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The Moral-Nonmoral Distinction in Catholic Ethics: The Sterilization of Moral Language

Introduction. !{CHARD McCORMICK has achieved an ascendency among Catholic moral theologians, a position he has earned after two decades of reporting developments in moral theology and articulating his often judicious moral positions. He also stands as a principal partner in the dialogue between Catholic and Protestant ethics. McCormick's gradually emerging moral methodology and the ethical positions which he takes have received mixed assessments. The litera.ture abounds with supporters who praise him for contributing to a nuanced and sensible aggiornamento in Catholic moral thought and with opponents who accuse him of serious deviation from the Catholic moral tradition. I suspect that a weariness is developing in the debate over (1) whether McCormick holds a strictly teleological theory of moral justification; (2) whether such a theory is (a) compatible with Catholic moral teaching at least as far back as Thomas Aquinas and (b) philosophically tenable; and (3) whether the thrust of McCormick's position will be to (a) undermine a coherent Catholic morality or (b) make the entire enterprise epistemologically more humble and honest. Not wanting to enter the debate on any of these points, I wish to probe McCormick's moral methodology at another, and I think, neglected level. I would like to subject his position, especially his employment of moral terminology and moral notions, to an analysis which moral theologians often fail to attend adequately to themselves, often at the expense of the cogency of their positions. One cannot avoid the impression that the language of Catholic moral theology has in the