Timothy E. O'ConneU
The Point of Moral Theology
The author describes the profound difference in our new vision of manand the difference it makes for moral theology.
"Where is moral theology today? In fact, is there any moral theology, any m01¡ality today? And if there is, why do we hear things today that seem so different from what we were taught? What, after ali, is going on? Wh at do ali these new ideas, new terms, new arguments really mean?" That these questions are cornmonly verbalized today is beyond question. In conversations among priests, in discussions with laity, even in scholarly theological presentations one hears questions such as these raised time and again .. What seems to be Jess apparent, or at least Jess acknowledged, is that these questions are exceedingly important. They are not merely the complaints of malcontents. They are not the self-defence of anti-intellectuals. And above ali, they are not, and cannot be reduce to, mere manifestations of theological and religious nostalgia. Quite the contrary. Questions such as those mentioned here are, it seems to me, symptoms of a religious dislocation that is both genuine and quite profound. For the fact of the matter is that moral theology has, in recent years, undergone a shift which is more than a matter of details, more than a mat49