Catholic moral theology

Examples of Catholic moral theologians include St. Alphonsus Liguori (author of Theologia Moralis), Bartolomé Medina (originator of Probabilism), Dominic Prümmer (Compensationism), Bernhard Häring (Dialogical Ethics), Servais Pinckaers (Nouvelle théologie), Germain Grisez and John Finnis (New Natural Law).

The curriculum for formation of priests commonly includes required and elective courses in Catholic moral theology.

[1] Although many theologians found inspiration in Aquinas from his death onwards, moral theology did not become its own separate field of scholarship until after the council of Trent at the dawn of the baroque period and the reformation, one of the wishes of the council fathers was to set out the more rigorous training of priests which would lead to the genesis of seminaries.

[19] The first manual of moral theology was written by the Jesuit, Juan Azor in three volumes, his Institutionum Moralium published in the 17th century.

Although claiming patrimony to Aquinas, nominalism was most prolific at the time among the intellectual elite which seems to have influenced Azor's outlook in his work, instead of focusing on the beatitudes and virtues in the moral life as Aquinas in his Summa, nominalism emphasises the obligatory and legal nature of God's commands as a result of the arbitrary will of God and a person's conscience before the law, many would follow Azor's model with few modifications and this outlook would influence the whole manualist tradition of moral theology which would become less dominant after Vatican II, during this period it became more common for alternative approaches or attempts to return to a biblical, patristic or scholastic approach before the influence of nominalism and outgrowth of casuistry which was characteristic of the tridentine period.