Uploaded June 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Fr. William Smith explains the errors of the moral theory called Proportionalism.
Proportionalism was developed by figures like Peter Knauer, Joseph Fuchs, Bruno Schüller, Louis Janssens, and Richard McCormick, in the 1960s.
This method in ethics called Proportionalism affirms that which consequentialists have long affirmed and Catholic ethicists had so long denied, namely that one may do evil that good may come. According to proportionalists, so long as the good effects are proportioned to the bad effects of the act, the act is licit even if evil is used as a means to achieve the good. As a result, proportionalism aims to choose the lesser of evils.
Pope St. John Paul II refutes Proportionalism in his encyclicals Veritatis Splendor, promulgated in 1993 (cf. section 75), and in Evangelium Vitae, 1995 (cf. article 68).
John Paul II upholds Catholic Moral Teaching, by reaffirming a moral theology based on the object of the act (finis operis), the intention of the person performing the act (finis operantis), and the circumstances surrounding the action. All these must be good in order for an act to be good, with the object of the act having the most importance.
Video Source:
youtube.com/watch?v=UUSFhMoMtUY
Read more:
ewtn.com/library/DOCTRINE/PROPORT.TXT
Fr. William Smith explains the errors of the moral theory called Proportionalism.
Proportionalism was developed by figures like Peter Knauer, Joseph Fuchs, Bruno Schüller, Louis Janssens, and Richard McCormick, in the 1960s.
This method in ethics called Proportionalism affirms that which consequentialists have long affirmed and Catholic ethicists had so long denied, namely that one may do evil that good may come. According to proportionalists, so long as the good effects are proportioned to the bad effects of the act, the act is licit even if evil is used as a means to achieve the good. As a result, proportionalism aims to choose the lesser of evils.
Pope St. John Paul II refutes Proportionalism in his encyclicals Veritatis Splendor, promulgated in 1993 (cf. section 75), and in Evangelium Vitae, 1995 (cf. article 68).
John Paul II upholds Catholic Moral Teaching, by reaffirming a moral theology based on the object of the act (finis operis), the intention of the person performing the act (finis operantis), and the circumstances surrounding the action. All these must be good in order for an act to be good, with the object of the act having the most importance.
Video Source:
youtube.com/watch?v=UUSFhMoMtUY
Read more:
ewtn.com/library/DOCTRINE/PROPORT.TXT
