Abstract

This article seeks to demonstrate that the perverted faculty argument is at the foundation of magisterial teaching in sexual ethics. Yet new natural law theorists have consistently condemned this argument for decades despite their claim that they support the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. This situation is incongruous. Current scholarship indicates that NNL theorists do not accept the rationale for magisterial teaching in sexual ethics because, despite their opposition to proportionalism, they still hold in common its most critical error—an error that Pope St. John Paul II was at pains to condemn in Veritatis splendor.