Making Sense of Eighty Years of Theological Ethics

Abstract

This article surveys all the contributions in ethics on these pages over the past eighty years and is divided into four historical parts: the first three years; the years from 1943 to 1964; the years Richard McCormick wrote from 1964 to 1984; and the years beyond McCormick. It surveys a period from neo-Scholastic manualism at the eve of World War II to the contemporary era, where methods for attaining moral objectivity are complex. This survey notes shifts in theological method, the movement of the center from the personal to the social, the transition from an exclusively clerical authorship to a much broader array of authors, and a shift in readership from priest confessors to professional theologians.