In this post, I offer the simplest compelling argument against Catholic Integralism that I know of. It is based on the Mortara Case, where Pope Pius IX, sovereign of the papal states, removed Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish boy, from his Jewish family. Pius IX did so because he discovered that the boy had been illicitly baptized by the family’s Catholic servant. The child, by law, was owed a Catholic education, and Pius IX saw to that himself, raising Mortara as his own. Some integralists say Pius IX acted permissibly; everyone else disagrees. On this basis, we can formulate a simple argument as follows:

The Mortara Argument (Against Integralism)

1. If integralism is true, Pope Pius IX was morally permitted to remove Edgardo Mortara from his parents.
2. But Pius IX was not morally permitted to remove Edgardo Mortara from his parents.
3. Therefore, integralism is false.

Defense of premise 1

Pius IX was, by integralist standards (and perhaps by others), the legitimate sovereign of the papal states, and as such, had a duty to prepare his subjects for eternal beatitude. The moral law forbids forced baptism, but once it occurs, the baptized are under the jurisdiction of the Church and are owed the gifts of the Church, which includes a Catholic education. Being Jewish, the Mortara family was likely to deprive their child of this great good, so Pius IX was morally and legally bound to intervene once he learned that Edgardo had been validly baptized by his babysitter, essentially.

Further evidence for premise 1 is that I don’t know any integralists who argue that Pius IX acted wrongly. And you would think that if there were at least some way to show that integralism does not have this implication, that we’d have seen the argument by now. I have read a ton of integralist publications and I just haven’t seen it (but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). So it seems to me integralists accept premise 1, and that’s further reason to think 1 is true.

Defense of Premise 2

Everyone but integralists accept it, including all non-integralist Catholics I know of. I assume this includes at least the last five popes, and probably all living cardinals, and maybe all living bishops in the Catholic Church. That is, the wise within the Catholic Church agree with premise 2, as does seemingly everyone else outside the Catholic Church.

Beyond testimonial evidence, and mere moral intuitions, what’s the reason that removing Mortara was wrong? Well, the goods of family life together are very great, and the Mortara family was gravely damaged and its members gravely psychologically harmed. On top of that, it seems unjust to take children from their parents because parents have a natural right to raise their children in accord with their faith, within some reasonable limits. Further, Pius IX’s reasoning does not satisfy the Golden Rule. It would not be acceptable for a Jewish state to treat a Catholic family as Pius IX treated the Mortaras. He did not treat the Mortaras as he would be treated.

But even if you can’t expressly state the explanation of the wrongness of the act, the deep set nature of the intuition that Pius IX acted wrongly is itself evidence that the act was wrong. We all have a faculty of moral intuition that either perceives the moral truth or is a summary of our reasoning in that direction, and the deliverance of that faculty is clear.

Reject Integralism Before Rejecting Premise 2

I think the intuition grounding premise 2 is so deep set that we are rationally entitled to reject the weakest premise in any argument that Pius IX’s acts were morally permissible. That is, just about any rational person should simply reject the weakest premises in the best arguments for integralism (the basis for showing Pius IX acted permissibly) and take the modus tollens. It seems like any reasonable person would be rationally entitled, if not rationally required, to do so.

The only exception is if you think integralism is Catholic dogma, in which case you have to accept that Pius IX acted permissibly or abandon your entire faith. But if I were Catholic and found myself believing integralism is Catholic dogma, I would do everything I rationally could to avoid it. Anyone should be extremely hesitant to accept that Pius IX acted permissibly.

So, there’s the argument. It is valid, and the case for the two premises is very strong. This won’t move integralists, I realize. But I do think they have a burden of explaining why we should reject moral commonsense, even the commonsense of Catholic Christians.

And Yet…

But I still sense a weakness in the argument, related to my first integralism post, which is that these kinds of modus tollens arguments only go so far. That integralism must embrace removing Mortara raises a red flag, but it doesn’t tell us what the problem with the view is. We know integralism has an untoward implication, but we don’t know if the basis for the implication is sufficiently weak that we can reject it, whatever it turns out to be. So the Mortara argument is really less of a proof against integralism and more of a reason to draw out the rationales for integralism and assess them. It should lead us to ask the question, “What went wrong that we ended up at this point?”