Morality: The Catholic View, Paperback

Descriere

Contributor(s):Author: Servais O. P. Pinckaers As Alasdair Mac Intyre notes in the preface, the work of Pinckaers attracted strongand fully justified notice in this country with the publication in English of his The Sources of Christian Ethics. As Pinckaers himself notes in the text, excellently translatedby Michael Sherwin, the interest should in no way be limited to Roman Catholics. Morality recasts the earlier book in an argument that is both lower andupper case catholic, and is accessible to readers and teachers outside the limitedcircle of moral theologians and academic ethicists. Pinckaers contends that Christian morality is not first of all about obligations but about happiness, understandingthat the happiness of union with God is our natural destiny made possibleby grace. The Sermon on the Mount is at the center of an approach to moralitythat turns on the distinction between freedom for excellence and freedom ofindifference, the former understood as human flourishing and the latter as a neutral capacity to choose between controversies. The proposal of Morality is thoroughly Christ-centered, humanistic, and faithful to the magisterial teaching of the Church. Warmly recommended. First Things If you want to have the experience of reflecting on Catholic morality as thoughyou were reading about it for the first time, treat yourself to Father Servais Pinckaers Morality: The Catholic View. He has recovered the classical view of themoral life as the quest for happiness and has presented it with disarming simplicity. Bringing us back to the Sermon on the Mount and Romans 12 15, the writingsof Augustine and Aquinas, and the theme of natural law, he has freed those textsfrom the layers of legalism which has hidden their liberating, spiritual powers formoral living. By distinguishing freedom of indifference from freedom for excellence, he has restored a wise vision of freedom. No one has shown better the roleof virtues as building blocks for morality. Catechists need to read th