natural moral law - key terms Flashcards
agent
the moral agent - the person involved in making an ethical decision.
beatific vision
the ultimate and direct knowledge of God in humanity, only accessed in heaven.
casuistry
a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting certain rules from a particular case and reapplying them to a new circumstance.
latin = ‘case’
consequentialism
an approach to ethics by which the rightness or wrongness of an act is judged by its consequences.
cultural relativism
the idea that a person’s moral beliefs should be judged considering their own culture.
deontology
an approach to ethics in which the rightness or wrongness of an act is judged by how the act itself conforms to rules/obligations.
intrinsic good
something that is ethically good in itself.
Jesuit
a member of the Society of Jesus.
Magisterium
the teaching office of the Catholic Church. includes the Pope and bishops, so holds the authority to lay down the original teachings of the Church.
Manualism
the tradition of producing manuals to use in Catholic seminaries, to train clergy by applying NML to complex cases.
rights
NML is used by many to give humanity certain entitlements which result from a shared human nature.
seminary
a school for training clergy, in Catholicism.
Sanctity of Life principle
the idea that humans were created in the image of God - from this Christian theologians deduced that human life is sacred as it is dedicated to God.
(based on Genesis 1:26-27)
often used to argue that acts similiar to abortion and euthenasia are always morally wrong.
teleological
refers to views of ethics where the emphasis is on the goal/purpose that an ethical approach intends to achieve.
Thomist
refers to Thomas Aquinas - a Thomist position is one that would have been proposed by Aquinas.
(eg: Thomist Cosmological Arguments)
