346 - The Giving and Taking of Life: Essays Ethical

The Giving and Taking of Life: Essays Ethical
By James Tunstead Burtchaell, C.S. C.
Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1989. 324 pages, $29.95.

If the reader were looking for a slick dust jacket label, I would be tempted to characterize The Giving and Taking of Life as moral theology with markedly liberal principles but starkly conservative conclusions. That's too facile, of course, but it does give some hint (to borrow Emily Dickinson's fine phrase) of the "superb surprise" of this new work by Roman Catholic theologian and Chair of the Theology Department at Notre Dame University, James Tunstead Burtchaell.

The essays in this work (previously published and here reworked) range widely, from abortion and fetal tissue research to terrorism and liberation theology. The disparate treatments, however, rest on but two fundamental principles: the moral import of human actions resides in their capacity to develop or stunt the character of the person acting, and, secondly, the criterion for discerning moral character lies ultimately with the Christian community, whose wisdom is informed by its divinely inspired experience. Those principles form the framework of a distinctly liberal approach that prizes wisdom over law, prudent discernment over judgmental proscriptions, the experience of the community over authoritative ecclesiastical pronouncements. (The Vatican ban on birth control fails on all three counts.) Yet, for the most part, the positions Burtchaell takes, in the employment of his framework, remove him far from the popular understanding of liberalism. His conservative views on abortion are an illustrative paradigm. He contends that the Christian community's condemnation of abortion stems from a discernment, unbroken in the tradition, that it violates the characteristically Christian call to welcome the stranger and to be hospitable to all, particularly the most vulnerable: the poor, the widowed, the unborn child. Thus, the moral atrocity of abortion, he argues, is more readily discerned in the inhospitable spirit of those who choose it and those who perform it, rather than in the slaughtered unborn.

348 - The Giving and Taking of Life: Essays Ethical

The analysis here and throughout is provocative, bracing and (true to his own standard) discerning. Another essay, on liberation theology, is so reasoned and measured that one would hope it might become a fixed point of reference in a debate that often suffers from severe vertigo. The exploration of "moral complicity" in the essay on fetal research is a subtle, masterful phenomenology of our bad faith efforts at masquerading our complicity with evil.

As is often the case with a collection of essays, there is some unevenness in the quality of the analyses. I failed to see, for example, how the final chapter (some thirty-five pages of previously published book reviews) served either to move along or conclude the argument of the book. It also struck me as needlessly obscure to labor at length, as the author does, in demonstrating how the Torah and New Testament are " obsolete"; all the while holding that the Scriptures are neither abrogated nor extinct but rather anchor and sustain the tradition. Again, the treatment of terrorism suffers from the refusal to assign moral import to how one fights a war (the just in bello standard). To argue, as Burtchaell does, that not to butcher prisoners is a "desirable convention" but not a "canon of morality" seems so wrongheaded-even by the author's own standard. Surely, butchering prisoners would have some effect on the character of the butchers, would it not?

My most serious reservation, however, has to do with the adequacy of the author's framework. Character formation is, undeniably, a linchpin of any moral theory. But to define good and evil in terms of the consequences acts have upon a person's character ignores the very real moral categories embedded in those acts themselves. If abortion ravages the human spirit it must be because it is, first of all, the killing of an innocent human being. It is not their effects on character that make acts right or wrong but (as the tradition has wisely discerned) it is good acts that form character, evil acts that destroy it. So, giving a gift or betraying a friend are acts that form us as benefactor or betrayer precisely and only because of what they first of all are: beneficent or traitorous acts. (For a work that offers a richer account of our moral experience, I would recommend Father Robert Sokolowski's masterful work, Moral Action.)

Fortunately, the author is not all that rigorous or consistent in his application of this consequentialist framework and so when he simply allows his considerable powers of discernment free reign there is much that we can learn from him. The Giving and Taking of Life is so eminently readable, so moderated by common sense, so inviting of dialogue that, reservations aside, it should be greeted with what the author avows is a distinctively Christian response-a hospitable and welcoming embrace.

Francis Kane
Salisbury State University
Salisbury, Maryland