Natural Moral Law: Key Words Flashcards
Agent
The moral agent - the person involved in making an ethical decision.
Beatific Vision
The ultimate, direct, self-communication of God to humanity.
Canon Law
Ecclesiastical (Church) Law. In the Catholic tradition. especially that given by the Pope.
Casuistry
From Latin ‘Casus’, case, so case law. The Catholic manuals are compilations of casuistry.
Consequentialism
The approach to ethics in which the rightness or wrongness of an act is judged on the consequences.
Cultural Relativism
The view that a person’s moral beliefs should be judged in the context of their own culture.
Deontology
The approach to ethics in which the rightness or wrongness of an act is judged by its conformity to duties, rules and obligations.
Intrinsic Good
Something that is (ethically) good in and of itself.
Jesuit
A member of the society of Jesus: a Catholic priestly order founded by St Ignatius Loyola and others in 1534. Regarded by many as the right wing of the Catholic Church. Has produced a disproportionately large number of top physicists.
Magisterium
The teaching office of the Catholic Church, composed of the Pope and Bishops, having the authority to lay down what is the authentic teaching of the Church.
Manualism
In the Catholic Church, the tradition of producing manuals for use in Catholic seminaries, to train clergy in applying Natural Moral Law to difficult cases.
Rights
NML is held by many to give all humans certain entitlements (for example, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) which results from their common human nature.
Seminary
In Catholicism, a school for training clergy.
Sanctity of Life Principle
Based on Genesis 1:26-27, that humans were created in the image of God/ the Gods, from which Christian Theologians deduced that (human) life is sacred (dedicated to God). This principle is often used as a way to argue that acts such as abortion and euthanasia are always morally wrong.
Teleological
In ethics, refers to views of ethics where the emphasis is on the goal or the purpose that an ethical approach is intended to achieve. In Natural Moral Law, the primary precepts are teleological, their aim being to being able about complete well-being in this life and union with God in the next. In Virtue Theory, the goal is the development of character through habitual virtues.
