Statistics don’t fascinate everyone. Some find them boring ­ especially polls about the state of our political parties. One recent statistic amazed me ­ that there are said to be more members of the Islamic faith in Dublin than there are Presbyterians and Methodists put together. On the whole the People of Islam are god-fearing in a way that would put to shame many western Christians. Most take their religion very seriously. Indeed the name of Allah is never uttered without adding words of blessing to it. Muslims walking the streets of Dublin are therefore usually incredulous at hearing the divine names of Jesus, Christ and God Almighty uttered, not as pious prayers, but as obscenities. It’s a sad Irish trait ­ one that’s so common that people are surprised and hurt to be told that their usage of the divine name verges at times on moral blasphemy.

Can we make moral judgements?

How we use language says something about our attitude to morality in general. Yet anyone who intends to comment on the practical application of Christian moral ideas in the modern world needs to tread carefully. Is it possible still to speak of an accepted morality? With Christians divided can we even speak of Christian morality? and how far can we speak of people being responsible given the new sciences of psychology and sociology and biology? Do the traditional moral answers still fit today’s situations?

Authority in Morality

To some, of course, any suggestion that long-accepted answers may change is pure heresy. "The Bible says" is a phrase still expected in many quarters to stifle all discussion. People forget that the scriptures themselves have been mediated through the language and thinking of frail human beings ­ and that faith, which is a living response in a lively world, cannot always stand still. The present times are more revolutionary than perhaps even those of the Renaissance or the Reformation. The revolt today is largely against authority of any kind: "Don’t you tell me what to do." As in the days of the first Christians, authority today may be accepted if the quality of its demand is clear, and if it is seen in the quality of the lives of those who believe it to be true. Every statement is examined critically to see if it justifies itself by what it tells us to do.

Even without this challenge to authority there can be changes that must make us examine traditional moral teaching.

New Morality?

This first occurs when moral judgements meet new facts. War has changed significantly during the past hundred years. Nowadays it’s almost impossible to achieve the traditional rules of Just War. So can modern warfare ever be justified? Is the Israeli/Palestinian fracas justifiable when so many civilians rather than combatants get hurt? Was the Bosnian war just since it didn’t even have the support of the United Nations Organisation? The Irish Army is more correctly known as the Defence Forces because, whether at home or abroad, it’s never permitted to be an aggressive force. It can come to the assistance of oppressed peoples and yet still maintain the traditional concept of neutrality.

Change in thinking may also occur as our understanding changes. When Jonathan Swift founded St Patrick’s Hospital it was a place in which to incarcerate those who were called lunatics and to keep them away from society. Our understanding of insanity and criminal responsibility has today significantly changed.

Even our moral assessment of the facts may change. From a biblical point of view capital punishment, even slavery, are both virtuous and acceptable. Yet how many hold such a view today? The Oireachtas abolished almost all capital punishment some years ago and many would say we are rightly being asked next week to abolish it totally ­ despite its totally clear scriptural basis. So too with areas of sexual morality. Contraception was roundly condemned by the 1930 Lambeth Conference as being contrary to biblical morals, yet was given approval within marriage in 1948. And no Roman Catholic teaching document has ever been so widely ignored as has been Humanae Vitae.

Making Moral Judgements

In making moral judgements we’re engaged in a very tentative exercise. We in our generation have both limited knowledge and limited judgement. We also need, as I said, to be careful of trotting out "The Bible says" selectively using texts that support us and ignoring those which don’t. There’s always the temptation to take refuge in what we some call biblical discipline and standards. Equally there’s the very opposite temptation to give up seeking any answer to our question and simply to say "Whatever will be will be" or to indulge in situation ethics where everything is about me and there’s nothing about society.

Tolerance and Courage

Against this the Christianity can offer only two watchwords ­ tolerance and courage.

Tolerance isn’t a very exciting virtue. It hasn’t the ring of "liberty" or "equality". But it’s still important. We never pose a greater threat to our fellow human beings than when we want to make them do something or be more moral; and the better our intentions, the more harm we can effect. Tolerance calls for far greater self-restraint and effort to understand other people. It calls on us each, not just to put forward abstract moral positions, but in doing so to examine our own life-styles as well. Any declaration of the general principles of Christianity can be expected to draw polite murmurs of approval. The real difficulty comes in attempting to follow them. Despite our intellectual concerns with love and justice, despite our emotional involvement with the abstract needy and helpless, we don’t always succeed in loving real people.

Love

The Gospel this morning concludes with part of the high priestly prayer of our Lord: Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’

Courage to love is always much more difficult to achieve than courage to criticise. We love, not for cosiness but because perfect love casts out fear. Of course there’s a very large gap between what society is and what it should be. It’s to help bridge this gap that the Churches needs to begin doing serious theology about the moral maze in which we live ­ and to do it now rather than later.