It wasn’t easy for Pope Benedict XVI to stay out of the limelight after his resignation. Not because he craved public attention, but because the public craved his. News media were ready to pounce on the slightest hint that the pope emeritus had an opinion, especially if the opinion differed from his successor’s.  

One of the most unfortunate episodes involved the divulgation of private correspondence between Benedict and the then-prefect of the Secretariat for Communication of the Holy See, Msgr. Dario Viganò. As Archbishop Georg Gänswein relates in his memoir Who Believes Is Not Alone, Msgr. Viganò asked Benedict to write a preface to a series of books on the magisterium of Pope Francis. Though flattered, Benedict declined since he had too many prior commitments and his failing strength would not allow him to read all the volumes in the series. Besides, he had made it a principle never to write an introduction to a book he had never read. 

What really cast Benedict back into the limelight, however, was something else he said in the same private correspondence. He expressed consternation that Father Peter Hünermann — the German theologian who succeeded Father Hans Küng at the University of Tübingen after Father Küng’s faculties were revoked in 1979 — had contributed a volume to the series, since Father Hünermann had a large role to play in the publication of the so-called Kölner Erklärung (the “Cologne Declaration”) of 1989, a vicious attack against the magisterial authority of the pope, particularly in regard to questions of moral theology that would eventually be expounded in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) four years later. 

The primary purpose of the “Cologne Declaration” was to protest the appointment of Archbishop Joachim Meisner to the Archdiocese of Cologne, which the signers took to indicate a “new Roman centralism.” The declaration regretted the Holy See’s refusal to grant licenses to theologians dissenting from magisterial teaching, claiming that this dangerously intruded upon their academic freedom. The declaration points to Humanae Vitae as an example of how a pope can overstep his bounds and enforce his doctrinal competence “in an inadmissible way.” 

The pope emeritus’ deep concern that Father Hünermann was featured in a series dedicated to Francis’ magisterium suggests that, unlike many encyclicals, Veritatis Splendor is even more important today than it was when first published. In his memoir, Archbishop Gänswein explains that, at the time of the encyclical, Cardinal Ratzinger, then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was deeply troubled by theologians insisting that “the good” meant nothing more than “better than x.” If the basic criterion for judging a moral action is merely a calculation of that action’s possible consequences, and if morality is based simply on whatever seems “better,” morality itself collapses since it fails to account for the “good” in itself, which, in turn, hardly allows Christianity to call herself “the Way” with any consistency and integrity. 

This, Cardinal Ratzinger explained in his introduction to Veritatis Splendor, was the reason for the ostensibly metaphysical approach of the encyclical rooted primarily in a robust theology of creation, allowing Pope St. John Paul II to bring together the seemingly separated poles of anthropocentrism and theocentrism and have them mutually reinforce one another.  

“Reason,” we read in the encyclical, “draws its own truth and authority from the eternal law, which is none other than divine wisdom itself.” John Paul II even asserts that “the natural law is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God.” To some, this might seem to eviscerate natural law and moral philosophy in the face of divine law and moral theology. Yet natural law is made no less “natural” by relating it to the God who infuses it in us. In fact, this is precisely the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, who says that natural law is nothing other than a certain participation in eternal law. Indeed, the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and evil, is nothing other than the “imprint of the divine light in us” (Summa Theologiae I-II, 91, 2).  

Cardinal Ratzinger emphasized that the metaphysics of creation at the core of the encyclical — which, in turn, is the basis for objective moral norms — led John Paul II to an astounding exposition of martyrdom.  

“The unacceptability,” Pope John Paul explains, “of ‘teleological,’ ‘consequentialist,’ and ‘proportionalist’ ethical theories, which deny the existence of negative moral norms regarding specific kinds of behavior, norms which are valid without exception, is confirmed in a particularly eloquent way by Christian martyrdom.”   

In the Book of Daniel, Susanna preferred to die rather than commit adultery. “By her readiness to die a martyr,” writes John Paul II, “she proclaims that it is not right to do what God’s law qualifies as evil in order to draw some good from it.” John the Baptist “gave his life in witness to truth and justice,” together with Stephen, James and countless others who “bore witness to and defended moral truth even to the point of enduring martyrdom.” Early Christians refused even to feign the worship of an idol because they “preferred death to a single mortal sin.”  

Do we? Only if we have our metaphysics right. The 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume famously asserted that we cannot derive an “ought” from an “is.” But the metaphysics of martyrdom teach us that every “is” inevitably leads to an “ought.” The early martyrs who refused to burn incense before a statue of the emperor (Revelation 13:7-10) knew that they ought to die because “performing even a single concrete act contrary to God’s love and the witness of faith” is objectively wrong. 

Veritatis Splendor is one of those encyclicals we need more today than we did when it was published. It reminds us to pray that we be more willing to die than to lie, cheat, steal, fornicate or commit adultery, let alone burn incense in front of an idol. If we live by the metaphysics of martyrdom, we will be ready to join those who, “like Christ himself … obediently trusted and handed over their lives to the Father, the one who could free them from death.” 

 

Daniel Gallagher is a lecturer in literature and philosophy at Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia.