Moral Theology

Moral theology, or ethics, explores the moral dimensions of the religious life.

Practical theology, interprets the forms of worship, styles of organization, and modes of interpersonal relationship within religious communities.

Although different questions have preoccupied theologians at different times, certain topics have established themselves as basic to theological study. These include the basis for humans' knowledge of God, the being and attributes of God, the relation of God to the world and of the world to God.

Moral Theology

The Roman Catholic equivalent to what Protestants commonly call Christian ethics. It is related to dogmatic theology and moral philosophy in Catholic tradition in ways parallel to the Protestant relationship of Christian ethics to systematic theology and philosophical ethics. General moral theology deals with the broad questions of what, from the point of view of moral agency and moral action, it means to live as a Christian. Its questions address methods of moral discernment, the definitions of good and evil, right and wrong, sin and virtue, and the goal or end of the Christian life. Special moral theology addresses specific issues of life such as justice, sexuality, truth telling, and the sanctity of life.

While the first five centuries of the church provided important guidance (above all in the works of Augustine) in the development of Catholic moral theology, even more influential was the rise in importance during the sixth century of the sacrament of reconciliation. A series of compendiums known as penitential books was prepared to assist priest - confessors in determining appropriate penance for various individual sins. Despite the great achievement of Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century in developing a systematic, unified philosophy and theology, the tendency to treat morality as a discipline separate from dogmatics was continued and confirmed by the Counter Reformation, which emphasized the connection between moral teaching and canon law.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth century debates about Jansenism and the precise meaning of the law, Alphonsus Liguori emerged as the most famous and influential moral theologian. Liguori's manuals noted the various alternatives and then urged a prudent, reasonable middle course on various questions. Casuistry in the style of these manuals, aimed primarily toward the preparation of priests for their role as confessors, remained the dominant approach to moral theology in Catholic circles into the 20th century.

The renewal and reformation of Catholic moral theology that has become so visible since Vatican II is the fruition of the work of such moral theologians as John Michael Sailor (1750 - 1832), John Baptist Hirscher (1788 - 1865), Joseph Mausbach (1861 - 1931), Th. Steinbuchel (1888 - 1949), and contemporaries Bernard Haring and Josef Fuchs. The new spirit in moral theology since Vatican II is represented by scholars such as Fuchs, Haring, Charles Curran, Timothy O'Connell, Edward Schillebeeckx, and Rudolf Schnackenburg.

Traditionally moral theology was based on the authority of reason, natural law, canon law, and the tradition and authority of the Roman Catholic Church and its magisterium. While Scripture has always been acknowledged as divine revelation, it is only in the new Catholic moral theology that the whole shape as well as specific content of moral theology has been aggressively reworked in relationship to authoritative Scripture. Natural law (or general revelation) continues to be important but is now supplemented by attention to the human and social sciences.

The parochialism and separatism of the past have given way to ongoing ecumenical dialogue with Protestant ethicists. The traditional preoccupation with specific sins and the role of moral guidance in the confessional have been subsumed in a broader inquiry about the total and positive meaning of the Christian life. The legalism, formalism, rationalism, and traditionalism which used to characterize Catholic ethics are no longer present in anything to the same degree. The prospects have never been better and the need more urgent for Protestants and Catholics to work together on a biblical base, informed by the whole history of the church and responsive to the massive challenges of a secular world.

D W Gill

Bibliography.
C C Curran, New Perspectives in Moral Theology; J M Gustafson, Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics; B Haring, Free and Faithful in Christ; T E O'Connell, Principles for a Catholic Morality.