Michael G. Lawler – författare

Two principles capture the essence of the Catholic tradition on sexual ethics: that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life, and that any human genital act must occur within the framework of marriage. In the Catholic tradition, moral sexual activity is institutionalized within the confines of marriage and procreation, and sexual morality is marital morality. But theologians Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler contend that there is a disconnect between many of the Church's absolute sexual norms and other theological and intellectual developments explicitly recognized and endorsed in the Catholic tradition, especially since the Second Vatican Council. These developments include the shift from a primary static worldview to a historically conscious worldview, one that recognizes reality as dynamic, evolving, changing, and particular. By employing such a historically conscious worldview, alternative claims about the moral legitimacy of controversial topics such as contraception, artificial reproduction, and homosexual marriage can faithfully emerge within a Catholic context.Convinced of the central role that love, desire, and fertility play in a human life, and also in the life of Christian discipleship, the authors propose an understanding of sexuality that leads to the enhancement of human sexual relationships and flourishing. This comprehensive introduction to Catholic sexual ethics - complete with thought-provoking study questions at the end of each chapter - will be sure to stimulate dialogue about sexual morality between Catholic laity, theologians, and the hierarchy. Anyone seeking a credible and informed Catholic sexual ethic will welcome this potentially revolutionary book.

This book has two objectives, one explicit and one implicit. The explicit objective is to explore the normative implications for both general and sexual ethics of the methodological and anthropological developments in Catholic tradition. The implicit objective is to stimulate dialogue in the Church about ethics, particularly sexual ethics, a dialogue that must necessarily include all in the communion-Church, laity, theologians, and hierarchy. Since we believe that genuine and respectful dialogue about sexual morality is sorely needed to clarify Christian truth today, we intend this book to be part of that genuine dialogue.

Doctrinal language on sexual and gender ethical issues continues to cause pain and trauma among Catholic faithful. Relying on the sources of ethical knowledge (tradition, scripture, reason, and experience), Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler propose revisions to the anthropology, ecclesiology, and ethical methodology supporting those doctrines to move the Church forward and to realize the synodal ecclesiology and "new pastoral methods" of Pope Francis, as exemplified in his apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia."This work is precisely highlighting how harm to the People of God is a sure sign of problematic teachings. The teachings are not conceptual connections with other teachings; they are Christian truths as life guides for Christian agents, dare we say, disciples and, our authors argue, that such harm to the agents challenges the truth claims of the instructions. We ethicists believe that we must find the truth, and in part that means naming not only what is lacking, but what was not virtuously expressed. In this work, Lawler and Salzman offer their insights into the ongoing discourse to find virtuous pathways for contemporary Christians on the way of the Lord."—From the foreword by James F. Keenan, SJ, Canisius Professor, Boston CollegeTodd A. Salzman is Amelia and Emil Graff Chair Professor of Catholic Theology at Creighton University. He has published thirteen books and over one hundred fifty scholarly articles. Michael G. Lawler is Amelia and Emil Graff Chair Professor Emeritus of Catholic Theology at Creighton University. He has published twenty-eight books and over two hundred scholarly articles. In addition to their individual work, they have collaborated on numerous publications.†

At a time in human history when women and men are more concerned about interpersonal relationships and when there is an extensive questioning of the specific relationship between a woman and a man in marriage, Marriage and Sacrament offers an understanding of how to live out the Christ-meaning and Church-meaning of that relationship so that, by living martially and sacramentally, couples can reveal to the world and to the Church the deeper meaning of all human love.The book examines the relationship among love, marriage, and sacrament; it examines the meanings of the sacrament of marriage, its biblical basis, its history and what happens when it comes to an end; it examines sexual love, indissoluble love, fruitful love, and ecumenical love in relationship to both marriage and sacrament.Marriage and Sacrament is an indispensable resource for pastoral ministers and ministry students as well as all who contemplate or are now partners in marriage.

It is an open secret that marriage is in crisis in the United States and that the marriages of Catholics are not significantly different from other marriages. In Marriage and the Catholic Church Michael Lawler confronts the difficult questions in the Catholic theology of marriage.Lawler, among the leading Catholic voices on the theology of marriage, does not shy away from the difficult questions, but confronts them honestly, historically accurately, and pastorally. He highlights a Catholic approach to premarital relationships, to marriage, to divorce, and to remarriage. He examines the relationship of marriage and sacrament, faith and sacrament, friendship in marriage, divorce and remarriage, cohabitation, family, interchurch marriages, and the changing models of marriage in the Catholic tradition. The whole offers a fresh look at the Catholic theology of marriage for a new millennium.Chapter 1 looks at marriage as a sacrament. Chapter 2 then asks what models of marriage function in the contemporary Catholic Church. Chapter 3 considers what it takes to transform the social reality of marriage into the Catholic sacrament and answers that it takes personal faith. Lawler looks into the bonds or relationships in marriage in Chapter 4. He offers an extended consideration of divorce and remarriage in the Catholic Church in Chapter 5. In Chapter 6 he offers theological and pastoral reflections on interchurch marriage. He analyzes the Christian reality and value of friendship and reflects on its contribution to the stability of marriage in Chapter 7. Lawler inquires, in Chapter 8, whether cohabitation could, again as in the past, be counted as a step in the process of becoming married in the Catholic tradition. Finally in Chapter 9 he seeks to construct a theology of Christian family and reflects on what that theology, and the families rooted in it, can contribute to American families in their present crisis.Chapters are Marriage and the Sacrament of Marriage," "Catholic Models of Marriage," "Faith and Sacrament in Christian Marriage," "On the Bonds of Marriage," "Divorce and Remarriage in the Catholic Church," "Interchurch Marriages: Theological and Pastoral Reflections," "Friendship and Marriage," "Cohabitation and Marriage in the Catholic Church: A Proposal," and "Toward a Theology of Christian Family." Michael G. Lawler, PhD, is the Amelia B. and Emil G. Graff Chair in Catholic Theological Studies and Dean Emeritus of the Graduate School at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. He directs the Center for Marriage and Family, whose studies of marriage preparation, interchurch marriages, and the first five years of marriage have gained international acclaim."

Theologians today take for granted that the principal achievement of the Second Vatican Council was its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. The central core of this central document - its Vision of Church as communion - is also being taken for granted. But this Vision was hard won - or, rather, recovered - at the Council, and its significance should not be allowed to fade with time or familiarity.The Church: A Spirited Communion emanates from the ecclesiology of Vatican II as a systematic treatment of this Vision of communion: graced, prophetic, sacramental, spiritual, and ministerial. It is about a Church in communion with the laity, the hierarchy, and with all the Churches. Since Church" is God in communion with the faithful, this book is primarily theo-logical and only secondarily ecclesio-logical. It is primarily about the God who is Triune, who calls the Church into existence, and who seeks in every age a people who adhere to "God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).

Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, marked fundamental shifts in ethical methodology, in how we do ethics in the Catholic tradition, and in how we think about ethical and ecclesial issues in the Catholic Church in the modern world. On the document’s fiftieth anniversary, this book explores the historical origins of Gaudium et Spes, its impact on the Church’s ecclesial self-understanding, and its implications for doing Catholic theological ethics for the specific ethical issues of marriage, social justice, politics, and peacebuilding.The book engages in the ongoing communal discernment of the aggiornamento sought by the council’s convener, Pope John XXIII, seeking to bring the Church up to date in the twenty-first century.

The genesis of this book was sown in 1961 in a seminar on theological method under the guidance of Bernard Lonergan. Lonergan was convinced that something new was happening in history, and that a living theology required a new theological approach. In this book, Michael Lawler is concerned with three characteristics of this new approach: that theology must be historical, empirical, and in interdisciplinary collaboration with the social sciences. The book thus explores the relationship between practical theology (which is concerned with the church as it is and as it ought to be) and sociology, and specifically the theological realities of sensus fidei and reception. The exploration is concretized by a consideration of the sociological data and theology of two Catholic moral doctrines: artificial contraception and divorce and remarriage without prior annulment. In addition to being a useful primer on the relationship between theology and sociology (both theoretical and empirical), the book provides a wonderfully clear description of the sea-changes that have occurred in Roman Catholic theology worldwide over the past 70 or so years.Among those elements are the turn to the subject; the sociology of knowledge; the distinctions between uncreated and created grace and between original and dependent revelation; a complex, non-fundamentalist understanding of Sacred Scripture; the preferential option for the poor; the notion of the church as communion rather than hierarchy; and, finally, the necessity for church teaching to be "received," accepted, by the whole church. If a Catholic Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep 40 or 50 years ago, he would read this book, upon opening his eyes, with amazement.

Two principles capture the essence of the official Catholic position on the morality of sexuality: first, that any human genital act must occur within the framework of heterosexual marriage; second, each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life. In this comprehensive overview of Catholicism and sexuality, theologians Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler examine and challenge these principles. Remaining firmly within the Catholic tradition, they contend that the church is being inconsistent in its teaching by adopting a dynamic, historically conscious anthropology and worldview on social ethics and the interpretation of scripture while adopting a static, classicist anthropology and worldview on sexual ethics.While some documents from Vatican II, like "Gaudium et spes" ('the marital act promotes self-giving by which spouses enrich each other'), gave hope for a renewed understanding of sexuality, the church has not carried out the full implications of this approach. In short, say Salzman and Lawler: emphasize relationships, not acts, and recognize Christianity's historically and culturally conditioned understanding of human sexuality."The Sexual Person" draws historically, methodologically, and anthropologically from the best of Catholic tradition and provides a context for current theological debates between traditionalists and revisionists, regarding marriage, cohabitation, homosexuality, reproductive technologies, and what it means to be human. This daring and potentially revolutionary book will be sure to provoke constructive dialogue among theologians, and between theologians and the Magisterium.

A call to reform Catholic health care ethics, inspired by the teachings of Pope FrancisSince its first edition in 1948, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERD) has guided Catholic institutions in the provision of health care that reflects both the healing ministry of Jesus and the Church’s understanding of human dignity. However, while the papacy of Pope Francis and the clerical sex-abuse scandal both profoundly impacted the Catholic Church, the latest edition of the ERD does not address or reflect these transformations. Now for the first time, Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler present an extended critical commentary on the 2018 ERD. They argue that it is problematic in a number of ways. First, the revised ERD continues to prioritize a rule-based over a personalist-based ethical method, with an emphasis on absolute norms that proscribe specific medical acts. Further, it does not take into account Pope Francis’s transforming ecclesiological, methodological, and anthropological visions, neither internally in Catholic health care institutions nor externally in collaborations between Catholic and non-Catholic health care institutions. Finally, the revised ERD provides no evidence that the bishops grasp how the clerical sex-abuse scandal and its cover-up have fundamentally undermined episcopal authority and credibility. Salzman and Lawler propose new ways forward for US Catholic health care ethics that prioritize human dignity as their guiding principle. As there is pluralism in Catholic definitions of human dignity, there must be pluralism in the norms and directives that facilitate realizing human dignity. Pope Francis’s emphasis on the virtues of mercy and care should move the ERD forward from a focus on absolute norms in medical ethics to a focus on virtues and principles to guide both patients and health care professionals in their discerned conscientious health care decisions.

A call to reform Catholic health care ethics, inspired by the teachings of Pope FrancisSince its first edition in 1948, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERD) has guided Catholic institutions in the provision of health care that reflects both the healing ministry of Jesus and the Church’s understanding of human dignity. However, while the papacy of Pope Francis and the clerical sex-abuse scandal both profoundly impacted the Catholic Church, the latest edition of the ERD does not address or reflect these transformations. Now for the first time, Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler present an extended critical commentary on the 2018 ERD. They argue that it is problematic in a number of ways. First, the revised ERD continues to prioritize a rule-based over a personalist-based ethical method, with an emphasis on absolute norms that proscribe specific medical acts. Further, it does not take into account Pope Francis’s transforming ecclesiological, methodological, and anthropological visions, neither internally in Catholic health care institutions nor externally in collaborations between Catholic and non-Catholic health care institutions. Finally, the revised ERD provides no evidence that the bishops grasp how the clerical sex-abuse scandal and its cover-up have fundamentally undermined episcopal authority and credibility. Salzman and Lawler propose new ways forward for US Catholic health care ethics that prioritize human dignity as their guiding principle. As there is pluralism in Catholic definitions of human dignity, there must be pluralism in the norms and directives that facilitate realizing human dignity. Pope Francis’s emphasis on the virtues of mercy and care should move the ERD forward from a focus on absolute norms in medical ethics to a focus on virtues and principles to guide both patients and health care professionals in their discerned conscientious health care decisions.

In Pope Francis, Marriage, and Same-Sex Civil Unions: Foundations for the Organic Development of Catholic Sexual Doctrine, Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler argue for the organic development of Catholic sexual teaching to recognize the morality and sacramentality of opposite-sex and same-sex marriage. They do so on the basis of Pope Francis’ support of the legal protection of same-sex civil unions, “new pastoral methods,” theological anthropological, and ethical methodological developments. To that end, the authors consider the historical development in the Catholic tradition of sexual and marital ethics; the impact of virtue ethics, emphasis on the authority and inviolability of an informed conscience, and a revised understanding of sexual complementarity on defining human dignity and the method for doing Catholic ethics; the sacramental nature of opposite-sex marriage as an upper-case Sacrament and same-sex marriage as a lower-case sacrament; the widespread and growing phenomenon of cohabitation before marriage where couples grow into the ideal of marriage; and sociological and experiential data that supports the overwhelming positive impact on children of opposite-sex and same-sex parents. All of these issues are considered in the light of the theological and pastoral changes that Pope Francis is introducing, with widespread support and minority opposition, into the Catholic tradition.