Lived Experience and the Search for Truth: Introduction

by Deborah Savage and Robert Fastiggi

[This descriptive and informative introduction to Lived Experience and the Search for Truth is reproduced from the book except for footnotes. This important book can be purchased through Enroute Books and Media.]

Introduction to Lived Experience and the Search for Truth

An Overview

In his classic work, After Virtue, Alistair MacIntyre argues persuasively that all contemporary moral disputes are driven by a kind of “emotivism,” the conviction that at the heart of our seemingly interminable debates is the assumption that personal preference—and not self-evident first principles—is the starting place of all moral discourse. The truth is now what “I” say it is, or at least what I prefer it to be, and anyone who disputes my right to hold to “my truth,” no matter how illconsidered or arbitrary, can only be a bigot or an ideologue. MacIntyre’s analysis sheds light on a critically important feature of the current state of public discourse. We now face a situation in which personal, subjective experience trumps reasoned argument of any kind; the language of lived experience has become the linguistic currency of our era.

This is a dangerous development, for to traffic in this conversation is to accept the terms established by those under the sway of a faulty premise: that there is an unbridgeable gap between one’s subjective experience and the exercise of reason. This is a false dichotomy, one that we have allowed to permeate our discourse for far too long. Like a poisonous mist, it has seeped silently into the common sense of the culture almost without notice—and without any overt exercise of power or coercion. It has confused the human community literally for centuries, preventing a full-throated search for the truth and truncating the quest for self-knowledge and wholeness.

The aim of this volume is to confront this false dichotomy. The collection is an effort to reclaim the language of lived experience from those who would have us believe that it supplies a complete and adequate guide to achieving the fullness of human happiness. Together we will demonstrate that, while attending to one’s own experience is certainly one step in coming to understand oneself, it provides but a glimpse—a partial clue—into the mystery of who one is and is meant to be. Indeed, experience is not alienated from human cognition but integral to it. Wisdom is the fruit of both experience and reason. But, as we will show, contrary to claims of those who would give primacy to subjective personal experience over and against the conclusions of right reason, it is only possible to arrive at the full truth about oneself if the intellect is allowed to pursue its proper end, not mere knowledge but understanding.

Finally, we hope to persuade the reader that a proper grasp of the place of lived experience in the search for truth reveals that the Catholic understanding of the human person and human sexuality provide the only sure route to human happiness.

Context and Rationale

The immediate context for this volume is an event that took place in July 2022, when the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAL) published the proceedings of an interdisciplinary study seminar convened by the Academy from October 30 to November 1, 2021. The seminar sought to “recast a theological ethics of life” in light of the “doctrinal impulse” thought to characterize Pope Francis’s more recent papal corpus. Entitled Theological Ethics of Life: Scripture, tradition, practical challenges, the final base text was the fruit of the collaboration of eight authors who hoped to transcend the persistent divide between “conservatives and liberals, traditionalists and revisionists” in the “delicate field of bioethics.” According to the president of the Academy, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the book was “unique in its kind” in that it was a serious attempt to “develop these processes of ecclesial dynamism, which does not limit itself to the mere repetition of old formulas and commonplaces.” Its stated purpose was to initiate debate on what might constitute a theological ethics of life.

It would be beyond our purposes at this point to provide a summary or even a critique of the PAL document. Suffice it to say that it generated a strong response on the part of the Catholic community. For some, it symbolized a welcome step toward a long sought after wish to relax the Church’s teaching on a number of controverted issues, most notably those having to do with human sexuality. For others, it represented a dangerous advance in the now decades old battle to preserve the Church’s teaching on the same. The ancient stricture on contraception, so central to the doctrine of Humanae Vitae— and the Church’s account of human sexuality and its meaning as a whole—seemed to be, once again, under attack.

Within just a few months of the publication of the PAL document, the International Catholic Jurists Forum (ICJF) organized a conference in response to these concerns. Held in Rome in December 2022, the conference included an impressive gathering of internationally known scholars from various disciplines, all recognized experts in their field. Together they assembled an impressive and unassailable set of arguments in defense of the Church’s teaching on the human person and human sexuality. The proceedings of that event were published early in 2024 in a volume entitled Humanae Vitae and Catholic Sexual Morality. The collection represents perhaps the most comprehensive rationale yet for the validity of the Catholic Church’s position, grounded in a realist metaphysics and the moral law, both natural and divine, its truth demonstrated by irrefutable evidence from both the physical and social sciences. Once again, the teaching of Humanae vitae was undeniably vindicated. And this is all to the good.

But the problem we really must face—and what this present volume is meant to address—is that those we seek to persuade, whether in the culture at large, or within the Church herself, are not listening. Indeed, they have been either deaf or resistant to these same arguments for decades. Unaccountably, they ignore the mountain of evidence compiled in the last 60 years, evidence that documents with undeniable clarity the toxic impact of the sexual revolution on actual, living men and women, on families, and on the society as a whole. The question that begs to be asked is - why? Why turn away from such obvious truths?

The answer is well within reach; the signs are all around us. They are reported in the media, signaled by both students and faculty on college campuses, invoked by politicians, family members, friends, and co-workers. They reveal the manifestly evident fact that the language of subjective personal experience has displaced rational argument in both private and public discourse. Indeed, personal experience has become the lexicon of our era; it is now considered the only valid touchstone of truth. Claims about the existence of universal truth or an objective moral order often cannot find a foothold when confronted with the argument that such realities do not resonate with a particular individual’s personal “experience.” Rather than a starting place in self-evident first principles, the arbiter of what constitutes right thinking and moral human behavior, assuming that question is even asked, has become a matter of personal preference. This is a reality confronted daily by persons in all circumstances, no matter what their philosophical persuasion or worldview. It is a position advanced by our culture and encountered in the media, in education, in academia, in our political discourse. And now, it seems even to have entered into the deliberations of the Catholic Church.

Of course, this development did not happen overnight. Indeed, it could be argued that it has been underway since the 14th century. We will consider its origins later in the volume. For now, let us acknowledge that if we are to have any hope of recovering a culture, not only of life, but one in which sound reason has a foothold, it seems clear that it is time to reconsider our strategy. Surely it is necessary to face the fact that our more abstract metaphysical arguments, as essential as they are, are not finding purchase in this “battle” with those intent on dismantling the Church’s moral teachings, and not only those found in Humanae vitae. It is time to take them up on their claim that experience should take primacy over truths arrived at through reasoned argument, whether those ground Church doctrine or are relied on in providing pastoral guidance to the those who seek it. For such a claim presents us with a manufactured either/or proposition, a false choice between two loci of wisdom that actually are meant to inform one another in the search for what is so. Indeed, such thinking reflects a woefully inadequate understanding of how the Church arrives at her teachings in the first place.

As anyone familiar with the Church’s own methods should know, experience is not a separate category in the search for truth; it is the starting place of the search for truth. The Catholic intellectual tradition does not base its investigation on the methods of Cartesian rationalism; nor does it reduce knowledge to its twin, the deadly “sensism” of David Hume. The Church’s proposals regarding the path to human happiness are not derived out of thin air, nor do they reflect a radical reduction of the person to merely his material existence. Rather they are derived from both faith and reason, both Scripture and the evidence of the senses, as well as centuries of reflection on their significance for man’s life and his actions in the world. The Church—and those who seek to further her vision—subscribe to a particular form of realism: the conviction that truth is arrived at through contact with reality itself. She upholds the view that it is the direct experience of the real that prompts the questions that then drive us all to pursue knowledge of the truth and an understanding of God’s word. And further, that this more comprehensive understanding of man and of his place in the world is the only sure road to human happiness.

In arguing that subjective human experience should take priority over and against reasoned argument, proponents of this view—be they in the Church or in the wider culture—are rejecting not only the possibility of objective moral norms—but the very possibility of ever arriving at them. Lived experience is not a separate, distinct realm that operates in isolation from human cognitional acts; it is integral to them. Knowledge begins in the senses, which prompts the intellect to seek the meaning of the world and of our experience of it. Experience might be the launching pad and, when properly integrated into the whole of who one is, may lead one to grasp the truths embedded in the natural law or the Church’s own doctrine. But it cannot be confused with the truth itself. As Father Bernard Lonergan used to say, “insights are a dime a dozen.” Their true value is discerned through a deliberate, reasoned inquiry and the scrutiny of judgment. The same can be said of experience. Sometimes it leads to a dead-end.

Now, having said that, one is justified in being nonetheless sympathetic to the deeper concerns reflected in this new paradigm. Surely, we can all acknowledge the kernel of truth at the heart of the shift under consideration in this new approach: the argument that abstract ideas, however carefully reasoned, are not enough to live the Christian life. With this we can all agree. Further, it is essential to recognize that the starting place of any pastoral encounter is not likely to be a reiteration of doctrinal statements, no matter how carefully articulated. Clearly, abstract ideas must be translated, often in real time, into the lexicon of the pastoral minister, the psychologist, the parent, the friend. The starting place of such interactions—which are, after all, not with man per se but with concretely existing persons—will surely not be abstractions but their personal lived experience. The question that remains is how to properly integrate that experience—which can only ever be partial—into the whole of who one is.

Our Aim

And this brings us to our aim in this collection. What distinguishes it from other attempts is, above all, its method. Rather than beginning with the metaphysical framework which, though indisputably essential to our understanding of this teaching, seems unpersuasive in the contemporary milieu, our hope here is to arrive at the truths embedded in the Church’s moral teaching, especially those on human sexuality, not by deducing them from an abstract account of human nature, but through a process of induction, with the evidence of lived experience as our starting place. The volume is an initial attempt to arrive inductively at the truths embedded in the moral teaching of the Church through the lived experience of faithful men and women, rendered intelligible in conceptual terms.

It seems clear that those who seek to give priority to experience over truths arrived at through reason are proceeding without an adequate theory or understanding of the place that “lived experience” really does hold in a coherent account of the person. It is not enough to merely assert its place; one needs a full account of the person, one that includes the recognition that he is distinguished from all of creation by his power of reason, so that we can grasp the principles that govern our use of it in pastoral encounters. Perhaps the Church Fathers are unaware of Pope St. John Paul II’s own proposition that the category of lived experience is an essential element in a full account of the moral life and the search for the whole truth about oneself. Perhaps if they could be alerted to it, they would find a way to address the pastoral needs of their flock without appearing to subordinate doctrine to lived experience. Perhaps they would find it helpful in their fervent wish to assist those who suffer to arrive at the wholeness all persons seek. Perhaps this could be the basis of the “paradigm shift” the Holy Father suggests is needed.

Indeed, the fact is that the “experience” that generally grounds the conclusion that Catholic teaching is too hard, too rigid, too strict for human persons, is primarily that of women and men who dissent a priori from the Church’s teaching on the meaning and telos of human sexuality, Humanae Vitae in particular. Overlooked in this calculus is the lived experience of those who are faithful to it. For there are those whose own experience has led them instead to the opposite conclusion—that the Catholic understanding of the human person and the meaning of human sexuality lead, in fact, to authentic human flourishing. About all this we will have much to say in what follows.

We anticipate and invite further research into the significance of this approach. Though it must never be allowed to replace reasoned discourse, we cannot ignore the place of lived experience in arriving at the full truth about the human person. Above all, we must prevent any further advance of the idea that experience and reason do not share a common root in the mind of man. It is time to explode the myth that “lived experience” contradicts the foundational understanding of the Church on these matters. Indeed, here we will show that “lived experience”, once integrated into a more coherent account of the wholeness of the person, actually can illuminate the validity of the teaching proposed by the Magisterium, as it has been articulated by a wide swath of theologians, demonstrated by scientists, and relied on by the clergy and pastoral ministers. Our hope is that this collection will reveal the beauty of Catholic teaching evidenced by the lived experience of those who have come to accept it and live by it. This is so not because the teaching imposed unnecessary limits—but because it illuminated the reality and telos of an authentically human existence. Moreover, it helped them to arrive at the wholeness of their personhood and brought coherence to their lives.

Structure of the Volume

The collection is divided into five parts. The first part, “Philosophical and Intellectual Foundations,” will provide the proper grounding and conceptual framework within which one might view the meaning and the place of experience—its significance, its merits, and its dangers—in the search for wholeness.

Part Two, “Reflections on the Revolution,” enters into the impact of the Sexual Revolution as a whole, its consequences for persons and society, its aftermath and its ongoing influence. It is intended to provide a cultural context for the situation in which we find ourselves now.

Part Three, “Dispatches from the Front Lines,” is really the heart of the collection. There you will find a number of essays from those who encountered the impact of that revolution on a personal level, and who’s own “lived experience” led them to grasp the truths embedded in the Church’s teaching on the human person, on human sexuality, motherhood and fatherhood, man and woman.

Part Four, “The Science of Love,” regards the questions at stake here through the lens of science and technology, biology and biomedical ethics.

Finally, Part Five “Policy Considerations” explores the implications of these questions for several current policy issues.

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