As Covenantal Theology proves, the Eucharistic Event, the continuing work of the risen Lord with His bride, One Flesh in the One Sacrifice offered daily in His very Person on the Church's altars, is alone able to serve as the free a priori of theology. All explorations of Necessary Reasons, from whatever angle, are by their first premises unable to regard, let alone account for, the free responsibility of the New Covenant, its existence as gift ex nihilo.
Thus for covenantal moral theologies, debate about the existence or not of universal ethical norms, and whether their existence can be proved (for certain values of 'proved'), might have philosophical interest, but it can be of no theological interest.
What remains interesting is the vulnerability of former moral theologies to the essential monism of "traditional" discourse, from all sides, in re Napier vs suttee.
For the world knows that Power and Authority are already identical, or that eventually they will be, since, whether we like it or not, at root a Necessary Unity binds all.
And that Unity brooks no rivals. The Divine omnipotence is inseparable from the Divine authority; and even in this life, Power 'wants' to be identical to Authority; Authority 'wants' to be identical to Power; a separate 'place' for each -- indeed, ultimately a separate 'place' for any multiplicity or division whatever -- is an illusion.
The Thomist attempt to ground the analogy [of being] in the monadic Deus Unus does not and cannot succeed, for the Deus Unus cannot be the Creator ex nihilo, as the pagan wisdom knew; the unity of divinity so understood is absolutely unqualified and is therefore absolutely unrelated to whatever is multiple until that multiplicity is recognized as nonbeing, as illusion.
CT I p. 143
Therefore some commentators ask, if we posit that moral Authority is grounded in universal ethical norms, where is the evidence that this famous incident of Napier vs. the 'custom' of suttee teaches anything at all about universal ethical norms, let alone about the moral Authority of those norms in the world of men? Just for starters, they say, Napier himself never mentioned such.
And absent Napier's men and guns, they continue, wouldn't "universal ethical norms" immediately have vanished? Wouldn't the Hindus have returned to their banned 'custom', detecting nothing at all 'unreasonable' about it, but rather showing by their actions that, just as they said, this 'custom' is important, indeed, sacred to them?
Thus, doesn't the incident in fact teach that might makes right? -- that "disputes about 'custom' will be won by the tribe with the most ability and will to use force." [ Eric Raymond, "Napier's Lesson." Accessed (2024). ]
We note that the Hindu priests at least ignored, if they did not implicitly repudiate, any claim that some abstract universal moral ethic bound them. But equally, they did not agree with modern commentators, that therefore Right did not exist.
As many historically-oriented peoples have believed through the ages, the priests believed that their gods, and their religion, were for their own place. Right existed -- but in terms of their own place, their own history. They did not ask that their custom be respected universally, but only within their particular nation: You God your way, I'll God mine.
But what was Napier to do? He was a scion of Christian Britain, in which suttee was abhorrent -- the real reason the British East India company had persistently discouraged suttee, even though the company's general rule had always been that such interference in the "customs" of the natives was bad for business.
Put differently, if a universal normative ethic apart from Might can be found, yet it cannot be found in 'Reason', but rather in religion -- then which religion would that be?
Covenantal Theology has taught us that a question like that implies the existence of a dehistoricized, a-sacramental 'Archimidean point', a 'place' outside the ravages of history by which one can leverage the "answer."
But Jesus's question to us is not of that character; it places us at the nexus of historical decision, of a truly free, truly personal responsibility: "Who do you say that I am?"
On the other hand, if a Hindu widow places herself on the funeral pyre, then according to covenantal moral theologies, since the Catholic Church cannot offer her the remedy of the sacrament of Penance, the Catholic Church cannot accuse her of sin.
By what liturgical, thus moral, authority, then, may Catholics do anything whatever regarding a Hindu widow -- a grieving widow who is about as extra ecclesia as can be imagined -- who wishes to commit suttee, beyond offering her conversion?
Now we tell a Fairy Tale, with a genuine traditional Happy Ending and even a Moral. Here it is:
In the face of the Hindu priests' attempted revival of the horror of suttee, Napier found a way -- not the only way, perhaps not even the best way -- using the resources available to him, to defend the common decencies of his then still-Christian place even in a foreign land.
May that be true of us, and all of us!
But no one in the Fairy Tale was Catholic; thus, according to covenantal moral theologies, since no one in that story could be offered the remedy of the sacrament of Penance, the Catholic Church could not characterize any of their behavior as sinful, or not sinful. For she can bind only those whom she can loose.
Of course, if any one of her baptized children planned or initiated suttee, or even desired that in his heart, she would call that sinful, and offer him -- indeed, require of him -- the remedy of the sacrament of Penance.
And of course, she could say to the Hindus, "IF you were my children, I would tell you not to behave like that."
Previously we had found ourselves entirely constrained within what we took to be the limits, from the perspective of covenantal moral theologies, not of what Mother Church can say to her adopted sons regarding good and evil, but of what can be her responses to The Children Of This World on the same subject:
Here we recall that her Lord taught her both by word and deed how she is to treat strangers and even enemies, but not how these same should treat each other. For example, He was notably unresponsive to appeals to adjudicate the relationship between Roman and Jew.
...
For covenantal moral theologies, apart from Man's participation in the Church's sacraments, there flatly is no substantial brotherhood of Man, no universal (fallen) moral ordo, to which she can appeal.
...
In fact, for covenantal moral theologies, a necessitated brotherhood, a substantial, true moral ordo that is imposed on Man -- by 'generation' or 'nature' or in any other way -- contradicts everything about the free responsibility of substantial human being that the Church possesses as Gift and offers to all men of all times and places.
Jesus died for all men of all times and places. Thus, the Catholic Church has Authority at all times and places to preach repentance and conversion to all men and to offer Baptism and hence, The Way to them.
But beyond that? Only recently have we found ourselves able to go on and go further.
Of course, for former moral theologies, there is no difficulty. There is an Eternal Rulebook In The Sky, and God and thus the Catholic Church judges everyone universally and objectively by that Rulebook, lest the whole world descend into Relativism.
General Napier came from a then-powerful nation in which Catholicism had been nearly wiped out, but not all of the common decencies of The Way had disappeared among its people. So yet influential were these "customs" that even the British East India Company had to pay them some mind; and Napier himself probably endorsed those "customs" both personally and professionally.
And since there is a universal moral ethic universally available to autonomous reason, then General Napier would not be responsible for 'imposing' such an ethic on the Hindu priests.
For God the Law-Giver -- not Napier -- has imposed His Law universally on every man at all times and places; He has given all of us eternal rules that bind us whether we like it or not. Whether through malice or ignorance, the Hindu priests were blind to God's Law regarding the evil of suttee. But Napier was acting as God's servant in seeing to it that God's eternal Law was adhered to despite their resistance.
This makes everything simple, and our Fairy Tale come true.
By contrast, covenantal moral theologies make everything hard. Covenantal moral theologies admit to an essential indigence far deeper and broader than the moral theologies of the past, and can find no necessitated universal Eternal Rulebook In The Sky.
It is well to remember that even the most scholastic of schoolmen readily acknowledge that even our strictest adherence to The Eternal Rulebook In The Sky cannot in any way rescue us from the Fall. Covenantal moral theologies agree: the Fall was so deadly that it could only be remedied by the death of the Lord.
Yet former moral theologies nonetheless typically resort to a necessitated universal Eternal Rulebook In The Sky. We have opined that they have inhabited, and been inhibited by, a-sacramental, noncovenantal philosophies which, quite by definition, can find no free responsibility, but rather identify "historical freedom with the irrational, with that which is not subsumed to necessary reasons" [ CT Vol. II, Appendix, p. 655 ].
As a result, such moral theologies 'prove', to themselves at least, that the choice 'must' be between irrationality and necessary reasons, and choose necessary reasons, or rather, Necessary Reason, The Eternal Rulebook In The Sky.
Nor is it passing strange that a moral theology would conclude to this, if it did not take the Event of the Eucharist as its prior. For absent the Eucharist, then either irrationality, or necessary reasons -- as Fr. Keefe sometimes put it, either the jungle, or the cage -- is all that is available to the world.
For covenantal moral theologies, however, the radically historical One Sacrifice daily represented on the Church's altars, by which she is One Flesh with her Lord, changes everything.
The Bridegroom with His bride continue their work, and in history, as sheer gift ex nihilo -- not within or by means of any time-less Necessary Reason, and with no implication whatever of a transaction, a do ut des, something given in order to obligate a response.
In the eucharistic One Flesh in the One Sacrifice, with the Spiritus Creator, in the glory of God the Father, the Bridegroom with His bride offer to all men of all times and places the concrete specific kinship history of sacraments, professions, and gifts, works, and obligations that is the praxis, the life, which we have called The Way.
Thus we repeat: sin is not disobeying a (non-existent) Rule In The Sky; it is a free refusal, small or great, of a man's kinship history with our Lord and our Lady and all their kin.
Indeed, the sin of Adam and Eve was also personal, not impersonal, it was not a disobedience of a Rule In The Sky. It was the same free refusal, a free refusal of their kinship history with our Lord and our Lady by which Adam and Eve possessed their substantial human nature, and hence, their substantial human unity with each other.
Sin can truly, specifically, decisively, be Named in a man, but solely within the prior gift to that particular man of the One Flesh in the One Sacrifice, only once that man has been immersed in the death of the Lord and hence has received a true, a unique, an irreplaceable -- a baptismal -- Name.
We have said that even sticks and stones are alive with the grace of Christ, the gift in which they are created, thus that even sticks and stones have intrinsic moral capability and can be said -- not merely 'poetically' but truly -- to bless the Lord. Heaven and earth are "full of your glory."
However, though the world of sticks and stones even as fallen retains an intrinsic moral capability, that capability, as Paul instructs us, is at least as much a "groaning," a yearning to worship, as the actual power to do so.
Is that a mere 'wounding' of the whole of the good Creation, or is that the death within which even Moses and David languished, prior to the crucified Lord's rescue of them by His descent into Hell?
As Achilles, the central character in Homer's Iliad, learned full well, the world of sticks and stones has no power whatever to put a man under judgment.
In this fallen world, though a man does retain the trahi a Deo that is his creation in Christ, prior to his baptism, every single thing he does, every breath he takes, cannot bless the Lord more than can a stick or a stone, full stop.
This is not to say that sticks and stones do not bless the Lord and thus are insignificant, or that either pain or pleasure are illusory in the world of sticks and stones, or that men in the world of sticks and stones do not judge themselves and other men by some standard or other, or that they are unable to punish other men severely or to honor them lavishly, or that the men they punish or praise will not feel it. Nor would a Catholic ever say that there is no great evil in the world of sticks and stones.
It is to say, as Achilles learned, that everything in the world of sticks and stones, all of it, while not in the least being illusory, retains only an inchoate intrinsic significance or value -- it "groans" in its very depths to bless its Redeemer in Whom it was created.
Only after a man is immersed in the death of the Lord and begins to follow The Way can what that man does -- and also what he has done -- be part of something more than the world of sticks and stones.
This is why some putative 'holiness' did not cause the fame and honors enjoyed by the great hero Achilles, nor did any putative 'sin' cause it all to become as nothing after he died. Everything that Achilles did in the world of sticks and stones was never really going to matter. It was inevitably going to leave him with nothing. For sticks and stones just happen. Homer has Achilles's shade, now in the underworld, say to Odysseus:
I would rather serve as slave to another man
a man with no land and livelihood
than be a king over all the rotted corpses
Only by the death of the Lord does the consequential morality of men, thus their consequential holiness, re-enter the world of sticks and stones.
Indeed, only by the death of the Lord can good and evil themselves be clarified, for such judgments are entirely convenantal, historical, sacramental.
In the world of sticks and stones, does it matter if the thousand nameless lions eat the hundred thousand nameless gazelles, over and over? There is no time-less Watcher who 'cares' about Everything Under The Sun and sorts it as good and evil according to The Eternal Rulebook In the Sky. Was the inconsequence of Achilles in the underworld an evil? Perhaps not to his enemies.
In the world of sticks and stones, sticks and stones just happen. Stone can fall upon stone, as it did when eighteen were killed [Lk 13:4] as the tower of Siloam fell on them. This is why no one's sin caused the man born blind [Jn 9] to be blind, though his blindness was indeed a somber evil upon him -- sticks and stones just happen.
Here we make a brief excursus. We want to account for how a man's inchoate universal trahi a Deo, his ineradicable creation in the grace of Christ despite the Fall, can become his personal free responsibility to choose The Way, with no prior possibility in the fallen world of such moral consequentiality, of such free responsibility.
Covenantal Theology, especially at Vol. II, Ch. 5, pp. 422, emphasizes that, very much contrary to the Aristotelianism of St. Thomas on the point, the concrete specificities of the Church's offering of the Eucharist can only theologically be accounted for covenantally, thus as radically historical, as Event, as a sacramentally-ordered succession of acts with concrete specific things in concrete specific history: Offertory, Consecration, Communion.
We emphasize here that, though bread and wine have their creation in the grace of Christ and thus have some inchoate capacity to worship, there exists no prior possibility for bread and wine to become the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus, but they do become objectively, really, exactly that as these are brought into the history of His Church's worship in Offertory, Consecration, Communion.
In a sense, then, even though there existed no prior possibility whatever for it, in retrospect, after that bread and wine had been brought into the history of the Church's worship, simultaneously it is also possible to say that the bread and wine were born to become the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus. They became what they were meant to be all along, with no prior possibility of it.
In the same way, all the sacraments are covenantal, radically historical: not 'moments', but Events.
There exists no prior possibility of free responsibility in a baptismal candidate, who by definition is simply fallen. Yet the ordinary rite of Baptism is no 'moment'. Rather, it is an Event that step-by-step brings the baptismal candidate into the history of the Church's worship.
In the Event of Baptism, step-by-step the candidate begins his substantial, consequential history, which culminates in but is scarcely limited to his immersion in the death of the Lord. By that step-by-step liturgical history he is made freely responsible as now Named and known as our Lord's brother and as His mother and bride's son.
He has been born again into a free responsibility, with no prior possibility of it. Moreover, as it always does, the Event of Baptism has clarified his entire previous fallen existence.
What had been morally inconsequential in his fallen life, can now be Named as holiness, or forgiven as sin, just as immersion in the death of the Lord clarified the holiness, and forgave the sins, of Moses, David, St. John the Baptist, St. Joseph.
Thus the Event of Baptism itself, which brings a man into the history of the Church's worship, clarifies his inchoate trahi a Deo into a full free responsibility by which the former catechumen has, in retrospect, been able validly to seek baptism, and thus then be baptized.
(We observe that the instinct of the early Church: that a catechumen not yet baptized can enjoy eternal life if martyred, is "even more true" if Baptism is an Event that step-by-step brings a fallen man into the history of the Church's worship. In his martyrdom, the catechumen is immersed in the death of the Lord, which consummates his participation in the gradually unfolding Event of his Baptism.)
But there remains another problem. The Children Of This World by definition have not been brought into the history of the Church's worship. They 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.
All moral authority in the Catholic Church is liturgical, sacramental: this is basic Covenantal Theology. Beyond calling The Children Of This World to conversion, how then can Mother Church morally -- which is to say, liturgically, sacramentally -- interfere in the affairs of those to whom she cannot offer her sacraments?
LEMMA
Episcopal authority to teach, to govern, to protect, flows not from any superseding or independent a-sacramental source but solely from the irreplaceable episcopal authority to sanctify: to offer both the Eucharist and the other sacraments proper to Holy Orders.
Matrimony, which Images the New Covenant 'outwards', in and into the world of sticks and stones, is offered by the laity. Matrimony cannot exist apart from the Eucharistic New Covenant which it Images, but nevertheless it is inaccurate for the episcopate to presume a pre-eminent moral Authority to interfere in the social order.
The least of the difficulties is that Mother Church has no expertise in the matter, nor can she ever have any.
The fundamental impediment is that, since the moral grounds for governance in the social order cannot be other than entirely sacramental, such moral grounds thus must subsist primarily not in Holy Orders but in the sacraments of Baptism and particularly in Matrimony.
Can a secular ruler write to St. Thomas Aquinas for advice on what would be the most moral course in a certain secular situation?
Of course.
Can a bishop assert a liturgical, therefore a moral, authority regarding how many years of state welfare should be granted before welfare payments are cut off and gainful employment is required of the recipient?
No.
Can a bishop assert a liturgical, therefore a moral, authority regarding whether a Catholic hospital can cause scandal among the faithful, and desecrate the ordo of the sacraments of Baptism and Matrimony, by offering abortions, sterilizations, and contraceptives?
Of course.
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Sidebar: Clarification
First: Of course, Catholics may not engage in such things. As to whether a Catholic hospital can coerce employees who are not Catholic to observe the Catholic "custom" regarding these things, that is a political question; it cannot be a liturgical one. Mother Church has zero liturgical authority over The Children Of This World; and to The Children Of This World, a Catholic hospital is a business, a "custom," nothing more.
Second: On the other hand, it is a liturgical matter to prohibit Catholic persons and Catholic-owned resources in a Catholic institution from assisting with, participating in, and being used for these things, even if the direct perpetrators are not Catholic.
Third: A 'Catholic' institution whose "customs" regularly desecrate The Way desecrates itself as a Catholic institution. If such a desecrated 'Catholic' institution were a desecrated Catholic church, a rite of reparation would have to be performed, preferably by the bishop, followed by a reconsecration.
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With this lemma in mind, Mother Church and her kin are not morally prevented from (well or poorly) exercising political or legal or financial or psychological or any kind of other influence in the world of men to move The Children Of This World towards the Catholic faith's own "customs."
Here are the reasons. What the Catholic Church does in the world of sticks and stones can spark conversion to The Way. But in every other eventuality, The Children Of This World can make nothing of the Catholic Church but as she who practices her "customs," whether welcomed, ignorable, disgusting, pathetic, hypocritical, or criminal.
But our Lord lived in that fallen world, and was brought before the tribunals of both Jew and Roman in it.
(As we have seen, even the Old Covenant was unavailing for salvation, and has moral consequentiality not on its own but solely as our Lord brought it into the history of His Church's worship, into the Eucharistic Event of the One Sacrifice offered in His Person, by which His bride and mother is One Flesh with Him).
Mother Church has as much moral right as her Lord Himself to offer The Way and live and preach and discourse and work in the world of sticks and stones.
And, although the Catholic Church does not possess, nor will she ever possess, any moral authority whatever to require The Children Of This World to obey the Ten Commandments among themselves, there is a difference between requiring The Children Of This World to obey the Ten Commandments, and influencing them to do so.
Here we delineate a few instances in which such influence would be morally proper.
First, as we said, Mother Church and her sons definitely possess the moral authority to worship and to live and work in the world of sticks and stones and to defend The Way, herself, and her sons, as best she can against attacks by The Children Of This World.
And for Mother Church, moral defense includes not only defending against direct attacks but also defending her sons from baneful influences -- for instance, temptations, near occasions of sin, bad example, manifested, even encouraged, among The Children Of This World.
This defense can morally be not only in ecclesia, warning her known and Named children to avoid those influences, but also extra ecclesia.
Though her Lord warns His disciples to be on the lookout because He is sending them out as lambs among wolves, yet also He is their Good Shepherd who protects and defends them against the wolves, even to laying down His life for them; hence Mother Church has the moral right to actively protect her known and Named children from baneful influences in the world of sticks and stones.
If there be clear and present danger that particular deeds and influences among The Children Of This World can be near occasions of sin to her sons, then Mother Church, and her sons, possess the sacramental, hence moral, authority not only to warn the faithful against them but also to actively defend against them.
As we have said regarding secular marriage, Mother Church's moral authority in this instance, is, as ever, strictly liturgical, sacramental, and arises indirectly, by "extending the Church's protective charity around a matter directly involving her known and Named children."
Which is to say, for covenantal moral theologies, it is her sons' personal concrete presence at what would be for them a "near occasion of sin" which clarifies the situation enough to invoke some sacramental, hence moral, authority to actively defend against it, even if it belongs to The Children Of This World, whose every action is flatly unable to be personal enough, Named enough, to merit either Penance or the Bread of Life.
In the case of clear and present danger to her sons, then, the Catholic Church, and her sons, can (well or poorly), but morally, interfere in the affairs of The Children Of This World.
But that interference cannot be Mother Church's direct intention, as she has zero sacramental authority to do that.
So first, Mother Church and her sons have the moral authority to interfere in the affairs of The Children Of This World in matters directly involving her known and Named children.
Second, in the world of sticks and stones, our Lord healed the man born blind [Jn 9]. Then He did something infinitely greater, infinitely beyond the world of sticks and stones: He asked the man to believe in Him.
For covenantal moral theologies, the lesson is clear: the City of Man exists in covenantal subsidiarity to the City of God, and thus, God fully loves this blatantly perishable world of sticks and stones, He does not disdain it even one little bit, and He desires healing in it, but He desires most of all that men come to believe in Him and live as the sons of His bride and mother and as His brothers, forever and ever.
Third, in the face of suttee (an example of a harm that cannot directly affect Mother Church's children) are Catholics supposed to merely preach conversion, but never actually do anything? In response, we say three things.
First, Our Lord commanded His disciples to love even enemies.
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Additional
Some recent commentators have fixated on the writings of the political philosopher Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), who asserted a Christian distinction between a "private enemy" (Latin inimicus) and a "public enemy" (Latin hostis), saying that Jesus's command, that His followers love their 'enemies', referred entirely to inimicus, not to hostis.
We are indebted to the pseudonymous writer "writing340" Accessed (2024) for his summary refutation:
The "hostis / inimicus" distinction might exist in the gospel of Carl Schmitt, but not in the Gospels of Jesus Christ, which use the same word in both Greek (echthros) and Latin (inimicus) for enemies of all kinds. So in fact, Jesus does command us to "love" enemies not only within but also outside the city walls. This is very obviously so when he weeps over the future destruction of Jerusalem:
"The days will come upon you when your enemies [echthroi / inimici] will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you." (Luke 19:43-44)
He also calls the Devil himself an "inimicus," though surely the Devil would be a public enemy too if anything or anyone is.
So, are we going to say that Jesus was wrong about this and Carl Schmitt was right?
...
My "argument" is simple and is really just an observation: there is no distinction in the wording or text of the New Testament between your two types of enemies, "inimicus" and "hostis" -- "private enemies" who are "within our city's walls," and the "public" enemy "who surrounds our city and beats with hostile intent against our city's walls." The distinction isn't there in anything Jesus ever says, because the word "hostis" and equivalents never appear in either the Latin Vulgate text or the Greek text it's translating. ALL the enemies to whom Jesus refers are "inimicus." Even in Luke 19, when he's obviously speaking of an enemy (of Jerusalem's) that would later appear *outside* its city walls, not within them, and would beat on them with hostile intent to the point of reducing them to rubble, he applies the same word, "inimici," that he does when commanding Christians to "Love your enemies." If he ever had in mind two categories of enemies, one of whom fell outside that command, then that fact went unrecorded.
So you're inserting into the Gospels, and putting into Jesus' mouth, a further distinction that Carl Schmitt either got from somewhere else or made up himself. You can argue that it's a distinction that "should never be lost sight of" if you like, but not that it's a distinction that comes from Jesus or the Gospels. Jesus himself apparently either ignored it or lost sight of it.
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Second, in the world of sticks and stones our Lord healed those who did not believe -- of ten healed lepers, only one returned.
Third, we are reminded that the very man to whom the Good Samaritan was "neighbor," if that man had had his wits about him, if he had not been left abandoned, robbed, beaten, and half dead, that very man would most probably have felt morally obligated to shun, even to spit on, the Good Samaritan.
(We further recall that, at least from the point of view of covenantal moral theologies, the initial question the lawyer asked Jesus was (at least in form) personal, not impersonal: What must I do to inherit eternal life? Hence covenantal moral theologies read the lawyer's ultimate question as "And who is my neighbor?", not as, "Is there a moral ethic universally available to autonomous reason, in terms of which a Samaritan can be seen to obey it better than a Jew?")
Thus, not only do the kin of our Lord and our Lady possess the moral authority to defend The Way against The Children Of This World, but also, as part of their baptismal commission, the kin of our Lord and our Lady are sacramentally, morally, authorized -- commanded -- to actively seek out The Children Of This World.
First and foremost, they are sheep without a shepherd. They have perishable names, but no Names. They are men who retain only the merest shred of their substantial humanity. They are one, only as sticks and stones are one. More than anything else, they need the healing of repentance and belief. They need Baptism. They need the Living Bread from heaven, the Medicine of Immortality. They need The Way.
But Catholics are also liturgically, hence morally, commanded to try to heal the weary and broken bones of The Children Of This World in this fallen world of sticks and stones, even before they believe, even if they may never believe.
And secular 'healing' may also morally include actively preventing harm in the world of sticks and stones not only on behalf of her own children but also on behalf of The Children Of This World. This may morally include protecting Hindu widows from suttee, for example.
Having said that it is liturgically, thus morally, both permissible and obligatory to exert some effort towards the secular protection and healing of The Children Of This World, hoping for their conversion but not requiring anything at all from them in return, we now fill the remainder of this essay with warnings about -- 'about', not literally 'against' -- actually doing that.
We warn again that 'moral' questions in this area cannot even exist, let alone be addressed, until they are first clarified, even made to vanish, by the theological fact that Mother Church has zero expertise. She does not even know how to change a light bulb. She cannot know how to fix the world.
Thus we hasten to add that neither Mother Church, nor any of her children, enjoy divine protection in the world of sticks and stones, not even in attempts to heal or to prevent harm in that world -- not even in efforts to discern what in fact needs secular healing, or what in the world of sticks and stones helps the one, but does so at the grave expense of others. And so on.
Even genuine expertise is ever limited, and far from infallible; and while Mother Church infallibly knows "how to go to heaven," she, as herself, does not know, and will never know, how to cure cancer, or even how to fix a leaky faucet.
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.
Moreover, The Children Of This World may strenuously disagree that a particular thing needs "healing" or causes "harm." And they may even be right.
Just like anyone else's efforts, Mother Church's efforts to heal or to prevent harm in the world of sticks and stones may make things worse, not better. And her Lord will not rescue her from such an outcome.
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