Norbert J. RigaJi, S.J.
Christian Ethics and Perfection Moral theology cannot legitimately maintain that there is no distinctively Christian Ethic until it has re-incorporated ascetical theology-the science of Christian perfection.
When it was first generally acknowledged that moral theology needed to be reformed, theologians frequently lamented that this discipline had developed away from its roots in the Bible and dogmatic theology. There was much talk of developing a Christocentric moral theology. But by the end of the last decade many theologians were no longer thinking in terms of a Christ-centered ethics. Instead, the opinion that there is no distinctively Christian ethics had moved into the forefront of moral theology. If this rapid secularization of moral theology seems to have been precipitous, it perhaps would not have occurred at all, had theologians perceived the need for reform with a larger view of the inadequacy of traditional moral theology. Moral theology developed as a science for confessors and was thus understandably oriented toward the delimitation of sins. Less than a century after moral theology was established as an independent science, another independent subject, asceticism, emerged .. Whereas moral theology, directed toward understanding sin, had a negative thrust, ascetical . theology sought to understand the fulfillment and perfection of the Ch1istian life. By the historical accident of its having been born as a science of sin and thus separated from the science of Chris227