Are some specific moral norms infallibly proposed by the magisterium?
Every Catholic theologian acknowledges that certain very general moral norms are infallibly proposed (e.g., one ought to love God and one’s neighbor). But today a key claim made by a good number of Catholic theologians is that no specific moral norms have been infallibly taught; indeed, they claim that such specific moral norms (e.g., one ought never to commit adultery; one ought never intentionally to kill an innocent human being) cannot be taught infallibly. Some theologians, for example, Charles E. Curran, appeal to the Code of Canon Law to support their claim. Thus Curran and several of his associates appealed in 1969 to paragraph 3 of canon 1323 of the old 1917 Code (in fact, they erroneously cited canon 1223, or perhaps this was a typographical error), which corresponds to paragraph 3 of canon 749 in the new 1983 Code. [4] This paragraph says that “No doctrine is to be understood to be infallibly defined unless this is manifestly demonstrated” (emphasis added). But appeal to this
