Reflecting and Advancing the Transformation: Catholic Theological Ethics and the Journal of Religious Ethics, 1973–2023

Abstract

This essay considers how the JRE has engaged Catholic ethics in the last 50 years and how the concerns of Catholic ethics during this period of exceptional change are reflected and developed in the JRE. It discusses the transformation of Catholic ethics by focusing on the transitions: (i) from classical to historical consciousness; (ii) from an essentialist concept of human nature to a dynamic concept of the moral subject; (iii) from abstract to contextual moral reason; and (iv) from a discourse that ignored the politics of power to one that reckons with it, analyzing the distinct ways in which the JRE engaged with these transformations. It concludes by looking to the future and suggests that a deeper engagement with the breadth of Catholic ethics internationally may help advance the Journal's mission and that a fuller interaction with the comparative and humanistic dimensions of the JRE's mission will enhance Catholic ethics.

Revisiting Religious Ethics as Field and Discipline

“…For the perception has often been that religious ethics was conceived as a bid to displace theology and theological ethics from the academy, whether for good or for ill. Green, in an essay originally published in 1995 and republished in the JRE 25th anniversary supplement, regards the JRE as having been created to establish the “field of religious ethics,” at that time existing “more as a hope than a reality” (1997, 224). In the course of a nuanced and appreciative survey of the first 20 years of the journal, he nevertheless comments that “the movement from Christian ethics to religious ethics which JRE was created to effect has been slow to happen” (1997, 233) and asks whether “the very agenda for the journal has—without full awareness—been driven by a theological and apologetic agenda” (1997, 235). This stance indicates an aspiration to displace theological ethics from within religious ethics, as inadequately detached, neutral, and/or critical.…”

“…Inasmuch as Green is critical of tendencies within Christian ethics to resist “imposing a general ethical framework or scheme on the distinctiveness of a religious tradition,” he evinces a desire to impose just such a general ethical framework (1997, 234). We might say that the enterprise of “imposition” here raises as many red flags as the “apologetic” agendas that worry Green (1997, 235). However, insofar as the rebuke of apologetics here is a summons to face what we might now call Christian privilege, it remains a timely and salutary critique.…”

Religious Ethics as a Social Practice

“…Indeed, Linda Hogan's article for the JRE's 50th anniversary suggests that efforts to overcome the JRE's parochialism should work against the continuing "dominance of Euro-American conceptual frameworks, disciplinary structures, and theological voices"(Hogan 2023). …”