What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
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by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
If dead bodies began to float down a river the first order of business would be to bury them. But if they kept coming simply burying the dead would be an ineffective way of dealing with problem. It would be necessary to go upstream and to find out what was causing the deaths. We find ourselves in an analogous situation. All kinds of things are dying: recognition of God in public and private life, respect for God’s name, religious practice, respect for authority, safety from violence, unborn babies, the aged who have outlived their usefulness, childhood innocence, marriages, humor and entertainment that rise above toilet and bodily functions, security from thefts, common courtesy, decency in conversation, and respect for truth.
Amid unprecedented prosperity Americans are saying that life is not as good as it used to be. They blame the decline in moral standards. It is not merely that Americans like every one else in the world are inclined to evil, but the fact that there is not agreement on what constitutes evil. Our popular culture, especially in our music and motion pictures, is suffused with calls to hedonism, anarchy, and revolt. All these dead things are floating in our river of life. It is not enough just to wring our hands over them. It is necessary to go upstream and discover the cause of all these floating corpses.
What is there upstream that is the cause of our destruction of moral standards? We suggest that it is abandonment of traditional, objective morality. Many deny the validity of an objective morality that measures our lives and sets a standard to which we are bound to adhere. We either live according to principles that measure us or our lives become the pattern for measuring our principles. We reject the demands the old morality made upon us and instead of striving to pass the test of the old morality we change the test.
There are several substitutes for the traditional objective morality that is now supposed to be outmoded: (1) social convention; (2) aesthetics; and (3) choosing the course of action that is likely to contribute to the greatest overall good. The common characteristic of all these is that they are subjective in nature. They depend upon the decision of the individual subject rather than upon some external, objective measure. It would be useful to have a look at each of them.
One replacement for traditional, objective morality is social convention. A thing is good or not depending upon the judgment of society. Thus murder and theft disrupt society and so they are branded as evil. There are problems with this measure of the morality of our acts. Some societies permit cannibalism and slavery. Not too long ago some societies permitted and held as good the extermination of Jews and other politically undesirable people. Our society apparently has changed its views on sexuality and now acts formerly condemned such as adultery, divorce and remarriage, sexual contact among the unmarried, cohabitation without a matrimonial commitment, and homosexual marriages are either considered as good things or in no way the business of anyone outside the circle of the parties who consent to them. The fatal flaw in this measure of our moral acts is that it offers nothing to correct society when it is immoral. Recall that an entire society called for the death of Jesus.
Some people say that traditional, objective morality should be replaced by moral feeling. Some acts such as betraying family and friends, cheating, lying, and being intolerant make one feel badly. Certain acts just do not smell right and so the moral person avoids them. These moralists deem moral aestheticism a sufficient guide and an external code of ethics is not only unnecessary but actually undesirable. There is a problem with this system as well. It equates doing good with feeling good. A smell test may be good in judging whether milk is good but not in judging goodness. There are criminal elements whose sensibilities are not offended by killing for hire, extortion, and prostitution, dope peddling, etc. These things make them feel good particularly when they bring them great wealth. Are we to decide to pay bills on the basis of principles of justice or according to individual aesthetics? So aesthetic moral systems fail because they offer no corrective for persons who perform acts that most think are ugly.
A third substitute for traditional, objective morality popular in our day (indeed even among some Catholic moralists) is choosing the moral alternative that produces the greatest overall good. This system, in opposition to traditional morality, holds that there are no moral norms that bind without exception. Things wrong under normal conditions can become permissible if there are extenuating circumstances. In certain circumstances it is permissible to do what traditional morality calls evil in order to achieve a higher good. Thus contraception, condemned by traditional morality as always immoral, under the system of proportionalism can be good (or at least not culpably evil) if it brings about a better state of affairs, like peace in the marriage. Who could quarrel with notion that we should act so as to achieve the highest good?
Of the three systems that would replace traditional morality this is by far the worst. It admits that some acts are evil but can be committed if there are extenuating circumstances. Thus under certain conditions the system allows evil and says that it is good. It would be all right to become a prostitute or a bank robber rather than starve. It would permit abortion as an alternative to having one’s educational or career opportunities destroyed or it would allow the elderly ill to be killed if that ends their suffering. Robin Hood is a hero under this system because in robbing from the rich and giving to the poor he is bringing about a better state of affairs. In theory there is no act however evil that could not be justified under certain circumstances. How does one make a judgment about the outcome that produces the highest good? Whose good do we consider, the individual’s, the society’s, the Church’s? The good that could result from an abortion certainly does no good to the aborted child. Nor does it benefit the society to have unleashed on it the principle that innocent human life can be eliminated to achieve the good of a more powerful person. This brings us back to the barbarism of Nazism and Stalinism.
Traditional morality is far superior to the substitutes for it. It is based on the basic tendencies of human nature: (1) to preserve human life; (2) to reproduce and rear families; (3) to give to God his due; and (4) to get on well with our fellow human beings. It obliges us never to do anything against these basic tendencies or goods. Thus we may never directly attack innocent human life, our own and that of others. Fornication, adultery, or contraception are forbidden because they are in one form or another direct attacks on the basic good of human procreation. We may not ignore God by irreligion because that is against the basic human good of giving the author of humanity his due. It would be like depriving an author of his royalties. Doing any sort of injury to our fellow human beings goes directly against the basic human good of living in society. Traditional morality provides the objective standards that measure our conduct and their fulfillment results in the perfection of our nature as embodied in our basic human tendencies while offenses against it degrade it and bring about degradation of our nature and conflicts in society. The obligations of the basic human tendencies apply in every case and there are no exceptions. We cannot kill one innocent human being even to save the rest of the human race.
It is clear that traditional morality is more rigorous than its would-be replacements. That is why the alternative systems are appealing to us. But following traditional morality actually accomplishes the purposes of the substitutes and avoids their shortcomings. It brings order to society and absolutely forbids injustice even when the society itself wants to act unjustly. It brings about good moral feelings and does not allow such feelings for acts that are truly ugly. It does not allow us to do evil and to call it good so long as we could find some plausible excuse for the evil.
We have the option of following traditional, objective morality or we may adopt a more congenial substitute. But no matter how well the other systems sugar coat the evil they permit the evil still remains poisonous. They still cause the dead bodies we see floating down our moral stream.
