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Postscript: A Modest Proposal
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211 Postscript: A Modest Proposal “But I shall show you a still more excellent way.” 1 Cor. 12:31 Any book offers the incomplete melody of its singular author. The careful harmony for this song, for which the author is grateful, is constructed from many sources. In this book, readers can listen to stanzas drawn from official church teaching, theological reflection, and personal experience. The author learned to sing “Catholic” in Latin. The songs changed to English with Vatican II. The new lyrics spoke of human dignity and community, of religious freedom and openness to insights from other religions. They awakened a responsive chorus of aggiornamento and ecumenism. As this theologian finds her voice becoming faint, she still wants to sing a love song. She wants to sing of being loved by an eternal and all-caring God, who became human in Jesus and who continues to call her through the voices of her family and her church. “Let me see your face,” the lover says. “Let me hear your voice” (Song of Songs 2:14). She wants to respond to the lover, to reaffirm her belief that relationship with Christ offers both motivation and content for the moral life and relationship with others. Perhaps this is why she has written the book. Over centuries, philosophers have struggled over how to define and to do what is moral. They have not always agreed about the starting point, method, or the prioritization of values. The moral life is a journey and a process of 212 Postscript: A Modest Proposal dialogue and decisions. At its best, this process listens to all voices. Human beings have a good ear. They can sort the good music from the cacophony in the objective culture. Like the workers in the parable of the weeds (Matt. 13:24-30), they can sort out the good wheat from the weeds. RecentscandalsbothwithintheCatholiccommunityandothergroupshave cast doubt on institutional credibility, perhaps rejecting pronouncements from authority. Sexual predators, dishonest politicians, pompous leaders—all have contributed to the distrust of authority that once characterized the Enlightenment . The actions of some have called into question the teaching authority of the Catholic magisterium. Serious Christians must separate the virulent evil present in religious and other communities from the true good—more weeds and wheat work to do. Another way of thinking about this is that original sin, using the understanding suggested in the text, is present in all of life. Discordant voices of evil lure the sincere person from the straight path. In his popular book Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis’s instructor devil, Wormwood, reminds his pupil devil Screwtape that the best place to grow evil is in the soil of the good. It is too facile an excuse to reject the rich offerings of the Christian tradition because Christians and even Christian leaders are tainted with the blemish of sin. “Let them grow together until harvest” (Matt. 13:30). In the harvest, God will sort. For now, it is the task of the pilgrim person to distinguish the good amid the bad as best as he or she can. It is the pilgrim’s responsibility to “tune” conclusions to the correct pitch, with the pitch pipe of community. The study of human experience across cultures demonstrates common themes or values. Different cultures, because of their place along the continuum of history, and different individuals, because of their unique experiences , may sort and apply these values in different ways. Values may be buried in the detritus of history or the “final frontier” yet in the future. While it seems that all human communities cherish life, loyalty, honesty, and perhaps other human-worthy goods, how these play out differs from culture to culture , person to person. Subsistence cultures, affluent societies, Christians and other religious people endorse giving one’s singular life for the survival of the community. Members of the Mafia embrace family loyalty. Most judicial systems reflect their cultures in expecting truthful answers in court. Values are present, but they resonate in different keys. [3.236.240.48] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:17 GMT) 213 Postscript: A Modest Proposal Each of us carries within a special gift: our unique heritage from family, culture, religion. Each of us has the choice to keep that heritage in total, reject it completely, or sort among the various elements and keep what seems appropriate . The book has presented moral decision making in the major key of Christian heritage, with its clear identity, its growing and changing tradition...