Veritatis Splendor: Part 29--Freedom as Cruciform

JOHN PAUL II INSISTS on the connection between freedom and truth and faith and morals. These are the two burdens of his encyclical. Christ set men free, and the Christian life to which all men are called is centered upon freedom. Christ is the truth, and the Christian life to which all men are called is likewise centered upon truth. "[O]nly freedom which submits to the Truth leads the human person to his good. The good of the person is to be in the Truth and to do the Truth." VS, 84.*

Here is the central tragedy of this age:

This essential bond between Truth, the Good and Freedom has been largely lost sight of by present-day culture. As a result, helping man to rediscover it represents nowadays one of the specific requirements of the Church's mission, for the salvation of the world. Pilate's question: "What is truth" reflects the distressing perplexity of a man who often no longer knows who he is, whence he comes and where he is going.

VS, 84.

The Pope's solicitude toward mankind is apparent. The loss of a moral compass, of a knowledge of who he is, where he is supposed to go, and how to get there has left modern man in a moral quandary, in a state of moral chaos, in a slough of despond. He is like the Man Who Was Thursday.

Hence we not infrequently witness the fearful plunging of the human person into situations of gradual self-destruction. According to some, it appears that one no longer need acknowledge the enduring absoluteness of any moral value. All around us we encounter contempt for human life after conception and before birth; the ongoing violation of basic rights of the person; the unjust destruction of goods minimally necessary for a human life. Indeed, something more serious has happened: man is no longer convinced that only in the truth can he find salvation. 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. This relativism becomes, in the field of theology, a lack of trust in the wisdom of God, who guides man with the moral law. Concrete situations are unfavorably contrasted with the precepts of the moral law, nor is it any longer maintained that, when all is said and done, the law of God is always the one true good of man.

VS, 84.*

There is but one way from shadow into light, from the darkness of moral relativism to the light of moral truth, and it is this way to which the Church is witness. The Church came into the world not for the purpose of denouncing or refuting falsehood. While she may do so, she does so only as a natural concomitant of her true rule: to constantly look toward and point to the Lord Jesus, to Christ crucified. VS, 85.

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 Church makes her own the Apostle Paul's awareness of the mission he had received: "Christ . . . sent me . . . to preach the Gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power . . . We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:17, 23-24).

VS, 85.

Drawing of Christ Crucified by St. John of the Cross

Freedom is, at its heart, cruciform: "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." VS, 85. Christus cruci affixus verum libertatis sensum ostendit! The crucifix--the Jesus affixed to the cross--and Christ's victory over death--His Resurrection--are crucial to understanding the Christian insistence that freedom and truth are conjoined:

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.

VS, 87.

Man's freedom suffers from nobility and weakness. It is both real and limited. It is a created freedom, and like all creation something we have not give ourselves, but something which has been given to us: "its absolute and unconditional origin is not in itself, but in the life within which it is situated and which represents for it, at one and the same time, both a limitation and a possibility." VS, 86. The gift of freedom has a responsibility attached to it: it is "to be received like a seed and to be cultivated responsibly." VS, 87. It is self-evident that freedom is not an evil to be suffered, but a good. It is self-evident that freedom ought not to be used to do evil, but rather to do good. And so the gift of freedom contains within itself a hint of its purpose; it hearkens back to the Giver of the gift:

Within that freedom there is an echo of the primordial vocation whereby the Creator calls man to the true Good, and even more, through Christ's Revelation, to become his friend and to share his own divine life. 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.

VS, 86.

Freedom, then, points "Yonder, yes yonder, yonder, yonder."** Though freedom, then, has this golden "echo of the primordial vocation" which points yonder, it also has a leaden echo, a tragic weakness which we witness, and of which we know:

Reason and experience . . . confirm [freedom's] tragic aspects. Man comes to realize that his freedom is in some mysterious way inclined to betray this openness to the True and the Good, and that all too often he actually prefers to choose finite, limited and ephemeral goods. What is more, 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" (Gen 3:5).

VS, 86.

There is then, in freedom, the "beginning to despair, to despair, despair, despair, despair, despair."** And man becomes aware of this odd necessity: that freedom has become captive, and "freedom itself needs to be set free."

Libertas ideo est liberanda!

Who, then, is to set the captive freedom free?

Christus est liberator!

Christ, the Pope cries anew with the voice of old, invoking St. Paul's letter to the Galatians (5:1), "has set us free for freedom." Ipse nos liberavit ut essemus liberi. VS, 86.
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*This is actually a quote from the Pope's Address to those taking part in the International Congress of Moral Theology (April 10,1986), 1; Insegnamenti IX, 1 (1986), 970.
**G. M. Hopkins, "Maiden's Song from St. Winefred's Well"

Veritatis Splendor: Part 9--Freedom as Idol

CONTEMPORANEOUSLY, THERE IS GREAT confusion about freedom: what it is, and what it is for. Human freedom and truth are inextricably related, though modernly man seems to have severed their intimate relationship. Freedom without regard to truth has no shortage of advocates. Freedom has become the right "to do it my way," not the Way.

In one way, the modern emphasis on freedom is a great good. Like all errors, the modern emphasis contains some truth or it would not attract us. "This heightened sense of the dignity of the human person and of his or her uniqueness, and of the respect due to the journey of conscience, certainly represents one of the positive achievements of modern culture." Individualism and the respect given to the dignity of judgment, of conscience, of personal responsibility is, within proper limits, a good thing. The Church has always stressed man's freedom, man's dignity, and man's need to be responsible and conscientious in his moral decisions.

But the heightened sense of personal dignity and personal freedom in modern thought is almost invariably coupled with something that is less benign. In another way, the modern notion on emphasis of the individual is fraught with error. Many theories of human freedom place man in a position of complete autonomy from any reality, any truth, even God. Some conceptions of freedom "diverge from the truth about man as a creature and the image of God, and thus need to be corrected and purified in the light of faith." VS, 31. In particular one might point to those conceptions of freedom that are immanent, materialistic (and reject anything transcendent or metaphysical), or are implicitly or explicitly atheistic. Non-transcendent or atheistic notions of freedom deify human freedom and "exalt [it] to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values." VS, 32. Couple individualism and personal dignity with a materialistic, atheistic worldview, and it spells a recipe for moral disaster.

Freedom was once thought to be something "under God," and not something apart from God or something not referable to God. But freedom apart from God or not referable to Him is no longer freedom: a deification of freedom simply means that she becomes the idol of Libertas, an idol built of human hands and human presumption and human hubris.

Libertas, the Goddess of Liberty atop the U.S. Capitol
Is she our modern idol?
For us, is it "freedom under God," or "freedom is God"?

But freedom is not well-fitted to act independent of truth and good. Freedom manumitted from truth and the good is no longer freedom. Freedom must be adapted to reality, to the objective moral order; otherwise, it gets captured by a vicious moral subjectivism or individualism, where the only criterion of truth is "sincerity, authenticity and 'being at peace with oneself,'" which, of course, are standards that are various, fickle, and arbitrary, and blow wherever they will (usually responding to the lesser angels of our nature). In such a view, conscience is accorded infallible rights of judgment, entirely disassociated from an objective moral law. Something is right for me because I decided it for me. Ipse dixit morality.

Such subjectivism in freedom has it source in the modern despair at the human intellect's ability to discover truth. As such, modern subjectivism has epistemological roots:

As is immediately evident, the crisis of truth is not unconnected with this development. Once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its primordial reality as an act of a person's intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgment about the right conduct to be chosen here and now. Instead, there is a tendency to grant to the individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly.

VS, 32.

But the impetus behind modern moral subjectivism may also be attributed to overemphasized individualism, since moral subjectivism is "quite congenial to an individualist ethic, wherein each individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others." VS, 32. Such a view of morality rejects such a thing as human nature: we define ourselves and who we are. "Taken to its extreme consequences, this individualism leads to a denial of the very idea of human nature." VS, 32. We have become Sartrists, disciples of Sartre and his vision of human as "no thing." L'homme n'est pas un chose. Man is not a thing; he is néant, nothing.*

Oddly inconsistent with the deification of human freedom is the equally modern tendency toward denying human freedom, toward a scientific or moral determinism. We see this tendency in some of the behavioral sciences. Though these behavioral sciences can impart some valuable truths, the insights are often overemphasized to the detriment of human freedom. So, for example, we have the notion that some humans are genetically determined to be homosexual, and so are not free to reject this inclination. Since they are not free to reject this genetically-compelled inclination, we have no right to call it a disorder. This deterministic application of the behavioral sciences--psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.--is erroneous, since it denies the very reality of human freedom.

The materialistic, individualistic views cannot carve God out of the picture. Without God and without freedom, there is no morality, since morality presupposes both God and human freedom.

The question of morality, to which Christ provides the answer, cannot prescind from the issue of freedom. Indeed, it considers that issue central, for there can be no morality without freedom: "It is only in freedom that man can turn to what is good". But what sort of freedom? The [Second Vatican] Council, considering our contemporaries who "highly regard" freedom and "assiduously pursue" it, but who "often cultivate it in wrong ways as a license to do anything they please, even evil", speaks of "genuine" freedom: "Genuine freedom is an outstanding manifestation of the divine image in man. For God willed to leave man "in the power of his own counsel" (cf. Sir 15:14), so that he would seek his Creator of his own accord and would freely arrive at full and blessed perfection by cleaving to God".

VS, 34 (quoting GS, 11, 17).

Freedom and the human person'srelationship with God is, without question, deeply personal, deeply individual, and yet it is not for all that outside of, or unrelated to, moral obligation.

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.** As Cardinal John Henry Newman, that outstanding defender of the rights of conscience, forcefully put it: "Conscience has rights because it has duties".***

VS, 34. Because of the modern tendency to divorce freedom and the moral law and freedom from God, John Paul II launches into an exploration of the interconnectedness of freedom of law. It is that analysis which we will tackle next.

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*See Man is not a Pickle: The Sartrean Argument against the Natural Law.
**Citing Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Declaration on Religious Freedom Dignitatis Humanae, 2; cf. also Gregory XVI, Encyclical Epistle Mirari Vos Arbitramur (August 15, 1832): Acta Gregoree Papae XVI, I, 169-174; Pius IX, Encyclical Epistle Quanta Cura (December 8, 1864): Pii IX P.M. Acta, I, 3, 687-700; Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Libertas Praestantissimum (June 20,1888): Leonis XIII P.M. Acta, VIII, Romae 1889, 212-246.
***Quoting from A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk: Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching (Uniform Edition: Longman, Green and Company, London,1868-1881), vol. 2, p. 250.

Freedom and Law: Pope Leo XIII's Libertas praestantissimum, Part 2

CONTINUING WITH OUR REVIEW OF LEO XIII'S encyclical Libertas praestantissimum, we recall briefly our last post which ended with the thought that our natural human liberty has a defect because our reason may adjudge as good and the will may seek as good things that are not good, but are merely evils masquerading as good, seeming goods. Our natural liberty must be therefore be enlightened and strengthened by law so as to provide guidance to our reason about what is a real good. "[T]here must be law, that is, a fixed rule of teaching what is to be done and what is to be left undone." LP, 7. Since, as we have seen, judgment precedes choice, and reason is what guides judgment, "reason prescribes to the will what it should seek after or shun, in order to the eventual attainment of man's last end, for the sake of which his actions ought to be performed." LP, 7. "This ordination of reason is called law." Iamvero haec ordinatio rationis lex nominatur. Law is, then, this ordinatio rationis, the ordinance of reason, which guides reasoned judgment and determines the good which is to be sought. It follows that law is essential for the right ordering of reason, the right formulation of judgment, and hence for the right direction of the will.

Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason; whereas the truth is that we are bound to submit to law precisely because we are free by our very nature. For, law is the guide of man's actions; it turns him toward good by its rewards, and deters him from evil by its punishments.

Nihilque tam perversum praeposterumque dici cogitarive posset quam illud, hominem, quia natura liber est, idcirco esse oportere legis expertem: quod si ita esset, hoc profecto consequeretur, necesse ad liber tatem esse non cohaerere cum ratione: cum contra longe verissimum sit, idcirco legi oportere subesse, quia est natura liber. Isto modo dux homini in agendo lex est, eumdemque praemiis poenisque propositis ad recte faciendum allicit, a peccando deterret.

LP, 7.

For man, the supreme law is the natural law:

Foremost in this office comes the natural law, which is written and engraved in the mind of every man; and this is nothing but our reason, commanding us to do right and forbidding sin.

Talis est princeps omnium lex naturalis, quae scripta est et insculpta in hominum animis singulorum, quia ipsa est humana ratio recte facere iubens et peccare vetans.

LP, 8. Law, however, implies authority, as "authority is the one and only foundation of all law," tota [lex] in auctoritate nititur: all law rests upon authority. Law must be promulgated. Law requires sanction for its breach. Law therefore requires a "voice," a vox, an authoritative voice, a vox auctoritatis. LP, 8. Where is the vox auctoritatis legis naturalis to be found?

We know where it is not to be found. It is not to be found in man. When it comes to the natural law, man is not autonomous. Man does not make his own fundamental law. He is not the rule of his own actions. If he were, then he would not be bound by his own law. Selflaw is not law. As the jurist Ulpian noted long ago, a prince is not bound by his laws: princeps legibus solutus est. If man were the source of his own standards, his own prince, then he would be governed by whim: for what pleases the prince has the force of law, quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem. But man is not the prince of the natural law. There must be an authority, a voice outside of man to account for the binding nature of the natural law. If it were not binding, if it were self-prescribed, it would not be law. All, therefore, points to God as the vox auctoritatis the vox legis naturalis. The princeps is not man, but is the summus princeps, the summus rex, the summus Deus, God who is the Eternal Reason and Eternal Law.

It follows, therefore, that the law of nature is the same thing as the eternal law, implanted in rational creatures, and inclining them to their right action and end; and can be nothing else but the eternal reason of God, the Creator and Ruler of all the world.

Ergo consequitur, ut naturae lex sit ipsa lex aeterna, insita in iis qui ratione utuntur, eosque inclinans ad debitum actum et finem, eaque est ipsa aeterna ratio creatoris universumque mundum gubernantis Dei.

LP, 8. The natural law, which is nothing but the eternal law writ in a voice man can understand, is therefore the fundamental rule, the ratio ordinis, which man should follow in forming his reasoned judgments which direct his will to the seeking of good. The natural law, however, is not the only aid given man. "To this rule of action and restraint of evil," agendi regulam peccandique frenos, which the natural law is, "God has vouchsafed to give special and most suitable aids for strengthening and ordering the human will." "The first and most excellent of these is the power of His divine grace whereby the mind can be enlightened and the will wholesomely invigorated and moved to the constant pursuit of the good." LP, 8.

Pope John Paul II in Camden Park, Baltimore, Maryland

Here, the natural law and grace work hand-in-glove, "for grace works inwardly in man and in harmony with his natural inclinations." The author of grace is the author of the natural law. The Redeemer is the Creator. "As the Angelic Doctor [Thomas Aquinas] points out, it is because divine grace comes from the Author of nature that it is so admirably adapted to be the safeguard of all natures, and to maintain the character, efficiency, and operations of each." LP, 8.

What a marvel! That God who makes law is God who gives grace! What human legislator is so solicitous that he both gives the law and the means to fulfill it?

Every single man and woman is therefore bound by the natural law. The natural law is the voice of the eternal law in us, a voice which guides each of our individual actions, a voice which guides our natural or human liberty, which orders it to the good, and which leads us from mere natural or human freedom to moral liberty, which is liberty pure and simple.

We might briefly turn from the Pope to the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin in his Poor Richard's Almanack:

Would you live with ease, do what you ought, and not what you please.*

If "ease" is defined as freedom, then Ol' Ben is on point.

What is true for the individual liberty or freedom is true for a people, true for a civil society. In his Homily at Oriole's Park at the Camden Yards in Baltimore, Maryland on October 8, 1995, John Paul II had the following to say to America:

Surely it is important for America that the moral truths which make freedom possible should be passed on to each new generation. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.**

So it is from the individual to society to which Pope Leo XIII next turns in his encyclical Libertas praestantissimum.

(continued)
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*Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack: Selections from the Apothegms and Proverbs (USC Publishing, 1914), No. 658
**Pope John Paul II, Homily at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, Maryland, Sunday, October 8, 1995, 7. Available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore_en.html.

Being and Natural Law: The Good or Ratio Boni

IS BEING GOOD? Some philosophers object to characterizing being as good. Their argument goes something like this. Since the analogon of being must include within it all of the analogates, their sameness and their dissimilarity, then it must also include their imperfections and defects. These latter also are within the great global transcendental analogical concept of being. Since the analogon of "being" contains the imperfections and defects in the analogates that compose it, it seems to follow that being cannot be good simpliciter. Being and good are not synonymous, it would appear.

But in fact this is not the case. The objection is based upon the failure to see that evil--imperfection, defects in the analogates--do not directly arise from being, but arise only indirectly. "Directly speaking only integral and whole analogates arise from being." The evil that arises occurs "later when these integral analogates accidentally clash." The clash between analogates--say the attack of a tiger on a man, the attack of one being upon another--is a clash within the level of the analogates. It is not a clash that reaches upwards, as it were, to the level of the analogon. It is a local dispute, not a universal dispute.* This same clash which occurs between analogates can also arise within an analogate. (The clash "within" an analogate within the analogon of being must also be understood to be a clash "between" analogates, analogates within an analogate, since our sensitive nature is an analogate of "being" and our intellectual nature is likewise an analogate of "being".) Therefore, the Pauline struggle between his natures** is a clash between analogates, and is not a clash that rises up, as it were, to the analogon and impugns the good of being.

What this means, then is that being and the good are equivalent. Being is identified with the good. The good is identified with being. There is no being that is not good qua being. There is no good that is not being. Not only is man an "intellector of being," but, because being and good are desirable, he is also a "willer of the good."

The identification of being with good provides the basis for moral obligation or moral necessity in Dr. Knasas's view. There is a three-linked chain between the identification of being with the good--the ratio entis = ratio boni--and the sense of moral obligation or felt necessity.

The first link is the intrinsic desire for the good that is engendered in us, and the expression of it, ordered or disordered, through particular goods. In choosing particular goods as expression of the intrinsic desire toward "the good," we also learn about freedom, our freedom to chose particular goods. Though we have have freedom to chose particular goods under the light of the good, we do not have the freedom, we remained determined, to chose, seek, and desire the universal good. We choose the particular good freely, though it is under the auspices as it were of the necessary choice for the universal good. The second link is therefore freedom to chose particular goods. All our choices as to particular goods are chosen under the aspect that they will somehow yield us "the good." All particular goods we desire and seek, even those that are chosen or sought in a disordered way and hence evil under the circumstances, are chosen as apparent or seeming goods under the in-built desire in us, a desire we cannot shed, for "the good." The third link will be the source of moral obligation, and that is the awareness that man shares, in a particularly forceful, superior, and unique way, in being and the good, that is, he is a sharer par excellence in these transcendentals. As a particular good, therefore, man is superior to all other particular goods, because he shares in a more noble way in being and in the good, since, contrary to all being and all good that is below man--the brute animals, vegetative life, and lesser things--man is both an "intellector of being" and a "willer of good." It is this dignity, the recognition of this dignity within us and others, that is the last link in the chain which takes us out of freedom in choosing particular goods, to the realm of moral obligation, to moral necessity, a necessity borne in freedom, that urges us to choose one particular good over another particular good as being right.

Going back to the first link in the chain of moral obligation, we may develop it as follows. The identification of being with good occurs in man as "an automatic abstraction of the intellect," one that "can go unnoticed and lurk in the depths of our conscious life." It is intrinsically in man, and we need not be philosophers implicitly to know that good and being are interchangeable. When confronting being as good, therefore, there is an "automatic rush of appetite," an "initial eruption of the will," an "engendered volitional dynamism," a desire for all being and all good, one that "is the source of all specifically human desire," which represents the human "heart's deepest longing."*** This implicit sense of being is why even the most unphilosophical of men would understand the first principle of speculative reason: the principle of contradiction--that something cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. This implicit sense of the good is also something that wells up in us, whether we are conscious of it or not, and so we can understand without being philosophical or introspective the first principle of practical reason--that one should do good and avoid evil. "By explicating being as a transcendental analogon, the philosopher merely explicates an abstractum that the intellect of every human person automatically takes from the real things presented by sensation." In other words, philosophers express the reality that is already impressed in all of us.

We necessarily tend, therefore, to the universal good--the good. Our hearts, our being is hardwired, as it were, to seek the good. But though, in fact because, the will tends invariably towards the universal good, it does not tend invariably toward particular goods. Hence, the fact that our will is determined to seek the universal good is what frees us in our choices of particular goods. The fact that we are forced to be on the road to being, the road to the good, is what allows us to visit the inns of particular goods on either side of the way.

Aquinas explains that since the will necessarily tends to the universal or perfect good, then before any particular or finite good, the will does not necessarily tend. . . . Poised before beings seen in the light of the good, the will is indeterminate or free. As individual goods, existing things can be will; but as individual goods, existing things need not be willed.

It is therefore the good that precedes our inclination to the good, and not vice versa. The good is not obtained from our inclinations. Our inclinations are a response to the reality of the good that precedes us, that is there before our inclinations. Our inclinations conform to the good.

From the universal desire for the universal good, to the awareness that this desire for the universal good allows us freedom in choosing the particular good, we come to the threshold of the basis for moral obligation. Moral obligation may be described as the moral necessity in the face of freedom in choosing particular goods, within the metaphysical necessity of choosing the universal good. From hard necessity into freedom back into a soft necessity. This is the manner in which the chain of moral obligation progresses. That last link in the chain will be the subject of our next blog posting.
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*This raises interesting issues for theodicy, the existence of (and even definition of) evil, and the providence of God. Dr. Knasas only hinted at such things as quandoque or "sometime" evils, evils which must arise in a material world which cannot be perfectly arranged and where free radicals therefore exist. He also spoke about whether there is evil when a superior analogate clashes with an inferior analogate (man kills a tiger) or only when an inferior analogate clashes with a superior (tiger kills man). Analogously, the higher aspect of man (his soul) clashes with his lower aspect (passion), and there is no evil done when the higher overcomes the lower (reason overcomes passion). Evil only happens when the lower overcomes the higher (passion overcomes reason). What is God's role in all this? Does God permit such quandoque evils so that an antecedent good may be done? Does God allow such quandoque evils so that a consequent good may be derived from it? Obviously, these issues were beyond the purview of Dr. Knasas's lectures.
**"I find then a law, that when I have a will to do good, evil is present with me. For I am delighted with the law of God, according to the inward man: But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin, that is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with the mind serve the law of God; but with the flesh, the law of sin." (Romans 7:21-25)
***When this "automatic rush of appetite," this "initial eruption of the will," this "engendered volitional dynamism," focuses on the particular instead of being or the good in general, dissatisfaction is invariably the result. Even when we choose a particular good well and our ordered desire is satiated, it is never fully satiated; it leaves a longing for more, a sense that "the good" has not been obtained. When we choose a particular good and our desire is disordered, the lack of satiation, this ennui, is even more apparent, as not only do we feel that we have not reached "the good," we sense that we have departed from the path to it, as such a fulfilled disordered desire leaves a bitter aftertaste.

What we thought would satisfy us leaves us wanting for more. What was the apple of our eye shrivels to one good among others. Do not these experiences indicate that fundamental to human consciousness is a grasp of perfect good against which things eventually proportion themselves as only particular goods?

Contra Consquentialismum: Freedom and Responsibility

FREEDOM IS PRESUPPOSED BY MORALITY, as there cannot be any real good and evil, or certainly not any right or wrong, if the person acting is not free, if everything is determined. The concept of freedom is, however, frequently misunderstood. Freedom is not a power for choosing evil, and it is not a fundamental feature of freedom that the existence of evil follows from it. "[T]he fact that people choose [evil] is not be be admired as proof of human freedom." God, we may remember, is supremely free . . . and supremely good. The power to do evil is, at best, a "sign of freedom, but only in the sense in which disease is a sign of life." Oderberg, MT, 28. There is no decrease of freedom if people were only to choose good, any more than there would be a decrease in mathematical thinking if our mathematicians were always right. There is no increase of freedom because people do evil, any more than we advance mathematically when a larger portion of mathematicians get things wrong.

Further, in understanding freedom, a distinction ought to be made between physical and psychological (or even legal) freedom and moral freedom. It is obvious that we are "free" physically, psychologically, and even legally (in this country, to its everlasting shame) to kill an unborn fetus; however, we are in no regard morally free to do so since it is an inexcusable violation of the absolute right of life of the child. Moral freedom is a "species of rational freedom," and "one is ever morally free to do the right thing," and only the right thing. There is no moral freedom to do the wrong thing, only physical, psychological, or, depending on the positive law, legal freedom. But these latter "freedoms" are not freedom plain and simple.

Freedom's Often Misunderstood

Human moral freedom is influenced by a number of factors, individual (age, temperament, talent, etc.) and social (upbringing, the surrounding culture, fashions, public opinion, prevailing ideology, etc.). Freedom is also affected by prior choice.* Regardless of these influences--and they can have great effect on us--they do not fundamentally rob us of free will.

"That a person is essentially a free agent means that he is responsible for his actions; he answers (responds) for them . . . a person's actions are imputable to him." Oderberg, MT, 30. This, of course, means that a person is "liable to reward or punishment," sanction or desert, depending upon his actions.

Two essential components are required for a free act to subject us to moral responsibility: knowledge and voluntariness. Knowledge and voluntariness are the sine qua nons of moral freedom and responsibility in the exercise of that freedom.

A person is responsible for his action if and only if it is done knowingly and voluntarily; the complete absence of either or both of these elements destroys freedom and hence responsibility. A partial lack of either or both lessens or diminishes responsibility, but does not destroy it.

Oderberg, MT, 30.

Knowledge is the foundation of intention. "As Aristotle pointed out, one does not will what one does not know." Oderberg, 30.

The voluntariness need not be "presently occurring," it can be "virtual." We can make a choice, that, as it were, we carry with us throughout the day, though it may not be actively present with us at the time of the act, but it informs the act and gives it a moral character. "In such a case, we might call the intention or choice virtual, since the power (or virtue)" of the initial resolution lasts throughout the entire day until revoked or changed. If sufficiently repeated, such a virtual power can become habitual. "The habitual intention is, as it were, worn like a forgotten piece of jewelery, and is a sign of a certain attitude of mind." If the habitual intention relates to moral matters and to good, we call it a virtue. If the habitual intention relates to moral matters and to evil, we call it vice.

Both knowledge and voluntariness are not discrete categories. We are not dealing with either absolute knowledge or voluntariness (for there to be freedom, and hence an act to be praiseworthy or blameworthy) versus total absence of knowledge of voluntariness (for there to be total destruction of freedom, and hence no responsibility). There are shades of knowledge and shades of voluntariness. Both external (violence) and internal factors (extreme fear or other passion) and habit (good or bad) can affect these, and mitigate moral blame to a greater or lesser degree. "Thus moral praise and blame are not all-or-nothing matters--they are matters of degree." Oderberg, 31. Acts may be intentional, reckless, negligent, inadvertent, in absolute ignorance, and anything in between, and the external and internal factors that can affect them are myriad.** It becomes clear, therefore, that "morality is not just about individual actions, but about the character of the person who acts." Oderberg, 33.

The fact that blameworthiness or praiseworthiness is subject to degrees does not mean "that boundaries of right and wrong are somehow blurred and confused. It does not mean there are no clear limits that, if crossed, make the agent guilty of a wrong act pure and simple." Oderberg, 33. "In morality, then, there are certain base levels of conduct that make certain actions right or wrong whatever the circumstances."*** Oderberg, 33.

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*A particularly poignant and extreme example of how prior choice may rob us of moral freedom arises from in vitro fertilization where, to improve success, multiple embryos are conceived in vitro and then some preserved by cryopreservation (freezing). These human beings, "orphans" held in animated state, in a limbo of man's own making, are forgotten by their parents and society. There is no way morally to dispose of this problem. We have painted ourselves in a moral corner; it is an insoluble dilemma. This is an instance where we have no moral freedom (other than do nothing) because of our prior evil choices: "All things considered, it needs to be recognized that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved. Therefore John Paul II made an “appeal to the conscience of the world’s scientific authorities and in particular to doctors, that the production of human embryos be halted, taking into account that there seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of ‘frozen’ embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should therefore be protected by law as human persons”. Dignitatis personae, no. 19 (Instruction on Certain Bioethical Question, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith). What kind of society would put itself in such a moral quandary? What kind of society would turn a deaf ear to the Pope's plea?
**Though unmentioned by Oderberg, classical moral theology distinguishes between: (i) human acts, that is, deliberate free acts, acts with requisite knowledge and voluntariness, and acts of man, that is, acts performed either without sufficient deliberation, or lacking knowledge or free will. The latter category includes unconscious acts, involuntary acts, semi-deliberate acts (e.g., acts done while half asleep and in a state or torpor), and spontaneous acts done on impulse without reflection.
***Oderberg gives as examples murder, manslaughter, rape, child abuse, fraud. Oderberg, 33.