ROBERTO DE MATTEI

A typical characteristic of situation ethics, is, according to Father Angelo Perego, "the denial of the decisive and constitutive function of the morality of the objective order" (Situation ethics, Edition "La Civiltà Cattolica" , Rome 1958, p.106).  In traditional morality, the ultimate rule of human action is being, not the acting subject. Hence, traditional morality is essentially objective, as it springs from being [itself] and is continually in proportion to being.  Situation ethics, on the other hand, are based on subjective becoming. In Buttiglione's and Pope Francis' situation ethics, the ultimate constitutive element of morality is of a strictly subjective nature. The moral law becomes an extrinsic norm which contributes to determine practical judgment, without it ever being the determining element.  What is the decisive factor? "Discernment" of the circumstances, on the part of the confessor, who, like a magician, can transform good into evil and evil into good.

Pius XII said: "We oppose with three considerations or maxims against situation ethics. The first is We concede that God wants above all and always, an upright intention; but this is not enough. He wants also good action. The second is that a bad action is not permissible in order for good to come from it (Rom, 3,8). The third is that there can be given circumstances, in which a man, especially a Christian, must remember that it is necessary to sacrifice everything, even his life, in order to save his soul. All the countless martyrs even in our time, remind us of this. But would the mother of the Maccabees and her children, Saints Perpetua and Felicitas  without regard for their babies, Maria Goretti and thousands of other men and women, venerated by the Church, against  the circumstances, have faced in vain and even wrongly a sanguinary death? Certainly not; and they remain, with their blood, the most eloquent witnesses to the truth, against the new morality". (Discourse , April 18, 1952, in AAS, 44 (1952), pp. 417-418)..