Herewith the Rector’s commentary from the latest edition of the Newsletter.
Sometimes the things we do with the best of intentions turn out to have appalling consequences. One of the most devastating examples of this is the way in which America and much of the rest of the Western World have embraced the theory of Situation Ethics.
Situation Ethics is an ethical system, developed in the 1960s, that is in the process of undermining and destroying the moral foundations of Western Civilization: what was once called Christendom. The irony is that the theory was principally developed by a Christian impelled by supposedly Christian motives. He was Professor Joseph Fletcher, an Episcopal priest, who taught Christian Ethics at Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at Harvard Divinity School from 1944 to 1970.
Fletcher’s theory basically states that sometimes other moral principles can be cast aside in certain situations if love is best served. He was influenced in this by the German-American theologian Paul Tillich who declared: “Love is the ultimate law.”
The love that supersedes the moral codes of Christianity, according to Fletcher, is the type of love St. Paul describes in the 13th chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians. It is the love the Greeks called agapē—meaning absolute, universal, unchanging and unconditional love for all people.
Fletcher believed that an ethical system based on love was the best expression of Jesus’ command that we love our neighbors. From this command, he deduced that there are no absolute laws other than the law of Agapē love. All the other Christian moral principles were laid down in order to achieve the greatest amount of this love, he concluded. Thus, as mere guidelines achieving this love, they could be broken if an alternative course of action seemed likely to result in more love.
This meant that all situations are always relative and “never” and “always” were words situational ethicists should try to avoid. “Only the end justifies the means, nothing else,” he wrote.
Fletcher’s theory of Situation Ethics—expounded in his books The Classic Treatment and Situation Ethics—took the academic world, including the mainline theological colleges, by storm. It was embraced by theologians of all jurisdictions and denominations, including not a few bishops and a host of clergy.
Its primary attraction was that it provided an elegant solution to the ambiguity we confront in a fallen world—a world in which there may be no good solution to problems but merely the less worst.
For the parochial clergy, it offered an easier means of approaching the moral dilemmas they wrestled with on a daily basis. For the impressionable young, it furnished a perfect excuse for embracing an increasingly fashionable “drugs, sex and rock-and-roll, make love, not war” culture. For their elders, it provided a reason for accommodating the younger generation’s self–destructive, behavior.
Not everybody embraced it, of course, especially those of us living or working in parts of the world in the thrall of totalitarian political regimes‑such as Soviet-style communism and fascist dictatorships.
The Situation Ethics’ maxim that “situations are always relative” and “only the end justifies the means” seemed custom built to serve evil and unscrupulous politicians. All they needed to do was declare a laudable goal and their totalitarian policies would be cloaked with respectability.
The late John Robinson, the controversial Bishop of Woolwich and Dean of Trinity College, at first embraced Fletcher’s theory, declaring that it gave individuals the responsibility for deciding the morality of their actions.
Later, however, Robinson utterly rejected Situation Ethics when he realized that leaving responsibility for morality up to the individual was a responsibility nobody—not even the noblest among us—was adequately equipped to handle.
Fletcher, he concluded, had handed people an excuse for not obeying the rules when it suited them. When folks wanted to do something badly enough, Situation Ethics gave them a means of justifying it to themselves. How right he was!
By the end of the decade in which it was conceived, Situation Ethics enabled the evil North Vietnamese Communist regime and its Viet Cong surrogates to present themselves as patriots engaged in a popular cause. Later, the even nastier Khmer Rouge adopted the same sorry fable.
By the 1980s, Situation Ethics had transformed the ruthless Soviet dictatorship into the moral equivalent of the United States—equating American attempts to defend its allies with the Soviets’ brutal suppression of its satellites and Comintern’s subversion in the Third World as manifestations of the democratic aspirations of oppressed people.
Most recently, it has supplied the perverse logic by which Islam, a religion with history of unremitting violence, is hailed as “the religion of peace.” And, at the same time, it has been deployed to condemn Christianity, the faith that has endowed humanity with undreamed of freedoms, as the religion of oppression.
Extremists espousing atheism have been responsible for the slaughter of at least 126 million people over the past 80 years, yet Situation Ethics permits them to portray Christianity as a primary source of discord, prejudice, hatred and violence
Indeed, the theory of Situation Ethics has infected virtually all aspects of life the in what was once called Christendom—our families, schools, media, business life, political life and, yes, our spiritual lives, too.
It promulgates the falsehood that family life inhibits personal growth. It fosters teaching school children wishful thinking as fact. It persuades to mistake greed and unscrupulousness for enterprise and innovation. It excuses biased news reporting, and permits politicians to wink at corruption and immorality.
But then this was bound to happen. Any system that labors under the delusion that human beings are, of their own accord, capable of Agapē love is doomed to failure.
Agapē, to quote the hymn, is “love divine, all loves excelling.” In other words, it is a degree of love that human beings can strive to emulate, but will prove incapable of achieving unaided by the Holy Spirit.
History, not just Holy Scripture, eloquently testifies that human beings have an inbuilt predisposition to do what is right in their own eyes. Thus, as Bishop Robinson discovered, Situation Ethics is rooted in Original Sin.
What, he asked, will be the consequences for a society that embraces the belief that all situations are always relative and only the end justifies the means? “It will all descend into moral chaos,” he lamented. How prophetic he was! GPH✠
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