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As a culture, our understanding of moral theology has gone through some drastic changes over the past five decades. These changes have caused a lot of confusion, and are at the center of what has come to be known as the "culture war." If we hope to clear up the confusion, we must first understand these changes.
In the 1940's and 1950's, morality was understood in terms of law and obedience. This attitude toward morality made sense at this time in history. Religious affiliation was bolstered by cultural practices in most countries. Religion was a cultural duty, and seen as a civic virtue. However, despite the nostalgic idealism many people hold for this time period, faith was often not internalized any more back then than it is today.
The result of the myopic focus on law and obedience was that the moral law became "heteronomous." This term is made up of the prefix "hetero," which means "other," and the root "nomy," which refers to the law. The idea behind the term is that the moral law is imposed on us from a distantly removed outside source. Our task is not to ask why, but to obey.
The dichotomy between the external practice and the internal faith gave rise to such complexitites as the murdering mob boss who could commit murder on Friday but wouldn't dream of missing Mass on Sunday, and will even invite the priest to dinner Sunday evening. This separation between faith and everyday life was one of the many issues tackled by the Second Vatican Council.
Unfortunately, the release from blind obedience to an exteriorly opposed law was interpreted by Catholics and theologians as an abolition of law and obedience. A fully developed corrective to heteronomous law was slow in coming, and in its absence an over-corrective attitude toward morality developed. Heteronomy gave way to autonomy, or self-law. Theories of moral theology developed that taught people that
the moral law was essentially created and arbitrated by their subjective conscience. While autonomous law got rid of blind obedience to the law, it did nothing to bridge the gap between faith and everyday life. Instead, it created the "cafeteria Catholic," whose motto is, "I can believe that abortion or contraception or homosexuality or euthanasia is ok and still be a good Catholic."
The true intentions of the Second Vatican Council's call to revise the direction of moral theology were answered by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor. In this encyclical, the pope re-introduced the vision of morality developed by the Catholic intellectual tradition, especially by Saint Thomas Aquinas. Pope John Paul II's vision can be called "participatory theonomy." Theonomy once again refers to "nomy" - the law - and "theo" - God. The moral law comes from God. However, God does not impose the Law on us external to human life. His moral law is a personal invitation to each human being to participate in His plan for human life - to be what God intended human beings to be at Creation, and to become what He wants us to be in Christ. As is usually the case, the truth holds in tension both of the aspects the heresies focused on to the exclusion of the other.
So, what is the vision of morality that has been promoted by the continuous Catholic intellectual tradition? What is the role of moral theology in this vision?
As a starting point, theology is the study of the Mysteries of God. The Mysteries of God are revealed to us through the Sacred Scriptures and through the living Tradition of the Church. The role of theology is to make attempts to clarify those areas of Divine Revelation that make up part of the inexhaustible Mystery of God that cannot be fully
