Paradigm Shifts and the End of Catholic Moral Doctrine

The Church’s mission is not a matter of abstractly proclaiming and deductively applying principles that are set out in an immutable and rigid manner, but of fostering a living encounter with the person of the risen Lord Jesus, by engaging with the lived experience of faith of the People of God in its personal and social relevance, in relation to the diverse situations of life and the many cultural contexts. Only the fruitful tension between what has been established in the Church’s doctrine and Her pastoral practice and the practices of life in which what has been established is verified, in the exercise of personal and communal life in the light of the Gospel, expresses the generative dynamism of Tradition: against the temptation of the sterile and regressive ossification of principles and statements, of norms and rules, regardless of the experience of individuals and communities. As Jesus taught, “the Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).

This quote above is taken directly from the Synod on Synodality Study Group No. 9’s Final Report focused on Theological Criteria and Synodal Methodologies for Shared Discernment of Emerging Doctrinal, Pastoral and Ethical Issues. This quote gives readers just a taste of the jargon employed throughout Study Group No. 9’s Final Report with special emphasis on what is called “a paradigm shift.”

The paradigm shift articulated in the above quote namely is this: The “immutable” Church’s propositions regarding Catholic morality deemed “rigid,”…“sterile and regressive ossification of principles…regardless of the experience of individuals and communities” is now replaced by discerning the “lived experience of faith” with attention to the “situations of life” with “particular care…given to those who find themselves living on the existential, social, and cultural peripheries.”

So instead of an authoritarian Church pronouncing moral doctrine, the People of God together must listen to “life experiences” and discern together, “in conversation with the Spirit,” as Part I, I.I headlines: “A Paradigm Shift that is faithful to the journey of the Christian experience.” The point being that “lived experience” is at least equal to if not even more ecclesially and spiritually foundational for Catholic morality than a Church “abstractly proclaiming and “deductively applying” her moral doctrines. This is why Report No. 9 will climax with the “lived experience” of two homosexuals”—according to one who discovered, based on his experience: “that sin, at its root, does not consist in the (same-sex) couple relationship, but in a lack of faith in a God who desires our fulfillment.”

The Synod on Synodality began in October 2021. However, the paradigm shift was already established in 2016 when Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia as the new head of the Pontifical Academy for Life and grand chancellor of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences—posts he held until his retirement at the age of 80 in 2025. Under new statutes put in place by Pope Francis, the Institute departed from its original focus and a majority of its staff and professors faithful to the teachings of the Church were dismissed.

The Institute’s redirection came into sharp focus when, under Archbishop Paglia, its mission was now to be geared toward what Paglia described as a “new pastoral theology” that tended to the “concrete reality of situations.” Dismissed staff were replaced by scholars with dissenting views on homosexuality and contraception, such as Msgr. Gilfredo Marengo and Fr. Maurizio Chiodi, who respectively expressed a willingness to revisit Humanae Vitae, St. Pope Paul VI’s encyclical banning artificial contraception and questioned the Church’s doctrine on homosexuality—in direct opposition to John Paul II’s teaching on moral theology which defended Catholic teaching on marriage and the family.

Natural Law Out—Personal Experience In

In a  May 26th interview with the Italian outlet Settimana News, Paglia revealed, in keeping with Francis’ vision, that Catholic moral teachings would no longer rely on natural law—which he described with derision (similar to Synodal Report No.9) as “static,” “immutable,” “essentialist” and “ahistorical.” He admitted that a “very profound reform was at stake.”

Indeed, this author seeks to explain what exactly is at stake for the Church in this absolutely revolutionary so-called “paradigm shift.” The overthrow of natural law as the foundation of morality ultimately amounts to a denial of God’s good creation as revelatory of His divine will.

To understand the crisis, we need to have a proper understanding of natural law. It is very interesting to note that even before the giving of the Ten Commandments, the first order of God’s revelation is actually creation itself. This is taught, for instance, in Dei Verbum, the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: “God, who through the Word creates all things (see John 1:3) and keeps them in existence, gives men an enduring witness to Himself in created realities (see Rom. 1:19-20).”

Note that the document cites the teaching of St. Paul where we may find the earliest Christian affirmation of natural law as the basis for morality. For, while the Jews were directly aided by divinely revealed law, the Gentiles, according to St. Paul, also knew that same law by recourse to nature:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against the irreligious and perverse spirit of men who, in this perversity of theirs, hinder the truth. In fact, whatever can be known about God is clear to them; he himself made it so. Since the creation of the world, realities, God’s eternal power and divinity, have become visible, recognized through the things he has made. (Romans 1:18-20)

And Paul goes on to teach, contrasting the Jews and Gentiles:

Sinners who do not have the law will perish without reference to it; sinners bound by the law will be judged in accordance with it. For it is not those who hear the law who are just in the sight of God; it is those who keep it who will be declared just.

When Gentiles who do not have the law keep it as by instinct, these men though without the law serve as a law for themselves. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts. Their conscience bears witness together with that law, and their thoughts will accuse or defend them on the day when, in accordance with the gospel I preach, God will pass judgment on the secrets of men through Christ Jesus. (Romans 2:12-16)

St. Paul very clearly teaches that all people, even pagans, have God’s law revealed to them by reference to the demands of human nature, that law “written in their hearts.” And how weighty is the keeping of natural law? It even impacts a person’s eternal destiny. Thus no “paradigm shift” can replace natural law as the foundation of morality as natural law has to do with exactly what it means to be human—and thus the meaning of human dignity itself.

Aquinas’ teaching on natural law is found in the Summa Theologica “Treatise on Law” (ST I-II, Q. 90-97).  In the natural law teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas there is a unity of mind, body, and divine wisdom—the latter synonymous with God’s eternal law. The Angelic Doctor’s very definition of natural law emphasizes the unity between eternal law and natural law:

[A]ll things subject to divine providence are ruled and measured by the eternal law…it is evident that all things partake in some way in the eternal law, in so far as, namely, from its being imprinted upon them, they derive their respective inclinations to their proper acts and ends. Now among all others, the rational creature is subject to divine providence, by being provident both for itself and for others. Therefore, it has a share of the eternal reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end; and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law. (Emphasis Added, ST I-II, Q. 91, a. 2,)

God created all things according to His divine wisdom. Everything God has created is His art. Things bear inner truth in relation to God’s eternal law, and the rational creature’s participatory relationship with the eternal law is called natural law.

For St. Thomas, natural law is a moral foundation that directs the human race to its ultimate end. It is anything but the rational mind imposing order and structure upon the world arbitrarily and from the outside, so to speak. Order, including moral order, already exists in the world because it was put there by God. And human happiness is bound up with it.

According to Aquinas, the human being is ruled by human “ends”: natural inclinations that, when followed, perfect human nature. Acting contrary to these ends is to act “against reason,” violating the intelligible unity between the bodily world, man’s reason, and God’s eternal wisdom. For even the human body bears an inner rationality of its own, provided by God’s divine wisdom, that gives it meaning and guides it to its perfection.

This is important to remember because a common misinterpretation of Aquinas is that “animal nature” must be humanized by coming under the control of reason, which can sound not-dissimilar to the neo-gnostic view. Instead, there is, in St. Thomas, a marvelous understanding and appreciation of the inherent relation, one could even say unity, between man’s rational faculties, the moral order rooted in human corporeal nature, and divine wisdom. All things have meaning and order given by God. Human reason would be incapable of discovering any real meaning if “things” were not already imbued by divine wisdom with an intelligibility. Let us quote the Angelic Doctor again!

The human intellect is measured by things, so that a human concept is not true by reason of itself, but by reason of its being consonant with things, since an opinion is true or false according as things are or are not. But the divine intellect is the measure of things, since each thing has its truth in it in so far as it is like the divine intellect… Consequently, the divine intellect is true in itself, and its exemplar is truth itself. (Emphasis Added, ST I-II, Q. 93, a. 2)

For Aquinas, there is no mere biology! Yes, the Angelic Doctor does place emphasis on the primacy of the intellect, as the faculty peculiar to humanity. But equally important in Aquinas’ natural law ethic is that all things have an inherent order and truth in themselves, toward which the intellect itself is ordered. The truth in things—and the intellect’s ordering to this truth—saves the Thomist system of ethics from dualism.

Natural human ends are in no sense mere biology propelling the human being to a fate he or she cannot control. There is no gulf between the body, the intellect, and divine wisdom. Human “animal” nature is filled with divine—one might even say sacred and transcendent—meaning because “natural inclinations” have no other end than God Himself. For us, corporeal nature has a spiritual meaning. We can’t know the truth about ourselves, or God, without it.

Just as our nature comes from God and directs us back to him, Aquinas teaches that when we violate our nature we do injury to God:

Just as the ordering of right reason proceeds from man, so the order of nature is from God himself; wherefore in sins contrary to nature, whereby the very order of nature is violated, an injury is done to God, the Author of nature. (ST I-II, Q. 154, ad. 2)

I end this presentation of natural law as it relates to the God of the Good Creation by citing an important—and indeed famous—teaching of Aquinas:

Human law has the nature of law insofar as it partakes of right reason; and it is clear from this respect, it is derived from the eternal law. But insofar as it deviates from reason, it is called an unjust law, and has the nature not of law but of violence. (ST I-II, Q. 93, a. 3)

And, relying on St. Augustine, Aquinas adds:

That which is not just seems to be no law at all: wherefore the force of a law depends on the extent of its justice. Now in human affairs a thing is said to be just, from being right, according to the rule of reason. But the first rule of reason is the law of nature…. Consequently, every human law has just so much the nature of law, as it is derived from the law of nature. But if at any point it deflects from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a perversion of law. (ST I-II, Q. 95, a. 2) 

And why should unjust laws, laws contrary to nature, be a kind of violence? Because such decrees undo the good creation of God.

Natural law is also the basis for understanding the sacramental meaning of creation—as all things bear a God-given internal truth according to the way God intended things to exist. Thus, all of nature bears a kind of sacramentality that discloses the mind of the Creator. The Catholic Church can no more “go beyond,” remove, or even subordinate natural law according to a “paradigm shift” that emphasizes “personal experience,” historical conditioning, and a communal discernment than the Church could deny God Himself! That is what is at stake here.

Paradigm shifts are not necessarily wrong or bad. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is loaded with them. And here we see a definite shift when Jesus taught the apostles the true meaning of greatness in response to James and John asking to sit in the highest places within the Kingdom:

Jesus called them together and said to them “You know how among the gentiles those who seem to exercise authority lord it over them; their great ones make their authority felt. It cannot be that way with you. Anyone among you who aspires to greatness must serve the rest; whoever wants to rank first must serve the needs of all.” (Mark 10:42-45)

Within Christianity, paradigm shifts should call believers to a deeper life of sacrifice—and that’s hardly the case with Synod Report No. 9.

Synod Report No. 9’s undoing of Catholic moral doctrine drew sharp criticism from Cardinal Archbishop Willem Eijk, Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht. His comments appeared in The Catholic Herald. He pointed out that the “deeper problem” lies in the report’s underlying methodology.

It explicitly rejects “immutable” principles in favor of a “‘synodal process focused on people’s practices and experiences.” It also openly and explicitly celebrates a “fruitful tension between what has been established in the Church’s doctrine and her pastoral practice and the practices of life.” “Study Group 9’s report fundamentally contradicts Catholic moral teaching,” and the relativization of moral doctrine has far-reaching consequences, affecting even the “protection of human life itself.”

And the cardinal rightly pointed out that Report No. 9 misapplies Jesus’ statement regarding the Sabbath rest in its attempt to argue that people, according to their life experience, are free from the application of moral norms:

Jesus’ teaching about the Sabbath concerned divine positive law—norms revealed in Scripture that are not intrinsically absolute unless they coincide with natural law. Accordingly, Old Testament Jewish liturgical laws are no longer binding. By contrast, the moral law regarding marriage and sexuality comes from natural law, which is unchanging and “reflects God’s purposes in creating human beings, marriage, and sexuality itself.

It is true that the Church needs to be pastorally sensitive to those members who are in relationships that are objectively immoral, to witness Christ’s truth to them with understanding and compassion—but without compromising the demands of the Gospel. I personally know full well the path a committed Christian must follow in loving those in such relationships as my homosexual brother, with whom I was very close, died of AIDS at the age of 42; and I have another close family member who is in a same-sex “marriage.”

Paglia’s troubling interview reveals the rejection of natural law, and thus the rejection of Catholic moral doctrine, was already in place in the shake-up of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences. The rejection has bled into the Synod. Pray for the Holy Father. Pray for Leo, that he has the courage to stop this heterodox flow of blood and stand up for God’s Wisdom in the Church’s moral doctrine as found in natural law.