Moral Disagreements in Catholicism: A Commentary on Wallace, Schüller, and Thomasma

Abstract

Catholic approaches to ethical issues in general and to the problems of medical issues in particular have been both admired and criticized for their extensive use of philosophical categories and methods. The reasons for the Catholic reliance on philosophy in articulating ethical theory and in resolving ethical disputes come from different sources. First, from the long history of Catholic theologians from Augustine and Aquinas to Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan in our own time, who have been deeply engaged with philosophy. Second, from Catholicism’s sense of itself as a universal church, as the carrier of a religious message that speaks to the hearts and the needs of all persons; this is a sense that was powerfully renewed at the Second Vatican Council and that underlies the recent pastoral letters of the U.S. Catholic Bishops. Third, from the Catholic understanding of the human person created as a free and rational being in the image of God, an image that is obscured, but not obliterated, by human sinfulness.