Diverse Voices in Modern US Moral Theology by Charles E. Curran

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...

Author's Response Mark Massa SJ First, my sincere thanks to the three reviewers. It is always an honor to have one's scholarship taken seriously by scholars as smart as Rodger Van Allen, Christina Astorga, and John Grabowski. I'm delighted that the conversation about interpreting how (or whether) natural law "develops" continues in their responses to my book. My sense from the moment I started this project was that people would respond differently to it. So first: I'd like to offer a preliminary contextual observation before I get to the substance of the three reviews. The project that resulted in the writing of my book began during my final year as dean of the School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College. As anyone who has had the privilege of serving in an academic administrative position knows well, one has to build into one's day thirty or forty minutes of "non-decanal activity"—reading or writing that has nothing to do with budgets, bylaws, or personnel issues (if only to keep one's mental balance). Thus, during the 2015–16 academic year I disappeared from the dean's office every day for at least 30 minutes, without my cell phone (to the frustration of my superb administrative assistant) to bury myself in the stacks of the Theology and Ministry Library. The task I set for myself was to reread the books that, over the course of three decades, have shaped my life as a scholar. One of the most important of those works was Thomas Kuhn's landmark study in the history and philosophy of science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a book I had read as an undergraduate in a philosophy of science course. The Jesuit community I lived in at the time included three moral theologians, two of them "virtue ethicians," and one of them an expert in Thomas and virtue ethics. How, I had been wondering for some time after our lively dinner conversations, did one make sense of the "development" of Christian morality if one set end-to-end Aquinas, Suarez, John Ford, Richard McCormick, Charles Curran, Germain Grisez, and Lisa Sowle Cahill? If one accepted all of them as theologians whose basic project was to offer smart "natural law" interpretations of the Catholic moral tradition, how might one understand the "development" of that tradition? Or was the word [End Page 72] "development" (a word that Kuhn himself tended to use in scare quotes when referring to the course of scientific research) perhaps the wrong one? The conclusion I came to was that it was indeed the wrong word unless one understood that there simply was no linear progression linking natural law discourse from Thomas to Humanae Vitae to Jean Porter. My narrative, in other words, takes as axiomatically true that Catholic moral theology has been marked by the same degree of disjunction, rupture, and discontinuity as Kuhn had discovered in studying the history of biology and physics. Successive models of natural law simply do not build on each other, despite the fact that most of them claimed be in the "Thomistic tradition" of natural law. And thus my book. Rodger Van Allen, with his usual and much-respected acuity, lucidly adumbrates the larger theme of my book: I had not set out to write a book about either birth control or the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae itself (both of which already have a number of superb studies in print, to which I direct the reader in my Introduction). Thus, it is no surprise my book is neither of those things. Rather, as Van Allen correctly notes, Humanae Vitae provides the occasion for pursuing a much larger (and in my opinion, more basic and more interesting) historical and epistemological question: how does Catholic theology "develop"? Or does it "develop" in anything like a linear, progressive, or organic manner (as several recent pontiffs have asserted—largely without proof, in my opinion). Or, in fact, is that word misused when talking about the history of Catholic theology? Thus, my book is more focused on tracing the morphology of change in Catholic theology than on the history of natural law theory per se. As Van...

This book argues that Catholic moral theology is a living tradition in which each generation understand, appropriate and live the Christian message in the light of its own history, culture and time. The Catholic tradition, argues Curran in this new set of essays, must be in dialogue with present realities, sometimes criticizing them severely and at other times learning from them. Curran begins by examining the tensions existing in the Roman Catholic church today and suggests why they are more severe than they should be. He argues that official Catholic teaching in sexual areas and Catholic ecclesiology have not incorporated a moral theology based on creative fidelity; he calls for a change in official sexual teaching, ecclesiology and the exercise of the hierarchical magisterium on the basis of the methodological approaches found in contemporary official Catholic teaching. Richard A. McCormick, Curran suggests, is one contemporary Catholic moral theologian who successfully illustrates creative fidelity by employing the casuistic method of the Jesuit tradition in moral theology to evaluate the changing problems of our contemporary life. Curran discusses perennial issues in moral theology that take on crucial importance in the changing realities of our contemporary existence - the relationship between Christian and human morality, divine providence and human responsibility, academic freedom and military force. Throughout the volume, while fully aware that the Roman Catholic church and moral theology will always know and experience the tensions of creative fidelity, Curran seeks to challenge himself and his readers to make certain that these tensions contribute to the ongoing life of the church.

The twentieth century was a time of enormous change in Catholic moral theology. The move from seminary to university helped end the use of the manuals that priests used to judge moral matters and inform their response to confessions. Though steeped in the manualist tradition, John C. Ford and Gerald Kelly, seminary professors in the 1950s and 1960s, recognized deficiencies with Catholic moral theology but feared that those seeking to correct the problems would ultimately remove moral theology's defining characteristics, especially the role of papal authority. A historiographical analysis of the works by contemporary moral theologians John Mahoney, Charles E. Curran, and James F. Keenan demonstrates that Ford and Kelly's concerns were well-founded. The historical assessments these three scholars provide are remarkable for their first-hand accounts and knowledge of moral issues. Inversely, their weakness is the subjectivity of their analyses. In considering papal authority in relation to the birth control encyclical Humanae Vitae, this article demonstrates how the three authors' historical perspectives necessitated altering the definition of Catholic moral theology. While Ford and Kelly believed that Catholic moral theology without papal authority could only be considered Christian ethics, later moral theologians preferred a discipline without an explicitly Catholic basis.

The Abuse of Conscience: A Century of Catholic Moral Theology, MatthewLevering, Eerdmans, 2021 (ISBN 978‐0‐8082‐7950‐9), viii + 360 pp., hb $45

The author asks how the argument from tradition should be constructed in Catholic moral theology. He traces the different ways the question has been dealt with in recent history, from the medieval model of Aquinas, to the Manuals of the post-Tridentine Neo-Scholastic model, to the models following on from Vatican II. He lays down the fundamental criteria which must be met for something to be received into Tradition, and argues for a sacramental-teleological model to meet the needs of the Church today.

Reviewed by: The Abuse of Conscience: A Century of Catholic Moral Theology by Matthew Levering Peter Cajka Matthew Levering, The Abuse of Conscience: A Century of Catholic Moral Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2021), viii + 360 pages. Matthew Levering wants to know why conscience, important before the Second Vatican Council, became even more dominant in Catholic moral theology in the late twentieth century. His book seeks to understand, as he frames it, “why, in Catholicism, conscience so easily and stubbornly takes over the whole terrain” (11). Levering bats away confession as an answer to this smart question, observing how the sacrament has declined. He then quickly dismisses the debate over Humanae vitae as ground zero. The battle over contraception is often seen as a decisive moment in a supposed twentieth-century pivot from law to conscience. Instead, Levering provides a more creative and interesting story. Conscience sky-rocketed to a place of prominence in the late twentieth century on the wings of the existentialist surge in Continental and Catholic thought after important intellectual foundations laid by Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers in the 1940s inspired Karl Rahner, Joseph Fuchs, and Bernard Häring to infuse Catholic moral theology with existentialism in the 1960s and after. These important intellectuals began a turn towards conscience well before the 1960s. Then they inspired a generation of moral theologians to amplify conscience in Catholic tradition. Conscience remains important today. Levering’s book parallels the pathbreaking insights found in historian Edward Baring’s recent work, Converts to the Real: Catholicism and the [End Page 87] Making of Continental Philosophy, a book that shows how Catholics were crucial in spreading existentialism and phenomenology across Europe in the twentieth century, making it truly “continental.”1 The approach of infusing conscience with existential thought has been picked up and pursued most prominently in recent years by Jesuit James Keenan of Boston College. Levering’s intervention is historical and, as I explore below, also profoundly theological. Rahner, Fuchs, Häring, and Keenan are just four of the twenty-six figures that Levering profiles in his impressive book. Levering has assembled a cast of characters that includes allies with whom he agrees and detractors held up as problematic. Here is where Levering’s theological intervention begins to emerge. Those he counts as fellow travelers acknowledge the importance of conscience but do not make it the center of Catholic thought; the interlocutors he takes issue with place too much hope in conscience. Levering says the writers in this latter group place conscience “at the helm” of Catholic life (192). He disagrees with this inflation, and his book seeks to subordinate conscience to other concepts while still allowing it to maintain an important role in Catholic ethics. Levering desires a much more diverse set of foundations for moral theology. “The Catholic moral life,” Levering writes, “consists in a Christ-centered ethics of the inaugurated Kingdom of God, in which the spirit leads us in charity while also forming us in humility and prudence, while also enlightening our perception of the natural law” (13). In this system, Levering adds, “conscience will continue to have a significant role, but now with the virtue of prudence” (16). He asks the twenty-six figures to serve as tour guides through four chapters, each of which constitutes discrete realms of analysis: (1) conscience and the Bible; (2) conscience and the moral manuals; (3) conscience and the Thomists; and (4) conscience and German thought. Levering lifts up thinkers like Benoît-Henri Merkelbach, Michel Labourdette, and Joseph Ratzinger, who, according to his analysis, bring conscience under the influence of other components of moral life, particularly the value of prudence. That is one side of his ledger. On the other side, Levering writes about the aforementioned existentialists but also explores the work of Biblical scholars like Philippe Delhaye, manualists like Austin Fagothey, S.J., and Thomists like Eric D’Arcy. He displays the work of these scholars as examples of Catholic thinkers who attributed too much power to conscience. Each of these writers assigns subjectivity a capacity to shape perceptions of reality. Each places serious checks on the power of law to coerce conscience. [End Page 88] Levering says...

The growing shift in Catholic moral theology from reflecting on rules alone to focusing on the identity and formation of persons as moral agents prompts a further question: What impact do recent changes in the identity and formation of Catholic moral theologians themselves have on how that discipline is practiced? Young Catholic moral theologians experience a sharply different professional formation and a changed location of ongoing professional life than prior generations of moral theologians. How do these differences influence the field of moral theology as a whole? New Wine, New Wineskins: A Next Generation Reflects on Key Issues in Catholic Moral Theology addresses these questions and more by offering a snapshot of how a new generation of Catholic moral theologians understands not only topics in the field, but the effects of their own identity and formation on their treatment of those topics. The distinctive contribution of this volume is the interweaving of three key concerns, all of which arise out of a critical self-reflection on the task of moral theology today: the character and adequacy of training and ongoing formation in the field of Catholic moral theology, the purpose and nature of teaching Catholic moral theology, and the fittingness of methodological debates with regard to the needs of the Christian life. Each essay makes a contribution to its specific area of interest-ranging from economic ethics, to Patristic rhetoric, to the nature and development of practical reasoning-while probing what exactly young Catholic moral theologians are doing, and how they can do what they do better.

I. Introduction: Catholic Enlightenment and Popular Catholicism One of greatest paradoxes of modern Catholic history is that a seemingly moribund Old Regime Church gave way to a broad-based popular Catholic revival in nineteenth century. How can this reinvigoration be accounted for? Miracles, of course, are always a possibility, but historians are required to look for more prosaic explanations. The Catholic revival has received a fair share of scholarly attention. As a multi-faceted phenomenon, scholars have focused on questions ranging from diocesan organization and clerical training, to in-depth studies on religious experience of common people. For all this interest in nineteenth-century Catholicism at local and popular level, however, it remains to be explained how Old Regime Church could accommodate its traditional distrust-when not outright repression-of popular religious practices, enabling popular Catholicism in fact to become one of key aspects of Church's political and social power. For all emphasis on nineteenth-century developments, then, it remains to be shown how Roman Catholicism in eighteenth century underwent a fundamental revision in its approach to popular religion. While it is certain that social, economic, and institutional factors had an important role in shaping of popular Catholicism, can it also be said that there were intellectual roots as well? The remainder of this article addresses this question by describing intellectual context of eighteenth-century revolution in Catholic moral theology that enabled institutional Church to align itself with practices of popular Catholicism. This essay also hopes to demonstrate that intellectual components of popular Catholicism must be understood on their own terms, and not merely reduced to social or political factors. I propose to demonstrate that new moral system outlined below overcame certain intellectual barriers that would otherwise have stood in way of Church's enthusiastic embrace of popular religious practices and attitudes.1 The central question of this essay, therefore, is how aristocratic-minded Church of Counter-Reformation adapted to social transformations of eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to become, in words of Louis Châtellier, the religion of poor.2 Rather than seeing this new identity as a late reaction to changes of revolutionary era, I will suggest how its roots extend back into early eighteenth century, specifically to disputes over laxism, probabilism, and rigorism. Social historians like Châtellier have shown how, around eighteenth century, missionaries in Europe shifted their efforts away from trying to force peasants to completely abandon their so-called superstitious beliefs. Instead, missionaries embraced what they now accepted as genuine piety, and sought instead only to strengthen connections between popular piety and institutional Catholic Church. In my view, this shift in pastoral practice should be seen in concert with revolution in moral theology that-while not abandoning concept of original sin-downplayed strongly negative Augustinian condemnation of human nature and embraced a generally more optimistic view of human moral capability. The figure of Neapolitan moral theologian and founder of popular Redemptorist Congregation Alphonsus Maria di Liguori (1696-1787) stands at center of this transformation. Liguori not only authored one of most widely circulated tracts on Marian devotion-the queen of superstition to Enlightenment Christians and rational skeptics alike-the Glories of Mary. He also succeeded in elaborating a system of moral theology which postulated that in cases of doubt about existence of a moral law, human liberty was anterior to law.3 More clearly than others, Liguori overcame negative Augustinian view of human nature that had led Jansenists to follow their rigorist tendencies in moral theology. …

Where Should We Place the Treatise on Conscience in Moral Theology? Benedict Merkelbach O.P. Translated by Matthew K. Minerd Originally: Benedict Merkelbach, "Note: Quelle place assigner au traité de la conscience?," Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques 12, no. 2 (1923): 170–83. Translator's Introduction The topic of conscience has been at the center of many ecclesial discussions of late.1 Much is to be said positively about the desire to [End Page 1017] emphasize the importance of the inner sanctuary in which moral judgment springs forth in our lives. To refer to the heavily-cited passage from Gaudium et Spes §16,2 conscience does indeed represent a profound sanctuary in the heart of the human person. From its deepest roots in faith and synderesis,3 as well as in the gains added by moral culture, philosophy, and theology, all the way to the terminal judgment of prudence, our moral reasoning (when it is indeed right and certain) sets the human person upon the path of the personal moral and divine self-governance4 that "existentializes" the [End Page 1018] human conquest of freedom for the good. Very often the term "conscience" is used somewhat loosely to refer to all of these aspects of moral reasoning. For Saint Thomas, it had a more specific sense, properly referring to the act of moral judgment applying moral knowledge to a particular case (see Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 79, a. 13). In the synthetic outlook presented in the Summa theologiae, conscience is not treated by itself as a subject set apart. However, soon after the thirteenth century, it became normal to discuss the nature of conscience somewhere in the neighborhood of the treatise on human acts (i.e., ST I-II, qq. 6–21), often swelling the discussion with later controversies and subtleties, especially those that arose in the context of the great debates over probabilism. The history became incredibly complex, and we find ourselves faced with a question: "Is this the best solution for synthetically treating the nature of conscience?" This article is presented as providing one possible approach to answering this question, one that seems seemed quite respectable to the famed Thomist Father Garrigou-Lagrange.5 In the text presented here by Nova et Vetera, Father Benedict Merkelbach (the author of the erudite and lengthy Summa theologiae moralis6) presents the results of his own research concerning these matters, providing a historical outline of the problem of conscience in the tradition of Catholic moral theology, as well as his opinion that a significant portion of this discussion should be conducted explicitly within the context of the treatise on prudence. Merkelbach and Garrigou-Lagrange7 argued that if right and certain conscience is [End Page 1019] [Begin Page 1022] the judgment declared as prudence's dictamen-judgment (in distinction from the imperium directing execution of the act), the only way to have a complete account of conscience is to discuss it in the company of the great host of virtues that are annexed to prudence, aiding in the lofty and difficult task of rectifying our natural and supernatural self-government in the moral and divine life. We thus come to see conscience as being centrally involved in the "conquest of the good" that is the task of prudence. Prudence provides the context within which further discussions can then take place: the necessity of the virtues for rectitude of will in relation to the ends of the acquired and infused moral virtues, the relationship of prudence to faith, synderesis, and "moral science" (as well as moral culture), the perfection of prudence by the Spirit's gift of counsel, the nature of practical truth as helping us understand the certitude involved in conscience, and so forth. Yet, before the specific details are considered, it is best to know the general terrain. Why not turn to a great master of a former age to consider this matter—especially when that master provides us with an erudite article like the one being presented here? Therefore, the intention of this translation is not to provide a mere "throwback" to past thought on the matter of conscience. Rather, it is to provide the...

Reviewed by: Defending Probabilism: The Moral Theology of Juan Caramuel Toon Van Houdt Defending Probabilism: The Moral Theology of Juan Caramuel. By Julia A. Fleming. [Moral Traditions Series.] (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 2006. Pp. xxiv, 201. $44.95. ISBN 978-1-589-01113-7.) Long considered to be an outmoded intellectual tradition, late-Scholastic moral thought is currently enjoying a renewed and, as it appears, sustained scholarly interest. To a large extent, this new interest has been kindled by the [End Page 151] emergence of a modernized kind of case ethics, which resulted from a serious reflection on, and discussion about, the methods to be used in moral problem-solving. In this debate, the question of moral certitude and incertitude played—and continues to play—a crucial role. Following the lead of Aristotle, several ethicists have insisted on the fact that ethics is not a science that defines absolutely certain and universally applicable principles, but rather is a form of practical wisdom dealing with a multitude of particular concrete situations that leaves room for moral doubt and difference of opinion. It is precisely between the two poles of doubt and certainty that the field of the early-modern moral theologian and casuist was situated. There exists a dubium, a moral problem about which the conscience doubts or moves in uncertainty. As absolute certainty is impossible to achieve in matters relating to human action, a person’s conscience can never be absolutely sure. At best, the moral theologian formulates an opinion that is so probable that it may be regarded as “certain”—that is, “practically sure,” from a moral point of view. In other cases, however, uncertainty remains. The theologian is only able to formulate solutions that, at most, can be termed probable or likely. At the speculative level, doubt remains. Anyone acting on the basis of such a probable opinion acts with a “probable conscience.” However, is the probable opinion of the theologian sufficient to dispel practical doubt? May one act on the basis of a probable opinion, even if the opposite opinion is more probable, that is to say, supported by stronger arguments or more authorities? Following the lead of earlier generations of Catholic moral theologians, the Spanish Cistercian monk Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz (1606–82) felt that one could—a “broad” or lenient standpoint firmly rooted in the so-called doctrine of probabilism. The Spanish Dominican friar Bartolomé De Medina (1528–81) is commonly believed to have first formulated this doctrine, but many other moral theologians were involved in its development. It continued to be defended long after it had become a major target of Jansenist attacks around the middle of the seventeenth century. In her elegant monograph Defending Probabilism, Julia Fleming deals with Caramuel’s contributions to the heated debate on probabilistic reasoning that created a deep split in the Catholic world for many decades to come. Attempting to correct the caricature of Caramuel as an unduly laxist theologian, Fleming has taken into account a rich variety of texts to trace important changes in Caramuel’s views on probabilism. After an introductory chapter that sketches Caramuel’s life and work against the background of ecclesiastical history and the history of moral theology, Fleming engages in a penetrating analysis of Caramuel’s early treatments of probabilism in his In Divi Benedicti Regulam (1640) and the Theologia Moralis Fundamentalis (1652). These texts were quite remarkable experiments in argumentation in favor of probabilism. At the same time, however, they equipped Caramuel’s opponents with the ammunition for their unrelenting attacks against probabilism and Caramuel’s theory and practical use of it. Those attacks forced Caramuel to ponder the matter more thoroughly. His [End Page 152] reflections were published in 1662 in the epistolary treatise Apologema, which was intended to explain and defend probabilism against its critics. As the Apologema was placed on the “Index of Forbidden Books,” Caramuel felt compelled to find a new means of explaining and defending probabilism. As Fleming convincingly demonstrates in chapter 6, Caramuel’s treatise Dialexis de Non-Certitudine (1675) contains a strikingly different approach to the problem of probabilistic reasoning—an approach that centers around the new concept of non-certitudo and is...

The New Natural Lawyers, Contraception, Capital Punishment, and the Infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium Christian D. Washburn (bio) In the years following Humanae Vitae, the encyclical enjoyed little support from Catholic theologians; but a few moral theologians, led by Germain Grisez, heroically came to its defense.1 These theologians attempted to use their New Natural Law theory (NNLT) in the service of the magisterium, but their arguments proved inadequate to stem the tide of dissent. In 1978, John C. Ford and Germain Grisez took a new approach, publishing an article arguing that the Church's teaching on the immorality of artificial contraception was taught infallibly by the ordinary universal magisterium. Their article was so successful that Russell Shaw's 1978 summary of their argument is still on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website.2 The NNLT, however, has led a number of its proponents to hold views on other theological issues that are clearly contrary to the teaching of Sacred Scripture and the doctrine of the Catholic Church, most notably on the issue of capital punishment.3 The NNL theorists do not merely argue that capital punishment should prudentially be set aside, given the numerous problems associated with its contemporary use, but that capital punishment should be condemned as intrinsically evil. Ironically, many of the arguments that [End Page 19] these theologians now advance in defense of their teaching on capital punishment are essentially the same arguments made in support of contraception by those engaged in dissent in the 1970s and '80s. This article will argue that the received Catholic teaching on capital punishment has been proposed infallibly by the ordinary universal magisterium and that the case that Ford and Grisez made against contraception can be made even more strongly for capital punishment. To this end, this article will first explain the New Natural Law theorists' view on the magisterial consensus on moral issues and then explain the teaching of Lumen Gentium 25 on the ordinary universal magisterium. Following the example of Ford and Grisez, the article will then examine the various sources for knowing the acts of the ordinary magisterium such as the papal magisterium, the Fathers of the Church, canon law, and the consensus of theologians to show that the criteria set forth in Lumen Gentium have indeed been met with respect to capital punishment. Finally, this article will examine some of the theological problems that result from the NNL theorists' position on capital punishment. Ordinary Universal Magisterium This article will assume Ford and Grisez's account of the ordinary universal magisterium, and will briefly summarize their explanation of the Second Vatican Council's explanation.4 In Lumen Gentium 25, Vatican II articulated the conditions under which the ordinary universal magisterium can teach in a definitive way: "Although the bishops individually do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they nevertheless proclaim the teaching of Christ infallibly, even when they are dispersed throughout the world, provided that they remain in communion with each other and with the successor of Peter and that in authoritatively teaching on a matter of faith and morals they agree in one judgment as that to be held definitively."5 Theologians see in this text four conditions to be met in determining whether an infallible act of the ordinary universal magisterium [End Page 20] exists. The first condition is that although dispersed throughout the world, the bishops are in hierarchical communion with one another and with the pope.6 The second condition is that the bishops teach authentically on a matter of faith or morals. This means that each bishop must intend to speak with the authority of his office and not merely as a private theologian or as a believer. The phrase "faith and morals" was customary by the sixteenth century but admitted a wide range of meanings.7 In contemporary theology, the term "faith" refers to those matters of belief that pertain to the deposit of faith. The term mores signifies propositions about those acts that are to be done or avoided. The third condition is that the bishops agree in one judgment about a doctrine. Lastly, bishops must propose the teaching as something "to be held definitively by all...

This chapter presents an examination of the thoughts and writings of Lisa Sowle Cahill, a moral theologian at Boston College. Taking issue with both Germain Grisez and Jean Porter, Cahill seeks to construct a new paradigm of natural law that addresses feminist and poststructural scholars. Cahill believed that any paradigm of intercultural or interreligious ethics that purported to be describing moral duties in the real world must begin by exploring how ethical questions are intimately tied to the concrete experiences in specific (often religiously diverse) communities. Her paradigm addressed the concerns of feminist and postimperialist scholars in moving beyond the “false universalism” offered by paradigms like that of neo-scholasticism, while offering a “realist” understanding of social ethics that remained true to the realist impulses in Catholic moral theology.

III John S. Grabowski Mark S. Massa utilizes Thomas Kuhn's model of paradigm revolution and replacement in the history of modern science to offer a novel reading of modern Catholic natural law theory. The various paradigms of natural law do not betray linear, organic development as much as wholesale replacement of competing accounts as each sought [End Page 70] to explain better the anomalies of the reigning paradigm and the "data" of lived moral experience, the complexity of which always exceeds the ability of any one model to capture. Certainly, this Kuhnian lens yields insights into the inadequacy of what Massa calls the Neo-scholastic paradigm in the face of the twentieth century crisis of Catholic moral reasoning before and after Humanae Vitae. Yet one cannot help but wish that the landscape was surveyed more widely both historically and analytically. The use of Lonergan's account of "historical consciousness" to outline the overturning of the "classicism" of modern Catholic moral theology can have an ahistorical ring insofar as this language fails to acknowledge its own embeddedness in a historical tradition with its roots in Hegel, Vico, and others. It also tends to create an unfortunate binary in regard to method—either one is classicist or "historically conscious"—as if there were no other alternatives. Something like Alasdair MacIntyre's account of dialogue within and among rival historical traditions seems to offer a more sophisticated approach to this history without smoothing away Massa's sharp Kuhnian edges of disagreement. Another set of problems is posed by Massa's decision to focus on what he calls the "micro-tradition" of natural law. This can create the impression that natural law is a sufficient or stand-alone methodology for Christian moral reasoning and the language of virtue or scripture is an afterthought or add on. In regard to some of the thinkers he engages (e.g., the proportionalism of Richard McCormick or the new natural law of Germain Grisez), this might be fair. But certainly, Jean Porter gives significant weight to the language of virtue in her "robust realist" recovery of Thomas and Lisa Sowle Cahill spends a significant amount of time wrestling with the biblical witness in constructing her pragmatic, cross-culturally capable, feminist ethic. And beyond these figures, much of the work of post-conciliar renewal has been precisely in a deeper engagement with biblical theology and virtue theory. When it comes to the Angelic Doctor himself whom Massa sees as the font of the many paradigms he surveys, the problem is even more pronounced. It is worth considering that while the Summa Theologiae devotes a mere question to natural law (I–II, q. 94), the language of virtue (and opposing vices) occupies much more space within the prima secundae and virtually all of the secunda secundae. Further, Aquinas's entire account of virtue is situated within a deeply biblical account of creation and salvation history. The effort to construct an entire moral system on the basis of natural law is simply foreign to Thomas. In the end Massa's reading is interesting, but the lens too narrow. Catholic moral theology—medieval or modern—cannot be reduced to a [End Page 71] dispute over the most adequate accounts of natural law without significant distortion. John S. Grabowski The Catholic University of America Copyright © 2020 American Catholic Historical Society

Pedagogy in moral theology follows some of the particular concerns Catholic theologians have had since the Second Vatican Council as well as the aftermath of John Paul II’s encyclical on moral theology, Veritatis splendor. Most of the textbooks reviewed here teach virtue, Christian practice, and Thomas Aquinas’s theology, as largely positive responses to the Council and John Paul II. Catholic moral theology thus appears as a relatively stable field, though the authors use multiple approaches. There are, however, some moral theologians offering alternative perspectives on moral theology. One book reviewed here contends with Humanae vitae and resists both Thomas Aquinas’s authoritative voice and Veritatis splendor’s argument against proportionalist thought. The textbooks offer a range of pedagogical tools for varying student levels. Two of the overall gaps in the field, as indicated by these textbooks, might be more direct engagement with Scripture, and a proper locating of Catholic social teaching within moral theology.