SOURCE: “Intrinsic Evil, Truth, and Authority,” in Religious Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2, June, 1995, pp. 209-19.

In the following essay, O'Neill examines the argument for intrinsic evil and moral authority in Veritatis Splendor. Though supporting John Paul's view that some acts are intrinsically evil, O'Neill objects to the pope's claim to “epistemological authority.”

Pope John Paul's recent encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, addresses itself beyond its immediate audience in the Catholic Church to ‘all people of good will’. While my Catholic friends assure me that the Catholic Church is one club that once entered can't be left, I assume myself to be in the wider audience: I write here as an atheist and one still happy to be called a Marxist, both condemned in the document. The paper is not written, however, from a position of hostility to all in the document. My aim in the first part of the paper is...