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Introduction to Catholic Moral Teaching

(Adapted from The Pope and Morality)

Written by Abbot Leander Dosch, OCSO

Abbey of the Holy Trinity, Huntsville, Utah

Introduction

Pope John Paul II is not an alarmist; generally he is optimistic where others become discouraged. However, in his recent encyclical entitled Veritatis Splendor or The Splendor of Truth, he says we are facing “a genuine crisis” in the understanding and teaching of basic principles of Christian morality. 

What makes the present situation so critical is that the disagreement with the Church’s traditional teaching on morality is coming, not from outside the Church, but from within the Church itself. 

The Pope makes it clear that the Church has a traditional moral teaching as well a dogmatic one. The Second Vatican Council did indeed call for a “perfecting of moral theology” as taught in seminaries.[1] Often this has been taken to mean that traditional moral norms can now be discarded and we have to begin from scratch in setting up standards of morality. Not so, says the Pope. The Church’s traditional moral teaching as expressed in magisterial documents and in the writings of doctors like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Alphonsus Liguori is still valid and binding.

The encyclical is addressed to the bishops of the Catholic Church, yet it is a public document clearly intended to be read by others than bishops. Obviously then, it is more than a reminder to bishops of their duty to teach their priests and people the right standards of morality. It is a reminder to the rest of the Catholic community – and all people – that the divinely established guide in these matters is not the opinions and teachings of theologians or instructors in religion. That guide is the teaching of the magisterium, which consists of the Pope and the bishops in communion with him. To them alone the promise of divine guidance has been assured.

In the past, popes and councils have addressed particular moral questions. The present crisis, however, prompts Pope John Paul II to deal with the very bases, the fundamental principles of moral teaching.  “This is the first time, in fact, that the magisterium of the Church has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this teaching.”[2] 

In this lecture I do not attempt to give an analysis of the encyclical or to comment on every point made by the Pope. Much of the letter consists of philosophical argumentation, which the Pope uses to counter the errors of professional theologians. Such language may deter people from reading the encyclical. Here I try to present important points made by Pope John Paul II which have a direct bearing upon the day to day moral decisions which each of us has to make.

Frequently in the encyclical the Pope quotes the Catechism of the Catholic Church. All English-speaking Catholics have available the full text of the Catechism, which is normative for the whole Church both in faith and in morals.

Conscience[3]

"Let your conscience be your guide," is a piece of advice we have all heard many times.  Moral theologians, both ancient and modern, tell us the same thing when they say that conscience is the proximate norm of morality and that we are obliged to follow our conscience when faced with a situation that calls for a moral decision.  So far, so good!

But what is conscience?

We have heard people say things like: “I feel that ending suffering by euthanasia is justified.”  “I had good reason for having an abortion; my conscience doesn’t bother me.”  “I feel that keeping animals in cages is wrong.”  “I feel it is all right to have a live-in girl friend (boy friend); a lot of others are doing it, so it can’t be wrong.”  On the other hand, many people feel just as strongly that the opposite opinions are the right ones. 

How can such people ever agree on what is right and what is wrong?  Feelings, we know from experience, are changeable and are not always under our control. They differ from person to person. If feelings constitute our conscience and serve as our guide in moral matters, then each person is a law unto himself. There can be no objective standard which can be imposed on all persons alike. Under such conditions no government could make laws obliging all citizens. Even parents would be unable to lay down rules for their children.  It should be clear that our feelings do not constitute our conscience. 

Likewise, conscience cannot be purely subjective. It must be objective and possess a standard that is shared with other people.  The very word conscience is derived from two

Latin words, cum +scientia [knowledge together with (other people)].[4]

Having a conscience distinguishes man from every other animal. Has a bull ever apologized for goring a person? Does a cat ever express remorse for having killed a mouse?  Does a fox have regrets for having chased a terrified rabbit it wanted to have for supper? Of course not.  The animal has instinct and a memory.  Because it has a memory, you can train it to act in a certain way, even contrary to its instincts.  But the animal has no guilt feelings or regrets, because it has no reason and no conscience.

Reason is what makes the difference between having a conscience and not having one.  And what is the task of reason?  It makes judgments, such as, “John is intelligent.” “Mary is kind.”  “The sunset is beautiful.”  These are judgments of fact.

It also makes moral judgments: “It is wrong to do this.”  “I ought to do that.”  “I should have helped my mother with the cleaning.”  “I should have kept my mouth shut instead of saying the unkind things I did.”  We all carry on a dialogue of this kind with ourselves, or

rather with that small voice within us that goes by the name of conscience.  In a similar fashion we judge the actions of others as praiseworthy or reprehensible.  “How generous of Mary to care for her sick sister!” “How wrong of John to cheat on his wife!”  (Note that we are judging the action rather than the person.)

It should not be difficult now to understand what Pope John Paul means when he writes: “(Conscience) is a moral judgment about man and his actions, a judgment either of acquittal or of condemnation, according as human acts are in conformity or not with the law of God written on the heart.” [5] 

The Pope goes on to describe this moral judgment: “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.”[6]

You may react to this statement of the Pope by saying, “I see no problem with that.  I am a reasonable person.  If I am supposed to follow my conscience, then all I have to do is act according to my reason and its judgments.” 

That would be a valid conclusion if your reason were infallibly correct in making judgments. Unfortunately, we all make errors of judgment. They may be factual errors.  If I phone George at his office, thinking that he is working today, only to find that he is in

the hospital, I have made a wrong judgment of fact.

Likewise, we can make errors of judgment in moral matters, and most of us do at some time. Nobody’s reason is infallible. It is swayed by passion, by others' opinions and example, and by the tendency we all have to justify our past actions, whether right or wrong. The Pope recalls the statement of Vatican II that conscience can even become “gradually...almost blind from being accustomed to sin.”[7]

We have no assurance that our reason, when left to itself, is going to make the correct judgment in moral matters.  In the encyclical, Pope John Paul quotes the words of Jesus: in Mt 6:22-23, “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!”

The Pope goes on to explain this passage: “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.”  Our fallible and sinful nature, including our reason, needs help and guidance in the formation of true and right moral judgments. If we need any proof of this, we need only consider people’s views on modern moral questions, such as abortion, euthanasia, contraception and divorce. Even well-intentioned persons arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions about them.  Someone is right, and someone is wrong; all cannot be right.

Where are we to find the necessary guidance to form a correct conscience? The Pope gives us the answer.  Here, as elsewhere, the Pontiff recalls the traditional teaching of the Church. In this case it is enshrined in the Declaration on Religious Freedom of Vatican II, which he quotes: “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.”[8] 

What about those people who do not know the teaching of the Catholic Church, either because they do not belong to her communion or, as Catholics, they have not been properly instructed?  The Pope answers that question by giving the traditional distinction between “culpable” (blameworthy) ignorance and “inculpable” (blameless) or invincible ignorance.

“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.”  Such a person, the Pope adds, must follow his conscience, even if he is in error.  Nevertheless, we must keep in mind the distinction between the objective morality of the act and the subjective innocence or guilt of the one who performs the act.  Robin Hood, who stole from the rich to help the poor, may have had good intentions. Before God he may not have been guilty, nevertheless his stealing was wrong.

There is the other kind of ignorance which is not excusable; it is culpable or blameworthy. The person could know, and should know, what the proper course of action is, but he neglects to become informed.

Take for example, a Catholic student in a school that offers a course in Catholic doctrine.  If such a student habitually skips those classes without a serious reason, he is blameworthy for his ignorance of the Church’s teaching.  He is not excused from sin when he transgresses the commandments of God or the Church’s teaching on morality. 

The same is true of a person who acts in doubt whether his action is good or bad. He should desist from acting until he has assured himself on proper authority that the act is morally permissible.  If he acts in doubt, he shows he is prepared to offend God by the action, and therefore he is guilty.

Here I should add a word about proper authority. As the Pope states several times in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, there are priests and theologians who hold positions contrary to the clear and traditional teaching of the magisterium. Some Catholics seek out such priests and teachers precisely because they want support or authority for their sinful acts.  Persons who deliberately seek out such teachers are not acting in good faith and cannot be excused from sin. 

Sometimes people in authority who know what the morally right course of action is, will leave people in ignorance, on the excuse that they are invincibly ignorant and therefore do not sin.  Such actions done in ignorance may be without sin, but as the Pope warns, “When...they disregard the law, or even are merely ignorant of it,...our acts damage the communion of persons, to the detriment of each.”[9]   

We saw that conscience is reason making moral judgments.  It judges whether an act we are considering is good or bad.  The presupposition is that a standard exists by which we are measuring such an act.  Too often people think conscience itself sets up the standard: “If I think a certain action is good, then for me it is good.”  This kind of thinking has led even moral theologians to allow people to consider themselves exceptions to general rules of morality, to think their case is subject to rules of its own. 

To this the Pope answers, “No.”  He reminds us that conscience only tells us where our actions fall on the scale of moral values. The scale of right and wrong has been established by the Creator and made known to us through the natural law and positive laws, such as the Ten Commandments and their interpretation by the Church.

We might illustrate this point by analogy with a bathroom scale.  You do not step on the scale, saying, “I am going to weigh 150 pounds.” The scale is set, and all you do is read the weight indicated on that scale. If the scale reads 225 pounds, you had better accept that reading and act accordingly. It may be advisable to go on a diet. You may misread the number and fail to see a need for dieting, but deliberately setting up your own scale would be foolish. 

In similar fashion, the function of conscience is to tell you whether the act you plan to do (or the one you have already done) is good or bad by God’s scale. You may misread the scale through ignorance, but the scale nevertheless is fixed and firm.  Conscience must respect that scale and read it clearly so that one’s actions can measure up to what is good.

Democratic morality?[10]

In the encyclical Pope John Paul II deals briefly with the subject of the renewal of political life, a topic he had addressed more fully in his previous encyclical Centesimus Annus marking the 100th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s great encyclical on labor. Both popes emphasize the dignity of the human person, the need for the elimination of slavery in all its forms, and an understanding of true freedom. 

The democratic process in the political order has the merit of being the best safeguard against abuse of power by persons in authority, because elected officials are answerable to the electorate and can be removed by them through the system of elections.  However, it is not fail safe.

What corrupts any kind of government is the appetite for power, with the resultant trampling upon the rights, dignity and freedom of the governed. Pope John Paul quotes from his earlier encyclical, Centesimus Annus: “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.”[11] 

We note that the Pope does not restrict this appetite for power to those in authority. It affects each of us.  In the democratic system an individual or group can maneuver to win a majority to its view and impose that view upon everyone. Such power blocs attempt to impose, not merely political or economic views, but moral views as well. The present attempt of pro-choice forces to keep abortion legal is one example of such a power play. 

The underlying philosophy of this way of acting is that the democratic system can be applied to morals in the same way it is applied to politics. The majority can decide what is morally good and what is morally bad.  One evidence of this way of thinking is the proliferation of surveys to obtain people’s views on questions of morality as on other aspects of life. Many people are led to think that once a majority decides that a certain course of action is morally acceptable, the Church, and God himself, must agree to such a

decision. Such thinking is moral relativism.

The Pope warns us that we must not become smug over the fact that Marxism and other totalitarian ideologies have fallen. Now we run “the risk of an alliance between democracy and ethical relativism, which would remove any sure moral reference point from political and social life, and...make the acknowledgement of truth impossible....As

history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.”[12] 

It has been well said that God and one make a majority. As the Pope pointed out earlier in the encyclical, “When it is a matter of the moral norms prohibiting intrinsic evil, there are no privileges or exceptions for anyone....Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal.”[13]  It is only when all alike, authorities as well as those governed, acknowledge the supremacy of the moral law given by God and submit to it, that true equality and freedom can exist.

Good Intentions[14]

I once had a professor who had a habit of saying, “The worst thing you can say about anyone is that he meant well.”  Saying someone meant well usually implies that what he actually did was stupid, imprudent, or simply poorly done.  No amount of good intentions could make the action a wise one or a masterpiece. 

Much the same is true in the moral order. Some people have come to think that good intentions make any act morally good, no matter what the nature of that act happens to be. 

Others have concentrated on the circumstances of an act. Under certain circumstances, they say, a person might justifiably do something that would normally be forbidden. For example, circumstances such as the poverty of a mother or her need for time to pursue her education could justify an abortion. Some have argued that cohabitation of unmarried persons can be condoned when their economic situation warrants it; it’s cheaper for two to live together than to live separately. Others try to justify homosexuality and adultery in the same way in certain circumstances, of course.

Still others have tried to evaluate the morality of an act by weighing its consequences. If the good effects outweigh the bad effects, the act is morally good, they say. This kind of

argumentation is very subjective. One person will give more weight to an argument than another will. There is really no way of arriving at an objective agreement by this method.

In face of these novel ways of estimating the goodness or evil of particular acts the Pope recalls the traditional criteria for determining the morality of any human act. There are three determinants, namely, the nature of the act itself, the intention of the one who acts, and finally the circumstances of the act.

As to the first, the Pope emphatically reiterates the constant teaching of the magisterium that certain actions are always evil and to be avoided. They are principally those forbidden by commandments expressed in negative form, such as: “You shall not kill.  You shall not steal.  You shall not commit adultery.  You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” 

One may never deliberately take the life of an innocent person, no matter what good intentions one has, and no matter what the circumstances are. One may never commit adultery or defame others, regardless of good intentions or circumstances.

In the words of the Pope himself, “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.’”[15]  Such actions are wrong, he says elsewhere, because they can never bring us nearer to God or serve the good of our neighbor or ourselves.

As examples of the intrinsically evil acts he has in mind, the Pope quotes St. Paul in 1 Cor 6:9-10: “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 Kingdom of God”.[16]

Quoting St. Paul in Romans 3:8, the Pope adds that we may never do evil that good may come from it. 

Circumstances, we know can change the morality of an act. To remove one’s clothes in the privacy of one’s bedroom is one thing. To remove them in public is a circumstance that changes the morality of the act considerably.

The intention, as we know from Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees, influences the moral quality of an act.  The act can be degraded by the wish to display one’s virtue. Giving gifts generally is an act of charity, but if one does it with the intention of persuading the recipient to do something sinful, the gift-giving becomes sinful.  An evil intention can make a good act evil, but a good intention cannot make an intrinsically evil act good, as we saw.

The Reality of Sin

In his encyclical Pope John Paul II frequently refers to preceding papal documents, including his own. Among them is his apostolic exhortation On Reconciliation and Penance, written in 1984 after the Synod of Bishops. There he wrote: “When the conscience is weakened, the sense of God is also obscured, and as a result, with the loss of this decisive inner point of reference, the sense of sin is lost.  This explains why my Predecessor Pius XII one day declared, in words that have almost become proverbial, that ‘the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin’.”[17] 

The loss of a sense of sin is very evident today in the abandonment of the Sacrament of Reconciliation or confession.  Why should one go to confession, if he has no sin? 

That sin exists, we know from conditions in the world around us. Daily we read of crimes, of injustice, of dishonesty, of innocent people suffering because of the heartlessness of others.  In other words, we see the effects of sin. Yet there are people–and we may be among them– who say they have committed no sin. 

For such people there is “social sin” but no personal sin, at least on their part. They readily project their own sin onto that vague entity called “society”, as Pope John Paul stated in his exhortation On Reconciliation and Penance.[18] In this view, “practically every sin is a social sin, in the sense that blame for it is to be placed not so much on the moral conscience of an individual but rather on some vague entity or anonymous collectivity, such as the situation, the system, society, structures, or institutions.” The reality, he continues, is that “such cases of social sin are the result of the accumulation and concentration of many personal sins.”

Recognizing and acknowledging our sins is facing the truth about ourselves. The Pope never ceases emphasizing in the encyclical the intimate relationship between truth and goodness, between truth and good morality. 

There is a human tendency to bend principles to fit our behavior rather than the other way around. The Pope comments on that propensity: “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.”[19] 

So there are personal sins, and all of us commit them.  St. John assures us of this in his first letter chapter 1, verses 8-10: “If we say we have no sin in us, we are deceiving ourselves and refusing to admit the truth; but if we acknowledge our sins, then God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and purify us from everything that is wrong. To say that we have never sinned is to call God a liar and to show that his word is not in us.”

To deny our sinfulness is to deny the need for Christ’s redemptive work.  If we have no sin, there was no need for Christ to die on the Cross, no need for his sacraments, especially those of baptism and reconciliation. Christ then becomes no more than Buddha, or Gandhi. He merely left us a good example to follow, and his grace is superfluous. 

Then there is the matter of the gravity of sin.  One of the novel theories of moralists in recent years has been that of the “fundamental option”. The only grave (mortal) sin is to turn away from God through atheism or agnosticism. As long as one maintains a basic orientation to God, any sin which would not change that basic orientation could not be accounted mortal sin.

Not so, says the Pope. The traditional teaching on the distinction between mortal and venial sin retains its validity. If one deliberately commits a grave sin, he severs his relationship with God and jeopardizes his eternal salvation.  This can be done by a single

act, for “the fundamental orientation can be radically changed by particular acts.” [20]

“You shall not....”

One of the complaints heard today about moral norms is that they are so negative.      Even the Ten Commandments have more negative than positive precepts.  For that reason some would like to throw them out of the Bible. Didn’t Jesus change all that when he gave us the law of love, namely, to love God with all our hearts and our neighbor as ourselves?

The Pope answers this objection very nicely. He begins his encyclical with a reflection on the gospel story of the rich young man who came to Jesus with the question, “Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?” (Matt. 19:16-21)  In his reply Jesus said, “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” Upon being asked by the young man, “Which ones?”, Jesus listed the following: “You shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and mother; also, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus, we notice, does not hesitate to list the negative commandments as well as the positive ones.

“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.”[21]  Every negative commandment, therefore, has a positive side and is meant to safeguard a very positive good.

When the Pope reviews the traditional teaching that the negative commandments may never be broken for any reason, he adds that this does not mean they are more important than the positive commandments. The positive commandments to love God and neighbor have no upper limits. We can show all the love and devotion to God that we are capable of, and we can do good to our neighbor without limit. The negative commandments, on the other hand, indicate the lower limit. If we fall below that line, we break our relationship with God and jeopardize our eternal salvation.

The Social Sciences & Morality

The social sciences, which study human behavior, have had some valuable things to say about people and their ways of acting. Many findings of these scientists have been popularized and have filtered down to the man in the street, often oversimplified or distorted. Today we have pop psychology, which some people take as seriously as religion.

Other scientists, notably sociologists, engage in surveys of all kinds to study people’s behavior patterns and their opinions on moral as well as on political and social matters. 

Such surveys not infrequently are misused. If the majority of those surveyed hold a certain opinion on a moral matter, such an opinion is considered to be right and normative, as we saw above in considering democracy and morality. It is simply a sophisticated version of the view that if everybody does it, it can’t be wrong.

Morality, says the Pope, is a religious matter, not a scientific one. It is concerned with the will of God for us, His creatures. God has often been compared to the manufacturer of an automobile or other machine. The manufacturer provides a manual with the machine, telling the user how to operate and service it, if he wants to get the most out of it. Our Manufacturer likewise has provided directions for our conduct. They are contained in the eternal law and its part for man called the natural law, as well as in the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes.

One characteristic of human nature is inconsistency.  At the same time as we desire and cling to freedom, we are afraid of it. On the one hand, we maintain that we have free will and want to act without hindrance from others. On the other hand, we are ready to shift the blame for our actions onto other persons or situations outside ourselves. This tendency to shift blame not infrequently shows up in the social sciences.

While psychology has some valid observations on factors which influence our behavior, some psychologists put so much emphasis on these factors that they practically rule out human freedom. This shows up in the legal system, when criminals are exonerated because they contend they were not responsible for their actions. We also find a readiness in some sectors of the scientific community to blame genes or faulty upbringing for the crimes and sins of people.

Some practitioners in psychology and psychiatry are uncomfortable with guilt feelings in people.  For them the only sin is having guilt feelings, and their aim is to rid their clients of such feelings so they feel good about themselves.

Guilt feelings are like the sensation of pain.  If I didn’t feel pain when I touch a hot stove, I might not withdraw my hand and could end up with a charred stump at the end of my arm. Feeling pain is a blessing for me, for it prompts me to withdraw the hand and save it. In the same way, someone who does evil should feel guilty. One who vandalizes another’s property, one who embezzles money, one who lies, such people should have guilt feelings. If they don’t, they are morally crippled. Like the feeling of pain, guilt feelings hurt, but they are beneficial, for they prompt us to withdraw from evil and repent.

The Pope points out that many people see a conflict or tension between nature and freedom.  For them “nature” consists of the material side of our being. They reason that, if a person is free, then he should be able to modify or change anything in his physical make-up that he chooses.  The real “I”, you will notice, is something outside the body, and the body becomes raw material that can be manipulated at will. One can go so far as to mutilate that body by direct sterilization or abuse it to serve one’s pleasure by taking drugs, by autoeroticism (masturbation) or other immoral behavior. 

From there it is a short step to thinking that one can treat the “nature” of others too as raw material to be manipulated.  The gross uses made of fetal tissue are evidence enough of the extremes to which such a philosophy of life can lead. 

Some Catholic moralists charge that the Church’s teaching on the natural law is “physicalist” or “naturalistic.” This was the charge made especially by dissident moralists against the teaching of Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), which reiterated the Church’s teaching that contraception is morally wrong. The charge of these moralists betrays a low esteem for the body, as if the soul alone is the subject of moral acts.

Throughout history we find a frequent emergence of dualism, the philosophy that views body and soul as independent entities which are united only accidentally. The soul is viewed like the driver in an automobile. It matters little whether the car is a Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota or Mercedes-Benz.  The driver is the important thing, and he is not bound inseparably to any particular kind of car.

We see this kind of dualistic thinking at work in the debate over the ordination of women.  Those in favor of it contend that the soul is asexual, so the bodily sex of the person holding the priesthood is of little consequence.  In this view, a person’s soul could just as

easily inhabit a body of the opposite sex.  The Church, as we shall see, does not subscribe to such a dualistic philosophy of the human person.

To the charges of physicalism and naturalism Pope John Paul replies by explaining the Church’s understanding of the natural law as set forth in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and in papal and conciliar documents. 

As a first step, the Pope points out that the Church’s understanding of the human person includes the body as well as the soul.  The body is an integral part of the human person, not merely material to be manipulated.  It participates intimately both in virtuous acts and in sinful  acts. Consequently, what we do in the body and with the body is very much a personal act and therefore a moral act and subject to moral laws.

Natural Law

How is man to know how to act as a body-and-soul being?  Twice in the encyclical (§ 12 & § 40) Pope John Paul quotes St. Thomas Aquinas’ definition of natural law: “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.” By quoting this definition twice within the same document, the Pontiff shows it is important and integral to Catholic doctrine. 

As a background to St. Thomas’ definition of natural law, let us return to the analogy of God as the Manufacturer of his creation. St. Thomas says God laid down an eternal law for that creation.  Sub-human creation obeys that law necessarily. Inert matter obeys the law of gravity, for example, without ever thinking of going contrary to it. Animals obey their instincts and do not reason about their actions.

Man, however, has reason and freedom. The Creator honors both when He puts man at the head of material creation and entrusts it to his care: “Fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28).  At the same time, the Pope emphasizes, God entrusted man himself to his own care and responsibility so that he might seek his Creator and freely attain perfection.

Man must use his reason, therefore, to attain his perfection. By reflecting on his own nature (body as well as soul) man can come to know the elementary principles of good conduct. “Good must be done and evil avoided” is one such. When he observes that every human being has a desire to live, man can arrive at the conclusion that every person has a right to life, and therefore all persons have a duty to respect that right.  By reflecting on the need to work in order to produce the necessities of life, man can conclude that there exists a right to private property and that stealing is wrong. 

The Church has always taught that original sin and actual sin have weakened man’s reason so that he will not arrive unaided at the secondary precepts of the natural law. He needs the assistance of divine revelation. 

 To illustrate this point, let us take the example of the human family. St. Thomas and the Scholastics say that unaided reason can see that a stable union between husband and wife is necessary, because human offspring require a much longer time to mature and become independent than do the offspring of animals, where mating is often random and temporary.

In the composition of the human family, unaided reason can conclude that a system in which one woman has several husbands is wrong, because the identity of the father would be uncertain, and consequently one could not know which husband is responsible for which children. 

On the other hand, unaided reason could not easily arrive at the conclusion that polygamy, where one husband has several wives, is wrong. The parentage of the offspring is fairly certain. Children know who their parents are, and parents know who their children are and can be held responsible for them. We find this kind of polygamy frequently in human history, even among the Chosen People of God in the time of the patriarchs. 

It took divine revelation to assist reason in coming to the conclusion that the proper design for a human family is one man and one woman in a life-long union. When questioned by the Pharisees about the morality of divorce, Jesus reminded them that Moses permitted divorce “because you were so unteachable,...but it was not like this from the beginning” (Matt 19:8). 

Divine revelation in Holy Scripture helps human reason to arrive at knowledge of secondary principles of the natural law. With the help of divine inspiration the Church continues to clarify such secondary principles for the guidance of human reason in knowing what is morally good and what is morally evil.

Today we find that most people have little difficulty understanding the immorality of abortion and euthanasia, because the precept, “You shall not kill” is one of the primary principles of the natural law. Many more have difficulty seeing the immorality of contraception, which is a secondary principle of the natural law. Despite the clarification of that principle by Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae Vitae and despite repeated support and further clarification by the present Pope, many Catholics refuse to accept that teaching. 

The trouble with offences against the natural law is that they have consequences which usually affect others as well as the sinner. Human freedom suffers in one form or another, and truth is obscured. The only remedy is to face the truth about ourselves and our relationship with God. That is often painful, but the pain is worthwhile, because “the truth will make you free.”

Martyrdom[22]

Certainly one of the most painful ways of facing the truth and defending it is martyrdom.  Whether the truth concerns doctrine or morals, to die for it requires more than mere human reason and determination. God’s grace is necessary, but it is given in the measure each person needs it. Christian martyrdom, the Pope writes, “has always accompanied and continues to accompany the life of the Church even today.”

He cites the example of Susanna in the Old Testament, who chose to fall into the hands of her judges rather than sin against God by committing adultery, as well as the example of St. John the Baptist and other martyrs in the New Testament. He comments, “Martyrdom...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.”[23]

Martyrdom is a witness to the personal dignity of man, because anyone who defends something dear to him to the point of giving up his life for it has complete possession of himself and acts in full freedom. Others become slaves to their fears, and deny the truth by their words or their actions. 

“Finally, martyrdom is an outstanding sign of the holiness of the Church.”[24]  It averts the danger of confusion between good and evil. By refusing to do evil, the martyr shows everyone, both those within the Church as well as those outside her communion, the clear line between good and evil. 

“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.”[25]