Germain Grisez

THE TRUE ULTIMATE END OF HUMAN BEINGS : THE KINGDOM, NOT GOD ALONE

The author argues against the view that the true ultimate end of human beings is only in God, attained by the beatific vision. The alternative proposed is that human beings true ultimate end is fulfillment in Gods kingdom, a communion of divine Persons and created persons, in which human members will be fulfilled with respect to all the goods proper to their nature. On this view, beatitude has various degrees, and the fulfillment of the blessed will continue increasing forever.

Contraception and the Infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium

Les AA. defendent la these suivante: Vatican I a explicite les conditions du caractere infaillible de lenseignement exerce par le magistere ordinaire du pape| lencyclique Humanae vitae et son enseignement sur la contraception ont alors un caractere infaillible.

Health Care Technology and Justice

The title of this paper refers to a subject matter that is already being dealt with by many able scholars, for some of whom it is a central preoccupation. The issue of justice in health care has also been an abiding concern of Joseph Boyle (see, e.g., Boyle, 1977, 1996, 2001). In essays ranging over some 30 years, he has defended a right to health care in developed nations, and has addressed some of the difficulties that arise in a context of finite resources and moral pluralism. In this essay I shall only propose some ideas that I hope will be helpful to Boyle and others who wish to contribute to the ongoing debate on these matters.

Infallibility and Contraception: A Reply to Garth Hallett

During the controversy following Humanae vitae, it was widely assumed that since the encyclical contains no solemn definition, the teaching it reaffirms is not proposed infallibly and could be mistaken. That assumption simply ignored the entire category of teachings infallibly proposed by the ordinary magisterium. However, Vatican I definitively teaches that there is such a category. Vatican II articulates the criteria for the infallible exercise of the ordinary magisterium: Although the bishops individually do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they nevertheless proclaim the teaching of Christ infallibly, even when they are dispersed throughout the world, provided that they remain in communion with each other and with the successor of Peter and that in authoritatively teaching on a matter of faith and morals they agree in one judgment as that to be held definitively. Reflecting on Vatican IIs formulation, John C. Ford, S.J., and I became convinced that the received Catholic teaching on contraception meets the criteria it articulates. We tried to show this in an article published in this journal in 1978. In that article we clarified the conditions for the infallible exercise of the ordinary magisterium by tracing the development of Vatican IPs text in the conciliar proceedings. We then argued that the facts show that the received Catholic teaching on the morality of contraception met these conditions and so has been proposed infallibly by the ordinary magisterium.

Book Review: Revisions: Changing Perspectives in Moral Philosophy

R.s argument is carefully wrought with ample citation of his mainly philosophical sources. His severe, though reasoned, criticism of individxad ualism is one that many will endorse. His analysis of human freedom is helpful, as is his insistence on the critical impact of narrative, image, and a public context for the discussion. However, as he recognizes himself (viii), the manner in which he develops his argument may lead to criticism by other interpreters of Kant and by moral theologians as well. R. sees philosophical reflection as a journey whose successful complexad tion makes it possible for ethical reflection to enter the ambit of faith and hence for moral theology to begin its work in earnest. The explicitly stated concern to have moral theology give an account of its most basic concepts and tasks is acceptable, but one might ask whether pressing this question too far would not impose an unduly intellectual texture on the actual human moral response, a response that seems also to include important nonrational dimensions. A related question is whether R.s overall approach makes moral theology secondary to a given philosophical analysis. This dependence would be understandable if the goal were simply apologetical, but it may not account sufficiently for the basic moral response considered as an act of faith properly understood. This seems to require explicit attention not only to freedom and reason but also to ecclesial community, divine vocation, conscience, sacrament, and charity, however these might be understood. This suggests that theology must have an immediate and original contact with the entire event under consideration, even if philosophy is simultaneously present to the enterxad prise.

Book Review: The Changing Profile of the Natural LawThe Changing Profile of the Natural Law. By CroweMichael Bertram. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977. Pp. 321. 59 glds.

study of the psychologico-moral experience of the guilt realized in the act of abortion will disclose the violation of the intrinsic value of fetal life. Deness views in her Necessity and Sorrow (New York: Basic Books, 1976, esp. xv-xvii, 242-47) are a good start in the clarification of values. Much of O.s work covers familiar territory: human action, the human person, morality, sin and virtue, conscience, the Christian vocation. Human persons are called to goodness and responsibility, and especially as Christians we experience ourselves as accountable, as challenged by ourselves and our world, as worthy of praise or blame depending on how we respond. This is a central aspect of existence, whether this phenomenon of accountability is viewed as conscience, as Heideggerian located being, or as Von Hildebrands experience of the importance-in-itself. As human agents aware of the claim of responsibility, we must deal with the world of values and disvalues; we must maximize the values and minimize the disvalues, the value of fetal life and the disvalue of elective abortion, the meaning and value of physical intimacy, the values and disvalues in medicine, in scientific research, in cybernetics. The suggestion was recently made in a Boston University publication that ethicists should leave their metaethical ivory towers and enter the medical, business, and law schools. In the contemporary atmosphere of an awakened interest in values and in the concept of sin, together with a large sample of writing amenable to a nonformal act-deontological ethic, it would seem that Catholic moral theologians may surprisingly find themselves with more readers and more listeners. In a very recent work on the primacy of clinical judgment over moral choice, a sociologist points out the wide insensitivity of doctors to ethical issues, which is not the result of callousness or ignorance but the logical outcome of their professional training. In the clarification and analysis of values, the moral philosopher-theologian is shown to be required as much in the medical school as in the graduate school of business in the training of M.B.A. candidates. OConnells aretaic orientation is a healthy beginning in this kind of rational enterprise. It is a long and painstaking one that may never get around to doing deontic ethics at all. That may not be altogether a bad thing.

Book Review: The Morality of Abortion: Legal and Historical PerspectivesThe Morality Of Abortion: Legal And Historical Perspectives. Edited by NoonanJohn T.Jr., Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1970. Pp. ix + 276.

My hope also is that in future writings M. will take seriously the differences among social scientists. While there is no doubt that these sciences can assist the practical moralist in many ways, the moralist has to make choices among the social scientific options. M. suggests that the ethician accept the contemporary scientific understanding of man (p. 118). But there is no one such thing. The Christian ethic leams its practical principles from Carl Rogers and Hans Morganthau, Lester Kirkendall and Margaret Mead, Rollo May and Theodore Roszak (pp. 120-21). Why Rogers and May rather than B. F. Skinner? Why Morganthau rather than Robert Dahl? Why Mead rather than Robert Redfield? Why Roszak rather than Talcott Parsons? Even scientific understandings of man are selective in their data from experience, and surely there are powerful interpretations of the data which shape them in any significant writer. How does the ethician decide which interpretation is most adequate? Indeed, in these interpretations there are normative presuppositions, Is it not necessary to analyze critically what these are? Finally, if everything in the new morality hangs on love, that term needs the most intensive scrutiny, and its uses in particular places need to have very careful specification. M. does some of this in the chapter on homosexuality, but more is required. And, to return to an old saw of mine, why is the Christian bound to a love monism in ethics? Love may be primary in Christian ethics, but no one has satisfied me on any grounds—theological, philosophical, or any others—that it is the one principle or attitude. As H. R. Niebuhr pointed out in 1951, the proposition God is love is not reversible. The lively polemic, the engaging style, the well-chosen illustrations, and the quiet passion of this book all make it attractive. There is nothing in M.s most fundamental outlook that I find shocking, or even very alien. If ones battle is still that of finding a way from a relatively closed morality to greater openness to experience, M. will help to win it. If, however, as the battle of Protestant ethics has been, one is concerned with how to find where to go in the openness, something more is required.