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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
In responding to the Second Vatican Council’s call for a renewal in moral theological reflection, Servais Pinckaers, Benedict Ashley, and Romanus Cessario, all Dominicans, are engaged in the earnest labour of authentically interpreting that call to renewal via a systematic examination of the sources of ethics contained in Sacred Scripture, Tradition, and natural reason.
The years since the Second Vatican Council have seen many divergent trends in moral method, not least the adoption of a widespread adherence to the methodology of proportionalism, particularly in the United States. The above mentioned Dominicans reject such a method as being incompatible with those crucial sources of our faith. In contrast to the popularity of proportionalism, they are engaged in a quiet, patient, and determined project, centred on virtue theory, that is gradually bearing fruit.
In Sources of Christian Ethics, Pinckaers tackles the distorted picture of an ethic based solely on the demands of obligation. The search for the minimal content of obligation in Christian ethics has been corruptive of a fully integrated approach to ethical understanding, and its latent effects are manifested in the minimalism of proportionalism that reduces the moral life to a form of quasitechnical calculus based on the will of the acting subject. Quite simply, proportionalism as a method seems incapable of adequately accounting for our profound sense of personal integrity, and with it, the control we exercise over the constitution of our character expressed in virtuous and unvirtuous conduct.
Understanding of our acts operates on two layers. The first layer is the externally observable act. The second layer, lying near the centre of our being, goes much deeper.
1 See generally Hoose, Bernard, Proporlionalism: The American Debate and its European Roots (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.
2 Pinckaers, Servais O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics. 3rd ed. Noble, Mary trans (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995)Google Scholar.
3 Hallett, Garth S.J., The Greater Good: The Case for Proporlionalism (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1995), 2Google Scholar.
4 Hallett, Greater Good, 10.
5 Finnis, John, “The Act of the Person,” in Persona Verita, e Morale: Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Teologia Morale (Rome: Citta Nuova Editrice, 1987), 159–75, 165Google Scholar.
6 Wojtyla, Karol, The Acting Person. Potocki, Andrzej trans. (Dordrecht; Boston: D. Reidel, 1979), 11, 160CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Ashley, Benedict N. OP., Living the Truth in Love: A Biblical Introduction to Moral Theology (New York: Alba House, 1996)Google Scholar.
8 Just such a source of renewal can be seen in Fides et Ratio, the recent papal encyclical on the relationship between faith and reason.
9 Cessario, Romanus O.P., The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990)Google Scholar.
10 Pieper, Josef, The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966)Google Scholar
11 For an excellent new biography of St Thomas More see Ackroyd, Peter, The Life of Thomas More (London: Chatto & Windus, 1998)Google Scholar.
12 Kreeft, Peter, Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 67.Google Scholar
13 Ashley, Living the Truth, III.
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