Pius XII's Condemnation of Situation Ethics: "Accusations of rigidity first attack the adorable person of Christ"
These words, uttered 65 years ago in 1952 by Pope Ven. Pius XII against so-called 'situation ethics' ring true today now over one year since the publication of Pope Francis' Amoris Laetitia. Despite being the reigning pope when the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio entered the Jesuit seminary as a novice, Pius XII's teaching seems to have had little effect on him. Besides his daily homilies that frequently criticize "rigid" faithful Catholic, Pope Francis even told his fellow Jesuits he thought charges of "situation morality" are "boogey man" accusations, while endorsing Bernard Häring, a pro-contraception dissenting theologian.
Situation ethics, to speak of it more precisely, is an individualistic and subjective appeal to the concrete circumstances of actions to justify decisions in opposition to the natural law or God's revealed will. The magisterial interventions of Pius XII on situation ethics are remarkable, precisely for their prescience in anticipating and directly refuting Pope Francis' key arguments for his own "new morality" in Amoris Laetitia and elsewhere.
Below you may find excerpts followed by the full text of five Magisterial documents from the papacy of Pope Ven. Pius XII which strongly, clearly, and solemnly condemn the heresy of situation ethics, some of which are being published here in English for the first time.
1) Vegliare con sollecitudine, Address to the Italian Association of Catholic Midwives, October 29, 1951
[...] It will be objected, however, that such abstinence is impossible, that heroism such as this is not feasible. At the present time you can hear and read of this objection everywhere, even from those who, because of their duty and authority, should be of quite a different mind. [...] we have the doctrine of the Council of Trent which, in the chapter on the necessary and possible observance of the Commandments, referring to a passage in the works of Augustine, teaches: 'God does not command what is impossible, but when He commands, He commands, He warns you to do what you can and to ask His aid for what is beyond your powers, and He gives His help to make that possible for you'. [...]
2) La famiglia, Radio Message on the Occasion of ‘Family Day’, March 23, 1952
[...] The ‘new morality’ affirms that the Church, instead of fostering the law of human liberty and of love, and of demanding of you that dynamics which is worthy of the moral life, instead bases itself almost exclusively and with excessive rigidity, on the firmness and the intransigence of Christian moral laws, frequently resorting to the terms ‘you are obliged’, ‘it is not licit’, which has too much of an air of a degrading pedantry. [...] Taking, therefore, the words of Christ and of the Apostle as the strict rule, should not one say that the Church of today is rather inclined more to coddling than to severity? It so happens that the accusation of oppressive rigidity made against the Church by the ‘new morality,’ in reality, attacks, in the first place, the adorable Person of Christ Himself."[...]
3) Soyez les bienvenues, Discourse to the Participants in the Congress of the World Federation of Catholic Young Women, April 18, 1952
The distinctive mark of this morality is that it is not based in effect on universal moral laws, such as, for example, the Ten Commandments, but on the real and concrete conditions or circumstances in which men must act, and according to which the conscience of the individual must judge and choose. Such a state of things is unique, and is applicable only once for every human action. That is why the decision of conscience, as the advocates of this ethic assert, cannot be commanded by ideas, principles and universal laws. [...] adultery and fornication, the abuse of marriage, the solitary sin, stealing and robbery, taking away the necessities of life, depriving workers of their just wage [...]—all this is gravely forbidden by the divine Lawmaker. No examination is necessary. No matter what the situation of the individual may be, there is no other course open to him but to obey. [...] this new ethic, perhaps without being aware of it, acts according to the principle that the end justifies the means. [...] did they [the martyrs], in the face of the “situation” in which they found themselves, uselessly or even mistakenly incur a bloody death? No, certainly not, and in their blood they are the most explicit witnesses to the truth against the “new morality.”
4) Nous vous souhaitons, Discourse to the Participants of the International Congress on Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology, April 13, 1953
[...] it would be erroneous to establish for real life norms which would deviate from natural and Christian morality, and which, for want of a better word, could be called "personalist" ethics. The latter would without doubt receive a certain "orientation" from the former, but this would not admit of any strict obligation. The law of the structure of man in the concrete is not to be invented but applied.
5) Contra doctrinam, Instruction on ‘Situation Ethics’, Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, February 2, 1956
[...] Having considered these things, in order to avert the danger of the “New Morality,” of which the Supreme Pontiff Pope Pius XII spoke in the Allocutions held on the days of March 23 and April 18, 1952, and in order to safeguard the purity and intactness of Catholic doctrine, this Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office interdicts and prohibits this doctrine of "Situation Ethics” from being taught or approved, under any name whatsoever it may be designated, whether in Universities, Athenaeums, Seminaries or houses of religious formation, or in books, dissertations, lectures, whether, as they say, at conferences, or by any other means of being propagated or defended.
