Reason Informed by Faith: Foundations of Catholic Morality [Paperback]

Richard M. Gula (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1989

Excellent textbook introduction to the basic issues of fundamental moral theology that considers all of today's moral issues.

Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: Paulist Press; 1St Edition edition (January 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809130661
• ISBN-13: 978-0809130665
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #149,280 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A MUST for anyone trying to get a grasp on Catholic Morality, April 9, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Reason Informed by Faith: Foundations of Catholic Morality (Paperback)

I was fortunate to have had this text while a seminarian at St. Patrick's Seminary, where Fr. Gula was a professor and dean. Fr. Gula's book takes a critical look at the various strains of thought in Catholic morality/ethics. By critical, I mean that he examines the major ideas, points out their strong points and weak points, and puts them within the context of Catholic teaching and Tradition. Since having left the seminary, I have had occasion to refer to this book as a reference for religious education and discussions with friends.

3.0 out of 5 stars Excellent principles of Morality but few examples, November 21, 2011

By 

Mark F. Mance - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Reason Informed by Faith: Foundations of Catholic Morality (Paperback)

I read this book years ago and found it to have an excellent methodological framework for morality. However, rarely does the author illustrate the principles with explanatory examples. The author could greatly improve a new edition with the inclusion of examples.

Most of the conservative critiques of other reviews have a predisposed bias to non-classical formulations of fundamental theology, such as the recognition of issue of historicity.

23 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars problematic, December 19, 2007

By 

Ian Wright (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Reason Informed by Faith: Foundations of Catholic Morality (Paperback)

I read most of this work because it was assigned as part of a graduate-level theology course I'm taking at a Catholic college. The book is good sometimes in its coverage of historical developments in moral theology, but ultimately suffers from a vision beholden to proportianlism. While reading the author's discussion of the current theology and its historical rather than classical orientation, warning bells began going off in the back of my mind. It took me a little while, but I remembered that JP II had exposed the flaws of proportionalism in Veritatis Splendor, an encyclical that doesn't show up much on the syllabi of professors at Catholic schools.

On the one hand, Gula's work antedates Veritatis, so he can be cut some slack. But on the other hand, when one examines the airy analytical apparatus he proposes for the new Catholic moral theology, it irritates the sensus fidei instantly. The "natural" in natural law is shorn from the classical notion that people have the same basic nature regardless of time or place. Instead, Gula offers us a new definition for natural that means many things and nothing; it is "shorthand for the creative involvement of humans in reality." It's the "total complexity of human reality taken in all its relationships and with all its potentials," a point taken up and tossed overboard explicitly in Veritatis. The author is all verbiage encircled in a cloud of ambiguity, spreading confusion at crucial points in his discussion. It all leads up in the last chapters to proportionalism.

I won't even begin to discuss in any depth the slanderous attribution to Thomas Aquinas of a proto-proportionalist theory. The author cites one line regarding circumstances (via Josef Fuchs) while ignoring all the surrounding articles in the Summa in which the great doctor makes plain that intentionality does not determine whether acts are good or evil. What's at work here is an agenda courteous of Charles Curran, dean of immoral theology in the American Church. Ever since artificial birth control was defined as intrinsicce malum by Paul VI in Humanae, the Americans -- the last people on the planet who should be doing moral theology, whether personal or social -- have bent over backwards to distort every teaching in order to justify their denial of a common human nature. If they can wipe out life-long marriage between heteros, well, that's just one more feather in their cap. The problem is, once you deny a common nature, then all sorts of evils become theoretically possible.

Gula and those in his orbit have muddied up the stream considerably with talk of creativity, growth, freedom, cultural conditions, and historical happenstance in shaping moral decisions. Examples, including the old tried and trues like slavery and usury, are not even cited as concrete cases of the moral norms being conditioned by flawed conceptions of the natural law. (Maritain and Murray both acknowledged that it was possible to make mistakes in reasoning about what the natural law required, but they remained staunchly rooted in traditional moral theology. It's no accident that Curran severely criticized Murray's work.) Catholic students with little background in Thomistic or papal teaching are left to wonder whether Gula's airy and confused theological stance allow for the possibility of the intrinsically evil becoming good, assuming it can pass an individual's proportional calculation.

A serious concern of mine with proportionalists like Gula and Timothy O'Connell, who is cited in this book, is that they seem oblivious to the ramifications for their theologizing in areas like biblical exegesis. If things really are as confused, muddled and historically conditioned as they want us to believe, then how do we understand the words of Christ in the Gospels? Not very easily. Yes, you may pick up the New Testament, turn to Matthew 19 and read Christ's answer to the question "what must I do to gain eternal life" and think you've got a good grip on the answer, but under the historicist hermeneutic, do you? Whatever meaning you take away is fine so long as you don't make the mistake of thinking it objective.

The epistemological problem is repeated again in other areas like church/state relations and the role of natural law in multi-sectarian societies. John Courtney Murray's work in this area is made nugatory under the artificial, anti-historical construct erected by the Gula-ites.

Secondly, they introduce a new dualism. Fellow traveler Charles Curran is upset that natural law theory is so closely tied to "physicalism," the view that the natural properties of the human person are determinant in moral agency. Well, yeah. For example, eating more food than is proper for one's constitution (and becoming obese and unhealthy as a result) is against the natural law, in 10,000 BC and now. Even sins of the heart that never make it into play are unintelligible if separated from physical reality.

To get around the problem of the body, which screams telos in its every part and function, the proportionalist camp begins talking about the believer finding new meanings, using creative discovery, investigation, exploration and discussions in deciding what's right and wrong for this particular moment -- all without worrying about the problem of nature. Who is the agent here? A ghost disconnected from the hard constraints of natural, bodily life? Christianity was seminal in the advent of modern science because it accepted that there was an objective nature out there that worked by immutable laws. Humans cannot choose to redefine the biological operations of their bodies according to some airy conception of "self-discovery" and experiential growth. Anyone with half a brain can see how this is applied practically in the world. The body is actually being held up for ridicule by Curran and his followers, as a kind of unwanted pest that can be worked around if we just commit to a new dualism.

If you must read Gula, I recommend getting Veritatis Splendor as an antidote. Dr. Janet Smith and Marissa Johannes have papers as well available on the Internet. Where the author sows confusion, JP II brings the discussion back down to earth by going to the Gospels, particularly Matthew, and situating Christian ethics back at their starting point. The great Fathers like Gregory of Nyssa are quoted as well, often times to show that what is being taught now as new and innovative is really old hat. The new theological arguments take a sound thumping from the wonderful simplicity of Jesus's words. The late pontiff points us to these in a fatherly way, reminding us that while life is rough, it need not be made more complicated by severing the human person from natural and supernatural ends that have been made known by God through nature and revelation.