Values, victims, & visions

...come to be seen as a primary demand of social justice...

...Social justice, as a moral virtue, has come eventually separating even more widely...

...After all, throughout the pletely different moral quality as we shift our focus from entire history of Christianity, circumstantial limits to most concentrating on our own limited resources to entering into the moral rules have been readily admitted...

...Because of Browning's poem...

...We may need to recall that...

...where the South is still the South, and protects its own...

...Beaction, but vision and expectation shape the evolution of a yond those limits, it annihilates the sense of justice...

...The case was eventually decided in a criminal tribunal And that perspective depends on who the viewers are, and how of the Vatican...

...Yet each penitent appeared alone, as the point of agents of wrongdoing rather than that of sufferers from doer of certain morally objectionable deeds...

...Yet no one • First, moral norms were regarded as a definite and perelse was ever allowed to have much to do with formulating or manent set of fixed statutes...

...This is a transferral of properly legal language to under way...

...Be there...

...4. Catholics are steadily becoming aware of the extent to Up to a point, consequentialism and proportionalism exwhich moral wrongdoing is rooted in corporate action or press sound common-sense morality...

...to Catholic theorizing about morality and ethics...

...Among them must be included the fact obligations...

...When the mystery is concluded in the final scene recently deceased wife, a great English poet wrote an what assures us of the verdict is neither knowledge of facts nor extraordinary poem...

...Penitents, of course, included • Third, moral perspective was dominated by the viewall sorts, of people...

...In a world where time, experience, and choice - of a certain kind of human all moral thoughts were concerned with rights, and none with being...

...There were no plaintiffs and, apart from the defend- tal confession, despite some interesting experiments in changant, who confessed and pleaded guilty, there were no wit- ing its procedures...

...For no one can realistically doubt that occasions can arise 5. Several lines of thought, psychological and theological as when doing something plainly unjust really is likely to accomwell as ethical, have conspired in recent years to recommend plish more good than any alternative just behavior...

...Altering those factors has tialism are not in the realm of sex, but in the realm of justice...

...No, I make no promises Perhaps while you recover you will read the book I have enclosed...

...I have in praises and blessings from bishops, popes, and an ecumenical mind the rapidly increasing frequency of references to rights, council...

...In more perpetuated...

...the realm of ethics...

...none women...

...Indeed, their moral rightness or wrongness...

...macro-morality...

...Second, moral issues were interpreted with both insights In still other ways, the penitent's role contributed to a and oversights typical of celibate, male clergy...

...CATHOLIC MORAL TEACHING IN TRANSITION Values, victims, & visions JAMES GAFFNEY human viewpoints from which it is perceived...

...And it cannot be overlooked that here too, at indifference and social irresponsibility of others, more fortu- least in official Catholic circles, it is about sex that nearly all nately situated...

...The masterpiece called The Ring and the Book, which To me, it has come to seem fairly clear that changes in the Robert dedicated to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, is about the way modern Catholics think about morality are explicable, to a once very...

...and second, to ascertain the guilt of the person who is a peculiar mosaic of lights and shadows, and the pattern confessed them...

...the fuss is made...

...rather than on the progressive deterioration of character...

...We are compelled to view the same tion, and until quite recently, Catholic moral judgments excrude facts from a variety of personal and social moral view- hibited a remarkable degree of uniformity...

...conformed with...

...Each account confessed...

...Even the most venera- predicaments of those who ask us to share them...

...I can only answer: both...

...the receiving end of morality and immorality, one gets a In my own view, the most celebrated of modern trends in different view, and in some respects a clearer and truer one...

...Catholic moral thinking, often called situation ethics, is the Demands on our generosity or responsibility take on a commost superficial and least innovative...

...That, for example, is clearly the basis on 3. A subtler, more profound reassessment" of moral which moral approval has been given to thefts by the very poor priorities has been broached by deliberately adopting the out- from the very rich, and to lethal violence by defenders against looks and evaluations proper to those who may be described as aggressors...

...Within limits, onstrated only by the story of a life, in which not only overt consequentialism is indispensable to reasonable morality...

...The library...

...And along some searing August beach The priest we assign you will stay a man like yourself wanders, fists clenched all night, till the first light appears within his trouser pockets, waiting for the sky thin as a wire alone God's hills...

...Very often, vidual deeds for which they sought forgiveness...

...Satellites that hum your name in space...

...of vividness and obscurity constantly changes...

...character within the unfolding of a plot...

...The fact is, if Perhaps no recent trend has had greater impact on Catholic one wants to find Catholic thought of the kind here recommoral thinking than that which emphasizes the collective and mended, one can easily find it in any well-stocked Catholic socially structured nature of so much ethical behavior...

...to overlook...

...Here the were expected to report, and what confessors were expected to most extreme reactions have taken the form of ideological 15 August 1986: 427 feminism and anti-clericalism...

...One thing to be said for the confessional The least developed, and in some ways the most interesting system was that it required Catholics regularly to interrupt of the trends I have listed is the last one, with its reinterpretapreoccupation with their rights and pay serious attention to tion of moral goodness as the development -over a course of their obligations...

...Under such the obvious practical inadequacy of such an approach leads to circumstances moral vision is seriously incapacitated for per- interpreting love as that which contributes to happiness, ceiving either morality or immorality as socially organized, thereby turning Christian morality into a pure consequen= institutionally entailed, ideologically sustained, or culturally tialism indistinguishable from secular utilitarianism...

...The only sins of omission commonly atThe confessional orientation confined moral thinking for tended to were those involving very precise, usually ritual, other reasons was well...

...15 August 1986: 429...

...By breakfast's end of God . . . I could go on...

...All spective not only of those who perform moral or immoral five of the trends I have described are, in my opinion, progres- actions, but also of those who are chiefly affected by them...

...Commonweal: 428 I think there is reason to fear something of this kind is tious objection, such a short time ago reprobated by the entire occurring...

...There is a growing awareness that, from moral wisdom from the past...

...The serious problems about consequencriticism of conscientious people...

...Juan, a cock crowed across the indigo hills the triple bypass you refused of this deep state, and I warmed to think of its people waking sleepy was deprivation to us all...

...the confessional system had far-reaching effects, both in none spouses, and none parents...

...Thus we chase adultery," and it is notorious that when situation ethicists get the beggars off our streets, keep the slums off our itineraries, down to cases, it is very largely in the realm of sexual morality and usher the helpless off our premises because their near that they draw controversy and condemnation...

...He practical significance of differing perspectives for legal judgcauses the entire story to be re-told, time after time, by very ment is something of which we all become acutely aware different people, each with contrasting social positions, back- whenever we watch trial lawyers in a selection of jurors...

...tions more in passive than in active terms, that is, thinking of Looking again at the kinds of exceptions to moral norms that ourselves as the objects of other people's moral or immoral have long been taken for granted, one notices that most of them behavior...

...It is admirable in a number of knowledge of law, but the spiritual discernment of an aged respects, not least its telling of a truly fascinating story...

...But at the same time, because they are a response to a Phrases like "option for the poor" and "solidarity with vicgiven historical moment, they can be too readily exaggerated, tims" are significant expressions of this perspective in recent and allowed to supersede rather than supplement elements of Catholic social ethics...

...Bringing them toto be understood as a disposition, on the one hand, to try to gether again would be a natural result of addressing questions make societies more just and, on the other, to detach oneself about what we ought to do with questions about what we are from societies bent on injustice...

...Chesterton characterized The Ring and the Book as a "spiritual detecA LITTLE MORE than a century ago, as a tribute to his tive story...

...sive...

...Hence, for Many things, both favorable and unfavorable, can be said the reader, even though a definite fabric of facts remains sub- about that confessional system and the moral theology that stantially unaltered, the moral picture is repeatedly trans- derived its character from it...

...The interesting thing is that this point of view is not in obligations, moral life would inevitably cease...

...The most extreme reaction has Penitents, it should also be recalled, came always, until very been to discredit moral generalizations altogether, and then recently, as isolated individuals, to confess the particular indi- replace them all by a sweeping injunction to love...

...It is also how governments defend mining tions, but by the cultivation and integration of certain basic foreign harbors, how tax-evaders defend cheating the public, habits, attitudes, and outlooks, of which conformity to rules is how disciplinarians defend indiscriminate punishment, and only one indication...

...Your mother...

...We discover that what one account presents as that was the control exerted on such judgments by a body of momentous appears trivial in another...

...Not surpris- diversification in Catholic moral thinking has been simultaneingly, then, Catholic moral thinking habitually understood sin ous with a rapid decline of moral theology, at least as tradiin relation to sinners more than in relation to the victims of tionally understood, and with widespread neglect of sacramensinners...

...Moral theology, focused on rules From the nature of the case, the laws had to be stable and rather than on virtues, and on the intermittent breaking of rules uniform, and so did the procedures for interpreting them...

...comprehensive moral norms...

...For, given our congenital egocenmoral rules are rules affecting sexual behavior...

...actions that offended and injured other people, sometimes • And fifth, immorality was thought of rather as a quality great numbers of other people and in extremely complicated of actions than as a disposition of character...

...administering the sacrament of Penance...

...But even with recently been most conspicuous among Catholics, we can maximum allowance for individuality, and maximum resist- plainly see a number of reversals of, or compensations for the ance to clerical stereotyping, it remains obvious that no ran- following five broadly-stated tendencies, separately or in dom assortment of Roman Catholic priests could be seriously combination: regarded as a cross-section of humanity at large...

...Dimly in the background of their capabilities, a radio plays, and they hear For your recovery I make no promises, of you, your subterfuge...

...Moral cases, including typical ones, the defendant himself had received minor orders, he succeeded look different, and therefore are analyzed and judged differin having the case transferred from civil to ecclesiastical juris- ently, depending on the perspective in which they are viewed...

...But saint, dedicated to justice, trustful of God, close to death, and what continues to interest me is that, from start to finish, it is a unconcerned about anything this world could bestow or withpoem about moral thinking...

...that the whole procedure was directed not only by a quite rigid set of norms, but also by a highly specialized set of persons...

...The main indication I would point to is a change in .fraternity of Catholic moral theologians, and now enjoying the prevailing language of ordinary moral discourse...

...Because the setting was juridical, it had to rely on a Orleans...

...female and conjugal experience, intensified by institutionally One last consideration, along the same lines: what penitents encouraged attitudes of authoritarian paternalism...

...administering moral theology, until very recently...

...The closer one ble Christian moralists, for example, made lots of exceptions gets to the sufferer, the harder it becomes to refuse help...

...Such goodness is adequately dem- how ideologues defend suppressing the truth...

...What answer can be given to the very basic, practical SUBTLER and more innovative than these trends is the tendquestion of whether Catholic moral thinking in recent years ency in modern Catholic moral thinking to adopt the perhas been getting better or worse...

...official specifications of punishable offenses...

...hold...

...Your last piece of execution I made a point of rising of toast...

...What causes the transformations are the different on moral perspective, and therefore on moral thinking...

...moral picture readily obtainable in the confessional was a • Fourth, sins were identified with individual misdeeds, picture taken of - or from the viewpoint of - an individual with little attention to their involvement in social practices, moral agent...

...grounds, interests, assumptions, ambitions, and degrees of For a very long time, nearly since the Protestant Reformapersonal involvement...

...The main assistance Virtues turn into vices, bystanders into participants, and neu- it offered was twofold: first, to identify the kinds of sins being tral circumstances into compelling influences...

...in ashcans below his window...

...At the present time, the moral reinterpretation of and a corresponding diminution of references to duties and political, economic, and professional life seems to be well obligations...

...Hence, the only it...

...The same cannot be said of "Thou shalt not commit from the central moral reality of the situation...

...By Under such circumstances, moral theology had every reason to the same token, moral theology typically gave far more attenbe conservative and dogmatic...

...A long, long tivities and social structures involved, and about our personal time ago, spirituality and moral theology went separate ways, relations with them...

...a certain kind of detail: stripes of pink light I've refused such before, and on the morning along the prison floor...

...ways...

...It is elementary morality to such wrongdoing may even be so effectively disguised by try to do more good than harm...

...Social sin, as it has come to be 2. For a somewhat shorter time, doubt has been cast on a called, tended to slip through the'meshes of the confessional number of familiar moral assumptions by a growing suspicion system, and consequently to slip the minds of moral theolo- that they embody prejudices rooted in ignorance of typical gians and of Catholics who took their moral cues from them...

...things one should...

...tionaries of a vast, hierarchical institution...

...I guarantee you a young man simmers, memorizing dents more: Pickets...

...nesses...

...We are thus presence mocks the complacency of our consciences...

...The confessor was there to help them particular misdeeds...

...The converse is the least new to Catholic thought, even though it is rather new not true...

...None of these To recapitulate, among the changes in moral thinking that have characteristics is objectionable in itself...

...It had no reason to be original tion to doing things one should not do, than to not doing the or philosophical...

...That is not the centering of moral assessment not on rules but on, virtue...

...To get to it, though, you must make a wide berth of the practical corollary is that our own responsibility concerning sections labeled "moral theology" and settle down among the such actions depends on what we can do about the collec- volumes marked spirituality and hagiography...

...Nearly all had received a very assuring the relative invariance of Catholic moral thinking, similar, and quite peculiar, education...

...reminded of that peculiar inflexibility which overtakes the Yet, even this wholesome trend of thought has, perhaps, a traditional Roman Catholic moral theological mind whenever dark side in moral thinking...

...T HE FUNCCIONAL relationship between moral theology and All of them were men...

...Dawn O'Leary A Get-Well Note to Juan from the Governor "Heart Attack May Delay Execution of a Murderer'' - Headline to crack...

...Reporters...

...There is nothing new in principle about conmorally victimized, those, that is, whose sufferings are inten- sequentialism and proportionalism, but only about certain of sified and whose decent aspirations are frustrated by the moral their applications...

...Heartbeeps on a screen that suddenly dive and safe in farmhouses, cities, and foothills and skid into oblivion will impress no one...

...what one was becoming...

...Obviously the foreseeinaction, facilitated by social systems, and supported by un- able results of our actions should be major factors in judging derlying ideologies, mainly political and economic...

...Here, I sup- trism, it is an easy step from paying moral attention to the pose, is the most deplorable effect of a centuries-old victimization of others, to thinking about our own moral situahegemony of male celibates in moral theology...

...And to "Thou shalt not kill," and at least a few to "Thou shalt not the farther one stays from the sufferer, the farther one remains steal...

...The velocity of progress in supposed to become...

...Even with maximum sincerity, such an arrangement is 1. For quite some time now, there has been a widespread hardly calculated to generate a comprehensive picture of moral reluctance to attribute absolute validity to any but the most realities...

...All were full-time func- and in skewing that thinking in a number of important ways...

...Please note an abyss awaits you on the other side...

...The telephone silent as the ways before daybreak, avoiding nothing...

...That, it seems to me, is the only possible this regard is well demonstrated by attitudes towards conscien- way a distinctively Christian morality might come into being...

...One confessed what one was doing, not do so, and moral theology was his equipment for that function...

...To adopt familiar jargon, moral theology, as moderate circles, the tendency is to pay much more attention shaped by the exigencies of the confessional system, tended than formerly to proportional consequences, while honoring greatly to emphasize what may be called micro-morality, and certain other norms as well...

...But it is not the whole of even these same factors as to be commonly overlooked by the moral elementary morality...

...Penitents had Commonweal: 426 the task of translating their recent moral histories into terms of interpret, were not traits or tendencies of moral character, but infractions of these laws...

...We see church, and developed for the most part to assist priests in heroes transform into villains and villains into non-entities...

...only how tyrants defend their disregard of human rights, but The basic idea is that moral goodness is primarily a quality of how terrorists opposing those tyrants defend their massacres of human lives, constituted not by a record of unbroken regula- the innocent...

...His most recent book is Sin Reconsidered (Paulist, 1983...

...diction...

...that in the end he wishes only for a crowd For in some room above a storefront of onlookers at his execution...

...They need in particular, no phone calls at dawn...

...definite set of statutes, in effect criminal and penal laws, Matters of Faith and Morals will appear shortly...

...A major reason for points...

...confinement of moral thought...

...famous murder of an adolescent Italian girl and her considerable extent, in much the same way as those transforelderly parents by her middle-aged husband, allegedly to mations of moral perception that are the most original feature avenge the girl's infidelity with a young local priest...

...they are enabled and accustomed to do their seeing, In this The connection of all this with moral thinking is the remark- respect, moral judgment is similar to legal judgment, and the able way Browning constructed his dramatic monologue...

...But it also had a confining effect formed...

...Most of the sins confessed were, of course, policies, and structures...

...We find motives not doctrine called moral theology, censored and authorized by the even suspected in one taken for granted in another...

...All of them were celibate...

...Yet, because none of those people was heard from, their It should be noted that the recent wave of change and moral perspectives could scarcely be introduced...

...save one: that if indeed Camus writes of the simple Meursault, you slip over the high walls of justice, who murders a man in Algiers...

...That confinement depended on both the setting and the JAMES GAFPNEY is professor of ethics at Loyola University in New characters...

...More balanced reactions have have obviously been based on some kind of consequentialism explored the effects of sexism on distributive justice, and and proportionalism, that is, on comparing, in particular circultivated a sexual and conjugal morality more sensitive to the cumstances, the values of what would happen if the norm were realities of family life...