Relativism and Catholicism

One of the most important jobs of this publication, from a religious perspective, is to fight against relativism at Boston College. I have personally helped lead this fight over the course of my four years at BC, but regrettably I have often failed to articulate clearly why exactly I am against relativism as a theology. Although I did publish a brief article on the subject two years ago, I am now dissatisfied with it and wish to amend it with a new article in order that my opinion might become more clear.

First, relativism teaches and holds that theological truths, including what constitutes “good” and “evil,” is a function of who is viewing, or judging, a certain thought or action. This means that different people, or even cultures, can have fundamentally different “truths,” all of which are equally acceptable. More importantly, this definition of relativism removes the ability of any one person or school of thought from claiming that they hold an exclusive truth which can be upheld in all circumstances (with the ironic exception of the relativists themselves).

In Catholicism, relativism is very often manifested through both the debate over which is more important, orthodoxy or orthopraxy, a fact which Pope Benedict XVI astutely points out in his book “Truth and Tolerance.” At Boston College, the relativists generally accept the notion that the orthopraxy, or the rituals through which religion is expressed, take precedence over the orthodoxy, or the theology itself. The end result, at least on campus, is that we find many students conditioning their Catholic beliefs in order to fit both parts of Church doctrine they like while maintaining beliefs which may not reflect the teachings of the Church. A common example of this occurs which the issue of premarital sex. A student may say “I am certainly Catholic, but I also believe in premarital sex…”

Because the Catholic relativists claim that the Mass, or the ultimate orthopraxy, is more important than the dogma itself, as long as students attend Mass, they are indeed Catholic and can so condition their orthodoxy in accordance with disagreements they may have over Church teachings in regards to personal ethics. In other words, it does not so much matter that I disagree with the Church, as long as I attend the Mass.

Immediately, this notion runs into practical and theoretical concerns, because the orthopraxy is dependent upon the orthodoxy. How the Mass is said, how often one should attend, and what exactly occurs at a Mass are all ultimately matters of orthodoxy. The question very well may (and indeed it has been) asked, “isn’t the Mass, and in fact all orthopraxy a matter of relativism too?” Pushed on the point, the relativist would be forced to concede that the answer is yes. The ultimate result of this, however, is that the Church loses the moral authority to teach in a manner which invites its followers to participate in the fullness of both the orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

What follows is a fraying, or crumbling, of Catholicism, at first around the edges, and then at the very center itself. We are left with a religion which has lost the moral authority to teach to its faithful and to proclaim the logos it has been studying for the past two thousand years. Broaden the scale and apply relativism to all religions, and it is easy to see why a certain type of polytheism has developed in American culture. Because monotheistic religion has lost part of its ability to teach with authority, we now have generations which are orphaned in faith. Lacking the parental structure of religion, they cling not to higher goods, in part because the worth of these goods has been determined to be relative, and they instead seek what Pope Benedict refers to as the gods of old, sex, money, power, drugs, and perhaps even obsessive careers.

When these aspects of society become the focus of life over religion, I truly believe that society has stepped backward, and not forward. If religion is to exist, then surely relativism is not the answer. This is not to say, in the age-old logical fallacy; if not A, then B. The human experience, even when spread across continents, nations, and cultures, is remarkably interconnected. The relativists, in using barriers between cultures to justify their theology, have forgotten how resilient the human spirit is, and how cultures separated by thousands of years and insurmountable geographical circumstances very often still hold the same basic virtues dear to their hearts.

Furthermore, I believe that the relativists have mistaken when they see religion as an aspect applied to culture, almost in the same way that power windows were once an “add-on” to a new car. Seeing religion through the “add-on” lens would seem to suggest that Catholicism cannot be applied to all cultures adequately. In keeping with the car example, one would never “add-on” a tow-hitch to a compact car. What the relativists fail to understand is that religion, in and of itself, especially Catholicism, is a culture, complete with its very own people, music, food, dress, and even philosophies. Modern political theorists have already begun to realize this when they find studies which support the fact that people who tend to describe themselves as “religious” are also considerably more likely to make friends with other “religious” people, even if those people follow different creeds. While at face value this may seem to be obvious, below the surface we know that they everyday life of an ardent Catholic is considerably different from the average everyday life in modern society. Items such as abstinence, daily prayer, and constant spiritual reading are lifestyle, or cultural, aspects which run counter to mainstream American culture.

If we understand Catholicism as a culture which can be applied to any other culture, than the relativists ultimately find themselves in a position in which their basic assumptions are undercut, a position from which they cannot win. Thus, as I understand relativism, it is not only a theology which is bad for Catholic culture, but one which rationally does not make sense in a world which places great value on reason and rationality.

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