Guidelines for Moral Case Presentation
Introduction:
Catholic moral theology, at its best, requires people to develop their creative and imaginative faculties, as well as their analytical skills, in order to grasp the complexity of moral problems and to come to some decision about how to act in response to them. In Theo 131 class you will be asked to work alone or with a pair. You are free to select your own possible issue or problem. You will be responsible for writing a four-part case, which must include:
You will be expected to make a presentation of your case (roughly 10-15 minutes, which includes leading a class discussion about your case). You will be responsible to reserve and set-up the LCD projector during your scheduled presentation. Instructions for Group Case Analysis and Presentation Project: The case analysis and presentation is a chance for you to work creatively on a moral issue that concerns you by designing a case study of your own. It may be (but need not be) based on your own experience. This outline is intended to guide you in setting up the basic structure of your case, but you should feel free to customize it to fit the particular moral problem you envision. Each pair should meet with me at least once before you present your case to the class. While presentation of your case in front of the class will factor in to your grade for the requirement, the majority of this grade will be based on your written case. The written portion of your case should be approximately 10 typed, double-spaced pages (but this is only a rough guideline) short bond paper. You will have 10-15 minutes to present your case in class and will be responsible for generating discussion about your case. Case write-ups are due on March 18 for TTH class and March 17 for MWF class, although earlier submissions are welcome. Format: I. Description of the Issue and Identification of the Question This section should contain your description of the moral issue that interests you. This is where you should address the descriptive dimension we have been talking about in class. Identify the particular moral issue for which your case will serve as an examination. Then formulate a particular question that will guide your development of the case. So, for example, suppose that you decide that you will investigate the moral issue of consumerism in the global economy. You should state why this issue is an urgent and complex moral problem (for example, because of scarcity of certain natural resources, because of the inequitable distribution of economic opportunity around the world). You must also formulate a particular question that will shape and guide the story you develop. This is a question from which you can then write a story and create a situation of your issue. II. Character Background and Development of the Situation In this next section, you will have to develop the particular case as a response to the question you have identified. You will then proceed to develop characters and a story that leads the characters involved to respond to the question you have posed. You should tell the story so that the question the characters confront is, for them, a realistic question that might arise and something that makes sense given their background and family history. III. Identification of Sources for Discernment and Possible Courses of Action This is where you will engage the sources for discernment we have been discussing in class (human person, virtue, freedom, law, conscience, moral act, sin, double effect, sources of moral norms) - the sources of moral knowledge that factor into a decision as reasons for pursuing this or that course of action. You may use, but are not limited to, the readings you have done for this course. The identification of sources might take a simple or a complex form. You should use these sources to sort out the possible ways you might answer the question you have identified. It should be clear in this part of the case that the people (characters in the case) involved have come to realize that there are multiple courses of action they might pursue. Each possible course of action should be analyzed with respect to the sources identified. Remember that reason, scripture, tradition and experience (personal or communal) are all legitimate sources for discernment, so your characters might consider one or all of these sources as they think through their decision. IV. Determination of Judgment and Selection of a Course of Action Here you identify how the characters you have created resolve the issue in question. What do they do? Why do they act in this way? Were there some goods, values or principles that took precedence over others in their decision? Were the characters involved at odds with each other and did they come to different decisions (this is a very real possibly when we deal with complex moral problems). How did the various communities of which they were a part (family, group of friends, church, town) respond to their decision? This is where the narrative portion of the case ends. V. Evaluation of the Decision and Identification of Lingering Questions This section is intended to leave the case’s tentative resolution open-ended. There are always lingering questions or problems that emerge from the decisions we have made. Our choices always have effects on other individuals or communities that are very difficult to foresee much less control. In this final section, you should identify the questions or problems that arise after the characters you have presented come to a judgment about the problem they face. Part of being a created being with physical, mental and spiritual limits is that every moral choice we make, even if it is about a relatively minor matter or even if we are sure that we have made the right choice, remains in some way tragic. You should express your own judgment about how the characters acted and whether there were ongoing questions that the people reading or listening to the case should consider. Remember, because you are presenting this case, you need a basis from which to generate a discussion. You might identify the issues you take to be the ones most likely to cause problems in the future. You might judge that, while the characters you developed acted in one way given the resources at their disposal, given other experiences or social influences they might have acted in a different way. The point of this section is to express your concerns about this issue and your acknowledgement (if you wish) that there is more than one legitimate resolution to the issue. In this section, each of you in your pair should feel free to write a dissenting opinion, especially if you feel strongly that your pair’s judgment of the case is not right. You may present this diversity of judgment in the presentation, or the case write-up, or both, or neither. Grading Standard Your individual case will be graded based on the following factors:
Class presentation: 50% Written case: 50%. |
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