Both Familiar and New: Reimagining Catholic Sexual Ethics

Abstract

The authors of the three essays featured in this focus challenge assumptions that are central to the official Catholic teachings on sexual ethics. Elizabeth Antus and Megan McCabe do so by taking on topics that have not received much attention from the magisterium. Cristina Traina urges us to think differently about the way we usually frame the moral issue of abortion. Although they address different moral problems, I argue in this introduction that they highlight common themes—social sin, interruption, and solidarity—share methodological commitments to using empirical data and to valuing human experiences, and push us to imagine a sexual ethic grounded in a just vision of human sexual flourishing.

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

“…Over the years, the JRE has been an important venue for feminist reconstructions of the moral subject and for the delineation of its implications for theological and religious ethics. Essays of feminist scholars working in and on the Catholic tradition, focusing on different aspects of moral subjectivity, include Weaver (2013), Christine Gudorf (2011), Christine Firer Hinze (1993), Elizabeth Bucar (2010), Hille Haker (2015), and Kalbian (2018). In addition, focus issues on feminist ethics (2015), Catholic sexual ethics (2018), and reproductive ethics (2021) capture the state‐of‐the‐art and indicate that the revolution anticipated by Farley in 1975 is well and truly underway.…”

“…The recasting of sexual ethics has been advanced primarily through the work of feminist ethicists who have developed an ethic of just love (Farley, 2008) beyond individualistic, patriarchal, and heteronormative accounts of sexuality. The JRE focus issue on Catholic sexual ethics conveys the extent of the transformation of this field and identifies areas meriting further attention, as Kalbian's introductory essay demonstrates (2018). Essays by McCabe on the social sin of rape (2018), by Traína on the role of mercy and solidarity in the face of women's unwanted pregnancies (2018), and by Antus on valorizing women's nonobligatory embodied desire (2018) each reframe traditional Catholic analyses of these issues by attending to the ways in which intersecting power dynamics frame the identification, analysis, and resolution of the ethical dimensions of sexuality.…”