Fall 1972

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CHICAGO STUDIES

tinctively Christian ethic" and when McCormick asserts that there is "only Christian morality, not a natural and a Christian morality." If at first glance the two eminent moralists appear to be in fundamental disagreement, each is actually expressing from a different viewpoint the oneness of authentic human morality and rejecting the notion of a truly human, natural morality that is exclusive of what has been traditionally understood as the supernatural virtue of charity. To this extent the two views coincide. The dichotomy between a natural and a supernatural morality was largely the result of the individualistic conception of morality behind it, namely, the idea that the moral order derives from natural and supernatural principles embedded with the individual man. Like Johann's relocating human rights from their enclosure within the individual to the interpersonal arena, the rejection of the dichotomy between natural and supernatural morality can be seen as one of many examples of the contemporary attempt to purge Catholic ethical thought of the individualistic bias that permeated it in the past. But at present the purification is a rather random process, and necessarily so. For it cannot be accomplished systematically and definitively, it would seem, until the Church is presented with a new, scientifically developed epistemology, which will firmly and lastingly estabilsh, among other things, that all moral and ethical knowledge is interpersonal knowledge. Only when the new epistemology appears will the Catholic moralist be in a position to cease calling for it and to return gladly to minding his own business.


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