Madam, - Our Irish bishops (RC) have issued a condemnation of some ideas Fr Sean Fagan SM is alleged to have put forward in his book Does Morality Change? (on my bookshelf these past five years).
My first reaction is to hope sincerely that their lordships consulted with the author before making their condemnation public. Otherwise, I fear we are back to the "bad old days" of anonymous "deletions", drawing pro forma condemnations from august Vatican dicasteries, which local episcopates apparently then feel obliged to accept and pass on unquestioningly.
This process, if it ever existed, was ended, we had hoped, with the more enlightened approach of Vatican II which, among other things, called for reform and revitalisation in moral theology. As one who has worked in this field for many years, I sincerely hoped and prayed that this undoubtedly needed renewal would actually take place, so that ordinary Catholics might once more find this branch of theology interesting and life-giving, rather than off-putting and depressing. Unfortunately the culture of "deletions" described above could have the opposite effect.
While I may well have my own ideas about how our moral thinking could be revitalised and made more humane, in touch with ordinary people's day-to-day experience, these ideas will stay safely hidden under the bushel of my own private thoughts and opinions, so long as I fear that they might be "deleted" to some mysterious body, which might then declare them erroneous, measured against some list of timeless, unchanging criteria. Maybe that's where my pet theories should stay!
At any rate, I hesitate to expose myself, my family and my Order, traditionally associated with the Inquisition, to the potentially destructive alternative. - Yours, etc.,
Father ARCHIE BYRNE, OP,
St. Malachy's Priory,
Anne Street,
Dundalk.