Introduction to Christian Morality

• Every person bears the dignity of being made in the image of God
• God has given us an immortal soul and the gifts of intelligence and reason to understand the order of things in creation
• God has given us free will to seek and love what is true, good, and beautiful
• Original Sin darkens our minds, weakens our wills, and inclines us to sin
• Baptism delivers us from Original Sin but not from its effects, especially the inclination to sin, concupiscence
• Within us is a surge toward the good because we are made in the image of God, and darker impulses toward evil because of the effects of Original Sin
• Morality is founded on the natural and eternal laws of God
• Morality is concerned with free human conduct and presupposes freedom
• Morality is guided by God's revelation and concerns what humans ought to be in the light of what humanity is
• Morality asks people to be the persons they are meant to be according to Christian faith
• Ethics and Morality can be used interchangeably, but there is a fine line that divides the two
• Ethics is the systematic study of the rightness and wrongness of human actions
• Morality refers to principles of right and wrong behavior or rightness and wrongness of human actions
• In determining the morality of human actions, the moral agent is guided by broader rules or principles of ethics
• Basic ethical principles include: Respect for persons, Truthfulness and confidentiality, Autonomy and informed consent, Beneficence, Non-maleficence, Justice
• Morality comes from the Latin word "mores" meaning "custom", while Ethics is derived from the Greek word "ethicos" meaning "custom" or "character"
• Morality of human acts refers to the goodness or badness, rightness or wrongness of human acts
• Immoral is synonymous with unethical, and moral/ethical person is one who is good and does the right thing
• Ethics provides principles on the morality of human acts and theoretical knowledge, while Morality is the practice of ethics and applies the theory into real action
• Morality exists only in the context of humanity, and there is no morality outside the context of humanity
• Morality is concerned with who and what we are as human beings and with our legitimate development as persons
• Authority does not create morality, things are forbidden because they are wrong, not wrong because they are forbidden
• Immoral and illegal are not the same thing, what is legal may not be moral, and vice versa
• Two presuppositions in moral theology are: Man possesses freedom of will and Man is accountable to an ultimate value or authority
• Division of moral theology includes General morals and Special morals, with subdivisions of Ethics of being and Ethics of doing
• Man's responsibility in the religious realm is towards God, and Man's responsibility towards the created world is towards neighbor & creation
• From the bases of our experiences, we want to be good because of our belief in salvation.
• Morality is that part of Theology that searches for the norms of free human conduct in the light of God's revelation.
• God's self-disclosure is known as salvation history.
• Morality is the science of what a human ought to be by reason of what he is. It is concerned with what humans ought to be in the light of what humanity is.
• Ethics is the science of Morals and morality is the practice of ethics.
• Ethics is moral philosophy while morality is moral theology.
• What are some of the things that frustrate human life and development, and which everyone would therefore consider evil? Death, suffering, pain, disability, deprivation of freedom, discrimination, deprivation of worth and self-esteem. We call these pre-moral evils.
• One way that pre-moral evil may be caused is by natural disaster such as earthquakes, floods, epidemics, accidents and in general, things whichare outside of human control. We call such evils “physical evils”.
• Most evil in the world is brought on by the free, deliberate and unjustified actions of human beings. We call such evils “moral evils”. And so, Moral evils Occur when we voluntarily and deliberately become involved in the spread of pre-moral evil.
• Jesus’ teachings about love have two dimensions:

  1. Vertical = pointing to God
  2. Horizontal = pointing to others
• The catholic faith teaches that “wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it.” And that “right is right, even though no one else is doing it.