David QuinnIts not only the Church that has to balance mercy and standards properly, writes David Quinn
Now that the first part of this Synod on the Family is over, the Church in every part of the world must consider how to respond. The Pope isn’t about to change the teachings on the family, but he does want a readjustment in the balance between mercy and moral standards. This is a very tricky thing to get right.
In a way, the same balance has to be struck in ecumenical relations. The Churches want improved relations with one another, and that has happened. But, at the same time, they don’t want to pretend that certain truths don’t matter.
Pope Francis wants the Church to be more conciliatory towards divorced and remarried Catholics, towards cohabitees living together before marriage or instead of marriage, and towards gay people.
At the same time, the Church has to be careful not to implicitly tell society that it has effectively shelved its teaching on marriage and human sexuality. That would do a tremendous disservice to society. The decline of marriage in the Western world has been extremely damaging, especially to the interests of children.
The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, issued a post-synod pastoral letter last weekend. It was very good, but the section on cohabitation could have been better worded.
He spoke of the “real goodness” that is to be found in the lives of those who “have decided to live together without marriage”. (We have to wonder, would Jesus have put it this way?)
Cohabitation
No doubt there is real goodness to be found in many cohabiting relationships, but Cardinal Nichols ought to have also argued more strongly in favour of marriage, spoken more of the good of marriage, and pointed out why cohabitation is not a good idea.
There is plenty of evidence that it is not. For example, it is commonly supposed that living together before marriage will reveal to a couple whether or not they are compatible and, if so, they can marry in the knowledge that they will quite likely stay married.
But cohabitation does not reduce the chances of getting divorced and there is evidence to suggest it actually increases it.
In fact, cohabitation is associated far more with relationship instability than is marriage, and that includes cohabiting relationships with children. The Church ought to make this known otherwise it is serving people badly and offering poor pastoral care.
When the economic crash happened and the world’s banking system almost collapsed there was a great deal of talk about ‘moral hazard’. Moral hazard is when people don’t face the bad consequences of their bad actions.
If a bank is badly run, goes the argument, then it ought to be let collapse, or other banks will learn that, no matter how badly run they are, they will always be saved. This will simply increase bad behaviour.
But the banks were saved because the consequences of letting them fail were too big. However, the rest of us are picking up the tab for the bad behaviour of the banks (among others) by having to pay for the bail-out.
Basically, what happened during the economic boom is that lending standards collapsed. Banks were uncritically lending to people who were very high risk, from big too small.
In fact, in the US, two of the biggest lenders – Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae – were specifically told by the government to give mortgages to people who were normally considered to be too financially insecure to be able to repay their loans.
These were the so-called ‘sub-prime’ loans. In a way, this policy was ‘merciful’ but the price was huge and the consequences were devastating, for poor people above all.
Right now in Ireland, there is a debate going on about how strict a lending policy the Central Bank should impose on Irish banks.
Lending policy
Politicians are arguing that the lending policy proposed by the Central Bank is too strict and is unfair to couples trying to buy a house for the first time. They want the Central Bank to be more ‘merciful’. The trouble is, if lending standards fall too much, we’ll all suffer again. So sometimes mercy can be very false.
What has this got to do with the Church and the synod? In a way, everything. What we see from this example is that in many (probably all) walks of life there is a need to balance mercy and standards.
A very strict lending policy would be risk-free because only the most financially secure would receive a loan. (A loan would be a reward for the ‘perfect’.) But it would also be rather merciless in that many people would be denied the chance of ever owning their own home.
However, we have seen what happens when lending policy becomes too ‘merciful’.
We would imagine something of the same kind happening in public health campaigns. Imagine if the State stopped urging people to eat healthily, get proper exercise, cut out smoking and drink less for fear of sounding ‘judgmental’.
The consequence would be that far more people would suffer heart attacks, and liver and lung problems. The hospitals would be even fuller than they already are.
The policy of ‘non-judgementalism’ in matters of public health would backfire very badly and the results would once again be merciless. A false mercy would again increase human suffering.
What applies to bank lending policy and the world of public health applies with double force to moral standards.
It should be obvious that a world without moral standards would be completely intolerable. No-one is proposing such a world, of course, but moral relativism goes a long way in this direction. For example, an attitude that any lifestyle choice is as good as any other, when applied to the family, is guaranteed to harm marriage and harm children.
This is why the Church, when rebalancing mercy and standards, has to be very careful not to do so in a way that causes more harm than good.