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PAGE 16 — The Georgia Bulletin, February 15, 1990
Bishops Told Moral Teach
ing Is Greatest Challenge
DALLAS (CNS) - In a
culture that views moral
norms as relative and
private, moral teaching
has become “the most
challenging” task facing
bishops, Cardinal Bernard
F. Law of Boston said Feb.
5 at an international
gathering of bishops in
Dallas.
He warned that to teach
effectively the bishops
must overcome “a
marginalization of the role
of the teaching office of
pastors within the church,
especially as regards ques
tions of medical-moral
matters.”
About 110 U.S. bishops,
along with some 60 from
Canada, Mexico, the Carib
bean, Central America and
the Philippines, attended
the Feb. 5-9 meeting, the
ninth annual medical-
moral workshop for
bishops sponsored by the
Pope John XXIII Medical-
Moral Research and
Education Center in Brain
tree, Mass.
Substantial funding for
the yearly workshop comes
from the Knights of Colum
bus.
Cardinal Law, delivering
the keynote address, said
the Second Vatican Council
25 years ago focused on
three important principles
of moral life. According to
the council, he said:
— “The Gospel is the
source of every moral
norm.”
— "The objective moral
order is of critical impor
tance” because it ad
dresses moral questions in
Theologian Says In Dallas
Life Issues Demand More Witness
BY CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
DALLAS (CNS) — To draw others to its
consistent ethic of life, the Catholic Church
must go beyond preaching the principle to
witnessing it, moral theologian John M.
Haas told about 170 bishops Feb. 7 at a
medical-moral workshop in Dallas.
“Rational argument will never win over
to a consistent ethic of life a society as
jaded, hedonistic and self-serving as our
own. What is needed is conversion,” Haas
said.
“There are few things as compelling as
consistency in word and deed,” he said,
calling for the church to help pregnant
women in need. “It bespeaks an integrity
which has irresistible moral appeal.”
Haas, a professor at St. Charles Bor-
romeo Seminary in Philadelphia, was one
of a dozen scholars to address the Feb. 5-9
workshop, organized by the Pope John XX-
III Medical-Moral Research and Educa
tion Center of Braintree, Mass.
“There is no institution in the United
States other than the Catholic Church
which has a more consistent life ethic in
health care (whether) in the narrow do
main of medical ethics or the broader one
of social justice,” Haas said.
But he urged more concerted efforts to
protect life, advance human dignity and
meet human needs, saying the church will
convert others to its viewpoint by witness
more than by argument.
He cited as an example the public com
mitment by Cardinal John J. O’Connor of
New York to provide “free, confidential
help of highest quality” to any single or
married woman facing an unplanned
pregnancy.
“It would provide an astounding exam
ple to the world and stop the mouths of
many critics if every diocese in the church
were able to make the same offer,” he
said.
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terms of the “inner unity”
of human nature, human
acts and the human
destiny.
— “The infallibility of the
‘sensus fidei’ (understand
ing of the faith) of the peo
ple of God in moral mat
ters” calls the church to
witness moral teaching in
the light of faith.
In today’s world, the car
dinal said, an “ever
growing technical ad
vancement” is accom
panied by a tendency “to
lose sight of the total per
son and his or her spiritual
destiny.”
One result, he said, is a
“tendency to split the
human person into discrete
areas of interest, losing
sight of the whole.... In
American culture this split
is lived out as a division of
‘private’ lives or concerns
(subjective) from the
‘public’ order (objective).
The private is the creation
of individual desire and
the public the result of
brokered convention,
usually legislated by
predominance of com
peting interests and ad
judicated externally in the
courts.”
He cited widespread
abortion, disintegration of
married life and families,
drug abuse and “the
decline in sexual morality"
as signs of the separation of
public and private morality
in U.S. culture.
Cardinal Law also
described “lack of social
consensus” on important
moral issues as a major
problem.
“There is a lack of a com
mon sense of the rightness
of things.... An exag
gerated sense of ‘tolerance’
or ‘openness’ is a thin gloss
over the tragic failure to
deal with the realities of
our common humanity and
of our common destiny in
God,” he said.
As a result, he added,
“Religion and religious
concerns as regards the
moral dimensions of life,
including medical-moral
questions, are marginal
ized to the private, personal
sphere, as if what is at
stake were just one’s
peculiar opinions about
life.”
He said that the bishop,
as a “moral teacher in an
unbelieving world,” is call
ed to reassert the centrali
ty of religion in life.
The bishop, he said, must
“build up in the faithful a
recognition of the unity of
every aspect of life in one’s
calling to a union of life
with God.”
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