All Blog Posts | Catholic Moral Theology

Tell me: Why are you still going to Church? Why are you not?

by Jason King | Aug 20, 2018 | Current Events | 2 |

The drive to church this past Sunday seemed longer than normal. I live in the Diocese of Greensburg, one of those featured in the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s report on the sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests and covered up by Catholic bishops. Our kids happily – or perhaps more not unhappily – sat in the back of the car. As we drove, my wife and I talked about how difficult it is to keep going in the wake of yet another sex abuse crisis, another failure of those who are supposed to be leaders in the church. Priests had...

Life amidst Death—20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

by Patrick Clark | Aug 18, 2018 | Lectionary | 0 |

Lectionary: 119 Proverbs 9:1-6 Psalm 34: 2-7 Ephesians 5:15-20 John 6:51-58 This week’s readings are about two themes: wisdom and life. The first reading speaks of wisdom as a person building a house and preparing a table of food to entice passers-by to enter. Wisdom is not a passive conceptual category, but an active agent. She draws people enter in, in order to nourish them and give them life. The second reading is a more straightforward ethical exhortation from St. Paul to “live not as foolish persons but as wise.” He says we should make the most of the...

To Uncle Ted’s Nephews

by Emily Reimer-Barry | Aug 18, 2018 | Current Events, Ecclesial Politics | 0 |

A year after Theodore McCarrick was named a cardinal, the Washington Post ran a story (“Uniform Policy on Priests’ Abuse Urged; More Comprehensive Way Is Needed, D.C.’s Cardinal McCarrick Says,” 4/17/2002, A01) in which the following is revealed: [McCarrick] also revealed that he personally had once faced an unfounded accusation. More than 10 years ago, while he was bishop of Newark, McCarrick said, he was accused of pedophilia “with my own family” in a letter sent to some of his peers in the church hierarchy. “I immediately did two things,” he said. “I wrote a response and sent it...

The Queen of Heaven, the Queen of Soul, and Sex Abuse

by Kelly Johnson | Aug 17, 2018 | Current Events | 0 |

It’s tempting to minimize the sin in order to honor the feast, but that’s the wrong move, as though to proclaim resurrection we need to say that death isn’t really all that bad. The truth of sin and proclamation of the good news aren’t contradictions. The Queen of Heaven, who is also the Mother of Sorrows, cries out that God has “shown the strength of his arm, scattered the proud in their conceit.” Oh, Mary, don’t you weep. However deep the sin we sink in, grace is deeper still.

What is to be our response??

by Jana Bennett | Aug 15, 2018 | Current Events | 0 |

When I noted that I was assigned to write a post for this week, I was going to write a post about the top 5 things that ethics teachers ought to think about at the beginning of the year. Maybe that’ll be a post next week or next semester. But other events have come into play – namely the publication, from many media outlets, of the grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania over the 300 (300!!!) priests who have credibly abused people in the past 70 years. More than that, there is the clear indication that bishops deflected alarms about...

The Vocation of the Theologian in 2018: Reflections on CTEWC

by Emily Reimer-Barry | Aug 10, 2018 | Current Events, From the Field, Role of Moral Theologian in Church and Society Series | 0 |

“Speak fearlessly.” -Petr Stica (Germany) “We need bold action.” -Emmanuel Katongole (Uganda/US) “We must get away from wooden, dense, constipating discourse.” -Dennis T. Gonzalez (Philippines) “Not without my sisters!” -Tina Beattie (UK) The Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church conference took place two weeks ago in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Much has already been written on the conference, and many of the talks will be published in the edited volume that comes out next year. But those publications will have a hard time capturing the spirited discourse that emerged in the conference sessions and around meals. CTEWC,...

Catholic Social Teaching, Libertarianism, and Economic Development

by Matthew Shadle | Aug 9, 2018 | Current Events | 0 |

America recently published an article by Stephanie Slade making “a libertarian case for the common good.” Slade argues that libertarianism provides a political philosophy that offers a vision of the common good both compatible with that found in Catholic social teaching and that emphasizes the importance of human freedom. She provides a portrait of libertarianism that is in some ways attractive from a Catholic perspective, but also fails to highlight some of the contrasts between the libertarian vision of society and Catholic social teaching. In this post I want to focus in particular on one claim made by Slade:...

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Love is the Bread of Life

by Jason King | Aug 8, 2018 | Current Events, Lectionary | 0 |

Reading 1: 1 Kings 19:4-8 Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 34 Reading 2: Ephesians 4:30-5:2 Gospel: John 6:41-51 As Christians, we are to “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us.” When you live in a country where the president regularly insults individual citizens however, it is easy to forget this. Paul’s call to get rid of our “bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling . . . along with all malice” and be “kind to one another, compassionate” sounds naïve, like a call to give in to the bullies of public discourse. Yet, this Sunday’s readings...

Parenting, Masculinity, and Structures of Sin

by Conor Kelly | Aug 8, 2018 | Current Events, Marriage and Family | 1 |

I think a lot about parenting. I can’t help it. I’m a parent. Often, my thinking about parenting is colored by my research as a theologian and an ethicist. It’s an occupational hazard of a research agenda that looks for connections between theological ethics and ordinary life. This means that my work on the ethics of free time colors my reflections on the time I have together with my children, while my research on digital distraction has spilled over into my real life in a way that has most of my extended family convinced that I am a luddite....

Death Penalty Development: A Conditional Advance of Justice

by Barrett Turner | Aug 3, 2018 | Current Events | 6 |

In a doctrinal clarification apropos for the feast day of Alphonsus Liguori, patron of moral theologians, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has modified the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penalty. Where the 1997 version left open, at least in theory, recourse to the supreme temporal punishment, Pope Francis has more strongly judged that the death penalty is “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” quoting the Holy Father’s address of 13 October 2017. These changes build upon prior remarks by popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI calling...

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