One question facing Pope Leo XIV will be whether to advance the “new paradigm” for moral theology proposed by Pope Francis and some of his advisors in recent years. As has often happened, the supposed “spirit” of Vatican II was being cited by authors of the Academy for Life while neglecting what the council documents actually said. Pope Francis spoke of a paradigm shift. The trend here is from the objective to the subjective, from moral norms to each individual person’s judgment of conscience, from intrinsically evil acts to the discernment of circumstances that can mitigate or set aside moral norms in practice.
