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Situation ethics does admit to one absolute: love. In any moral decision, Fletcher argues, the key question is: "What does God's love demand of me in this particular situation?" By stressing the demand of love, situation ethics is at once more lenient and more stringent than law morality. It can command hard decisions as well as easy ones—acceptance of martyrdom, for example, when law morality would permit surrender or compromise. It can also say that certain acts are immoral which law ethics would consider tech nically valid. To the situationist, says Fletcher, "even a transient sex liaison, if it has the elements of caring, of tenderness and selfless concern, is better than a mechanical, egocentric exercise of conjugal 'rights' between two uncaring or antagonistic marriage partners."
Playing the Game. Situation ethics has been sharply attacked by Protestants and Roman Catholics alike. President David Hubbard of California's Fuller Theological Seminary complains that "we can talk ourselves into a lot of things in the name of love unless we have some ground rules to play the game." Princeton's Paul Ramsey argues that traditional Christian moral principles are authoritative and that "how we do what we do is as important as our goals." In 1956 the Holy Office condemned situation ethics for Roman Catholics as an illicit brand of subjectivism. Attacking Fletcher's presentation in Commonweal, Dominican Theologian Herbert McCabe argues that the new morality has no criteria to distinguish love from what is really self-interest. "How do you know that what you are doing is loving?" he asks. McCabe also charges that situationism fails to consider that man is always acting within a community that cannot exist without law.
Fletcher argues that his approach is applicable to social policy and is no different from that of Jesus, who rejected the complexities of Jewish law and reduced his own ethical teaching to a twofold command to love God and neighbor. Situationism, claims Fletcher, is also implicit in the thought of such formative Christian thinkers as Augustine ("Love with care and then what you will, do") and Luther, who stated: "When the law impels one against love, it should no longer be a law." He feels that situationism, new or old, "is a reflection in the field of ethics of the pragmatic, open-minded thinking which is characteristic of an age of experimentation, inquiry and question-asking.