Proportionalism

What came to be known as proportionalism first developed among Roman Catholic moral theologians from the mid 1960s onwards, largely as a reaction to what had long been traditional Catholic teaching about a small number of acts which were deemed to be intrinsically evil (always morally wrong), regardless of circumstances. Its proponents hold that, when we are endeavoring to ascertain the moral rightness or wrongness of an act, we need to take into account all the positive and negative consequences of that act in whatever is the particular context. Given the following comment by Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, one might have expected that the scholars concerned would have had an easy ride:

The attempt to assess the proportion of the good or bad likely to proceed from a proposed action is really a common-sense judgment we all make rather routinely.

Like others who upheld traditional teaching, however, Ratzinger believed that this common-sense way of proceeding could not be applied across the board. There were/are, he said, exceptions. This was so in spite of the fact that, as a number of commentators began to observe in the 1970s, some of the most well-known Catholic moral theologians were proportionalists, and most of the others seemed not to be far removed from that position.

Long before the advent of the debate about proportionalism, the mutilation involved in surgery had been approved of in official Catholic teaching, provided the particular act of surgery was the best that could be done for the patient. Even when the surgery was justifiable, the mutilation (just as a killing in a case of legitimate self- defence or legitimate defense of a third party) was traditionally referred to as a physical evil (malum physicum). The use of this terminology was not intended to indicate that the act was anything other than morally right. Rather the designation of an element or consequence as a physical evil merely indicated that it was something negative that had to be justified. It is, of course, possible for an act of surgery to be other than the best that could be done for the patient. Clearly, in such a case, causing the physical evil that is mutilation could not be justified, and the act would be morally wrong. Proportionalists went along with this traditional line of thinking. However, because the word ‘physical’ tends to conjure up thoughts of materiality nowadays - and not all of the negative consequences of an act are material - they replaced ‘physical evil’ with other terminology. Thus, some began to speak of nonmoral evils, some of premoral evils and others of ontic evils. These, they said, should be avoided inasmuch as it is possible to do so. Louis Janssens’ definition of ontic evil applies equally to premoral evil and nonmoral evil: Ontic evil, he said, is what we call ‘any lack of a perfection at which we aim, any lack of fulfilment which frustrates our natural urges and makes us suffer.’

The differences between proportionalism and traditional Catholic teaching become clearer when we consider acts which, according to the latter, are always morally wrong, regardless of circumstances. In contrast, proportionalists hold that an act can be described as always morally wrong only if all the morally relevant circumstances are included in the description of the act. Thus, rape, for example, can be described as always morally wrong because all of the morally relevant circumstances are included in the definition of rape: forcing a person to submit to sexual intercourse against that person’s wishes. The same, of course, would be true of sexual activity with people who are incapable of consent.

Early contributions to debate about proportionalism appeared in Europe in the 1960s and early 70s in the form of a series of articles written by a number of Catholic scholars, principal among them perhaps being the Belgian moral theologian Louis Janssens, the German Josef Fuchs and, another German, Bruno Schüller, both of whom were also moral theologians. A number of American moral theologians began to participate in the 1970s . One such was Richard McCormick. Debate eventually ensued between these moral theologians and a number of other Catholic scholars, perhaps the most intense opposition coming from a group led by two philosophers, one American and the other Australian, Germain Grisez and John Finnis. These latter promoted their own alternative ‘Basic Goods Theory’. Debate between the two schools went on for many years, mainly by means of articles published in learned journals. In 1987, however, a book was published which both summarized and analysed the debate from a proportionalist point of view. The author was the British moral theologian Bernard Hoose, who went on to add contributions of his own to the debate that continued in learned journals.

It is sometimes erroneously claimed – not by their opponents in academia - that, according to proportionalists, a person may act against an absolute norm if one has a proportionate reason for doing so. Rather than this, proportionalists argue, entirely logically, that, if an exception to a norm exists, that norm is not absolute. In practise, of course, this has led to a situation in which certain norms which are held to absolute within traditional Catholic teaching are, as proportionalists see things, not absolute. Taking a look at debate about the ban on telling untruths with the intention of deceiving, which is upheld in some quarters, including traditional Catholic moral teaching, should help to clarify things. Many of the most influential figures in the history of Christianity adopted St. Augustine’s line that all intentional deception through false communication is wrong, even when an innocent person’s life is at stake. Eventually, some people in Catholic circles began to teach that, in extreme cases where, for instance, innocent life is at stake, one may use mental reservation or equivocation. Such practices, of course, require quick thinking, and, it could be argued, are unlikely to have the desired effect in most cases. Suppose that a badly wounded friend of yours is hiding in your house. An enemy soldier arrives and asks you if he is there. Accepting that it would be wrong to say ‘no’ and not being able to think of anything else to utter, you say ‘yes’. Hoose points out that, according to traditional Catholic teaching, if the soldier then attacks your friend, you may defend him, using whatever force is necessary. If there are several soldiers, and they all attack your friend, you may even go so far as to kill all of them, if that is necessary. ‘Such an act would be legitimate defense of a third party, and the tradition of Catholic moral theology down through the centuries would uphold the legitimacy of your act. But, of course, you might have been able to avoid all that bloodshed by telling a little untruth.’ Joseph Selling observes that

human experience testifies to a certain prejudice towards truth-telling; we would rather tell the truth all the time, but we sometimes judge that a greater harm is done by doing so than by deceiving another person. This is conflict. It is real, human, demonstrable, and it pervades the whole of life.