scholarly journals After Vatican II and Veritatis splendor: Five Moral Theology Textbooks

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-84
Author(s):  
Jana M. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Catholic Social Teaching ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Pedagogical Tools ◽  
Humanae Vitae ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Veritatis Splendor ◽  
Stable Field

Pedagogy in moral theology follows some of the particular concerns Catholic theologians have had since the Second Vatican Council as well as the aftermath of John Paul II’s encyclical on moral theology, Veritatis splendor. Most of the textbooks reviewed here teach virtue, Christian practice, and Thomas Aquinas’s theology, as largely positive responses to the Council and John Paul II. Catholic moral theology thus appears as a relatively stable field, though the authors use multiple approaches. There are, however, some moral theologians offering alternative perspectives on moral theology. One book reviewed here contends with Humanae vitae and resists both Thomas Aquinas’s authoritative voice and Veritatis splendor’s argument against proportionalist thought. The textbooks offer a range of pedagogical tools for varying student levels. Two of the overall gaps in the field, as indicated by these textbooks, might be more direct engagement with Scripture, and a proper locating of Catholic social teaching within moral theology.

John Paul II's Use of Scripture in His Moral Teaching

Horizons ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Charles E. Curran
Keyword(s):  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Scientific Presentation ◽  
John Paul Ii ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The World

The celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the College Theology Society naturally turns our focus to what has transpired in these fifty years. In terms of Roman Catholic theology, the two most significant historical realities are the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) and the now twenty-five-year pontificate of John Paul II as Bishop of Rome.In my discipline of moral theology, Vatican II and its document on the training of priests called for the renewal of moral theology with a special emphasis on its Scriptural bases. “Special care is to be taken for the improvement of moral theology. Its scientific presentation, drawing more fully on the teaching of holy Scripture should highlight the lofty vocation of the Christian faithful and their obligation to bring forth fruit and charity for the life of the world.”John Paul II as pope has written and taught extensively in the area of morality. In the light of the Vatican II mandate to renew moral theology through a greater appreciation of its scriptural roots and bases, this essay will critically evaluate John Paul II's use of scripture in his teaching on morality.

scholarly journals “If You Want Peace, Work For Justice:” Assessing Pope Paul VI as a Peacebuilder on the Levels of Insight and Action

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Hrynkow
Keyword(s):  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Gaudium Et Spes ◽  
Peace And Conflict Studies ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Peace And Conflict ◽  
Un General Assembly ◽  
Annual World

Paul VI was the first reigning pope to travel via airplane. On one such trip, he addressed the UN General Assembly, emphatically declaring “War never again! Never again war!” During the same period, Paul VI also saw the Second Vatican Council through to its completion. Vatican II produced an articulation of substantive peace in one of its final documents, Gaudium et Spes. This article employs an analytical yardstick through reading Gaudium et Spes in conversation with a Peace and Conflict Studies perspective, as a means to assess Paul VI’s peacemaking efforts on the levels of insight and action. Specifically, this article addresses Paul VI’s diplomatic initiatives, ecumenical outreach, and his contributions to Catholic Social Teaching, inclusive of the establishment of the annual World Day for Peace Messages. One of those messages is the source of what is his most repeated social teaching: “if you want peace, work for justice.”

scholarly journals Missiological Implications of Conscience in Present-Day Roman Catholicism

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Reid Karr
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Gaudium Et Spes ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Letter Exchange

During Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Papacy, The Theology Of Conscience Has Taken On A Significant Role. A Developed Theology Of Conscience Emerged During The Second Vatican Council, Most Notably With Gaudium Et Spes, And Later Developed As Essential In Moral Theology. Francis Is The First Pope To Fully Embody Vatican II Teachings, In Particular In His Incorporation Of The Conscience Into Theology And Practice. During The First Months Of His Papacy, He Made It Clear That Conscience Is Crucial To His Theology And, In A Letter Exchange With A Prominent Italian Journalist, He Underscored Obedience To One’s Conscience As The Key To Receiving Forgiveness Of Sins. This Development Has Tremendous Theological And Missiological Implications For The Roman Catholic Church. KEYWORDS: Roman Catholicism, Pope Francis, conscience, missiology, morality, Vatican II, Gaudium et spes

Epilogue

Mass Exodus ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 253-264
Author(s):  
Stephen Bullivant
Keyword(s):  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Humanae Vitae ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The Times ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors ◽  
The Church

Whether and to what extent the Second Vatican Council (either as a whole, or some particular aspect of its teaching and/or implementation) is to blame for the significant declines the Church has experienced in the decades following it is a question of significant dispute. The Epilogue to Mass Exodus addresses the question head on. It emphasizes the range of (non-Catholic-specific) social and cultural factors, discussed at length in earlier chapters, that have undoubtedly impacted upon Catholic retention. The notable declines witnesses by other major denominations over the same period, moreover, strongly suggest that Catholicism would also have suffered, even without the turbulence of Vatican II (and/or Humanae Vitae). Nevertheless, Vatican II cannot be absolved so easily. For a Council explicitly intended to read the signs of the times, to equip the Church to meet the challenges of the contemporary world, and indeed to make the Mass ‘pastorally efficacious to the fullest degree’, then it is very hard to escape that conclusion that, in Britain and America at least, it has failed to live up to its own expectations.

I. The Nonviolence–Just War Nexus

Horizons ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-114
Author(s):  
Drew Christiansen
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Catholic Social Teaching ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Pastoral Letter ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The Us ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
Peace And War

Gerald Schlabach wrote that a key test of progress for Catholicism in its dialogue with the historic peace churches on nonviolence and the use of force would be that the church's teaching on nonviolence would become “church wide and parish deep.” While modern Catholic social teaching has recognized nonviolence since the time of the Second Vatican Council, and Pope Saint John Paul II gave nonviolence strong, formal endorsement in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, the church's teaching on nonviolence is hardly known in the pews. If they are familiar at all with Catholic teaching on peace and war, most Catholics would know the just-war tradition, especially through the US bishops’ 1983 pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace. But the newer and still relatively slight teaching on nonviolence is hardly known at all. Only by rare exception do Catholic preachers address issues of peace and war.

scholarly journals Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae in the Course of Time

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-34
Author(s):  
Marek Petro
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Moral Pluralism ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Humanae Vitae ◽  
Moral Tradition ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Marital Love ◽  
The One ◽  
The Catholic Church

The content of Humanae Vitae (1968) caused an ongoing debate all over the world. It has also stirred up factual crisis of moral theology. The crisis has caused subjectivity of morality and this has caused further crisis. The most serious feature of the crisis seems to be an effort to accept moral pluralism inside the Catholic Church. The renewal of moral theology the Second Vatican Council talked about has been left blocked. A couple of years after the Second Vatican Council, but before publishing Humanae Vitae, warning of St. Paul VI calls for continuity with moral tradition as a criterion for the autonomy of Catholic moral theology. In spite of much opposition of some bishops, theologians, and laypeople, the teaching of the encyclical letter has priceless value. The truth about marital love and value of life is in its center. It is proclaimed in an overview of the teaching of the Catholic Church from Humanae Vitae to Evangelium Vitae. In its nature, family is invited to fullness of love and, at the same time, it is the heart of civilization of love. Unfortunately, current family has found itself between the two civilizations—civilization of love on the one hand and civilization of death and uncontrolled pleasure on the other. The teaching of the encyclical Humanae Vitae is a constant guide when protecting true marital love and family in the course of time.

The Synod of Pistoia and Vatican II

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Blanchard
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
High Water ◽  
Church Reform ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Bible Reading ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

This book sheds further light on the nature of church reform and the roots of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) through a study of eighteenth-century Catholic reformers who anticipated the Council. The most striking of these examples is the Synod of Pistoia (1786), the high-water mark of late Jansenism. Most of the reforms of the Synod were harshly condemned by Pope Pius VI in the bull Auctorem fidei (1794), and late Jansenism was totally discredited in the ultramontane nineteenth-century Church. Nevertheless, much of the Pistoian agenda—such as an exaltation of the role of bishops, an emphasis on infallibility as a gift to the entire Church, religious liberty, a simpler and more comprehensible liturgy that incorporates the vernacular, and the encouragement of lay Bible reading and Christocentric devotions—was officially promulgated at Vatican II. The career of Bishop Scipione de’ Ricci (1741–1810) and the famous Synod he convened are investigated in detail. The international reception (and rejection) of the Synod sheds light on why these reforms failed, and the criteria of Yves Congar are used to judge the Pistoian Synod as “true or false reform.” This book proves that the Synod was a “ghost” present at Vatican II. The council fathers struggled with, and ultimately enacted, many of the same ideas. This study complexifies the story of the roots of the Council and Pope Benedict XVI’s “hermeneutic of reform,” which seeks to interpret Vatican II as in “continuity and discontinuity on different levels” with past teaching and practice.

scholarly journals ‘Scrupulous and Timid Conformism’: Ireland and the Reception of the Liturgical Changes of Vatican II

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 545
Author(s):  
Gary Carville
Keyword(s):  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
The People ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Short Time Span ◽  
Irish Catholics ◽  
Catholic Tradition ◽  
Short Time ◽  
The Church

The Second Vatican Council and, in particular, its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, changed much in the daily life of the Church. In Ireland, a country steeped in the Catholic tradition but largely peripheral to the theological debates that shaped Vatican II, the changes to liturgy and devotional practice were implemented dutifully over a relatively short time span and without significant upset. But did the hierarchical manner of their reception, like that of the Council itself, mean that Irish Catholics did not receive the changes in a way that deepened their spirituality? And was the popular religious memory of the people lost through a neglect of liturgical piety and its place in the interior life, alongside what the Council sought to achieve? In this essay, Dr Gary Carville will examine the background to the liturgical changes at Vatican II, the contribution to their formulation and implementation by leaders of the Church in Ireland, the experiences of Irish Catholic communities in the reception process, and the ongoing need for a liturgical formation that brings theology, memory, and practice into greater dialogue.

scholarly journals The Tenacity of Popular Devotions in the Age of Vatican II: Learning from the Divine Mercy

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Robert E. Alvis
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Pope John Paul Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Therapeutic Tool ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The World ◽  
Divine Mercy

Despite is global popularity in recent decades, the Divine Mercy devotion has received scant scrutiny from scholars. This article examines its historical development and evolving appeal, with an eye toward how this nuances our understanding of Catholic devotions in the “age of Vatican II.” The Divine Mercy first gained popularity during World War II and the early Cold War, an anxious era in which many Catholic devotions flourished. The Holy Office prohibited the active promotion of the Divine Mercy devotion in 1958, owing to a number of theological concerns. While often linked with the decline of Catholic devotional life generally, the Second Vatican Council helped set the stage for the eventual rehabilitation of the Divine Mercy devotion. The 1958 prohibition was finally lifted in 1978, and the Divine Mercy devotion has since gained a massive following around the world, benefiting in particular from the enthusiastic endorsement of Pope John Paul II. The testimonies of devotees reveal how the devotion’s appeal has changed over time. Originally understood as a method for escaping the torments of hell or purgatory, the devotion developed into a miraculous means to preserve life and, more recently, a therapeutic tool for various forms of malaise.

The Natural Law in Catholic Ethics

2015 ◽  
pp. 387-402
Author(s):  
Kevin L. Flannery
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Classical Traditions ◽  
John Finnis

This chapter presents Catholic teaching on the natural law as the product of a conversation over millennia. After offering some basic conceptual distinctions, the chapter begins by considering ancient non-Christian sources for Christian reflection on the natural law, especially Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. The chapter then considers relevant biblical texts and the teachings of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Attention is particularly played to Thomas’s adaptation of Classical traditions, and his argument concerning the unchangeablness of natural law. The final section of the chapter focuses on discussion of natural law after the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) in the work of Germain Grisez and John Finnis.

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