Sexual experimentation, living together, raising children outside of
marriage, remarriage after divorce, and same-sex relationships... These
behaviours have become common in the wider society as well as among
Christians and Catholic Christians. Not only do they think and act
differently than the official Church teaching, but they do so convinced
that they are acting rightly. This challenges ethics to respond by what
can be called an 'ethics of mercy', by meeting people where they are and
helping them to grow towards the fullness of life and love. Such a
pastoral and educational ethics of growth should dare to stand within
the tension between what is desirable and what is attainable, without
surrendering the 'pro-vocative' idea of conjugal covenant as the basis
for the family. Mercy is needed not only after ethics but in ethics.
In harmony with Pope Francis's plea for a 'gospel of mercy', this book
seeks a middle way between merciless rigourism and relativising
subjectivism. It proposes an ethics of redemption that accompanies
people on their way to meaningful living and loving, grounded in a
spirituality that springs from the salvation offered in Jesus.