Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T02:00:17.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Moral Act

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Norbert J. Rigali
Norbert J. Rigali*
Affiliation:
University of San Diego
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

From the manuals of the classicist period, moral theology inherited an understanding of the moral act that is rooted in the classical conception of the human being as a rational animal. However, the new personalist and relational anthropology characterizing contemporary theology requires a corresponding revised idea of the nature of the moral act. This revision, it appears, cannot be definitively achieved unless a holistic material understanding of the moral life first replaces the merely formal and empty concept of it in the manualist tradition. Fortunately, this replacement seems to be occurring. The areas of sexual morality and social consciousness are those that suffer the greatest distortion in ethics based on classicist anthropology and, similarly, admit the greatest revision when transferred into the context of contemporary theological anthropology.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Fall 1983 , pp. 252 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1983

References

1 ST 1a2ae, q. 1, a. 1.

2 Hürth, F. and Abellán, P. M., De Principiis—De Virtutibus et Praeceptis (Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University, 1948), I:159.Google Scholar

3 ST 1a2ae, q. 1, a. 3.

4 Noldin, H., Schmitt, A., and Heinzel, G., Summa Theologiae Moralis (30th ed.; Innsbruck: F. Rauch, 1952), I:66.Google Scholar

5 See Johann, Robert O., Building the Human (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), pp. 76–79.Google Scholar

6 Surely among the many factors leading to this development are the publication of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's vision of the unity and interrelatedness of all reality, insights from depth psychology, and the influence of Martin Buber's personalism.

7 Monden, Louis S.J.,, Sin, Liberty and Law, tr. Donceel, Joseph S.J., (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965), p. 31.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., p. 36.

9 O'Neill, Robert P. and Donovan, Michael A., Sexuality and Moral Responsibility (Washington, DC: Corpus Books, 1968), p. 57.Google Scholar

10 McCormick, Richard A. S.J.,, Notes on Moral Theology 1965 through 1980 (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981), p. 304.Google Scholar

11 Rigali, Norbert J., “Christ and Morality” in Readings in Moral Theology, No. 2: The Distinctiveness of Christian Ethics, ed. Curran, Charles E. and McCormick, R. A. S.J., (New York: Paulist, 1980), p. 114.Google Scholar

12 See Noldin, Schmitt, and Heinzel, I:38: The human being “is bound to live a life worthy of a son of God through the supernatural observance of the commandments of God so that through good works he might merit the reward of eternal life.” This statement is indicative of a moral theology in which “the moral life” is merely a formal, empty concept.

13 Bernard Häring devotes the first volume of his second compendium of moral theology, Free and Faithful in Christ (New York: Seabury, 1978)Google Scholar, to presenting the Christian moral life as a life of creative freedom and fidelity in Christ. In Conscience: Development and Self-Transcendence (Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1981)Google Scholar, Walter E. Conn proposes that the moral life in general and, specifically, the Christian moral life are to be understood as the fulfillment of conscience as the drive toward self-transcendence through “a creativity that is at once sensitive, critical, responsible and loving” (p. 213 and passim).

14 Häring, , Free and Faithful in Christ, II (1979): 503, 560.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., pp. 562-63

16 Ibid., pp. 523-24.

17 Unfortunately, Humanae vitae itself exemplifies the failure of classicist moral theology to present a completely satisfactory understanding of the human act. Although the encyclical uses the terms, conjugal act (actus coniugais), act of marriage (coniugii actus), and conjugal intercourse (coniugalis congressio), in its key sentence regarding human regulation of conception it states that any use of matrimony (quilibet matrimonii usus) must remain per se ordered to the procreation of human life (AAS 60 [1968], p. 488Google Scholar). Pope Paul VI, of course, inherited the practice of speaking about sexual intercourse between a married couple as a “use of matrimony.” Nevertheless, this classicist terminology is extremely inept and misleading. It is a depersonalizing reification that causes marriage to appear as if it were a thing to be used rather than as a shared commitment to be lived. The question of contraception cannot even be posed, much less answered, without distortion unless such terminology, inextricably linked to an anthropology of the rational animal, is transcended.

Moreover, there is inherent distortion and confusion in language that speaks about a need for a human act to remain open to some good or value. It is not human acts but persons who are obliged to remain, in and through their acts, open to goods and values. Hypostasizing human acts distorts the relations that constitute the essence of moral, personal reality. Thus, while, for the sake of dialogue, adopting here the language of hypostasized human acts, I must at the same time call attention to the incapacity of this language definitively even to pose, much less to answer, the moral question of contraception.

18 Häring, Bernard, Medicol Ethics, ed. Jean, Gabrielle L. (Notre Dame, IN: Fides, 1973), pp. 184–89;Google ScholarFree and Faithful in Christ, 11:564.Google Scholar

19 Häring, , Medical Ethics, p. 186.Google Scholar

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid., p. 187.

22 Ibid.

23 Häring, , Free and Faithful in Christ, II:564.Google Scholar

24 Häring, , Medical Ethics, p. 188.Google Scholar

25 Ibid.

26 Häring, , Free and Faithful in Christ, II:564.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., p. 563.

28 Ibid.

29 McCormick has defined what he calls “vintage Haring.” It is “characterized by obvious kindness and compassion, pastoral prudence, a shrewd sense of the direction of things, and a generous amount of haziness” (Notes on Moral Theology 1965 through 1980, p. 340).

30 Häring, , Free and Faithful in Christ, II:563–64.Google Scholar

31 Keane, Philip S. S.S., Sexual Morality: A Catholic Perspective (New York: Paulist, 1977), p. 87.Google Scholar

32 Ibid.

33 Curran, Charles E., Catholic Moral Theology in Dialogue (Notre Dame, IN: Fides, 1972), p. 217.Google Scholar

34 Baum, Gregory, “Catholic Homosexuals,” Commonweal 99 (1974), 481.Google Scholar

35 Unfortunately, Baum's use of the term, “mutuality,” leaves him vulnerable to the charge that he sees human sexuality “simply as a vehicle of human intercommunication” and “fails to address the procreative or life-serving element of human sexuality” (Kosnik, Anthonyet al., Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought [New York: Paulist, 1977], p. 206Google Scholar). It is possible, however, that Baum does not understand “mutuality” in a narrow context and has in mind a relationship of love, fidelity, and responsibility that opens two persons more fully to society and the world, together with their responsibilities therein. Still, he does not tell us against what horizon, broad or narrow, we are to understand his words about a “friendship that enables the partners to grow and become more truly human.”

36 Rigali, Norbert J., “Faith and the Theologian,” The Priest 34 (1978), 14.Google Scholar

37 See “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World” in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Abbott, Walter M. S.J., (New York: Guild Press, 1966), no. 4, p. 202.Google Scholar