#moral theology

[existentialcatholic]

The above quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., points out an alarming trend in human behavior: specifically, that matters of right and wrong have become a matter of majority rule. This phenomenon is natural. Psychological studies have shown that the existence of litter in an environment predicts the littering of other individuals. In a generation of AI use, students have increasingly used AI to plagiarize assignments and are more likely to do so when they know that other students are doing it. On the most extreme level, media portrayals of abortions as an option frequently needed and taken can influence the media consumer to agree that abortions should remain widely available.

Catholic theology defies the societal trend of morality becoming a decision of the majority. As Catholics, we maintain that moral absolutes exist and rely on these absolutes, as given to us in the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) and analyzed further in Church teachings. Moral absolutes specify “intrinsically evil acts” and point to what is right by indicating what actions are wrong. In this post, I will answer why moral absolutes are important for Catholic theology. I will also examine why some people reject the idea of moral absolutes, and why this rejection cannot be maintained consistently.

Why are moral absolutes important for Catholic morality and why do some people reject the idea of moral absolutes?

Catholic theology recognizes activity as “morally good when it attests to and expresses the voluntary ordering of the person to his ultimate end and the conformity of a concrete action with the human good as it is acknowledged in its truth by reason” (VS 72). This quote from Veritatis Splendor tells us several features of the Catholic understanding of morality. First, moral good is voluntary. Without the freedom to act, there is no morality. Second, moral good is aligned with a person’s ultimate end. In Catholicism, we understand this ultimate end to be union with G-d. Moral actions contribute to our journey toward this end. Third, moral good consists in concrete actions. In other words, morality is a lived experience and not just an intellectual exercise. Fourth, moral good exists in conformity with the value of reason. When we perform morally good actions, our reason and our will align in pursuit of the good. With a well-formed reason, doing the good makes sense.

In addition to recognizing, encouraging, and applauding morally good activity, Catholic theology recognizes and condemns morally bad activity through moral absolutes. Moral absolutes are one aspect of the Catholic moral framework that contribute to moral good. They provide negative definitions of the tenets of Catholic morality; that is, they tell us what is right by telling us what not to do in order to achieve the right and the good. Though negative, moral absolutes “allow human persons to keep themselves open to be fully the beings they are meant to be” (May, 162).

Moral Absolutes and Catholic Morality

May defines moral absolutes as “moral norms identifying certain types of action, which are possible objects of human choice, as always morally bad, and specifying these types of action without employing in their description any morally evaluative terms” (May, 142). They prohibit “acts which, per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object” (RP, 17). Moral absolutes are important for Catholic morality because all judgments require a standard, and moral absolutes provide a standard for the judgments of Catholic morality. Moreover, the absolutes of Catholic morality have a Divine source, which provides secure authority for its teachings.

Catholic theology has moral absolutes because moral absolutes protect and promote what is good. They do so because moral absolutes function as standards of how failure to achieve moral good looks. Like danger signs, they tell us which actions and spiritual “places” or states to avoid. According to May, “They remind us that some kinds of human choices and actions, although responsive to some aspects of human good, make us persons whose hearts are closed to the full range of human goods and to the persons in whom these goods are meant to exist” (May, 162).

Conscience relies on the existence of moral absolutes. One definition of conscience is “one’s personal awareness of basic moral principles or truths” (May, 59). This awareness, called synderesis in the medieval tradition, refers to “our habitual awareness of the first principles of practical reasoning and of morality” (May, 59). Synderesis requires that principles of practical reasoning and morality exist in the first place. However, another level of conscience exists which refers to “mode of self-awareness whereby we are aware of ourselves as moral beings, summoned to give to ourselves the dignity to which we are called as intelligent and free beings” (May, 60). On this level as well, which tradition has referred to as conscientia, we require moral absolutes. Moral absolutes benefit conscientia by showing the standard to which we are called. Avoid lying to others or harming them. Do not dishonor G-d or one’s neighbor.

On the Rejection of Moral Absolutes

People who reject moral absolutes may fall into the camp of teleological ethical theory, which includes proportionalism and consequentialism. The proportionalist would weigh the “good” and “bad” effects of a moral choice and judge as right any moral decision that the actor perceived as producing more “good” effects than “bad.” The consequentialist would judge an act as right that had the relatively “best” consequences, no matter how one reached those consequences. Both of these moral theologies are called “teleological” because proponents place all focus and emphasis on the end, or telos, of human action.

A charitable proposal for why people may reject moral absolutes is because they get lost in the details of moral situations. For instance, committing credit card fraud is wrong. However, the reasons that one commits it or the details of why someone makes the decision could lead someone to call the action right. One could easily identify as wrong someone who commits credit card fraud to buy the newest smartphone. Committing said fraud to feed oneself or one’s children is still wrong, but the proportionalist would argue that the good of feeding someone outweighs the wrong of credit card fraud. The consequentialist would argue that the good end justifies the evil means.

To look at it from a simpler point of view, people may reject moral absolutes because they want to rationalize actions that are wrong. For instance, I used to be pro-choice. I took a teological viewpoint and argued that allowing free access to abortion would produce the most beneficial consequences for those who were “in need” of abortion, be it due to financial, health, or relational reasons. As a pro-choicer, I argued erroneously that taking the life of an infant through abortion was a justifiable means to avoiding poverty, the potential negative health consequences of pregnancy, and the relational vulnerability of being a mother who had to take care of a newborn (especially for survivors of rape and incest). I rightly understood that extending permission to abort these pregnancies meant doing so for potentially all pregnancies, as well as all reasons to end those pregnancies. Even as the examples in my arguments did not necessarily require abortions, I knew that the emotional charge of the examples gave me the best chance at convincing someone to allow exceptions. As soon as I got someone to allow those exceptions, I would accuse the person of opposing abortion situationally, not on principle, and argue that there was no longer reason to restrict abortion on principle. I knew and know that abortion is wrong, but I went through this exercise in mental gymnastics to convince myself that it was excusable. Now, however, I know and acknowledge the constancy of moral absolutes.

Conclusion

As I stated above, moral absolutes are necessary for this framework of morality because absolutes give the judgments of Catholic morality their standard. As Canavan states, “if there are no absolutes, reasoning collapses into incoherence and yields no conclusions” (Canavan, 93). Without the standard of morality that the Decalogue provides, the claims of Catholic morality hold no more sway than the teachings of other ethical systems. The high standards set by Catholic morality, which we can only reach with the help of grace, would repel many from the ethical system. However, with the established moral absolutes that Catholic morality sets forward, the individual can value and strive to maintain the standards for behavior that the framework sets.

Moral absolutes help us understand our ultimate end of union with G-d in heaven. For one to achieve this union with our Creator, it stands to reason that one must exist in accordance with His plan. After all, the only way to become fit for union with Him is to become like Him. Recognizing the validity of moral absolutes is a vital part of living in accordance with G-d’s plan because appreciating and respecting His work in the universe involves acknowledging and following the laws that He put in place for its functioning. These laws are explained well in the Decalogue but spread out to further applications and specifications elsewhere in Church teaching.

-Esther

---

Canavan, Francis. “A Horror of the Absolute.” The Human Life Review 23, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 91-97.

John Paul II. Reconciliation and Penance. December 2, 1984. The Holy See. https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_02121984_reconciliatio-et-paenitentia.html.

John Paul II. Veritatis Splendor. August 6, 1993. The Holy See. https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html.

May, William E. An Introduction to Moral Theology. Second edition. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1994.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINT OF THE DAY (August 1)

St. Alphonsus Liguori is a doctor of the Church who is widely known for his contribution to moral theology and his great kindness.

He founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, known as the Redemptorists, on 9 November 1732.

He was born on 27 September 1696 in Naples to a well-respected family and was the oldest of 7 children.

His father was Don Joseph de' Liguori, a naval officer and Captain of the Royal Galleys, and his mother came from Spanish descent.

He was very intelligent, even as a young boy. As a boy of great aptitude, he picked up many things very quickly.

St. Alphonsus did not attend school; rather, he was taught by tutors at home where his father kept a watchful eye.

Moreover, he practiced the harpsichord for 3 hours a day at the heed of his father and soon became a virtuoso at the age of 13.

For recreation, he was an equestrian, fencer, and card player. As he grew into a young man, he developed an inclination for opera.

He was much more interested in listening to the music than watching the performance.

St. Alphonsus would often take his spectacles off, which aided his myopic eyes, in order to merely listen.

While theatre in Naples was in a relatively good state, the young saint developed an ascetic aversion to perhaps what he viewed as gaudy displays. He had strongly refused participation in a parlor play.

At the age of 16, he became a doctor of civil law on 21 January 1713, though by law, 20 was the set age.

After studying for the bar, he practiced law at the age of 19 in the courts. It is said in his 8 years as a lawyer, he never lost a case.

However, he resigned from a brilliant career as a lawyer in 1723 when he lost a case because he overlooked a small but important piece of evidence.

His resignation, however, proved profitable for the Church. He entered the seminary and ordained three years later in 1726.

He soon became a sought-after preacher and confessor in Naples. His sermons were simple and well organized that they appealed to all people, both learned and unlearned.

However, his time as a diocesan priest was short-lived: in 1732, he went to Scala and founded the Redemptorists, a preaching order.

He was a great moral theologian and his famous book, “Moral Theology,” was published in 1748.

Thirty years later, he was appointed bishop and retired in 1775. He died on 1 August 1787.

He was beatified by Pope Pius VII on 15 September 1816. He was canonized by Pope Gregory XVI on 26 May 1839.

He was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius IX in 1871.

[flagellant]

yeah we might be brothers in christ but so were cain and abel so shut the fuck up before i decide to find a rock about it

[apesoformythoughts]

“For [David] DeCosse and many others, the excitement of the present moment consists in the growing ecclesiastical strength of the dominant academic postconciliar conscience-centered Catholic moral theology, in which ‘conscience’ is a place of profound encounter with the other, grounded in a pluralistic sense of historically contextualized human personhood and in respect for the laity's ability, guided by the Spirit, to get things right even when this necessitates changing the church's consistent magisterial teaching.”

— Matthew Levering: “Introduction”, The Abuse of Conscience

[vulnerasti-cor-meum]

so like is the state of moral theology at this point that on one side is Rahner and Fuchs’s school in Europe and McCormick, Keenan, and maybe Gaillardetz in the US - and on the other side is like, Grisez (US) and Finnis (Europe). do people even take Grisez seriously, because my impression is that scholars [read: the jesuits] dont like him very much and his theology seems (as I can gather from secondary sources eg. lawler & salzman (I know, I know) and the journal Theological Studies) to be very defensive of status quo, if not even stricter. also I’m clearly showing my American penchant for pitting two sides against each other. also ig I wouldn’t have considered Keenan a “progressive” so much as simply a good historically-conscious scholar (there’s a new book of his that’s out on the history of catholic ethics) but he did just contribute a (rather saccharine) article to America Media’s outreach.faith so like. okay. if youre writing for America’s Outreach site you’ve ipso facto outed your views lol. 

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

Okay I want some people to try this:

Using only science, math, logic, reason, etc, explain to me why murder is wrong. No theology, morality, philosophy, emotions, feelings, etc. Only cold hard facts. Explain why murder is wrong.

I am trying to see something here.

[pratchettquotes]

"You could have helped people," said Brutha. "But all you did was stamp around and roar and try to make people afraid. Like...like a man hitting a donkey with a stick. But people like Vorbis made the stick so good, that's all the donkey ends up believing in."

"That could use some work, as a parable," said Om sourly.

"This is real life I'm talking about!"

"It's not my fault if people misuse the--"

"It is! It has to be! If you muck up people's minds just because you want them to believe in you, what they do is all your fault!"

Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

[jcalexandrewrites]

What people think the Bible says: Follow all these rules or burn in hell! What the Bible actually says: You can't follow all these rules, so trust in Jesus!

from Christian Nerds Unite Podcast on Facebook.

[cinnamon-dragon]

So… Nick Marini plays Ayden, who is a mortal incarnation of the Dawnfather but at times plays him kind of like he’s Dawnfathers… Jesus, essentially? Like a son of himself, a god born mortal but also a god?

[catsconflictscopicsandchamomile]

been seeing lots of Chuck-As-Demiurge/"Flawed God" spn meta and it made me realize that my understanding of Chuck is???? not common????

so my hc/understanding was the Chuck Shurley was/is a human prophet who was possessed by God. First in the usual prophetic sense, then later as a "word of God" type prophet, like MAJOR biblical-level power, in order to pass God's direct thoughts/opinions on to Sam and Dean- and then lastly, God took Chuck as a full-time vessel.

so re: this, I kind of wondered if in the finale, the guy Sam and Dean left scrabbling on the ground was... just human Chuck. is it less meaningful? eh, kinda. does it make the finale make more sense? ...yup.

But most importantly. Picture this. You're a writer, creating OCs that you whump/angst/generally torture the CRAP out of, somehow this becomes an incredibly popular book series, you're touring, you're making BANK. Then later, you MEET YOUR OCS, they are REAL, and apparently so is magic, and the "prophet of God" thing that you thought was a writing/inspo device you'd made up is real, and God is talking to you. so uh, what the fuck. then everything goes black

and when you fade back in, its YEARS later, you're beat up and lying in the dirt, and yoUR OCS ARE STANDING OVER YOU, YELLING AT YOU FOR MAKING THEIR LIVES MISERABLE

THE GUYS *YOU THOUGHT WERE YOUR WHUMP OCS*

TELL YOU THAT YOU ARE MORTAL AND WILL INEVITABLY AGE AND DIE LIKE EVERY OTHER HUMAN

AND THEN DRIVE AWAY IN THE CAR THAT *YOU HAD THOUGHT YOU MADE UP*

all before you can get out so much as a coherent "what the fuck is going on"

like I'm sorry. conceptually that's hilarious

the whump OC you made when you were 25: "YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE A NORMAL BORING LIFE AND AGE AND GET OLD AND DIE! FUCK YOU GOODBYE FOREVER"

you:

[apilgrimpassingby]

(If you're not familiar with any of them, read this post).

Put your reasoning in the tags!

[saint-ambrosef]

young devout Catholics: A lot of laity don't really seem to know or understand a lot of core Church teachings, so it's important that we clearly teach and live it :) boomer hippie Catholics: Wow, so arrogant and unkind. Extremist millennials like you will be the death of the Church. young devout Catholics: ??????????

[vulnerasti-cor-meum]

Looked at merely from the outside, man appears to be "uneven and changeable," many-sided and self-contradictory. But to judge him thus superficially is to judge him unjustly. Go a little deeper, and under his seeming restlessness and shiftiness you will come upon accuracy of thought, uprightness of intention, and, possibly, fixity of aim. But it needs a keen-sighted observer to see into those innermost recesses of human nature where the true man, the man worthy of all respect, for the simple reason that he is a man, is to be found. By their speech and action most men show themselves not only fickle, but strangely weak. Yet, from the point of view of the laws a man is seen to break, a man's weakness is one thing; from the point of view of his own conscience, it may be quite another. The narrow-minded are inexorable judges, for they see no farther than the letter of the law, the broader-minded try to look at a fault through the conscience of him who did it. They reproach him with it, but only as a merciful God looks at it, and always light upon extenuating circumstances to make their judgment more indulgent. 

Moreover, there are many ways of studying suffering and of realizing what it is-----especially interior suffering, pain of mind or heart. There is much, then, for the kind man's mind to do. 

* * * 

Being, too, so eager to find excuses for ourselves, how is it that we are so ready to accuse other people? We may disapprove of an action, and may say so, but we need not judge and condemn the doer. If in your heart you think ill of your brother, your protestations of attachment to him are essentially false, and your words must needs lack that accent of sympathy which truth alone can impart. If, on the contrary, you think the best of all, and trustful of the uprightness of the intentions of others, show yourself indulgent to their weaknesses, you have only to follow the bent of your feelings to show unmistakable kindness in word and in action.

On Kindness, J. Guibert (1911)

[kazoosandfannypacks]

Hihi, I dont mean for this to come off weird at all but as a follower of Jesus are you open to or against being prayed for by people of other religions? I'm just curious as to your take on it, have a lovely day!!! 💜

Hello friend! Not a weird question at all.

Personally, I don't believe that praying to a god who, based on my knowledge of how the world works, isn't real has any bearing on my life or yours, positively or negatively, just as background context. That's not being said to be mean, but because I know some Christians might think it makes some negative spiritual impact, but I don't think it does.

And on the flipside? To be cared about enough by someone that they take the time to ask the most important being in their universe for something on my behalf? Whether or not their god is real, I know that their love for me is.

So no, I don't have any problem with it. 🤍

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

"Humans are totally depraved" "Humans are totally good" What if humans are inherently moral? It would explain why people are obsessed with this question. What do we truly desire if not to know and possess The Good? To have the definition of "good" and "bad".

What if this desire leads to us defining it on our own terms? What if my definition of "good" and "bad" is different from your definition of "good" and "bad"? What if there is no "good" or "bad"? What if we are horrifyingly free - abandoned by god - to define "good" and "bad"?

What if this redefining of good and evil on our own terms is the origin of all human failure?

[buzzdixonwriter]

Hedonism Makes You Smarter

Every value we hold dear, every fact we consider indisputable, every thread of irreducible logic we base our reality on can be traced back to something the earliest one-celled microbes realized without even possessing a brain to process it: 

Life = Good Death = Bad

At some point in the unimaginably distant past, some microbe mutated to the point where a certain type of stimuli prompted it to either move away or move closer.

And thus ethics / logic / morality / philosophy / theology was born.

The microbes capable of moving away from threats and towards nutriment stood a far better chance of surviving and reproducing than those that did not.

Very quickly, this rudimentary value system became permanently embedded in all life on the planet.

Any organism not embracing this principle quickly gets consumed by other life or wiped out by natural forces.

As we evolved into multi-cellular organisms, some of those cells develop to specialize and capitalize on the “flee death / find food” paradigm.  Every new mutation got weighed against this relentless evolutionary razor. Any mutation that didn’t help tended to get eradicated ASAP while those that helped got reinforced.

Sure, some mutations appear useless but in their cases so long as they didn’t impair pro-survival traits.

Eventually some of these specialized cells specialized even further into organs we now call brains.

And within these brains some sort of…abstract (for lack of a better word) consciousness…

Consciousness is oft referred to by philosophers and scientists as “the hard problem.”

And not in the least because – as with pornography – everybody knows it when they see it, but no one can adequately define it.

Some call it the spirit, some call it the soul, some call it psyche, some call it mind, some call it being, some call it identity.

Some claim body and mind are one, yet it is absolutely possible to destroy most of a human’s brain – and by that, who they ever actually are -- while keeping the body alive and healthy.

Others claim body and mind are separate and that in some yet to come golden age we can transfer our minds from these rotting flesh carcasses to perfect, immutable silicon bodies…

…only they not only lack any mechanism for doing so, they can’t adequately define what it is they’ll be transferring.

This is not a trivial matter!

This is of vital importance Right Now to all of us, especially those who choose not to think of it at all.  If we are nothing but a batch pf data points in a meat computer, then our whole sense of unique and discrete individual identity evaporates.  Any transfer of data points does nothing for the original organism…or its accompanying soul / identity / mind / consciousness.

This is why I think AI will never acquire bona fide self-awareness and consciousness.  Whatever grants us possession of such an abstract concept does not exist without feeling.

And these feelings came from the first protozoa to flee death and embrace life.

What we feel in e otions originates in what we feel physically.

We feel pain, we seek to avoid it.  We feel hunger, we seek food.  These basic sensations steer us to live, and not just live but to live abundantly, to avoid being prey to predators, to avoid conditions that would physically impair us, to seek out what prolongs and enriches our existence (again, not in a monetary sense).

We can see even plants doing this without benefit of anything recognizable as a brain or identity.  They grow towards beneficial stimuli and away from harmful ones.

Once brains arrived on the scene, organisms may develop more nuanced means os assessing threat / benefit ratios.  Already wildly successful on the most basic levels found in tardigrades and worms, when brains obtained the most rudimentary means of symbolizing the external world and passing that information along to other brains / minds, the race for genuine consciousness kicked into high gear. 

At some point this symbolic version of the world began to reside full time in an abstract realm we refer to as consciousness. 

Within the physical confines or our brains we conjure up literally an infinite number of symbolic realizations of what appears to be our “real” world – or at least our interpretations of the real world.

I hold this phenomenon to be something vastly different from AI’s generative process where it admittedly guesses what the next numbers / letters / words / pixels in a sequence should be.  AI is nothing but a flow chart -- a sophisticated, intricate, and blindingly fast flow chart, but a flow chart nonetheless.

Human consciousness is far more organic -- in every sense of the word.  It places values on symbolic items representing the (supposedly) external world around us, values that derive from emotions, not a predetermined logic chain.

You see, in order to create the ethical systems we live by, in order to create the cultures we inhabit, in order to experience genuine consciousness and self-awareness, we must feel first.

This is anathema to both the “fnck your feelings” crowd and to materialists who insist we need to process everything we experience purely rationally like…well…AI programs.

Nothing could be further from the truth, of course.

To differentiate between life and death, being and non-being, all higher functioning brains develop an emotional bond towards life and a hgealthy antipathy towards death.

The mix may vary from culture to culture -- one certainly doesn’t expect a 15th century samurai to share the exact values as a 21st century valley girl -- but they share a common set of core values that can be related to and understood by each other regardless of their respective background.

Because they feel emotionally --  both stoic samurai and histrionic teen -- they create a consciousness that can experience the external world and relate that experience both to themselves and others.

By comparison, when AI correctly predicts "the sun will rise tomorrow" does it actually understand what those terms mean or only that when they appear they usually do so in a certain sequence?  This is the Chinese room paradox:  Would somebody with a set of pictograms but no way of knowing what those pictograms actually symbolized actually understand Chinese if they figured out by trial and era that certain patterns of pictograms preceded another pattern?

 © Buzz Dixon