KEVIN WM. WILDES, S. J. THE PRIESTHOOD OF BIOETHICS AND THE RETURN OF CASUISTRY

ABSTRACT. Several recent attempts to develop models of moral reasoning have attempted to use some form of casuistry as a way to resolve the moral con-troversies of clinical ethics. One of the best known models of casuistry is that of Jonsen and Toulmin who attempt to transpose a particular model of casuistry, that of Roman Catholic confessional practice, to contemporary moral disputes. This attempt is flawed in that it fails to understand both the history of the model it seeks to transpose and the morally pluralistic context of secular, postmodern society. The practice of casuistry which Jonsen and Toulmin wish to revive is a practice set in the context of a community with a shared set of moral values and structures of moral authority. Without a set of common moral values and rankings, and a moral authority to interpret cases the casuistry of the postmodern age will be pluralistic; that is, there will be many casuistries not just Key Words: casuistry, common morality, kinetics, moral authority, moral pluralism, morphology, paradigm cases, taxonomy In the mid-seventeenth century, in the midst of great religious controversy throughout the Christian world, Blaise Pascal set out a vitriolic attack on the practice of casuistry in the Roman Catholic Church and its principal practitioners, the Society of Jesus. The heart of Pascal's criticism of Jesuit casuistry was its laxness and hypocrisy. Against the moral standard of a "God Who judges " the casuists gave moral license to subvert the demands of God's moral standard. According to Pascal:...the license which they have assumed to tamper with the most holy rules of Christian conduct amounts to a total subversion of the law of God (Pascal). The casuists were hypocrites in that they pretended to be, in the midst of their laxness, something they were not- faithful Chris-tians