Fr Hughes' book is about method in moral theology, where there is much current confusion among Catholics, and among Christians generally; and at the same time it is about authority, since the central issue of method which divides theologians concerns the role which various kinds of authority the Bible, Christian tradition, the consensus of all believers, the individual conscience should play in their arguments. His own position is avowedly cognitivis: he holds that moral utterances can be true or false. And it is pluralist: to follow the theory of ethics he proposes will lead to a broad range of moral views.