Moral Certitude Research Articles

Reasons for a Total Simulation of Marital Consent in Judgements Pro Nullitate of the Metropolitan Tribunal in Kraków Passed Between 2010 and 2020

The article deals with the important element inherent in proving the invalidity of marriage on the grounds of total simulation of marital consent (Canon 1101 § 1), which is the reason for simulation. I analyse all the decisions pro nullitate matrimonii of the Metropolitan Tribunal in Kraków handed down in the years 2010-2020. In the first part, the importance of causa simulationis at the instruction stage in the canonical process is presented. The essential part of this study is devoted to causa celebrandi and causa simulandi occurring in the presented jurisprudence. I also propose some legal and pastoral measures that may help to eliminate instances of invalid marriages, concluding that the causa simulandi is an important aid for judges to achieve moral certitude about the nullity of a marriage for the reasons stated above.

Moral Certitude in Brain Death Diagnoses in Light of OrganEx and BrainEx

Death by neurological criteria has been at the center of ethical debates. I argue that brain death is a valid determination of death. This follows from an understanding that the brain is the effective integrator of the body and that following the death of the brain the body stops functioning as an integrated whole. Questions regarding this certainty have been reignited, however, by a study out of Yale that demonstrated synthetic perfusates, such as the compounds dubbed BrainEx and OrganEx, could restore cellular and even organ function in a porcine body and brain after death. Through analyzing medical, scientific, and theological literature I argue that even in the face of developing scientific technology moral certitude in brain death determinations is secure.

Brain Death, Organ Donation, and the Need for Moral Certainty

The question of determining brain death is a topic of much debate, especially in the Catholic community. Some have come out strongly against proposed changes to the generally accepted neurological criteria for determining death while others find that the changes are still in line with Catholic teaching. At stake for many is the much-needed organ transplant opportunities that would be disrupted if Catholics were called to reject these criteria versus the possibility that the current standards allow a doctor to kill their patient in procuring organs. This article acknowledges these concerns and strives to help Catholics seek a state of moral certitude in the case of organ donation after declaration of brain death.

A Critique of Principlism

A Critique of Principlism

Reading the Epigraph-Figuration in Sergei Slonimsky’s Master and Margarita

The research here brings under scrutiny an essential compositional element found in Sergei Slonimsky’s 1972 operatic score, Master and Margarita. At issue is the “Epigraph-Figuration” — a 14-note chromatic melody presented on the score’s frontispiece and found in a myriad of variation throughout the 3-hour chamber opera. Teasingly abstract in its aspect, not limited to any one particular dramatic role, and in reflexive correspondence with the Goethe quote commencing Bulgakov’s famous novel, the Epigraph-Figuration has inspired compelling exegesis and speculation. Exactly because the attraction of extra-musical hermeneutics is so strong for scholars of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, Slonimsky’s melodic figuration has lacked an objective examination sufficient enough to explain the significance of its many kaleidoscopic incarnations. This is exemplified, but not limited to, the compelling hypotheses of multi-disciplinary scholar Siglund Bruhn who sees the figuration as a representation of spiritual “opening” — symbolically significant as she places it in the dynamic context of the Soviet history of cultural thaw and cultural repression well known to Slonimsky and his peers and colleagues. But the present author will arrive at an alternate orientation, aided in no small part by a brief paradigmatic analysis of the actual, empirical presence of the Epigraph-Figuration in ten selected score excerpts. With the recent passing of Slonimsky, the music world and contemporary Russian culture has lost not only a fabulously brilliant and dedicated composer, but a courageous civic figure who tirelessly dedicated his life to the musical development of others with unflinching moral certitude and uncompromising creative integrity. The present author, and former student of Slonimsky, arrives at an alternate conclusion, discovering in the Epigraph-Figuration a robust illustration of one of the composer’s most salient aesthetic principles — affinity for the Subject and care for its right to individual growth — demonstrated in his unique treatment of each of its multiple, morphological iterations.

Konfrontacja bezpośrednia i pośrednia w kanonicznym procesie o nieważność małżeństwa (kan. 1560 § 2 KPK)

The argumentation is the central part of the canonical processes. The process is not possible without it. The proofs collected during the instruction lead the judge to the moral certitude about the matter. One of the proof allowed by the legislator is the confrontation. The legislator does not defne the concept of confrontation, but only shows its purpose, general conditions and the possibilities of its survey. Confrontation is a specifc way of examination. It is diffcult to carry out a confrontation. The judge has to prepare it carefully. But confrontation can help the judge in fnding the truth if it is applied according to prescripts of the canon law.

Popularizing, Moralizing, and the Soul of American Science

Popularizing, Moralizing, and the Soul of American Science

Mravní jistota jako princip soudního rozhodnutí

The article examines the requirement of moral certitude in a judicial decision in canon law according to canon 1608 of the Code of Canon Law of 1983. It opens with the Papal Allocutions of Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II. It analyses and comments on canon 1608 which rules moral certitude as a principle of the canonical sentence. It consequently examines various aspects of the process of reaching moral certitude, especially the process of collecting and evaluating the proofs, the right of defense of the parties to the process, and the obligation of the judge to appraise the proofs according to the judge’s own conscience. Finally, it concludes that the way to reach a sentence based on moral certitude is quite specific, corresponding to human decision-making before God, and at the same time, is a principle of decision-making in the context of human reason, freedom and responsibility. Moral certitude does not exclude any possibility of judicial error but does exclude every serious and positive doubt about the matter to be decided by the sentence.

Moral Certitude: Merits and Demerits of the Standard of Proof Applied in Roman Catholic Jurisprudence

Abstract In Roman Catholic canon law, moral certitude describes the ecclesiastical judge’s full conviction that a defendant is guilty or that a statement of claim made by a civil plaintiff is rightful. Moral certitude is the requirement for a conviction or a civil sentence in favour of the party under the burden of proof. Secular legal orders apply other standards. Anglo-American legal cultures mostly refer to the beyond a reasonable doubt standard in criminal cases, the preponderance of evidence, or the clear and convincing evidence standard in civil matters. Continental European cultures predominantly refer to the standard of full conviction in criminal and civil matters alike. This article compares those standards of proof with moral certitude in order to better understand its merits and limits. Based on this comparison, it examines the arguments both in favour of and against abiding with moral certitude as a standard of proof in the Catholic Church.

Ancient Theology and New Philosophies: Pierre-Daniel Huet against Descartes and Spinoza

This article analyses Pierre-Daniel Huet’s reaction to the doctrines that he believed to favour atheism, Deism, and, generally, irreligion. Descartes and Spinoza, in particular, are guilty, according to Huet, of placing excessive confidence in the discerning power of reason and in the type of certitude it produces, which is incomparable to revealed truth and in no way superior to moral certitude that arises from authority and historical erudition. Huet counters Cartesian philosophy with sceptical fideism and opposes Spinozian exegesis by means of an innovative, although perhaps untimely, adaptation of the doctrine of ancient theology. Against the ‘atheist’ Spinoza and the cohort of deist thinkers, Huet intends to demonstrate that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch and the divulger of God’s message to all peoples, in all times, and that, as a consequence, deist ‘natural religion’ is a partially corrupted version of the Mosaic doctrine.

Specyfika wyrokowania w kanonicznym procesie skróconym o nieważność małżeństwa

The briefer process of the nullity of marriage is one of the most important reform introduced by Pope Francis in motu proprio Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus . This new institu­tion attributes to the diocesan bishop a very direct and decisive role which emphasizes his importance as a first judge in the particular Church for which he was entrusted. According to MIDI the judge is to be the bishop himself, who, due to his pastoral office, is with Peter the greatest guarantor of Catholic unity in faith and discipline. In the briefer process of the nullity of marriage the diocesan bishop, having consulted with the instructor and the assessor and having considered the observations of the defender of the bond and, if there are any, the defense briefs of the parties, is to issue the sentence, if moral certitude about the nullity of marriage is reached. The bishop does not reach his decision based on a subjective opinion but on a judgment about what is certain and possible to proof on the basis of the evidence and arguments that have been presented in the process. The only definitive decision the bishop may make is that the nullity of marriage is estab­lished, which decision is executable if it is not appealed after fifteen days from publication of the definitive sentence. There is no room for a negative sentence because when the bishop is not morally certain of nullity of marriage then he issues a decree and refers the case to the ordinary method.

Moral Certitude in Bioethics

How much certitude is warranted in bioethics? According to Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, it is the mark of an educated man to seek that level of certitude that is appropriate to a particular arena of human experience. Thus, for the ancients, it would be foolish to expect the same level of certitude in psychology, the study of human behavior, as one would expect in mathematics, the study of number and quantity. By the very nature of their subject matter, fickle human beings in psychology and stable unchanging quantities in mathematics, less certitude is attainable in the former than in the latter. Given the contingent nature of the types of judgments common in bioethics, therefore, it is not reasonable to expect metaphysical or physical certitude in this arena of human conduct. Moral certitude can and must suffice.

Catholic Witness in Health Care: Practicing Medicine in Truth and Love ed. by John M. Travaline And Louise A. Mitchell

Reviewed by: Catholic Witness in Health Care: Practicing Medicine in Truth and Love ed. by John M. Travaline And Louise A. Mitchell O.P. Basil B. Cole Catholic Witness in Health Care: Practicing Medicine in Truth and Love. Edited by John M. Travaline and Louise A. Mitchell. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017. Pp. xviii + 513. $45.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8132-2983-6. This work of twenty-seven authors, among whom are philosophers, theologians, and medical personnel, is a creative interdisciplinary effort covering practical health issues in the medical field, looking at the challenges through the lens of Catholic bioethical principles, and identifying how [End Page 151] treatments have a moral teleology about them. The book uses at least two hundred different medical terms describing on-site problems of the human body, which can make the nonmedical reader feel somewhat inadequate. However, these descriptions of certain illnesses and their ensuing medical-moral problems can be understood by someone who knows the teachings of the Church regarding authentic health care. Differing kinds of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and teachers will find in this book a plethora of wise advice. For medical schools in need of a book to train future professionals, this work is an excellent resource in this field of cure and care. Bioethics (medical moral theology) is a branch of the social teaching of the Church that depends upon the key concept of the dignity of the human person, here applied in the physical way of treating the body and soul. A type of bridge exists here between anthropology and eschatology. Human beings are, in a unique way, transcendent creatures on this planet and, after the resurrection of the body, will exist forever as spiritual embodied persons. Furthermore, bioethics is part of the Church's social teaching because health care deals with the common good of a society, and evil moral practices in this area can corrupt a county's sense of right and wrong, as has become evident in the ethos supporting contraception, abortion, and euthanasia in many countries, which consider these practices health care rather than health destruction. Wading through problems of proportionate or disproportionate cure and care requires the utmost prudence on the part of the practitioner. This book provides a profound introduction to the sound, multidisciplinary thinking that a good doctor, psychologist (see esp. chap. 11), or pharmacist (see esp. chap. 12) must possess in the secular world of medicine. The book is divided into three parts: basic principles of health care (the three beginning chapters), the "clinical context" (nine chapters of practical on-site issues and their resolution), and spiritual theology (the three concluding chapters). The text contains a plethora of endnotes and several appendices for further research. Spiritual advice is found throughout. Moral dilemmas are faced with sound solutions, always keeping in mind that absolute certitude in this field must often yield to moral certitude. Future doctors and medical persons are reminded from time to time of the importance of the priest or minister in their encounters with patients. The spiritual problems that need to be faced often help patients either to be healed or to accept the consequences of their illness with peace. Nevertheless, medical persons need to develop a "pastoral" side in their work, similar to the priest's approach, knowing how to ask the right questions to prompt patients to think about either their potential demise or the difficult consequences of treatment. Machines alone never tell the whole story of the cause of chronic or even intractable pain and suffering; they cannot replace interaction with a wise human being. Indeed, feelings of fear and anxiety often mask medical problems. Future and beginning priests can profit in a special way by beginning with chapter 3 since it deals with the pastoral care of the sick and dying, an integral [End Page 152] part of a parish priest's ministry. This can motivate such a reader to dive into the other sections of the book, which at first blush may appear daunting. Bringing the sacrament of the sick is not the only gift that the priest brings to those with serious illnesses: he...

Melodrama: An Aesthetics of Impossibility by Jonathan Goldberg

Reviewed by: Melodrama: An Aesthetics of Impossibility by Jonathan Goldberg Anupama Kapse (bio) Melodrama: An Aesthetics of Impossibility by Jonathan Goldberg. Duke University Press. 2016. $89.95 hardcover; $23.95 paperback; e-book available. 204 pages. An understanding of affect as an index of the political has been vital to the resurgence of scholarly interest in melodrama. As an affective mode par excellence, at least in the last two decades, melodrama has been associated with the ability to amplify the emotions of marginal and disadvantaged groups.1 Analytically, in cinema studies the challenge has been to uphold melodrama’s capacity to posit individual problems as larger, more complex indices of a desired social imaginary. Jonathan Goldberg’s Melodrama: An Aesthetics of Impossibility attempts to offer an interdisciplinary account of melodrama’s political possibilities by returning to its musical roots. Goldberg attempts to retrace melodrama’s original meaning of “drama to which music has been added.” More provocatively, he approaches melodrama as a musical-temporal mode that can incorporate queer desire into its form outside the progressive register of teleology. Such a project necessarily presents itself as a book for advanced readers. Wasting no time on rehearsing arguments, Goldberg simply assumes the reader’s familiarity with the key conventions and debates of melodrama.2 By and large, following Peter Brooks’s foundational work The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and the Mode of Excess, scholarship on melodrama has foregrounded [End Page 191] victimhood as the primary site of expression and intervention.3 Goldberg privileges a dense, poetic mode of writing: eschewing an overly rationalistic road map of his chapters, he complicates the existing meanings of melodrama as a hyperbolic form to be “explained” away. The style of the book is essayistic—symmetrically arranged readings and fine-grained analyses are themselves presented lyrically instead of being organized chronologically. Part 1 examines opera and cinema. Part 2 focuses on the novel and cinema. The four chapters in these two parts include an eclectic and often canonical range of examples that are read noncanonically: Beethoven in chapter 1 and Douglas Sirk, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Todd Haynes in chapter 2. The third chapter is titled “The Art of Murder: Hitchcock and Highsmith.” The fourth and final chapter, “Wildean Aesthetics: From ‘Paul’s Case’ to Lucy Gayheart,” looks at Willa Cather’s novels through a melodic lens. Featuring astute readings of the nonverbal, Goldberg uses musical metaphors to “listen” to queer meanings and otherwise invisible emotional parameters. Whether it is Beethoven’s Fidelio, Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1942), or Willa Cather’s Lucy Gayheart (1935), he aims to find the “queer lever[s]” that “ignit[e] sites of desire at . . . places of crossing” (xiii).4 These chapters foreground affective intersections, over and above any clear examples of moral certitude. Putting relationality over identity, Goldberg begins with Beethoven’s opera Fidelio (1814), an example of how “for male to become female is not to become woman but to enter into the differentially shared space of self-division.”5 Similarly, Todd Haynes’s melodramatic “remakes” of Sirks and Fassbinder’s films enact (or reenact) a “disengagement of the term woman from its referent “woman” setting into motion a “homo-aesthetics” vis-à-vis the politics of a similarity-in-difference.6 Fidelio functions as the book’s analytic center: it is an opera about a cross-dressed protagonist who switches voice, pitch, gender, and tonal registers that are dependent on an identity that collapses as soon as he/she retrieves his/her husband from jail and lapses back into being Leonore. As such, “the thrill of hearing Leonore’s voice ascend into soprano range has a great deal to do with its escape from confinement to the alto register [as Fidelio].”7 As Fidelio descends into the depths of prison to help dig the grave of an unjustly imprisoned man, Beethoven interrupts the separation of the speaking voice and music, joining melos and drama together in a moment the score names technically, formally, as “Melodram.”8 The central argument depends not only on the interpenetration of identities but also on the Melodram as the point at which music and...

Metody odkrycia prawdy procesowej przez sędziego w kanonicznym procesie małżeńskim

Niniejszy artykuł w swoich założeniach: „najpierw rzeczy pierwsze”, ma na celu zwięzłe przypomnienie o nadrzędnej wartości kanonicznego procesu małżeńskiego jaką jest prawda obiektywna, do której, poprzez różne metody poznania intelektualnego musi dojść sędzia kościelny badający sprawę o stwierdzenie nieważności małżeństwa. Autorka wskazuje i krótko opisuje kryteria pozwalające sędziemu poznanie prawdy w procesie takie jak: pewność moralna, swobodna ocena dowodów, obiektywizm. Zwraca również uwagę na charakterystykę osoby sędziego jako badacza sprawiedliwości. W publikacji przywołane zostają cechy i postawy, które wspomagają sędziego w przepowiadaniu prawdy, ale które mogą w pewnych okolicznościach osłabić też jego obiektywizm. Tenor myśli przewijającej się w pracy jest następujący: żadne racje pastoralne nie osłabiają nakazu osiągnięcia przez sędziego prawdy obiektywnej. Ta bowiem zawiera się w fundamentalnej kodeksowej zasadzie salus animarum.

Stjecanje moralne sigurnosti u ženidbenom sudskom postupku

The article deals with the issue of achieving moral certitude in the conscience of the judge based on documents and evidence put forward in petitions for declaration of nullity of a marriage. A brief comparison is drawn between Cann. 1608 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law and Article 247 of the Instruction Dignitas Connubi, and, based on this comparison, the development and understanding of the concept of moral certitude is demonstrated. A clear distinction is made between the concept of moral certitude and the concept of absolute certitude as well as the concept of quasi–certainty or probability. The definition of moral certitude and its content is explained in accordance with the teachings of Pius XII and John Paul II, that is to say, in keeping with their respective addresses to the Roman Rota. Also, the article discusses the subjective and objective content of moral certitude, the responsibility of the judge and the freedom recognized by law for the judge to assess the evidence.

Adwokat - cooperator veritatis w procesie o orzeczenie nieważności małżeństwa

Adwokat to osoba posiadająca odpowiednie kwalifikacje, spełniająca wymogi określone w kan. 1483 KPK/83, uznana przez kompetentną władzę, poproszona przez stronę procesową o osobistą pomoc, polegającą na obronie interesów klienta w procesie lub działaniu w sądzie. Zadanie adwokata w przepisach Kościoła łacińskiego zostało określone łacińskim terminem munus oraz officium o charakterze kościelnym. Adwokat zawsze działa z uwzględnieniem ducha i celów własnych kanonicznego porządku prawnego i dlatego, podobnie jak pozostałe podmioty procesu, zobowiązany jest do współpracy z sędzią w realizacji fundamentalnego celu postępowania kanonicznego, jakim jest poszukiwanie prawdy obiektywnej.Jedną z naczelnych zasad w procesie o stwierdzenie nieważności małżeństwa, zawartą w motu proprio „Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus”, przepisach kodeksowych oraz w Instrukcji Dignitas connubii jest zasada poszukiwania prawdy obiektywnej. Aby zrealizować tę zasadę, konieczna jest współpraca wszystkich uczestników procesu, a więc sędziego (biskupa diecezjalnego w procesie skróconym), stron, obrońcy węzła małżeńskiego, adwokata oraz rzecznika sprawiedliwości – jeśli bierze w nim udział.Szczególną rolę w tej współpracy pełni adwokat, który, jako osoba kompetentna i biegła w prawie, pomoże sędziemu w osiągnięciu pewności moralnej co do rozstrzygnięcia danej sprawy, przedstawiając mu usystematyzowane już fakty i dowody pozwalające na wydanie sprawiedliwego wyroku. Przez cały czas trwania sprawy, począwszy od pomocy stronie jeszcze przed procesem (zwykłym lub skróconym), poprzez wniesienie skargi powodowej, działania w trakcie samego procesu, a także już po ogłoszeniu wyroku, adwokat jest – nawet jeśli nie zawsze koniecznym – bardzo pomocnym gwarantem przysługującego wiernym prawa do obrony. W realizacji swojego zadania adwokat powinien działać przede wszystkim w interesie strony, której jest obrońcą, jednakże nigdy nie może stracić z pola widzenia prawdy, którą należy odkrywać w postępowaniu procesowym kierując się zawsze zasadą sprawiedliwości.

Non-Cognitivism and Fundamental Moral Certitude: Reply to Eriksson and Francén Olinder

ABSTRACTAccommodating degrees of moral certitude is a serious problem for non-cognitivism about ethics. In particular, non-cognitivism has trouble accommodating fundamental moral certitude. John Eriksson and Ragnar Francén Olinder [2016] have recently proposed a solution. In fact, Eriksson and Francén Olinder offer two different proposals—one ‘classification’ account and one ‘projectivist’ account. We argue that the classification account faces the same problem as previous accounts do, while the projectivist account has unacceptable implications. Non-cognitivists will have to look elsewhere for a plausible solution to the problem of accommodating fundamental moral certitude.

Private Troubles, Master Narratives: Dilemmas of Dementia Care in a Short Story.

Mary Gordon's short story, Mrs. Cassidy's Last Year, is about a family trying to cope, not only with Mrs. Cassidy, who has dementia and is physically and verbally abusive, but also with her elderly husband's difficulties caring for her at home. Mr. Cassidy's dilemma, expressed through the dissonance between his private "inner talk" of emotions and desires that he feels are forbidden and shameful, and his insistence to his son and daughter-in-law that his wife is still the woman he married and her care is not too much for him. This article attempts to open up conceptual space on such questions of caregiver perceptions of the personhood (who they are now), and "personness"-the motivations and intentions-of the person with dementia; caregiver and family motivations and feeling states; and the ways that cultural narratives of obligation in family caregiving affect a caregiver's sense of self and moral certitude. In addition, the story helps us to consider the implications of a bifurcation between a caregiver's inner feelings, and what he or she understands to be the way he or she should feel and act publically. The article attempts to illustrate the interplay and tensions between narratives-master narratives from the culture, those from more immediate ideological environments, auto- and biographical stories, memories, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are-and how these come into stark relief in the context of a radically altered intimate relationship.

No Consensus on Ella

When the FDA labeled ulipristal acetate (UPA; Ella is the product sold in the United States by HRA Pharma) an “emergency contraceptive,” Catholic and pro-life leaders criticized the decision, identified Ella as an abortifacient, and agreed it should not be used by Catholic institutions and providers.1 Ron Hamel, senior ethicist for the Catholic Health Association, shared this conclusion. In 2014, however, Hamel ended a review article by stating, “If, however, the consensus is correct, then there would seem to be sufficient moral certitude at this time to make use of UPA in Catholic hospitals.” Below I question whether a relevant consensus exists and argue that the scientific evidence militates against, rather than in favor of, use of UPA/Ella by Catholic providers.