Consequentialism and Catholic ethics seem to be natural enemies. The Catholicprohibition against intentionally killing the innocent lying committingadultery and... » 

Consequentialism and Catholic ethics seem to be natural enemies. The Catholicprohibition against intentionally killing the innocent lying committingadultery and so on contradicts the very essence of consequentialism that noact may be assessed as good or evil independently of its consequences. Howeverin the 1960s within the Catholic tradition itself there arose a method inethics called proportionalism which practically if not theoretically affirmedthat which consequentialists have long affirmed and Catholic ethicists had solong denied namely one may do evil that good may come. According toproportionalists so long as the good effects are proportioned to the badeffects of the act the act is licit even if evil is used as a means to achievethe good.In this book Christopher Kaczor argues against the plausibility ofproportionalism and its first proponents namely Peter Knauer Joseph FuchsBruno Schuller Louis Janssens and Richard McCormick. Examining the genealogyof the movement he disputes a received history that depicts proportionalism asa recovery of Thomas Aquinas. Instead contends Kaczor proportionalism is bestseen as the organic successor to the moral manuals of the preVatican II era.Proportionalism arises not from Thomas but rather extends many of thetendencies and presuppositions of the manuals. In particular it retains theirmarginalizing of the account of human action as a knowingwilling involving anumber of stages not always consciously recognized yet carefully described byThomas in Summa theologiae Prima Secundae 617. Kaczor shows that a greatdeal of the plausibility of proportionalism rests on a fragile foundation thatis rapidlyeroding an education in the moral manuals. «