“They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved.” ~ 2 Peter 2:19 (RSV)
The question of making sense of our lives has practically been removed from the sphere of public debate as the truths of freedom and faith are rejected and morality is reduced to politicized ideologies. Our major cultural crisis is rooted in a disordered moral reasoning, disguised as open-minded dialog which tries to silence those who follow strong morals rooted in faith and reason. The battle has reach the highest priority for those concerned with the common good, as the current powers of our secular civil authorities have begun directly clashing with the Church and her ecclesiastical authority. What many modern ideologists of the relativistic and socialistic right fail to recognize is that the question of making sense of our lives is embedded within the depths of the human heart which can only be copiously realized within the discipline of moral theology.
This question is of the utmost primacy of those who work for the common good because they fully acknowledge that the loss of the sense of the transcendental, rejection of absolute truth, and denial of moral norms puts all of humanity in grave danger. For this treacherous direction of society will only enslave man to moral anarchy and state sanctioned tyranny. These very morals that secular relativists and socialists reject are the very “values that protect man in his deepest needs.” (Ratzinger 1985)
These human “needs” can only be found within the proper understanding of the theology of conscience in relationship with the freedom for excellence and the culture of life. Modern man must look to moral theology as a means for all mankind to live in true freedom and harmony. As history has repeated itself before, the Church’s moral teachings will always clatter against the culture of the world. She must always engage the ideologies that are rooted in the original temptations faced by our primordial parents in the Garden of Eve. No matter how much modern man wishes, he can never “play” God without great peril to all of humanity. For in actuality, in doing so he chooses death, corruption, and enslavement for all.
The theology of conscience is a synthesis of our motives, actions, and norms guided by the Holy Spirit within our hearts which assists humanity to become true images of Christ within in the world. St. Thomas Aquinas a great teacher in moral reasoning saw the will as the human “faculty of love and desires” which is central to recognize the interior motives of the human heart. The interior motives of the human heart where the conscience has been properly formed do not result in enslavement but gives the person the power to “love in the purest and strongest sense of the word.” (Pinckaers, 387-391)
A person with a properly formed conscience is living in the totality of integration of body and soul in complete harmony with the image of Christ within them. A properly formed Christian conscience is known “to act not alone, but under the enlightenment and the impulse derived from revelation and grace in a strictly supernatural order.” (Rickaby 2007)
"Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths." (CCC, 1776)
This voice or Holy Spirit witnesses to the human soul ordaining the heart to follow the moral law, not to restrict man but to give him the complete freedom needed to live the fullness of his being. “A well-formed conscience will never contradict the objective moral law, as taught by Christ and his Church.” (CCC, 1783-5)
Modern man engulfed within the culture of death, has rejected this reality by embracing relativism, thereby corrupting his heart and violating his own conscience. These improperly formed consciences enslave man to reduce other human beings to objects whose only usefulness is the selfish pleasures of men. In light of rampant materialism, humanity is reduced to an object of utilitarian needs to meet scientific, economic and political ends. Society is threatened with self-destruction when the idea of freedom of choice without any moral compass becomes the norm. These twisted consciences perpetuates a false freedom based on choice which “becomes the moral norm that justifies everything else, including – if necessary – violence, homicide, mendacity… and what looks like ‘liberation’ turns into its opposite and shows its diabolic visage in deeds.” (Ratzinger 1985)
Why are improperly formed consciences dangerous for society and the individual? These ideologies of moral relativism, eclipses of conscience, materialism, and freedom of choice at all cost are opening the door to a diabolical culture with a “fundamental disrespect and contempt for the embodied nature of the human person.” (Torraco n.d., 1-15) The reality of the culture of death is that humanity rejects the image of God within them, thereby violating their consciences and giving away their humanity. The secular view of conscience rejects the deepest needs of the human person by enslaving them to follow their feelings and opinions, basically to act without really using their moral reasoning – nearby rejecting the dignity of conscience in its totality.
By following a malformed conscience, individuals condition themselves to be attracted to evil acts. With each evil act, it becomes harder to do the good. The influence of improperly formed conscience attacks the very essence of the person not just affecting what they do but what they become. They will no longer be good, but enslaved to a lifestyle that leads to perpetual sin and evil – ultimately to the mortal death of the soul. Imagine a world where all humanity has a dead soul? Doesn’t sound like heaven, does it? A society with no moral compass is a culture whose corporate soul is dead, for it becomes a society “more humanitarianism in the abstract” and looses its “humanity in the concrete.” (Herberg Fall 1986)
“The moral sense of conscience must be molded, not developed simply by feelings, opinions, circumstance, intentions or movements, but by the deep moral sense in which we participate by being human and capable of reason. Conscience does not simply decide for happy or sad, but for good or evil.” (Bransfield) Conscience needs to be properly formed through the practice of a virtuous life, where each act aids the person to grow more and more like the image of Christ. To reject that reality means that an individual will become enslaved to depravity, which is not actualized freedom.
An exploration of the proper ideal of freedom must be explored in order to understand its relationship with the theology of conscience. Within the culture of death, freedom has a very different meaning then from the Christian perspective. The culture of death proclaims a false freedom that emphasizes the autonomy of the human person. Just like John Donne once said, “No man is an island, entire of itself,” (Doone 1624) Human beings are social beings where their actions influence all those around them; emotionally, physically, and spiritually. To reject that idea is to live in a false reality. Humanity does not create their own realities that are mandated by the whims of emotions and opinions. Humanity is not omnipotent; humanity has been created by one who created a single universe guided by absolute truth grounded in the objective realities of eternal, natural, and moral laws. These laws can not be rejected by “realists” because to do so, rejects living in the objective reality. Relativists, who live the actuality of their poor moral reasoning, launch themselves into a life enslaved by addictions, depression, hopelessness and other forms of psychosis and degeneracy.
True human freedom allows a person to strive to live in the fullness of their humanity. This Christian perspective of freedom is the source of the founding of our Bill of Rights. Man was created with inalienable rights. These inalienable rights are given not by the state but by the one who created us all. To reject the moral reality that is the source of the founding of a Nation dedicated to the protection of the inalienable rights of the human person is to force the culture into despotism.
Actualized human freedom is not a freedom “from” mentality, but a form of freedom that commands a person to guard their dignity of conscience. A culture that truly wants humans to live in true freedom must also protect the dignity of their citizen’s conscience and give them the freedom to follow their conscience without coercion.
“The notion and actualization of freedom” flow from one’s love and capacity for living a life steeped in the virtues. (Spitzer, 209) The idea of liberty as a freedom “from”, freedom of choice, or even a freedom of indifference does not give the human person emancipation but violates their human dignity at all levels. Fr. Pinckaers speaks of a freedom for excellence which is grounded in the human potentiality and capacity for truth and goodness. The essence of this freedom becomes “a spontaneous attraction for the highest truth and goodness.” (Pinckaers, 387)
“True freedom consists in proceeding along the way of truth according to one's vocation” (Benedict, 2007) where the human person experiences the freedom to become what God created them to be. Being fully human, gives a person the freedom of excellence to become more then just pure existence but also turns their very personhood into a living gift for others. True freedom allows for human relationships to be based on virtue – instead of how the secular world directs relationships into the fleeting pleasures and usefulness of an egotistical reality. Living in true human freedom, our lives become an offer of our very selves freely given to the demands of love “by learning the ways of holiness so that we might be able to relate to God for all eternity.” (Keating 2008)
The call of personal holiness is not a new one and is at the core to constructing an authentic culture of life. This was the call to the new evangelization that Pope John Paul II always spoke about – a personal call to live human life in its fullness. “With a spirit of generous self-giving, recognize that you are directly involved in the new evangelization, which demands the involvement of all of us. Proclaim Christ, who ‘died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who for their sakes died and was raised up.’ (2 Cor 5:15).” (Letter to Youth, 1993) Those who live for him also live for the love of their brother, sister, and the least amongst themselves, which protects the common good for all peoples.
The new evangelization, lived within the context of relationships with the other, is rooted in the family and the actualization of SPICE within a person’s life. The forming of proper conscience is central to the duty of family life – the domestic church. For it is within the family that a person first learns how to relate to themselves and others in a proper moral way. Family life is the primary source of the school for a life of virtue. Just as families are the sacred seed for all of culture, so to the family is the primary place where one learns morality. Even secular science, especially those within the education profession, have known that the ability to learn the basics of right and wrong happen within the first formative years of human development, which means that all the basics of morality is learned by the age of six.
That critical information contained within the most basic of child development courses, only further validates why the Church emphasizes the sacredness and importance of family life for all of society. Just turning on the local news will confirm material evidence that family life is under attack and endangered by moral ambiguity, state policies and societal pressures that are oppressive and unfriendly to family life. Restrict a healthy, and dare we say holy family life, and society restricts human freedom for all. If a person has a hard time reaching their full potential in a troubled family life; it is even harder to achieve SPICE in their adult life which helps a person reach their full capacity for goodness and perfect charity. The foundations of a person’s fullness of humanity are laid down in their formative years.
Family life and the proper formation of the conscience remain essential to the edifice of a culture of life. Fr. Spitzer states very urgently to the need for a cultural revolution of the interior kind in his striking book Healing the Culture. With his dynamic synthesis of the cultural war taking place in society he talks about a disease that is infesting our culture at its foundation.
If we are moved beyond the more insidious effects of the agent [culture of death], we must begin to understand it. We must learn how to see it for what it really is. Rather than content ourselves with cataloguing its every effect, we must get to the nature of the beast. I would submit that the beast’s identity is reflected in the minimalistic way we see ourselves. More precisely, it is a radically incomplete cultural attitude about what it means to be a human person. (Spitzer, 17)
A moral theology of conscience’s main concern and expertise is the only authentic way to explore what it means to be a human person. To deny this truth in society attacks all of humanity at the core of man’s essence. "Conscience is man's most secret core, and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths" (GS 16). Our forefathers recognized this reality and strived to form a more perfect union of people. In order to protect the inalienable right of all persons to strive for that interior relationship with their creator, they guaranteed the protections within that union to require the legitimate governmental protections of those rights.
Without proper formed consciences the citizens of this union are being led down a dicey incline that threatens their inalienable rights that so many throughout it’s brief history have died to protect. In order to save this beautiful union we must raise our voices and defend those rights to properly shape our consciences and use them for the common good. Our secular brothers and sisters must be informed of the joy and freedom that is apprehended through the appreciative authenticity of what it means to be a human person. Failure to do so, will lead our culture to self destruction.
A properly formed conscience has an interior “orientation to the highest” which leads the soul to excellence in moral life. (Pinckaers, 387) A culture that rejects excellence in moral life cannot help but to decline into complete moral chaos and totalitarianism for all of its citizens. Those of the secular elite that proclaim that faith based ideologies are domineering and will thwart the further development of human society are dead wrong – literally.
Our society needs moral theology and proper formation of consciences to give mutual people living within a civilized culture the compass they need to prosper and live in true freedom. Pope Benedict stated in his first encyclical, “Faith liberates reason from its blind spots and therefore helps it to be ever more fully itself. Faith enables reason to do its work more effectively and to see its proper object more clearly.” (DCE, II, 28a) Faith balanced with proper and sound moral reasoning will only help a society to grow and develop. The cultural context on how that reality is unsurpassed is one that protects and guards the dignity of the human person in all states of life and the true meaning of human life – which is a culture of life.
WORKS CITED
Bransfield, Brian. "Voting by Conscience." Faithful Citizenship. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. 2007 - 2009. http://www.faithfulcitizenship.org/media/article/bransfield (accessed March 31, 2009).
Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britian. The Holy Bible, RSV, 2nd Edition. San Fransico: Ignatius Press, 2006.
Doone, John. "Devotions Upon Emergent Occassions: Meditation XVI." Indianna State University Online Library. 1624. http://isu.indstate.edu/ilnprof/ENG451/ISLAND/ (accessed April 3, 2009).
Herberg, Will. "What is the Moral Crisis?" The Intercollegiate Review, Fall 1986: 7-12.
II, John Paul. "Letter to the Youth of the World." World Youth Day VIII. Denver, 1993. 6.
Keating, James. "When You Wrestle with Your Conscience, Who Wins?" Catholic Culture. Edited by Envoy Magazine. March/April 2008. http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=8367&repos=1&subrepos=0&searchid=443075 (accessed Mar 31, 2009).
Pinckaers, Servais. The Sources of Christian Ethics. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995.
Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal (Pope Benedict XVI) and Vittorio Messori. The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985.
Rickaby, John. "Conscience." The Original Catholic Encyclopedia. Edited by Catholic Answers. The Appleton Company. 2007. http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Conscience (accessed Mar 31, 2009).
Spitzer, Robert J. Healing the Culture: A Commonsense Philosophy of Happiness, Freedom and the Life Issues. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000.
Torraco, Stephen F. "The Incarnation and the Politics of the Family: The Alternative to the Path of Least Resistance." 1-15.
XVI, Benedict. "Formation of Conscience in Fundamental Values." Catholic Culture. Edited by Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Feb 10, 2007. http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=7447&repos1&subrepos=0&searchid=440448 (accessed Mar 31, 2009).
XVI, Benedict. Deus Caritas Est. Vatican City: Pauline Books & Media, 2006.
Copyright February 2009 by Janelle Wingert
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Delivered from Slavery
“You show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” ~ 2 Cor 3: 3
Christ has delivered us from the slavery of the law through his life, death, and resurrection, having completed the law of the Old Testament by transcending the old law with the Evangelical Law. This New Law can only be understood with the proper illumination in regards to its relationship between human natural inclinations and the Ten Commandments. God, our creator promulgated the eternal law in the most perfect of designs that encompasses all of the natural laws, primary precepts and moral law.
Through His great wisdom and design maturing in a moral life would be completely possible for us through natural means, where using human reasoning we can discover the universal truths and norms found within the primary precepts of divine law. “Nature provides a purposive design discoverable by one who would make the effort to contemplate, receive, or ‘listen’ to” the Old law. (Torraco, Listening to Nature, August 1993) The natural law and the primary precepts are a means to help civilize ourselves from working in denying and failing to follow the natural inclinations of every human heart. “Even in most difficult situations man must respect the norm of morality so that he can be obedient to God’s holy commandment and consistent with his own dignity as a person.” (VS, 102)
These natural inclinations of the heart are the good desires of self-preservation, procreation and the raising of children, and to know the truth of God and live in society. All goods unto themselves these inclinations are totally identical with the primary precepts in the Decalogue that safeguard and contain the natural law within them. “Only God, the Supreme Good, constitutes the unshakable foundation and essential condition of morality, and thus of the commandments, particularly those negative commandments which always and in every case prohibit behavior and actions incompatible with the personal dignity of every man.” (VS, 99) In God’s great merciful and omnipotent understanding of human nature to thwart natural inclinations through original sin, he gave us the Old Law to control our disordered passions that threaten our physical, mental, and spiritual lives. Through His loving gift our Lord impresses upon us our duties to Him and each other by instructing us on what to do and what not to do, so we would know without a doubt the effect of sin in ourselves.
Bar, we must guard from looking at the Ten Commandments as just a list of rules to follow. By living these primary precepts like children, we are nurtured to grow into the New Law that Christ gave us, for when we understand the true beauty of the Old Law and recognize we need more we are able to say “in the depths of my soul I delight in your law and know that your commands are good, just and holy.” (A' Kempis 1989)
For St. Paul explained, “Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (Gal 3: 23 – 27) He is referring to the New Evangelical law that doesn’t bind us but sets us free.
The evangelical law is a law of love, grace, and freedom because we are freed from being a slave to the law because the evangelical law completes us in utmost maturity where we are prepared to receive our heritance in Christ. The more we work in union with the divine law we move beyond just being friends of God by being transformed into the actual daughters and sons of the Most High. (Denzi 1922 - 1939)
The divine law works within the hearts of individuals, who freely stop and listen to the divine inclinations that work in union with the natural human inclinations for a specific good. Jesus Christ completes this new law, bringing its fullness in order to help us to mature to the Ultimate Good and share in the interior Trinitarian life of God. For the evangelical law give us the divine tools to follow a way of perfection with utmost Christian maturity in all things moral and spiritual in life.
Therefore, comes the most imperative task at hand, to explain why it is vital for us to think aright in order for our personal maturity and the responsibility of civilization to be actualized. Let’s first look to the role of proper moral reasoning to help in the individual maturing of an adult person. God created man in his own image for us to live in utmost freedom in harmony with each other, ourselves, creation and him. Failure to think aright in moral reasoning opens the individual to make decisions that are physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually dangerous to their full development into a free human being living in the full truth of their dignity.
“The person who acts of his own accord following a natural instinct that has been perfected by virtue can be said to act with full freedom.” (Pinckaers, 186) The freedom and charity that is infused into us by the evangelical law furnishes us with what we require to freely choose the inclinations of our heart, for they are trinified in Christ. St. Augustine once said, “Do what you want.” He was not stating a hedonistic view point of morality, but was explaining how the Christian who has been perfected in the Evangelical Law is free to follow their heart, for their heart is inclined not just to follow natural law, but divine law. This natural instinct that St. Thomas explains in his Summa Theologica, does not just talk about a natural way of live, but an instinct that is supernatural through the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Why then again is this so important for us to renew our aright thinking not just as individuals but as a culture, at this particular time and place in our civilization’s history? The sudden tyrannical growth of the “culture of death” within all aspects of public life only intensifies the battle for our very humanity, which is in danger of being completely denied and suppressed. A relativistic society renounces all sound moral reasoning and thereby makes it impossible to find true meaning for human life. This view point is void of all veracity and rational thought. If we are human beings living in this world we are participating in the eternal law even if we deny that it exists, like all relativists do.
The argument in our secular society that tries to say that morality is a private matter is void in truth. “Civilization depends on the civilized imposing their standards on the uncivilized. ... If you can’t accept that, you are against civilization.” (Canavan 1989) God’s truth and divine law does not run in contradiction against the true development and maturing of human civilization. To deny our true humanity and the true meaning of human life is to reduce ourselves back to barbarianism. Repudiating moral reasoning in the public sphere is to open our civilization to a schizophrenic personality that threatens our very culture at its core being. Basically it will spiral civilization into to pure chaos which will destroy itself from within and deny the unalienable rights of all humanity, thereby opening the door to pure tyranny.
The best illustration of this reality is to look at the most controversial battle taking place between the culture of life and the culture of death – abortion. We can first gaze upon the interior reality of the abortionist and the role he plays in attacking the humanity in all of us. Through the vary nature of his trade, he redefines what morality is. “His goal becomes to graft the goals of public health onto his techniques for establishing a new culture with individual autonomy as its major premise and which can be efficiently hedonist with minimal adverse consequences. Under this system, techniques and those who wield them become the measure of the new 'morality'—really the old immorality.” (Marshall and Donovan Winter 1992) Abortion denies the humanity of the smallest and weakest among us.
The whole “culture of death” that frequently puts those is most risk in mortal peril, spoils the development of a society overall. “The assumption that abortion and euthanasia are human rights … is seen … as a contradiction which amounts to a denial of the human dignity and freedom which the law is supposed to protect. A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members; and among the most vulnerable are surely the unborn and the dying. A materialistic view of the human person will concede little value and dignity to either. What is then claimed as a victory for human rights is really the sanctioning of a freedom sundered from truth.” (John Paul II 25 May 2000) Moral reasoning is necessary to protect civilization from a cruel reality that will destroy humanity from within itself.
These collective pressures from the “culture of death” threaten human life and attack the innate dignity of all humanity. “At the root of such a culture is the "mother" of all its contradictions: on the one hand, the strong tendency to deny the concrete reality of human nature, and the other, the desire to destroy it (thereby admitting its existence), specifically by ripping apart the intimate unity between body and soul.” (Torraco, Campaign Update Winter 1994) These types of inconsistencies attest to the irrationality of amoral thought that defends the materialistic view of the human person.
Not only does this twisted view of the dignity of the human person damage civilization, it also grievously harms the individual in their ability to mature into a human person at a moral and spiritual level. The premise for the defense of abortion and other anti-life legislation is often argued by proclaiming a right to privacy. First off, it is irrational to argue for the right to privacy over another human beings right to life, which obliviously super cedes the prior. By proclaiming a right to privacy, the humanity of the individual is destroyed and their own rights and dignity are violated. “This privacy rests on the assumption that human freedom is freedom from being in relation to others because the very presence of others compromises my freedom and my selfhood… To be free, the other who calls me into relation and responsibility must be annihilated.” (Miller November 1991)
Humanity only fully develops and matures with the sincere gift of self for the other. In other words, “no man is an island.” We were created to be in relationship and in “agape” with each other and with God in the Trinitarian life of the Holy Trinity. To fail to live this way, is to fail to live in our actuality of our humanity.
Through Christ and the Evangelical Law we are called to live “better angels of our nature." Though the path to renewing moral theology to the “right” notion may seem daunting and like a loosing battle. We can take courage in the fact that Christ will overcome all. Ethics without the divine law is actually leads to moral and spiritual death, because a person and a culture can only attain true humanity and civilization with divine help. For to be anything less then how God created us to be is to frustrate our very development as adults grounded in authentic morality and leading a fruitful and blessed spiritual life. For the only way to be our best is to be our best, which requires the free movement and grace of the Holy Spirit within the heart of individuals and the corporate soul of a society. “…The salvation of our race was accomplished by the mystery of the Cross, and since the Church, dispenser of that salvation after the triumph of Christ, was founded upon earth and instituted, Providence established a new order for a new people.” (Leo XIII September 22, 1891)
We have a great hope to renew our morality as a civilization and a people with the renewal of moral theology. Though “the natural law is a participation in us of the eternal law: while human law falls short of the eternal law.” (Aquinas 1989, Q96, 2) St. Thomas was explaining that we all participate in the eternal law though we always fall short. We can find great hope in the knowledge that God realizes the true difficulty we have in living in our true humanity.
God through Christ has given us the tools necessary to develop morally and spiritually in evangelical truth and freedom. As St. Thomas explained latter in his Treatise of the Law, “There are two ways in which a thing may be instilled into man. First, through being part of his nature, and thus the natural law is instilled into man. Secondly, a thing is instilled into man by being, as it were, added on to his nature by a gift of grace. In this way the New Law is instilled into man, not only by indicating to him what he should do, but also by helping him to accomplish it.” (Aquinas 1989, Q166, 1) Through the evangelical law, which is the Holy Spirit, we have the ultimate guild to help us navigate the difficult waters of our present culture with truth and freedom by cooperating with the divine law that has transfigured our hearts into Christ.
WORKS CITED
A' Kempis, Thomas, trans. by William C. Creasy. The Imitation of Christ. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, Inc., 1989.
Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theological of Saint Thomas Aquinas. 2nd Revised. Prima Secundae Partis. 1989.
Canavan, Francis. "Commentary." Catholic Eye, 1989.
Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britian. The Holy Bible, RSV, 2nd Edition. San Fransico: Ignatius Press, 2006.
Denzi. "Pius XI 1922 - 1939." Sources of Catholic Dogma, 1922 - 1939: #2231.
John Paul II, Pope. "Address to the New Ambassador of New Zealand." Vatican, 25 May 2000.
—. "Veritatis Splendor." Encyclical, August 15, 1993.
Leo XIII, Pope. "Octobri Mense." Apostolic Letter. Rome, September 22, 1891. #4.
Marshall, Robert G., and Charles A. Donovan. "Will Birth Control Prevent Abortion?" Human Life Review (Ignatius Press) 18, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 41-49.
Miller, Monica Migliorino. "Severed Ties: How Abortion Dissolves Feminine Authority." Crisis 9, no. 10 (November 1991): 21-26.
Pinckaers, Servais. The Sources of Christian Ethics. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995.
Torraco, Stephen F. "Listening to Nature: The Significance of Leon Kass of Catholic Moral Theology." Linarce Quarterly, August 1993.
Torraco, Stephen F. "The Better Angels of Our Nature." The Catholic Campaign for America, Winter 1994: 3.
Copyright March 2009 by Janelle Wingert
Christ has delivered us from the slavery of the law through his life, death, and resurrection, having completed the law of the Old Testament by transcending the old law with the Evangelical Law. This New Law can only be understood with the proper illumination in regards to its relationship between human natural inclinations and the Ten Commandments. God, our creator promulgated the eternal law in the most perfect of designs that encompasses all of the natural laws, primary precepts and moral law.
Through His great wisdom and design maturing in a moral life would be completely possible for us through natural means, where using human reasoning we can discover the universal truths and norms found within the primary precepts of divine law. “Nature provides a purposive design discoverable by one who would make the effort to contemplate, receive, or ‘listen’ to” the Old law. (Torraco, Listening to Nature, August 1993) The natural law and the primary precepts are a means to help civilize ourselves from working in denying and failing to follow the natural inclinations of every human heart. “Even in most difficult situations man must respect the norm of morality so that he can be obedient to God’s holy commandment and consistent with his own dignity as a person.” (VS, 102)
These natural inclinations of the heart are the good desires of self-preservation, procreation and the raising of children, and to know the truth of God and live in society. All goods unto themselves these inclinations are totally identical with the primary precepts in the Decalogue that safeguard and contain the natural law within them. “Only God, the Supreme Good, constitutes the unshakable foundation and essential condition of morality, and thus of the commandments, particularly those negative commandments which always and in every case prohibit behavior and actions incompatible with the personal dignity of every man.” (VS, 99) In God’s great merciful and omnipotent understanding of human nature to thwart natural inclinations through original sin, he gave us the Old Law to control our disordered passions that threaten our physical, mental, and spiritual lives. Through His loving gift our Lord impresses upon us our duties to Him and each other by instructing us on what to do and what not to do, so we would know without a doubt the effect of sin in ourselves.
Bar, we must guard from looking at the Ten Commandments as just a list of rules to follow. By living these primary precepts like children, we are nurtured to grow into the New Law that Christ gave us, for when we understand the true beauty of the Old Law and recognize we need more we are able to say “in the depths of my soul I delight in your law and know that your commands are good, just and holy.” (A' Kempis 1989)
For St. Paul explained, “Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (Gal 3: 23 – 27) He is referring to the New Evangelical law that doesn’t bind us but sets us free.
The evangelical law is a law of love, grace, and freedom because we are freed from being a slave to the law because the evangelical law completes us in utmost maturity where we are prepared to receive our heritance in Christ. The more we work in union with the divine law we move beyond just being friends of God by being transformed into the actual daughters and sons of the Most High. (Denzi 1922 - 1939)
The divine law works within the hearts of individuals, who freely stop and listen to the divine inclinations that work in union with the natural human inclinations for a specific good. Jesus Christ completes this new law, bringing its fullness in order to help us to mature to the Ultimate Good and share in the interior Trinitarian life of God. For the evangelical law give us the divine tools to follow a way of perfection with utmost Christian maturity in all things moral and spiritual in life.
Therefore, comes the most imperative task at hand, to explain why it is vital for us to think aright in order for our personal maturity and the responsibility of civilization to be actualized. Let’s first look to the role of proper moral reasoning to help in the individual maturing of an adult person. God created man in his own image for us to live in utmost freedom in harmony with each other, ourselves, creation and him. Failure to think aright in moral reasoning opens the individual to make decisions that are physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually dangerous to their full development into a free human being living in the full truth of their dignity.
“The person who acts of his own accord following a natural instinct that has been perfected by virtue can be said to act with full freedom.” (Pinckaers, 186) The freedom and charity that is infused into us by the evangelical law furnishes us with what we require to freely choose the inclinations of our heart, for they are trinified in Christ. St. Augustine once said, “Do what you want.” He was not stating a hedonistic view point of morality, but was explaining how the Christian who has been perfected in the Evangelical Law is free to follow their heart, for their heart is inclined not just to follow natural law, but divine law. This natural instinct that St. Thomas explains in his Summa Theologica, does not just talk about a natural way of live, but an instinct that is supernatural through the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Why then again is this so important for us to renew our aright thinking not just as individuals but as a culture, at this particular time and place in our civilization’s history? The sudden tyrannical growth of the “culture of death” within all aspects of public life only intensifies the battle for our very humanity, which is in danger of being completely denied and suppressed. A relativistic society renounces all sound moral reasoning and thereby makes it impossible to find true meaning for human life. This view point is void of all veracity and rational thought. If we are human beings living in this world we are participating in the eternal law even if we deny that it exists, like all relativists do.
The argument in our secular society that tries to say that morality is a private matter is void in truth. “Civilization depends on the civilized imposing their standards on the uncivilized. ... If you can’t accept that, you are against civilization.” (Canavan 1989) God’s truth and divine law does not run in contradiction against the true development and maturing of human civilization. To deny our true humanity and the true meaning of human life is to reduce ourselves back to barbarianism. Repudiating moral reasoning in the public sphere is to open our civilization to a schizophrenic personality that threatens our very culture at its core being. Basically it will spiral civilization into to pure chaos which will destroy itself from within and deny the unalienable rights of all humanity, thereby opening the door to pure tyranny.
The best illustration of this reality is to look at the most controversial battle taking place between the culture of life and the culture of death – abortion. We can first gaze upon the interior reality of the abortionist and the role he plays in attacking the humanity in all of us. Through the vary nature of his trade, he redefines what morality is. “His goal becomes to graft the goals of public health onto his techniques for establishing a new culture with individual autonomy as its major premise and which can be efficiently hedonist with minimal adverse consequences. Under this system, techniques and those who wield them become the measure of the new 'morality'—really the old immorality.” (Marshall and Donovan Winter 1992) Abortion denies the humanity of the smallest and weakest among us.
The whole “culture of death” that frequently puts those is most risk in mortal peril, spoils the development of a society overall. “The assumption that abortion and euthanasia are human rights … is seen … as a contradiction which amounts to a denial of the human dignity and freedom which the law is supposed to protect. A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members; and among the most vulnerable are surely the unborn and the dying. A materialistic view of the human person will concede little value and dignity to either. What is then claimed as a victory for human rights is really the sanctioning of a freedom sundered from truth.” (John Paul II 25 May 2000) Moral reasoning is necessary to protect civilization from a cruel reality that will destroy humanity from within itself.
These collective pressures from the “culture of death” threaten human life and attack the innate dignity of all humanity. “At the root of such a culture is the "mother" of all its contradictions: on the one hand, the strong tendency to deny the concrete reality of human nature, and the other, the desire to destroy it (thereby admitting its existence), specifically by ripping apart the intimate unity between body and soul.” (Torraco, Campaign Update Winter 1994) These types of inconsistencies attest to the irrationality of amoral thought that defends the materialistic view of the human person.
Not only does this twisted view of the dignity of the human person damage civilization, it also grievously harms the individual in their ability to mature into a human person at a moral and spiritual level. The premise for the defense of abortion and other anti-life legislation is often argued by proclaiming a right to privacy. First off, it is irrational to argue for the right to privacy over another human beings right to life, which obliviously super cedes the prior. By proclaiming a right to privacy, the humanity of the individual is destroyed and their own rights and dignity are violated. “This privacy rests on the assumption that human freedom is freedom from being in relation to others because the very presence of others compromises my freedom and my selfhood… To be free, the other who calls me into relation and responsibility must be annihilated.” (Miller November 1991)
Humanity only fully develops and matures with the sincere gift of self for the other. In other words, “no man is an island.” We were created to be in relationship and in “agape” with each other and with God in the Trinitarian life of the Holy Trinity. To fail to live this way, is to fail to live in our actuality of our humanity.
Through Christ and the Evangelical Law we are called to live “better angels of our nature." Though the path to renewing moral theology to the “right” notion may seem daunting and like a loosing battle. We can take courage in the fact that Christ will overcome all. Ethics without the divine law is actually leads to moral and spiritual death, because a person and a culture can only attain true humanity and civilization with divine help. For to be anything less then how God created us to be is to frustrate our very development as adults grounded in authentic morality and leading a fruitful and blessed spiritual life. For the only way to be our best is to be our best, which requires the free movement and grace of the Holy Spirit within the heart of individuals and the corporate soul of a society. “…The salvation of our race was accomplished by the mystery of the Cross, and since the Church, dispenser of that salvation after the triumph of Christ, was founded upon earth and instituted, Providence established a new order for a new people.” (Leo XIII September 22, 1891)
We have a great hope to renew our morality as a civilization and a people with the renewal of moral theology. Though “the natural law is a participation in us of the eternal law: while human law falls short of the eternal law.” (Aquinas 1989, Q96, 2) St. Thomas was explaining that we all participate in the eternal law though we always fall short. We can find great hope in the knowledge that God realizes the true difficulty we have in living in our true humanity.
God through Christ has given us the tools necessary to develop morally and spiritually in evangelical truth and freedom. As St. Thomas explained latter in his Treatise of the Law, “There are two ways in which a thing may be instilled into man. First, through being part of his nature, and thus the natural law is instilled into man. Secondly, a thing is instilled into man by being, as it were, added on to his nature by a gift of grace. In this way the New Law is instilled into man, not only by indicating to him what he should do, but also by helping him to accomplish it.” (Aquinas 1989, Q166, 1) Through the evangelical law, which is the Holy Spirit, we have the ultimate guild to help us navigate the difficult waters of our present culture with truth and freedom by cooperating with the divine law that has transfigured our hearts into Christ.
WORKS CITED
A' Kempis, Thomas, trans. by William C. Creasy. The Imitation of Christ. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, Inc., 1989.
Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theological of Saint Thomas Aquinas. 2nd Revised. Prima Secundae Partis. 1989.
Canavan, Francis. "Commentary." Catholic Eye, 1989.
Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britian. The Holy Bible, RSV, 2nd Edition. San Fransico: Ignatius Press, 2006.
Denzi. "Pius XI 1922 - 1939." Sources of Catholic Dogma, 1922 - 1939: #2231.
John Paul II, Pope. "Address to the New Ambassador of New Zealand." Vatican, 25 May 2000.
—. "Veritatis Splendor." Encyclical, August 15, 1993.
Leo XIII, Pope. "Octobri Mense." Apostolic Letter. Rome, September 22, 1891. #4.
Marshall, Robert G., and Charles A. Donovan. "Will Birth Control Prevent Abortion?" Human Life Review (Ignatius Press) 18, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 41-49.
Miller, Monica Migliorino. "Severed Ties: How Abortion Dissolves Feminine Authority." Crisis 9, no. 10 (November 1991): 21-26.
Pinckaers, Servais. The Sources of Christian Ethics. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995.
Torraco, Stephen F. "Listening to Nature: The Significance of Leon Kass of Catholic Moral Theology." Linarce Quarterly, August 1993.
Torraco, Stephen F. "The Better Angels of Our Nature." The Catholic Campaign for America, Winter 1994: 3.
Copyright March 2009 by Janelle Wingert
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