Recovering the “both/and” of St. Pope John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor

The Church, in various periods of her history, has had to deal with the scourge of moral rigorism—a distorted emphasis on upright behavior. The prototypical rigorist movement, certainly in the modern era, was Jansenism, a warped return to Augustinian piety that began in seventeenth-century France and spread far and wide for centuries after. For Jansenist theologians, for a woman to reveal so much as her arm was a mortal sin, and a penitent confessing out of a mere shame or fear—an “imperfect” contrition—should be denied absolution.

But with the exception of some scrupulous souls, it’s safe to say that, in general, the Church today faces the opposite—and far more dangerous—trap: not moral rigorism but moral laxism. The laxist gets right what the rigorist gets wrong—that is, acceptance, understanding, and encouragement, patiently bearing with human weakness. But he does so at the expense of what the rigorist gets right—that is, the dangers of sin and the struggle for holiness.

Rigorism and laxism are, in a way, two sides of the same coin, each reacting to the other’s excess with an excess of its own. Indeed, Jansenism was, in large part, a reaction to the moral laxity that had crept into certain quarters of the Jesuit order. (See the Provincial Letters of Pascal, that able defender of the Jansenist movement, for the details.) And the upsurge of hedonism and libertinism in eighteenth-century France can be understood, at least in part, as a subsequent reaction to Jansenism.

In light of this history, Christians ought to study the brilliance balance of Pope St. John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth). In the face of alternating rigorism and laxism—and a general collapse into the latter that risks a counterreaction of the former—John Paul the Great displays a beautiful Catholic both/and.

John Paul II was deeply attuned to this both/and principle. His favorite passage from the Second Vatican Council was Gaudium et Spes 22, which sees the Incarnation—the communion of God and man—as revealing not only God but also man: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.”

In Fides et Ratio, he famously hails faith and reason as “two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” And in his Theology of the Body, he articulates a philosophical anthropology of the human being as a union of soul and body. God and man, faith and reason, soul and body—for John Paul II, they all go together.

This pattern of thought carries over into Veritatis Splendor. The encyclical was released to combat the rise in moral relativism—in particular, the problematic moral theory of “proportionalism” that conduces to it—and to restate the Church’s moral doctrine. In the pope’s own words:

It seems necessary to reflect on the whole of the Church’s moral teaching, with the precise goal of recalling certain fundamental truths of Catholic doctrine which, in the present circumstances, risk being distorted or denied. In fact, a new situation has come about within the Christian community itself, which has experienced the spread of numerous doubts and objections of a human and psychological, social and cultural, religious and even properly theological nature, with regard to the Church’s moral teachings. (4)

After opening with an extended meditation on the dialogue between Jesus and the rich young man, the pope insists—against proportionalist and relativist theories—that some actions are gravely evil in an intrinsic way—that is, regardless of their intentions, consequences, or contexts, including a “fundamental option” of wanting to love and serve God. Moreover, these intrinsic evils aren’t determined simply by personal religious experience; rather, they can be discerned as universal truths of God’s eternal law. Again reflecting the both/and principle, John Paul II notes that “this eternal law is known both by man’s natural reason (hence it is ‘natural law’), and—in an integral and perfect way—by God’s supernatural Revelation (hence it is called ‘divine law’)” (72).

But even with this moral rigor clearly stated, the pope does not fail to take into account the variability of human experience, the weakness of human nature, or the need for the Church to accompany human beings through both—which is precisely the trap of the rigorists. He adds:

A clear and forceful presentation of moral truth can never be separated from a profound and heartfelt respect, born of that patient and trusting love which man always needs along his moral journey, a journey frequently wearisome on account of difficulties, weakness, and painful situations. The Church can never renounce “the principle of truth and consistency, whereby she does not agree to call good evil and evil good”; she must always be careful not to break the bruised reed or to quench the dimly burning wick (see Isa. 42:3). As Paul VI wrote: “While it is an outstanding manifestation of charity towards souls to omit nothing from the saving doctrine of Christ, this must always be joined with tolerance and charity, as Christ himself showed by his conversations and dealings with men. Having come not to judge the world but to save it, he was uncompromisingly stern towards sin, but patient and rich in mercy towards sinners.” (95)

The rigorists uphold the head at the expense of human feeling; they are stringent where they should be patient, throwing the book at believers. But the laxists uphold the heart at the expense of clear thinking; they are lenient where they should be livid, throwing the book out altogether. Those on the Way must uphold both, their hearts illumined by the splendor of truth.

Behind this both/and is another, deeper both/and: the convergence of divine law and human freedom. The laxist, at the end of the day, grasps at personal freedom out of a fear of having to sacrifice it to the divine law; it exalts a false “flourishing” over obedience. The rigorist shares in the same distorted thinking, but takes the opposite approach, gleefully sacrificing the notion of personal freedom; it suppresses flourishing with a false “obedience.” John Paul II, by contrast, heralds the communion of divine law and human freedom—because freedom, as he famously put it, “consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” He writes:

Man’s genuine moral autonomy in no way means the rejection but rather the acceptance of the moral law, of God’s command: “The Lord God gave this command to the man . . .” (Gen. 2:16). Human freedom and God’s law meet and are called to intersect, in the sense of man’s free obedience to God and of God’s completely gratuitous benevolence towards man. (41)

John Paul quotes Augustine along the same lines:

Charity should make you a servant, just as truth has made you free . . . you are at once both a servant and free: a servant, because you have become such; free, because you are loved by God your Creator; indeed, you have also been enabled to love your Creator. . . . You are a servant of the Lord and you are a freedman of the Lord. Do not go looking for a liberation which will lead you far from the house of your liberator! (87)

In the thirty-plus years since the release of Veritatis Splendor, the dangers of what Pope Benedict XVI termed the “dictatorship of relativism” have only multiplied, both outside and inside the Church. John Paul II’s Catholic wisdom gives a gameplan for combatting the present crisis of laxity without losing its best instincts—or falling right back into the opposite trap.