Abstract
Karol Wojtyla also wrote on The Acting Person in 1969 (the original Polish was published in English in 1979 after his election as Pope John Paul II). Weaver’s book may share the same primary focus but her intent is significantly different. ‘This book describes the moral agent acting in relation to God’ (p. 1) are the opening words. In the last paragraph she states ‘Contemporary Christian ethics tends to minimize or ignore the importance of particular moral actions for the person’s relationship with God’ (p. 195). While Wojtyla sought to examine the phenomenological roots of the acting person, Weaver has a different preoccupation (action and God) in another context (contemporary Christian ethics).
Her argument is constructed in six chapters. She begins with a cost–benefit analysis of the influence of the sacrament of confession as it affected the analysis of moral action, emphasizing the current lack of attention to concrete actions in their relationship to God. This diagnosis is confirmed in the second chapter: Weaver is uneasy with a theological emphasis on ‘sin’ that is not accurately attentive to ‘sins.’ In Weaver’s judgment the dissociation of personal sin from wrongdoing limits what we can say about the significance of actions. The third step of her argument explores this deficit through analysis of the debate on how concrete actions relate to the person’s basic orientation toward or against God. Showing sympathy with the proponents of a fundamental option theory, she distances herself somewhat from it: given her preoccupation with the actions of a person, this is not a surprise. In Chapter four she begins her attempt to tie together the various strands of her argument, to explain better how our moral acting may be related to God. She affirms that ‘the moral significance of our actions centrally concerns our fidelity to God’ (p. 94). The circle is completed by an examination of truthfulness before God in naming our moral actions (pp. 131–58). The implications of her argument for moral theology are outlined in the final chapter (pp. 161–95). Weaver is realistic in her acceptance of sins as a result of our actions, but does not leave us in that wilderness. Making a creative use of stories of reconciliation (the aftermath of the brutal killing of Amish students in October 2006 on pp. 162–65 is movingly recounted), Weaver takes the personal and social threads of sinful actions crying out for reconciliation in a hermeneutical realism where action, sin, personal agency, and God can be encircled.
This book needs to be read at two levels. The basic one is the consistent conviction of the author that personal actions can only be properly interpreted in a God-referring context. The second level is a reading of moral theological debates of recent decades which have devoted serious energy to a revision of moral norms, actions, and sin. On the basic level one can note the influence of Karl Barth, a distrust of autonomous ethics and a radical belief that the individual person stands (or falls) in a judgment before God. On the second level, Weaver is attentive to, and very fair towards, prominent Catholic theologians in the recent debates, such as Charles E. Curran, Klaus Demmer, Josef Fuchs, and James Keenan. She is not parti pris in their regard, as she is not in respect of the criticisms implied against such authors in Veritatis splendor (1993) discussed in the section on freedom as a fundamental option on pp. 68–79.
While admiring the irenic spirit and considerable scholarship of the author, I am not convinced that she gives a consistently integrated account of how the two levels of reading the book can be coordinated. It is the person whose actions are considered before God. But, what person? Weaver offers a descriptive account: ‘while the distinction between act-centred and person-centred ethics is typically applied to describe Catholic moral theology, it is fair to say that contemporary Christian ethics in general is person-centred’ (p. 15). She gives some specification by recalling, in various sections of the book, that regard for the person has to be historically situated, culturally shaped, irreducibly social, dynamic, and embodied. And so say all of us. Given the profundity of her first level of concern (how actions relate to God), Weaver’s book would have been more convincing were it to have included a focused anthropological chapter on the precise concept of person she is working with.
It could be objected: such is not her aim. She is concerned with how recent theology has dealt with moral action in relation to God. The problem with these debates, however, is precisely the same lack of anthropological thoroughness. The time has come to treat these moral theological debates, often referred to as the autonomy versus faith ethics discussion, as an episode. We should learn from it, of course, but the shape of the questions facing moral theology now should not be dictated by an acrimonious debate from the past.
Weaver’s book is convincing in its conviction that actions need to be named truthfully before God. Her use of recent debates to make this point is less convincing. The book would be more coherent had she taken the first question as a separate one, perhaps using a title such as ‘Love of God and Moral Action.’ Her earlier book, Self Love and Christian Ethics (Cambridge, 2002) could be expanded, and applied to the preoccupation of this book. One of the issues arising from the autonomy–faith ethics debate is that it took place in the Roman Catholic Church at a particular period. Weaver is very well informed about the debate, but some of the questions raised can distract the reader from the underlying conviction of Weaver: the need to relate the significance of actions to a God-related life. I admit that, in summaries throughout the book, she brings the reader back to this point. The pathway between the various chapters would be more appealing were the writing more focussed on the basic question. One way in which this would help is in her presentation of the ecclesial dimension of moral theology. This is given some attention, especially in Chapter six: the introduction of this theme earlier in the book would help in showing the reader how the relationship between action and God is not the correlation of an isolated individual and a transcendent God (Weaver would certainly not hold this position) but is best analysed through the ecclesial community where the fidelitas interrupta (p. 122) both occurs and can be healed for the next step of the journey.
This is a scholarly theological work, written in a dense style but punctuated with many interesting literary references (such as Dante’s account of the relationship between Francesca and Paolo on pp. 55–58). To benefit from this book the reader would need to be well informed on recent moral theology: it is not a book for beginners. I would welcome a further book from Weaver, as indicated. Meanwhile, informed readers will benefit from a discretional use of the work reviewed here. Not least among its attributes is the ecumenically sensitive tone of the writing, reflecting Weaver’s ethical training and professional postings.