Msgr. Bernard Tissier de Mallerais: Faith Imperiled by Reason - Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutics

[Stone]

CHAPTER VII - Political and Social Personalism

If, from the Church, we pass to the city, we will see the disintegration which personalism causes, in political society first, and then in social life.

1. Personalism and political society

According to the theory which considers the person as a tissue of relations, as society itself is relation, it follows that the person would be its own end unto itself in society; it would be the end of society; the good of the person-communion would identify itself with the good of the political city.

According to the philosophy of Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, the good of the person does not constitute the common good of the city: this common good is ‘an added good’ which will make the person attain to an added perfection. To this common good the person must ordain himself as to his temporal end, as potency is ordained to act. This classical conception allows it to be justified that the person must sometimes sacrifice his own goods—and even his life—for the common good of the city. In short, the person finds his temporal perfection in ordaining himself to the end of the political community.

The personalist conception deprives political society of a proper finality which transcends the good of its members who are persons. The whole postconciliar magisterium, or what holds its place, would make of common good a collection of the rights of the person, of rights’ of which there is as yet no complete catalogue, and which appears sometimes contradictory,’ as Joseph Ratzinger avows.[178]

The Thomist, later personalist, philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) came to the aid of this theory by distinguishing two things in man. On the one hand, he should be an individual, ordained to the political community as to his end, as the part is to the whole. On the other hand, his is a person who transcends the city and who is not a mere part of its whole.

In reality, this distinction is specious: it is only true that in the supernatural order, where the person is elevated by sanctifying grace above his nature; but it is false in the natural order where the person is only an individual of a rational nature, making one part of the whole of reasonable natures, and consequently ordained to this whole as a part to its whole. This is however very simple; it is simply a matter of applying the principle of totality: the part is for the whole. Certainly this principle may be modified, according to the fact that the city is not a substantial whole but a whole of order between substances, but this modification does not suppress the necessary and natural ordination of the person to the city, in the temporal order, as to its end.

Thus, the definition of the person as a tissue of relations, by abandoning Boethius’ definition, leads to the denial of final causality for political society. One finds in conciliar politics the same lacuna of the final cause that one finds, in individual ethics, with Kant and all Enlightenment philosophy.


2. Personalism applied to marriage and chastity

A last application of personalism will be made by the Council to marriage and chastity.

Let us first consider sexuality and the virtue of chastity. The new ‘catechism of the Catholic church’ patronized by Cardinal Ratzinger makes chastity ‘the successful integration of sexuality into the person,’ that is to say,’ in the relation of person to person by an entire mutual gift [...] of the man and the woman,’[179] without reference to the first and proper end of sexuality, which is procreation, or reference to sin and to concupiscence.

The disappearance of the end implies ignorance of the nature of things. Thus, the nature of carnal desire (appetitus venereus) is passed over in silence, though Saint Thomas said of it that ‘it is especially connatural to us since it is ordained to the conservation of the nature [...] and thus, if it be nourished, it will increased to a higher degree [...] and thus at that higher degree it will have need of being checked’ (castigatus, chastised, from which comes chastity’s name).[180]

The tendency to abstract from the final cause and the nature of things is constant in personalism and in philosophies issued from Kant. Joseph Ratzinger’s intellectual itinerary is marked by this agnosticism.

Here is the truth: God, author and redeemer of human nature, is the legislator of conjugal society. It is he who willed marriage to be fruitful, for the propagation of mankind: ‘Increase and multiply,’ as he commanded the first human couple (Gen. 1, 28). The morality of marriage is dominated by this end: procreation. The traditional code of Canon Law decrees that ‘the primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of children’ and that ‘the secondary end is mutual help and a remedy for concupiscence’ (canon 1013). Contraception and sterilization are immoral because they divert the conjugal act from its end, just as is periodic continence without grave reason, which diverts the conjugal state from its end. Well, personalism will corrupt these objective principles with subjectivism.

[According to the Council, procreation—or the refusal to procreate—] must be determined by objective criteria [very good] drawn from the nature of the person and of his acts, criteria which respect, in a context of true love, the total significance of a reciprocal gift and of a procreation worthy of man; an impossible thing if conjugal chastity is not practiced with a loyal heart.[181]

A first glance, this text withers subjectivism and calls for objectivity. In reality, it is the contrary. Is not the ‘nature of the person’ (barbarism) the intellectuality of human nature, capable of proportioning its acts by good reason? Where is the individuality of the person [which is common in him with the beasts], and what should give foundation to his moral autonomy (I. Kant; Marc Sangnier and le Sillon[182])? Or rather is this the intersubjective relation of the ‘I-Thou’ dialogue (Martin Buber), or the amorous, interpersonal relation, which is ‘the disinterested impulse towards a person as such’ (Max Scheler)? According to this philosophy of values, love ‘possesses in itself its own finality.’[183] The objective order of beings and of ends, according to Pius XII’s expression, is not taken into account.

If nature, said Pius XII, had had exclusively in view, or at least in the first place, a reciprocal gift and possession of the spouses in joy and in love, and if it had regulated this act solely so as to make as happy as possible their personal experience, and not for the end of spurring them on in service of life, the Creator would have adopted another plan in the formation and constitution of the natural act. But, this act is on the contrary entirely subordinated and ordained to the great law of the generation and education of the child, ‘generatio et education prolis,’ that is to say, to the accomplishment of the first end of marriage, origin and source of life.[184]

Well, denying Pius XII and the natural order, the new code of Canon Law places ‘the good of the spouses’ before ‘the procreation and education of children’ (canon 1055). This inversion of the ends of marriage is an open door to free unions and to pacs, to contraception and abortion. Imbued with underlying relational personalism, a professor René Frydman envisages the human embryo ‘as a being of becoming, who takes the status of person when he enters the couple’s plan.’[185] If thus the mother does not feel any relation to the infant which she carries within her, it is no person and may be eliminated.

Has not Joseph Ratzinger on his own part taught—certainly with no view for abortion, but the principle is set out there—that ‘a being [...] which has neither origin nor term of relation would not be a person?’ (See above, p. 58 in the original or p. 39 here)

The pretended civilization of love is a civilization of death. Christ the King, legislator of nature, being rejected, Christianity runs towards physical extinction. There is the ultimate outcome of personalism.



Footnotes
[178] J. Ratzinger, ‘Conference at Subiaco,’ April 1, 2005, DC special edition, 2005, p. 121.
[179] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Mame/Plon, 1992, #2337.
[180] II-II, q. 151, a. 2, ad. 2.
[181] Gaudium et Spes, n. 51, 3; John Paul II, Familiaris consortio, # 32.
[182] See Saint Pius X, letter Our Apostolic Charge, # 25.
[183] Father Marie-Dominique Philippe, At the Heart of Love, Jubilé, 1998, p. 115.
[184] Pius XII, Speech to midwives, October 29, 191, Utz-Groner-Savignat, #
1160. EPS-Mariage, # 646.
[185] R. Frydman, God, Medicine and the Embryo, ed. Odile Jacob, 2003.