Why Pope Benedict XVI is not wrong about relativism

In an article entitled "WHY POPE BENEDICT XVI IS WRONG ABOUT RELATIVISM," published Friday (April 29, 2005) in NigeriaWorld.Com, Okezie Chukwumerije takes issue with a scathing attack on relativism made by Josef Cardinal Ratzinger in his homily during a Mass on April 18, before being elected Pope Benedict XVI. Chukwumeriji notes that Cardinal Ratzinger, in his homily before the conclave, was stating his views on the most important issues facing the Church "and trying to concentrate the minds of the cardinals on the kind of person that would address these issues as leader of the Catholic Church."

Chukwumerije then goes on to argue that Cardinal Ratzinger grossly misjudged the greatest threats faced by the Church:

People without food on their table, those inflicted with AIDS but who do not have the medicine with which to fight the disease, those who are unable to provide a decent quality of life for their children, do not sit and worry about the "dictatorship of relativism." ... If these indigent people in developing countries (a part of the world where there has been the largest increase of membership in the Catholic Church) were able to listen to the Pope's homily and understand it, they would probably have wondered why relativism trumped hunger, poverty and AIDS. Or, to put it differently, they would have wondered why the philosophical concerns of Westerners trump the practical problems of Catholics in the developing world.

Now I do not wish to dispute that the problems Chukwumeriji mentions are important. In fact, when all is said and done, the greatest social service organization in the world--clothing the naked and feeding the poor--is probably the Catholic Church. Certainly much larger than the United Nations. So there is no question these issues are important, and Chukwumeriji's article is a thoughtful and sensitive one, particularly in this respect.

What I do want to take issue with, however, is the way he procedes to politicize the debate over relativism. Ratzinger had noted that having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled "fundamentalism" today, whereas "relativism" is celebrated as a progressive outlook toward the modern or postmodern world. Chukwumeriji picks up on the reference to "fundamentalism" to play to its associations with repressive regimes of "Islamic fundamentalism" in the popular mind and public media. Fundamentalism is also associated, of course, with moral absolutism. He writes:

The danger with moral absolutism, however, is that if one truly believes in the absolute truth of moral propositions contained in religious texts, there is less incentive to negotiate with others about whether these propositions should be enforced by law. If I believe that abortion is evil because I believe the Bible says so, and I believe the bible is the absolute truth, and I believe that those who hold different positions on the issue are demonstrably wrong, there is limited space for me to engage in a public dialogue and negotiation about how society should deal with the issue of abortion. I have the truth. You don't. So shut up, listen to me, and do as I say.

By contrast, in Chukwumeriji's view, moral relativism looks positively enlightened:

Whatever one may think of the philosophical validity of moral relativism, there is no denying the fact that it promotes a healthy skepticism of the way society makes decisions about its values, especially of those decisions that involve choosing which values to enforce through the use of the police powers of the state. For example, a relativist may be reluctant to enact a particular religious tenet into law without first evaluating the tenet in the light of the broader goals of the particular society. Since the relativist does not accept religious tenets as absolute moral propositions, he would have to dig deeper, not rely merely on faith, as justification for the enactment of the tenet into law.

There are at least several serious problems with this reasoning, however well-intended as it may be. First, it confuses a debate about the existence of universal absolutes (truth, right and wrong, etc.) with a debate about how repressive political regimes are. It turns a discussion about the former into a discussion about the latter, which is something else. "Absolutism" is lifted out of its philosophical context and placed in a politically charged context where it means something utterly different, having historical associations with the Divine Right of Kings, Absolute Monarchy, "Islamic fundamentalism," Nazis and other repressive dictatorships, etc. By the same token, "relativism" is transposed into a political context where it is associated with multicultural tolerance, progressivism, liberalism, etc.

Second, when Chukwumerije suggests, in effect, that the relativist would be politically less repressive, more tolerant, and more just than the absolutist, he is making two indefensible assumptions. First, by assuming that less repression, more tolerance, and more justice are objective, real goods, he is assuming something that relativism has no right to assume: the existence of universal absolutes--like justice. This shows, in effect, that if one wants a basis for condemning injustice, repression, and for supporting compassionate outreach to AIDS victiums, the poor and the starving, only moral absolutism can provide that basis. Relativism cannot. Second, he is also assuming the indefensible premise that political repression always presupposes moral and religious absolutism, and that political liberality presupposes moral relativism. While it takes no genious to find historical examples of absolutists who have been repressive, the question is whether such repression is a function of their absolutist principles or a hypocritical lapse that can be credited to human greed and sin. There is no question that religious and moral absolutes also provide the basis for condemning such hyocritical repression, greed and sin. On the other hand, can Chukwumerije or anyone provide even one example of a saintly individual or a just society whose saintliness and justice is founded on moral relativism? Clearly not. Some absolutists have been sinners; but no saints have ever been relativists. Yet if one can find examples of sinful absolutists, one can much more easily find examples of notorious sinners who excuse their sin on the basis of moral relativism, or repressive political regimes that have do so. Witness Benito Mussolini [see photo, left, in which Mussolini is pictured to the left of Adolf Hitler]. Significantly, Mussolini wrote:

Everything I have said and none in these last years is relativism by intuition.... If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be the bearers of an objective, immortal truth ... then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity.... From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable. (Diuturna, pp. 374-377; quoted by Peter Kreeft in A Refutation of Moral Relativism)

Third, Chukwumerije assumes that the most important thing in life is material welfare. In assuming this, he joins ranks with the bourgeois capitalist consumers in the United States and the First World who care about nothing more than their own personal peace, affluence, and wellbeing. Ironically, Capitalism and Marxism share this assumption. The Capitalist wants to grow his own piece of the material pie bigger. The Marxist wants to grow the whole pie of the state bigger. But in both cases, the name of the game is getting more of the material pie. But the Catholic Church, while solicitous of the material welfare of the poor and repressed, also warns of the dangers of material wealth. Wealth can turn people away from God and from one another, so that their hearts turn in upon themselves (in curvatus in se) and they begin to look more like Gollum in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings than like healthy human beings. It is instructive that the third of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, according to the prayers of St. Louis de Montfort, petition the Lord for a "detachment from the things of the world, a love of poverty, and a love for the poor." This is not because poverty is something good in itself, but because wealth can corrupt the heart. The love of money, said Jesus, is the root of all evil.

Chukwumerije notes that very few people are moral relativists in the strict sense of denying the existence of any absolutes. This is certanly true. It's simply impossible to live as a strict relativist. Hence, even the most vociferous opponent of moral absolutism ends up only practicing a kind of selective relativism. The moment self-styled "relativists" feel victimized by some injustice or another, they will be appealing to the (objective, absolute, universal) value of things like justice, fairness, toleration, etc. (See in this connection J. Budziszewski's lucid, common sensical defense of natural law, i.e., what people can't help knowning about right and wrong just by virtue of being human beings, in his What We Can't Not Know

Chukwumerijie also notes that moral pluralism, the view that different moral theories capture parts of the truth about moral life, has more adherents than does moral relativism. This is also likely true. But moral pluralism effectively reduces to a species of moral relativism and to its native skepticism, which proclaims that nobody can really know what's right or wrong. The irony here, of course, is that the single greatest obstacle to the kind of relief for AIDS victims, the poor, and oppressed that Chukwumerije desires is very likely the relativistic and skeptical outlook which saps conviction and undermines charity and feeds self-indulgent hedonism. Ratzinger was right about relativism. (Gratia tibi, Stephen Starr)