“Which of these three, do you think, was a
neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one
who showed him mercy.” St. Luke 10:36-37
The
book was called “The Casuist: Cases in Moral and Pastoral Theology,” and
because it was published in 1906, I was able to download it onto my Kindle for
free. In the little town where I last
served as rector, they gave free gym memberships to the local clergy, so I took
my exercise on the elliptical machine, and for about six months, “The Casuist”
kept my mind occupied as my arms and legs ran through the machine’s monotonous
courses.
I don’t know if any of you read in
the gym or not, but I’ve found that books with short chapters and relatively
punchy content works best. And “The
Casuist” filled the bill in spades. Over
several volumes, it collected hundreds of “hard cases,” moral quandaries that
had been sent to the author, a certain Stanislaus Woywod, OFM, by puzzled
priests who ran across them while hearing confessions and giving spiritual
advice.
Fr.
Woywod’s cases tend toward the curious and the colorful. There’s Mary, who lays dying and would like
to make her confession to the priest over the telephone because her antireligious
husband forbids him from entering the house.[1] John, who becomes engaged to a (presumably
different) Mary, and then breaks it off without any good reason and marries
Martha in a civil ceremony needs to sort out what he owes to his jilted.[2]
And there’s a certain Father X, who
because of his scandalous conduct, has been forbidden by his bishop to enter a
saloon for a full year except to administer the last rites. If he is vacationing in another diocese, the
good father wonders, does the prohibition still apply?[3]
Many of the book’s cases involve two
laws or moral principles that seem to contradict each other, like the principle
that one should avoid occasions of sin and the fact that a bishop’s
jurisdiction necessarily has certain limits.
Some involve moral problems created by new technology and social situations,
where new principles need to be generated by looking back to similar situations
in earlier times.
The
book is fascinating for anyone interested in social history because it shows
all the challenges present for Catholics leaving the monoreligious farming
villages of the old world for a new land.
America is full of new moral quandaries: insurance companies who one’s
employer orders one to defraud;[4]
morphine, which might be taken in some situations but not in others;[5]
and legendary religious diversity. One
can be sure that back in Sicilian villages, priests didn’t encounter many people
like Titus, who “without the least scruple of conscience, has changed his
religion a number of times, for the sake of worldly gain.”[6]
I did enjoy a chuckle or two as I
read the book, but in many ways it was very helpful for me in my current work
as a priest. Because people do ask
priests hard questions. They find themselves
in situations at work or in their relationships where two obligations seem to
be in tension with each other. People
wonder when they should insist on a higher standard and when it’s right to go
along with the crowd. They worry about
balancing different commitments they have made, and how they should think about
the new moral and social situations that spring up around us every day. As an Episcopal priest in 2016 I don’t always
agree with Fr. Woywod in 1906, but the manner in which he reasons his way to a
conclusion can often be very valuable.
Casuistry is an ancient practice,
and it arises from the best of intentions.
People who love God and want to do His will inevitably find themselves
in situations that are morally perplexing. The Law God gave to Israel clearly
envisions unusual cases that may arise.
Saint Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians is pretty much one long
exercise in casuistry, as the apostle works through a set of questions raised
by the congregation there. Rabbis in
Jesus’ time were principally casuists, responsible for helping people reason
their way through how to apply the principles of the God’s law to particular
situations. And Jesus shows himself a
master of the art, and in some ways a critic of it, in today’s Gospel, the
Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Jesus tells his famous story, which
is really a moral case study, in an exchange with a teacher of the law. The exchange begins with consensus—Jesus and
the teacher both agree that the best summary of God’s law comes from the
combination of two Old Testament passages.
To enter into eternal life, one must love God with one’s heart, mind and
strength and one’s neighbor as one’s self.
But then the lawyer asks a question: “and who is my neighbor?”
It’s possible that the man was
trying to trap Jesus with the question, but it was also a perfectly reasonable
thing to ask a rabbi. We know from
Jewish texts of the time that different scholars gave different answers to the
question. Because society was changing,
and there were many more neighbors around than there used to be. Back when God gave the law to Moses, Jewish
people were a monoreligious, family-linked, insular society. In Jesus’ time, they were spread around the
known world, living alongside people who practiced diverse religions, spoke
different languages, and kept unusual social practices. What if my neighbor is one of the despised
Samaritan heretics? What if he’s a Roman
legionary or a swindling Greek trader? I
know God would want me to love as myself the person who sits beside me in synagogue,
but surely there must be limits. The
lawyer wants to know the boundaries Jesus puts around this term “your neighbor.”
And so to answer the question, Jesus
sets out a case. It’s a case about “some
guy”—the term is deliberately anonymous.[7] Even at the end of the story we don’t know
anything about this opening figure. Is he
a Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, pious or scoundrel? All we know him is that he is beset by
bandits, robbed, stripped naked and left unconscious along the side of the
road. He can’t speak. He’s not wearing the distinctive dress of any
social group. He could be anybody. That’s exactly the point.
The first man to happen upon him is
a priest, who is certainly socially prominent, probably wealthy, and hopefully
pious. Because
he’s a priest, he’s also bound by a series of laws about ritual purity. If he touches a dead man, or steps in blood,
maybe even if he touches an unbeliever, he will have violated his vows and
until he has offered a sacrifice of atonement, he won’t be able to minister in
the temple. Of course, he’s also obliged
to help a man in trouble. But maybe he
wanted to take the safest path, or maybe he was in a hurry, or maybe he couldn’t
be bothered. But he rides on by, leaving
the man half-dead in the ditch.
A
Levite rides by next, and he gets a little closer to the man in the ditch. The purity laws are a little laxer in his
case, but maybe he’s seen the priest ride by, and he thinks it would be
disrespectful to question the holy man’s judgment. So the Levite rides on as well, and the man
remains half-dead in the ditch.
But
then a Samaritan comes, a trader in a foreign land. He, above all, was a man who could be excused
for keeping his distance. The man in the
ditch is almost certainly not one of his kind.
He’s a stranger in a hostile land, where people recoil from his touch
and avert their eyes in his presence.
But
the Samaritan goes to “some guy,” the man in the ditch. He binds up his wounds, like God who binds up
his broken people. He pours in oil and
wine—antiseptic and balm, yes, but also the holy foods of the temple. He carries the man back to an inn, where he
could well be suspected for the crime. One
commentator I read compared it to an Indian riding into Dodge City with a
scalped cowboy in the saddle.[8] The Samaritan probably doesn’t just put the
man on his own horse, he also leads it like a servant. When he leaves the inn, he
pays for two weeks’ lodging, and promises to make good on the rest when he
comes back again.
Which
of the three, Jesus asks, was neighbor to the man who fell among the
thieves? He’s shifted the question, you
see. He’s not asking about who
discharged his carefully delimited duty properly. When “some guy” was nearly dead, Jesus means,
who became God’s true child by extending the mercy that saved his life. The teacher of the law gives the proper
answer. “The one who showed mercy,” he
says. The true neighbor was the one who
drew so near out of love, and risked his own life to save a man he never knew.
But
Jesus has also problematized the teacher’s original question. As the great New Testament scholar T. W.
Manson summarized, Jesus is suggesting that “love does not begin by defining
its objects; it discovers them.”[9]
On
the one hand, Jesus does give us a straightforward moral case with a number of
clear conclusions. It’s more important
to show mercy than to keep the laws for ritual purity. Helping a neighbor is more important than
maintaining one’s social position. My neighbor is any person I discover who
needs what I can give. Go and do likewise,
Jesus says, and in these days of such great social division and violence, we
need not look far to see many neighbors crying out for our attention and help.
But
as so often in these parables, Jesus also gestures towards something even more
beautiful and profound. This is
casuistry, but it is also prophecy. In
this unlikely figure, the Samaritan, Jesus points toward a God who loves all
whom He has made, who is merciful and life-giving. He helps us imagine that all social barriers
might one day fall, that when we looked at one another, we might see only “some
guy”—or better, this person who God has made in His own image, this person who
too is my brother or my sister. And
Jesus suggests that this healing and reconciling work might come from a most
unsuitable hero. The true Good Samaritan,
He would be One who came as a servant and was despised and rejected. He would be One who drew near to a broken and
dying human race. He would be One who
risked His own life in a single gesture of costly love.
[1] Woywod, Stanislaus. The Casuist: A Collection of Cases in
Moral and Pastoral Theology. New
York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1906, I.100ff.
[2] Ibid., I.128ff.
[4] Ibid., I.261ff.
[5] Ibid., I.255ff.
[7]
Hoezee, Scott. Luke 10:25-37. Center for Excellence in Preaching. http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/proper-10c/?type=the_lectionary_gospel
8 Jul. 2016.
[8] Bailey, Kenneth. Through Peasant Eyes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980, 52.
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