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106 BOOK REVIEWS and adequately grounded. The probable reasons alleged are in fact rooted in the operations of divine grace after loss of consciousness or, in other words, in the divine mercy, as well as in the possible and variable human factors attendant upon the unconscious state. The sacraments have been instituted as sensible signs; especially in the case of Penance some sensible communication of interior disposition is a sacramental necessity, according to the Thomists. From the viewpoint of the sacraments the probabilities alleged in the explanation of Fr. Doronzo's position are merely possibilities and thus an insufficient basis for sacramental administration. The final chapter on the Minister of Extreme Unction includes a treatment of the sources and extent of the priest's obligation to administer the sacrament of the dying. Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D. C. NICHOLAS HALLIGAN, 0. P. True Morality and its Counterfeits. By DIETRICH voN HILDEBRAND with ALICE JouRDAIN. New York: David McKay Co., 1956. Pp. 181. $3.00. Since the publication of this work, Roma locuta est concerning its principal subject matter, situation ethics. This apparently modem position, but really nothing more than an emotionally charged version of the ancient heresy of Illuminism, has received the censure of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, XXXXVIII, pp. 144-145). The condemnation was presaged by the allocution of the Holy Father given in April of 195~ to the Federation Mondiale de Jeunesses Feminines Catholiques. Dr. Von Hildebrand has wisely based his analysis and criticism of situation ethics upon the doctrine contained in this allocution . While not cast in the form of a commentary on the papal pronouncement , reductively True Morality and its Counterfeits, insofar as it treats of situation ethics, amounts to just that, a very lucid, penetrating presentation of the Pope's verdict on the "New Morality." Eminently successful in its principal goal of criticizing circumstance ethics in such a way as to refute in detail its disastrous errors while safeguarding and, to the extent possible, profiting from the truth it exploits, the book has not attained the same degree of success in its secondary and subsidiary aims. Spawned by existentialism, circumstance ethics, like its progenitor, is a form of protest, specifically a protest against mediocre, conventional Christians, our modern Pharisees. Dr. Von Hildebrand has treated the various aspects of this revolt in several chapters by drawing caricatures of the classical moral Pharisee and the mitigated derivatives of Pharisaism, the diverse types of self-righteous people. An air of unreality BOOK REVIEWS 107 hovers about the delineation of these characters-and the attempt to analyze their psychology of moral conduct, for the characters have been too overdrawn ; so much so that they are definitely unreal, the author's own mental fictions. It seems that the author in this case has been carried away from diligent and careful observation of real persons by his own rhetorical creations. As a result, the fundamental reason for treating these moral types: to discover the element of sin that makes them reprehensible and a foil to portray the humility of the publican, the humble sinner, lacks the emphasis that a brief and concise statement would have made possible. Real threats to moral integrity should be treated realistically without rhetorical device or substitute. Again, situation ethics pleads its case for moral acceptability on the grounds that it gives full respect to the spirit of the law in preference to the letter and as a result more perfectly enjoys the true freedom of the spirit of the Christian life. Both claims are considered by the author in separate chapters and both are soundly refuted. But the mode of refutation gives reasons for pause. As in his previous works, Dr. Von Hildebrand is not content to approach the problem from the established principles of formal moral theology or ethics.. Instead, his phenomenological bent of mind demands long and detailed investigation of single instances where letter and spirit may be distinguished, where they coincide, where they may be antithetical, etc. While this method may well produce, under ideal circumstances, good results, obviously the fruits cannot be imparted to others without complete presentation of the analysis undertaken, step by...

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