Luigi Lorenzetti wrote a remarkable book that collects the most meaningful contributions of the 40 years of the Rivista di Teologia Morale. The vastness of the volume can give to it an almost encyclopedic character. In effects, it lingers over all the most relevant questions of the christian and catholic ethics in the present moment, be it from the point of view of the theoretical fundamentals, as from the one of the most specific questions and of the prescriptiv aspects. And yet it is animated, on every argument, by a monographic attention. The work has in the element 'history' not only the occasion and style of approach, but the theological and spiritual core.

The author explains at the beginning the double sense of this programmatic reference to history: "History has a meaning and it is guided by the Providence […]. The historical perspective (or of history) takes the moral theology, as theological discipline, to tune itself with its own times", underlining that from the christian message arises a moral that carries 'within the history', with all its complex problems, and at the same time delegitimates any kind of moral functional to the established order.

Four great sections

It is not necessary to introduce the author, Luigi Lorenzetti, one among the most important italian theological moralists, teacher at the Studio Theologico S. Antonio in Bologna and author of numerous publications that have marked the path of catholic ethics in the last decades. Here we only remind that he has been president of the ATISM (Italian Theological Association for the Study of Ethics) and that he has founded in 1969 the Rivista di Teologia Morale (RTM), published by the Edizioni Devoniane in Bologna, that he still directs today.
The volume in question collects Luigi Lorenzetti’s statements at the Forums organized by the RTM within its first forty years; not in chronological order, obviously, on the contrary gathered on thematic bases, and preceded by an important introduction ("A forty year walk"). Here are reminded the dimensions that moral theology has recovered after the Council: theological - therefore christological and biblical -, anthropological, historical-escatological and ecclesial; and as fundamental novelty is underlined the fact that "the elaboration of the christian moral theology is not monopoly of the clergymen anymore excluding the laymen, of the men excluding the women. […] Laymen, men and women, are not only beneficiaries, but also active and prepared teachers of ethics" (p. 6).

The content articulates in four great sections. The first, The moral theology in the period after the Council, has a general character: it looks in a more specific and systematic manner to the fundaments (though the problem of the fundaments is found throughout the book, assuming a role or also in the matters of special morals) and it is divided in two great chapters: 1. an ethic of faith and reason, 2. answers to the moral question today.

Perhaps, speaking of 'chapter' doesm’t give well the idea of the ampleness of each of these circles. The first chapter, i.e., counts over one hundred pages, and it is divided in turn in different chapters; we would not call them under-chapters and not even paragraphs, being each endowed with its own autonomy though in correlation with the others. This applies for the whole work.


An "evangelized" moral

In the impossibility also only to offer an exhaustive list of the topics, we remind only the main ones, those that that mainly contribute to delineate soul and features of the book:
- the moral as place of meeting point between believers and not believers, the moral to be evangelized (in the sphere of the impulse towards the new evangelization that characterizes the engagement of the church in the years '90 and not only, the author observes that also the Christian moral must be evangelized for finding again its prophetic role in the human history);
- the events of love in the Christian moral; the autonomy of the moral reflection; the hope (last) and the hopes (second-last) in connection with the moral; faith and reason; the Decalogue as base of an universal moral;
- the sin of the world and the original sin, the sense of the sin and its crises, the foundation of a renewed understanding of the sin;
- the moral theology in history, its conversion and the new responsibilities toward the past and the present; distinction and possible connection between 'collective evils' and ' collective sins';
- stok taking of the new manuals of moral published after the Council; christology and moral; social moral in the Bible; the contribution of the christians and of the Churches to the request of meaning in the complex society;
- the new moral questions; the moral problem and "the impossible moral neutrality" in the education; the christian moral as education to happiness and offer of meaning to the times of the life.
In the whole articulation of this first part, but not only, it assumes a particular importance the anthropological question as base of ethics.

The second section deals with the themes related to Marriage and family, and also this section articulates in two chapters. In the first chapter is faced the meaning of marriage or - to use the expression of the author - the christian moral proposal in positive: ample space is given to the encyclical Humanae vitae of Paul VI. The theme 'family' can appear predominant, at least quantitatively, in comparison to the themes related to the couple and to the conjugal love. The second chapter (irregular Situations) referes to the divorced re-married, to the common-law marriages and to the discussion at the European Parliament on the possible marriage of homosexual subjects.
On the whole, this section, despite its merits and the equilibrium and the evident effort to overcome the traditional prescriptive and prohibitive language, can appear less studied in depth or less innovative than the others, perhaps simply because of the minor centrality of the related issues in the Forum, organized by the RTM in its first forty years of life.



Bioethics and new frontiers

The third section concerns Life, bioethics, bio-law. Also in this case the first part collects the fundamental principles of the Christian reflection on the bio-ethics, while the second faces different particular matters. Basic idea of the first chapter is that Christian ethic, more than to enunciate rules, has to promote favorable attitudes towards life. The most important magisterial document considered in this reagard is obviously the Evangelium Vitae of Giovanni Paul II (1995), of which some elements of novelty are underlined; it still speaks of the affinities/differences between moral law and civil law in defense of life, of the so-called "un-dealable values", of the Veronesi Commssion, of the different standings in respect of organs transplantations, of AIDS and of drugs.

In these fields evidently it is not easy to separate the particular matters from the general principles. However, the second chapter deals particularly with the themes more debated of the present moment, those in which can occurr the strongest contrasts, amplified and radicalized by the mass-media: abortion, euthanasia, assisted fecundation. From a theoretical point of view (we hope that the adjective doesn't sound to anybody as opposite to concrete, vital, operational), the matter perhaps more enthralling in this part it is the problematic relationship between moral and right, the dissociation/correlation of the two spheres.

Finally the fourth section, Moral theology in the social handles different subjects and almost constitutes a volume in the volume, for its ampleness and complexity always held together by the factor history: not only as necessary reference and as method, but as theological principle. It opens with an introductory general chapter titled "New frontiers", in which above all we find a most remarkable and most articulated reflection on globalization and on the new problems deriving from it, also in respect to ethics. The second concerns specific social moral, and it is articulated in four areas (politics - economy - ecology/ environmental protection - science/technique); the third the themes related to peace and to war.




We remind that Luigi Lorenzetti is editor (and director of the section 'moral theology', and author of different entries) of the remarkable Dizionario di Teologia della Pace that was published by the Editions Dehoniane in Bologna in 1997. The fourth chapter faces the social teaching of the Church, above all through the social encyclicals of the pontiffs, beginning from the Laborem exercens (1981) of John Paul II. Among the principal theoretical knots faced in this part we find: the transition from philosophy to theology in the magisterial meditation, the correlation/distinction between social doctrine of the church and moral theology, the pressing new social problems at he beginning of the third millennium.


A militant book

The last pages concern a more limited matter, but of great interest for the Italian readers: the teaching of the CEI and a profile of the modern italian catholic, with synthetic reference to the meaning and to the most remarkable acquisitions of the ecclesial conventions of Loreto (1985), Palermo (1990), Verona (2006).
Finally, even if certainly not the last among the important features of the volume, it has to be pointed out the extensive thematic index that, together with an index of names found at the end, becomes essential, due to the vastness of the work: it simplifies the search and it facilitates the use of the volume both for scientific and for pastoral purposes.
In this work, therefore, in addition to the deepened reflection on the foundations of the moral theology, on its renewal, earmarked by the Council and on its epistemological statute, are not missing the quaestiones vexatae, since years matter of a non painless debate both inside the Church and out of it. Thus, despite the calmness and the composure of the exposition, it is clealy notable of neither being in front of a manual nor of a dictionary nor of an encyclopedia, but of a book, in the noblest sense of the term, militant.
As to the strictly prescriptive dimension, in short the 'what to do', it must be said that the author in substance never diverges from the official positions of the teaching of the Church, and nevertheless the work is remarkable above all for its problematic and open character, due to a large extent especially to the historical-dynamic and solid layout, for having profoundly interiorized the most important and durable message of the Council Vatican II: the reconciled attitude towards the contemporary world and of the pluralist society, the value of the dialogue with secular ethics ("nobody can think that the secular ethic is synonymous of not moral", p. 6), the attention to the person.