Heythrop Library

In this post, and later posts in this series on Collections, we try to highlight areas in our collection which are either particular important to our Library’s holdings, or it is maybe not very obvious to the uninitiated that we would have books or journals on this area of theology or philosophy. We hope that our posts in this series will encourage engagement with these areas of our collection.

The important point about moral theology is that we try to keep books written by Christians separate from those writing on Ethics who do not believe in God. The idea with this division is that believing that there is a Christian God will make a difference to your morals, and how you look at the world and ethics.

So in BJ we have Ethics (Philosophy), and in BT, specifically BT1703 to BT2011 Christian ethics. In the off-site stores we hold over 1,600 items within this classmark range. In our reading room we have over 230 items, most of them books. Two books in our reading room which I usually mention when I give a tour of the Library are: Karl Barth’s Ethics (1981, in its English translation), and Bioethics : basic writings on the key ethical questions that surround the major, modern biological possibilities and problems / edited by Thomas A. Shannon. Barth’s book is important, as it is an example of the many books written by authors who are or were not Catholics, yet we put them on our shelves exactly next to Catholic voices – we do not really segregate books by the author’s background or denomination. The Bioethics volume was edited by a scientist who identified at the time of working on this volume as a Roman Catholic who was keen to have diverse voices represented in this volume, to reflect the range of approaches and opinions when focusing on specific bioethical issues.

One section within moral theology which is a relatively new (since 2025) addition is BT1721 (Moral injury): we currently have only 5 books in our reading room focusing on this topic, but there are more books in the off-site stores. PsychologyToday defines the term as ‘the social, psychological, and spiritual harm that arises from a betrayal of one’s core values, such as justice, fairness, and loyalty. Harming others, whether in military or civilian life; failing to protect others, through error or inaction; and failure to be protected by leaders, especially in combat—can all wound a person’s conscience, leading to lasting anger, guilt, and shame, and can fundamentally alter one’s world view and impair the ability to trust others.’ (see https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/moral-injury?msockid=35f24880695d6ae73c155e1c680a6be6). Traditionally, or originally, the idea of a soldier thinking of the duty of killing an opponent, whilst thinking of them having family members who will morn them, is a strong way of understanding this concept. As PsychologyToday points out ‘Anyone forced to make intense ethical choices risks moral injury; circumstance—not character—produces this struggle’. This relative clear idea and the repercussions for an individual have more recently been studied within the context of theology, and moral theology.

Studia moralia is one of the few live journal subscriptions which we have, which squarely is in moral theology. If you are on site, you can use our subscription to JSTOR for exploring over 15,000 articles in “Christian ethics”.

Of course, there are ethical approaches to looking at the issues of today, which are not in this classmark range/section, and are part of other sections. The most prominent section I can think of is numerous books at BT607 (Ecotheology, or Green Theology).

CG