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Human Dignity, Human Rights and Moral Responsibility
Paper presented to the John Cardinal Krol Chair of Moral Theology Symposium on Catholic Moral Teaching in the Pontificate of John Paul II
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
4 October 2003
In his encyclical Veritatis Splendor (“The Splendor of Truth”) in 1993 Pope John Paul II claimed that the Church was facing a genuine crisis which touched the very foundations of moral theology. He explained that this crisis was no longer a matter of limited and occasional dissent but of an overall and systematic calling into question of traditional moral doctrine.
In this year in which we celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the election of the Holy Father and the tenth anniversary of Veritatis Splendor it is a moot point whether the crisis has lessened or deepened, or indeed whether the situation remains basically as it was. Rome has spoken, but in the English-speaking world there is no evidence that the matter has been successfully concluded. I speak as an Australian bishop primarily about the situation in Australia. It remains for others to judge just how relevant my comments might be for the situation here in the United States and for other parts of the Catholic world.
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