Note: all of my posts thus far have been written originally for either my blog, Equus Nom Veritas, or my website The Nicene Guys. However, since I am also blogging here, I think that it is appropriate for me to write a few "feature" pieces for this site. I can't guarantee how frequently this will be done, but consider this the first such piece. I hope you all enjoy it!

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A complaint often aired against Christians in general and Catholics in particular is about morality. In my dealings with Protestants, I have heard many say something along the lines of "I just want a relationship with Jesus; the Church gets in the way of all that." Then there are the enlightened glitteratis--most especially the elites from the entertainment industry--who claim that they want "spirituality" as opposed to "religion." When they are saying "religion," they mean all the rituals and practices, but they also often mean the moral precepts, too. In short, both the anti-Church Protestants and the anti-religious secularists want the "spiritualism" of religion without the actual practices: they want their beliefs to place no demands on their lifestyles.



It's easy to consider the "moral teachings" to be the hard part of any religion, because these govern how we ought to live. Religions inevitably come with morality, and so to avoid morality, people avoid religion. Alternatively, they enter into the barest of religions, for example a "personal relationship" with Jesus (itself a good thing) which is free of any demands or restrictions, calling this a more "pure" relationship. Their justification is that the "restrictive" morality gets in the way of this relationship, it hinders their ability to love God. This is somewhat akin to those who say that marriage hinders the ability to love a spouse, because with marriage comes a certain set of rules (e.g. the exclusivity of the spouses, the mutuality of their possessions and their lives, "for better or for worse," etc.). Thus, marriage--itself a topic of morality--is in a sense an analogy for morality, a topic which I attempt to address next week.

There are two great mistakes which are often made regarding morality. The first is to reduce it to a mere list of commandments, "though shall..." and "thou shalt not..." This is by far the more common mistake, and it is the mistake made by those who want "spirituality" without religion, or Christ without the Church. The second mistake is almost as deadly, but is far less common and yet also more subtle. This is to say that because morality is more these "do's" and "don'ts," therefore the do's and don'ts do not matter. This is the heresy more often embraced by liberals within the Church. Although these mistakes are in some ways opposites of each other, they nonetheless has the same result, which is that the actual moral precepts are abandoned as irrelevant.

As to reducing morality to a list, this is a mistake, because this is to make morality into a set of restrictions on how we must behave--be it in deed, word, or thought--when the real purpose of morality is to be our guide to right living. When I say right living, I mean that morality underlies both how we are meant to live in private, and how we are to relate to others, and how we are to relate to God. The law--that is, the lists of moral precepts--is mad then, to guide us in right living; this list is an imposition, because we are sinful people. This is what St Paul means when he tells St Timothy (and us) that

St Paul wrote: "Now the end of the commandment is charity, from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and an unfeigned faith. From which things some going astray, are turned aside unto vain babbling: Desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither the things they say, nor whereof they affirm. But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully: Knowing this, that the law is not made for the just man, but for the unjust and disobedient, for the ungodly, and for sinners, for the wicked and defiled, for murderers of fathers, and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, For fornicators, for them who defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and whatever other thing is contrary to sound doctrine" (1 Timothy 1:6-10).

The morality which has been preserved and taught be the Church, and passed to us by her, is meant to aid us in loving our neighbors, loving God, and even loving ourselves. Herein lies the second possible error, which is to say that because I love my neighbor, my God, and myself, therefore I do not really need to follow the whole set of "moral instructions" which have been given to aide me in this. This, too, is a heresy. After all, it was our LORD Himself who said, "If you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15). Thus, we show our love to God by keeping His commandments--that is, by obeying His moral precepts--and so "thou shall" and "thou shalt not" still matter.

Now, it is true that St Paul says that he is "dead to the law" (see Galatians 2:19). Or, alternatively, that he is free from it. This is not, however, the same as to say that he has no need to obey it. Rather, it means that he has no desire to disobey it. To give one seemingly extreme example, I am free from the moral law "thou shalt not murder," because I have no desire to murder anybody. The law places no restriction on my action, since I don't have the intent to murder anybody. I do, in fact, want not to murder anybody, hence I live in accord with this law. On the other hand, we know that there are murders--thus, there are people who are not free from this law. Moreover, there are people at some times who actually desire murder, in that they see it as a good thing--that is, the murder of one person will solve a problem which they face, or will lead to their happiness, etc. This is the case, for example, in abortion, or euthanasia, or (quite often) in the death penalty. Thus, not everybody is free from the proscription against murder.



Now, I said that morality largely represents a means of ordered right living. This also implies that morality contains a set of instructions for how to live--the do's and don'ts, moral precepts--which ought to be obeyed. This is even the case when we think that we have a better solution. So, for example, it is immoral to fornicate because sexual activity is meant to be an expression of love and intimacy (not to mention that its primary purpose is to be procreative). Perhaps I really do love the woman with whom I am about to fornicate, and perhaps sexual intercourse really will make us be more intimate; perhaps we even agree that if she becomes pregnant, we will raise the child together hence fulfilling the procreative purpose). Maybe we're even engaged to be married to each other. Does this make sexual relations between us "moral?" I answer that it does not, even if it seems like it does. After all, the definition of fornication is sexual relations between two unmarried people. Thus, even if we fulfill, on the surface, all of the requirements for sexual activity to be morally licit save for marriage, the act is still fornication, is still immoral. I may think that I have found a "loophole" by saying that sex is supposed to be in marriage only because marriage is an arrangement for child-rearing and for fostering love, but that i have made an alternate arrangement for both. However, I would be wrong.

To use an analogy from my own childhood: consider a new "set" of Legos. Really, any model with many parts, each with its own distinct place, will work. When I was a child, I used to play with Lego, and any time my parents bought me a new set, I couldn't wait to put them together. Now, there is a specific way in which the Legos fit together in order to make the toy pictured on the front of the box. I could either try to put them together by looking at the picture, and hope for the best, or follow the numbers picture-instructions which inevitably came in the box. For the simplest of the lego sets, looking at the picture on the front was often enough (or nearly so) to build the toy. With the larger and more complicated sets--containing, quite often, thousands of little pieces--the instructions were all but a necessity in order to correctly build the set.

Even so, I would often find that 100+ steps were too many for me to want to follow the whole way through. Sometimes, I just knew that then next piece would go in a certain position. Sometimes, I was able to take these "shortcuts" with no difficulty. Sometimes, however, it was necessary to remove the pieces and take steps back, because of that one little piece which just wouldn't fit when I tried to built the toy my own way. I found that by following the instructions in the package, I could always build the whole toy, and correctly, using all of the pieces which I was supposed to use (sometimes, there were leftovers included in the box), and I could then enjoy the toy. Truth be told, often building by the instructions was the fun part, but in any case this was always made easier by having a guide to follow. Any deviation from the guide, and I would need to go back, or the future steps would become confusing and even useless.

If the instructions for the Lego set is an analogy for our moral instructions, then the finished Lego product is like each one of us, complete with our relationships to God and each other. Now, morality is often more difficult to follow than an instruction manual for a Lego set; sometimes, this is due to ambiguity, and sometimes because we have a desire which is contrary to the moral law. If morality is often more difficult than an instruction manual, it is also at least as necessary to obey, even when it seems unclear, even when we think we have a better solution.

Every one of us is far more complicated than even the most complex and intricate Lego set. After all, as humans we have our own will, feelings, emotions, likes, dislikes, levels of understanding, abilities in communication, and indeed our own unique identities, to say nothing of our proclivities for sin which thwart all of these things. We are, in other words, "I" and not "it," subjects and not merely objects. Because a person is infinitely more complex than a Lego set, it is in our best interest to obey the precepts of our morality; and God, being infinite, is infinitely more complex and complicated still. Thus, His morality provides us with the only means of ordering our lives towards Him. We cannot glance at Him, or even at the points He's revealed about Himself (e.g. in the Bible) and use these to determine our own correct response to Him. Instead, we must rely on the "instructions manual" which He has passed on to us, which is morality.

Now, I've mentioned that there are two errors against morality. Morality is more than a list of precepts, but it must include that list. There is one final objection raised, often from Protestant quarters, which is that Christ wants from us faith in Him, and this is all that matters; that if we have this faith, we will gain the hope of salvation, and from this hope will come love for God, and perhaps also for our neighbors. After all, the basis of right living is love, is it not?

Indeed, this is all correct, as far as it goes. However, it overlooks that we have a duty to respond to this faith, this hope, this love. Certainly, that response includes prayers--be they praise and worship, thanksgiving, petitions, or whatever--but it also means living as morally as we can. That is to say, the response is not only in our heart (that is, in our soul) or even in our minds (spirit, when mind and soul, will and intellect are taken together), but in our bodies. This last response is the object of morality, that we may properly respond to God not only with our hearts and minds, but also with our bodies. As St Anselm of Canterbury puts it,

Saint Anselm wrote: "Truly, O Lord, because Thou madest me, I owe unto Thy love my whole self. Because Thou didst redeem me, I owe Thee my whole self. Because Thou makest me such great promises, I owe Thee my whole self."

We each owe to God our whole selves. That means our spirit--mind, soul, will, intellect--and our bodies. Our bodies are a part of us, they are a part of our selves; this is a doctrine of the Faith, held over against the Gnostic claims that we are merely spirits which are trapped in (or which use) our bodies. Our bodies are us, the are the physical manifestation of our selves; or as St Thomas Aquinas puts it, "the body is the form of the soul." The Catechism of the Catholic Church echoes this statement.

It is for this reason that we look forward to not only the eternal life of our spirits, but of the resurrection of our bodies. It is because our bodies are a part of us, of who we are, that what we do with them matters, not only for how we relate to others but in how we relate to God. We are told to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17, which implies praying not only through our thoughts and words but through our actions, that is, with our bodies. The morality given to us by the Church provides us a means of doing this. It is the means for right relationships, for right conduct, and, indeed, for right living, which is pleasing to God.

Tags: Morality Philosophy Theology "Natural-Law" "Theology-of-th E-Body"

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