The Thinker sculpture by Rodin in Paris. Reasoning is a process of logic leading to a conclusion, while rationalisation begins with a conviction and seeks to justify it by a reasoning that is erroneous.

Some interlocutors glibly dismiss moral arguments that happen to coincide with the position of the Church as religious and, consequently, irrelevant in a secular society. The world has come of age and it does not need religion to decide what is right and what is wrong! The Enlightenment has shown us clearly that reason is all we need to know the way.

This implies that there is a morality for Christians that binds Christians but not non-believers. This is a fallacy. There is no morality applicable to Christians only. Christian morality simply means living in a genuinely human way. This was the way of Jesus in the Gospel. For him, the dignity of the human person was the priority, over and above any law.

The greatest affirmation of this was when he said the Sabbath is for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath (Mk 2,27-28). He always defended those who were burdened with religious laws and accused those who “put on others heavy loads which they would not touch with their fingers”. (Lk 11,46)

The Gospel helps us understand that genuine human nature needs to be open to what goes beyond material values, a factor that non-believers may not always appreciate . Inspired by the Gospel, the Church arrives at its moral positions by trying to find out which behaviours are conducive to genuine human flourishing and which are not. It does this through a process of reasoning.

In this, the Church is helped by knowledge that comes from the biological, physical and human sciences. However, it is important to keep in mind that these sciences are only descriptive. They may give some indication of what is right and wrong, but for a full moral judgement we need philosophy.

The Church arrives at its moral positions through a process of reasoning. It is helped by knowledge that comes from the biological, physical and human sciences

Many Christians are offended because their religion sidelined and relegated to the personal sphere rather than belonging to society. Personally, I am more offended that today’s secular society often sidelines reason, because many of its arguments – supposedly based on reason – are, in reality, based on rationalisation.

British psychoanalyst Alfred Ernest Jones introduced the term rationalisation to psychoanalysis in 1908, defining it as ‘the inventing of a reason for an attitude or action the motive of which is not recognised’.

In other words, while reasoning is a process of logic leading to a conclusion, rationalisation begins with a conviction, often reached through the logic of the affect, seeking to justify it by a reasoning that is erroneous.

The philosophy of old described man as rational. To some extent this is correct but, largely, it is not. Since Freud discovered how much we are under the influence of our unconscious, we have come to understand to what extent we – including our reasoning – are conditioned by its contents and how much we use the logic of the affect rather than Aristotelian logic. Often, when we say ‘I think’, in reality we should be saying ‘I feel’.

If we had to analyse many arguments made about embryo freezing lately and which have been presented as rational arguments, it would not take us long to realise that most of the time they are the fruit of rationalisation, not of reasoning.

Secular society has a right to disagree with some of the Church’s moral conclusions but in order to do this it needs to find flaws in the Church’s logic. I am not saying the Church is always right as it too needs to seek to continuously understand nature. It is in a state of ongoing learning and does not have final, definitive answers.

However, this is very different from dismissing arguments because they are of a religious nature and, consequently, not binding for non-Christians. The vocation of every Christian is to live in a dignified human way and this is also the vocation of every human person.

Democratic majority has a right to legislate but it gives us no assurance that its laws make us better people.

ajsmicallef@gmail.com

Fr Alfred Micallef is a member of the Society of Jesus.