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Change & Consistency Within the Catholic Church: Slavery & Other Issues [ a Historical & Theological Approach]

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During this course on the history of Catholic Moral Theology, we have had to deal with the topic of what can and cannot change within the Catholic Church. This happened to be the title of the primary book that we used for this course. This book, by John T. Noonan, is entitled A Church That Can and Cannot Change: The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching. A theme which Noonan immediately focuses on throughout the book is one which touches many of us deeply, slavery. As a person who has studied both law and religion and who is now embarking on a study of moral theology & ethics, I was highly interested in reading what John T. Noonan a distinguished scholar -author and member of the U.S. Court of Appeals- had to say in such an arena. Having heard him lecture, I was interested to see how his viewpoint translated into this type of arena. I was not disappointed. Throughout our course we not only discussed how this work dealt with such a topic, but we also discussed our own viewpoints on this very topic. Within the following paper I will discuss the issue of slavery, in the form of a synthetic paper, and how not only how it has evolved, but also the various positions the church has had concerning such an issue. As a backdrop, I will also use what Noonan outlined in his book as well. Therefore, this paper will be in the form of a review of Noonan thoughts (which will utilize various points from my prior presentation on this topic)/synthetic paper on the issue of slavery within the Catholic Church.
John T. Noonan builds A Church That Can and Cannot Change on the fact that the deposit of faith cannot change. In the early chapters Noonan identifies three areas where change in moral principles has definitely occurred in the course of the history of the Catholic Church. These principles are slavery, usury and religious liberty. He also points to a fourth

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