LESSON 2-3 INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIAN MORALITY

MEANING AND PRESUPPOSITIONS

The most basic principle of the Christian moral life is the awareness that every person
bears the dignity of being made in the image of God. He has given us an immortal soul
and through the gifts of intelligence and reason enables us to understand the order of
things established in his creation. God has also given us a free will to seek and love
what is true, good, and beautiful. Sadly, because of the Fall, we also suffer the impact
of Original Sin, which 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, then, is both the powerful surge toward the good
because we are made in the image of God, and the darker impulses toward evil
because of the effects of Original Sin (USCCB).
In this module, the students are expected to clearly understand the meaning of
Christian morality and its difference to ethics and respond to the moral challenges of
our time with considerations to some ethical principles.
Context of Morality
Animals are not responsible for their actions or the way they behave. This is not so with
man. There is responsibility or morality only in the context of humanity. There is no
morality outside the context of humanity. We say there is morality because there is
man.
 Morality is founded on the natural and eternal laws of God.
 From the bases of our experiences, we want to be good because of our belief in
salvation.
 Man is reward-oriented creature.
 We are lucky that God, in his wisdom, knows how to reward us properly not only
later in heaven but already here on earth.
 Our moral lives can’t be fully lived, understood, and explained through our
reasoning alone.
Definition of Morality
According to Franz Bockle (German theologian)
“Morality is that part of Theology that searches for the norms of free human conduct in
the light of God’s revelation.”
“Morality is that part of Theology that searches for the norms of free human conduct in
the light of God’s revelation.”
2 elements according to Bockle:
Morality is concerned with free human conduct
 Morality presupposes freedom
 Freedom means we can make choices about our lives/actions
 Morality concerns with what we do with our freedom
Morality is guided by God’s revelation
 Man has more than reason or human intelligence to guide his actions
 Revelation means “God unveiled himself in human history, by inviting people to
share his very life.”
 God’s self-disclosure is known as salvation history
o Is recorded in the Old Testament (the chronicle of Yahweh’s dealing with
the Jews)
o Is fulfilled in the New Testament, when God’s own son, Jesus Christ, came
as God’s final word, his total self-communication

According to Antonin Sertillanges (French theologian)

“Morality is the science of what 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.”
3 elements according to Sertillanges
Morality is a science
 An open-ended body of study; it builds up, it develops
 The more a person understands himself, the more refined his behavior will be.
Is concerned with what humans ought to be
 How things should be
 How people should act
In the light of what humanity is
 Morality asks people to be the persons they are meant to be
 Christian faith defines men and women:
As children of God with basic dignity, having an eternal destiny
As created by God, redeemed by Christ, indwelt by the spirit, destined to eternity
(God)
  What is right is to act as a child of God, what is wrong is to forget one’s basic
dignity
 In anything, a Christian asks: “what is the human thing to do?”
Ethics and Morality
The terms Ethics and Morality can be used interchangeably. However, there is a fine
line that divides the two. Ethics is the systematic study of the rightness and the
wrongness of human actions. The Science of Morals. Morality is the rightness and
wrongness of the human action. The practice of ethics.
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 the broader
rules or principles of ethics.
Ethics attempts to provide systems of moral principles and the reasons why these
principles are valid. Hence, ethics is more concerned with the theories that can be
used to explain why a particular moral principle is valid or not, right or wrong. It is in
this for this reason that ethicists have come up with some of the basic ethical principles
that may help determine the rightness or wrongness of a human action. Some of these
basic ethical principles are:
1. Respect for persons
2. Truthfulness and confidentiality
3. Autonomy and informed consent
4. Beneficence
5. Non-maleficence
6. Justice

Ethics: Killing is wrong because it violates the basic ethical principles of “respect for
persons” or “non-maleficence”.
Morality: “Do not Kill” because it is wrong!

 Morality comes from the Latin word mos or mores which means “custom”.
 Ethics is derived from the Greek word ethicos or ethos, the English translation of
which is “custom” or “character”, “Customary Behavior”.
 Ethics is a philosophical science which deals with the morality of the human acts.
 Morality of human acts refers to the goodness or the badness, the rightness or
the wrongness of human acts.
Immoral = Unethical
Moral = Ethical

Moral/ethical person= one who is good and does the right thing.
Immoral/unethical = one who ids bad and does what is wrong.

Ethics: Moral philosophy

 Provides principles on the morality of human acts
 Provides a theoretical knowledge of the morality of human acts
 Provides bases of right or wrong and good or bad actions.
 It does not necessarily follow that man does what he knows.
 Ethics does not actually guarantee that man will be moral.
 One can be moral when one applies ethics (theory).
Morality: moral theology
 The praxis (practice) of the ethics (theory)
 Properly called applied ethics
 Actualizes the theory into a real action
 The doing of ethics
Categorically, there is morality only in the context of humanity. There is no morality
outside the context of humanity.
In a simple term, we say, there is morality because there is man.
What does “moral” mean?
Moral: L. Mores: customs, habitual ways of doing things.
Customary ways of doing things can, of course, be either right or wrong, good or evil.
When we say that something is “moral” we generally mean that it is “good”.
In the historical past, in times when the social milieu was more uniform, doing the right
thing meant that you did what the generally good people in the society did because this
ultimately benefited the whole community.
To show responsibility for the community is clearly one of the ways in which we “do
unto others as we would have them do unto us.”
In morality, the fundamental value is always the human person and the person in
relationship with society.
We belong to society and the human community by the very nature of our birth; thus,
personal morality can never be divorced from our responsibilities as members of that
society.
Since customs, practices, habitual ways of doing things vary from culture to culture, it
can be expected that there will be varying approaches to morality.

The major issue in these varying approaches to morality is that people have different
views of what is good or evil.
Good or evil
• Every human person has an innate tendency to seek his or her fulfilment and
perfection. The mere fact of being alive and being human means that one has purpose,
one has goals, one seeks meaning in life. Also it means that one has needs and
desires pursuant to keeping oneself alive and seeking one’s own fulfillment. This
fulfilment, or perfection, we call “the good”. Hence, we can state another fundamental
truth: Anything contributing to the full actualization of human potential and the proper
development of the human person is good or moral.
Those who believe in God see and understand god as the final end and purpose of
human life, the supreme good.
• For the believer, human development and human perfection are undertaken in
accordance with God’s will, the guiding principle of which is love. God is love.
Just as anything that contributes to the proper growth and development of the human
person is good, so anything that frustrates or acts against this proper growth and
development is considered to be evil.
What are some of the things that frustrate human life and development, and which
everyone would therefore consider evil? Here is a partial list: Death, suffering, pain,
disability, Deprivation of freedom, Discrimination that deprives one of opportunity to
improve oneself, Deprivation of worth and self-esteem. We call these pre- moral evils
(that is, evils in the objective sense before any moral slant has been added).
Human beings may be deprived of what they need for their growth and development
as persons in different ways. One way that pre-moral evil may be caused is by natural
disaster such as earthquakes, floods, epidemics, accidents and in general, things
which are outside of human control. We call such evils “physical evils”. But as we know
quite well, most of the evil in the world does not occur in this way.
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.
Challenge on Christian moral living: What’s next then?
 Jesus’ teachings about love have two dimensions:
1. Vertical = pointing to God
2. Horizontal = pointing to others
 Faith in God alone is not enough in order to live a good life. We must also love
our neighbor.
On The Catholic Faith
 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.”
SOME IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS
1. Morality has to do with who and what we are as human beings and with our
legitimate development as persons.

One does not have to be a religious person or express belief in god to be bound by
morality.
No society can function properly for the good of its members unless there is some form
of agreed upon moral code that binds everyone. Right is right and wrong is wrong, part
altogether from religion.

2. Authority does not create morality.

Things are not wrong because they are forbidden; they are forbidden because they are
wrong.

3. Immoral and illegal are not the same thing.

What is legal may not be moral, like Abortion, Prostitution…
Doing bodily harm to oneself may not be illegal , but it is almost certainly immoral.
Driving through a red light may be illegal, but unless there is a danger of pre-moral evil
to the public, or to oneself, it is not immoral.
TWO PRESUPPOSITIONS IN MORAL THEOLOGY
 Man possesses freedom of will
o Men experience themselves not merely as instruments in the hands of
higher forces, but as creative agents
 o Able to choose among alternatives
o Capable of self-determination
 Man is accountable to an ultimate value or authority
o This ultimate accountability is what gives a moral demand or moral duty its
character
o Only on this condition is it possible to speak of moral duties which bind a
person in conscience and which he cannot refuse to obey without
becoming guilty
o From the commitment to this ultimate value, human life receives its ultimate
meaning
o The existence of god and man’s accountability to an ultimate value are not
two separate presuppositions

Division of moral theology

 General morals
o Treats the general presuppositions of the moral act and its qualities that it
may contribute to human’s final goal
o Why the action has to be done?
o Ethics of being
 Special morals
o Treats the human action
o What action has to be done?
o Ethics of doing
o
2 subdivisions of special morals
 Man’s responsibility in the religious realm: God
 Man’s responsibility towards the created world: neighbor & creation