In this extract from an article by William Murphy (Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, Wntr, 2008 by William F. Murphy, Jr. ) the author argues that Veritatis Splendor (1993) is fully in line with Aquinas’ thinking, and a reaction to the chaos wrought by the debate after the Second Vatican Council (1962) on the meaning of ethics. Click here for the relevant sections of Veritatis Splendor quoted here (section 75 – 93). This encyclical, basing the argument on Aquinas’ theory of natural law, sees goodness linked to the divine purpose or object of the action, so gives the case for an objective moral law defining intrinisc evil.  Full text is available on this link.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7048/is_1_11/ai_n42473865/

The encyclical is a specific response to what it describes as “the systematic calling into question of moral doctrine” (section 4), the phenomenon of revisionist moral theology that developed largely from the reaction against the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, with broader precedents including mid-twentieth-century “situation ethics.” In particular, VS insists that an adequate moral theory must be able to uphold the traditional teaching that certain kinds of human acts are “intrinsically” and therefore always evil. This tradition is rooted in biblical texts such as the Decalogue and the Pauline vice catalogs, and it is reaffirmed in a multitude of sources from the subsequent tradition. Moreover, section 75 of the encyclical judges that these revisionist theories go astray regarding “intrinsically evil acts” or “moral absolutes” precisely because they have “an inadequate understanding of the object of [a] moral action.”  Given the havoc wrought by the debate about moral theory and particular acts, we must not underestimate the importance for contemporary Catholic moral theology of this diagnosis about the danger of an inadequate understanding of the moral object.

Because it addresses the central matter of the “moral object” upon which the subsequent discussion of intrinsically evil acts (in section79-82) depends, section 78 is of decisive importance. It suggests the way toward an adequate approach to the moral object through a series of six affirmations: (1) “The morality of the human act depends primarily and fundamentally on the ‘object’ rationally chosen by the deliberate will “; (2) “In order to be able to grasp the object of an act which specifies that act morally, it is therefore necessary to place oneself in the perspective of the acting person”; (3) “the object is a freely chosen kind of behavior”; (4) the object is not “a process or an event of the merely physical order”; (5) the “object is the proximate end of a deliberate decision which determines the act of willing on the part of the acting person”; and (6) the morality of the object depends upon its “conformity with the order of reason.”

From these texts, from their role in the structure and argument of the encyclical, and from an understanding of their historical context, we can reasonably conclude that John Paul thought that a resolution to the postconciliar* crisis in Catholic moral theology requires a more adequate account of the moral object with the above characteristics. In insisting that this moral object must not be understood as “a process or an event of the merely physical order,” John Paul’s primary target was revisionist theory, which inherited what might be called “a physical understanding of the moral object” from the post-Tridentine casuist tradition.  The Pope’s approach, however, also challenges many more traditional Thomists, who sometimes treat the object that determines the morality of the human act as something of the merely physical order, or as what is caused physically. While maintaining that the moral object must be understood “in the perspective of the acting person” as “a freely chosen kind of behavior” and as “the proximate end of a deliberate decision,” John Paul clearly reinforces the importance of the much-neglected “proximate end” in a theory of the moral object.

Of course, these few phrases from VS section 78 do not amount to a comprehensive theory of the moral object and act, which is among the most difficult and contested topics in moral theology and philosophy. Still, presupposing that the pivotal interventions of the encyclical deserve a sympathetic reception (while granting that encyclicals should be understood as allowing room for alternative approaches) I will sketch an account of the moral object that explicitly seeks to follow the direction suggested by this key section of VS. Is so doing, my account will rely primarily on the texts of St. Thomas Aquinas, but read in light of the work of Martin Rhonheimer, the interpreter whose writings most closely resemble the encyclical, who has been at the forefront in its defense, and who–in my opinion–follows the texts of Thomas more closely than subsequent interpretative traditions.

*Postconciliar means the period after the second ecumenical Vatican Council (1962-5) known as Vatican II.