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Richard McCormick
When Father Richard McCormick, S.J., passed away in February 2000, he had already enjoyed a reputation as one of the most influential American moral theologians. McCormick earned his reputation as a great thinker and interpreter though many years of amenable and articulate review of current works in the area of moral theology and a Jesuit concern for the place of the human person in theology.Chris Hughes When McCormick began his studies under the Jesuits in 1940, he began learning in the manualist tradition of preconcilar Catholic moral theology. Until Vatican II theology was taught from a series of normative texts that were all strikingly similar to one another both in content and point of view. The theology in the manuals was directly reflective of the beliefs promulgated by the hierarchy and none wavered too far from center. McCormick was greatly influenced by the tradition presented in the manuals and found "an awful lot of good balance to it." [Odozor 8] But unlike the authors of the scholarly texts of the time, McCormick used tradition and the teachings of the church only as a jumping off point for his theology. He would not accept the clerical focus of moral theology, but wanted instead to develop a theology of morality for all men and women. Fr. McCormick did not accept the role of theologian as a vehicle for iron-clad church doctrine. The preconcilar church had brought genuine religious scholarship almost to a halt with its focus on the absolute submission to the doctrine of the hierarchy. There was no room for thought outside of the tight confines of established historical contexts. Though McCormick was raised and instructed in this tradition, he soon found his own voice freed by the tenets of the Vatican II council and became an advocate for the positive role of dissent in the church. McCormick felt that a Catholic scholar is not simply a scholar who is Catholic and keeps the faith. [Burghardt 2] As McCormick's own studies show, a scholar should be led by tradition, not bound to it. The theology McCormick studied had as its focus the human person. McCormick's work with the government and health care removes him from the world of the simply scholastic and places him into his proper role as a pastoral and priestly scholar. In an eulogistic article in America entitled "He Lived with Wisdom," Walter Burghardt states in relation to McCormick that "ideas have consequences." [Burghardt 3] The vast majority of McCormick's work reflect this humanistic approach to doing theology. >From 1965 to 1984, McCormick was the author of the popular "Notes on Moral Theology" in the scholarly journal "Theological Studies." This column, though not of McCormick's own invention, quickly became the primary vehicle for his beliefs on moral theology and required reading for other scholars in the field. McCormick believed that "church teaching had to be defended in rational argument, not merely by appeals to authority." [Commonweal 6] From this belief, he developed his defense of "conscientious dissent" in the church, which was, of course, viewed as an act of dissent. McCormick agrees that a good Catholic will put forth every effort to treat all teachings of the church as correct and authoritative. But if a Catholic has listened openly to the teaching, critically evaluated his or her own position in relation to the teaching and still finds the teaching inadequate, there is room for dissent in the church. [Ozodor 65] McCormick goes farther to state that dissent is perhaps even necessary to support the authoritative position of the church in moral matters. "If a teaching is valid independent of the reasons and arguments, then the possibility of dissent is eliminated in principle; if dissent is impossible, it is not clear in what sense one can say a teaching is noninfallible." [Ozodor 66] The bulk of McCormick's scholarly literature was his review of other literature on moral theology. For this reason, McCormick is sometimes cited as merely a collector of the ideas of others. He has been accused of merely hashing the ideas of Congar, Avery, and Dulles into his own theological amalgam. Even as an interpreter of current theological idioms, McCormick asserted wide influence on contemporary moral theology. But most scholars see McCormick as a genuine theologian who always gave a balanced review of the works and finished with his own views on the subject. Though he never pieced together a complete theology of his own, he is seen as developing or completing many of the accepted norms in moral theology today. Works Cited Richard McCormick, “Surrogacy: A Catholic Perspective” Chapter 16 of Corrective Vision, Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 199 Abstract by Daniel Forshier McCormick starts by laying a few ground rules. First he says that his perspective is "a Catholic perspective, not the Catholic perspective"(McCormick 201) for the Catholic perspective is briefly discussed in Donum vitae. Second he defines " a Catholic perspective" as an attempt "to draw on the riches and worldview identified with a historical believing community"(201). Next, he distinguishes the difference between a surrogate mother and a surrogate gestational mother. "A surrogate gestational mother provides the gestational but not the genetic component for reproduction" and a "surrogate mother provides both the female genetic component and the gestational component." Both the pros and cons involving these issues are very similar. He argues surrogacy with two general approaches including the third party in general and the advantages and drawbacks of the third party usage. Some general arguments for the third party participation include secrecy and asymmetry. As quoted by Baran and Pannor artificial insemination can be a "devastating ego blow" to the husband with the offspring being visual proof of the male's weakness. McCormick believes that "it will be seen by many as an intrinsic problem and as inseparable from AID (donated sperm) itself, whether secrecy is there or not"(204). He makes references to Donum vitae to further his arguments because it states that "a violation of the reciprocal commitment of the spouses and grave lack in regard to that essential property of marriage which is its unity." So the argument of marriage and unity comes into play, also. A child must be the "fruit and sign of the mutual self-giving of the spouses, love and fertility"(204). These above arguments are stand points of other people and Donum vitae. Now we see McCormick raise his own questions. If IFV and ET are technological continuations of sexual intimacy and not a substitute, then McCormick asks, "Is it appropriate for third parties o be involved in such continuation?"(205). He notes two issues where there is probably disagreement, the infringing on "conjugal exclusivity"(205) and does having a child justify such infringement. He answers yes to the first and no to the second. He believes that separating the genetic, gestational and raising of a child from conjugal exclusivity diminishes "aspects of the human person"(205). Another argument he raises is that third party presence will open the doors to artificial insemination of single-women and lesbians, and that brings up a whole other argument about who can an can't raise children and the child's environment. McCormick approaches the problem of surrogacy on the individual and social level. On the individual level he notes problems that could arise for the surrogate, the couple and the child. On a social level his arguments the world is not under-populated, parenting with uncertainty of responsibility, and degrading women. McCormick ends this Chapter by declaring his Catholic stance on the subject at hand, "If surrogate motherhood offends—on balance—our own good as persons, Catholics would reject it. I believe they should.” A Richard McCormick Bibliography
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