Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

182 TODD A. SALZMAN
is a magisterial presupposition against revisionism that makes
such respect and unbiased appraisal of arguments problematic
in the current situation. Second, given that rational arguments
are not a sufficient criterion for determining and formulating authoritative,
noninfallible teaching, they are certainly a necessary
criterion. When there are sound reasons and arguments for challenging
what may, by definition, be an erroneous teaching, those
arguments should be given due consideration. How those arguments
relate to, and utilize, other sources of moral knowledge
must be analyzed and discussed in their entirety.
Third, given the accessibility to the truths of natural law
through right reason, revisionism would qualify the BGT’s epistemological
claim concerning the relationship between knowledge
and grace. Certainly God’s grace, as promised to the
Church and in a special way to the magisterium, facilitates the
process in the discernment of truth, but it does not dispense the
Church from the very human tasks of gathering information and
evaluating that information. 38 It is in this process that the development
of moral doctrine takes place as history has shown. 39
Fourth, revisionism would accuse the BGT of advocating a
certain “creeping infallibility,” to use the words of CHARLES CUR-
RAN, 40 regarding the faithful’s response to noninfallible but authoritative
judgments. In the view of some revisionists, GRISEZ
calls for greater respect and authority to be given to such judgments
than is warranted by their status. GRISEZ writes, “when a
faithful Catholic’s best judgment is formed, as it should be, by
the Church’s noninfallible teaching, the Catholic might possibly
be following a false norm. Yet God has provided no better norm
for his or her current belief and practice.” 41 To give such judgments
this authority in cases where there are strong contrary arguments
is to both deny the role and function of the primacy of
38 See MCCORMICK, Notes on Moral Theology: 1965 through 1980 (Washington,
DC: University Press of America, 1981) 262-66.
39 See JOHN T. NOONAN, “Development in Moral Doctrine,” TS 54 (1993)
662-77.
40
CURRAN, Catholic Moral Tradition Today 226.
41
GRISEZ, Christian Moral Principles 884.