Book Review: Surviving Death: A Practical Guide to Caring for the Dying and Bereaved
conservatism. but a serious and developed body of scholarly literature. May finishes with an interesting argument in favor of the truth of moral absolutes. He maintains that in making free choices. we do not simply choose to cause a transient bit of behavior. In choosing to do something. we determine our moral selves we give a character and shape to our moral personalities which endure until a contrary choice is made. Moral life is not so much a matter of producing good outcomes as constituting selves that are open to all that is really good. Moral absolutes provide essential guidelines for choices which have this openness. For if one violates moral absolutes. one rejects some part of what is good for human beings. Thus. one who chooses to kill an innocent person for whatever reason sets his or her heart against the good of life; one who chooses to do one of the sexual acts which the Church has rejected by one of the moral absolutes taught in the area of sexual morality sets aside the real goods of sexuality in favor of momentary satisfaction or a pale imitation of the real human goods at stake. This raises a question: why do moral absolutes. as distinct from other moral principles and norms. have a special role in preserving openness to all the goods of human beings? It seems that one who violates a moral norm. even one that is nonabsolute. rejects something of what is good for people. One who breaks his word when the circumstances do notjustify it . constitutes himself as a promise breaker. as one who cares less than one should about the bonds of trust between persons and about the other goods which trustworthy cooperation makes possible. May's conviction that moral absolutes are especially important in preserving openness to the human good is surely right . but he needs a fuller account of why. Is it because they are clearer. or because they function differently in the moral reasoning of one who cares about them? For moral absolutes do seem to function differently than other norms: once one sees that an action is excluded by a moral absolute. one knows that further consideration of the action is simply out of the question. Knowing more about the action and its circumstances is not going to change the fact that that action is of a kind which is simply wrong. Or is there perhaps something much more profound here? I hope that May. and others within the Church. will pursue this matter further. Still , if May's little book has not said everything which might be said on the difficult matter of moral absolutes . it is a real contribution to the discussion, and should prove helpful not only to professional moralists but to all who want to intelligently find their way through the complex arguments of contemporary moral theology. These debates are in many ways unfortunate. but . as May's book makes clear. they have forced us to think more deeply and more clearly than ever before about the most fundamental and enduring issues of Christian moral life. Joseph Boyle SI. Michael's College University of Toronto