Archbishop Donald Wuerl - right or wrong?

This does not come under the heading of "news," for everyone already knows that Roman Catholic archbishops pretend to share the mind of god and thus know the difference between right and wrong.

And that's just what Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, D. C. said in an address on April 4 at Rome's Pontifical University of St. Thomas Acquinas. Cindy Wooden of Catholic News Service restated the archbishop's words thusly:

"The moral values taught by the world's main religions form the only ethical code with enough depth to help people judge what is right and wrong in a modern, increasingly technological society."

Religion, says Wuerl according to Wooden, "has been a key source guiding people to act righteously and promote the common good. ... more and more people are realizing that 'purely secular philosophy cannot offer the answers; it cannot provide a foundation deep enough' to respond to questions about right and wrong in an increasingly technological world."

One must accept "enduring moral values," said the archbishop, "which are both reasonable and confirmed by the constant teaching of the world's religions, or else 'personal preference becomes normative.'"

I suppose the archbishop is rather worried about the decline of the Roman Church, and the fact that the Muslims are now number one in the world and how a whole lot of the Roman Catholic faithful ignore much of what their church teaches because they know from experience it is neither moral nor ethical. Those may be the ones he's talking about for whom "personal preference becomes normative." They probably skip confession and Mass, too.

We are not told by the archbishop which of the world's religion's moral values we should accept, although he does mention Christians, Muslims and Jews. But what about the other religions of the world? Or are their moral values unworthy?

And which moral values taught by the world's religions should we be concerned with? The archbishop doesn't say.

So we are left with platitudes which will probably send folks off into the night shaking their heads in agreement because what the archbishop proposed sounds so good even though it is essentially empty of meaning and is, in truth, quite wrong.


Anyone with a smidgen of knowledge about the history of the world knows that the greatest perpetrators of hatred, violence and death and destruction have been the world's major religions. This is all detailed in the holy books subscribed to by these faith groups, and also by secular documents available for all to peruse and reflect upon.

On the other hand, it is also true that much hatred, violence, death and destruction has been thrust upon the earth's inhabitants by non-religious people. The "faithful" usually point to Stalin and/or Hitler, and of late, Saddam Hussein, as examples. Stalin, although he was raised in the Russian Orthodox tradition, did not show many religious tendencies when in power. Hitler, a Roman Catholic until the end, was a religious person and had an ongoing relationship with the Roman church and even invoked the Lutheran "saint," Martin Luther, as one who blessed his Nazi horrors.


Now if the archbishop is speaking of moral values, such as do not kill, or do not steal, or do not bear false witness, he need not go to religion to find them. The Ten Commandments, which so many people like to claim an affinity for, were not original with the Israelites, but a reworking of other ancient codes of law, such as the Code of Hammurabi (who, like Moses, believed God had chosen him to deliver the law to his people.) Perhaps Hammurabi was religious in his own way, but I don't think Archbishop Wuerl would accept that as "true" religion nor would he accept Hammurabi's moral values.


Furthermore, I'm afraid that some of those moral values that the archbishop refers to are values specific to the Roman Church. I think he is saying that a true moralist would be against all abortions, all family planning, anything that would contradict Catholic doctrine, and against the notion of separation of church and state.

In fact, he did mention the latter when he said that we need greater dialogue to defend "the essential role of faith in public life and human affairs."

Unfortunately, he left us out in the cold here, too, never bothering to explain the meaning of the phrase, "essential role of faith in public life and human affairs." We've got one home-grown example of how this might work, though. George W. Bush heard from god and god told him to invade Iraq. So much for faith in American public life and Iraqi human affairs!

Furthermore, if we look back through history to those days of yore when the Roman church actually did exercise its faith in public life and human affairs and all the hell on earth that caused, we'd probably suggest the archbishop was full of gas.


The truth is that Archbishop Wuerl's arguments have been dismantled over and over again by numerous philosophers and theologians. One can certainly defend one's religion as providing its adherents with a moral and ethical code. But it doesn't necessarily follow that it is the best or even a good moral and ethical code. Nor can one conclude that people without a religion are incapable of coming up with a moral and ethical code just as valid or even more valid than one based on a religion.

I'm going to quote a couple of paragraphs from Sam Harris. He may be an atheist, but Sam has a better handle on right and wrong than does Archbishop Wuerl:

"If a person doesn't already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won't discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran -- as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness. ...

"We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn't make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery -- and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture -- like the golden rule -- can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe."

I would add that in order to devise a proper moral and ethical code, one must of necessity ignore much of what is written in the holy books; which is exactly what religious people do, even the Christian fundamentalists who like to believe the Bible is the "inerrant" word of God!


However...with some deeply religious people flying airplanes into New York City skyscrapers and others working day and night to impose their beliefs upon our system of government, and true believers bombing the hell out of each other all over the world, it would seem that religion might be the last place one would go to find a workable moral and ethical system.

And that suggests that just because you're an archbishop doesn't necessarily mean you know what you're talking about.