Catholic Moral Theology & Social Ethics: A New Method by Christina A. Astorga (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Catholic Moral Theology & Social Ethics: A New Method by Christina A. Astorga Maureen O’Connell Catholic Moral Theology & Social Ethics: A New Method. By Christina A. Astorga. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013. 571pp. $50.00. Although patterns of Catholic moral theology after Vatican II point to the centrality of moral vision for the moral life, the tradition continues to be relatively short-sighted in this regard. Christine Astorga attempts to bring moral vision into better focus by developing a new method for moral theology, one which she describes as an integration of “an ethics of holistic reasoning” and virtue ethics. Her method includes attention to the cultural context of moral agents; an insistence on narrative hermeneutics; feminist, liberationist and global interpretations of fundamental theology from which moral theology grows; compatibility between moral norms and virtues; and three modes of Ignatian discernment. She asserts this integrative method can bridge all sorts of limiting divides in contemporary Catholic theology: between ethics and dogmatic theology, between Western historical preserve and contemporary applications coming from the margins, between principles and virtues, between reason and affectivity. While perhaps targeted for an academic audience either familiar with or new to the many strands of the Catholic tradition that she weaves together, Astorga insists on the practical urgency that drives her method: “We have to live the ordinariness of our lives with a profound sense of transcendence. The moral choices we make are not discrete acts; rather, they enter into the shaping of the fundamental orientation of our lives. And with our lives so deeply intertwined with other lives, our choices have far-reaching consequences” (233). [End Page 86] Astorga painstakingly develops her method over the course of ten chapters, organized around themes of “vision,” “norm,” and “choice,” and each of which incorporate classic figures and texts, and introduce insights of those on the leading edge. To that end, the book is an exhaustive survey of theological landscape of the twentieth century. However, Astorga’s eye for patterns or trends that come to the fore when we approach moral theology as a kind of vision, helps the reader to discover what she sees as the trajectory of the tradition: that the moral life is about individual and collective affectivity that arises when we engage the wisdom of religious stories incarnated in the particularities of culture, rather than simply a response to directives or norms. To develop her method, she relies on paradigmatic thinkers in Catholic systematic and moral theology (Rahner, Johnson, McCormick, Grisez, Cahill, Keenan), as well as those in and beyond Catholicism who contribute to its growing edges (Gilkes, Hauerwas, De La Torre). She also reviews the evolution of the fundamental components of moral theology (fundamental concepts such as love, grace, community; modes of biblical interpretation, moral norms; virtue ethics) and social ethics (central documents of Catholic social teaching, as well as theological methods (feminist, liberationist, Ignatian) making the text a helpful primer in moral theology or Christian ethics for graduate students. Of particular note is Astorga’s emphasis on the importance of culture in shaping moral vision and moral choice, both in terms of acknowledging religion as a particular source of culture and in embracing a diversity of cultures in which moral agents are formed. She invokes Tillich, Henriot, and Bellah in calling for “cultural exegesis” in methods of moral theology that will effect change in individual and communal lives, and offers an example of such a cultural interpretation in her review of the Filipino’s People’s Power Revolution in the first chapter. She notes, “Only when the cultural symbols and values of a people are taken seriously is their creative potential in the process of social change unfolded” (89). Attention to cultural diversity, and not simply the diversity of individual experience, through what she calls a [End Page 87] “hermeneutic of appreciation” is an innovative way of contextualizing moral theology in an increasingly diverse church. While exhaustive, Astorga’s presentation of her method is also at points somewhat exhausting in light of the copious thinkers and components of the moral tradition she incorporates. A tremendous amount of material is brought forward, and at times it is difficult to track what is...