Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

THE SUBJECT-OBJECT RELATION IN CONTEMPORARY CATHOLIC MORAL THEOLOGY 57serious misunderstandings concerning proportionalism. Inshowing that this is the case, I aim to support my argumentthat the interpretative framework that I propose, subject-orientedon the one hand, and object-oriented on the other, can helpus to understand the present situation of moral theology.The Encyclical Veritatis Splendor interprets the “teleologicaltheories” as maintaining that, “…they can justify, as morallygood, deliberate choices of kinds of behavior contrary to thecommandments of the divine and natural law.” 28 If I haveunderstood these theories correctly, this is not what they weresaying, even if they were widely interpreted in this way. Theencyclical can best be understood as a response to this commonperception of the theory, rather than to the theory as developedby its protagonists. They were not trying, for example, to justifymorally wrong killing or murder. Proportionalists accepted thatonce an act is judged to be morally wrong, for example, as murder,it is judged to be something which ought not be done.Proportionalist and revisionists would, I believe, accept this.But the point is, what is the process of reasoning by which theact is judged to be morally wrong?For those who adopt the “objectivist” theory, this processtakes the form of comparing the object of the act with the law(natural law), prior to any consideration of the intention. Whenthe object is judged to be not in accord with that law, the act isjudged to be morally bad. This badness then causes the will andintention of the subject, when he freely chooses that act, to bebad. The case is closed. There is no place, in this framework,for the distinction, made by proportionalists, between bad (subject)and wrong (act or object). The badness resides in theobject (and the act) and then causes the will of the subject to bebad.Consequently, those who think in this way will inevitablyinterpret any questioning of this account as a direct challengeto “objective morality.” That is, they will understand the proportionalistposition as a suggestion that the act, already constitutedas morally bad/wrong, can somehow be made morallygood/right by adding an intention or circumstances. The tendencyof some interpreters of proportionalism to think only in28Veritatis Splendor, # 76 .