Although many posts have referred to issues of prudential judgment — especially as it relates to issues of politics, war, and capital punishment — few of them are especially clear about exactly what prudential judgment is.

To begin with: what is prudence? As is usual, if Aquinas has something to say on the matter, it will be particularly helpful. He says that prudence is "right reason as applied to action". Prudence is a practical matter, an application of good reasoning as to which actions should be undertaken in particular circumstances. Prudence does not consider the goals of our actions, but rather the means by which we will achieve those goals.

In general, prudence may involve the use of ordinary pragmatic reasoning. If the weather forecast is for heavy rain, it may be prudent to have an umbrella handy. That is prudence as applied to a pragmatic problem. But also — depending on the issue — moral reasoning may be involved. That is because prudence is right reasoning, and correct reasoning must always be based on the right morals. Thus it is never prudent to consider immoral means to achieve any goal.

In general, the use of prudence may involve combining both pragmatic and moral reasoning. If the forecast is for rain, it is not prudent to steal an umbrella, since protecting the body at the expense of harming the soul is never prudent. Right reasoning would see that though the body is protected for a short time against the rain, this is insufficient reason to harm the eternal soul.

Does the Church make prudential judgments? Certainly. Very many. Some examples:

• in the exercise of canon law, both pragmatic and moral reasoning is involved. At a marriage tribunal, where the validity of a marriage is being determined, the Church is using right reasoning  both in defending a marriage bond if it exists (moral reasoning), while also investigating the pragmatic circumstances of the marriage (for which, perhaps a psychologist or a doctor is consulted, not for their moral opinion but for their pragmatic opinion).
• even more commonly, prudential judgments are made in sacramental confessions. The priest may listen to the pragmatic circumstances surrounding a potential sin, and then make a ruling as to whether it is a sin or not.

So, with this full sense of prudential (involving both pragmatic and moral reasoning), the Church certainly makes prudential judgments, and Catholics can be required to assent to those rulings.

It is sometimes claimed that though the Church has the ability to require Catholics to assent to moral rulings, it has not authority to require them to assent to pragmatic rulings. While there is a sense in which this is true, there is a sense in which it is false. Hence some disentangling is needed.

It is true that the Church has some areas on which her opinion is not authoritative. For example, deciding on the chances of rain tomorrow is left to a meteorologist, not the Pope, since it is a purely pragmatic issue. In contrast, what kinds of killing are wrong is a moral matter, over which the Church has authority to make moral rulings.

But (as we have seen in the bullet list above), the Church may make use of pragmatic reasoning prior to making a moral ruling. That kind of combined reasoning is not purely pragmatic, and can come under the authority of the Church.

The #2267 death penalty controversy

A timely example: controversy has recently arisen over a particular prudential judgment that can be found in the Catechism (#2267):

Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically non-existent."

 There is an argument there, of the form:

1. Do not apply the death penalty unless it is necessary for the safety of society;
2. It is very rare for the condition in (1) to be true;
3. Therefore, the application of the death penalty will be very rare.

 Objection is sometimes made that though (1) is a moral ruling, since (2) is a pragmatic judgment, the conclusion offered in (3) cannot amount to something that requires the assent of Catholics, since it relies on a pragmatic judgment. This is not correct. As we have seen in the bulleted list towards the beginning of this post, the Church is (and always has been) capable of making rulings based partly on a pragmatic assessment of particular circumstances. The kind of argument given in #2267 of the Catechism is of the same type, and (given its clear authority expressed by placing it both in an encyclical and the Catechism), requires assent — in the same way that rulings made in confession, and marriage-tribunal rulings require assent.

Fact and law and the Jansenists

A related kind of challenge to Church teaching, as described in the prior section, has been seen before in Church history. In summary: In the 17th century a Jansenist had written down in a book some teachings. The Pope read the book, and presented a list of condemned propositions he found in the book. To evade condemnation of the book, the Jansenists replied by claiming that while all the Pope's moral condemnations were of course completely correct, the condemned propositions were not actually to be found in the book, and furthermore (since the Jansenists really, really did not want the book to be condemned) that reading and understanding a book was only a pragmatic matter, and thus was not something that the Pope had authority to rule on.

The Pope replied by authoritatively asserting that he really did have the ability to read and understand a book, and the subsequent power, if necessary, to condemn a book specifically.

(This is not some kind of strange historical vignette. A very similar issue rose about a decade ago.)

The Church's social doctrine

Why care about #2267? Because the Church has a rather large amount of social doctrine that has been extremely poorly understood or adapted into the actions of lay Catholics (despite the fact that a Pope has ruled that the Church's social doctrine is a part of its moral theology). If #2267 is rejected as "merely pragmatic", rather than a teaching that should be assented to, there is the risk that some or all of the Church's social doctrine may be treated similarly. This would be a
disaster.