Holy Hill Cross
Veritatis Splendor
The Splendor of
Truth
www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals
Ioannes Paulus PP. II
(emphasis by Holy Hill Cross)
BLESSING
Venerable
Brothers in the Episcopate,
Health
and the Apostolic Blessing!
The splendor of truth shines forth
in all the works of the Creator and, in a special way, in man, created in the
image and likeness of God
(cf. Gen
INTRODUCTION
Jesus Christ, the True
Light that enlightens everyone
1. Called to salvation through faith in Jesus
Christ, "the true light that enlightens everyone" (Jn 1:9), people become "light in
the Lord" and "children of light" (Eph 5:8), and are made holy by
"obedience to the truth" (1 Pet
This obedience is not
always easy. As a result of that
mysterious original sin, committed at the prompting of Satan, the one who is
"a liar and the father of lies" (Jn 8:44), man is constantly tempted to turn his gaze away from
the living and true God in order to direct it towards idols (cf. 1 Thes 1:9),
exchanging "the truth about God for a lie" (Rom 1:25). Man's capacity
to know the truth is also darkened, and his will to submit to it is weakened.
Thus, giving himself over to relativism and scepticism (cf. Jn
But no darkness of error or
of sin can totally take away from man the light of God the Creator. In the
depths of his heart there always remains a yearning for absolute truth and a
thirst to attain full knowledge of it. This is eloquently proved by man's
tireless search for knowledge in all fields. It is proved even more by his
search for the meaning of life. The
development of science and technology, this splendid testimony of the human
capacity for understanding and for perseverance, does not free humanity from
the obligation to ask the ultimate religious questions. Rather, it spurs us on
to face the most painful and decisive of
struggles, those of the heart and of the moral conscience.
2. No one can escape from the fundamental
questions: What must I do? How do I
distinguish good from evil? The answer is only
possible thanks to the splendor of the truth which shines forth deep within the
human spirit, as the Psalmist bears witness: "There are many who say:
'O that we might see some good! Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord'
" (Ps
4:6).
The light of God's face shines in all its beauty on
the countenance of Jesus Christ, "the
image of the invisible God" (
Jesus Christ, the
"light of the nations", shines upon the face of his Church, which he
sends forth to the whole world to proclaim the Gospel to every creature (cf. Mk
3. The
Church's Pastors, in communion with the Successor of Peter, are close to the
faithful in this effort; they guide and accompany them by their authoritative
teaching, finding ever new ways of speaking with love and mercy not only to
believers but to all people of good will. The Second Vatican Council remains an
extraordinary witness of this attitude on the part of the Church which, as an
"expert in humanity",5 places herself at the service of every individual and of the whole
world.6
The Church knows that the
issue of morality is one which deeply touches every person; it involves all
people, even those who do not know Christ and his Gospel or God himself. She
knows that it is precisely on the path
of the moral life that the way of salvation is open to all. The Second
Vatican Council clearly recalled this when it stated that "those who without any fault do not know anything about Christ or
his Church, yet who search for God with a sincere heart and under the influence
of grace, try to put into effect the will of God as known to them through the
dictate of conscience... can obtain eternal salvation". The Council added:
"Nor does divine
4. At
all times, but particularly in the last two centuries, the Popes, whether
individually or together with the
Today, however, it seems necessary to reflect on the whole of the
Church's moral teaching, with the precise goal of recalling certain
fundamental truths of Catholic doctrine which, in the present circumstances,
risk being distorted or denied. In fact, a new situation has come
about within the Christian community
itself, which has experienced the spread of numerous doubts and
objections of a human and psychological, social and cultural, religious and
even properly theological nature, with regard to the Church's moral teachings.
It is no longer a matter of limited
and occasional dissent, but of an overall and systematic calling into question
of traditional moral doctrine, on the
basis of certain anthropological and ethical presuppositions. At the root of these presuppositions is the
more or less obvious influence of currents of thought which end by detaching
human freedom from its essential and constitutive relationship to truth. Thus the traditional doctrine regarding the natural
law, and the universality and the permanent validity of its precepts, is
rejected; certain of the Church's moral teachings are found simply
unacceptable; and the Magisterium itself is considered capable of intervening
in matters of morality only in order to "exhort consciences" and to
"propose values", in the light of which each individual will
independently make his or her decisions and life choices.
In particular, note should
be taken of the lack of
harmony
between the traditional response of the Church and certain theological
positions, encountered even in
Seminaries and in Faculties of Theology, with
regard to questions of the greatest importance for the Church and for
the life of faith of Christians, as well as for the life of society itself. In particular, the question is asked: do
the commandments of God, which are written on the human heart and are part of
the Covenant, really have the capacity to clarify the
daily decisions of individuals and entire societies? Is it possible to obey God
and thus love God and neighbour, without respecting these commandments in all
circumstances?
Also, an opinion is
frequently heard which questions the intrinsic and unbreakable bond between
faith and morality, as if membership in the Church and her internal unity were
to be decided on the basis of faith alone, while in the sphere of morality a
pluralism of opinions and of kinds of behaviour could be tolerated, these being
left to the judgment of the individual subjective conscience or to the
diversity of social and cultural contexts.
5. Given
these circumstances, which still exist, I came to the decision as I announced
in my Apostolic Letter Spiritus
Domini, issued on 1 August 1987 on the second centenary of the death of
Saint Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori to write an Encyclical with the aim of
treating "more fully and more deeply the issues regarding the very
foundations of moral theology",9 foundations which are being undermined by certain present day
tendencies.
I address myself to you,
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate, who share with me the responsibility of
safeguarding "sound teaching" (2 Tim 4:3), with the intention of clearly setting forth certain aspects of doctrine which are of crucial
importance in facing what is certainly a genuine crisis, since the
difficulties which it engenders have most serious implications for the moral
life of the faithful and for communion in the Church, as well as for a just and
fraternal social life.
If this Encyclical, so long
awaited, is being published only now, one of the reasons is that it seemed
fitting for it to be preceded by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which
contains a complete and systematic exposition of Christian moral teaching. The
Catechism presents the moral life of believers in its fundamental elements and
in its many aspects as the life of the "children of God": "Recognizing
in the faith their new dignity, Christians are called to lead henceforth a life
'worthy of the Gospel of Christ' (Phil
CHAPTER I
"TEACHER, WHAT GOOD MUST I DO...? " (Mt 19:16)
Christ and the Answer to the Question about Morality
"Someone came to him..."
(Mt 19:16)
6. The dialogue of Jesus with the rich young
man, related in the nineteenth chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel, can
serve as a useful guide for listening
once more in a lively and direct way to his moral teaching: "Then
someone came to him and said, 'Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal
life?' And he said to him, 'Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only
one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments. 'He
said to him, 'Which ones?' And Jesus said, 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You
shall not bear false witness; Honour your father and mother; also, You shall
love your neighbour as yourself.' The young man said to him, 'I have kept all
these; what do I still lack?' Jesus said to him, 'If you wish to be perfect,
go, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have
treasure in heaven; then come, follow me' " (Mt 19:16-21).13
7. "Then
someone came to him...". In the young man,
whom Matthew's Gospel does not name, we can recognize every person who,
consciously or not, approaches Christ
the Redeemer of man and questions him about morality. For the young man, the question is not so much about rules
to be followed, but about the full
meaning of life. This is in fact the aspiration at the heart of every human
decision and action, the quiet searching and interior prompting which sets
freedom in motion. This question is ultimately an appeal to the absolute Good
which attracts us and beckons us; it is the echo of a call from God who is the
origin and goal of man's life. Precisely in this perspective the Second Vatican
Council called for a renewal of moral theology, so that its teaching would
display the lofty vocation which the faithful have received in Christ,14 the only response fully capable of satisfying the desire of the
human heart.
In order to make this
"encounter" with Christ possible, God willed his Church. Indeed, the
Church "wishes to serve this single end:
that each person may be able to find Christ, in order that Christ may walk with
each person the path of life".15
"Teacher, what good
must I do to have eternal life?" (Mt 19:16)
8. The
question which the rich young man puts to Jesus of Nazareth is one which rises
from the depths of his heart. It is an
essential and unavoidable question for the life of every man, for it is
about the moral good which must be done, and about eternal life. The young man
senses that there is a connection between moral good and the fulfillment of his
own destiny. He is a devout Israelite, raised as it were in the shadow of the
Law of the Lord. If he asks Jesus this question, we can presume that it is not
because he is ignorant of the answer contained in the Law. It is more likely
that the attractiveness of the person of Jesus had prompted within him new
questions about moral good. He feels the need to draw near to the One who had
begun his preaching with this new and decisive proclamation: "The
time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in
the Gospel" (Mk 1:15).
People
today need to turn to Christ once again in order to receive from him the answer
to their questions about what is good and what is evil. Christ is the Teacher, the Risen One who has life in
himself and who is always present in his Church and in the world. It is he who opens up to the faithful the book of the Scriptures
and, by fully revealing the Father's will, teaches the truth about moral
action. At the source and summit of the economy of salvation, as the Alpha and
the Omega of human history (cf. Rev
1:8; 21:6;
If we therefore wish to go
to the heart of the Gospel's moral teaching and grasp its profound and
unchanging content, we must carefully inquire into the meaning of the question
asked by the rich young man in the Gospel and, even more, the meaning of Jesus'
reply, allowing ourselves to be guided by him. Jesus, as a patient and
sensitive teacher, answers the young man by taking him, as it were, by the
hand, and leading him step by step to the full truth.
"There is only one
who is good" (Mt
9. Jesus
says: "Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good.
If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments" (Mt
Before answering the
question, Jesus wishes the young man to have a clear idea of why he asked his
question. The "Good Teacher" points out to him and to all of us
that the answer to the question, "What good must I do to have eternal
life?" can only be found by turning one's mind and heart to the
"One" who is good: "No
one is good but God alone" (Mk
10:18; cf. Lk 18:19). Only God can answer the question about what
is good, because he is the Good itself.
To
ask about the good, in fact, ultimately means to turn towards God, the
fullness of goodness. Jesus shows that the young man's question is really a religious question, and that the
goodness that attracts and at the same time obliges man has its source in God,
and indeed is God himself. God alone is worthy of being loved "with all
one's heart, and with all one's soul, and with all one's mind" (Mt
10. The
Church, instructed by the Teacher's words, believes that man, made in the image
of the Creator, redeemed by the Blood of Christ and made holy by the presence
of the Holy Spirit, has as the ultimate
purpose of his life to live "for the praise of God's glory" (cf.
Eph 1:12), striving to make
each of his actions reflect the splendour of that glory. "Know,
then, O beautiful soul, that you are the
image of God", writes Saint Ambrose. "Know that you are the glory of God (1 Cor 11:7). Hear how you are his glory. The Prophet says: Your knowledge has become too wonderful for
me (cf. Ps. 138:6,
Vulg.). That is to say, in my work your majesty has become more wonderful; in
the counsels of men your wisdom is exalted. When I consider myself, such as I
am known to you in my secret thoughts and deepest emotions, the mysteries of
your knowledge are disclosed to me. Know then, O man, your greatness, and be
vigilant".17
What man is and what he
must do becomes clear as soon as God reveals himself. The Decalogue is based on these words: "I am
the Lord your God, who brought you out of the
The
moral life presents itself as the response due to the many gratuitous initiatives taken by God out of love for
man. It is a response of love, according to the statement made in Deuteronomy
about the fundamental commandment: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is
one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with
all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you
this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your
children" (Dt 6:4-7). Thus the moral life, caught up in the
gratuitousness of God's love, is called to reflect his glory: "For
the one who loves God it is enough to be pleasing to the One whom he loves: for
no greater reward should be sought than love itself; charity in fact is of God
in such a way that God himself is charity".18
11. The statement that "There is only one
who is good" thus brings us back to the "first tablet" of the
commandments, which calls us to acknowledge God as the one Lord of all and to
worship him alone for his infinite holiness (cf. Ex 20:2-11). The
good is belonging to God, obeying him, walking humbly with him in doing
justice and in loving kindness (cf.Mic
6:8). Acknowledging the Lord as God is the very core, the heart of the Law, from
which the particular precepts flow and towards which they are ordered. In the
morality of the commandments the fact that the people of
But if God alone is the Good, no human effort, not
even the most rigorous observance of the commandments, succeeds in
"fulfilling" the Law,
that is, acknowledging the Lord as God and rendering him the worship due to him
alone (cf. Mt 4:10). This
"fulfilment" can come only from a gift of God: the offer of a share in the divine Goodness revealed
and communicated in Jesus, the one whom the rich young man addresses with the
words "Good Teacher" (Mk
10:17; Lk 18:18). What the young man now perhaps only dimly perceives will in
the end be fully revealed by Jesus himself in the invitation: "Come,
follow me" (Mt
"If you wish to
enter into life, keep the commandments" (Mt
12. Only God can answer the question about the
good, because he is the Good. But God has already given an answer to this
question: he did so by creating man
and ordering him with wisdom and love to his final end, through the law
which is inscribed in his heart (cf. Rom
2:15), the "natural law". The latter "is nothing other than
the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what
must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man
at creation".19 He
also did so in the history of Israel, particularly
in the "ten words", the commandments
of Sinai, whereby he brought into existence the people of the Covenant
(cf. Ex 24) and called them to
be his "own possession among all peoples", "a holy nation"
(Ex 19:5-6), which would
radiate his holiness to all peoples (cf. Wis
18:4; Ez 20:41). The gift of the
Decalogue was a promise and sign of the New
Covenant, in which the law would be written in a new and definitive way
upon the human heart (cf. Jer
31:31-34), replacing the law of sin which had disfigured that heart (cf. Jer
17:1). In those days, "a new heart" would be given,
for in it would dwell "a new spirit", the Spirit of God (cf. Ez
36:24-28).20
Consequently, after making
the important clarification: "There is only one who is good", Jesus
tells the young man: "If you wish to enter into life,
keep the commandments" (Mt
13.
Jesus' answer is not enough for the young man, who continues by asking the
Teacher about the commandments which must be kept: "He said to him, 'Which
ones?' " (Mt
19:18). He asks what he must do in life in order to show that he acknowledges
God's holiness. After directing the young man's gaze towards God, Jesus reminds
him of the commandments of the Decalogue regarding one's neighbour: "Jesus
said: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not bear false
witness; Honour your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbour as
yourself' " (Mt 19:18-19).
From the context of the
conversation, and especially from a comparison of Matthew's text with the
parallel passages in Mark and Luke, it is clear that Jesus does not intend to
list each and every one of the commandments required in order to "enter
into life", but rather wishes to draw the young man's attention to the "centrality" of the Decalogue with
regard to every other precept, inasmuch as it is the interpretation of what the
words "I am the Lord your God" mean for man. Nevertheless we cannot
fail to notice which commandments of the Law the Lord recalls to the young man.
They are some of the commandments belonging to the so-called "second tablet"
of the Decalogue, the summary (cf. Rom
13: 8-10) and foundation of which is the
commandment of love of neighbour: "You shall love your neighbour as
yourself" (Mt 19:19; cf. Mk 12:31). In this commandment we
find a precise expression of the
singular dignity of the human person, "the only creature that God
has wanted for its own sake".21 The different commandments of the Decalogue are really only so
many reflections of the one commandment about the good of the person, at the
level of the many different goods which characterize his identity as a
spiritual and bodily being in relationship with God, with his neighbour and
with the material world. As we read in
the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "the
Ten Commandments are part of God's Revelation. At the same time, they teach us man's
true humanity. They shed light on the essential duties, and so indirectly on
the fundamental rights, inherent in the nature of the human person".22
The commandments of which
Jesus reminds the young man are meant to safeguard the good of the person, the image of God, by protecting his goods. "You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You
shall not bear false witness" are moral rules formulated in terms of
prohibitions. These negative precepts express with particular force the ever
urgent need to protect human life, the communion of persons in marriage,
private property, truthfulness and people's good name.
The commandments thus represent
the basic condition for love of neighbour; at the same time they are the proof
of that love. They are the first
necessary step on the journey towards freedom, its starting-point. "The beginning of freedom",
14. This
certainly does not mean that Christ wishes to put the love of neighbour higher
than, or even to set it apart from, the love of God. This is evident from his
conversation with the teacher of the Law, who asked him a question very much like the one asked by the
young man. Jesus refers him to the two
commandments of love of God and love of neighbour (cf. Lk
These two commandments, on
which "depend all the Law and the Prophets" (Mt
Both the Old and the New Testaments explicitly
affirm that without love of neighbour,
made concrete in keeping the commandments, genuine love for God is not possible.
15. In
the "Sermon on the Mount", the magna
charta of Gospel morality,24 Jesus says: "Do not think that I have
come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have come not to abolish them but
to fulfil them" (Mt
Jesus
brings God's commandments to fulfilment, particularly
the commandment of love of neighbour, by
interiorizing their demands and by bringing out their fullest meaning. Love
of neighbour springs from a loving
heart which, precisely because it loves, is ready to live out the loftiest challenges. Jesus
shows that the commandments must not be understood as a minimum limit not to be
gone beyond, but rather as a path involving a moral and spiritual journey
towards perfection, at the heart of which is love (cf. Col 3:14). Thus the
commandment "You shall not murder" becomes a call to an attentive
love which protects and promotes the life of one's neighbour. The precept
prohibiting adultery becomes an invitation to a pure way of looking at others,
capable of respecting the spousal meaning of the body: "You have heard
that it was said to the men of old, 'You
shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment'. But I say to you that every one who
is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment... You have heard that it
was said, 'You shall not commit
adultery'. But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman
lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt
"If you wish to be
perfect" (Mt
16. The
answer he receives about the commandments does not satisfy the young man, who
asks Jesus a further question. "I have kept all these; what do I still lack?" (Mt 19:20). It is not easy to say with a clear conscience
"I have kept all these", if one has any understanding of the real
meaning of the demands contained in God's Law.
And yet, even though he is able to make this reply, even though he has
followed the moral ideal seriously and generously from childhood, the rich
young man knows that he is still far from the goal: before the person of Jesus
he realizes that he is still lacking something. It is his awareness of this
insufficiency that Jesus addresses in his final answer. Conscious of the young man's yearning for something
greater, which would transcend a legalistic interpretation of the commandments,
the Good Teacher invites him to enter upon the path of perfection: "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell
your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven; then come, follow me" (Mt
19:21).
Like the earlier part of
Jesus' answer, this part too must be
read and interpreted in the context of the whole moral message of the Gospel,
and in particular in the context of the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes
(cf. Mt 5:3-12), the first of
which is precisely the Beatitude of the poor, the "poor in spirit" as
Saint Matthew makes clear (Mt
5:3), the humble. In this sense it can be said that the Beatitudes are also
relevant to the answer given by Jesus to the young man's question: "What
good must I do to have eternal life? ". Indeed,
each of the Beatitudes promises, from a particular viewpoint, that very
"good" which opens man up to eternal life, and indeed is eternal
life.
The
Beatitudes are not specifically concerned
with certain particular rules of behaviour. Rather, they speak of basic
attitudes and dispositions in life and therefore they do not coincide exactly with the commandments. On the other
hand, there is no separation or
opposition between the Beatitudes and the commandments: both refer to
the good, to eternal life. The Sermon on the Mount begins with the proclamation
of the Beatitudes, but also refers to the commandments (cf. Mt
17. We
do not know how clearly the young man in the Gospel understood the profound and
challenging import of Jesus' first reply: "If you wish to enter into life,
keep the commandments". But it is certain that the young man's commitment
to respect all the moral demands of the commandments represents the absolutely
essential ground in which the desire for perfection can take root and mature,
the desire, that is, for the meaning of the commandments to be completely
fulfilled in following Christ. Jesus'
conversation with the young man helps us to grasp the conditions for the moral growth of man, who has been called to
perfection: the young man, having observed all the commandments, shows
that he is incapable of taking the next step by himself
alone. To do so requires mature human freedom
("If you wish to be perfect") and God's gift of grace ("Come,
follow me").
Perfection demands that
maturity in self-giving is to which human freedom is called. Jesus points out to the young man that the
commandments are the first and indispensable condition for having eternal life;
on the other hand, for the young man to give up all he possesses and to follow the Lord is presented as an
invitation: "If you wish...". These words of Jesus reveal the particular dynamic
of freedom's growth towards maturity, and at the same time they bear witness to the fundamental
relationship between freedom and divine law. Human freedom and God's law
are not in opposition; on the contrary, they appeal one to the other. The follower of Christ
knows that his vocation is to freedom. "You were called to freedom,
brethren" (Gal
Saint Augustine, after
speaking of the observance of the commandments as being a kind of incipient,
imperfect freedom, goes on to say: "Why, someone will ask, is it not yet perfect?
Because 'I see in my members another law at war with the law of my reason'... In part freedom, in part slavery: not yet complete freedom, not yet
pure, not yet whole, because we are not yet in eternity. In part we retain
our weakness and in part we have attained freedom. All our sins were destroyed
in Baptism, but does it follow that no weakness remained after iniquity was
destroyed? Had none remained, we would live
without sin in this life. But who
would dare to say this except someone who is proud, someone unworthy of the
mercy of our deliverer?... Therefore, since some
weakness has remained in us, I dare to say that to the extent to which we serve
God we are free, while to the extent that we follow the law of sin, we are
still slaves".27
18. Those who
live "by the flesh" experience God's law as a burden, and indeed as a
denial or at least a restriction of their own freedom. On the other hand, those
who are impelled by love and "walk by the Spirit" (Gal 5:16), is a still uncertain and
fragile journey as long as we are on earth, but it is one made and who desire to
serve others, find in God's Law the fundamental and necessary way in which to
practice love as something freely chosen and freely lived out. Indeed, they feel an interior urge a genuine
"necessity" and no longer a form of coercion not to stop at the
minimum demands of the Law, but to live them in their "fullness".
This possible by grace, which enables us to possess the full freedom of the
children of God; (cf. Rom
This vocation to perfect
love is not restricted to a small group of individuals. The invitation, "go, sell your possessions and give the
money to the poor", and the promise "you will have treasure in
heaven", are meant for everyone, because
they bring out the full meaning of the commandment of love for neighbour, just
as the invitation which follows, "Come,
follow me", is the
new, specific form of the commandment of love of God. Both the commandments and
Jesus' invitation to the rich young man stand at the service of a single and
indivisible charity, which spontaneously tends towards that perfection whose
measure is God alone: "You,
therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48). In the Gospel of Luke,
Jesus makes even clearer the meaning of this perfection: "Be
merciful, even as your Father is merciful" (Lk
"Come, follow
me" (Mt
19. The
way and at the same time the content of this perfection consist in the
following of Jesus, sequela Christi, once
one has given up one's own wealth and very self. This is precisely the
conclusion of Jesus' conversation with the young man: "Come, follow me" (Mt
It is Jesus himself who takes the initiative and
calls people to follow him. His call is addressed first to those to whom he
entrusts a particular mission, beginning with the Twelve; but it is also clear
that every believer is called to be a follower of Christ (cf. Acts 6:1). Following Christ is thus the essential and
primordial foundation of Christian morality: just as the people of Israel followed God who led
them through the desert towards the Promised Land (cf. Ex 13:21), so every disciple must follow Jesus, towards whom he
is drawn by the Father himself (cf. Jn
6:44).
This is not a matter only
of disposing oneself to hear a teaching and obediently accepting a commandment.
More radically, it involves holding
fast to the very person of Jesus, partaking of his life and his destiny,
sharing in his free and loving obedience to the will of the Father. By
responding in faith and following the one who is Incarnate Wisdom, the disciple
of Jesus truly becomes a disciple of
God (cf. Jn 6:45). Jesus
is indeed the light of the world, the light of life (cf. Jn
20. Jesus asks us to follow him and to imitate
him along the path of love, a love which gives itself completely to the
brethren out of love for God: "This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (Jn
The word "as"
also indicates the degree of
Jesus' love, and of the love with which his disciples are called to love one
another. After saying: "This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 15:12), Jesus continues with words
which indicate the sacrificial gift of his life on the Cross, as the witness to
a love "to the end" (Jn 13:1):
"Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his
friends" (Jn
15:13).
As he calls the young man
to follow him along the way of perfection, Jesus asks him to be perfect in the
command of love, in "his" commandment: to become part of the
unfolding of his complete giving, to imitate and rekindle the very love of the
"Good" Teacher, the one who loved "to the end". This is what Jesus asks of everyone who
wishes to follow him: "If any man would come after me,
let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mt
21. Following Christ is not an outward
imitation, since it touches man at the very depths of his being. Being a
follower of Christ means becoming
conformed to him who became a servant even to giving himself on the
Cross (cf. Phil 2:5-8). Christ dwells by faith in the heart of the
believer (cf. Eph
Having become one with
Christ, the Christian becomes a member
of his Body, which is the Church (cf. Cor
"With God all things
are possible" (Mt
22. The
conclusion of Jesus' conversation with the rich young man is very poignant:
"When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had many
possessions" (Mt
In the same chapter of
Matthew's Gospel (19:3-10), Jesus, interpreting the Mosaic Law on marriage,
rejects the right to divorce, appealing to a "beginning" more
fundamental and more authoritative than the Law of Moses: God's original plan
for mankind, a plan which man after sin has no longer been able to live up to:
"For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but
from the beginning it was not so" (Mt
19:8). Jesus' appeal to the "beginning" dismays the disciples, who
remark: "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient
to marry" (Mt
To imitate and live out the love of Christ is not
possible for man by his own strength alone. He becomes capable of this love only by virtue of a
gift received. As the Lord
Jesus receives the love of his Father, so he in turn freely communicates that
love to his disciples: "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you;
abide in my love" (Jn
15:9). Christ's gift is his Spirit,
whose first "fruit" (cf. Gal
23. "The law of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom
8:2). With these words the Apostle Paul invites us to consider in the
perspective of the history of salvation, which reaches its fulfilment in
Christ, the relationship between the
(Old) Law and grace (the
New Law). He recognizes the pedagogic function
of the Law, which, by
enabling sinful man to take stock of his own powerlessness and by stripping him
of the presumption of his self-sufficiency, leads him to ask for and to receive
"life in the Spirit". Only in this new life is it possible to carry out
God's commandments. Indeed, it is
through faith in Christ that we have been made righteous (cf. Rom
Love and life according to the Gospel cannot be thought of first and foremost as a kind of
precept, because what they demand is beyond man's abilities. They are possible only as the result of a gift
of God who heals, restores and transforms the human heart by his grace: "For
the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus
Christ" (Jn
1:17).
The promise of eternal life is thus linked
to the gift of grace, and the gift of the Spirit which we have received is even now
the "guarantee of our inheritance" (Eph
24. And
so we find revealed the authentic and original aspect of the commandment of
love and of the perfection to which it is ordered: we are speaking of a possibility
opened up to man exclusively by grace, by the gift of God, by his love.
On the other hand, precisely the awareness of having received the gift, of
possessing in Jesus Christ the love of God, generates and sustains the free response of a full love for
God and the brethren, as the Apostle John insistently reminds us in his first
Letter: "Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God and knows
God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love... Beloved,
if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another... We love, because he
first loved us" (1 Jn 4:7-8, 11, 19).
This inseparable connection
between the Lord's grace and human freedom, between gift and task, has been
expressed in simple yet profound words by
The
gift does not lessen but reinforces the moral demands of love: "This is his commandment, that we should
believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another just as he has
commanded us" (1 Jn 3:32).
One can "abide" in love only by keeping the commandments, as Jesus
states: "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my
love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love"
(Jn
Going to the heart of the moral
message of Jesus and the preaching of the Apostles, and summing up in a
remarkable way the great tradition of the Fathers of the East and West, and of
Saint Augustine in particular,32 Saint Thomas was able to write that the New Law
is the grace of the Holy Spirit given through faith in Christ.33 The external precepts also mentioned in the Gospel
dispose one for this grace or produce its effects in one's life. Indeed, the
New Law is not content to say what must be done, but also gives the power to
"do what is true" (cf. Jn
"Lo, I am with you
always, to the close of the age" (Mt 28:20)
25.
Jesus' conversation with the rich young man continues, in a sense, in every period of history, including our own.
The question: "Teacher, what
good must I do to have eternal life?" arises in the heart of every
individual, and it is Christ alone who is capable of giving the full and
definitive answer. The Teacher who expounds God's commandments, who invites
others to follow him and gives the grace for a new life, is always present and
at work in our midst, as he himself promised: "Lo, I am with you always,
to the close of the age" (Mt
28:20). Christ's relevance for people of
all times is shown forth in his body, which is the Church.
For this reason the Lord promised his disciples the
Holy Spirit, who would "bring to their remembrance" and teach them to
understand his commandments (cf. Jn 14:26), and who would be the
principle and constant source of a new life in the world (cf. Jn 3:5-8; Rom 8:1-13).
The moral prescriptions which God
imparted in the Old Covenant, and which attained their perfection in the New
and Eternal Covenant in the very person of the Son of God made man, must be faithfully kept and continually put into
practice in the various different cultures throughout the course of
history. The task of interpreting these prescriptions was entrusted by Jesus to
the Apostles and to their successors, with the special assistance of the Spirit
of truth: "He who hears you hears me"
(Lk
26. In
the moral catechesis of the Apostles, besides
exhortations and directions connected to specific historical and cultural
situations, we find an ethical teaching with precise rules of behaviour. This
is seen in their Letters, which contain the interpretation, made under the
guidance of the Holy Spirit, of the Lord's precepts as they are to be lived in
different cultural circumstances (cf. Rom
12-15; 1 Cor 11-14; Gal 5-6; Eph 4-6; Col
3-4; 1 Pt and Jas). From the
Church's beginnings, the Apostles, by virtue of their pastoral responsibility
to preach the Gospel, were vigilant
over the right conduct of Christians,35 just as they were vigilant for the purity of the faith and the
handing down of the divine gifts in the sacraments.36
The first Christians,
coming both from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles, differed from the
pagans not only in their faith and their liturgy but also in the witness of
their moral conduct, which was inspired by the New Law.37 The Church is in fact a
communion both of faith and of life; her rule of life is
"faith working through love" (Gal 5:6).
No damage must be done to the harmony between faith and life: the unity of the Church is
damaged not only by Christians who reject or distort the truths of faith but
also by those who disregard the moral obligations to which they are called by
the Gospel (cf. 1 Cor 5:9-13). The Apostles decisively
rejected any separation between the commitment of the heart and the actions
which express or prove it (cf. 1 Jn
2:3-6). And ever since Apostolic times the Church's Pastors have unambiguously
condemned the behaviour of those who fostered division by their teaching or by
their actions.38
27. Within the unity of the Church, promoting and
preserving the faith and the moral life is the task entrusted by Jesus to the
Apostles (cf. Mt 28:19-20), a task which continues
in the ministry of their successors. This is apparent from the living Tradition, whereby as the
Second Vatican Council teaches "the Church, in her teaching,
life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to every generation all that she is and all that she believes. This
Tradition which comes from the Apostles, progresses in the Church under the
assistance of the Holy Spirit".39
In the Holy Spirit, the Church receives and
hands down the Scripture as the witness to the "great things" which
God has done in history (cf. Lk
1:49); she professes by the lips of her Fathers and Doctors the truth of the
Word made flesh, puts his precepts and love into practice in the lives of her
Saints and in the sacrifice of her Martyrs, and celebrates her hope in him in
the Liturgy. By this same Tradition Christians receive "the living voice
of the Gospel",40 as the faithful expression of God's wisdom and will.
Within Tradition, the authentic interpretation of the
Lord's law develops with the help of the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit who is at
the origin of the Revelation of Jesus' commandments and teachings guarantees
that they will be reverently preserved, faithfully expounded and correctly
applied in different times and places. This constant "putting into
practice" of the commandments is the sign and fruit of a deeper insight
into Revelation and of an understanding in the light of faith of new historical
and cultural situations. Nevertheless, it can only confirm the permanent
validity of Revelation and follow in the line of the interpretation given to it
by the great Tradition of the Church's teaching and life, as witnessed by the
teaching of the Fathers, the lives of the Saints, the Church's Liturgy and the
teaching of the Magisterium.
In particular, as the
Council affirms, "the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether
in its written form or in that of Tradition, has been entrusted only to those
charged with the Church's living Magisterium, whose authority is exercised in
the name of Jesus Christ".41 The Church, in her life and teaching,
is thus revealed as "the pillar and bulwark of the truth" ( 1 Tim
Precisely on the questions
frequently debated in moral theology today and with regard to which new
tendencies and theories have developed, the Magisterium, in fidelity to Jesus
Christ and in continuity with the Church's tradition, senses more urgently the
duty to offer its own discernment and teaching, in order to help man in his
journey towards truth and freedom.
CHAPTER II - "DO NOT BE CONFORMED TO THIS WORLD"
(Rom 12:2)
The Church and the Discernment of Certain Tendencies
in Present-day Moral Theology
teaching what befits
sound doctrine. (cf. Tit 2:1)
28. Our
meditation on the dialogue between Jesus and the rich young man has enabled us
to bring together the essential elements of Revelation in the Old and New Testament
with regard to moral action. These are: the
subordination of man and his activity to God, the One who "alone is
good"; the relationship clearly
indicated in the divine commandments, between the moral good of human acts and eternal life; Christian discipleship, which opens up before man
the perspective of perfect love; and finally the gift of the Holy Spirit, source and means of the moral life of
the "new creation" (cf. 2 Cor
5:17).
In her reflection on
morality, the Church has always
kept in mind the words of Jesus to the rich young man. Indeed, Sacred Scripture remains the living and
fruitful source of the Church's moral doctrine; as the Second
29. The
Church's moral reflection, always conducted in the light of Christ, the
"Good Teacher", has also developed in the specific form of the
theological science called "moral
theology ", a science which accepts and examines Divine Revelation
while at the same time responding to the demands of human reason. Moral
theology is a reflection concerned with "morality", with the good and
the evil of human acts and of the person who performs them; in this sense it is
accessible to all people. But it is also "theology", inasmuch as it
acknowledges that the origin and end of moral action are found in the One who
"alone is good" and who, by giving himself to man in Christ, offers
him the happiness of divine life.
The Second Vatican Council
invited scholars to take "special
care for the renewal of moral theology", in such a way that
"its scientific presentation, increasingly based on the teaching of
Scripture, will cast light on the exalted vocation of the faithful in Christ
and on their obligation to bear fruit in charity for the life of the
world".45 The Council also encouraged theologians, "while respecting
the methods and requirements of theological science, to look for a more appropriate way of communicating doctrine
to the people of their time; since there is a difference between the deposit or
the truths of faith and the manner in which they are expressed, keeping the
same meaning and the same judgment".46 This led to a further invitation, one extended to all the
faithful, but addressed to theologians in particular: "The faithful should
live in the closest contact with others of their time, and should work for a
perfect understanding of their modes of thought and feelings as expressed in
their culture".47
The work of many theologians
who found support in the Council's encouragement has already borne fruit in
interesting and helpful reflections about the truths of faith to be believed
and applied in life, reflections offered in a form better suited to the
sensitivities and questions of our contemporaries. The Church, and particularly
the Bishops, to whom Jesus Christ primarily entrusted the ministry of teaching,
are deeply appreciative of this work, and encourage theologians to continue
their efforts, inspired by that profound and authentic "fear of the Lord,
which is the beginning of wisdom" (cf. Prov 1:7).
At the same time, however,
within the context of the theological debates which followed the Council, there have developed certain interpretations of Christian
morality which are not consistent with "sound teaching" (2 Tim 4:3). Certainly the Church's
Magisterium does not intend to impose upon the faithful any particular
theological system, still less a philosophical one. Nevertheless, in order to
"reverently preserve and faithfully expound" the word of God,48 the Magisterium has the duty to state
that some trends of theological thinking and certain philosophical affirmations
are incompatible with revealed truth.49
30. In
addressing this Encyclical to you, my Brother Bishops, it is my intention to
state the principles necessary for
discerning what is contrary to "sound doctrine", drawing
attention to those elements of the Church's moral teaching which today appear
particularly exposed to error, ambiguity or neglect. Yet these are the very
elements on which there depends "the answer to the obscure
riddles of the human condition which
today also, as in the past, profoundly disturb the human heart. What is man?
What is the meaning and purpose of our life? What is good and what is sin? What
origin and purpose do sufferings have? What is the way to attaining true
happiness? What are death, judgment and retribution after death? Lastly, what
is that final, unutterable mystery which embraces our lives and from which we
take our origin and towards which we tend?".50 These and other questions, such as: what is freedom and what is
its relationship to the truth contained in God's law? what
is the role of conscience in man's moral development? How do we determine, in
accordance with the truth about the good, the specific rights and duties of the
human person? can all be summed up in the fundamental
question which the young man in the Gospel put to Jesus: "Teacher, what
good must I do to have eternal life?"
Because the Church has been sent by Jesus to preach
the Gospel and to "make disciples of all nations..., teaching them to observe all" that he has
commanded (cf. Mt 28:19-20), she today once more puts forward the
Master's reply, a reply that possesses a light and a power capable of
answering even the most controversial and complex questions. This light and
power also impel the Church constantly to carry
out not only her dogmatic but also her moral reflection within an interdisciplinary context, which is
especially necessary in facing new issues.51
It is in the same light and
power that the Church's Magisterium
continues to carry out its task of discernment, accepting and living out
the admonition addressed by the Apostle
Paul to Timothy: "I charge you
in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the
dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word, be
urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing
in patience and in teaching. For the time will come when people will not endure
sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves
teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the
truth and wander into myths. As for you, always be steady, endure
suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry" (2 Tim 4:1-5; cf. Tit
"You will know the
truth, and the truth will make you free" (Jn
31. The
human issues most frequently debated and differently resolved in contemporary
moral reflection are all closely related, albeit in various ways, to a crucial
issue: human freedom.
Certainly people today have
a particularly strong sense of freedom. As the Council's Declaration on Religious
Freedom Dignitatis Humanae had
already observed, "the dignity of
the human person is a concern of which people of our time are becoming
increasingly more aware".52 Hence the insistent demand that
people be permitted to "enjoy the use of their own
responsible judgment and freedom, and decide on their actions on grounds of duty
and conscience, without external pressure or coercion".53 In particular,
the right to religious freedom and to respect for conscience on its journey
towards the truth is increasingly perceived as the foundation of the cumulative
rights of the person.54
This heightened sense of
the dignity of the human person and of his or her uniqueness, and of the
respect due to the journey of conscience, certainly represents one of the
positive achievements of modern culture. This perception,
authentic as it is, has been expressed in a number of more or less adequate
ways, some of which however diverge from the truth about man as a creature and
the image of God, and thus need to be corrected and purified in the
light of faith.55
32. Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it
becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values. This is
the direction taken by doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent
or which are explicitly atheist. The individual conscience is accorded the
status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment which hands down categorical and
infallible decisions about good and evil. To the affirmation that one has a
duty to follow one's conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one's
moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in the
conscience. But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding
their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and "being at peace
with oneself", so much so that some have come to adopt a radically
subjectivistic conception of moral judgment.
As is immediately evident, the crisis of truth is not
unconnected with this development. Once the idea of a universal truth about the
good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience
also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in
its primordial reality as an act of a person's intelligence, the
function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific
situation and thus to express a judgment about the right conduct to be chosen here
and now. Instead, there is a tendency to grant
to the individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the
criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly.
Such an outlook is quite congenial to an individualist ethic, wherein each
individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others.
Taken to its extreme consequences, this individualism leads to a denial of the
very idea of human nature.
These different notions are at the
origin of currents of thought which posit a radical opposition between moral
law and conscience, and between nature and freedom.
33. Side by side with its exaltation of
freedom, yet oddly in contrast with it, modern
culture radically questions the very existence of this freedom. A number of disciplines, grouped under the
name of the "behavioural sciences", have rightly drawn attention to
the many kinds of psychological and social conditioning which influence the
exercise of human freedom. Knowledge of these conditionings and the study they
have received represent important achievements which have found application in
various areas, for example in pedagogy or the administration of justice. But
some people, going beyond the conclusions which can be legitimately drawn from
these observations, have come to question or even deny the very reality of
human freedom.
Mention should also be made here of theories which
misuse scientific research about the human person. Arguing from the great
variety of customs, behaviour patterns and institutions present in humanity, these theories end up, if not with an outright denial of
universal human values, at least with a
relativistic conception of morality.
34.
"Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?".
The question of
morality, to which Christ
provides the answer, cannot prescind (1. be cut off-Websters Third New Intl,
p.1792-ed.) from the issue of freedom. Indeed, it considers that issue central, for there can be no morality without freedom: "It
is only in freedom that man can turn to what is good".56 But what sort of
freedom? The Council, considering our contemporaries who "highly
regard" freedom and "assiduously pursue" it, but who "often
cultivate it in wrong ways as a licence to do anything they please, even
evil", speaks of "genuine"
freedom: "Genuine freedom
is an outstanding manifestation of the divine image in man. For God willed to
leave man "in the power of his own counsel" (cf.
Certain tendencies in contemporary moral theology,
under the influence of the currents of subjectivism and individualism just
mentioned, involve novel interpretations of the relationship of freedom to the moral
law, human nature and conscience, and propose novel criteria for the moral
evaluation of acts. Despite their variety, these
tendencies are as one in lessening or even denying the dependence of freedom on truth.
If we wish to undertake a critical
discernment of these tendencies a discernment capable of acknowledging what
is legitimate, useful and of value in them, while at the same time pointing out
their ambiguities, dangers and errors we
must examine them in the light of the fundamental dependence of freedom upon
truth, a dependence which has found its clearest and most authoritative
expression in the words of Christ: "You will know the
truth, and the truth will set you free" (Jn 8:32).
I. Freedom and Law
"Of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat" (Gen
35. In the Book of Genesis we read: "The
Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'You may eat freely of every tree of the
garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,
for in the day that you eat of it you shall die' " (Gen 2:16-17).
With this imagery, Revelation teaches that the power to decide what is good and what is
evil does not belong to man, but to God alone. The man is certainly free, inasmuch as he can
understand and accept God's commands. And he possesses an extremely
far-reaching freedom, since he can eat "of every tree of the garden".
But his freedom is not unlimited: it must halt before the "tree of the
knowledge of good and evil", for it is called to accept the moral law
given by God. In fact, human freedom finds its authentic and complete
fulfilment precisely in the acceptance of that law.
God, who alone is good, knows perfectly what is good for man, and by
virtue of his very love proposes this good to man in the commandments.
God's law does not reduce, much less
do away with human freedom; rather, it protects and promotes that freedom. In
contrast, however, some present-day cultural tendencies have given rise to
several currents of thought in ethics which centre upon an alleged conflict between freedom and law. These doctrines
would grant to individuals or social groups the right to determine what is good or evil. Human freedom would thus be
able to "create values" and would enjoy a primacy over truth, to the
point that truth itself would be considered a creation of freedom. Freedom
would thus lay claim to a moral
autonomy which would actually amount to an absolute sovereignty.
36. The
modern concern for the claims of autonomy has not failed to exercise an influence also in the sphere of Catholic moral theology. While
the latter has certainly never attempted to set human freedom against the
divine law or to question the existence of an ultimate religious foundation for
moral norms, it has, nonetheless, been led to undertake a profound rethinking
about the role of reason and of faith in identifying moral norms with reference
to specific "innerworldly" kinds of behaviour involving oneself,
others and the material world.
It must be acknowledged
that underlying this work of rethinking there are certain positive concerns which to a great extent belong to the
best tradition of Catholic thought. In response to the encouragement of the
Second Vatican Council,60 there has been a desire to foster dialogue with modern culture,
emphasizing the rational and thus universally understandable and communicable
character of moral norms belonging to the sphere of the natural moral law.61 There has also been an attempt to reaffirm the interior character
of the ethical requirements deriving from that law, requirements which create
an obligation for the will only because such an obligation was previously
acknowledged by human reason and, concretely, by personal conscience.
Some people, however,
disregarding the dependence of human reason on Divine Wisdom and the need,
given the present state of fallen nature, for Divine Revelation as an effective
means for knowing moral truths, even those of the natural order,62 have actually posited a complete sovereignty of reason in the
domain of moral norms regarding the right ordering of life in this world.
Such norms would constitute the boundaries for a merely "human"
morality; they would be the
expression of a law which man in an autonomous manner lays down for himself and which has its source exclusively in human
reason. In no way could God be considered the Author of this law, except in the sense that human reason exercises
its autonomy in setting down laws by virtue of a primordial and total mandate
given to man by God. These trends of
thought have led to a denial, in opposition to Sacred Scripture (cf. Mt 15:3-6) and the Church's constant
teaching, of the fact that the natural moral law has God as its
author, and that man, by the use of reason, participates in the eternal law,
which it is not for him to establish.
37. In their desire, however, to keep the moral life
in a Christian context, certain moral theologians have introduced a sharp
distinction, contrary to Catholic doctrine,63 between an ethical
order, which would be human in origin and of value for this world alone, and an order of salvation, for which only
certain intentions and interior attitudes regarding God and neighbour would be
significant. This has then led to an actual denial that there exists, in Divine
Revelation, a specific and determined moral content, universally valid and
permanent. The word of God would be limited to proposing an exhortation, a
generic paraenesis (advice - Websters
Third New Intl, p.1636-ed.), which the autonomous reason alone would then have
the task of completing with normative directives which are truly
"objective", that is, adapted to the concrete historical situation. Naturally, an autonomy conceived in
this way also involves the denial of a specific doctrinal competence on the
part of the Church and her Magisterium
with regard to particular moral norms which deal with the
so-called "human good".
Such norms would not be part of the proper content of Revelation, and would not
in themselves be relevant for salvation.
No one can fail to see that such an interpretation of the autonomy of
human reason involves positions incompatible with Catholic teaching.
In such a context it is absolutely
necessary to clarify, in the light of the word of God and the living Tradition
of the Church, the fundamental notions of human freedom and of the moral law, as well as their profound and intimate
relationship. Only thus will it be possible to respond to the rightful claims
of human reason in a way which accepts the valid elements present in certain
currents of contemporary moral theology without compromising the Church's
heritage of moral teaching with ideas derived from an erroneous concept of
autonomy.
"God left man in the
power of his own counsel" (
38.
Taking up the words of Sirach, the Second Vatican Council explains the meaning
of that "genuine freedom" which is "an outstanding manifestation
of the divine image" in man: "God willed to leave man in the power of
his own counsel, so that he would seek his Creator of his own accord and would
freely arrive at full and blessed perfection by cleaving to God".64 These words indicate the wonderful depth of the sharing in God's dominion to which
man has been called: they indicate that man's dominion extends in a certain
sense over man himself. This has been a constantly recurring theme in
theological reflection on human freedom, which is described as a form of
kingship. For example, Saint Gregory of Nyssa writes: "The soul shows its
royal and exalted character... in that it is free and self-governed, swayed
autonomously by its own will. Of whom else can this be said, save a king?... Thus human nature, created to rule other creatures, was
by its likeness to the King of the universe made as it were a living image,
partaking with the Archetype both in dignity and in name".65
The
exercise of dominion over the world represents
a great and responsible task for man, one which involves his freedom in
obedience to the Creator's command: "Fill the earth and subdue it" (Gen
39. Not
only the world, however, but also man
himself has been entrusted to
his own care and responsibility. God left man "in the power of his
own counsel" (
Even so, the Council warns
against a false concept of the autonomy of earthly realities, one which would
maintain that "created things are not dependent on God and that man can
use them without reference to their Creator".67 With regard to man himself, such a concept of autonomy produces
particularly baneful effects, and eventually leads to atheism: "Without its Creator the creature
simply disappears... If God is ignored the creature itself is
impoverished".68
40. The
teaching of the Council emphasizes, on the one hand, the role of human reason in discovering and applying the moral
law: the moral life calls for that
creativity and originality typical of the person, the source and cause of his
own deliberate acts. On the other hand, reason draws its own
truth and authority from the eternal law, which is none other than divine
wisdom itself.69
At the heart of the moral life we thus find the
principle of a "rightful autonomy"70 of man, the personal subject of his actions. The moral law has its origin in God and always finds its source in him:
at the same time, by virtue of natural reason, which derives from divine
wisdom, it is a properly human law. Indeed,
as we have seen, the natural law "is nothing other than the light of
understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must
be done and what must be avoided. God
gave this light and this law to man at creation".71
The rightful autonomy of the
practical reason means that man possesses in himself his own law, received from
the Creator. Nevertheless, the
autonomy of reason cannot mean that reason itself creates values and moral norms.72 Were this autonomy to imply a denial of the participation of the
practical reason in the wisdom of the divine Creator and Lawgiver, or were it
to suggest a freedom which creates moral norms, on the basis of historical
contingencies or the diversity of societies and cultures, this sort of alleged autonomy
would contradict the Church's teaching on the truth about man.73 It would be the death
of true freedom: "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you
shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die" (Gen
41.
Man's genuine moral autonomy in
no way means the rejection but rather the acceptance of the moral law, of God's
command: "The Lord God gave this command to the man..." (Gen 2:16). Human freedom and God's law
meet and are called to intersect, in the sense of man's free obedience
to God and of God's completely gratuitous benevolence towards man. Hence obedience
to God is not, as some would believe, a heteronomy
(a condition of lacking moral freedom or self-determination- Websters Third New Intl, p.1063-ed.), as if the moral life were subject to the will of
something all-powerful, absolute, extraneous to man and intolerant of his
freedom. If in fact a heteronomy of morality were to mean a denial of man's
self-determination or the imposition of norms unrelated to his good, this would
be in contradiction to the Revelation of the Covenant and of the redemptive
Incarnation. Such
a heteronomy would be nothing but a form of alienation, contrary to divine
wisdom and to the dignity of the human person.
Others speak, and rightly so, of theonomy, or participated theonomy, since man's free obedience to God's law
effectively implies that human reason and human will participate in God's
wisdom and providence. By forbidding man to "eat of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil", God makes it clear that man
does not originally possess such "knowledge" as something properly
his own, but only participates in it by the light of natural reason and of
Divine Revelation, which manifest to him the requirements and the
promptings of eternal wisdom. Law must therefore be considered an
expression of divine wisdom: by submitting to the law, freedom
submits to the truth of creation.
Consequently one must acknowledge in the freedom of
the human person the image and the nearness of God, who is present in all (cf. Eph 4:6). But one must likewise
acknowledge the majesty of the God of the universe and revere the holiness of
the law of God, who is infinitely transcendent: Deus semper
maior.74 (
Blessed is the man who
takes delight in the law of the Lord. (cf. Ps 1:1-2)
42. Patterned on God's freedom, man's freedom is not
negated by his obedience to the divine law; indeed, only through this obedience
does it abide in the truth and conform to human dignity. This is clearly stated
by the Council: "Human dignity requires man to act through conscious and
free choice, as motivated and prompted personally from within, and not through
blind internal impulse or merely external pressure. Man
achieves such dignity when he frees himself from all subservience to his
feelings, and in a free choice of the good, pursues his own end by effectively
and assiduously marshalling the appropriate means".75
In his journey towards God, the One
who "alone is good", man must freely do good
and avoid evil. But in order to accomplish this he must be able to distinguish good
from evil. And this takes place above all thanks to the light of natural reason, the reflection in man of
the splendour of God's countenance. Thus
43. The Second Vatican Council points out that
the "supreme rule of life is the divine law itself, the eternal, objective
and universal law by which God out of his wisdom and love arranges, directs and
governs the whole world and the paths of the human community. God has enabled
man to share in this divine law, and hence man is able under the
gentle guidance of God's providence increasingly to recognize the unchanging
truth".78
The Council refers back to
the classic teaching on God's
eternal law.
44. The
Church has often made reference to the Thomistic doctrine of natural law,
including it in her own teaching on morality. Thus my Venerable
Predecessor Leo XIII emphasized the essential subordination of reason and
human law to the Wisdom of God and to his law. After stating that "the natural law is written and engraved in the heart of each and
every man, since it is none other than human reason itself which commands us to
do good and counsels us not to sin", Leo XIII appealed to the
"higher reason" of the divine Lawgiver: "But this prescription of human reason could not have
the force of law unless it were the voice and the interpreter of some higher
reason to which our spirit and our freedom must be subject". Indeed, the force of law consists in its authority
to impose duties, to confer rights and to sanction certain behaviour: "Now all of this, clearly, could not
exist in man if, as his own supreme legislator, he gave himself the rule of his
own actions". And he concluded:
"It follows that the natural law is itself
the eternal law, implanted in beings endowed with reason, and inclining
them towards their right action and
end; it is none other than the eternal reason of the Creator and Ruler
of the universe".83
Man is able to recognize
good and evil thanks to that discernment of good from evil which he himself
carries out by his reason, in
particular by his reason enlightened by Divine Revelation and by faith, through
the law which God gave to the Chosen People, beginning with the commandments on
Sinai.
45. The Church gratefully accepts and
lovingly preserves the entire deposit of Revelation, treating it
with religious respect and fulfilling her mission of authentically interpreting
God's law in the light of the Gospel. In addition, the Church receives the gift
of the New Law, which is the "fulfilment" of God's law in Jesus
Christ and in his Spirit. This is an "interior" law (cf. Jer 31:31-33), "written not with
ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on
tablets of human hearts" (2 Cor
3:3); a law of perfection and of freedom (cf. 2 Cor 3:17); "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus" (Rom 8:2).
Even if moral-theological
reflection usually distinguishes between the positive or revealed law of God
and the natural law, and, within the economy of salvation, between the
"old" and the "new" law, it must not be forgotten that
these and other useful distinctions always refer to that law whose author is
the one and the same God and which is always meant for man. The
different ways in which God, acting in history, cares for the world and for
mankind are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they support each other
and intersect. They have their origin and goal in the eternal, wise and loving
counsel whereby God predestines men and women "to be conformed to the
image of his Son" (Rom
"What the law
requires is written on their hearts" (Rom
46. The alleged conflict between is freedom
and law forcefully brought up once again today with regard to the
natural law, and particularly with regard to nature. Debates
about nature and freedom have always marked the history of moral
reflection; they grew especially heated at the time of the Renaissance and the
Reformation, as can be seen from the teaching of the Council of Trent.85 Our own age is marked, though in a different sense, by a similar
tension. The penchant for empirical
observation, the procedures of scientific objectification, technological
progress and certain forms of liberalism have led to these two terms being set
in opposition, as if a dialectic, if not an absolute conflict, between
freedom and nature were characteristic of the structure of human history. At
other periods, it seemed that "nature" subjected man totally to its
own dynamics and even its own unbreakable laws. Today too, the situation of the
world of the senses within space and time, physio-chemical constants, bodily
processes, psychological impulses and forms of social conditioning seem to many people the only really decisive factors of human
reality. In this context even moral
facts, despite their specificity, are frequently treated as if they were
statistically verifiable data, patterns of behaviour which can be subject to
observation or explained exclusively in categories of psychosocial processes.
As a result, some ethicists,
professionally engaged in the study of human realities and behaviour, can be
tempted to take as the standard for their discipline and even for its operative
norms the results of a statistical study of concrete human behaviour patterns
and the opinions about morality encountered in the majority of people.
Other moralists, however, in their concern to stress the importance
of values, remain sensitive to the dignity of freedom, but they frequently conceive of freedom as somehow in opposition to or in
conflict with material and biological nature, over which it must progressively
assert itself. Here various
approaches are at one in overlooking the created dimension of nature and in
misunderstanding its integrity. For some, "nature" becomes
reduced to raw material for human activity and for its power: thus nature needs
to be profoundly transformed, and indeed overcome by freedom, inasmuch as it
represents a limitation and denial of freedom. For others, it is in the untrammelled advancement of man's
power, or of his freedom, that economic, cultural, social and even moral values
are established: nature would thus come to mean everything found in man and the
world apart from freedom. In such an understanding, nature would include in the
first place the human body, its make-up and its processes: against this
physical datum would be opposed whatever is "constructed", in other
words "culture", seen as the product and result of freedom. Human nature, understood in this way,
could be reduced to and treated as a readily available biological or social
material. This ultimately means making
freedom self-defining and a phenomenon creative of itself and its values.
Indeed, when all is said and done man would not even have
a nature; he would be his own personal life-project. Man
would be nothing more than his own freedom!
47. In
this context, objections of physicalism and naturalism
have been levelled against the traditional conception of the natural law, which
is accused of presenting as moral laws what are in themselves mere biological
laws. Consequently, in too superficial a way, a permanent and unchanging
character would be attributed to certain kinds of human behaviour, and, on the basis of
this, an attempt would be made to formulate universally valid moral norms. According
to certain theologians, this kind of "biologistic or naturalistic
argumentation" would even be present in certain documents of the Church's
Magisterium, particularly
those dealing with the area of sexual and conjugal ethics. It was, they
maintain, on the basis of a naturalistic understanding of the sexual act that
contraception, direct sterilization, autoeroticism, pre-marital sexual
relations, homosexual relations and artificial insemination were condemned as
morally unacceptable. In the opinion of these same theologians, a morally
negative evaluation of such acts fails to take into adequate consideration both
man's character as a rational and free being and the cultural conditioning of
all moral norms. In their view, man, as a rational being, not only can but actually must
freely determine the meaning of his behaviour. This process of
"determining the meaning" would obviously have to take into account
the many limitations of the human being, as existing in a body and in history.
Furthermore, it would have to take into consideration the behavioural models
and the meanings which the latter acquire in any given culture. Above all, it
would have to respect the fundamental commandment of love of God and neighbour.
Still, they continue, God made man as a rationally free being; he left him
"in the power of his own counsel" and he expects him to shape his
life in a personal and rational way. Love of neighbour would mean above all and
even exclusively respect for his freedom to make his own decisions. The
workings of typically human behaviour, as well as the so-called "natural
inclinations", would establish at the most so they say a general
orientation towards correct behaviour, but they cannot determine the moral
assessment of individual human acts, so complex from the viewpoint of
situations.
48.
Faced with this theory, one has to
consider carefully the correct relationship existing
between freedom and human nature,
and in particular the place of the
human body in questions of natural law.
A freedom which claims to be absolute
ends up treating the human body as a raw datum, devoid of any meaning and moral
values until freedom has shaped it in accordance with its design. Consequently, human nature and the body appear as presuppositions or preambles, materially
necessary for freedom to make
its choice, yet extrinsic to the person, the subject and the human act. Their functions
would not be able to constitute reference points for moral decisions, because
the finalities of these inclinations would be merely "physical" goods, called by some
"pre-moral". To refer to them, in order to find in them rational
indications with regard to the order of morality, would be to expose oneself to
the accusation of physicalism or biologism. In this way of thinking, the
tension between freedom and a nature conceived of in a reductive way is
resolved by a division within man himself.
This moral theory does not
correspond to the truth about man and his freedom. It contradicts the Church's teachings on the unity of the human
person, whose rational soul is per
se et essentialiter the form of his body.86 The spiritual and immortal soul is the principle of unity of the
human being, whereby it exists as a whole corpore et anima unus 87 as a person. These definitions not only point out that the
body, which has been promised the resurrection, will also share in glory. They
also remind us that reason and free will are linked with all the bodily and
sense faculties. The person, including
the body, is completely entrusted to himself, and it is in the unity of body
and soul that the person is the subject of his own moral acts. The
person, by the light of reason and the support of virtue, discovers in the body
the anticipatory signs, the expression and the promise of the gift of self, in
conformity with the wise plan of the Creator. It is in the light of the dignity
of the human person a dignity which must be affirmed for its own sake that
reason grasps the specific moral value of certain goods towards which the
person is naturally inclined. And since the human person cannot be reduced to a
freedom which is self-designing, but entails a particular spiritual and bodily
structure, the primordial moral requirement of loving and respecting the person
as an end and never as a mere means also implies, by its very nature, respect
for certain fundamental goods, without which one would fall into relativism and
arbitrariness.
49. A doctrine which dissociates the moral act from the
bodily dimensions of its exercise is contrary to the teaching of Scripture and
Tradition.
Such a doctrine revives, in new forms,
certain ancient errors which have always been opposed by the Church, inasmuch
as they reduce the human person to a "spiritual" and purely formal
freedom. This reduction misunderstands the moral meaning of the body and of
kinds of behaviour involving it (cf. 1 Cor
50. At this point the true meaning of the
natural law can be understood: it refers
to man's proper and primordial nature, the "nature of the human
person",89 which is the person himself in the unity of soul and
body, in the unity of his spiritual and biological inclinations and of
all the other specific characteristics necessary for the pursuit of his end. "The natural moral law expresses and lays down
the purposes, rights and duties which are based upon the bodily and spiritual
nature of the human person. Therefore this law cannot be thought of as simply a
set of norms on the biological level; rather it must be defined as the rational
order whereby man is called by the Creator to direct and regulate his life and
actions and in particular to make use of his own body".90
To give an example, the origin and the foundation of the duty of absolute
respect for human life are to be found in the dignity proper to the person and
not simply in the natural inclination to preserve one's own physical life.
Human life, even though it is a fundamental good of man, thus acquires
a moral significance in reference to the good of the person, who must always be
affirmed for his own sake. While it is always morally
illicit to kill an innocent human being, it can be licit, praiseworthy or even
imperative to give up one's own life (cf. Jn 15:13) out of love of neighbour or as a witness to the truth. Only in reference to the human person
in his "unified totality", that is, as "a soul which expresses
itself in a body and a body informed by an immortal spirit",91 can the specifically
human meaning of the body be grasped.
Indeed, natural
inclinations take on moral relevance only insofar as they refer to the human
person and his authentic fulfilment, a fulfilment which for that matter can
take place always and only in human nature.
By rejecting all manipulations of corporeity which alter its human meaning, the
Church serves man and shows him the path of true love, the only path on which
he can find the true God.
The natural law thus understood does not allow for
any division between freedom and nature. Indeed, these two realities are harmoniously bound together, and each
is intimately linked to the other.
"From the beginning it was not so" (Mt 19:8)
51. The
alleged conflict between freedom and nature also has repercussions on the interpretation
of certain specific aspects of the natural law, especially its universality and immutability.
"Where then are these rules written", Saint Augustine wondered,
"except in the book of that light which is called truth? From thence every just law is transcribed and
transferred to the heart of the man who works justice, not by wandering but by
being, as it were, impressed upon it, just as the image from the ring passes
over to the wax, and yet does not leave the ring".92
Precisely because of this
"truth" the natural law
involves universality. Inasmuch as it is inscribed in the rational
nature of the person, it makes itself felt to all beings endowed with reason
and living in history. In order to perfect himself in his specific order, the
person must do good and avoid evil, be concerned for the transmission and
preservation of life, refine and develop the riches of the material world,
cultivate social life, seek truth, practice good and contemplate beauty.93
The separation which some
have posited between the freedom of individuals and the nature which all have
in common, as it emerges from certain philosophical theories which are highly
influential in present- day culture, obscures the perception of the universality
of the moral law on the part of reason. But inasmuch as the natural
law expresses the dignity of the human person and lays the foundation for his
fundamental rights and duties, it is universal in its precepts and its
authority extends to all mankind. This universality does not ignore the
individuality of human beings, nor is
it opposed to the absolute uniqueness of each person. On the contrary, it
embraces at its root each of the person's free acts, which are meant to bear
witness to the universality of the true good. By submitting to the common law, our acts build up the true communion
of persons and, by God's grace, practise charity, "which binds everything
together in perfect harmony" (Col
3:14). When on the contrary they disregard the law, or even are
merely ignorant of it, whether culpably or not, our acts damage the communion
of persons, to the detriment of each.
52. It
is right and just, always and for everyone, to serve God, to render him the
worship which is his due and to honour one's parents as they deserve. Positive
precepts such as these, which order us to perform certain actions and to
cultivate certain dispositions, are universally binding; they are
"unchanging".94 They unite in the same common good all people of every period of
history, created for "the same divine calling and destiny".95 These universal and permanent laws correspond to things known by
the practical reason and are applied to particular acts through the judgment of
conscience. The acting subject
personally assimilates the truth contained in the law. He appropriates this
truth of his being and makes it his own by his acts and the corresponding
virtues. The negative
precepts of the natural law are universally valid. They
oblige each and every individual, always and in every circumstance. It is a
matter of prohibitions which forbid a given action semper et pro semper, (always and for ever-ed.) without
exception, because the choice of this kind of behaviour is in no case
compatible with the goodness of the will of the acting person, with his vocation to life with God and to communion
with his neighbour. It is prohibited to everyone and in every case to
violate these precepts. They oblige everyone, regardless of the cost, never to
offend in anyone, beginning with oneself, the personal dignity common to all.
On the other hand, the fact that only the negative commandments oblige always and under all circumstances does
not mean that in the moral life prohibitions are more important than the
obligation to do good indicated by the positive commandments. The reason is this: the commandment of love of God
and neighbour does not have in its dynamic any higher limit, but it does have a
lower limit, beneath which the commandment is broken. Furthermore, what
must be done in any given situation depends on the circumstances, not all of
which can be foreseen; on the other hand there are kinds of behaviour which can
never, in any situation, be a proper response a response which is in
conformity with the dignity of the person. Finally, it is always possible that man, as the result of coercion or
other circumstances, can be hindered from doing certain good actions; but he
can never be hindered from not doing certain actions, especially if he is
prepared to die rather than to do evil.
The Church has always taught that
one may never choose kinds of behaviour prohibited by the moral commandments
expressed in negative form in the Old and New Testaments. As we have seen, Jesus himself reaffirms that these
prohibitions allow no exceptions: "If you wish to enter into life,
keep the commandments... You shall
not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall
not steal, You shall not bear false witness" (Mt
53. The great concern of our contemporaries for
historicity and for culture has led some to call into question the immutability of the natural law itself,
and thus the existence of "objective norms of morality" 96 valid for all people of the present and the future, as for those
of the past. Is it ever possible, they ask, to consider as universally valid
and always binding certain rational determinations established in the past,
when no one knew the progress humanity would make in the future? It
must certainly be admitted that man always exists in a particular culture, but
it must also be admitted that man is not exhaustively defined by that same
culture. Moreover, the very progress of cultures
demonstrates that there is something in man which
transcends those cultures. This "something" is precisely human nature: this
nature is itself the measure of culture and the condition ensuring that man
does not become the prisoner of any of his cultures, but asserts his personal
dignity by living in accordance with the profound truth of his being.
To call into question the
permanent structural elements of man which are connected with his own bodily
dimension would not only conflict with common experience, but would render
meaningless Jesus' reference to the
"beginning", (cf. Mt. 19:4) precisely where the social and cultural
context of the time had distorted the primordial meaning and the role of
certain moral norms (cf. Mt
19:1-9). This is the reason why "the
Church affirms that underlying so many changes there are some things which do
not change and are ultimately founded
upon Christ, who is the same yesterday and today and for ever".97 Christ is the "Beginning" (cf. Mt. 19:4) who, having taken on human nature, definitively
illumines it in its constitutive elements and in its dynamism of charity
towards God and neighbour.98
Certainly there is a need
to seek out and to discover the most
adequate formulation for universal and permanent moral norms in the
light of different cultural contexts, a formulation most capable of ceaselessly
expressing their historical relevance, of making them understood and of
authentically interpreting their truth. This truth of the moral law like that
of the "deposit of faith" unfolds down the centuries: the norms
expressing that truth remain valid in their substance, but must be specified
and determined "eodem sensu
eademque sententia" 99 in the light of historical circumstances by the Church's
Magisterium, whose decision is preceded and accompanied by the work of
interpretation and formulation characteristic of the reason of individual
believers and of theological reflection.100
II. Conscience and Truth
Man's sanctuary
54. The
relationship between man's freedom and God's law is most deeply lived out in
the "heart" of the person, in his moral conscience. As the Second
The way in which one conceives the relationship
between freedom and law is thus intimately bound up with one's
understanding of the moral conscience. Here the cultural tendencies
referred to above in which freedom and law are set in opposition to each
other and kept apart, and freedom is exalted almost to the point
of idolatry lead to a "creative" understanding of moral
conscience, which diverges
from the teaching of the Church's tradition and her Magisterium.
55. According to the opinion of some
theologians, the function of conscience had been reduced, at least at a certain
period in the past, to a simple application of general moral
norms to individual cases in the life of the person. But those norms, they
continue, cannot be expected to foresee and to respect all the individual
concrete acts of the person in all their uniqueness and particularity. While
such norms might somehow be useful for a correct assessment of the situation, they cannot
replace the individual personal decision
on how to act in particular cases.
The critique already mentioned
of the traditional understanding of human nature and of its importance for the
moral life has even led certain authors to state that these norms are not so
much a binding objective criterion for judgments of conscience, but a general perspective which helps man
tentatively to put order into his personal and social life. These authors also
stress the complexity typical
of the phenomenon of conscience, a complexity profoundly related to the whole
sphere of psychology and the emotions, and to the numerous influences exerted
by the individual's social and cultural environment. On the other hand, they
give maximum attention to the value of conscience, which the Council itself
defined as "the sanctuary of man, where he is alone with God whose voice
echoes within him".102 This voice, it is said, leads man not so much to a meticulous
observance of universal norms as to a creative and responsible acceptance of
the personal tasks entrusted to him by God.
In their desire to emphasize the
"creative" character of conscience, certain authors no longer
call its actions "judgments" but "decisions": only by
making these decisions "autonomously" would man be able to attain
moral maturity. Some
even hold that this process of maturing is inhibited by the
excessively categorical position adopted by the Church's Magisterium in many
moral questions; for them, the Church's interventions are the cause of
unnecessary conflicts of conscience.
56. In order to justify these positions, some
authors have proposed a kind of double status of moral
truth. Beyond the doctrinal and abstract level, one would
have to acknowledge the priority of a certain more concrete existential
consideration. The latter, by taking account of circumstances and the
situation, could legitimately be the basis of certain exceptions to the general rule and thus permit
one to do in practice and in good conscience what is qualified as intrinsically
evil by the moral law.
A separation, or even an
opposition, is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the
precept, which is valid in general, and the norm of the individual conscience,
which would in fact make the final decision about what
is good and what is evil. On this basis, an
attempt is made to legitimize so-called "pastoral" solutions contrary
to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a "creative"
hermeneutic (explanation- Websters Third New Intl,
p.1059-ed.) according to which
the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular
negative precept.
No one can fail to realize
that these approaches pose a challenge to the very identity of the moral conscience in relation to human
freedom and God's law. Only the
clarification made earlier with regard to the relationship, based on truth,
between freedom and law makes possible a discernment
concerning this "creative" understanding of conscience.
The Judgment of Conscience
57. The text of the Letter to the Romans which
has helped us to grasp the essence of the natural law also indicates the biblical
understanding of conscience, especially
in its specific connection with the
law: "When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law
requires, they are a law unto themselves, even though they do not have the law.
They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their
conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps
excuse them" (Rom
2:14-15).
According to
58. The
importance of this interior dialogue
of man with himself can never be adequately appreciated. But it is also
a dialogue of man with God, the
author of the law, the primordial image and final end of man. Saint Bonaventure teaches that "conscience
is like God's herald and messenger; it does not command things on its own
authority, but commands them as coming from God's authority, like a
herald when he proclaims the edict of the king. This is why conscience has
binding force".103 Thus it can be said that conscience bears witness
to man's own rectitude or iniquity to man himself but, together with this and
indeed even beforehand, conscience is the
witness of God himself, whose voice and judgment penetrate the depths of
man's soul, calling him fortiter et
suaviter to obedience. "Moral conscience does not close
man within an insurmountable and impenetrable solitude, but opens him to the
call, to the voice of God. In this, and not in anything else, lies the entire mystery and the dignity of the moral
conscience: in being the place, the sacred place where God speaks to
man".104
59.
The judgment of
conscience is a practical judgment, a
judgment which makes known what man must do or not do, or which assesses an act
already performed by him. It is a judgment which applies to a concrete
situation the rational conviction that one must love and do good
and avoid evil. This first principle of practical reason is part of
the natural law; indeed it constitutes the very foundation of the natural law,
inasmuch as it expresses that primordial insight about good and evil, that reflection
of God's creative wisdom which, like an imperishable spark (scintilla animae), shines in the
heart of every man.
But whereas the natural law discloses
the objective and universal demands of the moral good, conscience is the
application of the law to a particular case; this application of the law thus becomes an inner dictate for the
individual, a summons to do what is good in this particular situation. Conscience
thus formulates moral obligation in
the light of the natural law: it is the obligation to
do what the individual, through the workings of his conscience, knows to be a good he is called to do
here and now. The
universality of the law and its obligation are acknowledged, not suppressed,
once reason has established the law's application in concrete present
circumstances. The judgment of conscience states "in an ultimate way"
whether a certain particular kind of behaviour is in conformity with the law;
it formulates the proximate norm of the morality of a voluntary act,
"applying the objective law to a particular case".105
60. Like the natural law itself and
all practical knowledge, the judgment of conscience also has an imperative
character: man must act in accordance with it. If man acts against this
judgment or, in a case where he lacks certainty about the rightness and
goodness of a determined act, still performs that act, he stands condemned by
his own conscience, the proximate norm
of personal morality. The
dignity of this rational forum and the authority of its voice and judgments
derive from the truth about
moral good and evil, which it is called to listen to and to express. This truth
is indicated by the "divine law", the universal and objective norm of morality. The judgment of
conscience does not establish the law; rather it bears witness to the authority
of the natural law and of the practical reason with reference to the supreme
good, whose attractiveness the human person perceives and whose commandments he
accepts. "Conscience is not an
independent and exclusive capacity to decide what is good and what is evil.
Rather there is profoundly imprinted upon it a principle of obedience vis-ΰ-vis
the objective norm which establishes and conditions the correspondence of its
decisions with the commands and prohibitions which are at the basis of human
behaviour".106
61. The
truth about moral good, as that truth is declared in the law of reason, is practically
and concretely recognized by the judgment of conscience, which leads one to
take responsibility for the good or the evil one has done. If man does evil, the just judgment of his conscience remains within
him as a witness to the universal truth of the good, as well as to the malice
of his particular choice. But the verdict of conscience remains in him also as
a pledge of hope and mercy: while bearing witness to the evil he has done, it
also reminds him of his need, with the help of God's grace, to ask forgiveness,
to do good and to cultivate virtue constantly.
Consequently in the practical judgment of conscience, which
imposes on the person the obligation to perform a given act, the link between freedom and truth is made
manifest. Precisely for this reason conscience expresses
itself in acts of "judgment" which reflect the truth about the good,
and not in arbitrary "decisions". The maturity and responsibility
of these judgments and, when all is said and done, of the individual who is
their subject are not measured by the liberation of the conscience from
objective truth, in favour of an alleged autonomy in personal decisions, but,
on the contrary, by an insistent search for truth and by allowing oneself to be
guided by that truth in one's actions.
Seeking What is True and
Good
62. Conscience, as the judgment of an act, is not exempt from
the possibility of error. As the Council puts it, "not infrequently
conscience can be mistaken as a result of invincible ignorance, although it
does not on that account forfeit its dignity; but this cannot be said when a
man shows little concern for seeking what is true and good, and conscience
gradually becomes almost blind from being accustomed to sin".107 In these
brief words the Council sums up the doctrine which the Church down the
centuries has developed with regard to the erroneous conscience.
Certainly, in order to have a "good
conscience" (1 Tim 1:5),
man must seek the truth and must make judgments in accordance with that same
truth. As the Apostle Paul says, the conscience must be
"confirmed by the Holy Spirit" (cf. Rom 9:1); it must be "clear" (2 Tim 1:3); it must not "practice
cunning and tamper with God's word", but "openly state the
truth" (cf. 2 Cor 4:2). On the
other hand, the Apostle also warns Christians: "Do not be conformed to
this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove
what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rom 12:2).
Paul's admonition urges us
to be watchful, warning us that in the judgments of our conscience the
possibility of error is always present. Conscience is not an infallible judge; it can
make mistakes. However, error of conscience can be the result of an invincible ignorance, an ignorance of
which the subject is not aware and which he is unable to overcome by himself. The Council
reminds us that in cases where such invincible ignorance is not culpable,
conscience does not lose its dignity, because even when it directs us to act in
a way not in conformity with the objective moral order, it
continues to speak in the name of that truth about the good which the subject
is called to seek sincerely.
63. In any event, it is always from the truth
that the dignity of conscience derives. In the case of the correct conscience,
it is a question of the objective
truth received by man; in the case of the erroneous
conscience, it is a question of what man, mistakenly, subjectively considers to be true. It is never acceptable to confuse a
"subjective" error about moral good with the "objective"
truth rationally proposed to man in virtue of his end, or to make the moral
value of an act performed with a true and correct conscience equivalent to the
moral value of an act performed by following the judgment of an erroneous
conscience.108 It is possible that the
evil done as the result of invincible ignorance or a non-culpable error
of judgment may not be imputable to the agent; but even in this case it does
not cease to be an evil, a disorder in relation to the truth about the
good. Furthermore, a good act which is not recognized as such does not
contribute to the moral growth of the person who performs it; it does not
perfect him and it does not help to dispose him for the supreme good. Thus, before feeling easily justified in the name of
our conscience, we should reflect on the words of the Psalm: "Who can
discern his errors? Clear me from hidden faults" (Ps
Conscience, as the ultimate
concrete judgment, compromises its dignity when it is culpably erroneous, that is to say, "when man shows little
concern for seeking what is true and good, and conscience gradually becomes
almost blind from being accustomed to sin".109 Jesus alludes to the danger of the conscience being
deformed when he warns: "The eye is the lamp of the body.
So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye
is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in
you is darkness, how great is the darkness!" (Mt
6:22-23).
64. The words of Jesus just quoted also represent
a call to form our conscience, to
make it the object of a continuous conversion to what is true and to what is
good. In the same vein,
Christians have a great
help for the formation of conscience
in the Church and her Magisterium. As the Council
affirms: "In
forming their consciences the Christian faithful must give careful attention to
the sacred and certain teaching of the Church.
For the Catholic Church is by the will of Christ the teacher of truth. Her
charge is to announce and teach authentically that truth which is Christ, and
at the same time with her authority to declare and confirm the principles of
the moral order which derive from human nature itself ".111 It follows that the authority of the Church, when she pronounces on
moral questions, in no way undermines the freedom of conscience of Christians.
This is so not only because freedom of conscience is never freedom
"from" the truth but always and only freedom "in" the
truth, but also because the
Magisterium does not bring to the Christian conscience truths which are
extraneous to it; rather it brings to light the truths which it ought already
to possess, developing them from the starting point of the primordial act of
faith. The Church puts herself always
and only at the service of conscience,
helping it to avoid being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine
proposed by human deceit (cf. Eph 4:14),
and helping it not to swerve from the truth about the good of man, but rather,
especially in more difficult questions, to attain the truth with certainty and
to abide in it.
III. Fundamental Choice and Specific Kinds of
Behaviour
"Only do not use
your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh" (Gal
65. The
heightened concern for freedom in our own day has led many students of the
behavioural and the theological sciences to develop a more penetrating analysis
of its nature and of its dynamics. It has been rightly pointed out that freedom is not only the choice for one or another
particular action; it is also, within that choice, a decision about oneself and a setting of one's own life for or
against the Good, for or against the Truth, and ultimately for or against God. Emphasis has rightly been placed on the importance
of certain choices which "shape" a person's entire moral life, and
which serve as bounds within which other particular everyday choices can be
situated and allowed to develop.
Some authors, however, have proposed an even more
radical revision of the relationship
between person and acts. They speak of a "fundamental
freedom", deeper than and
different from freedom of choice, which needs to be considered if human actions
are to be correctly understood and evaluated. According to these authors, the key role in the moral life is to be
attributed to a "fundamental option", brought about by that fundamental freedom whereby the person
makes an overall self-determination, not through a specific and conscious
decision on the level of reflection, but in a "transcendental" and
"athematic" way.
Particular acts which flow from this option would constitute only
partial and never definitive attempts to give it expression; they would only be
its "signs" or symptoms. The immediate object of such acts
would not be absolute Good (before which the freedom of the person would be
expressed on a transcendental level), but particular (also termed
"categorical") goods. In
the opinion of some theologians, none of these goods, which by their nature are
partial, could determine the freedom of man as a person in his totality, even
though it is only by bringing them about or refusing to do so that man is able
to express his own fundamental option.
A distinction thus comes to be introduced between the fundamental option and deliberate choices of a concrete
kind of behaviour. In some authors this division tends to become a separation, when they expressly
limit moral "good" and "evil" to the transcendental
dimension proper to the fundamental option, and describe as "right"
or "wrong" the choices of particular "innerworldly" kinds
of behaviour: those, in other words, concerning man's relationship with
himself, with others and with the material world. There thus appears to be established within human acting a clear
disjunction between two levels of morality: on the one hand the order of good
and evil, which is dependent on the will, and on the other hand specific kinds
of behaviour, which are judged to be morally right or wrong only on the basis
of a technical calculation of the proportion between the "premoral"
or "physical" goods and evils which actually result from the action.
This is pushed to the point where a concrete kind of behaviour, even one freely
chosen, comes to be considered as a merely physical process, and not according
to the criteria proper to a human act.
The conclusion to which this eventually leads is that the properly moral
assessment of the person is reserved to his fundamental option, prescinding in
whole or in part from his choice of particular actions, of concrete kinds of
behaviour.
66.
There is no doubt that Christian moral teaching,
even in its Biblical roots, acknowledges the specific importance of a
fundamental choice which qualifies the moral life and engages freedom on a
radical level before God. It is a question of the decision of faith, of the obedience of faith (cf. Rom
In the Decalogue one finds,
as an introduction to the various commandments, the basic clause: "I am
the Lord your God..." (Ex
20:2), which, by impressing upon the numerous and varied particular
prescriptions their primordial meaning, gives the morality of the Covenant its
aspect of completeness, unity and profundity.
Jesus' call to "come,
follow me" marks the greatest possible exaltation of human freedom, yet at
the same time it witnesses to the truth and to the obligation of acts of faith
and of decisions which can be described as involving a fundamental option. We
find a similar exaltation of human freedom in the words of
67.
These tendencies are therefore contrary to the teaching of Scripture itself,
which sees the fundamental option as a genuine choice
of freedom and links that choice
profoundly to particular acts. By his
fundamental choice, man is capable of giving his life direction and of
progressing, with the help of grace, towards his end, following God's call.
But this capacity is actually exercised in the particular choices of specific
actions, through which man deliberately conforms himself to God's will, wisdom
and law. It thus needs to be stated that the
so-called fundamental option, to the extent that it is distinct from a generic
intention and hence one not yet determined in such a way that freedom
is obligated, is always brought into
play through conscious and free decisions.
Precisely for this reason, it is
revoked
when man engages his freedom in conscious decisions to the contrary, with
regard to morally grave matter.
To separate the fundamental
option from concrete kinds of behaviour means to contradict the substantial
integrity or personal unity of the moral agent in his body and in his soul. A
fundamental option understood without explicit consideration of the
potentialities which it puts into effect and the determinations which express
it does not do justice to the rational finality immanent in man's acting and in
each of his deliberate decisions. In point of fact, the morality of human acts
is not deduced only from one's intention, orientation or fundamental option,
understood as an intention devoid of a clearly determined binding content or as
an intention with no corresponding positive effort to fulfil the different
obligations of the moral life. Judgments
about morality cannot be made without taking into consideration whether or not
the deliberate choice of a specific kind of behaviour is in conformity with the
dignity and integral vocation of the human person.
Every choice always implies a reference by the deliberate will to the goods and
evils indicated by the natural law as goods to be pursued and evils to be
avoided. In the case of the
positive moral precepts, prudence always has the task of verifying that they
apply in a specific situation, for example, in view of other duties which may
be more important or urgent. But the negative moral precepts, those prohibiting
certain concrete actions or kinds of behaviour as intrinsically evil, do not
allow for any legitimate exception. They do not leave room, in any morally
acceptable way, for the "creativity" of any contrary determination
whatsoever. Once the moral species of an action prohibited by a universal rule
is concretely recognized, the only morally good act is that of obeying the
moral law and of refraining from the action which it forbids.
68. Here an important pastoral consideration
must be added. According to the logic of the positions mentioned above, an
individual could, by virtue of a fundamental option, remain faithful to God
independently of whether or not certain of his choices and his acts are in
conformity with specific moral norms or rules. By virtue of a primordial option
for charity, that individual could continue to be morally good, persevere in
God's grace and attain salvation, even if certain of his specific kinds of
behaviour were deliberately and gravely contrary to God's commandments as set
forth by the Church.
In point of fact, man does
not suffer perdition only by being unfaithful to that fundamental option
whereby he has made "a free self-commitment to God".113 With every freely committed mortal sin, he offends God as the
giver of the law and as a result becomes guilty with regard to the entire law
(cf. Jas 2:8-11); even if he
perseveres in faith, he loses "sanctifying grace",
"charity" and "eternal happiness".114 As the Council of Trent teaches, "the grace of justification
once received is lost not only by apostasy, by which faith itself
is lost, but also by any other mortal sin".115
Mortal and Venial Sin
69. As
we have just seen, reflection on the fundamental option has also led some
theologians to undertake a basic revision of the traditional distinction
between mortal sins and venial sins. They insist that the
opposition to God's law which causes the loss of sanctifying grace and
eternal damnation, when one dies in such a state of sin could only be the
result of an act which engages the person in his totality: in other words, an
act of fundamental option. According to these theologians, mortal sin, which
separates man from God, only exists in the rejection of God, carried out at a
level of freedom which is neither to be identified
with an act of choice nor capable of becoming the object of conscious
awareness. Consequently, they go on to say, it is difficult, at least
psychologically, to accept the fact that a Christian, who wishes to remain
united to Jesus Christ and to his Church, could so easily and repeatedly commit
mortal sins, as the "matter" itself of his actions would sometimes
indicate. Likewise, it would be hard to accept that man is able, in a brief
lapse of time, to sever radically the bond of communion with God and afterwards
be converted to him by sincere repentance. The gravity of sin, they maintain,
ought to be measured by the degree of engagement of the freedom of the person
performing an act, rather than by the matter of that act.
70. The Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et
Paenitentia reaffirmed
the importance and permanent validity of the distinction between mortal and
venial sins, in accordance with the Church's tradition. And the 1983 Synod of Bishops, from which
that Exhortation emerged, "not only
reaffirmed the teaching of the Council of Trent concerning the existence and
nature of mortal and venial sins, but it also recalled that mortal
sin is sin whose object is a grave matter and which is also committed with full
knowledge and deliberate consent".116
The statement of the
Council of Trent does not only consider the "grave matter" of mortal sin;
it also recalls that its necessary condition is "full awareness and
deliberate consent". In any event, both in moral theology
and in pastoral practice one is familiar with cases in which an act which is
grave by reason of its matter does not constitute a mortal sin because of a
lack of full awareness or deliberate consent on the part of the person
performing it. Even so, "care will have to be taken not to
reduce mortal sin to an act of 'fundamental
option' as is commonly said today against God", seen either as
an explicit and formal rejection of God and neighbour or as an implicit and
unconscious rejection of love. "For mortal sin exists also when a person
knowingly and willingly, for whatever reason, chooses something gravely
disordered. In fact, such a choice already includes contempt for the divine
law, a rejection of God's love for humanity and the whole of creation: the
person turns away from God and loses charity. Consequently, the fundamental orientation can be radically
changed by particular acts. Clearly, situations can occur which are very
complex and obscure from a psychological viewpoint, and which influence the
sinner's subjective imputability. But from a
consideration of the psychological sphere one cannot proceed to create a
theological category, which is precisely what the 'fundamental option' is,
understanding it in such a way that it objectively changes or casts doubt upon
the traditional concept of mortal sin".117
The separation of
fundamental option from deliberate choices of particular kinds of behaviour,
disordered in themselves or in their circumstances, which would not engage that
option, thus involves a denial of Catholic doctrine on mortal sin: "With the whole
tradition of the Church, we call mortal sin the act by which man freely and
consciously rejects God, his law, the covenant of love that God offers,
preferring to turn in on himself or to some created and finite reality,
something contrary to the divine will (conversio
ad creaturam). This can occur in a direct and formal way, in the sins of
idolatry, apostasy and atheism; or in an equivalent way, as in every act of
disobedience to God's commandments in a grave matter".118
IV. The Moral Act
Teleology and Teleologism
71. The relationship
between man's freedom and God's law, which has its intimate and living centre
in the moral conscience, is manifested and realized in human acts. It is
precisely through his acts that man attains perfection as man, as one who is
called to seek his Creator of his own accord and freely to arrive at full and
blessed perfection by cleaving to him.119
Human acts are moral acts
because they express and determine the goodness or evil of the individual who
performs them.120 They do not produce a change merely in the state of affairs
outside of man but, to the extent that they are deliberate choices, they give
moral definition to the very person who performs them, determining his profound spiritual traits. This was perceptively
noted by Saint Gregory of Nyssa: "All things subject to
change and to becoming never remain constant, but continually pass from one
state to another, for better or worse... Now, human life is always subject to
change; it needs to be born ever anew... But here birth does not come about by
a foreign intervention, as is the case with bodily beings...; it is the result
of a free choice. Thus we are in
a certain way our own parents, creating ourselves as we will, by our
decisions".121
72. The
morality of acts is defined by
the relationship of man's freedom with the authentic good. This good
is established, as the eternal law, by Divine Wisdom which orders every being
towards its end: this eternal law is known both by man's natural reason (hence
it is "natural law"), and in an integral and perfect way
by God's supernatural Revelation (hence it is called "divine
law"). Acting is morally good when the choices of freedom
are in conformity with man's true good
and thus express the voluntary ordering of the person towards his
ultimate end: God himself, the supreme good in whom man finds his full and
perfect happiness. The first
question in the young man's conversation with Jesus: "What good must I do
to have eternal life? " (Mt 19:6) immediately brings out the essential connection between the moral value of an act and man's
final end. Jesus, in his reply, confirms the young man's conviction: the
performance of good acts, commanded by the One who "alone is good",
constitutes the indispensable condition of and path to eternal blessedness:
"If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments" (Mt
The rational ordering of
the human act to the good in its truth and the voluntary pursuit of that good,
known by reason, constitute morality. Hence human activity cannot be
judged as morally good merely because it is a means for attaining one or another
of its goals, or simply because the subject's intention is good.122 Activity is
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. If the object of the
concrete action is not in harmony with the true good of the person, the choice
of that action makes our will and ourselves morally evil, thus putting us in
conflict with our ultimate end, the supreme good, God himself.
73. The
Christian, thanks to God's Revelation and to faith, is aware of the
"newness" which characterizes the morality of his actions: these
actions are called to show either consistency or inconsistency with that
dignity and vocation which have been bestowed on him by grace. In
Jesus Christ and in his Spirit, the Christian is a "new creation", a
child of God; by his actions he shows his likeness or unlikeness to the image
of the Son who is the first-born among many brethren (cf. Rom 8:29), he lives out his fidelity
or infidelity to the gift of the Spirit, and he opens or closes himself to eternal
life, to the communion of vision, love and happiness with God the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit.123 As Saint Cyril of
Consequently the moral life has an essential "teleological" character, since
it consists in the deliberate ordering of human acts to God, the supreme good
and ultimate end (telos) of
man. This is attested to once more
by the question posed by the young man to Jesus: "What good must I do to
have eternal life? ". But this ordering to one's
ultimate end is not something subjective, dependent solely upon one's
intention. It presupposes that such acts are in themselves capable of being
ordered to this end, insofar as they are in conformity with the authentic moral
good of man, safeguarded by the commandments. This is what Jesus himself points
out in his reply to the young man: "If you wish to enter into life, keep
the commandments" (Mt
Clearly such an ordering
must be rational and free, conscious and deliberate, by virtue of which man is
"responsible" for his actions and subject to the judgment of God, the
just and good judge who, as the Apostle Paul reminds us, rewards good
and punishes evil: "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,
so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the
body" (2 Cor 5:10).
74. But
on what does the moral assessment of man's free acts depend? What is it that
ensures this ordering of human acts to
God? Is it the intention of
the acting subject, the circumstances
and in particular the consequences of his action, or the object itself of his act? This
is what is traditionally called the problem of the "sources of
morality". Precisely with regard to this problem there have emerged in
the last few decades new or newly-revived theological and cultural trends which
call for careful discernment on the part of the Church's Magisterium.
Certain ethical
theories, called "teleological",
claim to be concerned for the conformity of human acts with the ends pursued by
the agent and with the values intended by him. The criteria for evaluating the moral rightness of an action are drawn
from the weighing of the non-moral or
pre-moral goods to be gained and the corresponding non-moral or
pre-moral values to be respected. For some, concrete behaviour would be
right or wrong according as whether or not it is capable of producing a better
state of affairs for all concerned. Right
conduct would be the one capable of "maximizing" goods and
"minimizing" evils.
Many of the Catholic moralists who follow in this direction seek to distance
themselves from utilitarianism and pragmatism, where the morality of human acts
would be judged without any reference to the man's true ultimate end. They rightly recognize the need to find ever
more consistent rational arguments in order to justify the requirements and to
provide a foundation for the norms of the moral life. This kind of investigation is legitimate and necessary, since the moral
order, as established by the natural law, is in principle accessible to human
reason. Furthermore, such investigation is well-suited to meeting the
demands of dialogue and cooperation with non-Catholics and non-believers,
especially in pluralistic societies.
75. But as part of
the effort to work out such a rational morality (for this reason it is
sometimes called an "autonomous morality" )
there exist false solutions, linked in
particular to an inadequate understanding of the object of moral action. Some authors do not take into sufficient consideration the fact
that the will is involved in the concrete choices which it makes: these choices are a condition of its moral goodness
and its being ordered to the ultimate end of the person. Others are inspired by a notion of
freedom which prescinds from the actual conditions of its exercise, from its
objective reference to the truth about the good, and from its determination
through choices of concrete kinds of behaviour. According to these theories,
free will would neither be morally subjected to specific obligations nor shaped
by its choices, while nonetheless still remaining responsible for its own acts
and for their consequences. This "teleologism", as a method for discovering the moral
norm, can thus be called according to terminology and approaches imported
from different currents of thought "consequentialism"
or "proportionalism". The former
claims to draw the criteria of the rightness of a given way of acting solely
from a calculation of foreseeable consequences deriving from a given choice.
The latter, by weighing the various values and goods being sought, focuses
rather on the proportion acknowledged between the good and bad effects of that
choice, with a view to the "greater good" or "lesser evil"
actually possible in a particular situation.
The
teleological ethical theories (proportionalism, consequentialism), while
acknowledging that moral values are indicated by reason and by Revelation,
maintain that it is never possible to formulate an absolute prohibition of
particular kinds of behaviour which would be in conflict, in every circumstance
and in every culture, with those values. The acting subject would indeed be responsible for attaining the
values pursued, but in two ways: the values or goods involved in a human act
would be, from one viewpoint, of the
moral order (in relation to properly moral values, such as love of God
and neighbour, justice, etc.) and, from another viewpoint, of the pre-moral order, which some
term non-moral, physical or ontic (in relation to the advantages and
disadvantages accruing both to the agent and to all other persons possibly
involved, such as, for example, health or its endangerment, physical integrity,
life, death, loss of material goods, etc.). In a world where goodness is always
mixed with evil, and every good effect linked to other evil effects, the
morality of an act would be judged in two different ways: its moral
"goodness" would be judged on the basis of the subject's intention in
reference to moral goods, and its "rightness" on the basis of a
consideration of its foreseeable effects or consequences and of their
proportion. Consequently, concrete kinds
of behaviour could be described as "right" or "wrong",
without it being thereby possible to judge as morally "good" or
"bad" the will of the person choosing them. In this way, an act
which, by contradicting a universal negative norm, directly violates goods
considered as "pre-moral" could be qualified as morally acceptable if
the intention of the subject is focused, in accordance with a
"responsible" assessment of the goods involved in the concrete
action, on the moral value judged to be decisive in the situation.
The evaluation of the
consequences of the action, based on the proportion between the act and its
effects and between the effects themselves, would regard only the pre-moral
order. The moral specificity of acts, that is their goodness or evil, would be
determined exclusively by the faithfulness of the person to the highest values
of charity and prudence, without this faithfulness necessarily being
incompatible with choices contrary to certain particular moral precepts. Even
when grave matter is concerned, these precepts should be considered as
operative norms which are always relative and open to exceptions.
In this view, deliberate consent to certain kinds of
behaviour declared illicit by traditional moral theology would not imply an
objective moral evil.
The Object of the
Deliberate Act
76. These theories can gain a certain
persuasive force from their affinity to the scientific mentality, which is
rightly concerned with ordering technical and economic activities on the basis
of a calculation of resources and profits, procedures and their effects. They seek to provide liberation from the
constraints of a voluntaristic and arbitrary morality of obligation which would
ultimately be dehumanizing.
Such theories however are not faithful
to the Church's teaching, when they believe they can justify, as morally good,
deliberate choices of kinds of behaviour contrary to the commandments of the
divine and natural law. These theories cannot claim to be grounded
in the Catholic moral tradition. Although the latter did witness the
development of a casuistry which tried to assess the best ways to achieve the
good in certain concrete situations, it is nonetheless true that this casuistry
concerned only cases in which the law was uncertain, and thus the absolute
validity of negative moral precepts, which oblige without exception, was not called
into question. The faithful are obliged
to acknowledge and respect the specific moral precepts declared and taught by
the Church in the name of God, the Creator and Lord.125 When the Apostle Paul sums up the fulfilment of the law in the
precept of love of neighbour as oneself (cf. Rom 13:8-10), he is not weakening the commandments but
reinforcing them, since he is revealing their requirements and their gravity. Love
of God and of one's neighbour cannot be separated from the observance of the
commandments of the Covenant renewed in the blood of Jesus Christ and in
the gift of the Spirit. It is an
honour characteristic of Christians to obey God rather than men (cf. Acts 4:19; 5:29) and accept even
martyrdom as a consequence, like the holy men and women of the Old and New
Testaments, who are considered such because they gave their lives rather than
perform this or that particular act contrary to faith or virtue.
77. In
order to offer rational criteria for a right moral decision, the theories
mentioned above take account of the intention and consequences of human action. Certainly there is need
to take into account both the intention as Jesus forcefully insisted in clear
disagreement with the scribes and Pharisees, who prescribed in great detail
certain outward practices without paying attention to the heart (cf. Mk 7:20-21; Mt 15:19) and the goods obtained and the evils avoided as a
result of a particular act.
Responsibility demands as much. But the
consideration of these consequences, and also of intentions, is not sufficient
for judging the moral quality of a concrete choice. The weighing of the goods
and evils foreseeable as the consequence of an action is not an adequate method
for determining whether the choice of that concrete kind of behaviour is
"according to its species", or "in itself", morally good or
bad, licit or illicit. The foreseeable consequences are part
of those circumstances of the act, which, while capable of lessening the
gravity of an evil act, nonetheless cannot alter its moral species.
Moreover, everyone recognizes
the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of evaluating all the good and
evil consequences and effects defined as pre-moral of one's own acts: an
exhaustive rational calculation is not possible. How then can one go about
establishing proportions which depend on a measuring, the criteria of which
remain obscure? How could an absolute obligation be justified on the basis of
such debatable calculations?
78. The morality of the human act depends primarily and
fundamentally on the "object" rationally chosen by the deliberate
will, as is borne out by the insightful analysis, still
valid today, made by
The reason why a good
intention is not itself sufficient, but a correct choice of actions is also
needed, is that the human act depends on its object,
whether that object is capable or not
of being ordered to God, to
the One who "alone is good", and thus brings about the perfection of
the person. An act is therefore good if its object is in conformity with the
good of the person with respect for the goods morally relevant for him.
Christian ethics, which pays particular attention to the moral object, does not
refuse to consider the inner
"teleology" of acting, inasmuch as it is directed to promoting the
true good of the person; but it recognizes that it is really pursued only when
the essential elements of human nature are respected. The human act, good
according to its object, is also capable
of being ordered to its ultimate end. That same act then attains its
ultimate and decisive perfection when the will actually does order it to God through charity. As the Patron (St. Alphonsus Liguori) of moral theologians and
confessors teaches: "It is not enough to do good works; they need to be
done well. For our works to be good and perfect,
they must be done for the sole purpose of pleasing God".129
"Intrinsic
evil": It is not Licit to Do Evil that Good May Come
of It. (cf. Rom 3:8)
79. One must therefore reject the thesis, characteristic
of teleological and proportionalist theories, which holds that it is impossible to qualify as morally evil according
to its species its "object" the deliberate choice of certain kinds of behaviour or specific acts,
apart from a consideration of the intention for which the choice is made or the
totality of the foreseeable consequences of that act for all persons concerned.
The primary and
decisive element for moral judgment is the object of the human act, which
establishes whether it is capable of
being ordered to the good and to the ultimate end, which is God. This
capability is grasped by reason in the very being of man, considered in his
integral truth, and therefore in his natural inclinations, his motivations and
his finalities, which always have a spiritual dimension as well. It is precisely these which are the contents of the
natural law and hence that ordered complex of "personal goods" which
serve the "good of the person": the good which is the person himself
and his perfection. These are the goods safeguarded by the commandments, which,
according to
80. Reason
attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature
"incapable of being ordered" to God, because they radically
contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which,
in the Church's moral tradition, have been termed "intrinsically
evil" (intrinsece malum):
they are such always and per se, in
other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior
intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in
the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and
especially by intentions, the Church teaches that "there exist acts which per se and in themselves,
independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their
object".131
The Second Vatican Council itself, in discussing the
respect due to the human person, gives a number of examples of such acts:
"Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide,
genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the
integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture
and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such
as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery,
prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of
work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free
responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they
infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than
those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the
Creator".132
With regard to
intrinsically evil acts, and in reference to contraceptive practices whereby
the conjugal act is intentionally rendered infertile, Pope
Paul VI teaches: "Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to
tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to
promote a greater good, it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do
evil that good may come of it (cf. Rom
3:8) in other words, to intend
directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and
which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to
protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in
general".133
81. In
teaching the existence of intrinsically evil acts, the Church accepts the
teaching of Sacred Scripture. The Apostle Paul emphatically states: "Do not be deceived: neither the immoral, nor
idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy,
nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the
If acts are intrinsically
evil, a good intention or particular circumstances can diminish their evil, but
they cannot remove it. They remain "irremediably" evil acts; per se and in themselves they are not
capable of being ordered to God and to the good of the person. "As for
acts which are themselves sins (cum
iam opera ipsa peccata sunt),
Saint Augustine writes, like theft, fornication, blasphemy, who would dare
affirm that, by doing them for good motives (causis bonis), they would no longer be sins, or, what is even
more absurd, that they would be sins that are justified?".134
Consequently, circumstances or
intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its
object into an act "subjectively" good or defensible as a choice.
82. Furthermore, an intention is good when it
has as its aim the true good of the person in view of his ultimate end. But
acts whose object is "not capable of being ordered" to God and
"unworthy of the human person" are always and in every case in
conflict with that good. Consequently, respect for norms which prohibit
such acts and oblige semper et pro semper, that is, without any exception, not
only does not inhibit a good intention, but actually represents its basic
expression.
The doctrine of the object as a source
of morality represents an authentic explicitation of the Biblical morality of
the Covenant and of the commandments, of charity and of the virtues. The moral
quality of human acting is dependent on this fidelity to the commandments, as
an expression of obedience and of love. For this reason we repeat the
opinion must be rejected as erroneous which maintains that it is impossible to
qualify as morally evil according to its species the deliberate choice of
certain kinds of behaviour or specific acts, without taking into account the
intention for which the choice was made or the totality of the foreseeable
consequences of that act for all persons concerned. Without the rational determination of the morality of
human acting as stated above, it would be impossible to affirm the
existence of an "objective moral order"135 and to establish any particular norm the content of which would
be binding without exception. This would be to the detriment of human
fraternity and the truth about the good, and would be injurious to ecclesial
communion as well.
83. As
is evident, in the question of the morality of human acts, and in particular
the question of whether there exist intrinsically evil acts, we find ourselves
faced with the question of man
himself, of his truth and
of the moral consequences flowing from that truth. By acknowledging and
teaching the existence of intrinsic evil in given human acts, the Church
remains faithful to the integral truth about man; she thus respects and
promotes man in his dignity and vocation. Consequently, she must reject the
theories set forth above, which contradict this truth.
Dear Brothers in the
Episcopate, we must not be content merely to warn the faithful about the errors
and dangers of certain ethical theories. We must first of all
show the inviting splendour of that truth which is Jesus Christ himself. In
him, who is the Truth (cf. Jn
14:6), man can understand fully and live perfectly, through his good actions,
his vocation to freedom in obedience to the divine law summarized in the
commandment of love of God and neighbour. And this is what takes place through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the
Spirit of truth, of freedom and of love: in him we are enabled to interiorize
the law, to receive it and to live it as the motivating force of true personal
freedom: "the perfect law, the law of liberty" (Jas 1:25).
CHAPTER III
"LEST THE CROSS OF CHRIST BE EMPTIED OF ITS
POWER (1 Cor
Moral Good for the Life of the Church and of the
World
"For freedom Christ
has set us free" (Gal 5:1).
84. The fundamental
question which the moral theories mentioned above pose in a particularly
forceful way is that of the relationship of man's freedom to God's law; it is
ultimately the question of the relationship
between freedom and truth. According to Christian faith and the Church's teaching,
"only the freedom which submits to the Truth leads the human person to his
true good.
The good of the
person is to be in the Truth and to do
the Truth".136
A comparison between the
Church's teaching and today's social and cultural situation immediately makes
clear the urgent need for the Church
herself to develop an intense pastoral effort precisely with regard to this
fundamental question. "This essential bond between
Truth, the Good and Freedom has been largely lost sight of by present-day
culture. As a result, helping man to rediscover it represents nowadays one of
the specific requirements of the Church's mission, for the salvation of the world. Pilate's question: "What is
truth" reflects the distressing perplexity of a man who often no longer
knows who he is, whence he
comes and where he is going.
Hence we not infrequently witness the fearful plunging of the human
person into situations of gradual self-destruction. According to some, it
appears that one no longer need acknowledge the enduring absoluteness of any
moral value. All around us we encounter contempt for human life after
conception and before birth; the ongoing violation of basic rights of the
person; the unjust destruction of goods minimally necessary for a human life.
Indeed, something more serious has happened: man is no longer convinced that
only in the truth can he find salvation. The saving power of the truth is
contested, and freedom alone, uprooted from any objectivity, is left to decide
by itself what is good and what is evil. This relativism becomes, in the field
of theology, a lack of trust in the wisdom of God, who guides man with the
moral law. Concrete situations are unfavourably
contrasted with the precepts of the moral law, nor is it any longer maintained
that, when all is said and done, the law of God is always the one true good of
man".137
85. The
discernment which the Church carries out with regard to these ethical theories
is not simply limited to denouncing and refuting them. In a positive way, the
Church seeks, with great love, to help all the faithful to form a moral
conscience which will make judgments and lead to decisions in accordance with
the truth, following the exhortation of the Apostle Paul:
"Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of
your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and
acceptable and perfect" (Rom
12:2). This effort by the Church
finds its support the "secret" of its educative power not so much
in doctrinal statements and pastoral appeals to vigilance, as in constantly looking to the Lord Jesus. Each
day the Church looks to Christ with unfailing love, fully aware that the true
and final answer to the problem of morality lies in him alone. In a particular
way, it is in the Crucified Christ that
the Church finds the answer to
the question troubling so many people today: how can obedience to universal and
unchanging moral norms respect the uniqueness and individuality of the person,
and not represent a threat to his freedom and dignity? The Church makes her own
the Apostle Paul's awareness of the mission he had received: "Christ...
sent me... to preach the Gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross
of Christ be emptied of its power.... We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling
block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:17, 23-24). The Crucified Christ reveals the authentic
meaning of freedom; he lives it fully in the total gift of himself and
calls his disciples to share in his freedom.
86.
Rational reflection and daily experience demonstrate the weakness which marks
man's freedom. That freedom is real but limited: its absolute and unconditional
origin is not in itself, but in the life within which it is situated and which
represents for it, at one and the same time, both a limitation and a
possibility. Human freedom belongs to us
as creatures; it is a freedom which is given as a gift, one to be received like
a seed and to be cultivated responsibly. It is an essential part of that
creaturely image which is the basis of the dignity of the person. Within
that freedom there is an echo of the primordial vocation whereby the Creator
calls man to the true Good, and even more, through Christ's Revelation, to
become his friend and to share his own divine life. It is at once inalienable
self-possession and openness to all that exists, in passing beyond self to
knowledge and love of the other.138 Freedom then is rooted in the truth
about man, and it is ultimately directed towards communion.
Reason and experience not only confirm
the weakness of human freedom; they also confirm its tragic aspects. Man comes to realize that his
freedom is in some mysterious way inclined to betray this openness to the True
and the Good, and that all too often he actually prefers to choose finite, limited
and ephemeral goods. What is more, within his errors and
negative decisions, man glimpses the source of a deep rebellion, which leads
him to reject the Truth and the Good in order to set himself up as an absolute
principle unto himself: "You will be like God" (Gen 3:5). Consequently,
freedom itself needs to be set free.
It is Christ who sets it free: he "has set us free for
freedom" (cf. Gal 5:1).
87.
Christ reveals, first and foremost, that the frank and open acceptance of truth
is the condition for authentic freedom: "You will know the
truth, and the truth will set you free" (Jn
Furthermore, Jesus reveals by his whole life, and
not only by his words, that freedom is acquired in love, that is, in the gift
of self. The one who says: "Greater love has no man than this, that
a man lay down his life for his friends" (Jn
The Church, and each of her
members, is thus called to share in the munus
regale of the Crucified Christ (cf. Jn
Jesus, then, is the living, personal
summation of perfect freedom in total obedience to the will of God. His crucified flesh fully reveals the unbreakable
bond between freedom and truth, just as his Resurrection from the dead is the
supreme exaltation of the fruitfulness and saving power of a freedom lived out
in truth.
Walking in the Light (cf. 1 Jn
1:7)
88. The attempt to set freedom in opposition to
truth, and indeed to separate them radically, is the consequence, manifestation
and consummation of another more
serious and destructive dichotomy, that which separates faith from morality.
This separation represents
one of the most acute pastoral concerns of the Church amid today's growing
secularism, wherein many, indeed too many, people think
and live "as if God did not exist". We are speaking of a mentality
which affects, often in a profound, extensive and all-embracing way, even the
attitudes and behaviour of Christians,
whose faith is weakened and loses its character as a new and original criterion
for thinking and acting in personal, family and social life. In a widely dechristianized culture, the criteria
employed by believers themselves in making judgments and decisions often appear
extraneous or even contrary to those of the Gospel.
It is urgent then that
Christians should rediscover the
newness of the faith and its power to judge a prevalent and
all-intrusive culture. As the Apostle Paul admonishes us: "Once
you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of the
light (for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and
true), and try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the
unfruitful words of darkness, but instead expose them... Look carefully then
how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time,
because the days are evil" (Eph 5:8-11, 15-16; cf. 1 Th 5:4-8).
It is urgent to rediscover
and to set forth once more the authentic reality of the Christian faith, which
is not simply a set of propositions to be accepted with intellectual assent.
Rather, faith is a lived knowledge of
Christ, a living remembrance of his commandments, and a truth to be lived out. A word, in
any event, is not truly received until it passes into action, until it is put
into practice. Faith is a decision involving one's whole
existence. It is an encounter, a dialogue, a communion of love and of life
between the believer and Jesus Christ, the Way, and the Truth, and the Life
(cf. Jn 14:6). It entails an act of trusting abandonment to
Christ, which enables us to live as he lived (cf. Gal
89. Faith also
possesses a moral content. It gives
rise to and calls for a consistent life commitment; it entails and brings to
perfection the acceptance and observance of God's commandments. As
Through the moral life, faith becomes
"confession", not only
before God but also before men: it becomes witness. "You are the light of the world", said Jesus;
"a city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it
under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let
your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give
glory to your Father who is in heaven" (Mt 5:14-16). These works are above all those of charity (cf. Mt 25:31-46) and of the authentic
freedom which is manifested and lived in the gift of self, even to the total gift of self, like
that of Jesus, who on the Cross "loved the Church and gave himself up for
her" (Eph 5:25). Christ's
witness is the source, model and means for the witness of his disciples, who
are called to walk on the same road: "If any man would come after me, let
him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Lk 9:23). Charity, in conformity with
the radical demands of the Gospel, can lead the believer to the supreme witness
of martyrdom. Once again this means imitating Jesus who died on
the Cross: "Be imitators of God, as beloved children", Paul writes to
the Christians of Ephesus, "and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave
himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Eph 5:1-2).
Martyrdom, the Exaltation
of the Inviolable Holiness of God's law
90. The
relationship between faith and morality shines forth with all its brilliance in
the unconditional respect due to the
insistent demands of the personal dignity of every man, demands
protected by those moral norms which prohibit without exception actions which
are intrinsically evil. The universality and the immutability of the moral norm
make manifest and at the same time serve to protect the personal dignity and
inviolability of man, on whose face is reflected the splendour of God (cf. Gen 9:5-6).
The unacceptability of
"teleological", "consequentialist" and "proportionalist"
ethical theories, which deny the existence of negative moral norms regarding
specific kinds of behaviour, norms which are valid without exception, is
confirmed in a particularly eloquent way by Christian martyrdom, which has always accompanied and continues to
accompany the life of the Church even today.
91. In
the Old Testament we already find admirable witnesses of fidelity to the holy
law of God even to the point of a voluntary acceptance of death. A prime
example is the story of Susanna: in
reply to the two unjust judges who threatened to have her condemned to death if
she refused to yield to their sinful passion, she says: " I am hemmed in on every side. For if I do this thing, it is death for
me; and if I do not, I shall not escape your hands. I choose not to do it and
to fall into your hands, rather than to sin in the sight of the Lord!" (Dan 13:22-23). Susanna,
preferring to "fall innocent" into the hands of the judges, bears witness
not only to her faith and trust in God but also to her obedience to the truth
and to the absoluteness of the moral order. By her readiness to die a martyr, she proclaims that it is not right to
do what God's law qualifies as evil in order to draw some good from it.
Susanna chose for herself the "better part": hers was a perfectly
clear witness, without any compromise, to the truth about the good and to the
God of Israel. By her acts, she revealed the holiness of God.
At the dawn of the New
Testament, John the Baptist, unable
to refrain from speaking of the law of the Lord and rejecting any compromise
with evil, "gave his life in
witness to truth and justice",142 and thus also became the forerunner of the Messiah in the way he
died (cf. Mk 6:17-29). "The one who came to bear witness to
the light and who deserved to be called by that same light, which is Christ, a
burning and shining lamp, was cast into the darkness of prison... The one to
whom it was granted to baptize the Redeemer of the world was thus baptized in
his own blood".143
In the New Testament we
find many examples of followers of Christ, beginning with
the deacon Stephen (cf. Acts
6:8-7:60) and the Apostle James (cf. Acts
12:1-2), who died as martyrs in order to profess their faith and their love
for Christ, unwilling to deny him. In this they followed the Lord Jesus
who "made the good confession" (1 Tim
The Church proposes the example
of numerous Saints who bore witness to and defended moral truth even to the
point of enduring martyrdom, or who preferred death to a single mortal
sin. In raising them to the honour of
the altars, the Church has canonized their witness and declared the truth of
their judgment, according to which the love of God entails the obligation to
respect his commandments, even in the most dire of circumstances, and the
refusal to betray those commandments, even for the sake of saving one's own
life.
92. Martyrdom, accepted as an affirmation of the
inviolability of the moral order, bears splendid witness both to the holiness
of God's law and to the inviolability of the personal dignity of man, created
in God's image and likeness. This dignity may never be disparaged or
called into question, even with good intentions, whatever the difficulties
involved. Jesus warns us most sternly: "What does it profit a man, to gain
the whole world and forfeit his life? " (Mk 8:36).
Martyrdom rejects as false and
illusory whatever "human meaning" one might claim to attribute, even
in "exceptional" conditions, to an act morally evil in itself.
Indeed, it even more clearly unmasks the true face of such an act: it is a violation of man's
"humanity", in the one perpetrating it even before the one
enduring it.144 Hence martyrdom is also the exaltation of a person's perfect
"humanity" and of true "life", as is attested by Saint
Ignatius of Antioch, addressing the Christians of Rome, the place of his own
martyrdom: "Have mercy on me, brethren: do not hold me back from living;
do not wish that I die... Let me arrive at the pure light; once there I will be truly a man. Let me imitate
the passion of my God".145
93. Finally, martyrdom is an outstanding sign of the holiness of the
Church. Fidelity to God's holy law, witnessed to by death, is a solemn
proclamation and missionary commitment usque
ad sanguinem, so that the splendour of moral truth may be undimmed in
the behaviour and thinking of individuals and society. This witness makes
an extraordinarily valuable contribution to warding off, in civil
society and within the ecclesial communities themselves, a headlong plunge into
the most dangerous crisis which can afflict man: the confusion between good and evil, which
makes it impossible to build up and to preserve the moral order of individuals
and communities. By their eloquent and attractive example of a life
completely transfigured by the splendour of moral truth, the martyrs and, in
general, all the Church's Saints, light up every period of history by
reawakening its moral sense. By
witnessing fully to the good, they are a living reproof to those who transgress
the law (cf. Wis 2:12), and
they make the words of the Prophet echo ever afresh: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness
for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for
bitter!" (Is
Although martyrdom represents the high
point of the witness to moral truth, and one to which relatively few people are
called, there is nonetheless a consistent witness which all Christians must
daily be ready to make, even at the cost of suffering and grave sacrifice. Indeed, faced with the many difficulties which
fidelity to the moral order can demand, even in the most ordinary
circumstances, the Christian is called, with the grace of God invoked in
prayer, to a sometimes heroic commitment. In this he or she is sustained by the
virtue of fortitude, whereby as Gregory the Great teaches one can actually
"love the difficulties of this world for the sake of eternal
rewards".146
94. In
this witness to the absoluteness of the moral good Christians are not alone: they are supported by the moral sense
present in peoples and by the great religious and sapiential traditions of East
and West, from which the interior and mysterious workings of God's Spirit are
not absent. The words of the Latin poet
Juvenal apply to all: "Consider it the greatest of
crimes to prefer survival to honour and, out of love of physical life, to lose
the very reason for living".147 The voice of
conscience has always clearly recalled that there are truths and moral values for
which one must be prepared to give up one's life. In an individual's words and
above all in the sacrifice of his life for a moral value, the Church sees a
single testimony to that truth which, already present in creation, shines forth
in its fullness on the face of Christ. As Saint Justin put it, "the
Stoics, at least in their teachings on ethics, demonstrated wisdom, thanks to
the seed of the Word present in all peoples, and we know that those who
followed their doctrines met with hatred and were killed".148
Universal and Unchanging
Moral Norms at the Service of the Person and of Society
95. The
Church's teaching, and in particular her firmness in defending the universal
and permanent validity of the precepts prohibiting intrinsically evil acts, is
not infrequently seen as the sign of an intolerable intransigence, particularly
with regard to the enormously complex and conflict-filled situations present in
the moral life of individuals and of society today; this intransigence is said
to be in contrast with the Church's motherhood. The Church, one hears, is
lacking in understanding and compassion. But
the Church's motherhood can never in fact be separated from her teaching
mission, which she must always carry out as the faithful Bride of Christ, who
is the Truth in Person. "As Teacher, she never tires of proclaiming the
moral norm... The Church is in no way the author or the arbiter of this norm.
In obedience to the truth which is Christ, whose image is reflected in the
nature and dignity of the human person, the Church interprets the moral norm
and proposes it to all people of good will, without concealing its demands of
radicalism and perfection".149
In fact, genuine understanding and compassion must
mean love for the person, for his true good, for his authentic freedom. And
this does not result, certainly, from concealing or weakening moral truth, but
rather from proposing it in its most profound meaning as an outpouring of God's
eternal Wisdom, which we have received in Christ, and as a service to man, to
the growth of his freedom and to the attainment of his happiness.150
Still, a clear and forceful
presentation of moral truth can never be separated from a profound and
heartfelt respect, born of that patient and trusting love which man always
needs along his moral journey, a journey frequently wearisome on account of difficulties,
weakness and painful situations. The
Church can never renounce the "the principle of truth and consistency,
whereby she does not agree to call good evil and evil good";151 she must always be careful not to break the bruised reed or to
quench the dimly burning wick (cf. Is
42:3). As Paul VI
wrote: "While
it is an outstanding manifestation of charity towards souls to omit nothing
from the saving doctrine of Christ, this must always be joined with tolerance
and charity, as Christ himself showed by his conversations and dealings with
men. Having come not
to judge the world but to save it, he was uncompromisingly stern towards sin,
but patient and rich in mercy towards sinners".152
96. The
Church's firmness in defending the universal and unchanging moral norms is not
demeaning at all. Its only purpose is to serve man's true freedom. Because
there can be no freedom apart from or in opposition to the truth, the
categorical unyielding and uncompromising defence of the absolutely
essential demands of man's personal dignity must be considered the way and the
condition for the very existence of freedom.
This service is directed to
every man, considered in the
uniqueness and singularity of his being and existence: only by obedience to universal moral norms does man find full
confirmation of his personal uniqueness and the possibility of authentic moral
growth. For this very reason, this service is also directed to all mankind: it is not only for
individuals but also for the community, for society as such. These norms in
fact represent the unshakable foundation and solid guarantee of a just and
peaceful human coexistence, and hence of genuine democracy, which can come into
being and develop only on the basis of the equality of all its members, who
possess common rights and duties. When it is
a matter of the moral norms prohibiting intrinsic evil, there are no privileges
or exceptions for anyone. It makes no difference whether one is
the master of the world or the "poorest of the poor" on the face of
the earth. Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal.
97. In this way, moral
norms, and primarily the negative ones, those prohibiting evil, manifest their meaning and force, both personal and social.
By protecting the inviolable personal dignity of every human being they
help to preserve the human social fabric and its proper and fruitful
development. The
commandments of the second table of the Decalogue in particular those which
Jesus quoted to the young man of the Gospel (cf. Mt
These commandments are
formulated in general terms. But the very fact that "the origin, the
subject and the purpose of all social institutions is and should be the human
person" 153 allows for them to be specified and made more explicit in a
detailed code of behaviour. The fundamental moral rules of social life thus
entail specific demands to
which both public authorities and citizens are required to pay heed. Even though intentions may sometimes be
good, and circumstances frequently difficult, civil authorities and particular
individuals never have authority to violate the fundamental and inalienable
rights of the human person. In the end, only a morality which acknowledges
certain norms as valid always and for everyone, with no exception, can guarantee
the ethical foundation of social coexistence, both on the national and
international levels.
Morality and the Renewal
of Social and Political Life
98. In
the face of serious forms of social and economic injustice and political corruption
affecting entire peoples and nations, there is a growing reaction of
indignation on the part of very many people whose fundamental human rights have
been trampled upon and held in contempt, as well as an ever more widespread and
acute sense of the need for a radical personal
and social renewal capable of
ensuring justice, solidarity, honesty and openness.
Certainly there is a long
and difficult road ahead; bringing about such a renewal will require enormous
effort, especially on account of the number and the gravity of the causes
giving rise to and aggravating the situations of injustice present in the world
today. But, as history and personal experience show, it is not difficult to discover at the bottom of these situations
causes which are properly "cultural", linked to particular ways of
looking at man, society and the world. Indeed, at the heart of
the issue of culture we find the moral
sense, which is in turn rooted and fulfilled in the religious sense.154
99. Only God, the Supreme Good, constitutes the unshakable
foundation and essential condition of morality, and thus of the commandments,
particularly those negative commandments which always and in every case
prohibit behaviour and actions incompatible with the personal dignity of every
man. The Supreme Good and the moral good meet in truth: the truth of God, the Creator and Redeemer, and the truth
of man, created and redeemed by him.
Only upon this truth is it possible to
construct a renewed society and to solve the complex and weighty problems
affecting it, above all the problem of overcoming the various forms of
totalitarianism, so as to make way for the authentic freedom of the person.
"Totalitarianism arises out of a denial of
truth in the objective sense. If there is no transcendent truth, in obedience
to which man achieves his full identity, then there is no sure principle for
guaranteeing just relations between people. Their self-interest as a class,
group or nation would inevitably set them in opposition to one another. If one
does not acknowledge transcendent truth, then the force of power takes over,
and each person tends to make full use of the means at his disposal in order to
impose his own interests or his own opinion, with no regard for the rights of
others.... Thus, the root of modern totalitarianism is
to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person who,
as the visible image of the invisible God, is therefore by his very nature the
subject of rights which no one may violate no individual, group, class, nation
or State. Not even the majority of a social body may violate these rights, by
going against the minority, by isolating, oppressing, or exploiting it, or by
attempting to annihilate it".155
Consequently, the inseparable connection between
truth and freedom which expresses the essential bond between God's wisdom and
will is extremely significant for the life of persons in the socio-economic
and socio-political sphere. This is clearly seen in the Church's social
teaching which "belongs to the field... of theology and particularly of
moral theology" 156 and from her presentation of commandments governing social,
economic and political life, not only with regard to general attitudes but also
to precise and specific kinds of behaviour and concrete acts.
100. The
Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms
that "in economic matters, respect for human dignity requires the practice
of the virtue of temperance, to
moderate our attachment to the goods of this world; of the virtue of justice, to preserve our neighbour's
rights and to render what is his or her due; and of solidarity, following the Golden Rule and in keeping with the
generosity of the Lord, who 'though he was rich, yet for your sake... became
poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich' (2 Cor 8:9)".157
The Catechism goes on to present a series of kinds
of behaviour and actions contrary to human dignity: theft, deliberate retention of goods lent or
objects lost, business fraud (cf. Dt
25:13-16), unjust wages (cf. Dt
24:14-15), forcing up prices by trading on the ignorance or hardship of another
(cf. Am 8:4-6), the
misappropriation and private use of the corporate property of an enterprise, work
badly done, tax fraud, forgery of cheques and invoices, excessive expenses,
waste, etc.158 It continues: "The seventh commandment prohibits actions or
enterprises which for any reason selfish or ideological, commercial or
totalitarian lead to the enslavement
of human beings, disregard for their personal dignity, buying or selling
or ex- changing them like merchandise. Reducing persons by violence to
use-value or a source of profit is a sin against their dignity as persons and
their fundamental rights.
101. In the political sphere, it must be
noted that truthfulness in the relations between those governing and those
governed, openness in public administration, impartiality in the service of the
body politic, respect for the rights of political adversaries, safeguarding the
rights of the accused against summary trials and convictions, the just and
honest use of public funds, the rejection of equivocal or illicit means in
order to gain, preserve or increase power at any cost all these are
principles which are primarily rooted in, and in fact derive their singular urgency
from, the transcendent value of the person and the objective moral demands of
the functioning of States.160 When these principles are not
observed, the very basis of political coexistence is weakened and the life of
society itself is gradually jeopardized, threatened and doomed to decay (cf. Ps
14:3-4; Rev 18:2-3, 9-24). Today, when many countries have seen the
fall of ideologies which bound politics to a totalitarian conception of the
world Marxism being the foremost of these there is no less grave a danger
that the fundamental rights of the human person will be denied and that the
religious yearnings which arise in the heart of every human being will be
absorbed once again into politics. This is the risk of an alliance between democracy and ethical relativism, which
would remove any sure moral reference point from political and social life, and
on a deeper level make the acknowledgement of truth impossible. Indeed,
"if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity,
then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As
history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or
thinly disguised totalitarianism".161
Thus, in every sphere of personal, family, social
and political life, morality founded upon truth and open in truth to
authentic freedom renders a primordial, indispensable and immensely valuable
service not only for the individual person and his growth in the good, but also
for society and its genuine development.
Grace and Obedience to God's Law
102.
Even in the most difficult situations man must respect the norm of morality so
that he can be obedient to God's holy commandment and consistent with his own
dignity as a person. Certainly, maintaining a harmony between freedom
and truth occasionally demands uncommon sacrifices, and must be won at a high
price: it can even involve martyrdom.
But, as universal and daily experience
demonstrates, man is tempted to break that harmony: "I do not do what I
want, but I do the very thing I hate... I do not do the good I want, but the
evil I do not want" (Rom
What is the ultimate source of this
inner division of man? His history of sin begins when he no longer
acknowledges the Lord as his Creator and he himself wishes to be
the one who determines, with complete independence, what is good and what is
evil. "You will be like God, knowing
good and evil" (Gen 3:5): this was the first
temptation, and it is echoed in all the other temptations to which man is more
easily inclined to yield as a result of the original Fall.
But temptations can be overcome, sins can be
avoided, because together with the commandments the Lord gives us is the
possibility of keeping them: "His eyes are on those who fear
him, and he knows every deed of man. He has not commanded any one to be
ungodly, and he has not given any one permission to sin" (
103. Man
always has before him the spiritual horizon of hope, thanks to the help of divine grace and with the cooperation of human freedom. It is in the saving Cross of Jesus, in
the gift of the Holy Spirit, in the Sacraments which flow forth from the
pierced side of the Redeemer (cf. Jn
19:34), that believers find the grace and the strength always to keep God's
holy law, even amid the gravest of hardships. As Saint Andrew of
Only
in the mystery of Christ's Redemption do we discover the "concrete"
possibilities of man. "It would be
a very serious error to conclude... that the Church's teaching is essentially
only an "ideal" which must then be adapted, proportioned, graduated
to the so-called concrete possibilities of man, according to a "balancing
of the goods in question". But what are the "concrete possibilities
of man? And of which man are we
speaking? Of man dominated by
lust or of man redeemed by Christ?
This is what is at stake: the reality of Christ's redemption. Christ has redeemed us! This means that he has given us the
possibility of realizing the entire truth
of our being; he has set our freedom free from the domination of concupiscence. And if redeemed man still sins,
this is not due to an imperfection of Christ's redemptive act, but to man's
will not to avail himself of the grace which flows
from that act. God's command is of course
proportioned to man's capabilities; but to the capabilities of the man to whom
the Holy Spirit has been given; of the man who, though he has fallen into sin,
can always obtain pardon and enjoy the presence of the Holy Spirit".164
104. In
this context, appropriate allowance is made both for God's mercy towards the sinner who converts and for the understanding of human weakness. Such
understanding never means compromising and falsifying the standard of good and
evil in order to adapt it to particular circumstances. It is quite human for the sinner to acknowledge his
weakness and to ask mercy for his failings; what is unacceptable is the
attitude of one who makes his own weakness the criterion of the truth about the
good, so that he can feel self-justified, without even the need to have recourse
to God and his mercy. An attitude of this sort corrupts the morality of society
as a whole, since it encourages doubt about the objectivity of the moral law in
general and a rejection of the absoluteness of moral prohibitions regarding specific
human acts, and it ends up by confusing all judgments about values.
Instead, we should take to heart the message of the Gospel parable of the
Pharisee and the tax collector (cf. Lk 18:9-14). The
tax collector might possibly have had some justification for the sins he
committed, such as to diminish his responsibility. But his prayer does not
dwell on such justifications, but rather on his own unworthiness before God's
infinite holiness: "God, be merciful to me a sinner!
" (Lk 18:13). The
Pharisee, on the other hand, is self-justified, finding some excuse for each of
his failings. Here we encounter two different attitudes of the moral conscience
of man in every age.
The tax collector represents a
"repentant" conscience, fully aware of the frailty of its own nature
and seeing in its own failings, whatever their subjective justifications, a
confirmation of its need for redemption.
The Pharisee represents a
"self-satisfied" conscience, under the illusion that it is able to
observe the law without the help of grace and convinced that it does not need
mercy.
105. All
people must take great care not to allow themselves to
be tainted by the attitude of the Pharisee, which would seek to eliminate
awareness of one's own limits and of one's own sin. In our own day this
attitude is expressed particularly in the attempt to adapt the moral norm to
one's own capacities and personal interests, and even in the rejection of the
very idea of a norm. Accepting, on the other hand, the
"disproportion" between the law and human ability (that is, the
capacity of the moral forces of man left to himself)
kindles the desire for grace and prepares one to receive it. "Who will deliver me from this body of
death?" asks the Apostle Paul. And in an outburst of joy and gratitude he
replies: "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
" (Rom 7:24-25).
We find the same awareness
in the following prayer of Saint Ambrose of
Morality and New Evangelization
106. Evangelization is the most powerful and
stirring challenge which the Church has been called to face from her very
beginning. Indeed, this challenge is posed not so much by the social and
cultural milieux which she encounters in the course of history, as by the
mandate of the Risen Christ, who defines the very reason for the Church's
existence: "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole
creation" (Mk 16:15).
At least for many peoples,
however, the present time is instead marked by a formidable challenge to
undertake a "new evangelization", a proclamation of the Gospel which is always new
and always the bearer of new things, an evangelization which must be "new
in its ardour, methods and expression".166
Dechristianization, which
weighs heavily upon entire peoples and communities once rich in faith and Christian
life, involves not only the loss of faith or in any event its becoming
irrelevant for everyday life, but also, and of necessity, a decline or obscuring of the moral sense. This
comes about both as a result of a loss of awareness of the
originality of Gospel morality and as a result of an eclipse of fundamental
principles and ethical values themselves. Today's widespread tendencies towards subjectivism, utilitarianism and
relativism appear not merely as pragmatic attitudes or patterns of behaviour,
but rather as approaches having a basis in theory and claiming full cultural
and social legitimacy.
107. Evangelization and therefore the "new evangelization"
also involves the proclamation and presentation of
morality. Jesus himself, even as he preached the Kingdom of God and its saving
love, called people to faith and conversion (cf. Mk 1:15). And when Peter,
with the other Apostles, proclaimed the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from
the dead, he held out a new life to be lived, a
"way" to be followed, for those who would be disciples of the Risen One
(cf. Acts 2:37-41; 3:17-20).
Just as it does in proclaiming the
truths of faith, and even more so in presenting the foundations and content of
Christian morality, the new
evangelization will show its authenticity and unleash all its missionary force
when it is carried out through the gift not only of the word proclaimed but
also of the word lived.
In particular, the life of holiness which is
resplendent in so many members of the People of God, humble and often unseen,
constitutes the simplest and most attractive way to perceive at once the beauty
of truth, the liberating force of God's love, and the value of unconditional
fidelity to all the demands of the Lord's law, even in the most difficult
situations. For this reason, the Church, as a wise
teacher of morality, has always invited believers to seek and to find in the
saints, and above all in the most holy Virgin Mother of God "full of
grace" and "all-holy", the model, the strength and the joy
needed to live a life in accordance with God's commandments and the Beatitudes
of the Gospel.
The lives of the saints, as
a reflection of the goodness of God the One who "alone is good"
constitute not only a genuine profession of faith and an incentive for sharing
it with others, but also a glorification of God and his infinite holiness. The
life of holiness thus brings to full expression and effectiveness the threefold
and unitary munus propheticum,
sacerdotale et regale which every Christian receives
as a gift by being born again "of water and the Spirit" (Jn 3:5) in Baptism. His moral life
has the value of a "spiritual worship" (Rom 12:1; cf. Phil
3:3), flowing from and nourished by that inexhaustible source of holiness and
glorification of God which is found in the Sacraments, especially in the
Eucharist: by sharing in the sacrifice of the Cross, the Christian partakes of
Christ's self-giving love and is equipped and committed to live this same
charity in all his thoughts and deeds. In the moral life the Christian's royal
service is also made evident and effective: with the help of grace, the more
one obeys the new law of the Holy Spirit, the more one grows in the freedom to
which he or she is called by the service of truth, charity and justice.
108. At the heart of the
new evangelization and of the new moral life which it proposes and awakens by
its fruits of holiness and missionary zeal, there is the Spirit of Christ, the principle and strength of the
fruitfulness of
As Pope Paul VI
reminded us: "Evangelization will never be possible without the action of
the Holy Spirit".167 The Spirit of Jesus, received by the humble and
docile heart of the believer, brings about the flourishing of Christian moral
life and the witness of holiness amid the great variety of vocations, gifts,
responsibilities, conditions and life situations. As Novatian once
pointed out, here expressing the authentic faith of the Church, it
is the Holy Spirit "who confirmed the hearts and minds of the disciples,
who revealed the mysteries of the Gospel, who shed upon them
the light of things divine. Strengthened by his gift, they did not fear either
prisons or chains for the name of the Lord; indeed they even trampled upon the
powers and torments of the world, armed and strengthened by him, having in
themselves the gifts which this same Spirit bestows and directs like jewels to
the Church, the Bride of Christ. It is
in fact he who raises up prophets in the Church, instructs teachers, guides
tongues, works wonders and healings, accomplishes miracles, grants the
discernment of spirits, assigns governance, inspires counsels, distributes and
harmonizes every other charismatic gift. In this way he completes and perfects
the Lord's Church everywhere and in all things".168
In the living context of
this new evangelization, aimed at generating and nourishing "the faith
which works through love" (cf. Gal
5:6), and in relation to the work of the Holy Spirit, we can now understand the
proper place which continuing
theological reflection about the moral life holds in the Church, the
community of believers. We can likewise speak of the mission and the
responsibility proper to moral theologians.
The Service of Moral
Theologians
109. The whole
Church is called to evangelization and to the witness of a life of faith, by
the fact that she has been made a sharer in the munus propheticum (prophetic mission-ed.) of the Lord Jesus through the gift of his Spirit. Thanks
to the permanent presence of the Spirit of truth in the Church (cf. Jn
In order to carry out her prophetic
mission, the Church must constantly reawaken or
"rekindle" her own life of faith (cf. 2 Tim 1:6), particularly through an ever deeper reflection, under the
guidance of the Holy Spirit, upon the content of faith itself. The
"vocation" of the theologian in the Church is
specifically at the service of this "believing effort to understand the
faith". As the Instruction Donum
Veritatis teaches: "Among the vocations awakened by the Spirit in
the Church is that of the theologian. His role is to pursue in a particular way
an ever deeper understanding of the word of God found in the inspired
Scriptures and handed on by the living Tradition of the Church. He does this in
communion with the Magisterium, which has been charged with the responsibility
of preserving the deposit of faith. By its nature, faith appeals to
reason because it reveals to man the truth of his destiny and the way to attain
it. Revealed truth, to be sure, surpasses our telling. All our concepts fall
short of its ultimately unfathomable grandeur (cf. Eph
It is fundamental for
defining the very identity of theology, and consequently for theology to carry
out its proper mission, to recognize its profound and vital connection with the
Church, her mystery, her life and her mission: "Theology
is an ecclesial science because it grows in the Church and works on the
Church... It is a service to the Church and therefore ought to feel itself
actively involved in the mission of the Church, particularly in its prophetic
mission".171 By its
very nature and procedures, authentic theology can flourish and develop only
through a committed and responsible participation in and "belonging"
to the Church as a "community of faith". In turn, the fruits of theological research and
deeper insight become a source of enrichment for the Church and her life of
faith.
110. All
that has been said about theology in general can and must also be said for moral theology, seen
in its specific nature as a scientific reflection on the Gospel as the gift and commandment of new
life, a
reflection on the life which "professes the truth in love" (cf. Eph
4:15) and on the Church's life of holiness, in which there shines forth the
truth about the good brought to its perfection.
The Church's Magisterium intervenes
not only in the sphere of faith, but also, and inseparably so, in the sphere of
morals. It has the task of "discerning, by means of judgments normative
for the consciences of believers, those acts which in themselves conform to the
demands of faith and foster their expression in life and those which, on the
contrary, because intrinsically evil, are incompatible with such demands".172
In proclaiming the
commandments of God and the charity of Christ, the Church's Magisterium also
teaches the faithful specific particular precepts and requires that they
consider them in conscience as morally binding. In addition, the Magisterium carries
out an important work of vigilance, warning the faithful of the presence of
possible errors, even merely implicit ones, when their consciences fail to
acknowledge the correctness and the truth of the moral norms which the
Magisterium teaches.
This is the point at which to
consider the specific task of all those who by mandate of their legitimate
Pastors teach moral theology in Seminaries and Faculties of Theology. They have the grave duty to instruct
the faithful especially future Pastors about all those commandments and
practical norms authoritatively declared by the Church.173
While recognizing the
possible limitations of the human arguments employed by the Magisterium, moral
theologians are called to develop a deeper understanding of the reasons
underlying its teachings and to expound the validity and obligatory nature of
the precepts it proposes, demonstrating their connection with one another and
their relation with man's ultimate end.174 Moral theologians are to set forth the
Church's teaching and to give, in the exercise of their ministry, the example
of a loyal assent, both internal and external, to the Magisterium's teaching in
the areas of both dogma and morality.175 Working together in cooperation with the hierarchical Magisterium,
theologians will be deeply concerned to clarify ever more fully the biblical
foundations, the ethical significance and the anthropological concerns which
underlie the moral doctrine and the vision of man set forth by the Church.
111. The
service which moral theologians are called to provide at the present time is of the utmost importance, not only for the
Church's life and mission, but also for human society and culture. Moral theologians have the task, in close and
vital connection with biblical and dogmatic theology, to highlight through
their scientific reflection "that dynamic aspect which will elicit the
response that man must give to the divine call which comes in the process
of his growth in love, within a community of salvation. In this way, moral theology will acquire an inner spiritual dimension
in response to the need to develop fully the imago Dei (image of God-ed.) present in man, and in response to the laws of spiritual development described by
Christian ascetical and mystical theology".176
Certainly moral theology
and its teaching are meeting with particular difficulty today. Because the
Church's morality necessarily involves a normative
dimension, moral theology cannot
be reduced to a body of knowledge worked out purely in the context of the
so-called behavioural sciences. The latter are concerned with the phenomenon of
morality as a historical and social fact; moral theology, however, while needing to make use of
the behavioural and natural sciences, does not rely on the results of formal
empirical observation or phenomenological understanding alone. Indeed, the
relevance of the behavioural sciences for moral theology must
always be measured against the primordial question: What is good or evil? What must be done to have eternal life?
112. The moral theologian
must therefore exercise careful discernment in the context of today's
prevalently scientific and technical culture, exposed as it is to the dangers
of relativism, pragmatism and positivism. From the theological viewpoint, moral principles are not
dependent upon the historical moment in which they are discovered. Moreover, the fact that some believers act without
following the teachings of the Magisterium, or erroneously consider as morally
correct a kind of behaviour declared by their Pastors as contrary to the law of
God, cannot be a valid argument for rejecting the truth of the moral norms
taught by the Church. The affirmation of moral principles is
not within the competence of formal empirical methods. While not
denying the validity of such methods, but at the same time not restricting its
viewpoint to them, moral theology, faithful to the supernatural sense of the
faith, takes into account first and foremost the spiritual dimension of the human heart and its vocation to divine
love.
In fact, while the behavioural
sciences, like all experimental sciences, develop an empirical and statistical
concept of "normality", faith teaches that this normality itself
bears the traces of a fall from man's original situation in other words, it
is affected by sin. Only Christian faith points out to man the way to
return to "the beginning" (cf. Mt
19:8), a way which is often quite different from that of empirical normality.
Hence the behavioural sciences, despite the great value of the information
which they provide, cannot be considered decisive indications of moral norms. It is the Gospel which reveals the
full truth about man and his moral journey, and thus enlightens and admonishes sinners; it proclaims to them God's
mercy, which is constantly at work to preserve them both from despair at their
inability fully to know and keep God's law and from the presumption that they
can be saved without merit. God also reminds sinners of the joy of forgiveness,
which alone grants the strength to see in the moral law a liberating truth, a
grace-filled source of hope, a path of life.
113.
Teaching moral doctrine involves the conscious acceptance of these
intellectual, spiritual and pastoral responsibilities. Moral
theologians, who have accepted the charge of teaching the Church's doctrine,
thus have a grave duty to train the faithful to make this moral discernment, to
be committed to the true good and to have confident recourse to God's grace.
While exchanges and
conflicts of opinion may constitute normal expressions of public life in a
representative democracy, moral teaching certainly cannot depend simply upon
respect for a process: indeed, it is in no way established by following the
rules and deliberative procedures typical of a democracy. Dissent, in the form of carefully orchestrated
protests and polemics carried on in the media, is opposed to ecclesial communion and to a correct understanding of the
hierarchical constitution of the People of God. Opposition to the teaching of the
Church's Pastors cannot be seen as a legitimate expression either of Christian
freedom or of the diversity of the Spirit's gifts. When this happens, the
Church's Pastors have the duty to act in conformity with their apostolic
mission, insisting that the right of
the faithful to receive Catholic doctrine in its purity and integrity
must always be respected. "Never
forgetting that he too is a member of the People of God, the theologian must be
respectful of them, and be committed to offering them a teaching which in no
way does harm to the doctrine of the faith".177
Our Own Responsibilities
as Pastors
114. As
the Second Vatican Council reminds us, responsibility for the faith and the
life of faith of the People of God is particularly incumbent upon the Church's
Pastors: "Among the principal tasks of Bishops the preaching
of the Gospel is pre-eminent. For the Bishops are the heralds
of the faith who bring new disciples to Christ. They are authentic
teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach to
the people entrusted to them the faith to be believed and put into practice;
they illustrate this faith in the light of the Holy Spirit, drawing out of the
treasury of Revelation things old and new (cf. Mt 13:52); they make it bear fruit and they vigilantly ward off
errors that are threatening their flock (cf. 2 Tim 4:1-4)".178
It is our common duty, and even before that our
common grace, as Pastors and Bishops of the Church, to teach the faithful the things
which lead them to God, just as the Lord Jesus did with the young man in the
Gospel. Replying to the question: "What
good must I do to have eternal life?", Jesus
referred the young man to God, the Lord of creation and of the Covenant. He
reminded him of the moral commandments already revealed in the Old Testament
and he indicated their spirit and deepest meaning by inviting the young man to
follow him in poverty, humility and love: "Come, follow me!"
The truth of this teaching was sealed on the Cross in the Blood of
Christ: in the Holy Spirit, it has become the new law of the Church and of
every Christian.
This "answer" to the
question about morality has been entrusted by Jesus Christ in a particular way
to us, the Pastors of the Church; we have been called to make it the object of
our preaching, in the fulfilment of our munus
propheticum (mission of prophesy ed.). At the same time, our responsibility
as Pastors with regard to Christian moral teaching must also be exercised as
part of the munus sacerdotale (priestly mission-ed.): this happens when we dispense to the
faithful the gifts of grace and sanctification as an effective means for
obeying God's holy law, and when with our constant and confident prayers we
support believers in their efforts to be faithful to the demands of the faith
and to live in accordance with the Gospel (cf. Col 1:9-12). Especially today, Christian moral teaching must be
one of the chief areas in which we exercise our pastoral vigilance, in carrying
out our munus regale (kingly - authoritative
mission ed.).
115.
This is the first time, in fact, that the Magisterium of the Church has set
forth in detail the fundamental elements of this teaching, and presented the
principles for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural
situations which are complex and even crucial.
In the light of Revelation
and of the Church's constant teaching, especially that of the Second Vatican
Council, I have briefly recalled the
essential characteristics of freedom, as well as the fundamental values
connected with the dignity of the person and the truth of his acts, so as to be
able to discern in obedience to the moral law a grace and a sign of our
adoption in the one Son (cf. Eph
1:4-6). Specifically, this Encyclical has evaluated certain trends in moral
theology today. I now pass this evaluation on to you, in obedience to the word
of the Lord who entrusted to Peter the task of strengthening his brethren (cf. Lk
Each of us knows how
important is the teaching which represents the central
theme of this Encyclical and which is today being restated with the authority
of the Successor of Peter. Each of us
can see the seriousness of what is involved, not only for individuals but also
for the whole of society, with the
affirmation of the universality and immutability of the moral commandments, particularly
those which prohibit always and without exception intrinsically evil acts.
In acknowledging these commandments,
Christian hearts and our pastoral charity listen to the call of the One who
"first loved us" (1Jn
116. We
have the duty, as Bishops, to be vigilant
that the word of God is faithfully taught. My Brothers in the Episcopate, it is part of our pastoral ministry to see to it that this moral
teaching is faithfully handed down and to have recourse to appropriate measures
to ensure that the faithful are guarded from every doctrine and theory contrary
to it. In carrying out this task we are all
assisted by theologians; even so, theological opinions constitute neither the
rule nor the norm of our teaching. Its authority is derived, by the assistance
of the Holy Spirit and in communion cum
Petro et sub Petro (with Peter and under
Peter-ed.), from our fidelity to the Catholic faith which comes
from the Apostles. As Bishops, we have
the grave obligation to be personally vigilant
that the "sound doctrine" (1 Tim
A particular
responsibility is incumbent upon Bishops with regard to Catholic institutions. Whether these are agencies for the
pastoral care of the family or for social work, or institutions dedicated to
teaching or health care, Bishops can canonically erect and recognize these
structures and delegate certain responsibilities to them. Nevertheless, Bishops
are never relieved of their own personal obligations. It falls to them, in
communion with the Holy See, both to grant the title "Catholic" to
Church-related schools,179 universities,180 health-care
facilities and counselling services, and, in cases of a serious failure to live
up to that title, to take it away.
117. In
the heart of every Christian, in the inmost depths of each person, there is
always an echo of the question which the young man in the Gospel once asked
Jesus: "Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?" (Mt 19:16). Everyone, however, needs
to address this question to the "Good Teacher", since he is the only
one who can answer in the fullness of truth, in all situations, in the most
varied of circumstances. And when Christians ask him the
question which rises from their conscience, the Lord replies in the words of
the New Covenant which have been entrusted to his Church. As the Apostle
Paul said of himself, we have been sent "to preach the
Gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the Cross of Christ be emptied of
its power" (1 Cor
When
people ask the Church the questions raised by their consciences, when the faithful in the Church turn to their
Bishops and Pastors, the Church's
reply contains the voice of Jesus Christ, the voice of the truth about good and
evil. In
the words spoken by the Church there resounds, in people's inmost being, the
voice of God who "alone is good" (cf. Mt
Through the anointing of the Spirit this gentle
but challenging word becomes light and life for man. Again the Apostle Paul
invites us to have confidence, because "our competence
is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not
in a written code but in the Spirit... The Lord is the Spirit, and where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces,
reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one
degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Cor 3:5-6, 17-18).
CONCLUSION
Mary, Mother of Mercy
118. At the end of these considerations, let us entrust
ourselves, the sufferings and the joys of our life, the moral life of believers
and people of good will, and the research of moralists, to Mary, Mother of God
and Mother of Mercy.
Mary is Mother of Mercy because her
Son, Jesus Christ, was sent by the Father as the revelation of God's mercy (cf. Jn
Indeed, sin itself makes
even more radiant the love of the Father who, in order to ransom a slave,
sacrificed his Son:181 his mercy towards us is Redemption. This mercy reaches its
fullness in the gift of the Spirit who bestows new life and demands that it be
lived. No matter how many and great the obstacles put in his
way by human frailty and sin, the Spirit, who renews the face of the earth (cf.Ps 104:30), makes possible the
miracle of the perfect accomplishment of the good. This
renewal, which gives the ability to do what is good, noble, beautiful, pleasing
to God and in conformity with his will, is in some way the flowering of the
gift of mercy, which offers liberation from the slavery of evil and gives the
strength to sin no more. Through the gift of new life, Jesus makes us sharers
in his love and leads us to the Father in the Spirit.
119. Such
is the consoling certainty of Christian faith, the source of its profound
humanity and extraordinary simplicity.
At times, in the discussions about new and complex moral problems, it
can seem that Christian morality is in itself too demanding, difficult to
understand and almost impossible to practise. This is untrue, since Christian morality consists, in the simplicity of the
Gospel, in following Jesus Christ, in
abandoning oneself to him, in letting oneself be transformed by his grace and
renewed by his mercy, gifts which come to us in the living communion of his
Church.
By the light of the Holy Spirit, the
living essence of Christian morality can be understood by everyone, even the
least learned, but particularly those who are able to preserve an
"undivided heart" (Ps
86:11). On the other hand, this evangelical simplicity does not exempt one from
facing reality in its complexity; rather
it can lead to a more genuine understanding of reality, inasmuch as following
Christ will gradually bring out the distinctive character of authentic
Christian morality, while providing the vital energy needed to carry it out.
It is the task of the Church's
Magisterium to see that the dynamic process of following Christ develops in an
organic manner, without the falsification or obscuring of its moral demands,
with all their consequences. The one who loves Christ keeps his commandments
(cf. Jn
120. Mary is also Mother of Mercy because it is to her that Jesus entrusts his Church and all humanity. At the foot of the Cross, when she accepts John as her son, when she asks, t