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

Abstract

Reviewed by: Diverse Voices in Modern US Moral Theology by Charles E. Curran Meg Stapleton Smith Diverse Voices in Modern US Moral Theology. Charles E. Curran. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018. 266 pp. $34.95. In Diverse Voices in Modern US Moral Theology, Charles Curran brilliantly weaves together the thought of the leading Catholic moral theologians in the twentieth through twenty-first century. Curran selects twelve authors who have shaped the method of Catholic moral theology in the United States. Each chapter is dedicated to a different author (although one chapter is dedicated to the New Wine, New Wineskins movement), and each chapter follows the same general outline. Curran begins by articulating each author's Sitz in Leben (one's "setting in life"), then traces the content of their major works, and proceeds to highlight how their life and thought shifted the current method of moral theology. Curran does not elaborate a critique of these authors, though toward the end of each chapter he raises general criticisms that others have offered. Although the book is not driven by one central thesis, and is rather intended to trace the methodological shifts of U.S. Catholic moral theology, there are a few central themes. The first theme is the [End Page 93] influential role that Vatican II and Humanae Vitae played in U.S. Catholic moral theology. The early chapters on John Ford (1902–1989), Bernard Häring (1912–1998), Joseph Fuchs (1912–2005), Richard McCormick (1922–2000), Germain Grisez (1929–2018), and Romanus Cessario (1944–present) are dedicated particularly to this theme. Each of these writers inherited the pre-Vatican II method of moral theology that was based on the moral manuals. The method of the moral manuals was fundamentally casuistic and thoroughly deontological—focusing on training priests for their role in the confessional to know which acts were sinful and their degree of sinfulness. Vatican II, as well as the writing of Humanae Vitae, "occasioned discussion about the natural law, absolute moral norms, and the teaching authority of the hierarchical magisterium" (85). In the beginning chapters, the reader notices each author engaging with these various topics. Two of the underlying themes that emerge as a result are the role of individual conscience vis-a-vis the magisterium, and what it means to dissent from the official teaching of the Catholic Church. The reader cannot help but notice methodological shifts that move the center of moral theology to the dignity of the human person rather than mere assent to divinely ordained truths, to a rejection of static essentialism in favor of a more nuanced understanding of subjectivity, and to the role of conscience and the sensus fidelium in questioning the authority of the magisterium. The second part of the book begins with the work of Margaret Farley (1935–present), Lisa Sowle Cahill (1948–present), and Ada María Isasi-Díaz (1943–present) who have been the leading feminist voices in U.S. Catholic moral theology. Farley and Cahill, picking up the methodological trajectories of their predecessors, highlight the need for an inductive method where experience is a locus theologicus—a source for moral learning. For Farley and Cahill, the experience of women becomes central. Isasi-Díaz extends this further to the experience of marginalized women in the Latina community, and subsequently places the role of praxis as essential to informing one's theo-ethical insights. [End Page 94] The last three chapters of the book, dedicated to the work of Bryan Massingale, The New Wine, New Wineskins movement, and James Keenan ushers the reader into the future of U.S. Catholic moral theology—a future that seeks to go beyond the post-Vatican II revisionist methods. These three chapters, as well Curran's concluding reflection, raise several provocative questions about the future of U.S. Catholic moral theology. If "Christianity is a white church with a white God that brings about a dual brainwashing, rendering whites unaware of the horrors of racial oppression and black people passive in their role" (204), how ought moral theology change (Massingale)? If we continue to revise old methodology by pouring new wine into old wine skins, will Catholic moral theology be able...