The Tyranny of the Banal: On the Renewal of Catholic Moral Theology [Hardcover]

Catholic positions on contested moral issues are rejected by the majority in the secular West and are increasingly rejected by Catholics themselves. In this book, David Deane argues that there are two main reasons for this. First, the dominance of secular approaches deprives Catholic positions of their claim to coherence. Second, the Catholic positions, Deane shows, have lost contact with the theology on which they were originally based. In response, Deane undertakes a deconstruction of the dominant secular positions, and seeks to restore Catholic positions to their theological roots. The result of this is a moral theology reconnected with the Trinitarian understanding of God and Gods relationship with the world. Restored to its doctrinal foundations, the moral theology that Deane offers is more coherent, more beautiful, and more convincing than has been found in Catholic moral discourse for centuries.David Deaneis associate professor of theology at the Atlantic School of Theology.

This exceptional book shows how the Catholic Church is unable to challenge the current banal consensus around questions of life, death, and sexuality because it fails fully to question the metaphysical undergirdings of that consensus which it even, historically, helped to shape. Catholic ethics will only become credible once more if we restore its basis in a philosophical account of the soul-body relation, that is itself grounded in Christian doctrine. This book is crucial reading for all Christian ethicists. John Milbank, University of Nottingham

This work explains why Catholic moral teaching is so little understood. As with many other areas of theology, the problems have their roots in late medieval ideas, in the project of Immanuel Kant and in post-Conciliar theology wafting across the Anglosphere from Belgium and Holland. Deane explains not only what the Church teaches but the engines or foundations upon which an authentic Catholic moral theology is based. Hisl.