Introduction to Moral Theology by Romanus Cessario, O.P. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Introduction to Moral Theology. By ROMANUS CESSARIO, O.P. Catholic Moral Thought Series 1. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001. Pp. 288. $44.95 (cloth), $24.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8132-1069-0 (cloth), 0-8132-1070-4 (paper). Romanus Cessario's new book, Introduction to Moral Theology (the first in a series of publications from CUA Press on the topic of Catholic moral thought) is a splendid book. It is lucid, accessible to the beginner, firmly rooted in patristic and medieval sources, particularly Aquinas, and it nicely incorporates official Church teaching on ethics since Vatican II. The publication of this book and others like it signals an end to the tired and sterile debates that afflicted and paralyzed Catholic moral thought throughout much of the twentieth century. In some ways, Cessario's book is most profitably read by beginning with the appendix, "Flight from Virtue: The Outlook of the Casuist Systems." The practice of moral casuistry, a term which arises from the penchant for examining specific moral situations or cases (casus), has always had a role in Catholic ethics. But it takes on a new shape and gains a kind of ascendancy in moral theology during the modern period, especially from Trent to Vatican II. In his appendix, Cessario offers a concise description of the casuist systems of the modern period and of their severe deficiencies. Following the work of his fellow Dominican, Servais Pinckaers, Cessario traces the roots of casuistry to the late medieval repudiation of teleology and of freedom as ensconced within the natural orientation of the human person toward happiness, understood as the true good of human nature. Thus a liberty of indifference replaces a liberty for perfection. The dominant terms of the moral life become law and liberty, with conscience as mediator. In a misunderstanding of the scriptural contrast between law and liberty, the casuists depict the two in a "dramatic conflict, rather than as complementary expressions of God's saving providence" (231). Given this opposition, the key pastoral problem concerns private morality, the individual's ability through conscience to resolve individual cases of moral doubt. The pastoral response oscillates between, on the one hand, a "rigorism" that eliminates personal initiative and makes obedience the sole virtue and, on the other hand, a "probabilism" that allows quite a bit of leeway for individual initiative so long as one can establish some sort of likely consensus of authorities in support of a course of action. Whether one adopts a lax or rigorous tone, the modern approach involves serious distortions of the patristic and medieval conception of moral theology. The casuists place undue emphasis upon private 629 630 BOOK REVIEWS morality, upon abstract laws in relation to isolated, specific acts, and upon the language of guilt and permissibility. As Cessario aptly points out, the very structure of moral theology alters in the transition from Aquinas to the casuists. Law, liberty, and conscience replace the foundational investigations of man as imago Dei and of beatitude as the telos or goal of human life. No longer is moral theology organized around the virtues, acquired and infused, and the gifts ofthe Holy Spirit: "Acting in order to respect a law replaces acting for a purpose, for an end." Since "no end draws the human soul, obedience to law becomes the key virtue." Without a "prudential movement through the ea quae sunt ad finem toward an ultimate and specifying good end, there is not hierarchy of divine things that provides structure for or gives context to the moral life" (237). The natural law is viewed as a law extrinsic to the individual, separate from and in tension with human freedom. By contrast, inAquinas's teleological view, natural law is a participation ofthe rational creature in the eternal, the imprint of the creator on and in the creature, constituting, rather than opposing, the freedom of the human person. And the New Law, the Law of Christ, is poured out through the Spirit and constitutes the indwelling of the Spirit in the hearts of believers. Law is always seen as pointing, indeed inclining, the human person toward beatitude, which is ultimately realized in union with God and...