To Know, Worship and Love, 11/12
Catholic Ethical Thinking for Senior Secondary Students

Catholic Ethical Thinking for Senior Secondary Students is written to span the last two years of secondary education or high school, the pre-university levels in Australia and other countries, age levels 16-18. Dr Kathleen Engebretson wrote this text working with other authors who are skilled in specific fields. Much of the extensive content of this book is also appropriate for adult education and parish discussion circles. Web links are suggested for all chapters.

The first three chapters are foundational, to develop a student’s capacity for “ethical thinking”. The art of ethical thinking analyses defective approaches to ethics that are at work in “post modern” society today, and favours the natural law approach. Authorities in Catholic ethics takes up the meaning of the commandments and the new law of love in Christ’s Gospel, focusing on Jesus Christ and his attitude to people and the supernatural virtues and gifts that form Christians. This is taken in a practical direction in the fifth chapter, The pursuit of happiness, on the Beatitudes, completing what began at Year 6 - what Christian happiness really means, here proposed in an ethical perspective.

Catholic Ethical Thinking for Senior Secondary Students continues an ongoing Christian education in human sexuality in parts of chapter 4, Respect for the body, and more specifically in chapter 6, Marriage and family issues. Inspired by Pope John Paul’s “theology of the body”, this chapter sets all sexuality in the perspective of marriage, including issues such as cohabitation, homosexuality, contraception etc. But chapter 4 also focuses on the immediate moral issues and choices faced by young people at school: alcohol, drugs and eating disorders.

Chapter 7 is the culmination of the pro-life ethic that runs through the other texts in the series, To Know, Worship and Love. The “culture of life” is built on respect for the life of the unborn, and that reverence for the right to life is applied in ethical thinking about embryonic stem-cell research, euthanasia and capital punishment.

Forming a just society, chapter 8, is a more detailed study of the principles of Catholic social teaching such as: solidarity, the preferential option for the poor and subsidiarity. The final chapter, Global peace, development and justice looks at the wider world of the early twenty-first century, particularly peace and the status of just war theory, world poverty and international debt. Three issues relevant in Australia and many other countries conclude the chapter: justice for indigenous people, environmental justice and the rights of refugees.

The first Appendix provides case studies, a practical analytical approach to three ethical issues: research on embryonic stem cells, euthanasia, and cohabitation before marriage. A second Appendix, When a Catholic marries, describes the procedures and requirements for a valid sacramental marriage. Most of the students using this text will marry and need the guidance and support of the Church in their vocation of life and love.

Rev Msgr Peter J. Elliott General Editor