CUA Press Lenten Sale

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Thomistica.net: Nouvelle Revue Théologique 1958-2003 free!

Thomistica.net: A New Moral Theology Journal - its webpage. Looks like it is embracing a "broad spectrum" of contributors. Keenan, Hollenbach, and Cahill? Sad.

Still, there is this article by Craig Steven Titus: Servais Pinckaers and the Renewal of Catholic Moral Theology.

Video of Fr. Giertych at the DPST

Begun on September 21 at 2:34 PM.

Here

"Virtuous human action-- an icon of God. Aquinas's vision of Christian morality." Fr. Wojciech Giertych, OP from DSPT on Vimeo.

Alas, I don't think it includes the Q&A session after the presentation, but I haven't watched it yet since I was in the audience and heard the talk. That's too bad, I wanted a friend to see a couple of the people (students?) asking questions.

Fr. Giertych talks about the moral agent as being an icon of God through cooperation with grace. He
accepts the thesis of Fr. Pinckaers that the roots of modern moral theology are to be found of William of Ockham's nominalism. But does voluntarism, a certain account of the will as a spiritual faculty or the of the relationship of law to the will, really originate in nominalism?

One does notice a shift in the organization of moral theology texts of the Counter-Reformation period and afterwards. But what is the theological source of this shift? I don't think this has really been established yet. Beginners and sinners may understand morality in terms of law and obedience, and a moral theology focused on law (and freedom) may have some explanatory force for them. What was happening in Christianity (or the universities) to cause the shift? What are the social and political changes that contributed to it?

Fr. Giertych touched upon the relationship between the infused virtues and the acquired virtues, but it is not something that he has studied in detail. He did claim that St. Paul had the acquired virtues, which could be properly applied after he had been converted. But the exact relation between the two sorts of virtues needs to explored more. He did recommend a recent article... (in The Thomist?). I'll have to add the information when I find my notes.

Fr. Cessario on casuistry

The appendix to Introduction to Moral Theology.

Rather than putting all of the blame for the laity developing a distorted understanding of obedience on the Jesuits (as Geoffrey Hull does in A Banished Heart, iirc), should we attribute it instead to the general intellectual and cultural trends following Trent? Was this development in Christian moral theology mirrored by secular trends in understanding ethics in the 18th and 19th centuries? I can see how it would be in the interest of those in power to create docile citizens, but this is always the case, as we see in Aristotle's differentiation of the good citizen from the good man.

Regarding the appraisal of pre-conciliar treatments of sexual morality,  we should keep these comments by Fr. Cessario in mind:

The liberty of indifference favors a dualist anthropology insofar as the theory envisions the will as set over and against the rest of the powers of the human person. This may explain why casuist moral theology took a disproportionate interest in regulating sexual morality. No greater threat to the liberty of indifference could be imagined than the sudden upsurge of bad lust. So every precaution had to be taken to maintain the serene "indifference" of the will in the face of some de facto, especially unexpected, compelling good. Recall that, according to the casuist theorists, no factor outside of the will itself could set human willing effectively upon a particular course of action (238).

The "Jansenistic" attitude towards sex may not have been due to formal or even cultural Jansenism, but a "practical" Jansenism arising from the dominance of casuistry?

James Chastek, A (sort of) Thomistic divine command theory

“Command” is an analogous term, that is, the meanings of “[human] command” and “divine command” are in one sense the same and in another sense different. They are the same so far as, when considering a command, we view it as either (a) a procession from the will or (b) a normative being. But the sense in which a human command is an (a) and (b) is not the same as the way a divine command is. The unity we find between (a) and (b) in human commands must be negated when speaking of divine commands.

I'm curious as to why command is described as a "procession from the will" as opposed to something pertaining to reason. When imposed on another, it does involve the will of the law-giver.

Related:
Introduction to Moral Theology
The Pinckaers Reader

Edward Feser on Fr. Pinckaers

From the comments to his latest:

Hello all,

Bwall and Anon 1, I agree that Pinckaers intends to be fair-minded and doesn't indulge in the knee-jerk Neo-Scholastic bashing others do. But I still think he's just wrong to pit the manualists' understanding of obligation against the other themes mentioned -- as if what existed was an incompatibility, as opposed to a mere difference of emphasis -- and gravely wrong to insinuate that the manualists' position somehow presupposes Ockhamism (especially given that he concedes, as of course he must, that they were not nominalists). In general, I am utterly opposed to the mentality that holds that Catholic thought -- here or elsewhere -- somehow got way off track between Trent and Vatican II, a mentality which you find in writers like Pinckaers no less than in dissenters like Curran and Co. And this sort of mindset has, unfortunately, contributed to a contemporary tendency of even some conservative Catholic thinkers to want to distance themselves somewhat from the manualists. This nonsense has got to stop.

As Bruce says, though, the mentality is to be found in surprising places, and I think you're right, Bruce, to see a tendency toward Platonism as part of the problem, at least among conservatives who evince hostility to Aristotelianism, Thomism, Neo-Scholasticism, etc. In conservative Catholic circles, this "Platonic" mentality manifests itself in a tendency to pit Augustinianism and the Church Fathers in general against the period between Trent and Vatican II. This is standard nouvelle theologie shtick, for example, which one finds in de Lubac, Balthasar, et al.

Part of the motivation here is ecumenical -- a desire to minimize Catholic-Protestant differences. Part of it is a tendency toward mysticism and a temperamental dislike of the rigor and systematic quality of Scholastic thinking. And part of it reflects, I think, a moral rigorism of its own -- a dislike of the realistic and down-to-earth quality of the manualists' approach to ethics, and an insistence on something more high-falutin' and touchy-feely.

This is why in sexual morality, for example, these folks often fling around the same sorts of caricaures of Neo-Scholasticism that theological liberals do -- "All those horrible manualists cared about is what body part goes where" blah blah blah -- and prefer to talk instead about a communion of persons, "one flesh union" etc. That's all fine as far as it goes, but sure enough, the moment they have to explain why exactly this rules out homosexual acts, marital sodomy, and the like, they are themselves back to talking about... why this body part is supposed to go here rather than there etc. But they do so in a way that is totally unconvincing to those who don't already agree with them, because they've chucked out the A-T metaphysics that makes the appeal to natural function intelligible. The whole thing is farcical.

In other ways too I think the decision of many Catholic conservatives after Vatican II to abandon the Neo-Scholastic tradition has been rather obviously a disaster. The disappearance of general apologetics is only one example: In response to the militant secularism that has only increased since Vatican II (all the "dialogue" with "modern man" notwithstanding), too many conservative Catholics have nothing to say except that Christianity is a better way of upholding "the digity of the human person" -- which, of course, secularists don't buy for a moment, because they disagree in the first place about what counts as upholding the dignity of the human person. To settle that question requires getting into the metaphysics of human nature, the metaphysics of the good, and all the other stuff the Neo-Scholastics did so well and their successors do so badly when they do it at all. There is also the collapse of catechesis and the disappearance of a general understanding among the faithful of what Catholic theology teaches and how it all fits together into a rational system -- something R. R. Reno lamented in a recent First Things piece, and traced to the abandonment of Neo-Scholasticism.

Is it merely a difference in emphasis? Or is obligation/law taken to be the foundational principle for the science, around which everything else is "organized"? Which offers a better moral theology, the Summa Theologiae or the manuals?

Pinckaers revisited

Fr. Pinckaers on the origin of the two competing notions of freedom:

In seeking the source of these profound differences in the concept, organization, and teaching of moral theology I was led, by a study at once systematic and historical, to the idea of freedom undergirding the two systems. On the one hand was the freedom of indifference, whihc brought Ockham into opposition with St. Thomas, while its concept went back to two compatriots, Gauthier of Bruges and Henry of Ghent, contemporaries of St. Thomas but outliving him. On the other hand, in Aquinas we find a freedom rooted in the intellect and will according to their natural inclinatiosn to the true and the good, and this is what we call a freedom of ecellence or of perfection.

From "Dominican Moral Theology in the 20th Century," collected in The Pinckaers Redaer: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, pp. 80-1.

So there were antecedents to Ockham. Was Ockham really that influential on his contemporaries and successors? That remains my question, as I am not convinced of the causal relationship, even if there are resonances between his account of freedom, and how moral theology was later conceived. And should we attribute this account of freedom to "nominalism" as such? Or is it an inheritance of certain schools of thought? Who is the earliest theologian to understand freedom as the freedom of indifference?

* note that one of the translators or editors decided to turn all instances of the pronoun he to she in a blatant manifestation of academic PCness. Unbelievable--even at CUA press they feel compelled to do this.

Fr. Pinckaers on St. Alphonsus Liguori

After all the shifts and variations of ethicists through two centuries--and they were at times extreme--St. Alphonsus' system established a certain balance by its return to considered reason. There followed a measure of calm in regard to the probabilist dispute, and in 1831 the Church confirmed this by declaring that the moral theology of Blessed Alphonsus might be safely taught and used in the confessional. Withotu going so far as to assert explicitly that his 'theory of equal probability' was the best system for moral theology, the Church declared him a Doctor in 1871. Thus Alphonsus became the patron of moralists.

The patronage of St. Alphonsus, which merits our respect and esteem for his achievements, still leaves ethicists free in regard to following his reasoning. They retain this freedom as long as no definite law constrains them. This freedom is all the more necessary as the limitations of casuist morality, of which St. Alphonsus was teh most highly authorized representative, have become more apparent in our day. We can now better perceive the fundamental differences in organization and structure as well as in problematics that separate it from the moral theology of St. Thomas and the Fathers of the Church. Incontestably, post-Tridentine moral theology, in concentrating on cases of conscience and the dispute over probabilism, narrowed its horizon. We see now how it contrasts with the breadth fo the views on human action and on God that we find in the Fathers and the great scholastics. The link has not been broken, but there has been a shrinkage and a slight distortion.

The Sources of Christian Ethics, 277

Servais Pinckaers, OP: RIP

Thomistica.net: Servais Pinckaers, OP: RIP

Vox-Nova: Rumor: Servais Pinckaers, O.P. passes
Fr. Servais Pinckaers dies at the age of 82.

Fribourg: Décès du dominicain Servais Pinckaers, ancien doyen de la Faculté de théologie

Un spécialiste de théologie morale né à Liège le 30 octobre 1925

Fribourg, 7 avril 2008 (Apic) Le Père dominicain Servais-Théodore Pinckaers, professeur émérite de théologie morale à la Faculté de théologie de l'Université de Fribourg, dont il fut également doyen, est décédé le 7 avril à l'âge de 82 ans.

Né le 30 octobre 1925 à Liège, en Belgique, "une ville détruite par Charles le Téméraire, en 1468, à cause de son amour de la liberté", aimait-il à dire, Servais Pinckaers est entré à l'âge de 20 ans dans l'ordre des dominicains. Un ordre auquel il allait rester fidèle toute sa vie.

Profès dans l'Ordre des frères prêcheurs en 1946, il est ordonné prêtre en 1951. En 1952-53, il passe son doctorat à Rome. Il est ensuite enseignant à La Sarte, en Belgique, de 1954 à 1966. De 1966 à 1973, le Père Pinckaers est supérieur de la maison des dominicains de Liège avant d'être appelé comme professeur de théologie morale à l'Université de Fribourg. En 1989-1990, il est doyen la Faculté de théologie, et plusieurs fois prieur du couvent de l'Albertinum, à Fribourg.

Il est nommé en juin 1989 consulteur à la Congrégation pour l'Education catholique par le pape Jean Paul II. Auteur de nombreux ouvrages théologiques, il a donné sa dernière leçon à l'Université de Fribourg en juin 1996. En l'an 2000, le professeur de théologie morale était fait docteur "honoris causa" de l'Université du Latran à Rome.

De nombreuses distinctions

La distinction de docteur en "théologie du mariage et de la famille" lui avait été remise en présence du cardinal Camillo Ruini, Grand chancelier de l'Université, et du cardinal Angelo Sodano, secrétaire d'Etat au Vatican. En 1975, 10 ans après le Concile, le Père Pinckaers participait, notamment avec le Père Raphaël Oechslin, et ses confrères Guy Bedouelle et Georges Cottier, à la fondation de "Sources", une nouvelle revue dominicaine bimestrielle éditée à Fribourg. Son objectif était de garder le "juste milieu" dans la mise en pratique des réformes issues du Concile Vatican II.

Il fut également consulteur de la Congrégation pour l'éducation catholique, organe de la Curie romaine, responsable de la formation et des séminaires, et membre de la Commission théologique internationale, un important collège du Saint-Siège qui réunit 30 membres sous la présidence du préfet de la Congrégation pour la doctrine de la foi et traite des questions centrales de la théologie.

Le Père Pinckaers est l'auteur de nombreux ouvrages théologiques qui sont devenus des références en la matière. L'Université de Fribourg l'avait honoré à l'occasion de son 65e anniversaire en 1990, notamment par la parution d'un recueil d'hommages sous le titre "Aux sources du renouveau de la morale chrétienne". La messe d'obsèques du Père Pinckaers aura lieu au couvent de Ste-Ursule à Fribourg jeudi 10 avril à 14h30. (apic/be)

07.04.2008 - Jacques Berset

ND Center for Ethics and Culture profile: Servais Pinckaers, O.P.
University of Fribourg bio

Google Books:
The Sources of Christian Ethics - 1995 - 519 pages
Morality: The Catholic View - 2001 - 141 pages
The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral ... - 2005 - 422 pages

Fr. Servais Pinckaers, OP 16 June 1999 Fides et Ratio-13 Reflections