Preface
Introduction
Being Faithful and Contemporary
Summary and Outline
The Rhetoric of Disputation: Writing as Argument
On Reading this Book
Part I. The Church and the Conversation of History
1. Sexual Discourse and the Problem of Modernity
The Church's Conversations on Sexual Morality
The Problem of Modernity
The Church's Brief Against Modernity
2. The Historicity of Faith and Life
Modernity and the Progress of History
The Liabilities of History: Pluralism, Relativism, and Conventionalism
The Obligations of Fidelity
The Obligations of Contemporaneity
Revelation and Historicist Modernity
Alterity
and the Moral Praxis of History
3. History, Interpretation, and the Moral Life
Revelation and Reason
The Labor of Rational Interpretation
The Reality of Hermeneutic Burdens
The Norm of Content
The Church and the Problem of Modernity
Part II. The Analytic Conversation of Moral Argument
4. Ethical Norms and Moral Rules
An Analytic Mistake
The Levels of Moral Discourse and the Place of Ethical Argument
5. The Origin, Structure, and Function of Ethical Norms
The Origin of Ethical Norms
The Structure and Function of Ethical Norms
Marriage as a Normative Sacramental Model
Part III. Substantive Conversations in Christian Ethics and Moral Theology
6. The Norm of Heterosexual Marriage
Historical Remembrance and Moral Obligation
"The Reality of the Historical Past"
The Norm of Marriage
What Our History Discloses
The Values and Goods of Marriage
Nonmarital Sexual Expression
The Liabilities and Limitations of Argument
7. Building Communities of Moral Discourse
The Moral Intentions of Rationality
Moral Discourse and the Nature of the Church
Framing Constructive and Effective Debate: The Praxis of Communicative Action
"Discourse Ethics"
Moral Intuitions and the Vulnerability of Sociocultural Life
Consensus and Community: Toward a Moral Theology of Communication
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
