Foreword

Summary

With this book, An Introduction to Catholic Ethics since Vatican II, Andrew Kim explodes onto the scene of the discipline of moral theology with a wise, hospitable, and challenging overview of Catholic ethics. The book's title aptly names two contexts where Kim makes an important and successful contribution, and I'll allow these to structure my thoughts in this foreword.

“Catholic ethics since Vatican II”: By all accounts, Catholic moral theology was in need of renewal at the time of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. The key figure in that post-conciliar renewal is Fr. Servais Pinckaers, O.P. In important ways the ongoing project of renewal is a further execution of the characteristic features of his work. With this book Kim joins the ranks of those of us who seek to join and advance that renewal. Allow me to identify four features of this book that make it exemplary of renewal in Catholic moral theology since Vatican II in the vein of Pinckaers's work.

First, as explicitly mentioned in the oft-quoted Optatam totius no. 16 call for the perfection of moral theology, and as particularly evident in the work of Pinckaers, Catholic ethics must be nourished by Scripture. This is no small task, as it is easy for moralists to merely proof text Scripture to adorn their predetermined conclusions. Not so for Kim. This book is replete with nourishment from Scripture. The chapter on justice, Chapter 7, relies nearly wholly on the Old and New Testaments. At key points in numerous chapters, Scriptural passages play formative roles in the presentation of the topic at hand. Examples include Genesis 18 on war, the Prodigal Son on justice, the Good Samaritan on universal human dignity, Job on suffering, the Magnificat on preferential option for the poor, and, by far my favorite, a reflection on the Annunciation in his treatment of commercial surrogacy.