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Christian Bioethics Advance Access originally published online on November 27, 2008
Christian Bioethics 2008 14(3):302-309; doi:10.1093/cb/cbn016
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of The Journal of Christian Bioethics, Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

This article appears in the following Christian Bioethics issue: Richard McCormick's Moral Epistemology and Bioethics: A Symposium [View the issue table of contents]

Enriching Proportionalism Through Christian Narrative in Bioethics: The Decisive Development in Richard McCormick's Moral Theory?

Joseph Boyle

St. Michael's College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Address correspondence to: Joseph Boyle, St. Michael's College, 81 St. Mary Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1J4, Canada. E-mail: jboyle{at}chass.utoronto.ca


  Abstract

In this short response to Peter Clarke's thorough and interesting tracing of the developments in Richard McCormick's approach to moral questions, I take a perspective external to the concerns of Clarke's paper. I propose to look at the developments in McCormick's approach not so much from the perspective of contemporary Catholic moral theology but from that of the impact on the practices and beliefs of the Catholic community. From that perspective, the really important events in McCormick's theological development are his rejection of the received teaching on contraception and his closely connected embracing of a moral theory that implies that there are no moral absolutes, namely, proportionalism.

Keywords: contraception, incommensurable human goods, moral absolutes, proportionalism


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