Morality is a very important area for Catholic students, and so it is a very important area for Catholic teachers to understand well. There is a significant difference between moralizing and the teaching of morality. Moralizing is more like "finger wagging", and it is perpetual, as though the Christian faith is nothing more than observing moral laws and the living up to the expectations of a group of perfectionists. Moralizing is usually grounded on a kind of semi-Pelagianism, the notion that God's grace in my life depends upon some initial good act on my part. It leads to a kind of legalism, that our salvation comes primarily through our works. But good works arise out of genuine faith, that is, out of trust in the salvation that Christ brought humanity through his Incarnation, death and resurrection. This is what Martin Luther, one of the most misunderstood personages in the history of the Church, was trying to get across to the Church in the 16th century. He drew the following analogy that underscores the primacy of faith as trust:
When a man and a woman love each other and truly believe in their love, who teaches them how to behave, what to do, what to avoid, what to say or not say, and what to think? Their confidence alone teaches them all this and more. They don't differentiate between actions: they do big, long, and many tasks as gladly as small, short, and few ones, and vice versa; all with joyful, peaceful, and confident hearts, each being a free companion to the other. But where there is doubt, people search for what is best; then they imagine different actions to win favor, yet they do it with a heavy heart and great reluctance. It's as if they are trapped, more than half in despair, and often end up making a fool of themselves" (Luther, Martin. Treatise on Good Works: Modern, Updated Translation (p. 11). (Function). Kindle Edition).
Morality isn't bad news; it is in fact part of the good news of the gospel, the good news of Christ's victory over death (the resurrection). The morally virtuous life is the way to emotional well-being and stability, because the virtues dispose the emotions to follow the guidance of reason. The life of virtue is also the secret to looking beautiful, as we will explore later in this article. In short, by virtue of divine grace, through which the human person is divinized or deified, the burden of a morally good life becomes light: "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy, my burden is light" (Mt 11, 28-30).
In my experience, a good number of young Catholic students are relatively unaware of how radically different and contrary the morality of popular culture is from the fundamentals of Catholic morality. This has always been the case in the Church, and it is especially the case today, but it is not easy to help others see this. The morality of popular culture has mixed within it a number of very good moral principles, such as equity (which is the concern for fairness), and inclusivity (which involves a greater awareness of who our systems might be excluding unjustly), and the need to reverence diversity. Consider the progress we've made in regard to anti-racism, which proceeds from all three principles. These are good principles and we have made good progress in implementing them in ways that were unheard of 60 years ago. The problem with the morality of popular culture is that it is internally inconsistent. These principles, when employed by popular culture, will often cover up a depravity that we find on a deeper level in the culture. Jesus spoke of something similar when he addressed the Pharisees, referring to them as whitewashed tombs full of the bones of the dead (Mt 23, 27-28).
For example, we pride ourselves on being socially conscious, but we continue to make decisions on the municipal, provincial and federal levels that make life so much more difficult for those in the low-income sectors of society and the homeless, which in turn creates great stress and stress related illnesses for families. Consider the housing crisis today, the average price of a house, and the rising food prices. I bought my house 5 years after I began teaching, for $165,000; now it is worth close to a million. That's ridiculous. How can anyone except the wealthy purchase a house today and start a family? These situations are not inevitable, but the result of human decisions, political decisions, and yet we still believe we are a socially conscious society with a socially conscious government. We speak so much of tolerance, but at the same time we have seen the rise of cancel culture; we don't tolerate those who have different political opinions; we tend to look upon them with contempt, and it rarely dawns on us, including Catholics, that perhaps we are wrong and need to listen to this or that person's point of view. We also tolerate behavior that no civilized nation would tolerate, such as infanticide and the direct killing of the elderly and of those who suffer from mental illness. Although we have made great progress in terms of women's rights, we tolerate the exploitation of women and the male sex drive in our permissive attitude towards pornography. We no longer debate certain issues, because we believe in political correctness. We believe in diversity, but again we don't put up with a diversity of political opinions and we censor news that offends us or challenges certain belief systems. Moreover, students are afraid to express their opinions and challenge the teacher or professor, for fear of repercussions.
So many of our new teachers have a very noble desire to make sure their classrooms are safe spaces, which means open to a diversity of perspectives, inclusive of everyone, and equitable, and this is wonderful to see, because the education system was not always so open and was in many ways unsafe to a good number of students. But there is a distinction between good DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and bad DEI, just as there is a difference between good pride and bad pride. Good pride is more like: "I'm proud of you", or "I'm proud of my test results"; bad pride is disordered self-esteem, looking down one's nose at others, etc. There is also good envy and bad envy (the capital sin of envy); for example, good envy is more like "I envy your ability to learn a language so easily", or "I envy your musical abilities, I wish I had them", etc. Bad envy is a matter of loving my own good to the extent that I will that you be deprived of the goods that are yours, which results in the propensity to delight in the misfortunes of others. Similarly, there is good DEI--which seems to be what so many of our students aim for, i.e., openness to the perspectives of their students, including everyone, and treating everyone equitably, regardless of race, culture, disability, sexual orientation, etc., and there is bad DEI, the DEI rooted in postmodern relativism--such as including everything, because there is no objective good and evil in human action, it's all relative, or tolerating everything and anything, because there is no such thing as truth (you have your truth and I have mine), as if truth is nothing more than personal taste. Most people don't think this way, but such a viewpoint has been imposed upon us by a minority of postmodernists.
We in the Church embrace good DEI. The word Catholic comes from the Greek word kataholike, and it means all nations. Christ commissioned the Apostles not to impose a specific culture on foreign cultures, but to proclaim the good news of the kingdom to all nations. But we still live in a very anti-life culture; for we still abort over 100,000 unborn children every year, and it is still a very sexually permissive culture, advertising is increasingly lewd, we don't have the same sense of what is appropriate for young people and so censorship in film and television has virtually disappeared; we live in a culture that confuses love with sentimentality, a culture in which marriage and fidelity have been on the decline since the late 60s, and these are moral issues that go right to the heart of personal morality.
Social justice cannot be achieved without personal moral integrity. In other words, it is not possible to have a socially just society or just world that is made up of individuals who are morally unjust or immoral on a personal level; there is no just world without morally upright human persons. That's why we continue to live in a very unjust world--most people like to talk about social justice and the obligations of the state towards the oppressed, but they will often resent it when they are challenged to be morally upright on a personal level, with respect to issues that bear upon their own personal lives. I know of a person who is a police officer and who believes wholeheartedly in socialism, but this person, for years now, has not purchased toilet paper and paper towels and latex gloves--she lifts them from work, entirely indifferent to the fact that she is stealing from the taxpayer. And a priest friend of mine has received, over the years, a number of nasty messages on his answering machine after preaching a good homily that challenged the faithful to moral reform, but no one has ever gotten upset with him for preaching about just working conditions, fair wages, and equality. Christ came to transform individual persons. The most important level of moral discourse is the level of personal morality, for this is where social justice begins. The problem with many Catholic educators in the past is that they would focus almost exclusively on the level of political discourse and neglect the weightier matters of personal morality, and so, many of our students were not challenged to deal with more personal matters, such as sexual morality, the obligation to be married to the person you are having sex with, the obligation to protect developing life within the womb, the obligation to care for the sick and not murder them to free up hospital bed space, etc. The other extreme was to focus exclusively on sexual ethics and neglect issues of social and ecological justice.
Morality is really a vast area, and there has been tremendous development in moral philosophy and theology in the 20th century. A good number of people today uncritically fall in line with the culture when it comes to morality, sort of like walking on a very crowded sidewalk where we simply follow the person in front of us and trust the direction the crowd is taking us. The Church has never taken this approach. My good friend from Washington D.C. once said to me that it was easy to be a Catholic growing in the 50s. If you were a Christian standing up for Christian principles, everyone agreed with you. But then came the 60s, with the introduction of Individualism, Meism, the Sexual Revolution of the late 60s, followed by the 70s, the so-called "Swinging 70s" with lots of experimentation with open marriages. Then the 80s. Popular culture in the 80s was very different from pop culture two decades earlier; for we saw the introduction of shows like Married with Children, Dawson's Creek, and so forth, which in many subtle ways mocked traditional marriage and family and doubted even the possibility of moral adulthood. And then we get to the nihilism of the 90s. Nihilism is the belief that life has no intrinsic meaning, only the meaning that individuals give to it, and so there is no universal moral truth or enduring moral principles. And so today, if you are a Catholic standing up for your principles, virtually everyone disagrees with you. Hence, those Catholics who despite this hostile atmosphere maintain their principles, do so heroically. This is the age of Christian heroes.
To anyone growing up within this cultural ethos, Catholic morality typically comes across as strange, outdated, bizarre, and narrow minded, just as it did to early Roman society. Christian morality was strange to Roman culture. This idea of remaining faithful to your wife, the idea of monogamy, marrying only one and remaining faithful to that one, chastity, sacrifice, absolute honesty, integrity, was just too much for Roman society. And so, the early Christians were hated, despised, persecuted, and many countless were martyred because of it. Things have certainly improved, but there is still a great deal in Catholic moral thought that is inconsistent with current cultural mores.
The word morality comes from the Latin mores, which means 'character'. Your character is your moral identity: the kind of person that you are; and the kind of person that you are is the kind of person that you made yourself to be by the choices that you have made. We are not referring to any kind of choice, such as the choice of occupation or where you choose to live, but moral choices, that is, free choices bearing upon basic intelligible human goods.
We are like sculptors: and we are the clay that we sculpt. We make ourselves; we shape our character. There is nothing more intimately my own than my character. And of course, character is not the same as personality. You and I have inherited many personality traits, through DNA, through environment and upbringing, our past experiences, etc. We don't choose our personality. But we certainly determine our character, and it is determined primarily by what it is we choose to worship, what it is we adore, what it is that fills our imagination. Some people worship themselves, some worship money, wealth, success, and power, some worship certain celebrities, but the morally noble human being loves the good as such, the good in itself, over his own private good. This is the difference between the person who is morally depraved and the one who is morally noble. The depraved love their own private good first and foremost, and love others only insofar as they are of some use to him or her. But the morally good human being loves and chooses the good in itself over his or her own private good. Now, since God is the Supremely Good, it follows that to choose the good as such as opposed to my own private good, is to choose God above oneself. It is very difficult to know who among us loves the good as such, as opposed to their own private good; one has to be in situations that test a person's commitment to the good. But your moral character is entirely yours, more intimately yours than anything you possess. You made it. You sculpted it. It follows that a person can have a great personality, but morally depraved character. In fact, most psychopaths do have great personalities; that's how they dupe the women they seduce and murder, or, if they don't murder them, oppress them and trap them in a situation they cannot escape from, except with great difficulty. I've had many women over the years confide in me about the narcissistic psychopath they married, who has everyone in his environment fooled, convinced that he is such a wonderful man. These narcissists have great personalities, but they are as depraved as the average sociopath.
Conversely, you can have a rather dull personality, but tremendous moral character. That's what I found so frustrating about my Vice Principal friends who were responsible for hiring new staff; they were often taken in by the dynamic personality, by the one who interviews very well, says all the rights things, smiles, shakes your hand, but on the inside is a person of rather dubious character--but this only comes out years later. A 30-minute interview is not enough to know someone, and yet I don't have the solution to that problem, because people can hide their true character for a long time. But eventually, it is revealed. As they say: character is what you do when no one is looking.
So, morality has to do with character, first and foremost. It is about the shaping of character--and not about determining what choices are most conducive to a pleasant life, which is what morality has come to mean in Western culture since the end of World War II. After the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, the West gradually adopted a utilitarian morality, or utilitarianism, which aims at maximizing pleasure with its principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, along with the principle that one may do evil to achieve good (the end justifies the means). Such an ethics is completely incompatible with the fundamentals of Christianity. St. Paul explicitly condemns the principle that we may do evil that good may come of it, in his letter to the Romans, chapter 3, verse 8. To do evil is to become evil. The reason is that we shape our moral identity by the moral choices that we make; if I choose to lie, I become a liar, even if I lie for a good purpose. If I choose to steal, I become a thief, even a nice thief, one with a rather pleasant personality. If I choose to kill, I become a killer. You are not what you eat; but you are what you choose.
Moral science therefore has to do with good and evil in human action. A good action is one that promotes the fullness of one's human nature; an evil act is one that demotes the fullness of that nature. The strange thing about human beings is that we can make irrational choices, that is, choices that in the end will destroy us. The reason is that choices that are morally self-destructive can have a certain appeal; they may at first appear to be delightful options, pleasurable, such as a married person choosing to have an affair with someone he/she is not married to, or lying to gain some benefit, theft, etc. We can choose to reject such choices, and the temporary pleasures that accompany those choices, for the sake of a higher good, namely, the goodness of character, moral integrity, and the fullness of our nature, and of course the salvation of our soul; or we can choose to indulge in such choices, indulge in such temporary pleasures, which deplete our nature and damage our character, such as adultery, pornography, recreational drug use, lying, theft, fraud, indifference to human suffering, indifference to human life, killing in its various forms, gossip, envy, harboring resentment and unforgiveness, etc.
Free-choice is the locus of our fundamental dignity of being human, created in God's image and likeness: God loves us so much that He will allow us to reject Him if we so choose; for love isn't love unless it is freely given--this, however, does not mean that God will in turn reject us "For the Lord does not reject forever; though he brings grief, he takes pity, according to the abundance of his mercy" (Lam 3, 31-32). But in rejecting him, we destroy ourselves in the process, for that rejection affects our relationship to the earth and our relationship to one another. Every moral choice we make is either a "yes" to God, who is the fullness of goodness, the source of all that is good, or a rejection of God in favor of the self. And the more we reject him in favor of the self, the emptier we become.
There are certain choices that are inconsistent with life in the Person of Christ, choices that weaken the effects of divine grace within the soul or even sever friendship with God, and there are certain choices that are consistent with life in Christ, or choices that the grace of God inspires. Morality is about determining which choices are consistent and which are inconsistent with life in the Person of Christ. Evil is a lack of goodness, a deficiency, a lack of fullness that ought to be there. The moral law consists of natural precepts, like a road map indicating where we ought to turn and what direction we are to take, and what turns to avoid. And of course, what makes sense out of these directions is the destination. If we in Toronto are heading to Florida, we'd best not to go East on the 401, but West, and then south on 75, etc. Our destination, of course, is heaven, union with God in the Beatific Vision. Now, God is Love, according to the first letter of John; that is why God creates anything at all, for love is effusive. That's one of the properties of love: it pours itself out. Love seeks to communicate itself beyond itself, to spread out, to give of itself. It is expansive. Since God is Goodness Itself, God is self-diffusive. He creates in order that we might share in His goodness, and creation reflects his goodness.
But God does not stop there. He reveals Himself in history, first to Israel, by entering into a covenant with Abraham and revealing himself through his relationship to Israel (salvation history), and finally he reveals himself definitively in the Person of Christ, the Word made flesh. He came to bring salvation. To redeem, to justify, and the justice of God has been revealed as mercy. He reveals himself for the same reason that anyone of us would reveal ourselves to another: as an invitation to a deeper communion. The goodness of creation is not enough. He invites us to Himself, to an eternal union with Him in the Beatific Vision. He came to reveal His love, the love that is visible from the cross. He rose from the dead, which is the good news of the gospel, that he has conquered death. He has restored us to life. We too will rise to an eternal life, with a glorified body, if we live in him and die in him. God invites us into Himself. He does not merely grant us a share in the riches of creation, but he invites us to the perfection of His goodness--Himself in other words. He wants the absolute best for us.
And because of the Incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ, the grace of God is now available to every member of the human race, to a sufficient degree, and it is entirely up to us to cooperate with grace, a grace that allows us to cooperate, so as to move us into a state of sanctifying grace (habitual grace). All we have to do is believe him; for we are saved by faith, as St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians: "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life."
That is such an important verse of scripture. We are not saved by our works, but by the grace of faith. Works come after. We cannot earn a share in divine grace by doing a good work. That is the heresy of semi-Pelagianism. Rather, it is the grace of faith that saves us; good works arise out of that faith. Without that faith (either implicit or explicit), we would not be inclined to works of charity and justice and love of neighbor.
The moral life is a movement towards the fullness of eternal life; it is about becoming good, becoming conformed to the image of Christ. It is about decreasing so that Christ may increase in us, as John the Baptist says about himself. It is about dying to self so that Christ may live fully in us, so that through us, Christ can invite others to himself. We are to become his hands, feet, eyes and ears, as St. Theresa of Avila once said. Many people today see morality as fundamentally restrictive: "...can't do this, can't do that". But it is really about becoming more fully the persons God intends for us to become. When God sees us, he looks at us through rose colored glasses. Indeed, he sees us in all our warts and defects, but He also sees us as He intends us to be. The moral life is about achieving that image, becoming the Christ, the unique Christ, which Christ can be in you individually and in me individually. When you are the person Christ intends you to be, when it is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you, then Christ appears in this world uniquely, through you. No one can be that unique Christ except you. And when you are that, you have a beauty that no one else can possess, a unique beauty that only you can bring the world. Becoming that unique Christ is to be yourself most fully, and so it is not about becoming something you are not. Sanctimony is not the same as holiness; rather, holiness is goodness, holiness is the love of others, the willingness to descend to the lowest places for love of the other. Holiness is not perfectionism, and becoming holy does not involve the stress of trying to become something you are not. You and I were created in view of Christ, and so holiness is the most natural thing for us--even though it requires supernatural grace. It is sin, self-seeking, sanctimony and hypocrisy that is most unnatural and self-destructive.
The moral life is also the secret to looking beautiful. Aristotle new this, and so too did Oscar Wilde, who wrote the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oscar Wilde wanted to explore the relationship between character and a person's face. Consider the expression: the eyes are the windows of the soul. What this means is that we wear our character on our face. One can have a pretty face, but a bad face, and one can have an ugly face, a face that no modelling agency would be interested in, but at the same time have a good face. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, an artist paints a life size portrait of Dorian, who is very handsome. And when Dorian sees it, he's shocked at how beautiful he looks. He says: I would give anything to stay looking that way. I would give anything to stay looking so young and beautiful, even my soul. And so he makes a covenant with the devil, so to speak. And a mysterious transference takes place. He gets what he wished for. He will remain forever looking that young and beautiful. Then Dorian meets a man named Lord Henry, who is a wealthy Epicurean. Epicurus is an ancient philosopher who taught that the purpose of this life is nothing more than pleasure: "pursue pleasure, avoid pain" is the guiding principle. And so, Lord Henry introduces Dorian to a life of decadence. The result is Dorian gradually begins to travel down the road of moral depravity. But every time he went to look at his painting, he noticed a change in the countenance. The eyes seem a bit different, the mouth also changed somewhat. As time goes on, Dorian makes choices that lead further down the road of moral depravity, and as he continues along this avenue, the face on the painting changes significantly. In other words, the face in the painting expresses the increasing depravity of his character, of his soul, to the point where he has to destroy it--this is after he commits murder.
It is such an important point. A morally noble character manifests in the countenance. To explain this to students, I look to Aristotle. In his masterpiece entitled the Nicomachean Ethics, he employs the Greek term kalon, which is very hard to translate in English. Kalon comes from the Greek word kaleo (attractive), a word used in the context of aesthetics. A work of art, if it is beautiful, attracts, draws us to itself. Kalon has often been translated as the morally right, the morally noble, that is, the morally right course of action. But this misses the original meaning, because these English terms come with historical baggage from the Victorian era. The most literal translation is "the morally beautiful". For Aristotle, the purpose of the science of ethics is to help us achieve a morally beautiful character. So, the secret to looking beautiful is virtue. Moral goodness. For Aristotle, happiness is activity in accordance with perfect virtue. There is no good life, no happiness, without moral nobility, or virtue.
In short, virtue is the secret to looking beautiful. The human person is a psychosomatic unity, a unity of matter and form, or soul and body. Soul and body form a unity; the soul is the life principle of a living organism. It is not some separate substance that is inside a body. Rather, there is no body, no living unified organism without the soul. The soul is the principle of biomolecular unity in a living organism. And so, what happens on the level of the soul affects the body, the soma. Now, virtues are habits that dispose the various powers of the soul to their proper activity. And so, the virtues bring about a harmony and order to the human soul, and harmony is one of the properties of beauty. Hence, a virtuous person is a morally beautiful person. And since matter and soul form a unity, what takes place on the level of the soul manifests in the countenance. A morally beautiful character will manifest as a morally beautiful face.
And that's why some people have great faces, even if they are not naturally good looking. People discover this when they are dating, some people at least. You can date a stunningly handsome person who takes your breath away, but as you get to know his character and you see that he is quite self-centered, egotistical, vain, etc., he becomes less attractive to you. And you can date someone who is not, at first glance, great looking, but as you get to know their character, their moral identity--not their personality--, they become more attractive to you.
There is also a relationship between character and knowledge. A person of poor moral character will lack the intellectual ability to understand and determine the right course of action, while a person of good moral character will readily see the best course of action. This is connatural knowledge. Think of a judge in a gymnastics competition. Who are the best judges? Those who were former gymnasts or former figure skaters. They can spot a good routine, because the skill is intrinsic to them. An accomplished singer is better able to distinguish between a good singer and one of lesser quality. To the rest of us, they usually all sound good; all figure skaters seem exceptional, etc. Similarly, the person of good moral character is like the gymnastics judge who is at the same time a former accomplished gymnast. Such a person can readily see who has good character and who does not, and can readily discern what is the best course of action, and is able to see through those who have bad character hiding behind a relatively decent personality.
The first appearance of the moral law in Scripture comes in the book of Exodus, after the Israelites have been delivered from Egyptian slavery. They move through the desert, led by Moses, and eventually come to Mount Sinai. It is here Moses receives the commandments, which are an outline of the basic precepts of the natural law. Morality certainly becomes much more complicated as we move from the general level of precepts to more specific precepts, like any science. Principles are general, but the application of those principles within the contingencies of everyday life render morality a very complex science.
Let us go over these commandments; but first, let it be said at this point that these are commandments, not recommendations, nor are they invitations. God commands; and it is up to us to heed those commands or not. We are free to reject them or embrace them. If we embrace them, it is then and only then that we come to know their truth from within. If we reject them, we will never know their truth from within, and we'll never know the joy of moral integrity, not to mention that we will leave a great deal of hurt and destruction in our wake.
The first thing to notice about the structure of these commandments is that the first three have to do with God, and the last seven have to do with our neighbor. The basic Jewish insight here is that we cannot love our neighbor unless we love God first and foremost and above all. We can extend this and say that a nation that neglects God will never become a just society, but will always be corrupt on a deeper level.
The central Jewish prayer that sums up the entire Jewish law is the Shema prayer: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one, and as for you, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength." A genuine moral theology will always be rooted in this prayer and will be nothing more than an unfolding of the concrete implications of what it means to love God will all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
The first commandment is that "You shall have no other gods besides the Lord your God". To worship is to make the center of your life. This first commandment forbids idolatry, the worship of idols. To center one's life around anything other than God is to violate this first commandment. Today's most popular idols are money, power, the self, pleasures of all sorts. If God is not the center of our lives, one of these false gods will take his place. This commandment also includes the rejection of the occult in all its forms, such as fortune tellers, Ouija boards, mediums, etc., which are ultimately rooted in a lack of faith in divine providence and a disordered desire to control outcomes. The occult is fundamentally about power, not love.
The second commandment: "You shall not take the Lord's name in vain". This refers to perjury, among other things. To call on God as your witness that you are telling the truth, and then proceed to lie, is to drag God's name through the mud. To reverence the name of a person is to reverence the person; to disparage the name of a person is to disparage the person. The command to revere the name of God is the command to revere God and to not associate the name of God with anything profane, which we do when our actions are less than exemplary. In other words, we make our God look bad.
The third commandment: You shall keep holy the Sabbath day. The Jewish sabbath begins on Friday sundown and continues through Saturday, but the Christian sabbath begins on Saturday sundown and continues through Sunday, for this is the day that Christ rose from the dead. Consider that in the first chapter of Genesis, we read that "God rested on the sabbath" from all the work he had been doing, and God looked at all he had made and "indeed it was very good". In other words, the parts are good, but the whole is very good. This is reminiscent of an artist who, when finished his or her work, stands back and beholds the beauty of the whole, that is, contemplates it. The sabbath is a day of contemplation, a day to consider all that we co-created with God during the workweek, to reflect upon divine providence, that is, the hand of God in our day to day lives, to behold the beauty of creation in its entirety and to allow ourselves to be moved to praise and adore God. It is an anticipation of the eternal sabbath.
And of course, for Catholics, the highest way of keeping the sabbath day holy is to receive Christ in the Eucharist. We need to keep in mind, however, that when Christ instituted the Eucharist, he washed the feet of his Apostles, linking the Eucharist forever to works of mercy and service. A love of the Eucharist that is relatively indifferent to the suffering, the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, etc., is a love that is a farce.
The rest of the commandments are a natural outflow of these first three, and they bear upon our neighbor, the first of whom is our parents. So. the fourth commandment is: "You shall honor your father and mother". In fact, this is the only commandment with a promise attached to it: "...that you may live long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you". The insight here is that dishonoring our parents, harboring resentment against them, shortens our lives. How that works is hard to determine, but it is interesting to think about. To 'honor' is to glorify, and so this commandment calls us to glorify our parents, and we do that by making our parents look good. In other words, a good son or daughter who is a person of high moral integrity reflects well on his or her parents.
The fifth commandment is "You shall not kill", or murder. Human life is sacred; for it is the breath of God himself that makes man (humous, soil) a living being. The human person is created in the image and likeness of God. To murder is to intentionally destroy human life, even when good may come of it. But we must not do evil to achieve good, because in doing so, we nevertheless become evil--for we determine our moral identity by the moral choices that we make.
Not all killing, however, is murder. Killing in self-defense is not intentional killing; one is not willing that this person no longer exist. You are willing to stop him from killing you, and the only means you have at your disposal is a metal pipe, and you hit him with it, and he dies as a result. Your intention was not to kill him, but to stop him. That is indirect killing; for the death of the person is outside of your intention (praeter intentionem). What is currently going around as medical assistance in dying, however, is murder. The death of the patient is not "outside the intention", but is precisely what is intended, perhaps not for its own sake, but as a means to an otherwise good end (i.e., relief from suffering). It used to be illegal in Canada and would be grounds for arrest and prosecution. Not anymore, not because we have made progress, but rather because our sense of the value of human life has been seriously diminished.
The sixth commandment: "You shall not commit adultery". This is about reverencing the marriage bond. Fidelity. In Scripture, the meaning of the sexual act is intimately bound up in the meaning of marriage. The sexual act is the marriage act: the two become one flesh, one body, in the act of sexual union, and so it expresses "one flesh union" or marriage. It is a celebration of marriage in which the two have given themselves over to one another entirely, till death severs that bodily union. It is the expression of a love in which the two are loved for their own sake, not for the sake of what the other does for me. Sex outside the marriage bond is a completely different kind of action, one that does not express a permanent and exclusive union.
The seventh commandment is: "You shall not steal", or taking what rightfully belongs to another. There are many ways that one can take what rightfully belongs to another, such as towels in a hotel room, or taking school supplies for personal use, like photocopy paper, or purchasing personal items on a corporate credit card, etc. To respect the right of another to ownership of property is rooted in a respect for their status as equal in dignity to oneself.
The eighth commandment is: "You shall not bear false witness". Many people do not seem to understand the damage that lying does to one's character. What is on your lips does not conform to what is in your mind, and so, a dis-integration occurs (dis-integrity), that is, one becomes disintegrated. Examples include calling in sick when one is not sick at all, or lying to one's insurance company with the help of a chiropodist, for example, who tells the insurance company that the shoes are orthopedic shoes, so that the order will be covered by insurance and one will not have to pay for it, etc. These are lies that eat away at one's character like a spiritual cancer. The Lord is one, says the Shema prayer, but a person who lies is unlike God inasmuch as the liar has become two, that is, divided, not to mention untrustworthy.
The last two commandments have to do with envy of others; coveting the lives of others, which involves not being happy with the life that God gave you. It involves a secret delight in the misfortunes of others. Envy is rotten, and it spawns so many other sins, like jealousy, gossip, duplicity, deviousness, etc.
This brings us to the New Law that Christ established. In the New Testament with the coming of Christ, a higher moral law is introduced, one that exceeds the grasp of reason, a law that requires the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity in order to understand. Human reason alone, unaided by divine revelation and the light of faith, is certainly able to show that theft is wrong, that lying is morally wrong, or that adultery is morally wrong, etc., but reason alone, unenlightened by faith, is unable to make a great deal of sense out of this new law. For example, Jesus says, "...anyone who wishes to be a follower of mine must take up his cross and follow me", or "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Human reason on its own is unable to determine that we must follow this man, Jesus of Nazareth, and join ourselves to his sufferings, or that we should pray for our persecutors. If a person does not have faith and the light it spawns, such exhortations will make no sense. But Christian morality is about sharing in Christ's life and work of redemption.
With the coming of Christ, we are called to a higher end, a higher purpose, namely, to enter into the Person of Christ and share in his work of redemption of the entire creation, and it is this sharing in his cross and resurrection that is our way to eternal life within the heart of the Trinity. That is a life of unimaginable happiness. But it is an eternal life of unimaginable love and knowledge, and this life is a preparation for that, and the more we enter the life of Christ, the more we become disposed towards that eternal salvation. To live a life of selfishness, a mediocre life, unheroic basically, is to become indisposed to the Trinitarian life of heaven. In fact, heaven would be painful for such a person, just as being in the company of people who are completely unlike you would be painful. To believe this requires faith, and to hope for the redemption of all creatures requires the theological virtue of hope, and to love God intimately with a supernatural friendship requires the theological virtue of charity. A higher purpose, however, requires a higher moral law, the law of grace, which is what Christ brings us.
The fundamentals of this morality, its basic contours, are found in the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes, you'll notice, are different in tone. They do not begin with "Thou shalt not..." They are not written on stone, but they are interior dispositions or attitudes.
1. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, the kingdom of heaven is theirs. In other words, blessed are those who know their radical need for God as a poor person knows his need for material goods. This is the first condition for belonging to Christ, the first condition for belonging to his kingdom: knowing your radical need for God. Not everyone does. During times of prosperity, it is sometimes difficult to recognize our utter need for God, which is why we tend to be at our worst in times of prosperity, but at our best in times of suffering.
2. Blessed are those who mourn, they shall be comforted. This refers to those who love God to the extent that they mourn the sinfulness they see in the world, a sinfulness that darkens the world and perpetuates innocent suffering. It causes them grief, because they will the best for others. In other words, they love justice so much that injustice in whatever form it takes causes tremendous grief.
3. Blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth. A meek person is humble of heart and is not prone to disordered anger, but is gentle. There is, of course, a place for anger, which is a basic human emotion, a fundamental aspect of our being. Healthy anger is a response to injustice, and we see it in Christ. It is disordered anger that becomes problematic, that is, a chronic disposition to anger, typically rooted in unresolved issues.
4. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for what is right, they shall be satisfied. This refers to those who hunger for what is right as a first century Palestinian laborer would have hungered for food, or a person who has spent a long time in the desert would thirst for water. Personally, I have never experienced desert thirst or the pangs of hunger, but this is how a true follower of Christ thirsts for what is right, for what is just and good. I think it is safe to say that most people don't suffer from such a hunger and thirst for justice, but that is the mark of saints. They love truth and what is right more than they love their own job and are willing to put everything second to what is right. In other words, the pangs of hunger for justice are worse, for them, than the pangs of hunger for food.
5. Blessed are the merciful, mercy shall be shown to them. Jesus has some very harsh things to say about those who refuse to show mercy, who are vindictive. God has revealed himself in the Person of Christ as Absolute Mercy. Those who refuse to forgive and who are vindictive refuse to be God's instruments, that is, channels of God's light and life.
6. Blessed are the pure in heart; they shall see God. A pure heart is one that is 'unmixed', like pure maple syrup that is not mixed with anything artificial. A pure heart loves God with an unmixed love, that is, an undivided love. Most of us love God's gifts over the giver of those gifts. Their love is impure, mixed with a disordered love of things. Moreover, purity of heart is a necessary condition for "seeing God", for coming to understand the things of God. Love unites lover with the person loved. Hence, the more we love God with an undivided love, the greater the union, and the greater the union, the greater will be one's knowledge of God. To know, according to the Hebrew understanding of knowledge, is to experience, to enter into a kind of union with the object loved (i.e., Mary says to the angel at the Annunciation: "I know not man"), and so purity of heart leads to an increasingly deeper knowledge and understanding of God, a deeper wisdom.
7. Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called children of God. A peacemaker is one who will actively make peace, that is, work to create the conditions for peace, for unity with others. It is surprising how many people really don't love peace, but love division. Many secretly delight in the misfortunes of others. This, of course, is envy, and it is what sells newspapers.
8. Blessed are those who are persecuted on account of Christ, rejoice and be glad, Jesus says, for your reward will be great in heaven. In other words, a true disciple of Christ can expect suffering and persecution, but you can expect that a spirit of deep joy will burn within the depths of the heart. It's hard to describe that joy if you have not experienced it, but its real and it is a supernatural joy, sort of like the difference between drinking water and drinking wine. Water is like the natural happiness a person can experience, but plenty of wine is like the joy that comes from the Holy Spirit.
Other precepts in the Sermon on the Mount are the following: "If someone sues you for your tunic, give him your cloak as well", in other words, do not always stand on your rights (a person had a right to his cloak, and so a creditor was not permitted to take it). Also, "You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery, but I say this to you: anyone who looks at a woman with lust has committed adultery with her in his heart". Other things in the Sermon include the seriousness of looking upon others with contempt as well as ruining the reputation of another.
Christian morality is not so much following an external set of precepts. The prophet Jeremiah foretold the coming of a new law, one that God will write on the heart. The commandments of the Hebrew bible were written on tablets of stone; the new law, this higher law, is written on the heart through the power of divine grace (the indwelling of the Trinity), and so this new law implies a new heart, enlivened by the new life of grace, and a light that is the result of deification. The new law is actually about living in the Person of Christ, living each day with the strength that he provides for us to be able to follow him to Calvary. We have the ability to live this supernatural morality because we participate in his life, we take on his heart and love with that heart, not with our own. In other words, we are enlivened by divine grace. We begin to see the world and others through his eyes. Our life becomes a sacrifice in his sacrifice. In other words, we begin to live out what we became in baptism, namely, priest, prophet and king. A priest is one who offers sacrifice. Our life becomes a life of sacrifice in him, that is, a life given over to him, that he may be himself in us. This is the Royal Priesthood of the Faithful. And we were anointed prophet as well. A prophet is a mouthpiece of God. one who proclaims the truth revealed by God. God is Light from Light, and so in him we become light. Our life is to be, on the whole, a proclamation of him, of his risen life, of the new life that he brings. And we were anointed king. A king governs a kingdom; he goes to battle in order to conquer and expand his kingdom. We share in his kingship, and so our life is a battle to expand the kingdom of God that he established over and against the kingdom of darkness, but we do so without conventional weapons and without compelling anyone.
The above is nothing more than a very general outline of the moral life of a believer. The details and specific requirements with respect to issues of justice towards others, nations, the earth, etc., are too much for a summary article of this nature. But morality is integrated; it is one, that is, a single system. As such, it demands consistency. An error in one part of the system will have repercussions over the entire system. For example, a deficient ethics of sexuality will give rise to a deficient way of relating to women, for example. This in turn often leads to a kind of dualism that identifies women with matter, passivity, reception, something of lesser value, while "male" is identified with reason, activity, spirit, and production, regarded as of higher value, which in turn affects the way we relate to the earth (nature). This gives rise to ecological injustice, irreverence for matter, indifference to the earth, etc. Moral dis-integration on a personal level has very real social repercussions. For example, a disordered love of self and a limited ability to restrain one's passions will have obvious economic repercussions; it will affect a person's work ethic, his or her sense of responsibility, one's ability to make sacrifices for the sake of the organization for whom one works, his or her ability to be trusted by others, not to mention the obvious social consequences, such as the stability of a person's marriage, and the emotional life of the children should that marriage fall apart, which in turn has very costly social and economic consequences impossible to trace in all their details. That is why belittling the serious treatment of specific areas of ethics, such as sexual ethics, is misleading and shortsighted.