Chapter 1: The Essence of Church.

His salvific work is directed

towards building up of his mystical
Catholic Morality body. Moral theology emphasizes the
communitarian dimension of Christian
♥ Nature of catholic Morality
life.
 Biblical- The word of God is
Moral Theology is sometimes called
authoritative in matters of faith and
Christian or theological ethics, moral
morality. The fundamental orientation
theology focuses on the implications of faith
and conception of morality should be
for the way of life. As a theological
derived from scriptures.
discipline, it is concerned with God’s
 Sacramental- Moral theology should
revelation of divine love in Jesus and
develop the sacramental dimension of
through the Spirit as an invitation calling for
the Christian life. Progressive
response. It regards the response to the
sacramental incorporation into the
initiative of God’s offer of love as the very
ecclesial community brings about a
soul of moral life. Moral theology makes
gradual transformation into Christ.
clear how faith shapes Christian life, both
 Personalistic- Moral theology
the lives of individual Christians and the life
emphasizes the human person in its
of the Church. As Fr. Pasquale Giordano,
totality: body, intellect, will,
S.J. in his book, Evangelizing Presence:
conscience, relationship, family,
Living the Moral Life Today, He said that,
church, and society.
“Moral Theology is about making decisions
 Ecumenical- The universality of the
in life that enable us to become more fully
Gospel of Christ.
human, to enable us to come to God as our
final end.”
Christian moral theology is
♥ The Place of morality in the Catholic
interested in the implications of Christian
faith
faith for the sort of persons Christians ought
to be (ethics of being or character ethics)
and the sort of actions Christians ought to Our life as catholic has three parts:
perform (ethics of doing). Both being and
doing, character and action are 1. How Catholics think—Catholic
interdependent concerns that are taken theology--- Creed---Words---Mind
together in the complete project of moral 2. How Catholics live----- Catholic
theology. Morality--- Code---Works-- Will
3. How Catholics pray---- Catholic
♥ Sources of Moral Theology Worship--- Cult----Worship-Heart
1. Divine revelation as interpreted by the These three come simultaneously.
Church The more prayer, the more virtue; the more
2. Human reason virtue, the more faith.
3. Human experience The three parts are like the three
legs of a tripod. If all three legs are not
According to Vatican 11, these are the
there, it is not a tripod. A person is not a
characteristics of a Catholic morality:
catholic without belief in the essence of
 Theocentric- Morality is a response to
what the Catholic Church teaches as God’s
God’s call out of love.
revealed truth or without sincere effort to
 Christocentric- Moral theology
obey what the Church teaches as God’s
explicitly deals with the way of the
commandments or without facing God in
following from the Christian’s being-
prayer as the Church does. God alone can
in-Christ. The person of Christ and our
know whether you are a strong or a weak
being-in-Christ is the center and focus
Catholic. But you can know whether you are
of moral theology.
a Catholic or not.
 Ecclesial- Christ is present to us and is
These three parts of the Catholic life
setting in us today ion and through the
are three aspects of the same single reality.
The reality that we confess in our creed is
the same reality that we obey in the
commandments and worship in prayer. That
one reality is the life of Christ.
♥ The Centrality of Christ in Catholic
Morality.
Luke 10:41-42 “Martha, Martha, you are
anxious and troubled about many things;
one thing is needful.” That ‘one thing’ is
Christ Himself.
Christ is not merely a teacher of a
moral code but God himself, the One who is
the sole source of all good things (the moral
law and our obedience to it). Christian
morality is not merely a means to the end of
a better world, peace and Justice, the
welfare of the family, or social harmony.
These things are relative to Christ, not
Christ relative to them. They are ways of
obeying his will. They are good because
they are from him. He is not good because
he is for them.
Catholic morality is a love affair
with Christ and his people, thought not
‘romantic love’. It has its laws and rules, as
a city has its streets. Streets are essential to a
city, but they are not the very essence of a
city. Streets are a means to the end of
getting home. Home is where the real living
takes place. Similarly, moral rules are the
means to the good life, but they are not the
thing itself. The thing itself is a relationship
of love. Though laws are only a means to
the greater end of the good life, laws are
essential means. You cannot be a Christian
without following the laws of morality.
So Catholic morality is a way of
being; of becoming a new creation,
becoming ‘little Christ’ (2 Cor. 5:17).
Christians love goodness most of all where
we saw it perfectly on earth: in Christ, the
God-man. It looked like a cross: God loving
us to death, to the end, no matter what it
cost him and no matter how undeserving we
are.
“If God does not exist, everything is
permissible”, according to Dostoyevsky.
When we destroy religion, we destroy
morality.
Pagan thinkers knew much of the
content of the moral law and recognized its
binding force without knowing much of
God. St. Paul in Rom. 1:17-21) wrote that
all men know God’s moral law through
natural reason and conscience. So there can
be true morality without true religion.
♥ If you can live a good moral life
without being a Catholic, why be
one?
You can live a long and healthy life
without knowing or practicing anything
about diet or exercise or medicine. But it is
not easy!
♥ Importance of Catholic Morality
today
Human civilization has ceased to
believe in an objectively real, universally
binding moral law and that civilization used
to be called “Christendom”. European
countries and in America, Catholics
believed that morality is subjective and
relative. So the critical teachings of the
Church today are her moral teachings, her
response to the moral crisis both in the
Church and in the world.

♥ The relation between religion and

morality