Is Christian Morality Reasonable?

On the Difference Between Secular and

Christian Humanism 1

Martin Rhonheimer

(Published in “Annales Theologici” 15,2, 2001, pp.529-549)

Reasonableness and “unreasonableness” of Christian morality

In his famous work “The Reasonableness of Christianity”, published in 16952,

the British philosopher John Locke holds that in revealed Christian morality “as
delivered in the Scriptures” there is nothing that cannot be grasped by human
reason alone,—unassisted by faith. He however adds that faith in revealed morality
is still, and will always be, psychologically necessary for the large majority of
people since they neither have the leisure nor the ability to apply themselves to the
demanding task of philosophical inquiry.
Such a view sharply contrasts with both secular humanism and what I want to
call Christian humanism. Secular humanism conceives itself as a kind of liberation
from the constraints of Christian faith and clerical paternalism. In all its current
forms, it would never allow one to assert that Christian faith is “psychologically
necessary for the large majority of people” because of their lack of leisure and
intellectual skill. Instead secular humanism, be it atheistic or not, contends that
many of the typical demands of Christian morality, as e.g. taught by the Catholic
Church, are utterly unreasonable, not demonstrable by rational means, and
generally to be rejected as inhuman.
In turn, Christian humanism, as I understand it, implies that Christian morality

1
Talk given at Boston College (Chestnut Hill, Mass.), the 10th April 2000, on invitation of the
Faculty of Theology and sponsored by the Jesuit Institute. A first version of this paper was read
during the Conference Understanding the Faith at Netherhall House, London, 16th April 1997.
For helpful comments, suggestions and encouragement I am indebted to Stephen Reynolds and
Arturo Blanco.
2
The full title reads The Reasonableness of Christianity, as deliver’d in the Scriptures
(London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1695).
is both profoundly reasonable and provokingly unreasonable. Such an affirmation
might cause surprise, among other reasons because, though conceding that some
contents of revealed morality are beyond or above reason, at least a Catholic will
not easily admit any of the requirements of Christian morality to be properly
unreasonable.
But this is what, paradoxically, seems to be the case. What I am going to argue
is that for a Christian life there are specific moral requirements which could
simultaneously be called both reasonable and unreasonable, without however
being properly beyond or above reason.
Or, to put it in another way: the basic moral requirements of Christian life are in
principle fully intelligible and therefore accessible to reasonable argument and
defense, but they simultaneously need in many cases the support of Christian faith
to preserve fully their reasonableness.
Without such support, so I will argue, these basic moral requirements appear to
be unreasonable because they are obviously difficult to fulfill. They appear to
overburden human beings, to be too demanding and unrealistic, and thus even
oppressing. So their inherent reasonableness easily converts into the unreasonable-
ness of an unattainable ideal, which is therefore unacceptable to most people. In
my view, people in fact can fully accept these moral demands as practically
achievable goals, but only on the ground of faith which engenders hope and
becomes practical through charity. It is in that context precisely that these moral
demands fully recover their reasonableness.3
I am not, of course, referring here to some strictly supernatural demands of
Christian life, such as the frequentation of the sacraments, faithfulness and
obedience to the Church’s Magisterium, or even the willingness to suffer martyr-
dom. Such moral requirements are obviously only intelligible on the basis of faith
in Christ, the Church, and the sacraments.
Of course even these strictly supernatural features of Christian morality do not
go undisputed nowadays, but the point is that they are contested mostly because

3
I would probably not go so far as to contend that, without the “announcement of Christ,
Christian morality would be an uncomprehensible puzzle”; see I. CARRASCO DE PAULA , “El
estudio y la enseñanza de la moral fundamental, hoy. Reflexiones en torno al quehacer teológico,”
Scripta Theologica 32: 3 (2000): 911-924; 919. The “unreasonableness” of Christian morality I
will be talking about, rather than complete “unintelligibility” (like a “puzzle”), is the unreason-
ableness of the unattainable ideal which, however, in itself and as a kind of good is intelligible
for everyone, and, in this sense, “reasonable”. Thus, there is a profound continuity between
revealed Christian morality and unassisted practical reason or “natural law”. This will be
explained in more detail below.

2
of a deep crisis at a rather different and deeper level which is precisely the one I’d
wish to refer to: the level of the basic demands of natural law, as understood and
taught by the Church. For instance—things like the indissolubility of marriage, the
practice of responsible parenthood exclusively by means of periodic continence,
the confining of sexual acts exclusively to marriage, the unconditional prohibition
of the direct killing of innocent human beings (mainly abortion). And we must also
include the moral requirements of justice and righteousness in e.g. business activi-
ty, politics or scientific research and medical care, which will often demand heroic
behavior on the part of a Christian.
The problem here is that what in principle looks intrinsically reasonable and
human, such as the ideal of inseparable fidelity in marriage or the unconditional
respect for human life, ends up appearing to unassisted human reason, at least in
many cases, as unattainable in practice and therefore unreasonable and even
inhuman. So—and this is my main point—Christian morality, to a large extent,
throws light on the possibility of living a moral life which fully meets the intrinsic
demands of human nature. This means that we can speak of a true specific
Christian humanism which differs from the purely secular humanism of the non-
believer. Thus, what initially appears unreasonable, regains reasonableness through
faith, hope and charity. That is how faith in fact rescues reason and reason recovers
all its power to make faith both human and effective. Rightly understood, reason
therefore needs revelation for being capable of effectively working as moral reason
and to maintain the “reasonableness of morality”.4 Let me now spell that out in
some more detail. By doing this, I also hope to contribute to the well known debate
— though the subject has now become less topical — about the “specificity” or
“distinctiveness” of Christian morality5.

4
Cf. J. RATZINGER, “Christliche Orientierung in der pluralistischen Demokratie? Über die
Unverzichtbarkeit des Christentums in der modernen Gesellschaft,” H. BÜRKLE , N. LOBKOWICZ,
ed., Das Europäische Erbe und seine christliche Zukunft (Veröffentlichungen der Hanns-Martin-
Schleyer-Stiftung 16) (Köln: Bachem, 1985), 20-35; especially 31 f.. Reprinted in Ratzinger,
Kirche, Ökumene und Politik. Neue Versuche zur Ekklesiologie (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag,
1987), 183-197.
5
I refer to my earlier treatments of the subject: “Über die Existenz einer spezifisch christlichen
Moral des Humanums,” Internationale katholische Zeitschrift ‘Communio’, 23:4 (1994): 360-
372; Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2000) 547-553; originally published in German as Natur als
Grundlage der Moral. Die personale Struktur des Naturgesetzes bei Thomas von Aquin: Eine
Auseinandersetzung mit autonomer und teleologischer Ethik (Innsbruck-Wien: Tyrolia-Verlag,
1987). A Spanish Edition has been published as Ley natural y razón práctica. Una visión tomista

3
The teaching of the encyclical Veritatis splendor

Catholic moral teaching holds that the basic requirements of morality are
fundamentally accessible to human reason. Accordingly, Veritatis splendor teaches
that even though “[o]nly God can answer the question about the good, because he
is the Good” he nevertheless “has already given an answer to this question: he did
so by creating man and ordering him with wisdom and love to his final end,
through the law which is inscribed in his heart (cf. Rom 2:15), the ‘natural law’”
(VS 12). Quoting Thomas Aquinas6, the encyclical then affirms that the natural law
“is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we
understand what must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and
this law to man at creation” (ibid.).
This is not to say that Christian morality contains nothing more than what natural
law demands, even though, in a sense that is also true. The above teaching of
Veritatis splendor however is related to the basic questions of “How do we, as
humans, discern what is basically good and bad, right and wrong, and, accordingly,
what does a life able to be ordered to God through supernatural charity consist in?”
Veritatis splendor replies that the basic capability of a human act “of being
ordered to the good and to the ultimate end, which is God (...) is grasped by reason
in the very being of man, considered in his integral truth, and therefore in his
natural inclinations, his motivations and his finalities, which always have a
spiritual dimension as well. It is precisely these which are the contents of the
natural law....” (VS 79,2).

de la autonoia moral (Ediciones Universidad de Navarra EUNSA, 2000) as well as a translation

into Italian: Legge naturale e ragion pratica. Una visione tomista dell’autonomia morale (Roma:
Armando, 2001). See further: “Moral cristiana y desarollo humano,”: La Misión del Laico en la
Iglesia y en el Mundo. VIII Simposio Internacional de Teología de la Universidad de Navarra, ed.
by A. SARMIENTO, T. RINCÓN , J.M. YANGUAS, A. QUIRÓS (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de
Navarra EUNSA, 1987) 919-938 (this is an earlier, much shorter version of the above mentioned
article in “Communio”). For some other related aspects see also my articles “Autonomia morale,
libertà e verità secondo l'enciclica ‘Veritatis Splendor’,” Veritatis splendor. Genesi, elaborazione,
significato, ed. by G. RUSSO . Seconda edizione aggiornata e ampliata (Roma: Edizioni Deho-
niane, 1995) 193-215; “Morale cristiana e ragionevolezza morale: di che cosa è il compimento
la legge del Vangelo?,” Gesù Cristo, legge vivente e personale della Santa Chiesa, ed. by G.
BORGONOVO (Casale Monferrrato: Piemme, 1996) 147-168.
6
In Duo Praecepta Caritatis et in Decem Legis Praecepta, Prologus, in Opuscula Theologica,
II No. 1129 (Torino: Marietti, 1954).

4
 That is why the encyclical also approves the attempt “to find ever more consis-
tent rational arguments in order to justify the requirements and to provide a
foundation for the norms of the
moral life.” The reason for this optimistic encouragement is
given in the very next sentence: “This kind of investigation is legitimate and neces-
sary, since the moral order, as established by the natural law, is in principle
accessible to human reason” (VS 74). This is so precisely because natural law is a
“prescription of human reason”: it is “human reason itself which commands as to
do good and counsels us not to sin” (VS 44, quoting Leo XIII.). Natural law is
nothing other than “the light of natural reason” which enables us “to distinguish
right from evil” (VS 42).
On the other hand, however, Veritatis splendor clearly perceives the gap opening
up between what reason, in principle, can justify as morally normative, and what
may seem reasonable considering man’s real possibilities. The encyclical insists
that “[o]nly in the mystery of Christ’s Redemption do we discover the ‘concrete’
possibilities of man.” That is why it “would be a serious error to conclude... that
the Church’s teaching is essentially only an ‘ideal’ which must then be adapted,
proportioned, graduated to the so-called concrete possibilities of man...”. The
encyclical further asserts that the Church is talking of “man redeemed by Christ”:
“God’s command is of course proportioned to man’s capabilities; but to the
capabilities of the man to whom the Holy Spirit has been given” (VS 103).
That means that only God’s love “poured out into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5) can assure fulfilling what the natural
law demands. Moreover, it implies that this is the only way that the full reasonable-
ness of natural law can be preserved and the temptation resisted of making one’s
“own weakness the criterion of the truth about the good” (VS 104).

The two levels of moral knowledge and the ought/can-dichotomy

What I have said so far, of course, raises several questions. But I shall now limit
myself to tackle a problem which is one of moral knowledge (or epistemology).
From what has been previously said, you might conclude that the problem of
practicability or “feasibility” is simply a problem of execution and that, in order to
fulfill what the moral law demands, one just needs the help of grace, and that is all.
But this is not the whole story.
First of all, and in a more fundamental way, we have here what amounts to a

5
problem of moral knowledge (as I said—an epistemological problem). Humans are
essentially reasonable beings. They act as free subjects, deliberately, willingly and
thus guided by reason and in a way we call “responsible”. This is also true on the
supernatural level, since grace does not suppress nature, but brings it—elevat-
ed—to its ultimate perfection. So the perfection brought about by faith, hope and
love necessarily must involve a perfecting of moral knowledge as well. Converse-
ly, the absence of these supernatural powers in the human soul will also have a
bearing on the reach and the quality of moral knowledge.
You may now ask whether this is not to destroy the rightful autonomy of the
created natural order. Is this not tantamount to declaring that human reason and
will are incapable of perceiving and realizing the good which properly corresponds
to human nature? You might even ask whether this does not amount to saying that
supernatural grace is a necessary or essential complement to human nature, thus
calling into question its supernatural and gratuitous character (grace is not
“demanded” by nature). Such doubts in fact lead us to the core of this whole
question.
Reason-guided moral perception has two dimensions which are closely con-
nected and are never completely separate from each other. The first dimension is
the capability of grasping human goods as such, and of from there disclosing the
corresponding “ought”. This is properly the work of natural law7. The second
dimension however is a judgement—also based on experience both personal and
social—about the practical possibilities of realizing this good and carrying out the
corresponding “ought”. On this second level, the moral subject is confronted with
experiences which conflict with the original insight into the human good and its
proper intelligibility. So, on this second level, the good and the “ought” presented
by natural law may now appear only as a more-or-less attainable ideal, rather than
as a morally binding norm or, if formulated in a prohibitive way, as a moral abso-
lute.
Consider e.g. the moral norm of indissolubility of marriage. Faithful marital love,
meant to last for ever and not to be subject to the volatility of the human will and
the changing circumstances of life, character etc., is as a basic human good clearly
intelligible to everybody—specially to children. But at the same time, on the level
of the judgement about practicability, it may seem impossible and too hard in all
cases and circumstances. People know very well that a society where all marriages
are stable and faithful would be a much better society, with much happier people

7
For details I refer to my Natural Law and Practical Reason (see Footnote 5 above).

6
than in our present society. But they think that it is a fanciful idea and quite
impossible to establish and uphold as a moral norm. There are of course really
tragic cases where, from a purely human point of view, faithfulness to a spouse,
abstaining from remarrying and from any kind of sexual relationship with another
partner, simply doesn’t seem to make sense anymore. In a situation like this an
additional input of intelligibility, such as e.g. identification with Christ, is
necessary in order to convert fidelity into a meaningful—and attainable—moral
option.
In other words, to resume this point, the second dimension of moral insight—the
judgement about the possibilities of realization or the “feasibility”—will necessar-
ily influence the plausibility of the corresponding “ought”, i.e. it will influence the
first level of moral insight. For in itself, no moral “ought” can be grasped that
reaches beyond the moral “can”. And the “can” itself—i.e. what someone will
admit or accept as being within his reach or power—is deeply affected by any
appearance of unreasonableness in the process of trying to achieve it. Accord-
ingly, persons who wish to act coherently on the grounds of a proper understanding
of their moral obligations, can find themselves faced with a chasm—an apparently
unbridgeable gap—opening up between what they know to be the human good “as
such” and what they judge to be achievable in practice and therefore reasonable.
Theoretically, of course, it is possible to cope with this predicament simply by
declaring oneself incapable of doing all the good one feels obliged to do. Yet, such
an attitude is not likely to lead to a rationally coherent and thus satisfying life-
plan8. A much more plausible way of filling the gap between the “ought” and the
“can” would be, therefore, to simply adjust the “ought” to the “can”, that is, to
rationalize the experience of “not being able to achieve the human good”, formu-

8
I think this can turn out to be a rationally coherent way of life only for those who are willing
to simultaneously accept sources of moral knowledge other than their own rational insight—e.g.
some revealed moral norms received by faith. I refer here, among other cases, to the position
taken by those who wish to follow the Church’s teaching in everything. When they come to
something they find difficult e.g. not to adopt contraception or to refrain from abortion in a “hard
case”, they try their best to obey the Magisterium. They do this because they are willing to accept,
through faith rather than their own reason, the moral norms given to them by the Church. But
notice that, in order to be a rationally consistent position, this presupposes to consider obedience
to the Magisterium as something reasonable because one is convinced—again on the grounds of
faith—that the authentic Magisterium of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, is really the voice
of truth. Notice moreover that in order to live in such a way consistently and faithfully, these
persons additionally should at least try to meet, through personal interior struggle, the moral
demands they accept by faith. Otherwise they would fail to be rationally coherent.

7
lating in consequence a moderated and “revised down” or “diluted” version of this
good and of the corresponding moral norm.
Yet, that does not at all suppress the intrinsic reasonableness of the original
insight into the human good. What it does is to downgrade it to an ideal that, when
converted into a moral norm, will in its turn be perceived to be inhuman, and
therefore to be unreasonable. But—except the case of culturally imposed prejudice,
which is not what we are at present examining—also in the second case it will still
be possible to understand the requirement of the “full” human good. But most
probably one will not accept it as normative or as morally reasonable.

The paradox of the human predicament and the temptation of becoming a

consequentialist

As I have said, there are experiences in human life which tend to overturn and
modify our genuine insight into the human good. They do that by inducing persons
to rationalize the gap between the good and practicability. Let me now ask: which
are these experiences?
You might expect me now to refer to original sin. In the present context,
however, this would not be of much avail. The dogma of original sin only explains
why man and the world, created by God, are found in such deplorable a condition.
It thus throws light on the origin and the punitive character of the present predica-
ment and hardship of mankind which we could never have known without the help
of revelation. The dogma however does not help us to understand the predicament
as such. On the grounds of quite obvious anthropological, psychological, historical,
sociological and other data known to everybody, it is no mystery at all. The condi-
tio humana is a plain fact. Faith simply tells us where it comes from, that “from the
beginning it was not so”, and that of course does bear on our interpretation of man,
of his moral possibilities and the sense of history9.
In the first place, therefore, we have to deal with something the dogma of
original sin throws no light on at all, that is, the predicament as such. It is consti-
tuted by experiences of suffering injustice, disease, division between men,
unfaithfulness, war and violence, being powerless in the face of evil and of

9
I refer to the, from a thomistic viewpoint, still outstanding treatment of this subject by M. J.
SCHEEBEN, Die Mysterien des Christentums (Gesammelte Schriften Band II), ed. by J. HÖFER,
(Freiburg: Herder, 1951), 200-259, especially 234 ff.

8
material and spiritual misery, and also our own weakness. It also contains the
experience of the senselessness of so many situations created by the actions of men
(mine and those of my neighbors ), as well as by circumstances that are beyond our
control. If we interpret this mysterium iniquitatis against the background of a
history of the fall of mankind and of the redemption already at work at the core of
history, we will draw conclusions about the moral “ought” quite different from
those drawn by a non-believer.
In the course of the past centuries we have been given many specifically non
Christian answers to the riddles of human existence and the condition of the world.
There are ideologies which promise inner-worldly salvation, and others which
typically work by reductionism, asserting “that man is nothing other than”, e.g.,
“libido”, or “matter”, or “a result of the conditions of production”, or an “outcome
of selective advantage in the struggle for survival of the fittest”, and so on. There
are different kinds of humanism—the most coherent of which certainly are the
openly atheistic ones,—and there are different ways of answering the question:
“What can we legitimately expect, what are we entitled to hope for?”
Furthermore, there is an even deeper self-contradiction that threatens human
reason. In many cases, which sometimes seem almost unavoidable, doing good and
abstaining from evil may be followed by very disadvantageous consequences. And
conversely, the consequences of a misdeed often seem to be better than the
consequences of refraining from such an action. And yet, for man’s practical
reason this is, so to speak, a “scandal”. For it essentially belongs to the good—so
we all are naturally inclined to think—that, at least in the long run, it should
eventually lead to something good. But from a purely human point of view this is
very often not the case. St. Paul did write to the Romans: “in everything God works
for good with those who love him” (Rom. 8:28), but that, of course, is only helpful
to the believer.
Now, on a purely human level the question arises whether there is any point
whatsoever in moral requirements which only seem to cause problems and
disasters, without offering a prospect of happiness. Isn’t it better and more human
to have, instead, a kind of morality that allows us to seek, in any given situation,
to optimize the outcome of our actions in terms of expected well-being and
happiness? Let us not forget that the prospect of well-being and happiness is an
essential feature of the good. They cannot reasonably be conceived as permanently
separated. Otherwise one would be trying to reconcile the reasonableness of the
good with a frustrated desire for happiness. And that, taking into account human
nature, is impossible.

9
 Moreover, considering humans as free and responsible beings, we would expect
the exercise of responsibility and happiness to be somehow linked. But sometimes
it seems that to be happy you just need to be lucky. It seems to depend more on
chance than on one’s efforts to be responsible in carrying out one’s moral duties.
So, good luck and bad luck seem to play a more decisive part than those achieve-
ments and decisions attributable to human persons and their free choices. Addition-
ally, in quite a few cases, instead of leading to well-being, refraining from doing
injustice will make you suffer injustice. Being moral does not seem to pay very
well, and it certainly seems to pay much better when your moral standard is a con-
sequentialist one.
The tempting attractiveness of consequentialism reveals precisely, and is a sign
of, the predicament of the human condition and of moral reason functioning under
its influence. Consequentialism is a sort of “technique” calling for continuous
rationalization in order to overcome the gap between “ought” and “can” by
adjusting the “ought” to “the best you can do”. It teaches you that to know what is
the right thing to do you just have to look at the possible outcome from this or that
course of action, and then to choose the one which is likely to bring about the most
desirable effects.
This shows again how reasonableness can be affected by simply modifying it
according to concrete expectations regarding consequences and their evaluation,
without however altering reason’s original capacity of grasping the human good.
I wish to emphasize that this alteration is brought about not on the first and
fundamental level of moral understanding, characterized by the original grasp of
human goods as practical aims, but on the second level where the judgements
about practical realizability are made. Thus the reasonableness of the first level is
not affected, but simply put aside or at least downgraded and thus relativized.

Christian humanism as salvation morality

Consequentialism of course is a rational theory and it does express, although in a

distorted way, a form of reasonableness. Consequentialism therefore can be
rationally argued against and shown to be morally defective. Yet, it is not my
present aim to do that.10 With the previous remarks I only wanted to indicate how

10
For a thorough critic of consequentialism I refer to my Die Perspektive der Moral.
Philosophische Grundlagen der Tugendethik (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001). Earlier versions

10
the plausibility of consequentialist moral thinking properly springs from and is
connected with the situation of man insofar as his moral reason is lacking the
support it would have from the faith, and from the prospects and expectations
which the faith generates.
To sum up what I have been saying so far: As long as the insight into the good,
and thus into what is morally normative, is shaped or conditioned by the experi-
ence of one’s own capabilities, as well as by one’s “reasonable expectations” and
related hopes, then the faithful’s and the non-believer’s understanding of the
human good and its normative implications will necessarily differ.
This seems to be a serious problem which almost impedes rational communica-
tion between believers and non-believers. But that is not the case. In reality, what
I have just said contains an opportunity. Notice that the basic requirements of
Christian morality, which in fact are requirements of natural law, are not derived
from revelation or faith. They genuinely spring from human reason. So there is a
common platform for dialogue between the believer and the nonbeliever. And this
platform is the platform of rational argument. At the same time, however, Chris-
tians and non-believers differ in their ability to accept fully what the human good
demands.
Christian revelation essentially contains a message about our real capabilities and
expectations. It provides a specific answer to the mysteries of the world and of
mankind, as well as to the innermost desires of the human heart. The coordinates
of that answer are the revelation of original sin, fall, inherited guilt (not personal,
but of humankind as such), redemption through God’s becoming man in Christ,
and the mediation of redemption through the Church.
Regarding the human good, salvation means liberation from the obvious
incapability of meeting fully and truly all the requirements of being human—such
as, e.g., indissoluble fidelity in marriage or the heroic refraining
from—legally—killing an innocent and defenseless human being in order to
resolve a grave personal problem, or abstaining from unjust business practices
when doing so gives rise to serious personal difficulties and professional disadvan-

of this book have been published in Italian as La prospettiva della morale. Fondamenti dell’etica
filosofica (Roma:Armando, 1994) and in Spanish as La perspeciva de la moral. Fundamentos de
la ética filosófica (Madrid: Rialp, 2000). See also Rhonheimer, Intentional Actions and the
Meaning of Object: A Reply to Richard McCormick, “The Thomist,” 59,2 (1995), 279-311;
reprinted in Veritatis splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology, ed. by J. A. DI NOIA and R.
CESSARIO (Princeton-Huntington-Chicago: Scepter-Our Sunday Visitor-Midwest Theological
Forum, 1999) 241-268.

11
tages.
The real point about the integration of practical reason into the context of
Christian faith is not just that grace comes in to help us fulfill what is required from
a moral point of view. The question is not simply one of execution. The influence
of faith goes much deeper. It reaches to the root of moral understanding by
affecting its second level, that is, the level of judgement about realization and
human possibilities, and thereby fully restores the intelligibility of the human good.
This influence however and the corresponding “rescue of reason” takes place on
a higher level. It is the level of the Christian’s being called to holiness and the
logic of the participation in the Cross of Christ and his Resurrection. This is
absolutely crucial for a correct understanding of Christian morality. The moral
requirements—what the human good and its integral fulfillment demand—are thus
brought into focus from the viewpoint proper to the history of salvation. Christian
morality is essentially salvation-morality11. And it is precisely in this way that the
inherent contradictions and inconsistencies of a purely secular humanism can be
overcome. It leads to a specifically Christian humanism that we can also call a
Humanism of the Cross. It is a human morality that is specifically Christian12. And
it is a true humanism because it is a realistic way to restore to the human good its
characteristic of being a promise of fulfillment and happiness. This of course is
good news. And the Christian message is good news, it is Evangelium.

Christian humanism and the specificity of Christian virtue ethics

From what has been said so far we can draw the conclusion that any purely secular
or non-believing humanism will necessarily miss the truly “human”. It will
necessarily undervalue—from its point of view, “reasonably” undervalue— the
real moral powers of man and fall short of his possibilities to fully strive at

11
This is also the reason why Christian faith can never be reduced to a kind of ethics, because
a genuine Christian ethical discourse is always more than an ethical discourse: it implies truths,
grounded in faith, about God, man, the world, and about the sense of history. - That Christian
morality—“morality that springs form the encounter with Jesus Christ—is essentially a “morality
of salvation”, has recently been emphasized also by C ARRASCO DE PAULA , “El estudio y la
enseñanza de la moral,”, 922 f.
12
So it overcomes the fallacious distinction between “salvation ethos” and “world ethos”; see
for that my Natural Law and Practical Reason, 547 ff. The dissociation between a worldly
“ethical order” and an “order of salvation” was rejected by Veritatis splendor, No. 37.

12
realizing what human reason grasps as its proper good: justice, faithfulness,
benevolence, truthfulness, fortitude, temperance, chastity etc.—that is, the whole
range of the virtues.
We should never forget that the undervaluation of the human person’s moral
possibilities typically leads to justifying moral standards which increase rather than
diminish the predicament of mankind. It also leads to practical “solutions” and
courses of action which normally makes a victim of someone other than the acting
person himself. By thus complicating matters further and entangling social
relations—consider e.g. the social effects of broken families and divorced
couples—this will in turn fatally increase the plausibility of any attempt at further
underestimating man’s possibilities and the plausibility, therefore, of a correlated
secular humanism based on ideologies of “free choice” and unrestrained individu-
alistic autonomy.
A Christian humanism, on the other hand, will be based on personal sacrifice,
service, self-giving and love—in the logic of following Christ and getting
progressively identified with him. If such a humanism is really Christian—unfor-
tunately Christians do not always behave in a Christian way—it leads to solutions
that, while demanding more from the acting person, are not carried out at the
expense of third parties. They therefore tend to diminish the predicament of
mankind and will definitely enrich both social relations and the acting person not
only humanly but also supernaturally. Finally, by creating new and encouraging
contexts of human experience, rooted in those values which typically spring from
the practice of the virtues, this will also confirm and increase the intelligibility of
the human good and therefore create and strengthen interpersonal bonds which, to
a large extent, depend on a shared understanding of the good. So, we can argue and
show that even considering its outcome, Christian morality turns out to be more
reasonable than pure secular humanism.13

13
This again shows the profound continuity of unassisted practical reason, as unfolded in
Natural law, with revealed Christian morality. This continuity, as it seems to me, roots in practical
reason as such, that is, in the fact that practical reason, as far as the human good is concerned, is
intrinsically able to grasp this good, though not in its full intelligibility, which precisely stems
from revealed Christian morality. In my view, to ground this continuity we therefore need not,
as CARRASCO DE PAULA in his article “El estudio y la enseñanza de la moral,”, 921, does, appeal
to the theology of creation, even if the theological truth that the world and man have been
originally created in Christ—which according to Carrasco explains the continuity between natural
moral reason and revealed morality—may give some further ontological grounding to this
continuity. However, such a reference to creation theology seems not to be needed from the
standpoint of practical reason which is the viewpoint of ethics, be it philosophical or theological.

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 You might now perceive, arising from the depths of your soul, the accusation of
“fundamentalism” or something similar. Yet, this charge, here, would be entirely
unjustified. A fundamentalist is somebody who tries to integrally establish norms
of Christian morality as a standard for coercive public order, for political institu-
tions and law. This however is not what Christian morality demands. On the
contrary, being dependent on revelation and faith—remember that acceptance of
the faith presupposes a free personal act—the reasonableness inherent in Christian
morality cannot be the standard of coercive legislation valid for a multitude in a
pluralistic society. Even in a society which is more or less homogeneously com-
posed of Christians, standards of morality concerning free and responsible
behavior and legally established and thus enforceable standards of behavior need
not be identical. In my view, Christians should be opting for a political culture in
which, within certain bounds, freedom and autonomy are conceived as essential
moral goods to be protected by public institutions. The submission of the individ-
ual person to truth is not a task to be carried out politically or by legal means. But
this rather complex topic is not one that I should be dealing with now.14
At any rate, in my view what Christians should aim at is not essentially to shape
society through law and the imposition of coercive measures by political institu-
tions, but to reform society from the inside through their behavior. This, of course,
eventually will lead to change and improve many things on the level e.g. of legisla-
tion as well. Nevertheless, we should not narrow down the task of Christians to
politics and organized action. The decisive part is the one carried out by “ordinary
people” who are conscious that they are called to aim in their ordinary life at fully
realizing the Christian vocation to sanctity, without fearing to be very often a “sign
that is spoken against”. With this, I come to my last point.

14
See for this M. RHONHEIMER, “Perché una filosofia politica? Elementi storici per una
risposta,” Acta philosophica, 1:2 (1992), 233-263; “Lo Stato costituzionale democratico e il bene
comune,” Ripensare lo spazio politico: quale aristocrazia? ed. by E. MORANDI and R. PANAT -
TONI, Con-tratto – Rivista di filosofia tomista e contemporanea VI (1997) (Padova: Il Poligrafo,
1998), 57-122. Some general reflections about the distinction between the legal-political plane
and the moral plane can be found in Rhonheimer, “Fundamental Rights, Moral Law, and the
Legal Defense of Life in a Constitutional Democracy. A Constitutionalist Approach to the
Encyclical Evangelium Vitae,” American Journal of Jurisprudence, 43 (1998), 135-183 (a first
version, in Italian, of this article has been published in Annales Theologici 9 (1995), 271-334.

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The profound reasonableness of Christian humanism and its ecclesiological
dimension

As we have seen, the basic moral requirements—the human good—contains an

intrinsic reasonableness which, in principle, is independent from faith, and in that
sense autonomous. Yet, only under the conditions of Christian faith is it possible
to comply consistently with a morality which is in full agreement with the “human”
and the “truth about man”, because, so I have argued, only when integrated within
the context of faith can these requirements be defended and justified—precisely as
reasonable! This is what restores full normative validity to what I have called the
original moral knowledge, which is nothing other than the natural law.
The point I wanted to make here is that, by bringing together the human good,
on one side, and the requirement of reasonableness, on the other, faith renders fully
intelligible moral demands genuinely grounded in reason. Thus, I think faith to be
a necessary condition of a person’s being able both to reconcile the requirements
of the human good with his striving for happiness, and therefore also to meet these
moral requirements consistently.
As Christians we should never be afraid of reason. Reason is on our side, even
though, to be given back all its strength, it must be permeated and enriched by the
seemingly unreasonable foolishness of the Cross. And the Cross, apart from being
a source of meaning and intelligibility, turns out to be the root of supernatural joy
and spiritual regeneration.
John Henry Newman, at the end of his Apologia pro vita sua, pays homage to the
truth-attaining capability of human reason. He points out how in fallen man reason
is biased towards irreligiousity, and how this in fact, in his own words, leads it to
“suicidal excesses” and to the “immense energy of the aggressive intellect”15.
Revelation therefore, which talks through the Church’s Magisterium, precisely
“supplies for a need”. Far from enfeebling human thought, it aims “to resist and
control its extravagance”16. So, Newman saw in the exercise of the infallible
Magisterium something able to fully restore and permanently protect reason’s
truth-attaining capability. Correspondingly, we should be imbued with the
conviction that the Church’s moral teaching is fundamentally reinforcing the power

15
J. H. NEWMAN, Apologia pro Vita Sua (London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1912
etc.[Everyman’s Li brary]), 221.
16
Ibid., 226.

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of reason and moral understanding.
That is why, according to the encyclical Veritatis splendor, we have “to find ever
more consistent rational arguments in order to justify the requirements and to
provide a foundation for the norms of the moral life” (VS 74). We are entitled to
be confident in the intelligibility of the human good and the capacity of man in
general to understand what this good requires.
Yet that, of course, is only one part of the story. It still remains necessary to let
this understanding be permeated and enriched by the prospects generated by faith.
So, we have to urge Christians to assimilate what moral reason demands and apply
it in living their faith. This implies two things. First, to foster, in themselves and
in others, personal conversion. That means acceptance of their own insufficiency
the need of grace, and the corresponding hope based on God’s goodness and
mercy. Second, from this conversion must spring the habitual disposition of
Christian charity and fraternity, in the first place the disposition to forgive one’s
neighbor, over and over again, for any harm he might have done to us. Such a
stable, and humble, attitude of personal conversion and of willingness to forgive
others “seventy-seven times”, is the basis on which a moral life has to be built up
so as to prevent the distortion of reason by the hardening of one’s heart.
Accordingly, also the Church’s mission can be described as twofold. It is
precisely to be defined as the commitment, first, to illuminate human conscience
regarding the truth of human existence as fully human, and, second, to assist him
mainly with her sacramental power, which is the redeeming presence of Christ in
this world, to struggle to meet this requirement, and thus to become simultaneously
light for others and leaven in the middle of society.
As to the first task, the Church is the first to be responsible for the formation of
consciences. She does that while being fully aware of the fact that, although
reasonable, her message will not be recognized by everyone as something reason-
able, and will therefore be rejected by many. This not only because of what we
have called before the “unreasonableness” of overburdening people, but also on
account of people’s being entangled in the cobwebs they have spun with their own
actions and which frequently weigh down their conscience with guilt and failure.
This may lead to self-justification, resignation or even desperation.
The more aggressively the Church’s moral teaching is called unintelligible, the
more we can suspect that the real problem is not its lack of intelligibility but rather
the critics’s unwillingness to undergo personal conversion. That is why I wish to
emphasize the second and very proper task of the Church in which she most
resembles her divine founder: the invitation to conversion, accompanied by the

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offer and effective dispensation of divine forgiveness and “re-creation”, mainly
through the sacrament of penance. Only within the Church—in virtue of the Holy
Spirit sent by the Father and the Son—are human lips able to offer divine forgive-
ness and mercy.
In doing so, the Church and her ministers precisely continue Christ’s mission of
rendering present among men the merciful love of the Divine Father. But that in
turn has no sense without clearly—importune, opportune—teaching the integral
truth about what is the good for man. It is not from the pulpit, but in the confes-
sional that the Church’s ministers have to absolve.
But we are never to forget that only in the light of faith the integral fulfillment
of the human good as a moral norm regains its full reasonableness, and with that
also its appeal as a meaningful prospect of happiness and fulfilment. This leads us
to an attitude of understanding and tolerance, not with sin, but with the persons
who feel unable to fully meet the requirements set forth in the Church’s moral
teaching. Without relativizing or unduly adjusting the “ought” to the “can” or
graduating the moral norm, all pastoral work nevertheless has to try to conduct
each single person to gradually fulfilling all the good which their human nature,
redeemed by Christ, aims at17.
Christians therefore should always be acting, not with an inferiority complex,
but— as Blessed Josemaría Escrivá used to say—with sort of a “complex of
superiority”, based on the power of our faith to save human reason’s truth-attaining
capability. When the truth is announced to them, many people may seem not to
understand, or be unwilling to accept. But that does not mean that the Church and
those faithful to its teachings have failed in their task of announcing the truth.
Neither does it mean that those we have spoken to are not, in principle, able to
grasp the truth of the teaching. Admittedly, improvements in ways of explaining
will always be possible, and most probably needed. But if and when people do
accept, it will be due to the changing dispositions of their heart. This change will
make them capable of fully opening themselves to the intrinsic intelligibility of
what natural law demands. That has never been achieved, in the first place, by
arguments, but rather through prayer, through each Christian’s personal struggle
for holiness, and through the example of self-sacrificing and joyful service to our
fellow men and sisters.

17
See JOHN PAUL II, Apostolic Exhortation “Familiaris Consortio” (1981), No. 34, 4, for the
well known distinction between the “law of gradualness” and “the gradualness of the law”.

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 Martin Rhonheimer
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Faculty of Philosophy
Private Address:
Rue P.-A.-de-Faucigny 7
CH-1700 Fribourg

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