Getting to the Point: ethics

Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts

Sunday, February 1, 2015

An Anatomy of Good and Evil

It is time for the Sunday Catechesis, that most popular of my columns, based on the stats. This week I would like to address something I have been aware of for quite a while, namely the very poor grasp many have of fundamental moral teaching – not just the different commandments and ‘shalt nots’ of the law, but an even more basic level – what is a moral act? What are we looking at when we are evaluating the morality of an action? The paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church where this material is found are pp. 1749-1756. I recommend reading them in full; here I will just give a précis.

Incidentally, this is a genuinely nuanced and complex element of moral thought in our tradition, so of course in a blog post I can only sketch the outline of it for you.

First, if an act is not done as a free and deliberate choice, it is not an act subject to moral evaluation. This is why emotions in themselves are neither morally good nor evil. They are not voluntary in themselves (the actions we take that arise from our emotions, on the other hand, are). Neither is a sneeze, a cough, a fall down a flight of stairs. Once freedom has left the building, there is absolutely no discussion of moral good or evil—it is the absolute presupposition for morality.

This is why morality is concerned with what is called the human act. Human beings do all kind of actions, all the various actions of a human. But it only becomes a human act, and hence a moral act, if the rational will has deliberated and chosen to do it.

What makes that human act good or evil? There are three ingredients that each contribute to the evaluation of the action. Think of a human act as a cake. There are the basic things that make a cake a cake—flour, liquid, eggs, leaven. Then there are the additional ingredients that make it the kind of cake it is—fruit, chocolate, etc. And there is the frosting that augments the goodness of the cake. If any one of these three is all wrong—if you substitute arsenic for flour, thumbtacks for raisins, or roofing tar for frosting—you are not going to have a good cake, no matter how good the other ingredients are, right? It is the same with any human act—all the parts of it have to be free from evil.

First there is the object of the act. This is the immediate ‘good’ that is chosen by the rational will. I choose to drink a cup of coffee in the morning. I choose to take some money lying on a table that is not mine. I choose to give alms to charity—the immediate chosen act, in other words, considered apart from any further goals or details. The moral judgment made in regard to the object is whether or not this good is in conformity with the true good, an evaluation made by considering everything we know about the moral law revealed to us by God and by our own rational reflection. We can see from the examples I give that an object can be itself morally good, evil, or neutral.

Second, there is the intention of the act. This is the further goal, the reason why we are choosing the immediate good of the object. What am I working towards here? What is the ultimate purpose of doing this? And is this ultimate purpose in accord with the true good of my person?

Third, the circumstances of the action affect its moral evaluation. These circumstances include the consequences of the act, and a host of other surrounding elements—the time and place it is done, the manner in which it is done, and many other things.

All three of these have to be consonant with the true good of the human person for an act to be a moral good. To perform an objective act that contradicts this good (taking money that does not belong to you, inflicting physical or mental pain on a prisoner) for a good end (to pay a bill, to get information from them) does not make the action good. On the other hand, to perform an act that is morally neutral or itself good (spending hours listening to a lonely person) with an evil intention (so as to seduce them into fornication!) makes that good object an evil act.

The circumstances cannot make that evil act a good act, and normally (since they are outside the act itself) do not suffice to make a good act evil, but they do affect the relative goodness or evil of the act. Whether one steals five dollars or five hundred is a relevant consideration. Duress or deep emotional distress and anguish may also be a circumstance that mitigates guilt considerably. Other circumstances, by contrast, can make the act more evil (I already have lots of money, say, and the person I am stealing from is a pauper).

In rare cases, circumstances may be such that an otherwise unobjectionable action is rendered evil (I am eating some food, with the good intention of sustaining life and health, but it happens to be the last bit of food in the house and one of my housemates, I know, has done heavy physical labor that day and needs the food more than I do).

Anyhow, there are tremendous nuances and fine distinctions that enter in with all of these matters—the Church’s moral doctrine is not only the simplistic list of rules people think it is, although there most certainly are rules—but that is sufficient for the day. Summary: for a free act to be a morally good action, it must not be objectively contrary to the good of humanity, there must be some good intention in performing it, and the circumstances must not be such as to maker that action bad. In short, to make a cake you need all the ingredients to be what they should be, and if one of them is rotten and foul, the cake is rotten and foul. So it is with every free human act.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Something That Resists Me

I experience the fact that [God] exists because I run up against him, and if ever it were I that had fashioned him, I should certainly have made quite a different job of it. As it is, I am obliged to accommodate myself to him. I am obliged to take him just as he is.

No, I never made him, in my image. I am the one who finally has to come down to doing things his way. And there’s the rub that makes me know I am in contact with the real: when I feel, that is, something which resists me, that I have no control of, and that, on the contrary, I must finally end up by adapting myself to, making way, giving up, against my will, all the while dragging my feet.

Jean Danielou, The Scandal of the Truth

Reflection – I’m going through some of my old files from my academic thesis and pulling out interesting quotes here and there. One thing that struck me around the Synod and the discussion surrounding it was the general need to ‘up our game’ intellectually a bit in the Church. I don’t mean to sound patronizing, as I firmly believe people are quite capable of being intelligent and thoughtful, but so much of what I read in the Catholic blogosphere during that time simply did not manifest that, much.

So I’m going a wee bit intellectual on the blog for a few days anyhow. It’s also good to remember some of these absolutely first rate theologians from the 20^th century who have to greater or lesser degrees been forgotten today (because, after all, they wrote their books more than ten minutes ago, and so cannot possibly have anything relevant to say, right?).

Danielou, for example, is fantastic, and as you can see from this passage, very readable. God is the One, here, who resists us, who thwarts us, who is Not Us, and to Whom we have to adapt ourselves, not have Him adapt Himself to us. It strikes me that this is more than a little relevant in the discussions around marriage and family life, human sexual expression and openness to life.

‘Do what comes naturally’ is the cry of our times. The right thing to do is the thing you feel most strongly like doing; such is our understanding of the natural law, commonly. Of course this is an incoherent position, as there is no shortage of people for whom what comes naturally is torturing animals, having sex with children, raping women… and nobody (except the perpetrators, I suppose) believes these things to be ‘the right thing to do.’

‘Do what comes naturally… ummm… unless you are hurting someone by doing so.’ That seems to be a way out of that particular quandary. But while that may work for us (sort of) as a rough and ready ethos for daily life, as a matter of strict logic, it won’t do. Philosophically, we have introduced a condition for moral action without any warrant or rationale. Why not hurt others? A sociopath will argue that there is no rational basis for that condition. We can simply say it and insist on it irrationally, but we are cheating by so doing.

The truth is, all the ways of trying to forge a human ethic without God and a moral law/natural law coming from Him founder on this precise point or arbitrariness. Utilitarianism, consequentialism, proportionalism—all of these fail to satisfy the question of the persistent five-year-old child: but why? It is only when we hit up against this Other, this One who made all that is, who is the source and sovereign Master of all that is, who gives it (and us) structure, meaning, purpose, and who thus has in our regard that most dreaded and despised word of our time.

Who has Authority, in short. We don’t like this, but this really is the only way to advance any kind of coherent ethical vision of life short of ‘do whatever the hell you please, and if what pleases you is to torture and kill me, please know that I am heavily armed.’ Without God, all things are permissible—Nietzsche and Dostoevsky really did have it right, after all. And we have to be clear that it really is ‘all things’ – not just the things that we enjoy doing or approve of or think we have a right to do.

But once we acknowledge this Authority, then ‘doing what feels right’ goes right out the window. The law of nature, the natural law, behaving in a way that is consistent with the structure and purpose of our humanity, means conforming our behavior to Him, not conforming all of reality to our own preferences.

It seems to me that in the Church we have placed so much stress on a sort of ‘feel good’ Christianity, advanced very strongly the (quite true) thesis that God wants us to be happy that we have failed to teach people that happiness comes on the other side of death to self and being crucified with Christ.

And we are reaping the fruit of that poor and one-sided teaching in the present inability of so many people to conceive of the notion that God may want them to sacrifice their natural preferences and inclinations for a greater good.

But that is the God of the Bible, the God of all our Catholic tradition, the God we believe in. And so we have to get busy re-learning, re-teaching, re-presenting that God who is the One True God, and the Good News that this God truly brings us in Jesus Christ.

Saturday, June 7, 2014

On Taming Toddlers So That They Work For You

The right and lawful ordering of birth demands, first of all, that spouses fully recognize and value the true blessings of family life and that they acquire complete mastery over themselves and their emotions. For if with the aid of reason and of free will they are to control their natural drives, there can be no doubt at all of the need for self-denial. Only then will the expression of love, essential to married life, conform to right order.

This is especially clear in the practice of periodic continence. Self-discipline of this kind is a shining witness to the chastity of husband and wife and, far from being a hindrance to their love of one another, transforms it by giving it a more truly human character.

And if this self-discipline does demand that they persevere in their purpose and efforts, it has at the same time the salutary effect of enabling husband and wife to develop to their personalities and to be enriched with spiritual blessings. For it brings to family life abundant fruits of tranquility and peace.

It helps in solving difficulties of other kinds. It fosters in husband and wife thoughtfulness and loving consideration for one another. It helps them to repel inordinate self-love, which is the opposite of charity. It arouses in them a consciousness of their responsibilities. And finally, it confers upon parents a deeper and more effective influence in the education of their children. As their children grow up, they develop a right sense of values and achieve a serene and harmonious use of their mental and physical powers.

Humanae Vitae 21

Reflection – OK, so I have to smile a bit at the first sentence here. To live the Church’s teachings in this matter, married couples have to not only recognize the true blessings of family life (I think many if not most couples can manage that), but also ‘acquire complete mastery over themselves and their emotions.’

Hey, no problem, eh? People with complete mastery over themselves and their emotions are just thick on the ground in our world today! Easiest thing in the world to do, right?

OK, perhaps at this point in our reading of the encyclical we should expect from an encyclical what an encyclical can deliver. A formal document, containing binding teaching on all the faithful, is not going to lay out an entire pastoral program of how to achieve this self-mastery or talk about the whole underlying picture of Christian moral life in which this statement makes perfect sense, is obvious really.

Because the need for self-mastery does not just pertain to moral conduct in areas of sexuality, you know. It is a fundamental requirement for any serious moral achievement. If I am never to tell lies, I must acquire mastery over myself and my emotions. If I am to never steal or be fraudulent in my financial dealings, I must have this mastery. If I am to use food and drink properly, treat my neighbor with kindness, generosity, and fairness, I must have self-control.

What we’re talking about here is the cardinal virtue of temperance. The four cardinal virtues[1] (can you name them without peeking?) are each called ‘cardinal’, from the Latin word for hinge, because the practice of all virtue, the ability of a person to live a morally good life, hinges upon our possession of these four virtues.

And we can see how this is the case with temperance. Because our emotions, our unruly desires and passions are always flying off in all directions, and essentially are like little toddlers who want what they want when they want it, we need the virtue that ‘tempers’ these passions, which is quite different from repressing or suppressing them. Rather, temperance ‘tames’ the emotions, bridles them, puts the force of emotional life to the service of the good. It is obvious, I hope, that no serious plan of moral action can succeed without this control over the emotions.

And so it is not so ridiculous that the Church presents the plan of moral action known as ‘right and lawful ordering of birth,’ according to the changeless and ancient doctrine of the evil of contraception, and then says that ‘well, it requires self-mastery’.

The rest of this paragraph has been criticized at times for providing an overly rosy picture of the

personal and communal benefits of following the teaching. I think that the book I reviewed here a couple weeks ago by Simcha Fisher does the best job of responding to those criticisms from an actual NFP user, so I will leave it at that for now.

[1] Prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude.

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Doing Evil That Good May Come?

Therefore We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children.

Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary.

Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means.

Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these.

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—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. Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.

Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, 14

Reflection – So here it is: the actual magisterial ruling, binding upon all the Catholic faithful, regarding what actions must not be taken to regulate fertility. The Pope, in the fullness of his authority as Vicar of Christ, entrusted with the safeguarding and handing on of Catholic doctrine, affirms here what has been the teaching of the Church for 2000 years.

Abortion, the in utero killing of a human being, is wrong, permanent sterilization which is the physical mutilation of a human being is wrong, temporary sterilization as in the birth control pill is wrong, and any other methods of acting to prevent or block the procreative nature of sexual intercourse are wrong.

The reasons behind this and the larger spiritual and theological context of those reasons are found in Humanae Vitae pp 1-13, every word of which I have presented on this blog these past few weeks. I won’t go over them all here; if you have just stumbled across this post and haven’t read the rest of the series, the label at the bottom of this post will bring you up to speed on the whole picture.

Pope Paul VI makes a good distinction, more necessary today than ever, between tolerating a lesser evil for the sake of a greater good and doing evil for the sake of a greater good. The first is unavoidable in a world of finite beings with finite powers; we almost always have to put up with things that are simply wrong because the course of action needed to fix them would be worse. Almost always there is some level in which our own actions are cooperating in the evil choices of others, and the Church has developed a very nuanced and delicate moral theology of cooperation that is a most useful diagnostic tool for how to navigate those murky waters.

But we must never, ever do an evil act to achieve some good purpose. To perform an abortion because a woman or young girl is in terrible trouble is to sacrifice one innocent life for the apparent good of another. To torture a terrorist so as to extract information about a possible attack is to deny the very sanctity of life and the person that we are supposed to be concerned for. To tell a deliberate lie so as to achieve some good end or other is wrong, even if in extreme circumstances (the classic ‘hiding Jews from Nazis’ scenario, which of course we all do every day) the wrong is so minuscule and the good so profound that the guilt of the lie is almost nil.

Consequentialism, the moral theory that a good intention sanitizes the evil of an action, or that there is no such thing as actions that are in themselves evil, only good or bad intentions, is the prevailing ethos of our day. It is not limited to the political left or right, as the examples I give show. It is common to all, and it is simply wrong.

It is, factually, an utterly incoherent theory. The example of torture shows this. We are against terrorism, of course, because it is wrong to brutally assail human life for a political end. And we express our opposition to terrorism by… brutally assailing human life for a political end! Or we are motivated to help a woman in a crisis pregnancy because people matter, dammit, and human life and happiness is a precious good. And we help her by… killing a human life and snuffing out any chance that the human being she carries in her womb will have for happiness. So I guess human life doesn’t really matter, then, does it. It is incoherent madness.

The only way to pursue the good of human life is by doing good actions and avoiding evil actions, even though in the short term this may entail suffering, sacrifice, painful struggle and hard choices. When we depart from that path to the easy quick way of life, we ultimately do no good to ourselves and damage our neighbor and the whole fabric of the world. There is, obviously, much more to say about all this, but that is quite enough for one day.