When I read that La Civilta Cattolica recently published an article titled Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism in the USA: A Surprising Ecumenism, I had to look it up. I even printed out a copy which is now marked up by a yellow highlighter and a red pen. A read and a number of rereads have me thinking and noting connections between this piece and other recent reads.

An aside for background on this publication is warranted. The title translates as Catholic Civilization. It has been published continuously since 1850. All articles are subject to revision by and the approval of the Vatican's Secretariat of State prior to publication. The purpose of the publication is to "promote a catholic culture, thought, and civilization in the modern world. . .in fidelity to
the magisterium of the church." (Wikipedia) In other words, it is considered an official organ of the central authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

The article is a critical analysis of the political scene in the United States with particular emphasis on the collaboration of Christian-Evangelical fundamentalists and Catholic integralists in pursuit of their socio-political goal of "a problematic fusion between religion and state, faith and politics, religious values and economy." It points out the danger in using this particular orientation to address a full range of issues from ecological crises, to ecumenism, to religious liberty in a secular state, and to armed conflict. There is a directly stated challenge to the "non-allegorical understanding" of biblical texts with the added caution that  ". . .a unidirectional reading of the biblical texts can anesthetize consciences or actively support the most atrocious and dramatic portrayal of a world. . ."

Those quotes from the article remind me of the response Noam Chomsky gave to an interviewer's question whether there were religious motivations that framed Chomsky's social justice work. The response reads: "No religious motivation, and for sound reasons. One can contrive a religious motivation for virtually any choice of action, from commitment to the highest ideals to support for the most horrendous atrocities. In the sacred texts, we find uplifting calls for peace, justice and mercy, along with the most genocidal passages in the literary canon. Conscience is our guide, whatever trappings we might choose to clothe it in." (New York Times, July 5, 2017)

Reinhold Niebuhr in his work The Irony of American History published in 1952 notes that there is a "mixture of good and evil in all human virtue" and "even the best human actions involve some guilt." When Niebuhr speaks of American exceptionalism, it is in the context of the "sin of American exceptionalism." Human communities and, most certainly, nation states claim innocence "according to their own official myth and collective memory."

I think what these three voices are saying is that any and all human endeavors fall short of perfection, if for no other reason than the simple fact they are human endeavors. Everyone and everything is a work in progress and will remain so as long as there are human actors. Niebuhr describes original sin as "the inevitable confusion between the relative (the individual in context) and the universal." Making use of the language of Christian morality, sin may be a simple and well-founded acknowledgment of the limited capacity of the human species and the individual person for perfection. Such a state is simply not attainable in either our personal lives or our corporate endeavors. Is it from this perspective that Pope Francis speaks of universal "sinner-hood" and poses the question "Who am I to judge?" The central message of the La Civilta Cattolica article is that no socio-political structure, nation state, or human organization can lay claim to absolute superiority, perfection, and the ultimate incarnation of the ideal. The human endeavor that wraps itself in the cloak of the absolute good and all others in varying degrees culminating in absolute evil is only masking its false and preposterous claim to that which is humanly impossible and that which is inhumane.

Does a moral equivalency argument have any place in Christian moral thought? Can one even raise this question with any degree of legitimacy in a discussion of New Testament Christian morality? Does it provide another angle of insight into Pope Francis' question "Who am I to judge?" Quantitatively there are manners of degree when it comes to human activity. Can such methodology be applied in Christian moral thinking?  Or is there no qualitative difference that can be used to justify certain actions or ranking of actions? If this is a legitimate question and a perspective that the individual Christian is to make use of in evaluating the relative merits or moral uprightness of his/her own and the behavior of others, are we left with anything other than saints and sinners indistinguishable from one another living in anarchy or in a vision and version of heaven?

I don't have a clear answer. The message in all this may well be there are no clear answers. This is one more aspect of the human condition that is simply incapable of perfection. Wisdom, or simply old age, may be that time that has been described in various ways, one of which I will try to paraphrase: When I was young I knew lots of things with lots of certainty, now that I am older I know a lot more things with a lot less certainty.