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On Presuppositions of Theological Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2013

Norbert J. Rigali SJ
Norbert J. Rigali SJ
Affiliation:
University of San Diego
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Abstract

Once the need to reform Catholic ethics became manifest with the Second Vatican Council, revision and adaptation of moral theology, the science that had served since the Council of Trent as official Catholic ethics, was often presented as the theological path to renewal. Scrutiny of philosophical, ethical, and theological presuppositions, however, discloses that the foundations of moral theology differ radically from those on which contemporary theological ethics must be based and that, accordingly, the way to true reform is not revision and adaptation of moral theology but the replacement of this self-contained science through construction of a fundamentally different kind of ethics, theological relational ethics as an essential, integral part of a reconstituted holistic theology.

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Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , Fall 2011 , pp. 211 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2011

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References

1 Second Vatican Council, Decree on the Training of Priests (Optatam totius), no. 16, in Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, ed. Flannery, Austin (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1975), 720Google Scholar.

2 Massingale, Bryan, “Beyond Revision: A Younger Moralist Looks at Charles E. Curran,” in A Call to Fidelity: On the Moral Theology of Charles E. Curran, ed. Walter, James et al. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 253–72Google Scholar, at 265–69.

3 See Rahner, Karl, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. Dych, William V. (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 8–10Google Scholar.

4 A Catechism of Christian Doctrine: Prepared and Enjoined by Order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (Los Angeles: Spearman, 1923), 5Google Scholar. The original edition appeared in 1885 and was followed by various revisions both before and after the 1923 edition.

5 Ibid., 16.

6 Ibid., 43.

7 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa theologiae IGoogle Scholar, q. 29. a. 1.

8 “Greek philosophy discovered the idea of essence but did not recognize the concept and essence of the person. It is not found there. There is only the individual” (Ratzinger, Joseph, On the Way to Jesus Christ, tr. Miller, Michael J. [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005], 19)Google Scholar.

9 Summa theologiae I–II, q. 3, aa. 1–8.

10 In a widely used, traditional theological summa, for example, the teaching on “The Nature of Man”—typically, no mention was made of the human person—was presented in two theses: “Man is composed of an organic body and a rational, spiritual, and immortal soul, which coalesce into one nature,” and “The rational soul is perse and essentially the form of the human body” (Tanquerey, Adolphe, A Manual of Dogmatic Theology, 2 vols., trans. Byrnes, John J. [New York: Desclee, 1959], 1:399–400Google Scholar; the original Latin text was published late in the nineteenth century, and an eleventh edition in 1907). Corresponding was the manual's individualistic central teaching about “The Destiny of Man”: “Essential heavenly beatitude is formally composed of three acts, namely the vision of God, the love of God, and the joy of God” (ibid., 2:418).

11 For a discussion of Augustine's Trinitarian theology as a source of individualistic understanding of the person, see LaCugna, Catherine Mowry, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 91–101Google Scholar. LaCugna characterizes Descartes as “a good Augustinian” in his “turn to the subject” and sees Kant as completing modern definitions of the person as self-consciousness by adding “the note of morality: A person is a self-conscious moral subject who is responsible for his or her actions” (ibid., 250–51).

12 Descriptive terms are from McCormick, Richard A., “Moral Theology 1940–1989: An Overview,” in The Historical Development of Fundamental Moral Theology in the United States, ed. Curran, Charles E. and McCormick, Richard A. (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 47Google Scholar.

13 Noldin, H., Scmitt, A., and Heinzel, G., Summa Theologiae Moralis, 30th ed., 3 vols. (Innsbruck: F. Rauch, 1952), 1:1Google Scholar; “the theological science of deliberate human acts as expressing a relation to the ultimate supernatural end to be obtained through those acts and the means of salvation” (Hürth, F. and Abellàn, P., De Principiis, De Virtutibus et Praeceptis [Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University, 1948], 7)Google Scholar; “the scientific exposition of human conduct so far as it is directed by reason and faith to the attainment of our supernatural final end” (Jone, Heribert, Moral Theology, 15th ed., trans. Adelman, Urban [Westminster, MD: Newman, 1956], 1)Google Scholar; “a supernatural science analyzing human acts inasmuch as they are means to attain the supernatural end” (Tanquerey, Adolphe, Synopsis Theologiae Moralis et Pastoralis: Ad Mentem S. Thomae et S. Alphonsi, Hodiernis Moribus Accomodata, 2 vols. [New York: Benziger Brothers, 1902, 1905], 1:ix)Google Scholar. Translations from Latin added.

14 In presupposing that the human person's activity has as its ultimate end (finis operantis) the supernatural beatific vision of God—the supreme grace—moral theology had to presuppose for human acts also a God-related ultimate end that human effort is able to produce (finis operis). This end was the accomplishing of God's will (“God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world”) through obedience to laws—divine, natural, and human—expressing God's will.

15 Tanquerey, , Synopsis Theologiae Moralis et Pastoralis, 2:242Google Scholar. The author adopts the definition from Augustine's Contra Faustum and characterizes it as the “commonly received definition.” See also Jone, , Moral Theology, 4Google Scholar; Génicot, Eduardus, Theologiae Moralis Institutiones, 4th ed., 2 vols.(Louvain: Polleunis & Ceuterick, 1902), 1:136Google Scholar; Noldin, , Schmitt, and Heinzel, Summa Theologiae Moralis, 1:262Google Scholar; Sabetti, Aloysius and Barrett, Timothy, Compendium Theologiae Moralis, 27th ed. (New York: Frederick Pustet, 1919), 127Google Scholar.

16 Dividing the discipline in standard fashion into two parts, Tanquerey's typical manual, Synopsis Theologiae Moralis et Pastoralis, explained its task thus: Before special moral theology treats the individual commandments of God and the church, general or fundamental moral theology “explains general principles of human acts, by which we strive toward the end; of laws, by which these acts are objectively governed; of conscience, by which the laws are applied subjectively to each individual situation; of sins, by which the will turns away from law; of virtues in general, by which we are moved to act according to law” (1:xi; translation added). See also Noldin, Schmitt and Heinzel, Summa Theologiae Moralis, 1:5Google Scholar; Jone, , Moral Theology, 2Google Scholar.

17 Mahoney, John, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 32–33Google Scholar.

18 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes [GS]), no. 12, in Vatican Council II, 913–14.

19 GS 14, ibid., 914–15.

20 Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen gentium), no. 9, in ibid., 359.

21 Ibid., 360.

22 Ibid.

23 GS 32, in ibid., 932.

24 Two magisterial presentations of the relational nature of the human person are Martin Buber's “What Is Man?” his inaugural lectures as Professor of Social Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (in Buber, M., Between Man and Man, trans. Smith, Ronald Gregor [New York: Routledge, 2002], 140–244)Google Scholar and John Macmurray's Gifford Lectures of 1953–54, published in two separate volumes, The Self as Agent and Persons in Relation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961)Google Scholar.

25 As a free subject the human person is a moral being and “precisely as free subject, and not merely in addition to this, is a being in the world, in history, and in a world of persons.” And the self-actualization of the free subject is achieved “in a situation which itself is always determined by history and by other persons” (Rahner, , Foundations of Christian Faith, 106–07Google Scholar).

26 Keenan, James F., Moral Wisdom: Lessons and Texts from the Catholic Tradition (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 150Google Scholar.

27 “Justice is a cardinal virtue … divided into individual (or commutative) justice and social justice. Commutative justice regulates the relations between man and man, whether as physical or moral person. Social justice regulates the mutual relations between man and society (the State) and vice versa; as legal justice it requires the individual to render to the State what is its due; as distributive justice it obliges the State to render to the individual what is his due” (Jone, , Moral Theology, 217Google Scholar).

28 Referring to his World War II experience of “the most absurd obedience by Christians … toward a criminal regime,” Bernard Häring states that after the war he “returned to moral theology with the firm decision to teach it so that its core concept would not be obedience but responsibility” (My Witness for the Church, trans. Swidler, Leonard [New York: Paulist Press, 1992], 23–24Google Scholar).

29 A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation, trans. and ed. Inda, Caridad and Eagleson, John (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1973)Google Scholar.

30 Kosnik, Anthony, Carroll, William, Cunningham, Agnes, Modras, Ronald, and Schulte, James, Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought (New York: Paulist, 1977), 82Google Scholar.

31 Ibid., 83.

32 Ibid., 86.

33 Ibid., ix.

34 In a letter of 13 July 1979 to Archbishop John R. Quinn, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Franjo Seper, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, commended the conference's Committee on Doctrine for their November 1977 evaluation of the report, judging erroneous its pastoral directives and norms for the formation of Christian conscience in sexual moral matters (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/faith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19790713_mons_quinn_en.html).

35 Salzman, Todd A. and Lawler, Michael G., The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008), 4 and 95Google Scholar.

36 Committee on Doctrine, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Inadequacies in the Theological Methodology and Conclusions of The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology by Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler,” 15 September 2010, 22–23, http://www.usccb.org/doctrine/Sexual_Person_2010-09=15.pdfGoogle Scholar.

37 von Hildebrand, Dietrich, Purity: The Mystery of Christian Sexuality (Steubenville, OH: Franciscan University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; originally published as In Defence of Purity: An Analysis of the Catholic Ideals of Purity and Virginity (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1931)Google Scholar.

38 Farley, Margaret A., Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics (New York: Continuum 2006)Google Scholar.

39 Paul, John II, Encyclical Redemptoris Missio (Mission of the Redeemer, 7 December 1990), no. 15 (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1990), 27Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., no. 16, 27.

41 Ibid., no. 15, 26.

42 See n. 13 above.

43 In the 51 pages of tables of contents and indexes of Henry Davis's typical manual of moral theology, Moral and Pastoral Theology (6th ed., 4 vols. [New York: Sheed and Ward, 1949])Google Scholar, there is no mention of Jesus, Christ, kingdom of God, or Holy Spirit (Holy Ghost). And even though a chapter of 154 pages is devoted to the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, the entire 1768-page work includes less than a dozen mentions of Christ and even fewer of Jesus—with all of these in the context of canonical discussions of the clerical state and the role of the minister of the eucharistic sacrifice. As a confessionoriented science of deliberate acts in relation to laws, moral theology's relation to Christian faith was not through Scripture or dogmatic theology. The relation was only indirect, through Catholic natural law tradition and canon law.

44 Häring, Bernard, “Moral Theology,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Rahner, Karl (New York: Seabury, 1975), 988–93Google Scholar, at 988.

45 Joyce, George H., “Revelation,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church, ed. Herberman, Charles G. et al. , 15 vols. (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912), 13:1–4Google Scholar, at 1. Toward the end of this long article treating revelation as propositional truths is a short section on “Christian Revelation” (4). While “God has spoken to his servants in every age and still continues to favour chosen souls,” the church refers to “the Revelation which has been committed to her charge” as “Christian revelation” or “the deposit of faith.” It was “given in its entirety to Our Lord and His Apostles,” and after “the death of the last of the twelve it could receive no increment.” The article makes no mention of Old Testament revelation, but it notes that among God's “servants in every age” are “prophets.”

46 Tanquerey, A., A Manual of Dogmatic Theology, 1:191–92Google Scholar. The virtue of faith was defined as the supernatural habit that “disposes the mind to assent firmly to all that God has revealed, because of divine authority” (192).

47 The ordinary dogmatic theology manual was structured according to theses, major doctrinal propositions to be ‘proved’ through Scripture texts, teachings of church Fathers, magisterial pronouncements, and reasoning. Evaluated by the same method, individual theological propositions in general were classified with a “theological note,” ranging from “de fide definita” of a solemnly defined revealed truth to “temerarious” and “heretical.”

48 Viewed as propositional truths, revelation was readily separated into divine mysteries (truths beyond the scope of reason) and truths knowable by reason; all revelation, therefore, was not intrinsically interrelated. And since moral theologians could find no moral norm in revelation that was not knowable by reason, the conclusion eventually was explicitly drawn that Christian morality and natural law are materially identical and that there is no specifically Christian ethics (see nn. 58–59 below).

49 Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei verbum), no. 2, in Vatican Council II, 751.

50 Alfaro, Juan, “Faith,” in Encyclopedia of Theology, ed. Rahner, Karl, 500–11Google Scholar, at 500.

51 “There is never a salvific act of God on man which is not also and always a salvific act of man. There is no revelation which could take place in any other way except in the faith of the person hearing the revelation” (Rahner, , Foundations of Christian Faith, 142Google Scholar).

52 For a brief history of this development in moral theology see Häring, Bernard, The Law of Christ: Moral Theology for Priests and Laity, 3 vols., trans. Kaiser, Edwin G. (Mercier: Cork, Ireland, 1963–1967), 1:22–33Google Scholar. With regard to the conciliar decree see n.1 above.

53 The Law of Christ, 1:viiGoogle Scholar.

54 Ibid., 1:viii.

55 See n. 43 above.

56 See the “Historical Survey of Moral Theology” in The Law of Christ, 1: 3–33Google Scholar, where Häring adopts this equivocal, anachronistic usage. Note that when his survey reaches the sixteenth century (p. 17) it becomes an account of the “Origin of ‘Moral Theology,’” with the name of the post-Tridentine science now requiring quotation marks to distinguish it from the so-called moral theology of the preceding fifteen centuries. Note, too, the subtitle itself of The Law of Christ: Moral Theology for Priests and Laity. Confusing and impeding the contemporary transformation of Catholic ethics from moral theology to theological ethics, such anachronistic, ambiguous use of the name is found still today in some Catholic academic contexts and circles.

57 Häring, , My Witness for the Church, 60Google Scholar.

58 McCormick, Richard A., “Notes on Moral Theology,” Theological Studies 32 (1971): 66–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 74.

59 Curran, Charles E., “Is there a Distinctively Christian Social Ethics,” in Metropolis: Christian Presence and Responsibility, ed. Morris, Philip D. (Notre Dame, Ind.: Fides, 1970), 92–120Google Scholar, at 115.

60 O'Connell, Timothy E., Principles for a Catholic Morality (New York: Seabury, 1978), 40Google Scholar.

61 Häring, Bernard, Free and Faithful in Christ: Moral Theology for Clergy and Laity, 3 vols. (New York: Seabury, 1978–1981), 1:45–46Google Scholar.

62 Ibid., 1:6.

63 See Rahner, , Foundations of Christian Faith, 13Google Scholar.

64 Summa theologiae, I–II, q. 106, a. 1.