Manuals and Mercy

We have a “second agenda” in today’s post. I received a letter early this week from a lady who is studying theology, specifically moral theology. She asked my opinion on purchasing the three volume The Law of Christ [1954] by the German theologian Bernard Haring. Haring was a pivotal figure in the theological renewal of moral theology just prior to Vatican II and certainly afterwards. I wrote back and told her that her inquiry came at an excellent time as we are embarking on the third section of James O’Toole’s For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America. [2025] So today we will look at how theologians of the past four centuries—including Haring—influence how we view morality and confession…and I will make my recommendation about buying Haring’s classic at the very end.
 
First, to our correspondent I say welcome to the Catechist Café Family. The letter arrived at a time when the Café is currently treating Penance/Confession in the context of sin and virtue. So, it is appropriate to ask if purchasing the three-volume classic, The Law of Christ [1954], is a wise investment of time and money. Over the past two weeks of posting we have been examining For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America [2025] by the Church historian James M. O’Toole of Boston College. O’Toole [Rise and Fall, pp. 226-228] references Haring’s writing and teaching in the context of confession and the birth control controversy, sparked by the encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968. Let’s investigate the roots of Haring’s work and how it impacted the Church.
 
THE MORAL LINEAGE THAT FORMED THE WORK OF FATHER BERNARD HARING
 
Father Bernard Haring [1912-1998] was a pivotal figure in the study and practice of moral theology in the Catholic Church. He has left us an autobiography, which I reviewed for Amazon here. He was a Redemptorist priest, a member of an order founded by St. Alphonsus Ligouri in the eighteenth century.
 
Let me stop here and explain St. Alphonsus Ligouri [1696-1787], the ultimate inspiration for Haring’s later thinking. Ligouri, a civil lawyer for some years before seeking the priesthood, founded his order to sanctify Catholics; he was a keen observer of the spiritual needs of souls and the degree to which morality and confessional practice of his day helped or hindered the faithful. His was a kindred spirit to St. John Vianney [see my Amazon review] who, a century later, became possibly the best-known confessor in the world. Ligouri’s spiritual writings, of which there are many, tended to emphasize mercy and piety in confessional practice, with less emphasis upon legalism and casuistry in the Sacrament of Penance. [Think Jesuits.] “Alphonsus was canonized in 1839 and proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius IX in 1871, recognized for his significant contributions to moral theology and his founding of the Redemptorists.” [quote per Britannica] That Ligouri was posthumously honored with sainthood, and the title of Church doctor is an indication that the Church at some level viewed the sacrament of Penance, and morality itself, as something more than black letter law.
 
Consequently, from the eighteenth century forward there has been something of a subtle back-and-forth between approaching Confession as an exclusive listing of sins in their number and species, on the one hand, and something akin to spiritual direction on the other. The “number and species” approach is referred to in historical texts even today as “The Manualist Tradition” for the obvious reason that a confessor could consult the book, the manual, if there were question of the existence or severity of mortal sin and guilt in a person’s confession. The most famous English language manual was Moral Theology compiled by Father Heribert Jone and Father Urban Adelman in 1929. [I met Father Adelman in his seniority around 1972, and I told him I had seen his work published at a student bookstore across the street from Catholic University in Washington, where I lived at the time. To which he replied: “Don’t tell me they’re still selling that thing!”]
 
Vatican II [1962-1965] called for a renewal of all the sacraments. Regarding Penance, an AI commentary states: “The history of the sacrament of confession has seen significant changes since Vatican II. The Council introduced new rites and expanded forms of penance, encouraging a broader pastoral focus. The sacrament has evolved from a strictly private, forensic model to rites that highlight scripture, communal preparation, and pastoral accompaniment.” It is a satisfactory answer in and of itself, but for years after the Council the Church in the U.S. debated about how much latitude could be given [or taken] to confessors and penitents alike. The major debate among and between moralists and confessors in America after the Council involved artificial contraception.
 
Many confessors felt that prudence was better served if priests did not probe into the conjugal practices of married couples [i.e., are you and your spouse using the pill or a barrier device?] Other confessors believed it was their duty, in the Manualist Tradition, to press the question in the belief that they were preserving the integrity of the sacrament and saving the penitent’s soul. In my family’s parish back in the 1960’s, it was general knowledge which priests asked, and which ones didn’t. The ultimate question, it would seem, was the best way to live a moral life which acknowledged personal sinfulness in tandem with a spiritual relation to Jesus of the Scriptures. And here is where Bernard Haring and other European theologians realigned the chess board.
 
THE SEEDS OF CONFESSIONAL REFORM
 
Every thoughtful European Catholic bishop, priest, philosopher, and theologian was profoundly shaken by the events of the first half of the twentieth century—World War I, World War II, the Holocaust—and interpreted events as evidence that a profound rethinking of Christian life was necessary. [Think Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his The Cost of Discipleship written in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.] But in the postwar years Catholic scholars, along with many Protestant and Evangelical confreres, were able to conjoin morality to deeper Scriptural scholarship and social justice ministry. For Catholics, this meant that in the confessional the Manual alone was seen as insufficient in addressing the needs of a penitent in developing a closer communion with the Jesus of the Scriptures. The postwar moral theologians deeply influenced many American universities and seminaries…including those attended by young American seminarians and priests studying overseas, including several who would become my professors and confessors.
 
The flagship work of the modern renewal of moral theology was the three-volume The Law of Christ by Bernard Haring, written in German in 1954 and then available in English in the early 1960’s. As a seminarian myself, I recall lectures on Haring and the reform of moral theology beginning with my entry into college in 1966 and the impact it made on the way I went to confession and would in turn celebrate the Sacrament of Penance after ordination. My class was never assigned the reading of The Law of Christ, in part because it was incorporated into our textbooks and lectures, and in part because of its sheer size. Three volumes, the first one alone six hundred pages. Within those pages, Haring had to address the nature of moral law which had stood for seven hundred years.
 
Haring and his confreres addressed the nature of morality as understood by the Church of his day. They faced the challenge of integrating the Bible, social justice, and personal conscience into the standing Church structures of morality established by the medievalists and reinforced later by the manualists. In the thirteenth century St. Thomas Aquinas and others drew from the philosophy of Aristotle that any human action is directed toward its proper end, and any conduct undertaken against its nature is sinful. An easy example is speech. As humans, we are created with the faculty of speech to communicate truth. If we lie, we have sinned, and the manuals would help the confessor to distinguish the gravity of the lie and the severity of the penance to be imposed. The absolution, or divine forgiveness of the sin, became the center of the sacramental encounter. As Haring and his associates took inventory of the world in 1945 and beyond, there was general consensus that the content of the confessional rite and its individual nature was doing little to broaden the human conscience and communal consciousness toward an outward disposition to engage in the works of Christ.
 
Haring’s generation of moral theologians labored to find philosophy, language, and rites to enrich the moral and sacramental environment of the Sacrament of Penance. The tension between the old ways and the new came to a head with Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae, in 1968, on artificial contraception. In the logic of the Aristotelian/Thomistic traditional theology, the human body was created and designed for reproduction; intercourse was the means to the end, i.e., for the creation of new life. To thwart the possibility of conception through artificial birth control was gravely sinful. So, too, were sexual acts where conception would be impossible, such as homosexual intercourse and masturbation. Humanae Vitae was directed toward everyone in a highly personal aspect of life. However, with the invention of “the pill,” the expectations of many moral theologians and lay Catholics alike had become confident that permission for use of the pill would be granted, and in fact many Catholics had assumed so and were already using birth control pills in 1968.
 
Father Andrew Greeley, the sociologist-novelist, pinpoints the 1968 encyclical as the primary factor in [1] the drop off in confessions, as penitents were faced with a bleak option of lying or withholding information from the confessor, which defeated the purpose of the sacrament; and [2] Catholics becoming more inclined to eschew certain Church moral teachings and the practice of personal confession entirely in favor of personal conscience. In 1993, the Catechism of the Catholic Church included the teaching of Humanae Vitae, so no change is seen in the foreseeable future. Given that traditional Catholic moral law is wedded to the law of nature, it is hard to see how the teaching could ever be changed. What would need to be changed is a more comprehensive understanding of the spirituality and the science of Catholic morality.
 
With the election of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the Church emphasized greater fidelity to traditional teaching. Moralists of the Haring tradition came under higher scrutiny. Haring’s criticism of the Pope's encyclical Humanae Vitae and his advocacy for a more personalist and scripture-based approach to moral theology led to tensions within the Church. Haring came under an intensive four-year investigation by the Vatican in which he vigorously defended his work. But Haring's views on contraception and his subsequent writing which called for a re-opening of the debate on this issue and many others were seen as a challenge to the Church's official teachings. We know from the research of CARA-Georgetown U. that in the 2020’s there is serious disagreement between the teaching Church and many of the faithful on several moral issues in the U.S.
 
The struggle, it seems to me, is finding a balance between the wisdom of the Holy Spirit granted to each of the baptized and a teaching authority in the Church that is true to the Scripture and a source of unity. The next post on this stream will address possibilities to improve the Sacrament of Penance as a gateway to prayer and holiness, in about two weeks.
 
TO BUY OR NOT TO BUY?
 
[A note to our correspondent and any reader wishing to go further in reading]:
 
I would recommend John A. Gallagher’s ​Time Past, Time Future: An Historical Study of Catholic Moral Theology [1990], a one volume overview of Catholic moral studies. Bernard Haring’s role in the twentieth century renewal of moral theology development is more than adequately covered. I just discovered I reviewed this book for Amazon twenty years ago. My memory is not what it used to be.
 
You might find Gallagher’s work more time economical in your moral studies, as well as the works of Father James Keenan, link here. From synopses I have read, the first volume of The Law of Christ highlights the principles of Haring’s theology.
 
Whatever you choose, good hunting!