The Fullness of Christian Action: Beyond Moralism and Antimoralism

Abstract

The Fullness of Christian Action:Beyond Moralism and Antimoralism Livio Melina (bio) There are no problems more insoluble than those that do not exist. Would that be the case with the problem of action, and would not the surest means of resolving it, the only one, be to suppress it? To unburden consciences and to give life back its grace, its buoyancy and cheerfulness, wouldn't it be good to unload human acts of their incomprehensible seriousness and their mysterious reality? The question of our destiny is terrifying, even painful, when we have the naiveté of believing in it, of looking for an answer to it, whatever it may be, Epicurean, Buddhist or Christian. We should not raise it at all.1 These are the provocative words with which one of the greatest of contemporary thinkers, Maurice Blondel, begins his masterpiece L'action, dedicated to the mystery of human action. At the end of the nineteenth century, he sought with this work to unmask the falsity of the project of diluting the problem of morality to the point of rendering it nonexistent. And at the dawn of the twenty-first century, we cannot fail to note the results of such an experiment. Blondel had already anticipated the error of this approach: the wish to conceal a [End Page 123] genuine problem only succeeds in making it worse. His words proved to be prophetic: "The moral problem of action and of human destiny does not exist, it was said, and to solve it, it seemed, is to suppress it. But lo and behold, thinking that we slip out from under it, we raise it in its entirety."2 The Moralism of a New Casuistry Certainly today we are more aware then ever of the gravity of the problem of morality for humankind. The recent past has seen a multiplication of ethical questions beyond all measure, to the degree that they are now of absolute thematic importance for understanding our society. But this took place in an altogether unique way. The attempt was made to resolve such questions by means of a rational technique, and by scrupulously avoiding to consider them in light of any global claim about morality and its ultimate foundation. The case of ethics is emblematic: the programmatic evasion of ultimate questions of meaning has yielded to a proliferation of formal methodological questions and to the unchecked growth of casuistry.3 The attempt to avoid the central question has led to the multiplication of particular problems, which seem to be ever more devoid of any solution. Consequently, we may grasp the fundamental paradox of our time: "our culture, which can be characterized by an eclipse of the moral, is tormented by problems of ethics."4 The torment of which we are speaking is not easily grasped in an explicit form; but it can be perceived and is disseminated in the form of a pessimism that will only get worse and that leads to the progressive demoralization of society. It is this spiritual situation that Taylor names "the unease of modernity."5 The more action lacks a reference to an ultimate meaning, the more a moralism of rules becomes oppressive. A substantial number of moral disputes—which have so proliferatedin the media—have contributed to this confused situation. The artificiality of their arguments and the disconcerting pluralism [End Page 124] of the positions taken foster a deep-seated conviction that the domain of morality is constituted by a series of opinions from among which each individual may choose according to taste and point of view. The result calls to mind the image of the tower of Babel, on which everyone works busily, but without anyone understanding anyone else. Something similar was described in the chaotic panorama presented by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue when he spoke of "a disquieting suggestion."6 To such a state of affairs, Catholic moral thought was no stranger; after the Second Vatican Council and the bitter polemics surrounding the encyclical Humanae Vitae, it focused, in a unilateral and reductive way, on questions of normative morality. Certain authors, in search of a more "open" interpretation of moral norms, introduced argumentative models of proportionalist origin,7 with...