A concrete example of whom I was referring to would be the signers of the Manhattan

Declaration, a curious confederation of moral zealots.

One thing they had in common were moral stances. What they did not have in common
were moral methodologies.
The protestant cohort derived their conclusions from a biblical literalism. Their catholic
counterpart employed their impoverished natural law approach.
Another thing they had in common was a pessimistic theological anthropology. The
protestants got their pessimism from their dialectical imagination. The catholics got
theirs from a hierarchicalistic, sacerdotalistic, clericalistic, patriarchilistic, infallibilistic
ecclesiology. Either route leads to the conclusion that modern culture largely fails to
cooperate with grace.
The irony in this particular catholic position is that they accuse others of denying the
efficacies of grace. Divine and natural laws bind all absolutely because, soteriologically,
the saving grace flows freely.
Those who would make allowances via a law of graduality, which recognizes formative
development, deny grace, undiscriminately imputing moral inculpability, making
excuses, providing allowances to persist in sin.
Those who would provide for a gradualness of positive (of course not divine or natural)
laws, which flexibly adapt to practical exigencies, jurisprudentially, deny grace, because
divine edicts aren't unrealizable ideals.
Those who would affirm a moral probabilism for doubts of law (of course not of fact),
which grounds one's right to dissent and the freedom to follow one's conscience, deny
grace, because the constant tradition would be thrown into question.
Those who would employ a proportionalist calculus to resolve otherwise deontological
moral conflicts, deny grace because there are no ambiguities.
For the much more catholic analogical imagination, though, these charges do not stick.
Grace, indeed, flows much more freely!
Over against a depraved view of culture, the Spirit animates people of faith and
nonbelievers alike, gifting rays of truth and lives of sanctity.
Over against a sacerdotalistic clericalism, implicit sacramental graces flow through
manifold and multiform relationships!
Over against a hierarchicalistic magisterium, grace flows through our theologians and
sensus laicorum, informing consciences not only through natural law abstractions but
through our concrete lived experiences, which an inductive personalist approach can
reveal through an active, collegial listening process.
It's no accident, then, that, however otherwise divergent in both moral methodology,
church polity or pneumatology, these conservative protestant and catholic cohorts self-

describe as Evangelical. Evangelical Catholicism pretty much overlaps with catholic

neoconservatism. (note below)
The evangelical descriptor derives from a sense of missiology, which is fine. Missiology
is five-fold insofar as it cooperates with the Spirit, Who orients, sanctifies, heals,
empowers and saves. But one's missiology is only going to be as good as one's
pneumatology is authentic.
Who's got the more incarnational pneumatology, affirming the Spirit's presence in our
sciences, histories, societies, cultures, economics, politics and religions? Who's really
denying the ubiquitous presence and efficacies of grace beyond a rather exclusivistic
ecclesiocentrism?
Not to be coy, Richard Rohr and Brian McLaren are authentically evangelical.
The Manhattan Declaration signees, it seems to me, while they certainly enjoy rays of
truth and degrees of sanctity, are the real pneumatological and anthropological
pessimists, grace-deniers.
There's just SO MUCH more to be about as Christians than a preoccupation with moral
realities.
I will press on in my vigorous defense of all who are unjustly discriminated against,
stigmatized, ostracized, oppressed, denied fundamental human rights and so on. But
it's not because the Bible tells me so. Justice and morality are transparent to human
reason without the benefit of special revelation. All are graced with a disposition to
learn and grow in what they need to know to live an upright and good life.
In my axiological epistemology, while descriptive, evaluative, normative (both moral &
practical) and interpretive approaches remain methodologically autonomous - in that
they ask distinctly different questions of reality, they also remain axiologically integral,
which is to say, each necessary but none alone sufficient for every human valuerealization. That remains true whether we approach reality regarding our proximate or
ultimate concerns.
And when our theological methods pursue value realizations "beyond" those of our 1)
descriptive sciences, for example in creed, 2) evaluative cultures, for example via cult,
3) normative philosophies, for example through code, or 4) interpretive metaphysics or
worldviews, for example in community, they must not go "without" them.
Put most plainly, anthropologically, our theologies can't go around just making stuff
up.
They might addend history and science, eschatologically, but mustn't amend their
truths. They might add beauty through inculturation, sophiologically, but mustn't
disvalue cultural riches. They might add goodness, sacramentally, adding mercy and
charity, but mustn't invent moral responsibilities or demands of justice. They might add
unity, ecclesiologically, in believing communities, but cannot coerce, logically or
evidentially, their existential orientations on others. They might augment freedom and
authenticity, soteriologically, but can neither deny nor obviate the secular conversions
--- intellectual, affective, moral or social --- that all people of goodwill can enjoy.

The fundamental issue is pneumatological --- how some imagine the Spirit engages us
and how we then cooperate with (or frustrate) grace.
If, as some insist, all intimate relationships must be 1) heterosexual 2) conjugal 3)
consensual 4) unitive 5) procreative and 6) indissouble, in order to conform, formally,
to the Christ-instituted Sacrament and benefit from its grace, that would be a creedal
dogma to be hashed out within dogmatic theology.
Now, those dogmatic criteria may or may not coincide with the associated moral
realities. We can't know that a priori but have to reason our way there with the tools of
moral philosophy (not relying on some distinctly uncatholic biblical proof-texting).
A robust moral philosophy will certainly include some vague natural law insights with
their deductive clarifications but must also rely on some specific personalist
observations of the concrete lived experiences of humankind with their inductive
illuminations.
I appreciate that JPII's Theology of the Body tried to make this personalist turn. I can
only suggest that if it was truly inductive and not embedding its conclusions in its
natural law conceptions --- well, either its sample size was too small or it ignored some
of the data.
Many, many people of large intelligence and profound goodwill, included learned
Catholic moral theologians, who've employed a much more robustly holistic moral
methology, have concluded that, in order to be moral, intimate relationships must be
1) conjugal 2) consensual 3) unitive and 4) procreative, more broadly conceiving the
procreative to be realizable --- not in insolated acts, but --- in the totality of the
relationship and --- not in a narrowly biologistic, physicalistic manner, but --- spiritually
and holistically.
Arguably, such relationships, beyond being moral, would be implicitly sacramental,
grace-filled.
The above distinctions would properly disentangle the creedal and moral realities and
provide a single doctrinal solution --- not only for LGBTQ persons, but --- regarding the
divorced remarried and contraception.
By relying on a pastoral solution only, it's disheartening for all concerned because the
flow of grace and cooperation with same in our lives is not being acknowledged. By
relying on subjective inculpability, alone, not only are LGBTQ persons' relationships
being called intrinsically disordered, but all suffer from an imputed ad hominem
assessment that they're either 1) invincibly ignorant 2) stuck in early stages of moral
development and/or formative spirituality 3) affectively immature or 4) under
psychological compulsion.
In other words, even the assessment that one can worthily receive communion under
Canon 916 is too often grounded in some type of exculpable dysfunction requiring
medicine for the sick.

As it is, good sacramental theology embraces the graces of Eucharist as flowing

through 1) covenant 2) memorial 3) meal 4) thanksgiving and 5) presence in a) the
word proclaimed b) priest presiding c) people gathered and d) sacred species. To send
the signal that one can participate fully in 7 of 8 above Christ-encounters but not the
last is incoherent and grounded in both flawed pastoral disciplines and impoverished
moral methodologies.
Make no mistake, the only doctrinal solution that will truly free contracepting couples
and the divorced remarried will also free our LGBTQ faithful, too. Those of us who
loyally and faithfully dissent must remain in total solidarity.
Go to communion because a just moral probabilism gifts you that divine right and not
based on juridical loopholes of Canon 916.
As for Canon 915, thankfully it's left to individual bishops to apply prudentially but it
would not be so pervasively pernicious if the underlying moral doctrine was correct in
the first place.
Failure to embrace moral probabilism is just one more symptom of this impoverished
pneumatology, which yields all of these sacerdotalistic and infallibilistic excesses.
Note:
I employ all political descriptors in terms of practical norms, so neoconservative
describes a strategic approach, a political philosophy.
American neoconservatism embraces such strategies as subsidiarity and the separation
of church and state.
Unlike the Enlightenment gone awry on the Continent, though, neoconservatives
embrace a secular statist strategy but not at all any militant secularism, which would
marginalize religion in the public square, where it can positively and formatively
influence the socio-economic, politico-cultural milieu.
Neoconservatives see value in nonstatist strategies, precisely following principles of
subsidiarity.
As for the influence of religion, neoconservatives remain wary of its politicization,
carefully distinguishing its moral judgments and spiritual missiology from its prudential
judgments.
When coercive, interventionist strategies do emerge from a subsidiarity calculus calling
for statist solutions, they should unapologetically reflect the moral ideals embedded in
the republic's foundations, whether in domestic or foreign affairs.
I appreciate that it's much more complex and nuanced, but that's my Readers Digest
version.
One of the most curious ideological inconsistencies of late seems to be the
neoconservative penchant for aggessively interventionist strategies in tribalistic
cultures 10,000 miles away, where it's eternally optimistic about the outcomes, coupled

with militantly noninterventionist strategies in domestic affairs at home, where it's

infernally pessimistic about those efficacies. Neocons have faith in BIG GOVT, but it's
incoherently selective and, sadly, empirically unjustified.
Let us pray that they're suitably chastized by their recent experiments and sufficiently
marginalized politically.
Classical liberalism is a much more consistent political philosophy, represented
nowadays by libertarian thought. In practice though, unfortunately, most libertarians
embrace an anti-statist stance rather than a proper nonstatist bias (subsidiarity
principle).
tags: pneumatology, moral philosophy, moral theology, neoconservative catholics,
evangelical catholicism, evangelical protestantism, amoris laetitia, lgbtq persons,
divorced remarried, birth control controversy, subsidiarity principle, libertarian,
classical liberalism, canon 915, canon 916, communion wars, moral probabilism,
theology of the body, manhattan declaration