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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2024
This essay is an attempt at a modest diatribe against some of the themes often associated with the ‘new moral theology’. It is my contention that in our enthusiasm for the seeming freedom promised in the new love ethic we have forgotten that the self must be transformed if we are to see the world as it is, and that the transformation into loving persons is not accomplished overnight by declaring our good intentions but by submitting patiently to the suffering that makes us real. We have impoverished our ethics by assuming that our lives can easily embody and reflect the good. In our moral behaviour, we have tacitly accepted existence in a world where God does not exist; in such a world, evil often appears beautiful and even kind. Such a situation is all the more pernicious because we claim to base our self-imposed blindness on love, kindness, justice, and even Jesus Christ. The main purpose of this essay is to try to locate some of the problems that have led us to confuse illusion with reality, for only when we understand the nature of our self-deception can we begin to appreciate how wonderful and yet how painful it is to live in a world where the good is not easily done.
page 212 note 1 Monden, Louis, Sin, Liberty, and Law (New York: Sheed and Mard, 1965), p. 89Google Scholar.
page 214 note 1 Milhaven, John, ‘The Behavioral Sciences and Christian Ethics’, in Projectives: Shaping An American Theology for the Future, edited by O'Meara, and Weisser, (New York: Doubleday, 1970), p. 138Google Scholar.
page 216 note 1 For a similar argument see MacIntyre, Alasdair, The Religious Significance of Atheism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969)Google Scholar.
page 216 note 2 For a suggestive analysis of the relation of language and ethics, see: McCabe, Herbert, Law, Love and Language (London: Sheed & Ward, 1969)Google Scholar, and my ‘Situation Ethics, Moral Notions, and Theological Ethics’, Irish Theological Quarterly (July, 1971), pp. 242–257.
page 216 note 3 Murdoch, Iris, The Sovereignty of the Good (London, 1971)Google Scholar.
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