The Origins of Moral Theology in the United States: Three Different Approaches.

Charles E. Curran. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1997. 311pp. $24.95 (paper).

The scarcity of books in the history of Catholic moral theology in America makes this book indispensable for scholars of theological ethics and American religious thought. More known for his work in contemporary ethics, Charles Curran critically engages the late nineteenth-century thought of the mostly unknown Catholic moralists Aloysius Sabetti, Thomas J. Bouquillon, and John B. Hogan. Interestingly, Curran demonstrates that during the 1880s-90s, when the 'ultramontanist' church was imposing the unitary method of Thomistic neoscholasticism on dogmatic theology, a 'methodological pluralism' existed in American Catholic moral theology. Although the crises of Americanism (1899) and Modernism (1907) abridged further methodological developments until after Vatican II (1962-65), the diversity of tradition serves as a basis for the pluralism of American Catholic moral thought today.

To begin, Curran provides a succinct history of modern moral theology and its linkage to Aloysius Sabetti. First, he traces the diversity of moral thought from laxism to rigorism (tutiorism), and especially the "moderate probabalist" position of Alphonsus Liguori. It was not only Liguori's manualist method of applying principles and rules to moral cases that appealed to church leaders, but his even-tempered moral judgment about such cases that made his Theologia moralis the summa of moral theology throughout the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Second, following in this tradition was the Italian-born Jesuit Aloysius Sabetti, who taught moral theology at Maryland's Woodstock College from 1871 to 1898. Although not the first American manual in moral theology, Sabetti's Compendium theologiae moralis (1884) became the most popular textbook in Catholic seminaries and colleges until the 1920s. The thrust of Sabetti's casuistic approach was to deductively apply absolute moral principles and norms to particular cases, while comparing cases to similar cases. Practically speaking, this meant that Catholics should remain extremely cautious about the underlying dangers of American society and only reluctantly obey the civil authorities and laws. Although licit to pledge allegiance to the Constitution, for example, Sabetti claimed that it is simply wrong to "assent" to the content of the document, especially regarding the freedom of thought, speech, religion, and the right of divorce. Indeed, by denouncing the principle of equality of all citizens, political democracy, and separation of church and state, Sabetti insisted that Catholics should strive to remain culturally and religiously distinct, foster their own school system, and support a strong paternalistic view of the family. In Curran's estimation, Sabetti combined a rigid articulation of the Alphonsian manualist tradition with an "ultramontanist ecclesiology which stresses the church as a hierarchical society with the pope enjoying fullness of power" (103).

In contrast is Thomas Bouquillon, the Belgian-born professor of moral theology at Catholic University from 1889 to 1902. As a neoscholastic, Bouquillon criticized the manualist tradition in his Theologia moralis fundamentalis; his teleological work was less interested in manualist forms of casuistry, then the final end of human beings and the proper means, rules, and acts for attaining that end. Like contemporary revisionists, he insisted that the morality of acts cannot be reduced to their physical nature, but are linked to their circumstances and final end; this means that the same physical act can have different moral meanings. Hence, says Curran, Bouquillon "pointed the way to a much more radical change in moral theology that would truly modify the nature and purpose of the discipline itself" (250). Unlike Sabetti, Bouquillon's social views were similar to other Catholic liberals like the bishops John Ireland and John Keane, and Cardinal James Gibbons, who supported the 'Americanization' of immigrants, the establishment of the Catholic University of America, Catholic participation in the Knights of Labor, and support and participation in public education. Indeed, he was only one of four American Catholic professors who supported the liberal economic views of Father Edward McGlynn, who was suspended then later excommunicated by the church.

The third theorist was John Hogan, the Irish-born Sulpician priest and professor and administrator at St. John's Seminary and Catholic University during the 1880s and 90s. The least known of the three, Hogan offers a historically conscious approach that radically departs from the earlier two theories. In Curran's mind, Hogan's "moderate modernism," influenced by Alfred Loisy and John Henry Newman, affirmed the "particular, the individual, and the changing as opposed to the eternal, immutable, and unchanging characteristics of the classicist mentality" (264). Unlike Sabetti and Bouquillon, then, he abandoned the deductive method in favor of an inductive and intuitive approach to moral decision-making; he clearly recognized the need to revise principles in light of new historical circumstances and moral cases. Moreover, he supported the use of natural and social sciences in theology, a historical-critical approach to the Bible, and the development of Catholic doctrine. Indeed, of the three theorists, he was the most affirmative about American culture and society, including republican government, public education, and separation of church and state.

As a revisionist moral theologian, Curran prefers the latter two moral theories and view of papal authority, and especially that of Hogan. Unlike Sabetti's conservative and ultramontanist position, Bouquillon reluctantly admits the possibility of legitimate dissent from nonfallible papal teaching if it disregards the ultimate moral end, while the historically minded Hogan explicitly claims that the church's traditional teachings about issues such as usury and slavery were simply wrong. Such a claim, says Curran, "is very much in keeping with the Thomistic tradition's insistence on intrinsic morality - something is commanded because it is good and not the other way around" (301). So, in the last analysis, it is Curran's reliance on Aquinas, as a virtue theorist, which provides the basis for his evaluation of these "legalist" moral theories. Indeed, Aquinas's use of prudence in decision-making correlates with Curran's own "relational-response" model for contemporary Christian ethics. Although Curran insists that he is not writing an unbiased history of American moral theology, this book is valuable both for its historical content and the author's own perspective about historical divergences in Catholic moral thought. Thus, it deserves to be read widely and ardently by those interested in the genesis of American Catholic moral thought and its application to American public life.

DAVID W. HADDORFF