Madam, - Fr Sean Fagan (April 15th) makes some misleading comments concerning both the history and the nature of Church teaching in his attempted rebuttal of those who claim that at least some dimensions of Catholic morality - such as sexual ethics - are objectively true, regardless of varying cultural topographies.
Fr Fagan's claim that until 1800 the Catholic Church found slavery totally acceptable is false. Pope Eugene IV condemned slavery as early as 1435, centuries before slavery was (officially) abolished in the West.
His portrayal of the church's early rejection of human rights philosophy is anachronistic and misleading. The church was highly suspicious of the French Revolution's "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" as it advocated materialistic individualism divorced from concern for the common good. Events after the revolution confirmed her suspicions.
Yet the church was to the fore in developing the human rights philosophy as we know it today. Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891) stressed the need for socio-economic rights while Pope Pius XI was among the few international leaders consistently to speak out against Nazism for its disregard of human rights, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. Let us not forget that human rights, from John Locke to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, is a thoroughly Christian phenomenon.
Fr Fagan argues for a culture-relative approach to morality. So even if we assume that his claim concerning the church and her blind acceptance of slavery is true, could not someone retort that slavery was socially acceptable at the time and therefore there was nothing wrong with it? No one of good conscience would accept such a justification - least of all Fr Fagan, who, in his attack on the church's supposed support of slavery, implicitly recognises moral values that transcend cultural norms and thus contradicts himself.
Perhaps Fr Fagan should spend less time misrepresenting Catholicism in national newspapers and meditate on the paradoxes in which he involves himself. - Yours, etc,
THOMAS FINEGAN, Silloge, Navan, Co Meath.