"On the Ontological Mystery," Marcel (1933)

Idea of the loss of the ontological sense, the sense of being: need of  being, being is or should be necessary -- it is impossible that everything is meaningless, a successive play of inconsistent appearances, a tale told by an idiot

• Man as assemblage of functions (vital, social, psychological?)
• Unquiet, unease
• World is empty, rings hollow
• Full of problems, but no place for mystery
• Events which break in on the ordinary course of existence, such as birth, love and death, are completely explainable--cause exhaustively accounts for effect
• Atrophy of the faculty of wonder

Distinction between the full and the empty

Distinction between problem and mystery: mystery = problem that encroaches on its own data

• Problem = objectively valid, the rational, the abstract and universalizable

Being = what would withstand exhaustive reductive analysis aiming to devoid the data of our experience of intrinsic value (e.g. Freud)

Question "who am I" is caught up with the ontological problem: urge towards an affirmation of being, an affirmation which I do not first utter but which I am

"My inquiry into being presupposes an affirmation in regard to which I am, in a sense, passive, and of which I am the stage rather than the subject. [cf. Hediegger]"

If the meta-problematical can be asserted at all, it must be conceived as transcending the opposition between the subject who asserts the existence of being and being as asserted by that subject, and as underlying it in a given sense. To postulate the meta-problematical is to postulate the primacy of being over knowledge (not of being as asserted, but of being as asserting itself); it is to recognize that knowledge is, as it were, environed by being, that it is interior to it in a certain sense. . . Knowledge is contingent on a participation in being for which no epistemology can account because it continually presupposes it.

Perhaps the domain of the meta-problematical coincides with the demain of love: obliteration of the division between that which is in me and that which is only before me

I who inquire into the meaning of this event, I cannot place myself outside it: I am engaged, I depend upon it, it envelops and comprehends me

It is only by way of liberation and detachment from experience that we can possibly rise to the level of the meta-problematical (mystery) = recollection

• Recollection transcends the dualism of being and action, reconciles the two
• This grasp upon myself is also an abandonment of myself
• Not to make myself an object for myself: the 'I' ceases to belong to itself

We are dealing with an assurance which underlies the entire development of thought

"I am convinced that it is in drama and through drama that metaphysical thought grasps and defines itself in concreto" (against Idealism, against losing the person)

Despair = "there is nothing in the realm of reality to which I can give credit--no security, no guarantee"

Hope implies credit: "there is at the heart of being, beyond all data, beyond all inventories and calculations, a mysterious principle which is in collusion with me, which cannot but will what I will, if what I will deserves to be willed and is, in fact, willed by the whole of my being"

Assertion that reality is on my side: transcends the level of all possible empirical disproof

Realm of the problematical = realm of the scientist, the one who draws up the minutes of reality as exactly as possible--this is the realm of technique, which serves desire and fear

• Despair = recognition of the ultimate inefficacy of techniques (envisioning reality as a complex of problems) together with the refusal to change over to a new ground, one which fundamentally escapes our grasp

Man is at the mercy of his technics: he is increasingly incapable of controlling his control (= recollection)

Question is, do we consider it desirable and just that we should have such control?

Optimism of technical progress goes hand in hand with pessimism of despair

The only genuine hope is hope in what does not depend on ourselves, hope as humility, not pride

• Pride = drawing one's strength solely from oneself

Hope is not quietism, a kind of inert waiting: rather it is "the prolongation into the unknown of an activity which is central, which is rooted in being"--"the will when it is made to bear on what does not depend on itself"

The stiffening, the contraction, the falling back on the self which are inseparable from pride . . . must not be confused with the humble withdrawal which befits recollection and whereby I renew my contact with the ontological basis of my being.

• This is the presupposition of creativity

Creative fidelity

• Fidelity = the opposite of inert conformism; it is active recognition of something permanent, not a law but a presence
• Not fidelity to a principle, which is a mere abstract affirmation
• Fidelity is the active perpetuation of presence, the renewal of its benefits--of its virtue which consists in a mysterious incitement to create

Presence = a certain kind of hold which being has upon us--it is more than the object, it exceeds the object on every side

• A reality, a certain kind of influx
• It depends upon us to be permeable to this influx, but not to call it forth: maintaining ourselves actively in a permeable state
• Not only before, but in me: interior accretion

Being = presence; a being is granted to me as a presence = as a being

Death as the test of presence

To be with: neither relationship of inherence or immanence nor a relationship of exteriority -- coesse, intimacy

Disponibilite: total spiritual availability, pure charity, to be present, to make room for, to welcome, to give, to be with with the whole of oneself

Presence vs. object: "presence involves a reciprocity which is excluded from any relation of subject to object or of subject to subject-object" [cf. I-thou vs. I-it]

Increasingly precise and automatic division between what concerns me and what does not, between things for which I am responsible and things for which I am not: concentric zones of decreasing interest and participation

The study of sanctity as the true introduction to ontology

The being who is opaque vs. the being who is transparent

"In contrast to the captive soul, the disponible soul is consecrated and inwardly dedicated; it is protected against suicide and despair, which are interrelated and alike, because it knows that it is not its own, and that the most legitimate use it can make of its freedom is precisely to recognize that it does not belong to itself; this recognition is the starting point of its activity and creativeness."

No revelation is, after all, conceivable unless it is addressed to a being who is involved--committed--in the sense which I have tried to define--that is to say, to a being who participates in a reality which is non-problematical and which provides him with his foundation as subject. Supernatural life must, when all is said and done, find a hold in the natural--which is not to say that it is the flowering of the natural. On the contrary it seems to me that any study of created Nature, which is fundamental for the Christian, leads to the conclusion that there is in the depth of Nature, as of reason which is governed by it, a fundamental principle of inadequacy to itself which is, as it were, a restless anticipation of another order.

"Nature and Morality," David Crawford

Hume's Law: question of relationship between "is" and "ought," "fact and "value"

• Naturalistic fallacy = to draw normative conclusions from statements about the way things are, to collapse practical reason into empirical or speculative reason

Many moral theologians accept this law, at least to a certain extent (e.g. Finnis, May, Grisez, Rhonheimer)

The emergence of this "law" has much to do with the characteristically modern way of understanding nature and the body--the problem is to see the ways in which nature does in fact offer a foundation for morality

"If nature is created, then: (1) it has 'value' inscribed in it from its beginning in the form of a vocation that constitutes and radically structures it, (2) it represents and manifests God's freedom, in which human freedom is given its possibility and form, (3) it possesses a radically sacramental structure, indicating its saturation with meaning that cannot be separated from or merely related extrinsically to human action. The strict division between is and ought presupposes a reduction of nature to dead matter, of reason to rationalism, of freedom to freedom of indifference, of causality to merely efficient causality, of order to mechanism, etc."

Critique of Church's teaching on bioethics (e.g. contraception) as  being "biologistic," i.e. drawing moral teaching from an analysis of the natural functioning of human bodily organs (e.g. sexual anatomy as ordered to procreation).

Prior to Vatican II, tendency to defend the teaching on contraception by reading moral norms from natural teleologies, in which God's law has been inscribed. Practical reason becomes basically speculative reason discovering the commands written in nature and applying them to concrete situations.

• Why must I obey natural teleologies? To reply that God is creator and has created things thus in his wisdom could lead to voluntarism: we ought to follow the natural law because God says so (extrinsicism, law is imposed)
• Rationalistic and deductive approach that fails to consider human aspiration: truth without freedom. This Suarezian approach fails to take into account the paradoxical nature of the God-world relationship, fails to make thematic the fact that the truth is ultimately a call that anticipates and requires freedom because it must be embraced and made one's own through action
• Also attempts to prove too much, draws too much moral truth from nature (e.g. is it wrong to cut your hair?)
• Presupposes Ockhamist sense of freedom as indifference. In the end, moral reasoning is conceived in terms of a discovery of the law or norms imposed through nature, moral laws that are simply "out there," waiting to be discovered--but then the moral subject is looking at human nature as an object external to himself and to his freedom

"De Lubac on Nature and the Supernatural," David Crawford

The basic thesis of a pure nature was more or less taken for granted by theologians from the 16th-20th century, seen as traditional teaching

"Pure nature" = a nature interiorly ordered toward a purely natural end/fulfillment/perfection

Necessary in order to guarantee the gratuity of divinization, of man's elevation to supernatural beatitude

An innate desire of nature cannot be directed to something beyond the possibilities of that nature to attain: this would  be a contradiction of the meaning of nature. The desire of a nature must be for that which is "proportionate" to it.

• If this were not the case, then the supernatural would somehow be "owed" to nature, which threatens its gift-character
• Would place demand on God: he cannot create a nature whose deepest longing is for a finality beyond itself and then deny fulfillment to it; God would be required to give his grace to man

Most proponents want to propose this natural end only as a possibility, admitting that in the concrete order our only end is life with God

• Yet at the same time, hold that our desire for the supernatural is not grounded in the depths of human nature, but merely "elicited" from us and "willed" by us once it has been revealed

Ultimately, transfer of the hypothetical "pure nature" into the concrete

Supernatural end comes to supplant the natural end of man

De Lubac's problem with the hypothesis of pure nature is not its formal and abstract possibility, but with the use of this formal concept to guarantee the gratuity of the supernatural

• Using the formal possibility in this way suggests that, where such a purely natural end does not exist (e.g. in our world), the "supernatural" is not gratuitous
• Premises that the only way to guarantee the gratuity of the supernatural is the possibility of pure nature

For de Lubac, the "natural" desire for the supernatural is at a deep level constitutive of what it is to be human

Taking man's end seriously means that it cannot be thought of as a mere "destination," as a "goal" that could be replaced at some point with another "goal" (as is suggested by the hypothesis of pure nature)

• Hypothesis of pure nature presupposes a "watered-down" notion of ends, one that is extrinsic: the end cannot be changed without destroying the nature (end as destiny, vs. end as destination)

Only small step to considering man completely separate from his supernatural end: supernatural end becomes unnecessary, thus unreal--pure nature as theological groundwork for secularism

If the supernatural comes to us "from the outside," how is it not alienating, a destructive force to our very nature? How can the human person even possess a capacity to receive such a gift? Doesn't this understanding tend toward a voluntaristic or moralistic understanding of man's response to God's call?

Is the sequela Christi an addition which we do as Catholics but which is not really necessary for a full human life?Or is it the very purpose and end of our human existence?

Nature was created for God: this is the most fundamental datum about man, that which orders everything else we can say about him; it shapes man's nature within from the beginning 

• Man's is therefore fundamentally open, this openness to God constitutes the innermost essence of his being, the meaning and purpose of his very existence

If God is going to call a creature to share in his divine life, he must create a creature with the capacity to receive this call.

Man has a natural desire for supernatural beatitude, not for a purely natural fulfillment

Man's spiritual, personal nature, this "desire of human nature" for the supernatural end, "is man himself." For de Lubac, this desire grounds the very sense of man's status as imago Dei (ordination to divinization).

Human nature as it really exists, in other words, was made to share in divine life, and this purpose of creation implies that the supernatural end of man--an end which all agree is man's concrete, historical end--is not "accidentally" related to his personal nature.

Natural desire must not be thought of as, in itself, the beginnings of supernatural life or grace, nor as some kind of latent power to achieve the supernatural; it is "merely" a capacity to receive God's call to divine life.

Paradox of man: while human nature's only final end is supernatural, the supernatural fulfillment of this end comes as something utterly and radically new and unanticipated. God created man so that he could give himself to man. This gift constitutes a movement of essential freedom, of absolute gratuity.

God creates man (the first "moment of gratuity) and God calls man (the second "moment of gratuity).

Man's deepest longing is for that which is not only utterly beyond his power, but also beyond the horizon of his experience and expectation.

According to de Lubac, we must keep a certain necessary tension in place (hence, paradox) if we are to avoid on the one hand a collapse into immanentism, and on the other a mere juxtaposition that separates nature from its destiny (=dualism, extrinsicism).

God's gift of himself in grace is not simply a continuation of creation. De Lubac emphasizes that passage from nature to the supernatural is as great as the distance from non-being to being.

While the first gift (creation) must at all costs be kept distinct from the second (grace), concretely the two cannot be separated, temporally or otherwise.

We must shift from an anthropocentric perspective to a theocentric one: we have to see God's creative act from the standpoint of his intention. The second moment of gratuity is the first in the order of intention. If God is going to call and give himself to his creature, he must create a creature who is capable of receiving this gift.

The nature of man, as spiritual and personal, must therefore be understood as analogous to sub-human nature.

Man "desires" that which--of its very nature--can only be received gratuitously. The one thing that is ultimately fulfilling for him is the one thing that he cannot provide for himself. In short, what he desires is the self-gift of the other, that is to say, love, which must necessarily be absolutely free.

On the one hand, nature's supernatural end is instrinsic, since it is only life in God that can finally fulfill the spiritual creature's nature; indeed, this finality is the ultimate inner reality of that nature. On the other hand, the supernatural is in no way "continuous" with or possessed in "anticipation" by or somehow "owed" to nature. The supernatural must become as a new birth, a re-creation, an opening within the creature of what is utterly beyond its nature.

The supernatural reaches to the core of nature, and yet is radically new to nature.

Man is called, not simply to be fully human, but even to surpass himself (i.e. divinization)

Man's "desire" is never known for what it is until it has been revealed to him. Hence, without revelation, man experiences this desire as a kind of Augustinian "restlessness."

Man is the creature whose finite capacity can only be fulfilled by the infinite.

"Nine Propositions on Christian Ethics," Hans Urs von Balthasar

The Christian who lives by faith has the right to justify his moral actions on the basis of his faith. (77)

It would be wrong to use the term "ethics from above" for an ethics that sets out from the full brilliance of the light of revelation and works backwards to the fumbling preliminary stages, as opposed to an ethics "from below," which takes anthropology as its foundation--this because Christ has become fully human, adopting both the form and the guilt of the First Adam, as well as the constrictions, perplexities and crises of the latter's existence. (77)


1. Christ as the Concrete Norm

Christ carried out the entire will of God (i.e., every "ought") in the world. (79)

Christ the concrete categorical imperative. He is the formally universal norm of ethical action, applicable to everyone. But he is also the personal and concrete norm, who, in virtue of his suffering for us and his eucharistic surrender of his life for us empowers us inwardly to do the Father's will together with him. (79)

The Christian imperative lifts us beyond the problems involved in autonomy and heteronomy: while the Son of God, begotten of the Father, is "heteros" vis-a-vis him, he is not "heteron." The Father's will ("heteronomy") is the ground of his existence and the inner source of his personal action ("autonomy"). (80)

All Christian action is a privilege, not an obligation, since we are God's children. (81)

The Church's precepts are intended to lead the believer out of the alienation of sin to his true identity and freedom, whereas they can (and often must) seem hard and legalistic to those who are imperfect, just as the Father's will seemed to the Crucified. (81)


2. The Universality of the Concrete Norm

The norm provided by Christ is personal, and as such is universal: he unites all persons (in their uniqueness and freedom) in his own Person. (82)

Insofar as Christ is the incarnate Word and Son of God the Father, he transcends in himself the clear separation into two sides that characterizes the Old Testament "covenant." He is more than the "mediator" who comes between the two parties; he is their personified encounter, and hence he is "One." (83)

As a result of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of Father and Son--the Spirit of the divine "We"--into the hearts of believers, this "being-for-one-another" that is the meaning of Jesus' new commandment is an even more fundamental a priori assumption. At the more-than-organic--that is, the personal--level of the Church, our membership in the "one body" means that we are given a personal awareness of  being a "we;" implementing it in terms of life is the Christian's ethical task. (84)


3. The Christian Meaning of the "Golden Rule"

The "prophets" looked to a fulfillment of the law that would not be possible until  God removed all heteronomy and set his law in the form of his Spirit deep in the hearts of men. (86)

In Christian terms no personal or social ethics can be envisaged apart from God's effectual and bountiful invitation to man. Dialogue between human beings, if it is to be morally in order, presupposes a dialogue between God and man. (86)

All Christian ethics is therefore cruciform--that is, vertical and horizontal--but this "shape" cannot for a moment be abstracted from its concrete content; namely, from him who stands, crucified, between God and man. It is he who makes himself present as the sole norm in every particular relationship, in every situation. (86)


4. Sin

The uniqueness and concreteness of the personal moral norm implies that all moral guilt must be referred to Christ. It is because the Christian, with his moral conduct, is so close to the principle of divine holiness that animates him as a Christian, that guilt becomes sin, as compared to the infringement of a mere "law" (in Judaism) or a mere "idea" (in Greek thought). (87)

The presence of absolute love in the world deepens man's guilty No and makes it a demonic No, more negative than man appreciates, that tries to draw man into the anti-Christian current. (87)


5. The Promise (Abraham)

All biblical ethics is based on the call of the personal God and man's believing response (obedience). (89)

The "covenant" established by God's call and faith's response addresses the moral subject in all the dimensions of his life, that is, in the risk of faith, but also in the flesh and its possibilities. (90-91)

The existence of Abraham (and hence of the entire Old Covenant, including the period of the law) can only be a clinging to God by faith without being able to change God's promise into fulfillment. The ancient people can only "wait" and "seek," having seen the promise and "greeted it from afar." It was precisely in their intermediate state, not being able to reach what was promised and yet persisting in waiting for it, that the ancients were commended by God. (91)


6. The Law

Though in a provisional manner, from "outside" and "above," the Law expressly reveals God's inner disposition in order to deepen the covenant response to him: "You shall be holy, for I am holy." (92)

The law is subsequent to the promise and does not abrogate it in its implications; thus, it can only be intended as a more detailed definition of faith's "waiting" attitude. It illuminates from various angles the attitude of the man who is "righteous before God." This attitude no doubt corresponds to the constitutive structure of human nature ("natural law"), because God is not only Creator but the continual Giver of blessing. But the theme of this righteousness is not man himself, but the deeper unveiling of God's holiness in his covenant faithfulness. (92)

Since, however, the perfect response remains the subject of the promise, the law remains dialectical: it is good in itself, but yields transgression, and to that extent it is both negatively and positively a "tutor" leading to Christ. (93)

From God's perspective the law's imperative offers the opportunity of living in a godly way before him in the proximity created by the covenant. Initially, however, in indicating the precise shape of the response that God expects (the positive side), the drama only serves to uncover man's inability to respond (the negative side). Thus, the promise still awaits fulfillment. (93)

By trying to fulfill the abstract letter literally, the Pharisee imagines he can manufacture the elusive response. This erection of an abstract, formal imperative has given rise to many forms of ethics, which all tend to set up the human subject as his own lawgiver, as an autonomous subject along Idealist lines, accepting limitation in order to realize himself--such as we find in Kant's ethical formalism. (93-94)


7. Conscience

Man's whole constitution is unconditionally predisposed toward goodness as it reveals itself in a light of transcendence (synderesis, primal conscience). He tends toward it in some way even in the sensual parts of his spirit-directed nature. (96)

Abstract formulations of man's attraction to the good in terms of "natural law"--for example, the "categorical imperative" governing relations between fellow men--are derivative and point toward their source. (97)

The call that comes from the absolute is identical, transcendentally speaking, with that which comes from one's fellow man, but differentiation occurs a posteriori in view of the realization that one's fellow man, too, has "only" been awakened in the same manner [i.e. granted access]. (97-98)

Freedom, understood as autonomy, and grace, which grants participation in itself, are side by side in the original identity of being and radiance. Similarly, in the awakened, dependent identity, freedom and inclination (toward the primal Good) are inseparable. The active attraction of the unconditionally good imparts to the act of free response an element of "passivity" that does not interfere with its freedom. (98)

The whole man is permeated by this predisposition to submit to the power of the good, and this includes his senses, informed as they are by spirit. The distinctive ethical task laid upon man is that of ethicizing his entire spiritual-bodily nature; success is called virtue. (98)

"Signposts" are provided against the time when there will be an obscuring of the original brilliance of the Good (under the form of grace and love) that looks for the free response of loving gratitude. As such, these signposts do not replace the Good in itself, nor yet do they represent it; they only call it to mind. Insofar as they refer to the most important situations of incarnated and socially constituted spirit, they develop along the lines of "natural law." This must not be divinized; if it is not to ossify, it must clearly preserve its essentially relative character as a point, indicating the vitality and self-giving nature of the Good. This also applies to Kant's categorical imperative: because of its formalism, it is obliged to oppose abstract "duty" against the "inclination"of the senses, whereas in reality it is a question of encouraging the person's absolute "inclination" toward the absolute good to triumph over contrary particular affections. What man appropriates to himself with a view to the absolute norm coincides with self-expropriation in favor of the divine good and the good of one's fellow man. (100)


8. The Prebiblical Natural Order

The human good of a prebiblical ethics which takes its bearing from physis will be part of an all-embracing world order that, while it has an absolute (divine) dimension and hence gives scope for ordered moral action, retains a worldly and finite dimension and to that extent hinders human freedom of decision from attaining its full stature. Thus, the goals of action remain partly political and partly individualistic and intellectualist insofar as theoria and knowledge of the rhythms of the universe seem to be the most desirable aims. (101)

Once the biblical fact has come into view, on the free initiative of God--who is radically distinct from created nature--man is raised to a freedom that can no longer take its pattern of behavior from subhuman nature. If this freedom will not render thanks to the God of grace in the Christian understanding, it will logically seek its source in itself. It will understand ethical action as self-legislation. (101-102)


9. Post-Christian Anthropological Ethics

The human "nature" or "structure" that remains in a post-Christian stage is constituted by the reciprocity of freedoms, where each freedom is only awakened and aroused to respond (and to issue a challenge in turn) by some other freedom. However, because the particular freedom addressed cannot simply acknowledge its debt to the fellow freedom that has elicited it (otherwise it would be ultimately heteronomous), and since God's challenge, which grounds both freedoms, is denied, the degree of give and take and self-surrender on the part of each of them is limited and calculated. The subjects remain monads, impenetrable to one another. (103)

"The Church's Teaching Authority--Faith--Morals," Joseph Ratzinger

Increasing trend to view Christianity not primarily as "orthodoxy" but as "orthopraxy" (47)

• Liberation theology: truth is regarded as ploy of interest groups seeking to confirm their position; only praxis can decide the value or worthlessness of theories
• Orthodoxy as unfruitful if not positively harmful

At the opposite end from the view that would define and realize Christianity in terms of orthopraxy there is a position that affirms that there is no such thing as a specifically Christian morality and that Christianity must take its norms of conduct from the anthropological insights of its time. (49)

Where Christianity is interpreted as "orthopraxy," the basic issue is the question of truth, of what is reality. (51)

Regarding a non-specific Christian morality, the question is how what is specifically Christian can be defined vis-a-vis the changing historical forms it adopts. It also involves the problem of how faith communicates with reason, with universally human aspects. (51-52)

The originality of Christianity does not consist in the number of propositions for which no parallel can be found elsewhere (if there are such propositions, which is highly questionable). It is impossible to distill out what is specifically Christian by excluding everything that has come about through contact with other milieux. Christianity's originality consists rather in the new total form into which human searching and striving have been forged under the guidance of faith in the God of Abraham, the God of Jesus Christ. (53)

What is important is not that moral pronouncements can be found elsewhere, but the particular position they have or don't have in the spiritual edifice of  Christianity (form/structure, not matter) (53-54)

An often highly dramatic struggle took place between those elements of the surrounding legal and moral tradition that could be assimilated by Israel and those that Israel was bound to reject. (54)

The commandments show in practical terms what it means to believe in Yahweh, to accept the covenant with Yahweh. At the same time they define the figure of God himself, whose nature is manifested through them. They are part of the concept of God, showing who this God is. (55-56)

The concept of the "holy" as the specific category of the divine (i.e. the totally other) has already coalesced with the concept of the "moral": that is what is new and unique about this God and his holiness. (57)

In one sense, Christianity is most definitely an "orthopraxy," i.e. a realization of Jesus Christ's manner of life. The very name "Christian" implies fellowship with Christ, hence readiness to take upon oneself martyrdom in the cause of goodness (christos--chrestos) (61)

Faith and life: Paul emphasizes intimate connection between faith and "imitating" him, who in turn imitates Christ. This manner of life ("walking") is part of the transmitted tradition. (62)

Paul was confronted, not with a particular scholarly consensus on the subject of the "good" to be simply adopted, but with a maze of conflicting positions (e.g. Epicurus, Seneca). The only way to proceed here was not to accept the given, but through resolute critical discernment. (64)

A faulty concept of God leads to faulty moral behavior in the pagan world; returning to God in Jesus Christ is identical with a return to the manner of life of Jesus Christ. (65)

Paul's apostolic exhortation is not some moralizing appendix with a variable content, but a very practical setting forth of what faith means; thus, it is inseparable from faith's core. The apostle is in fact only following the pattern of Christ, who linked admission to the Kingdom of God with fundamental moral decisions. (65)

Christian faith does indeed involve a praxis on the part of faith; orthodoxy without orthopraxy fails to reach the core of the Christian reality, namely, love proceeding from grace. This also implies that Christian praxis is nourished by the core of Christian faith, that is, the grace that appeared in Christ and that is appropriated in the sacrament of the Church. Faith's praxis depends on faith's truth, in which man's truth is made visible and lifted up to a new level by God's truth. By looking to the example of Jesus Christ, faith recognizes fundamental human values and rescues them from all manipulation. (70)

The faith of the apostles is convinced that reason is capable of embracing truth, and that, therefore, faith does not have to erect its edifice apart from the tradition of reason, but finds its language in communication with the reason of the nations through a process of reception and dialectic. (71)

Faith involves fundamental decisions (with definite content) in moral matters. The first obligation of the teaching office is to continue the apostolic exhortation and to protect these fundamental decisions against reason's capitulation to the age. There must be a correspondence with basic insights of human reason, albeit these insights have been purified, deepened and broadened through contact with the way of faith. (72)

Veritatis Splendor

Introduction

Yearning for truth in the depths of man's heart: question of the meaning of life, what must I do? (1)

Christ as answer to every one of man's questions (2)

Need today to reflect on the whole of the Church's moral teaching, recalling certain fundamental moral truths (4)

• Danger of systematic calling into question of traditional moral doctrine on basis of certain presuppositions, esp. the detaching of human freedom from its essential and constitutive relationship to truth.
• Natural law is rejected, Magisterium can only "exhort consciences," while each individual must make his or her own life choices.
• Questioning of "intrinsic and unbreakable bond between faith and morality," pluralism of moralities

Aim of encyclical = treating the issues regarding the very foundations of morality, which foundations are being currently undermined; to set forth the principles of a Catholic moral teaching and to shed light on the presuppositions and consequences of current dissent (5)


Chapter 1

Question not about rules but about the meaning of life: the good sets freedom in motion (7)

Christ as Teacher, the one who reveals the Father's will (8)

Only God, who is Goodness Himself, can answer the question about what is good: moral question is a religious question (9)

Purpose of life = to strive to make each of our actions reflect the splendor of God's glory (10)

God makes himself known in his Law (10)

"The moral life presents itself as the response due to the many gratuitous initiatives taken by God out of love for man. It is a response of love." (10)

Acknowledging the Lord as God is the heart of the Law, from which particular precepts flow and towards which they're ordered. (11)

Natural law = the law inscribed in our hearts, "the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man at creation." (12)

God's commandments show man the path of life and lead to it. (12)

The Decalogue is "the interpretation of what the words 'I am the Lord your God' mean for man." (13)

Commandments are meant to safeguard the good of the person by protecting his goods (13)

Commandments as the beginning of freedom, to be free from crimes . . . (13)

Without love of neighbor, made concrete in keeping the commandments, genuine love for God is not possible (14)

Christ is the living fullness of the law: interiorizes the demands of the Commandments and brings out their fullest meaning, invites others to follow him (15)

Beatitudes are not rules but basic attitudes and dispositions (16)

• Promises from which there flow normative indications for the moral life
• Self-portrait of Christ

Perfection demands that maturity in self-giving to which human freedom is called (17)

The precepts of the Law are at the service of the practice of love (17)

"Those who live 'by the flesh' experience God's law as a burden, and indeed as a denial or at least a restriction of their own freedom. On the other hand, those who are impelled by love and 'walk by the Spirit', and who desire to serve others, find in God's Law the fundamental and necessary way in which to practice love as something freely chosen and freely lived out. Indeed, they feel an interior urge--a genuine 'necessity' and no longer a form of coercion--not to stop at the minimum demands of the Law, but to live them in their 'fullness.'" (18)

"Come, follow me" = the new, specific form of the commandment of love of God (18)

"The way and at the same time the content of this perfection consists in the following of Jesus, sequela Christi, once one has given up one's own wealth and very self." (19)

Following Christ is the essential and primordial foundation of Christian morality. It involves holding fast the  very person of Jesus, partaking of his life and his destiny, sharing in his free and loving obedience to the will of the Father (19)

Jesus' way of acting and his words, his deed and his precepts constitute the moral rule of Christian life. (20)

To be a follower of Christ means to become conformed to him--this is the effect of grace, and makes one a member of his body, the Church (21)

To live out Christ in our members is not possible for man on his own strength alone: we need Christ's gift, which is his Spirit, the first fruit of which is charity. (22)

Pedagogical function of the Law: by enabling sinful man to take stock of his own powerlessness and by stripping him of the presumption of his self-sufficiency, the Law leads him to ask for and to receive "life in the Spirit." Only in this new life is it possible to carry out God's commandments. (23)

• "The law was given that grace might be sought; and grace was given, that the law might be fulfilled." (Augustine)

The New Law is not content to state what must be done, but gives the power to do it. (24)

"The Church is in fact a communion both of faith and of life; her rule of life is 'faith working through love.'" (26)

Harmony between faith and life: the Apostles decisively rejected any separation between the commitment of the heart and the actions which express or prove it. (26)

Need for the Church to interpret God's precepts in light of current historical situation: guided by the Holy Spirit (27)


Chapter 2

Essential elements of revelation regarding moral action: (28)

• Subordination of man and his activity to God
• Relationship between the moral good and eternal life
• Christian discipleship as the way to perfect love
• Gift of the Holy Spirit as source and means of the moral life

Sacred Scripture remains the living and fruitful source of the Church's moral doctrine (28)

"Moral theology is a reflection concerned with 'morality,' with the good and the evil of human acts and of the person who performs them; in this sense it is accessible to all people. But it is also 'theology,' inasmuch as it acknowledges that the origin and end of moral action are found in the One who 'alone is good' and who, by giving himself to man in Christ, offers him the happiness of divine life." (29)

Need for a more appropriate way of communicating doctrine: there is a difference between the deposit or the truths of faith and the manner in which they are expressed. (29)

"The faithful should live in the closest contact with others of their time, and should work for a perfect understanding of their modes of thought and feelings as expressed in their culture." (29)

Magisterium does not intend to impose particular theological system, but has the duty to state that some trends of theological/philosophical thought are incompatible with revealed truth. (29)

Crucial issue of today = freedom (31)

• Right to religious freedom and respect for conscience increasingly perceived as foundation of the cumulative rights of the person
• Positive achievement of modernity

Individual conscience as absolute: "To the affirmation that one has a duty to follow one's conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one's moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in the conscience. But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and 'being at peace with oneself.'" (32)

• Connected to crisis of truth, no universal truth about the good applied by conscience to this specific situation; rather, conscience determines the criteria and acts accordingly (individualism)

There can be no morality without freedom, since it is only in freedom that man can turn to what is good. But what sort of freedom? (34)

Although each individual has a right to be respected in his own journey in search of the truth, there exists a prior moral obligation, and a grave one at that, to seek the truth and to adhere to it once it is known: "Conscience has rights because it has duties." (34)

Negative tendencies in contemporary moral theology are "at one in lessening or even denying the dependence of freedom on truth." (34)

I. Freedom and Law

Alleged conflict between freedom and law--freedom would thus be able to 'create values' and would enjoy a primacy over truth, to the point that truth itself would be considered a creation of freedom. (35)

Some people, disregarding the dependence of human reason on Divine Wisdom and the need, given the present state of fallen nature, for Divine Revelation as an effective means of knowing moral truths, even those of the natural order, have actually posited a complete sovereignty of reason in the domain of moral norms regarding the right ordering of life in this world. (36)

• Rather, God is the author of the natural moral law, which man participates in by his reason

Certain moral theologians [cf. Fuchs] have introduced sharp distinction between ethical order (human in origin, of value for this world alone) and order of salvation (for which only certain interior attitudes and intentions are necessary): denial that there exists in Divine Revelation a specific and determined, universally valid moral content (37)

"God willed to leave man in the power of his own counsel, so that he would seek his Creator of his own accord"--sharing in God's dominion, man's dominion extends in some way over himself (38)

The teaching of the Council emphasizes, on the one hand, the role of human reason in discovering and applying the moral law: the moral life calls for that creativity and originality typical of the person, the source and cause of his own deliberate acts. On the other hand, reason draws its own truth and authority from eternal law, which is none other than divine wisdom itself. (40)

• The rightful autonomy of reason means that man possesses in himself his own law, received from the Creator; it does not mean that reason itself creates values and moral norms.

Human freedom and God's law meet and are called to intersect, in the sense of man's free obedience to God and of God's completely gratuitous benevolence towards man. Hence obedience to God is not, as some would believe, a heteronomy, as if the moral life were subject to the will of something all-powerful, absolute, extraneous to man and intolerant of his freedom. (41)

God's eternal law = "the reason or the will of God, who commands us to respect the natural order and forbids us to disturb it." (Augustine) (43)

God cares for man not 'from without,' through the laws of physical nature, but 'from within,' through reason, which , by its natural knowledge of God's eternal law [good and evil], is consequently able to show man the right direction to take in his free actions. In this way God calls man to participate in his own providence, since he desires to guide the world--not only the world of nature but also the world of human persons--through man himself, through man's reasonable and responsible care. (43)

Natural law = "participation of the eternal law in the rational creature" (Aquinas) (43)

"Conflict" between nature and freedom: "The penchant for empirical observation, the procedures of scientific objectification, technological progress and certain forms of liberalism have led to these two terms being set in opposition, as if a dialectic, if not an absolute conflict, between freedom and nature were characteristic of the structure of human history." (46)

Some moralists "frequently conceive of freedom as somehow in opposition to or in conflict with material and biological nature, over which it must progressively assert itself. Here various approaches are at one in overlooking the created dimension of nature and in misunderstanding its integrity (nature = what is not freedom) (46)

Human nature is reduced to and treated as a readily available biological or social material. This ultimately means making freedom self-defining and a phenomenon creative of itself and its values. Indeed, when all is said and done man would not even have a nature; he would be his own personal life-project. Man would be nothing more than his own freedom! (46)

Objections of physicalism and naturalism have been leveled against the traditional conception of the natural law, which is accused of presenting as moral laws what are in themselves merely biological laws. Consequently, in too superficial a way, a permanent and unchanging character would be attributed to certain kinds of human behavior, and, on the basis of this, an attempt would be made to formulate universally valid moral norms (e.g., sexual ethics). . . . In this view, man, as a rational being, not only can but actually must freely determine the meaning of his behavior, over against biological limits and cultural conditioning. (47)

God made man as a rationally free being; he left him "in the power of his own counsel" and he expects him to shape his life in a personal and rational way. Love of neighbor would mean above all and even exclusively respect for his freedom to make his own decisions. (47)

Question of correct relationship between freedom and human nature, in particular the human body. (48)

A freedom which claims to be absolute ends up treating the human body as a raw datum, devoid of any meaning and moral values until freedom has shaped it in accordance with its design. Consequently, human nature and the body appear as presuppositions or preambles, materially necessary, for freedom to make its choice, yet extrinsic to the person, the subject and the human act. Their functions would not be able to constitute reference points for moral decisions, because the finalities of these inclinations would be merely "physical" goods, called by some "pre-moral." (48)

Forgetfulness of unity of the human person, body and soul: "reason and free will are linked with all the bodily and sense faculties. The person, including the body, is completely entrusted to himself, and it is in the unity of  body and soul that the person is the subject of his own moral acts. The person, by the light of reason and the support of virtue, discovers in the body the anticipatory signs, the expression and the promise of the gift of self, in conformity with the wise plan of the Creator. . . . [T]he human person cannot be reduced to a freedom which is self-designing, but entails a particular spiritual and bodily structure." (48)

Reduction of the person to a "spiritual" and purely formal freedom. (49)

Natural law = "man's proper and primordial nature, the 'nature of the human person,' which is the person himself in the unity of soul and body, in the unity of his spiritual and biological inclinations and of all the other specific characteristics necessary for the pursuit of his end. 'The natural moral law expresses and lays down the purposes, right and duties which are based upon the bodily and spiritual nature of the human person. Therefore this law cannot be thought of as simply a set of norms on the biological level; rather it must be defined as the rational order whereby man is called by the Creator to direct and regulate his life and actions and in particular to make use of his own body.'" (50)

Only in reference to the human person in his 'unified totality,' that is, as 'a soul which expresses itself in a body and a  body informed by an immortal spirit,' can the specifically human meaning of the body be grasped. Indeed, natural inclinations take on moral relevance only insofar as they refer to the human person and his authentic fulfillment. (50)

Inasmuch as the natural law is inscribed in the rational nature of the person, it is universal, making itself felt to all beings endowed with reason and living in history. (51)

These universal and permanent laws (e.g., honor your parents) correspond to things known by the practical reason and are applied to particular acts through the judgement of conscience. The acting subject personally assimilates the truth contained in the law. He appropriates this truth of his being and makes it his own by his acts and the corresponding virtues. (52)

The negative precepts of the natural law are universally valid. They oblige each and every individual, always and in every circumstance . . . because the choice of this kind of behavior is in no case compatible with the goodness of the will of the acting person, with his vocation to life with God and to communion with his neighbor. (52)

On positive precepts vs. prohibitions: "The commandment of love of God and neighbor does not have in its dynamic any higher limit, but it does have a lower limit, beneath which the commandment is broken. Furthermore, what must be done in any given situation depends on the circumstances, not all of which can be foreseen; on the other hand there are kinds of behavior which can never, in any situation, be a proper response--a response which is in conformity with the dignity of the person. Finally, it is always possible that man, as the result of coercion or other circumstances, can be hindered from doing certain good actions; but he can never be hindered from not doing certain actions, especially if he is prepared to die rather than to do evil." (52)

It must certainly be admitted that man always exists in a particular culture, but it must also be admitted that man is not exhaustively defined by that same culture. Moreover, the very progress of cultures demonstrates that there is something in man which transcends those cultures. This "something" is precisely human nature: this nature is itself the measure of culture and the condition ensuring that man does not become the prisoner of any of his cultures, but asserts his personal dignity by living in accordance with the profound truth of his being. (53)

II. Conscience and Truth

In the depths of his conscience man detects a law which he does not impose on himself, but which holds him to obedience, always summoning him to love good and avoid evil. Man has in his heart a law written by God. To obey it is the very dignity of man. (54)

The voice of conscience, it is said, leads man not so much to a meticulous observance of universal norms as to a creative and responsible acceptance of the personal tasks entrusted to him by God. In their desire to emphasize the "creative" character of conscience, certain authors no longer call its actions "judgments" but "decisions": only by making these decisions "autonomously" [or, "authentically"] would man be able to attain moral maturity. (55)

Double status of moral truth [cf. Fuchs?]: Beyond the doctrinal and abstract level, one would have to acknowledge the priority of a certain more concrete existential condition. The latter, by taking account of circumstances and the situation, could legitimately be the basis of certain exceptions to the general rule and thus permit one to do in practice and in good conscience what is qualified as intrinsically evil by the moral law. [In this case] the norm of the individual conscience . . . would in fact make the final decision about what is good and what is evil. (56)

Conscience in a certain sense confronts man with the law and becomes a witness for man of his faithfulness or unfaithfulness. Conscience is the only witness, since what takes place in the heart of the person is hidden from the eyes of everyone outside. Conscience makes its witness known only the person himself. (57)

Conscience is the herald and witness of God himself, whose voice and judgment penetrate the depths of man's soul. Moral conscience does not close man within an insurmountable and impregnable solitude, but opens him to the call, to the voice of God. It is the sacred place where God speaks to man." (58)

Conscience functions as a moral judgment about man and his actions, a judgment either of acquittal or of condemnation, according as human acts are in conformity or not with the law of God written on the heart. (59)

Whereas the natural law discloses the objective and universal demands of the moral good, conscience is the application of the law to a particular case; this application of the law thus becomes an inner dictate for the individual, a summons to do what is good in this particular situation. Conscience thus formulates moral obligation in the light of the natural law. (59)

In the practical judgment of conscience, which imposes on the person the obligation to perform a given act, the link between freedom and truth is made manifest. Precisely for this reason conscience expresses itself in acts of "judgment" which reflect the truth about the good, and not in arbitrary "decisions." (61)

It is always from the truth that the dignity of conscience derives. In the case of the correct conscience, it is a question of the objective truth received by man; in the case of the erroneous conscience, it is a question of what man, mistakenly, subjectively considers to be true. It is never acceptable to confuse a "subjective" error about moral good with the "objective" truth rationally proposed to man in virtue of his end, or to make the moral value of an act performed with a true and correct conscience equivalent to the moral value of an act performed by following the judgment of an erroneous conscience. It is possible that the evil done as the result of invincible ignorance or a non-culpable error of judgment may not be imputable to the agent; but even in this case it does not cease to be an evil, a disorder in relation to the truth about the good. (63)

We are called to form our conscience, to make it the object of a continuous conversion to what is true and good: knowledge of God's law in general is certainly necessary, but not sufficient--what is essential is a sort of "connaturality" between man and the true good. (64)

• Magisterium helps to form conscience, brings to light truths which conscience ought already to possess, developing them from the starting point of the primordial act of faith.
• Church is at the service of conscience, helping it to attain the truth with certainty and to abide in it.

III. Fundamental Choice and Specific Kinds of Behavior

Freedom is not only the choice for one or another particular action, but also, within that choice, a decision about oneself and a setting of one's own life for or against the Good, for or against the Truth, ultimately for or against God. (65)

According to certain authors [e.g. Fuchs], the key to the moral life is the "fundamental option," brought about by that fundamental freedom whereby the person makes an overall self-determination, not through a specific and conscious decision on the level of reflection, but in a "transcendental" and "athematic" way. Particular acts which flow from this option would constitute only partial and never definitive attempts to give it expression; they would only be its "signs" or symptoms. The immediate object of such acts would not be absolute Good (before which the freedom of the person would be expressed on a transcendental level), but particular (also termed "categorical") goods.

A distinction thus comes to be introduced between the fundamental option and deliberate choices of a concrete kind of behavior: "good"/"evil" refer to the transcendental decision only, "right"/"wrong" refer to particular choices.

There thus appears to be established two levels of morality: the order of good and evil, which is dependent on the will, and specific kinds of behavior, which are judged to be morally right or wrong only on the basis of a technical calculation of the proportion between "premoral" or "physical" goods and evils which actually result from the action. (65)

Fundamental decision = faith, total and free self-commitment, submission in obedience of intellect and will (66)

• This capacity is actually exercised in particular choices of specific actions, through which man deliberately conforms himself to God's will, wisdom and law. (67)

The so-called fundamental option, to the extent that it is distinct from a generic intention is always brought into play through conscious and free decisions. Precisely for this reason, it is revoked when man  engages his freedom in conscious decisions to the contrary, with regard to morally grave matter. (67)

The morality of human acts is not deduced only from one's intention, orientation or fundamental option, understood as an intention devoid of a clearly determined binding content or as an intention with no corresponding positive effort to fulfill the different obligations of the moral life. Judgments about morality cannot be made without taking into consideration whether or not the deliberate choice of a specific kind of behavior is in conformity with the dignity and integral vocation of the human person. (67)

The fundamental orientation can be radically changed by particular acts. (70)

IV. The Moral Act

It is precisely through his acts (in which man's freedom confronts God's law) that man attains perfection as man (71)

We are, in a certain sense, our own parents, creating ourselves as we will, by our decisions. (71)

The eternal law is known both by man's natural reason (natural law) and, in an integral and perfect way, by God's supernatural Revelation (divine law). Acting is morally good when the choices of freedom are in conformity with man's true good and thus express the voluntary ordering of the person towards his ultimate end: God himself. (72)

The rational ordering of the human act to the good in its truth and the voluntary pursuit of that good, known by reason, constitute morality. Hence human activity cannot be judged as morally good merely because it is a means for attaining one or another of its goals, or simply because the subject's intention is good. (72)

The moral life has an essentially teleological character, since it consists in the deliberate ordering of human acts to God, the ultimate end (telos) of man. This ordering does not depend solely on one's intentions, but on whether such acts are in themselves capable of being ordered to this end. (73)

What does the moral assessment of man's free acts depend? What is it that ensures this ordering of human acts to God? Is it the intention of the acting subject, the circumstances--and in particular the consequences--of his action, or the object itself of his act? (74)

Consequentialism/Proportionalism: Weighing of non-moral or pre-moral goods to be gained and corresponding non-moral or pre-moral values to be respected with the aim of achieving best state of affairs for all concerned, maximizing goods and minimizing evils (74)

• Consequentialism = calculation of foreseeable consequences deriving from a given choice
• Proportionalism = proportion between good and bad effects

The values or good involved in a human act would be, from one viewpoint, of the moral order (in relation to properly moral values, such as love of God and neighbor, justice, etc.) and, from another point of view, of the pre-moral (non-moral, physical, ontic) order (in relation to the advantages and disadvantages accruing both to the agent and to all other persons possibly involved, such as, for example, health or its endangerment, physical integrity, life, death, loss of material goods, etc.). In a world where goodness is always mixed with evil, and every good effect linked to other evil effects, the morality of an act would be judged in two different ways: its moral "goodness" would be judged on the basis of the subject's intention in reference to moral goods, and its "rightness" on the basis of a consideration of its foreseeable effects or consequences and their proportion. The evaluation of the consequences of the action would regard only the pre-moral order, while the moral specificity of the act (whether it is good or evil) would be determined by the faithfulness of the person to the highest values of charity and prudence. (75)

• Affinity to scientific mentality (calculation), seek to provide liberation from constraints of a voluntaristic and arbitrary morality of obligation which would ultimately be dehumanizing. (76)

Love of God and neighbor cannot be separated from observance of the commandments of the Covenant. (76)

Consideration of consequences is not adequate for determining whether this concrete choice is "in itself" morally good or bad, licit or illicit. The foreseeable consequences are part of those circumstances of the act which, while capable of lessening the gravity of an evil act, nonetheless cannot alter its moral species. (77)

Exhaustive rational calculation of the consequences of an act is impossible. (77)

The morality of the human act depends primarily and fundamentally on the "object" rationally chosen by the deliberate will. By this object, one cannot mean a process or an event of the merely physical order, to be assessed on the basis of its ability to bring about a given state of affairs in the outside world. Rather, that object is the proximate end of a deliberate decision which determines the act of willing on the part of the acting person. (78)

The reason why a good intention is not itself sufficient, but a correct choice of actions is also needed, is that the human act depends on its object, whether that object is capable or not of being ordered to God, to the One who alone is good and thus brings about the perfection of the person. (78)

One must therefore reject the thesis, characteristic of proportionalism, that it is impossible to qualify as morally evil according to its species the deliberate choice of certain kinds of behavior or specific acts, apart from a consideration of the intention for which the choice is made or the totality of the foreseeable consequences of that act for all persons concerned. (79)

Whether an act is capable of being ordered to the good is grasped by reason in the very being of man, considered in his integral truth, and therefore in his natural inclinations, his motivations and his finalities, which always have a spiritual dimension as well. It is precisely these which are the contents of the natural law and hence that ordered complex of "personal goods" which serve "the good of the person": the good which is the person himself and his perfection. These are the goods safeguarded by the commandments. (79)

Intrinsically evil acts = those which are per se gravely wrong, independently from circumstances

While it is sometimes lawful to tolerate a lesser evil to avoid a greater evil or to promote a greater good, it is never lawful to do evil that good may come of it (80)

If acts are intrinsically evil, a good intention or particular circumstances can diminish their evil, but they cannot remove it. They remain "irremediably" evil acts; per se and in themselves they are not capable of being ordered to God and to the good of the person. (81)

We must not be content merely to warn the faithful about the errors and dangers of certain ethical theories, but must first of all show the inviting splendor of truth which is Jesus Christ himself. In Christ, man can understand fully and live perfectly, through his good actions, his vocation to freedom in obedience to the divine law summarized in the commandment of love of God and neighbor. And this is what takes place through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, of freedom and of love: in him we are enabled to interiorize the law, to receive it and to live it as the motivating force of true personal freedom. (83)


Chapter 3

Only the freedom which submits to the Truth leads the human person to his true good. The good of the person is to be in the Truth and to do the Truth. (84)

The saving power of the truth is contested, and freedom alone, uprooted from any objectivity, is left to decide by itself what is good and what is evil. (84)

Each day the Church looks to Christ with unfailing love, fully aware that the true and final answer to the problem of morality lies in him alone. In a particular way, it is in the Crucified Christ that the Church finds the answer to the question troubling so many people today: how can obedience to universal and unchanging moral norms respect the uniqueness and individuality of the person, and not represent a threat to his freedom and dignity? The Crucified Christ reveals the authentic meaning of freedom; he lives it fully in the total gift of himself and calls his disciples to share in his freedom. (85)

Human freedom is real but limited. It is at once inalienable self-possession and openness to all that exists, in passing beyond self to knowledge and love of the other. Freedom then is rooted in the truth about man, and it is ultimately directed towards communion. (86)

Within his errors and negative decisions, man glimpses the source of a deep rebellion, which leads him to reject the Truth and the Good in order to set himself up as an absolute principle unto himself: "You will be like God." Consequently, freedom itself needs to be set free. (86)

Christ reveals, first and foremost, that the frank and open acceptance of truth is the condition for authentic freedom. Furthermore, he reveals by his whole life that freedom is acquired in love, that is, in the gift of self. (87)

The full meaning of freedom = the gift of self in service to God and one's brethren. (87)

Jesus is the living, personal summation of perfect freedom in total obedience to the will of God. His crucified flesh fully reveals the unbreakable bond between freedom and truth, just as his Resurrection from the dead is the supreme exaltation of the fruitfulness and saving power of a freedom lived out in truth. (87)

The attempt to set freedom in opposition to truth, and indeed to separate them radically, is the consequence, manifestation and consummation of another more serious and destructive dichotomy, that which separates faith from morality. (88)

Growing secularism, men and women live "as if God did not exist," faith loses its character as a new and original criteria for thinking and acting in personal, family and social life. (88)

Faith is a lived knowledge of Christ, a living remembrance of his commandments, and a truth to be lived out. A word, in any event, is not truly received until it passes into action, until it is put into practice. Faith is a decision involving one's whole existence. It entails an act of trusting abandonment to Christ, which enables us to live as he lived. (88)

Through the moral life, faith becomes confession, not only before God but also before men: it becomes witness. (89)

Martyrdom rejects as false and illusory whatever "human meaning" one might claim to attribute, even in "exceptional circumstances," to an act morally evil in itself. Indeed, it even more clearly unmasks the true face of such an act: it is a violation of man's "humanity," in the one perpetrating it even before the one enduring it. Hence martyrdom is also the exaltation of a person's perfect "humanity" and of true "life." (92)

The voice of conscience has always clearly recalled that there are truths and moral values for which one must be prepared to give up one's life. In an individual's words and above all in the sacrifice of his life for a moral value, the Church sees a single testimony to that truth which, already present in creation, shines forth in its fullness on the face of Christ. (94)

Church is accused of lacking understanding and compassion, yet genuine understanding and compassion mean love for the person, for his true good and authentic freedom. This does not result by concealing or weakening moral truth but by proposing it in its most profound meaning. This must be joined with tolerance and charity, as Christ himself showed in his dealings with men. (95)

Because there can be no freedom apart from or in opposition to the truth, the categorical--unyielding and uncompromising--defense of the absolutely essential demands of man's personal dignity must be considered the way and the condition for the very existence of freedom. (96)

At the heart of the issue of culture we find the moral sense, which is in turn rooted and fulfilled in the religious sense. 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. The Supreme Good and the moral good meet in truth: the truth of God, the Creator and Redeemer, and the truth of man, created and redeemed by him. (99)

If there is no transcendent truth, in obedience to which man achieves his full identity, then there is no sure principle for guaranteeing just relations between people. Their self-interest as a class, group or nation would inevitably set them in opposition to one another. If one does not acknowledge transcendent truth, then the force of power takes over, and each person tends to make full use of the means at his disposal in order to impose his own interest or his own opinion, with no regard for the rights of others. (99)

Despite the fall of communism, there is still a danger that the fundamental rights of the person will be denied and the religious yearnings of man will be absorbed into politics. This is the risk of an alliance between democracy and ethical relativism, which would remove any sure moral reference point from political and social life, and on a deeper level make the acknowledgment of truth impossible. Indeed, if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism. (101)

Man's history of sin begins when he no longer acknowledges the Lord as his Creator and himself wishes to be the one who determines, with complete independence, what is good and what is evil. (102)

Only in the mystery of Christ's redemption do we discover the "concrete" possibilities of man. Christ has redeemed us! This means that he has given us the possibility of realizing the entire truth of our being; he has set our freedom free from the domination of concupiscence. And if redeemed man still sins, this is not due to an imperfection of Christ's redemptive act, but to man's will not to avail himself of the grace which flows from that act. (103)

Today's widespread tendencies towards subjectivism, utilitarianism, and relativism appear not merely as pragmatic attitudes or patterns of behavior, but rather as approaches having a basis in theory and claiming full cultural and social legitimacy. (106)

Revealed truth beckons reason--God's gift fashioned for the assimilation of truth--to enter into its light and thereby come to understand in a certain measure what it has believed. (109)

Moral theology = scientific reflection on the Gospel as the gift and commandment of new life, a reflection on the life which "professes the truth in love" and on the Church's life of holiness, in which there shines forth the truth about the good brought to its perfection. Moral theologians are called to develop a deeper understanding of the reasons underlying the Magisterium's teachings and to expound the validity and obligatory nature of the precepts it proposes, demonstrating their connection with one another and their relation with man's ultimate end. They should be deeply concerned to clarify ever more fully the biblical foundations, the ethical significance and the anthropological concerns which underlie the moral doctrine and the vision of man set forth by the Church. (110)

The affirmation of moral principles is not within the competence of formal empirical methods. While the behavioral sciences develop an empirical and statistical concept of 'normality,' faith teaches that this normality itself bears the traces of a fall from man's original situation. (112)

Christian morality is extraordinarily simple: it consists in following Jesus Christ, in abandoning oneself to him, in letting oneself be transformed by his grace and renewed by his mercy. (119)