Then K Gurries at Opuscula has a look at the question using the traditional Catholic analysis of the moral act in terms of object, intention and circumstances: The sources of morality.
I found the latter article very helpful because I spent some time the other day reading Noldin (a standard Latin manual of moral theology) on this very subject, as well as H J Davis - a similar book but written in English. I was reminded of a Latin tag:
bonum ex integra causa malum ex quocumque defectuLiterally this means "good (thing) from an integral cause, bad (thing) from any defect whatever" which isn't terribly helpful. A more Ronald Knox-friendly translation into good English (used in the article Good in the Catholic Encyclopaedia) would be "An action is good when good in every respect; it is wrong when wrong in any respect."
Neither of the articles will solve the problem of the Pope's comments for you but both of them will help you with some moral theology. I certainly found them good because I am not a moral theologian; I'm a dogmatist. But you knew that already ;-)
Meanwhile, John Smeaton has been looking at the claim that "the Church has never spoken out against the use of condoms outside of marriage" and has a very useful series of quotations.
3 comments:
Father, how can Smeaton's Patristic quotations be helpful, when they are all quotations that demonstrate something that is simply not under controversy: the perennial Christian teaching against Contraception?
Since the argument in favour of allowing serodiscordant couples to use condoms when making love is (often) based on an argument from double effect, and the issue is thus not condoms used as contraceptives, but as prophylactics, none of the quotations of the Fathers have any relevance to the point under question. That Smeaton (or whomever it is that writes his blog) doesn't appear to realise this, makes his condescending claim to give Jack Valero and Austen Ivereigh "remedial training in Catholic teaching on sexual ethics" rather ironic.
Whilst not a partisan for the Rhonheimer position myself, I did find Smeaton's blog both ignorantly simplistic and irrelevant. It simply doesn't deal with the issue at hand.
Besides which, what precisely is the SPUC Director doing commenting on a matter of Catholic moral theology? Hardly his part of ship...
Smeaton's quotations are largely off-topic since they address the question of contraception rather than sex using condoms (someone might argue for the latter, on prophylactic grounds, using double effect-type arguments). However, the one regarding condomistic sex from the Holy Office is extremely interesting - and would seem to make double effect arguments impossible.
Thank you Father for pointing us to two very useful articles for us to study.
I think the rationale for John Smeaton's involvement is the popular view that the Pope is moving towards approving the use of condoms. This will no doubt encourage those who hand out and teach the use of condoms to schoolchildren thereby encouraging promiscuous behaviour which leads to abortions.
Nicolas Bellord
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