Abstract
This book is the outcome of a project undertaken 20 years ago by Raphael Gallagher CSSR, then professor of moral theology at the Alfonsianum in Rome. He had come to realize that, though he had been familiarizing students with the work of Alphonsus over decades, he had overlooked what in effect is a preface to the eight-volume Theologia Moralis: a short tract on conscience, included from the second edition onwards. His conviction is that this is Liguori’s most distinctive text and most notable contribution to moral theology, and what he presents here is a translation and commentary with the needs of a modern student in mind.
The translation is the first in English based on Leonard Gaudé’s 1905 critical edition, and the commentary draws on Gaudé’s historical-theological researches and the work of L. Vereecke, S. Majorano, M.Vidal, D Capone, and A. Amarante. The translation aims at accuracy rather than literary flourish, as the author puts it, though he avoids a verbatim rendering, preferring what flows better in English. In a helpful Introduction he explains his methodology and the rationale for various editorial decisions, and a short bibliography lists the primary and secondary works consulted. His acknowledgment of the value of internet resources comes with a warning that these can be unreliable as a primary source when dealing with an historical text.
Even for one whose introduction to moral theology came with the aid of Bernard Häring’s Law of Christ, it was a surprise to discover the attention that Alphonsus gave to conscience, and a greater surprise to find him describe his treatise on conscience as ‘the one that begins the path toward all moral theology’ (p. 7). The surprise sprang not only from ignorance of Liguori’s writings but also from a hazy preconception of Alphonsian moral theology as—prior to Häring—irredeemably negative and rigid; it’s ironic, as Gallagher remarks, that Alphonsus is sometimes quoted as favouring a rigorous morality of the type that in fact he strove to eradicate. Aquinas was pre-eminently the theologian of conscience in a typical fundamental moral theology programme, as indeed he still is. And so, too, he was for Liguori who was, he himself tells us, ‘especially eager’ to consult Aquinas’s writings, as can be seen from the references contained in the end-notes by Raphael Gallagher, especially for Chapter Three in Part Two.
Both the Summa Theologiae of St Thomas and the Theologia Moralis of St Alphonsus were intended as text-books for the training of students for the priesthood. But the times and circumstances of their composition were different, and it is instructive to see how essentially the same materials are handled differently by each author. In the treatise on conscience, one might say, Alphonsus is putting the theology of conscience to work in a more overtly pastoral way than was Aquinas. This is to be expected, given what he says in the Preface: ‘The specific aim of our tiny Congregation is to be free to give missions. With the necessary work of the missionaries comes the duty of directing consciences by instructions and confessions’ (3). And recall his description of the conscience treatise as opening the pathway to all moral theology, an observation which Gallagher regards as ‘pivotal,’ along with that which intimates that ‘the exit point in pastoral ministry is also through conscience’ (p. 163). Critically though, as Gallagher shows in his excellent commentary, the pastoral for Alphonsus is theological, the theologizing is pastoral; his moral theology is simultaneously pastoral and scholarly.
Ours is not the church of Alphonsus, nor is his world ours. He wrote in the manual tradition of moral theology at a time when, following Trent’s focus upon the Sacrament of Penance, education for the priesthood included a significant emphasis on training for the work of the confessional, and not only for Redemptorists. He was moreover writing within a way of looking at the moral life which saw it in terms of law, and he came to his task as one already educated in the law and jurisprudence of the Roman civil system. And the wider context of his thinking included a perceived tension between the claim of conscience and the claims of law; in Raphael Gallagher’s characterization, there were ‘two claimants for the allegiance of a person: the inner voice of conscience and the external word of those who commanded conscience’ (p. 164). For Liguori ‘[t]he choice was not conscience or law, but conscience within law. Mea conscientia . . . is not the lonely drama it was for Luther; it is played out within the community the Church’ (Gallagher again, loc. cit.).
The moral theology of St Alphonsus inevitably bore the marks of its origins and development against the background just described, and is not exempt from the typical criticisms of the manual tradition associated with the ‘renewal’ of moral theology and with the theology which undergirded the teaching of Vatican II. In general terms, ‘[w]hat conscience means for us, and what moral theology involves as a contemporary science, have changed appreciably,’ as Gallagher puts it (p. xiv). The commentary acknowledges these changes, yet Gallagher can offer some unforced analogous applications to the situation today. Given its context and its author’s background, Alphonsus’s moral theology could not have been other than ‘legalistic’ and ‘casuistical,’ but it is interesting and still instructive to see how he understood his task as theologian and as minister of the Gospel. This is best grasped, with Raphael Gallagher’s help, from a study of the entire treatise, but passages in the Preface to Theologia Moralis are explicit.
There, explaining his purposes, Alphonsus wrote: ‘I wanted [a work] that would navigate a middle way between views that were too rigid or too lax.’ He refers to the damage done by the laxist authors, but no less severe are his strictures concerning rigourists who ‘confuse counsels with precepts, and burden consciences with new commands . . . do not spare a thought for human weakness . . . make the yoke of Christ intolerable, when it should be light.’ Words worth pondering, indicating just one of the ways in which Alphonsus may be read with profit still. Gallagher adds an important observation: ‘When Alphonsus says he is seeking a middle way between extremes, this is to be understood constructively. He was not looking for a compromise that reduced tensions to the lowest common denominator’ (p. xvii). Later: ‘The careful way Alphonsus outlines the steps in reaching a moral decision within a system of principles guarantees the dignity of a personal conscience. The claim of law to its rights is relatively straightforward. The claim of conscience to its rights is more challenging. Equity in the application of the law is the lodestar to protect conscience from an overbearing legalism’ (p. xviii).
Words which provide a fitting epitome of the intent and content of Alphonsus’s treatise. Its appearance now in a well-produced paperback volume from Liguori Publications is a valuable addition to the literature of Catholic moral theology, of interest to Alphonsian scholars no doubt, but potentially to a wider readership also, thanks to an eminently readable translation, and a commentary reflective both of Raphael Gallagher’s gifts as a communicator and of his scholarship.