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7~~ BOOK REVIEWS they illustrate, I hope, the fact that Christian and secular moralist alike stand to profit from fuller communication. To this communication situation ethics has made a major contribution, and one hopes that Situationism and the New Morality will help to increase that contribution since it makes the heart of the situationism debate easily and effectively available to both Christian and secular audiences. Pomona College Claremont, California J. CHARLES KING Authority and Freedom: the Case for Orthodoxy in the Catholic Church. By CHARLES E. RicE. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1971. Pp. 253. $5.95. Charles E. Rice, Professor at the School of Law at the University of Notre Dame and editor of the American Journal of Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy, joins an ancient and honorable tradition of lay apologetics with this volume, which is primarily aimed at fellow Catholics, especially at fellow laymen. Avoiding the excesses of both right and left, he tries to clarify the principles at stake in the present crisis of authority in the Church, and then he brings these principles to bear in balanced treatments of several concrete issues of most immediate practical concern. The resultant work exemplifies what used to be meant by "thinking with the Church " and " loyalty to the Holy See " by those whose Society once promoted these attitudes most vigorously. Prof. Rice recognizes that the crisis of authority and obedience is not as basic as the crisis of faith. But he wishes to clarify the immediate issues in their own terms so far as possible, without pursuing his inquiry to the ultimate theological and philosophical principles. He makes clear the distinctions between faith, religious assent, the obedience to disciplinary decrees, but he also recognizes the dynamic unity of the attitude of faithfulness which has always been characteristic of Roman Catholics true to their religious tradition. As a background for his discussion of the paradigm instance of the crisis of authority-that is, the reaction to Humanae Vitae-Prof. Rice reviews (pp. 16-35) the aspects of the contemporary anti-life movement. This movement subordinates the sanctity of life to individual and social convenience , and this subordination leads to the widespread acceptance of abortion, sexual permissiveness, public indecency, marital instability, contraception , and even coervice public programs of birth control. This movement is totally opposed to the entire Christian moral tradition. Many BOOK REVIEWS 7fl3 who are not even Christian call attention to the threat to human dignity implicit in the anti-life movement of our time. Prof. Rice next summarizes (pp. 86-57) the controversy prior to the publication of Humanae Vitae, the teaching of that encyclical, and the controversy following it. His balanced treatment of the essential facts is very valuable; unfortunately, all too many Catholics have received partial and distorted views from brief reports in the public media and from biased presentations in certain journals calling themselves " Catholic " which hardly deserve the name. Therefore, the summary in this book should be very useful for correcting misunderstandings. Prof. Rice sees two factors underlying dissent from the teaching of Humanae Vitae. One is the authority crisis itself; the other is liberal secularist thought leading to doctrinal errors and issuing in the so-called "new morality." The chapter on authority (pp. 58-82) briefly summarizes the common Catholic understanding of the origin and locus of authority in the Church, the scope of such authority, which includes the precepts of the natural moral law, and the relationship between the mrrgisterium aad the properly formed conscience of the faithful Catholic. Here careful distinctions are made between disciplinary and teaching authority, as well as among the modalities of the hierarchical teaching authority. The chapter (pp. 88-100) on the ideas which have led up to the present crisis reviews the conceptions signified by the expression '' the new morality " and shows how these ideas conflict with Catholic teaching. This chapter also relates the contemporary moral crisis to the wider ideological crisis brought about by the attack of secularism upon religious faith, and by the compromises made by some " theologians " and others in the name of religious faith-for example, in the form of the " modernism " condemned early in this century. With the preceding as a...

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