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An Introduction to Moral Theology by William E. May

1994; Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception; Volume: 58; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tho.1994.0039

2473-3725

John S. Grabowski,

American Constitutional Law and Politics

BOOK REVIEWS 359 Men might well wonder (Knowles wrote) if any reverence towards the things of God remained in those who ordered this pillage, and if any human faith could be looked for in those who desecrated great abbeys dedicated to the divine service, and trafficked in their treasures. . . . Visible beauty of form and line and hue is as nothing in comparison with the eternal beauty of things unseen, but those who wantonly de· stroy the one will not readily be supposed to value the other (Religious Orders of England Ill, p. 387). Duffy is angry (the last few pages are elegantly evocative) and it is because, like Gasquet and Knowles before him, he is theologically involved . His religion has been misrepresented for four hundred years and he has, I think, proved and detailed the misrepresentation. Duffy believes the theological content of the Reformation is essential to the debate. He sees continuity in the small band of recusants who held to the same beliefs as had been held for a thousand years and who hold them still. This is not sentimentality or nostalgia. Duffy is simply stating the fact that the pre-Reformation Church was "another country, another world " from the Anglican Church which followed, and that any attempt on the part of Anglicans to claim continuity with the Medieval Church is wishful thinking at best. The English Reformation represented a profound theological change in the English nation, and, even though some of the ceremonies and ecclesiastical forms of the traditional religion were kept, the heart of it, the content, was gone. One important consequence of Duffy's attention to theology is that the continuity of the English Catholic Church from the late medieval period even to the present day (let alone 1850) becomes obvious. Prayers for the dead, the liturgy, the Pope, the Eucharist, vestments, devotions involving ashes and palms, pilgrimages (Have you been to Walsingham lately?) , the veneration of the saints-they are all with us today just as they were with Catholics of pre.Reformation England, sometimes in startling similarity. Duffy has produced a masterpiece of historical investigation and evaluation and this book must be read by any serious student of the English Reformation. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D.C. JOHN VIDMAR, O.P. An Introduction to Moral Theology. By WILLIAM E. MAY. Huntington , Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor, 1991. Pp. 239. $7.95 (paper). In this present work William E. May, Michael McGivney Professor of Moral Theology at the Pope John Paul II Institute for Studies on 360 BOOK REVIEWS Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C., sets for himself a twofold task. The first and more ambitious is to respond to the call of the Second Vatican Council for a renewal of moral theology which displays " livelier contact with the mystery of Christ " and is " more thoroughly nourished by biblical teaching" (Optatum Totius, n. 16). While this work makes no claim to be the definitive response to this summons, May sees it as a contribution especially as it presents in compact and accessible form some of the more positive developments in moral theology since the Council, including both the work of others (especially Germain Grisez, upon whom he relies heavily) and some of his own previously published work. The second and more immediate task of the book is to provide " an alternative moral vision " to some of the currently popular revisionist introductions to moral theology such as those of O'Connell and Gula (p. 16). For May, the two tasks are not unrelated insofar as revisionist moral theology is not representative of authentic renewal because of its departures from Church tradition and teaching. In light of the first task of the work, May loosely structures the work to reflect the " central biblical themes of crucial significance to moral theology and the moral life, ... creation, sin, incarnation and redemption , and eschatology" (p. 14). The theme of creation is taken up in the first three chapters of the work. While there is little biblical or theological analysis of the notion of creation, May lays the foundations of his natural law approach to morality through a treatment of related ideas: human dignity, human action, conscience, and the primacy...