Between Physicalism and the New Dualism: The Moral Relevance of the Human Body for Catholic Ethics

One could argue the remarkable changes to the landscape of Catholic moral theology over the course of the twentieth century were unparalleled in the history of the Church. Animated by anthropological and pastoral concerns, competing schools of Catholic ethicists introduced novel interpretations of natural law that sought to do greater justice to the entirety of the human person, not merely the physical dimension that tended to be emphasized throughout the manualist era. These unique and competing perspectives that emerged in the middle of the 1900s, found in the revisionist school and the New Natural Law Theory school, shaped the topography of Catholic moral theology in unprecedented ways. Previously unknown methods of moral decision-making came to dominate works of Catholic scholars; this was accompanied by radically new conclusions reached by the dominant revisionist school. It is these changes that are of interest to the current project. More precisely, this work seeks to reevaluate the present situation within Catholic moral theology through an anthropological lens. Both revisionist and traditionalist scholars alike explicitly operate with the intention of providing ethical systems that correspond to the holistic (i.e., nondualist) picture of the human person emphasized at the Second Vatican Council. But do these theories actually meet their nondualist anthropological standard? This work argues that they do not. It will be argued that the concern to avoid physicalist mistakes caused an overcorrection. In the revisionist school in particular, there has arisen a new dualism whereby the moral body has become irrelevant for Catholic ethical theories. The goal of this project, then, is to examine this dualism and propose modest but necessary principles required for finding a morally relevant place for the human body within Catholic moral theology. If the human body makes up an essential aspect of the human person, then this ought to be reflected in the methodological structure of Catholic ethics. By integrating the principles offered in this work into modern ethical theories, the diversity of thought reflected within Catholicism can remain while simultaneously finding a moral relevance of the human body

Summary of the Snowmastodon Project Special Volume: A high-elevation, multi-proxy biotic and environmental record of MIS 6-4 from the Ziegler Reservoir fossil site, Snowmass Village, Colorado, USA

In North America, terrestrial records of biodiversity and climate change that span Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 are rare. Where found, they provide insight into how the coupling of the ocean–atmosphere system is manifested in biotic and environmental records and how the biosphere responds to climate change. In 2010–2011, construction at Ziegler Reservoir near Snowmass Village, Colorado (USA) revealed a nearly continuous, lacustrine/wetland sedimentary sequence that preserved evidence of past plant communities between ~140 and 55 ka, including all of MIS 5. At an elevation of 2705 m, the Ziegler Reservoir fossil site also contained thousands of well-preserved bones of late Pleistocene megafauna, including mastodons, mammoths, ground sloths, horses, camels, deer, bison, black bear, coyotes, and bighorn sheep. In addition, the site contained more than 26,000 bones from at least 30 species of small animals including salamanders, otters, muskrats, minks, rabbits, beavers, frogs, lizards, snakes, fish, and birds. The combination of macro- and micro-vertebrates, invertebrates, terrestrial and aquatic plant macrofossils, a detailed pollen record, and a robust, directly dated stratigraphic framework shows that high-elevation ecosystems in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado are climatically sensitive and varied dramatically throughout MIS 5