The living tradition of Catholic moral theology

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...

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...

In its specific moral conclusions ecclesiastical Anglican theology shares much with traditional Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. In its understanding of the method and purpose of moral theology classical Anglicanism sometimes diverges from earlier Roman Catholicism -- and anticipates the most positive developments in contemporary Roman Catholic moral theology -- while sharing a common theological heritage with Rome in its understanding of natural law, the moral agent, and the moral act. Anglicans situate moral reasoning within the Church of the patristic Tradition, which distinguishes them from Protestants, yet do not accept the Roman magisterium's self-understanding. Consequently, the Anglican mode of moral reasoning has strong affinities with the Orthodox churches.

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. …

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 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.

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 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.

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...

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...

At the end of his 1975 Père Marquette lecture on the “The Contributions of Theology to Medical Ethics” [2], J. M. Gustafson comes to the conclusion that these contributions are not particularly great. The volume Theology and Bioethics: Exploring the Foundations and Frontiers[3], edited by E. E. Shelp, confirms this conclusion. It follows that we can hardly expect greater things when we deal here specifically with the contribution of Catholic theology to medical ethics. Nevertheless, reference is made frequently to Catholic medical ethics, presumably because Catholic moral theology and the Catholic Church have dealt more frequently in the past with questions of medical ethics than have other religious institutions.

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.

In the early modern age, for the first time in history, moral theology became a ground of bitter strife within the Roman Catholic Church. After the Council of Trent, it evolved as a specialized discipline with its own methodology, which became increasingly identified with casuistry. The theoretical underpinning of this development was probabilism, the system according to which, when there are two opposite opinions as to the morality of a course of action, one is allowed to follow the less probable one. From about 1650, first of all in Belgium and France, both probabilism and casuistry came under attack as favoring laxity. Rigorism, which was linked to but by no means synonymous with doctrinal Jansenism, progressively spread to the entire Church. The papacy, whose pronouncements on moral matters became increasingly important, shared in this reaction but was careful to preserve theological pluralism.

The notion of discipleship has come to be considered an essential foundation and perspective in modern Catholic moral theology. Fritz Tillmann’s manual Die Idee der Nachfolge Christi was a landmark work in the early 20th century whose popularity led to a wide diffusion of the biblical concept of discipleship in Catholic moral theology. However, little mention is made of Tillmann in current academic writing. The article aims to explore the thought of Tillmann by outlining his understanding of Christian moral discipleship in conjunction with examples of key authors who influenced Tillmann, such as Hirscher and Linsenmann of the Tübingen School, as well as Neo-Scholastic authors who severely criticized his approach. The article concludes with a reflection on the current implications of discipleship in moral theology, calling for a greater recognition of the need for a transformative, loving relationship with Christ to fuel the desire to choose the good.

This article surveys the modes of ethical upbringing in African and Western Catholic education in an effort to appreciate the fact that moral living is not universal, but contextual, given the different contexts in Africa and elsewhere in the world. The data collection tool employed is document analysis. It engages four Catholic moral theologians, three of whom are Africans, namely, John Samuel Mbiti of Kenya, Laurent Magesa of Tanzania and Benezet Bujo of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The fourth moral theologian, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), is an epitome of Western Catholic moral reflections. African refers to what is related to the continent of Africa in terms of various cultures, traditions, customs, descent, ethnicity, nationality, languages, literature, art, music, spirituality, and history (Mbiti, 1969). Western Catholic refers to the Roman Catholic Church, whose supreme head is the Pope, as opposed to the Eastern Catholic Churches (O’Collins and Farrugia, 2020, p. 2). Froebel (1886) defines education as an activity, “that raises man to a free, conscious living in accordance to the divine. It guides man to clearness about himself and in himself to peace with nature and to union with God” (p. 3)