Veritatis Splendor: Part 28--Intrinsically Evil Acts

“T

HE MORALITY OF THE HUMAN ACT," emphasizes Pope John Paul II, "depends primarily and fundamentally on the 'object' rationally chosen by the deliberate will, as is borne out by the insightful analysis, still valid today, made by Saint Thomas." In making that statement, the Pope cites to St. Thomas's work the Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q.18, art. 6.

I answer that, Certain actions are called human, inasmuch as they are voluntary, as stated above (Question 1, Article 1). Now, in a voluntary action, there is a twofold action, viz. the interior action of the will, and the external action: and each of these actions has its object. The end is properly the object of the interior act of the will: while the object of the external action, is that on which the action is brought to bear. Therefore just as the external action takes its species from the object on which it bears; so the interior act of the will takes its species from the end, as from its own proper object.

Now that which is on the part of the will is formal in regard to that which is on the part of the external action: because the will uses the limbs to act as instruments; nor have external actions any measure of morality, save in so far as they are voluntary. Consequently the species of a human act is considered formally with regard to the end, but materially with regard to the object of the external action. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. v, 2) that "he who steals that he may commit adultery, is strictly speaking, more adulterer than thief."

Respondeo dicendum quod aliqui actus dicuntur humani, inquantum sunt voluntarii, sicut supra dictum est. In actu autem voluntario invenitur duplex actus, scilicet actus interior voluntatis, et actus exterior, et uterque horum actuum habet suum obiectum. Finis autem proprie est obiectum interioris actus voluntarii, id autem circa quod est actio exterior, est obiectum eius. Sicut igitur actus exterior accipit speciem ab obiecto circa quod est; ita actus interior voluntatis accipit speciem a fine, sicut a proprio obiecto. Ita autem quod est ex parte voluntatis, se habet ut formale ad id quod est ex parte exterioris actus, quia voluntas utitur membris ad agendum, sicut instrumentis; neque actus exteriores habent rationem moralitatis, nisi inquantum sunt voluntarii. Et ideo actus humani species formaliter consideratur secundum finem, materialiter autem secundum obiectum exterioris actus. Unde philosophus dicit, in V Ethic., quod ille qui furatur ut committat adulterium, est, per se loquendo, magis adulter quam fur.

In determining the object of any particular act, a certain projection is required: one must project oneself into the situation of the acting subject. In other words, the analysis is perspectival: "[i]n order to be able to grasp the object of an act which specifies that act morally, it is . . . necessary to place oneself in the perspective of the acting person." VS, 78.

The object of an act is something distinct from its purpose, from the intent behind it, from the consequences which flow from it. The object of the act relates to the "freely chosen kind of behavior." The object "is the proximate end of a deliberate decision which determines the act of willing on the part of the acting person." The behavior itself must be compared to "the order of reason," and, if it is in conformity with the "order of reason," and the intention of the acting subject is good, then "it is the cause of the goodness of the will." The act not only is good, it also "perfects us morally, and disposes us to recognize our ultimate end in the perfect good, primordial love." VS, 78.

Since the object of an act is something that is compared to the "order of reason," an order which we do not ourselves make as it is an objective order ultimately based upon God, it follows that there are certain kinds of behavior whose object is always against the "order of reason," and which are in each and every instance wrong. When St. Paul says that one may not do evil that good may come (Rom. 3:8), St. Paul is saying that intention alone does not define an act; rather, the object of the act, the kind of behavior chosen to implement the intent must also conform to the good. Both intent and object must be good. Hence, as St. Thomas points out: "Let us say that someone robs in order to feed the poor: in this case, even though the intention is good, the uprightness of the will is lacking."* There is, then, no "Robin Hood" exception in traditional morality: one cannot rob (object) the rich to feed the poor (intent). One cannot give false testimony (object) to put a guilty man in jail (intent). One cannot commit prostitution (object) to obtain money to feed one's children (intent). As St. Alphonsus Liguori succinctly states it:

It is not enough to do good works; they need to be done well. For our works to be good and perfect, they must be done for the sole purpose of pleasing God.

Non sufficit opera bona patrare, oportet ea probe patrare. Ut autem opera nostra bona perfectaque sint, necesse est ut illa fiant una mente satisfaciendi Deo.**

The Pope therefore condemns theories that refuse to consider the species of an act, the object of an act, and characterize the goodness or badness of an act without regard to the kind of act involved, but rely entirely on the actor's intent, the consequences of the act, or a combination of both intent and consequence. Teleological theories of ethics--utilitarianism, consequentialism, proportionalism--thus stand condemned as irreconcilable with classical moral thinking.

One must therefore reject the thesis, characteristic of teleological and proportionalist theories, which holds that it is impossible to qualify as morally evil according to its species — its "object" — 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.

VS, 79.

The moral uprightness of the object of an act, of its species, is determined by reference to the "order of reason," which means by reference to 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." VS, 79. In other words, the object or species of an act is measured by "the contents of the natural law," which is equivalent of saying "that ordered complex of 'personal goods' which serve the 'good of the person': the good which is the person himself and his perfection." VS, 79. The Ten Commandments present a good summary of the contents of the natural law. VS, 79.

There are, then acts whose object is always disordered, whose species are, in each and every circumstance, evil intrinsically, and must never be done.

Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature "incapable of being ordered" to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church's moral tradition, have been termed "intrinsically evil" (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church teaches that "there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object."

VS, 79.***

The Pope then gives some examples--some express, some implied, but in any event not intended to be exhaustive--of such intrinsically evil acts--prohibited in all times and all places:

• Acts which are hostile to life itself: homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, voluntary suicide;
  
• Acts which violate the integrity of the human person: mutilation, physical and mental torture, attempts to coerce the spirit (forced conversions); use of artificial contraception, homosexuality, adultery;
• Acts which offend human dignity: forcing a person to accept subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, trafficking in women and children, treating humans as if they were mere instruments of profit, and subjecting them to degrading conditions of work;
  
• Acts which are unjust to God: idolatry, blasphemy.
  

VS, 80-81.

No good intention, no circumstance, no alleged good that may be derived thereby--nothing--excuses or justifies the undertaking of an intrinsically evil act:

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. . . . Consequently, circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act "subjectively" good or defensible as a choice.

VS, 81.

There are such things as intrinsically evil acts. Their existence is true. Their denial involves a rejection of man's created nature, of the truth of who man is. More, they involve the rejection of Jesus Christ, the Truth incarnate, who displayed in himself, the truth of man and the Truth of God, and who promised man that he would know the Truth, including the Truth about evil. The Christ who promised man the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, of Truth that would set him free, that would allow man to "interiorize the law, to receive it and to live it as the motivating force of true personal freedom, 'the perfect law, the law of liberty.'" VS, 83 (citing James 1:25).
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*The Pope quotes St. Thomas's In Duo Praecepta Caritatis et in Decem Legis Praecepta. De Dilectione Dei: Opuscula Theologica, II, No. 1168.
**VS, 78. The Pope cites to St. Alphonsus Liguori's work The Practice of Loving Jesus Christ, VII, 3.
***The quotation is from the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia (December 2, 1984), 17: AAS 77 (1985), 221, but reference is also made to Paul VI, Address to Members of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, (September 1967): AAS 59 (1967), 962: "Far be it from Christians to be led to embrace another opinion, as if the Council taught that nowadays some things are permitted which the Church had previously declared intrinsically evil. Who does not see in this the rise of a depraved moral relativism, one that clearly endangers the Church's entire doctrinal heritage?"

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law: Part 7: Moral Good and Moral Evil

MAN HAS FREE WILL. That means he moves about in a moral world with a moral order, a moral order that the conformity with which is good, the nonconformity with which is evil. In what exactly does the distinction between good and evil consist? Upon what is that distinction founded?

Mercier insists that there is a real, intrinsic distinction between moral good and evil. It is not merely something in the eye of the beholder, something subjective, a taste, an individual, particular matter-of-choice. Whether something is morally good or morally evil is not defined by our choice; it exists regardless of our choice; it pre-exists or is antecedent to our choice; it survives our choice and remains the same consequent to our choice; it is absolutely unaffected by our choice. We have no power over the moral order; it is entirely a "given" to us. In short, our choice is judged by conformity to the moral order which is objective.

We are aware of this objective, real, intrinsic distinction between good and evil in three ways. First, it is felt by our conscience. Second, it is confirmed inductively. Third, it can be established deductively.

There is an internal witness to moral good and evil: our conscience. We may quote here the beautiful words of Cardinal Newman:

My nature feels towards the voice of conscience as towards a person. When I obey it, I feel a satisfaction; when I disobey, a soreness-just like that which I feel in pleasing or offending some revered friend.

John Henry Newman, Callista (London 1910), 314-315. Certain things present themselves to our conscience as good and right. Other things present themselves as the opposite: wrong and evil. To take the position that there is not a faculty in us that feels shame, that feels guilt, that judges some things to be good and right and others evil and wrong is, by the common testimony of mankind, untenable.

The fact that we have this internal sense, this internal compass and internal judge, suggests an external, objective moral order which it perceives. The external reality of this order contains the "notes of necessity, universality, and persistence." [229(30)] This external, objective order subjectively sensed by human conscience as one of necessity, universality, and persistence, is the moral order. It presents itself as something over and above-and-beyond the passions and mere self-interest. It is another sort of voice from the urging pleas of our passion, or from the argument of self-interest. It is the echo from another place in the mind's mountains. "An echo implies a voice; a voice a speaker. That speaker I love and I fear." (Newman) Inductively, the most fitting explanation for this is the existence of a moral order "anterior to every code of merely human origin and independent of all contingent circumstances." [229(30)]

Hence, short of denying the natural capacity of human reason to know the truth, and of thus logically professing skepticism, we must admit that the distinction between moral good and evil is founded on the very nature of things.

[229-30(30)]

The third argument is more distant, less personal, but steely and irrefutable. It is deductive. It hits us in the face, though maybe not in the heart, with the logic of syllogism. Something that hits the face like a cold wind is not less true than something which hits us within, like the subtle softness of a man who yields to love. A man's heart can be full of love, but he will die of exposure, just like a man whose heart is full of hate or bitterness, if he persists to go out without a overcoat in a blizzard. Reason is reason to the heart of gold as to the heart of iron.

Major	"The good or right is by definition that which leads to the end of man's rational nature; conversely, we call wrong whatever is in opposition to the end of human nature."
Minor	"Now there must be some objective suitable and others suitable to human nature."
Conclusion	"Therefore between moral good and evil there must be a distinction which is founded on the nature of things."

[230(30)] Informed by the voice of conscience and inductive and deductive arguments, we can be assured that there is such a thing as a moral order which is founded upon the very nature of things. It is an antecedent given. There is nothing we can do to change it (we are not gods). And even if we were gods, we could not change it. We cannot change the nature of things, and so it follows we cannot change moral good and moral evil.

Our perception of the reality of the moral order is not the result positive or merely extrinsic influences. Someone didn't posit it, suggest it, will it into existence, even God did not arbitrarily posit it. It is so intrinsic, so fundamental that it cannot be changed, even by God, for the moral order, based as it is on the eternal law, is the expression of God himself. And God, who is Eternal Law, does not change. Deus immutabilis est. "The distinction between goodness and badness of human actions is not explained in its ultimate analysis by any extrinsic or positive influence, whether human or divine." [230(31)] (emphasis added).

Nor is the moral order a result of "traditional preposssessions, social conventions or laws." It is not, as Montaigne maintained, the result of educational prejudice. It is not, as Hobbes and Rousseau maintained, the result of the civil law, which, to them was the foundation of all morality. It is not what Puffendorf or Descartes suggest, the result of God's untrammeled will which decides willy nilly what is good and what is evil. The moral order is not even based upon an "absolutely free decree of God," as William of Ockham or John Calvin maintained. [230(31)] Mercier explains.

The opinion that makes the distinction between good and evil depend on the [absolute, untrammeled] free will of God leads to inadmissible consequences: (a) God might then make blasphemy, perjury, violation of contracts and the like obligatory upon us. (b) Whatever is morally good would be obligatory, and even heroism would be a duty forced upon us. (c) If all moral law owed its origin to a free act of the sovereign will of God, a positive revelation would be necessary for us to discern the difference between good and evil [because all good and evil would be based upon an arbitrary edict of God]. Such conclusions as these condemn the principle from which they logically follow.

[230-31(31)] Mercier thus reasonably rejects the notion of a potentia Dei absoluta, and opts for a potentia Dei ordinata.

Since nature is created by God, and moral right and moral wrong is found in the nature of things, it follows that moral right and moral wrong is something that is God's bailiwick, not ours. But even God is limited by who he is, and he cannot make good evil by decree, for that is equivalent to saying that he can change himself. God, who is goodness itself, cannot make a good thing evil or an evil thing good. His power is not absolute in the sense that he can contradict himself or deny himself. Those who want to wrest from God the power to define good and evil are wannabe deicides, wannabe legicides. But just as one cannot squelch the reality of nature, of an objective wrong and right built upon nature, one cannot kill God.

Depiction of Parable of Dives and Lazarus, Codex Aureus Epternacensis (ca. 1040)

It is true that a man can poison his own heart and the heart of his fellows against God, just like he persuade others to sin against the natural law, and to maintain irrationally that there is no natural law. But to claim to be a deicide or a legicide is the most foolish and vain and quixotic of boasts. It is the feigned blindness of one that can see. It is the feigned sight of one who is blind. To claim to be beyond the moral law, to be a creator of it, an Übermensch, is rank idiocy and hubris. These are the raves and rantings of an unbalanced lunatic, of ungoverned, ungovernable modern man. A man in rebellion against the natural order and in rebellion against God.

Friederich Nietzsche

Hear me Nietzsche if you are able! Why did you kick against the goads? Are you there with Dives? Have you learned the foolishness of your utterly blasphemous boast, "Gott is tot"? You, who claimed to arrogate to yourself not only God's potentia ordinata but claimed even a power he did not have, a potentia absoluta? What has become of you? You remain, your boasts notwithstanding, subject to the power of God. You, like Dives, have heard God's voice, the voice of the very God that you claimed to have killed, call you, Stulte! "You Fool!" How much that in your vituperative madness you wrote would you retract! No, Nietzsche. No, no, no, no! let's away to truth!

The "Mouth of Hell" Where Unrepentant Deniers of God and His Law Live

We shall be content to be Lazarus, to be counted among the anawim and not the Übermenschen whose bodies, despite their boasts, get sick, grow old, and die like ours. We trust our inner sense, and we trust our reason: We believe in God, in created nature, and in the moral order that is therein inscribed. And we shall sing with the Saints, not of our own power, but of the one and only God, the sovereign Lord of nature's might, the Magnae potentiae Deus:

Plasmator hominis, Deus, qui cuncta solus ordinans, humum iubes producere reptantis et ferae genus:	Maker of man, who from from Thy throne dost order all things, God alone; by whose decree the teeming earth to reptile and to beast gave birth:
Qui magna rerum corpora, dictu iubentis vivida, ut serviant per ordinem subdens dedisti homini:	The mighty forms that fill the land, instinct with life at Thy command, are given subdued to humankind for service in their rank assigned.
Repelle a servis tuis, quicquid per immunditiam, aut moribus se suggerit, aut actibus se interserit.	From all Thy servants drive away whate'er of thought impure to-day hath been with open action blent, or mingled with the heart's intent.
Da gaudiorum praemia, da gratiarum munera: dissolve litis vincula, astringe pacis foedera.	In heaven Thine endless joys bestow, and grant Thy gifts of grace below; from chains of strife our souls release, bind fast the gentle bands of peace.
Praesta, Pater piissime, Patrique compar Unice, cum Spiritu Paraclito regnans per omne saeculum.	Grant this, O Father, ever One with Christ, Thy sole-begotten Son, Whom, with the Spirit we adore, one God, both now and evermore.

(The hymn above, Plasmator hominis Deus, is one of a series of six hymns attributed to Pope St. Gregory the Great each emphasizing one day of the six days of creation. The other hymns are Lucis creator optime, Immensi caeli conditor, Telluris ingens conditor, Caeli Deus sanctissime, and Magnae potentiae Deus.)

By Nature Equal: How Are Men Created Equal? Identifying the Host Property, Part 3

SINGULARITY IS THE NEXT CRITERION that Coons and Brennan explore in their survey of the Western convention of human equality. Having tentatively identified the host property of human equality to be the capacity of the self to accept or reject the duty of the lateral moral order (the duty of reciprocity) that arises from man's encounter with another of his kind, Coons and Brennan explore whether this tentatively-identified host property is sufficiently singular or unique as to form the foundation of human equality. Whether the host property is sufficient singular to meet the criterion of singularity is closely related to whether it meets the criterion of importance.

Coons and Brennan perceive the convention of human equality to spring from a certain dignity in man, one that is derived or is based upon a "discrete metaphysical status." (p. 58) Either the relation itself, or the host property from which that relation springs, must relate to a unique metaphysical feature in man if we are to be true to the Western convention.

Creation of Eve by Michelangelo
Sistine Chapel

Before his encounter with Eve, Adam had the power of moral commitment: he had moral duties to God, and he had some attenuated moral obligation to creation arising from his dominion over them. Following his encounter with Eve, however, this moral capacity in man underwent a radical awakening, a transformation. It was as if Adam was a complete man only in potentia, potentially, until his encounter with Eve, whereafter he became complete man in actum, in act. The transformation is so fundamental one can say that, in a manner of speaking, in Adam's encounter with Eve, humanity was born. It was not good for man to be alone, the Scriptures say God said within himself, implying that man's good required that there be more than one of his kind and that there be lateral obligations that arise from such encounter with another of his kind. Thus, this relation of Adam and Eve is a source relation because it is the cause or source of a host property. It would appear that the relation between Adam and Eve is what gives rise to the host property which Coons and Brennan have tentatively identified, that being the capacity of the self to accept or reject the duty of the lateral moral order (the duty of reciprocity) since it did not exist but in potentia before such relation. (pp.44, 59) This relation in fact meets the singularity criterion that Coons and Brennan had, at the outset of their investigation, set forth as an indicium of the host property of human equality. It is distinct from the ascendant and descendent moral orders, however important they may be.

[T]he relation of mutually conscious persons is a metaphysical novum. It literally springs into existence with the encounter [between Adam and Eve]. . . . [W]e have . . . [through Adam] encountered the homo sapiens next door and in her discovered a different kettle of moral fish.

(p. 60) Coons and Brennan insist that this source relation that gives rise to the host property of reciprocity presupposes an objective moral order, one independent of the will of Adam, that is, one independent of the will of man. Man is not the measure of the lateral order, but must discover it, must recognize it, and must conform to it.

Here arises a problematic. With increasing frequency in the West, the notion of a preexisting and objective moral order has been rejected. We are increasingly skeptical, increasing relativistic in our ethic. The rejection of an objective moral order is endemic in our academia, our intelligentsia, our media, and our political and legal institutions. There is a disintegration of our moral fiber, of our received conventions. As such, the convention upon which Coons and Brennan rely to identify human equality is seriously threadbare. Even if we still tenuously hold on to the convention that such an objective moral order exists, a "preinstitutional source" of morality, such a hold is accidental, as we have lost our theory of such an order. (p. 63) We have forgotten the natural law. It is as we have become Kakure Kirishitan: over time our Christ appears more and more like Buddha, our Mary more and more like Kannon, and our Pater noster sounds more and more like a Buddhist chant. Only instead of replacing Christianity with Buddhism, Christianity has been displaced with secularism, materialism, relativism, individualism, all products of a modernity that has sloughed of its Christian past with greater and greater relish and greater aggressiveness. Did the Christian faith leave the Kakure Kirishitan, and if it did, when? After so many planks of different wood have been replaced from the original, when does the Ship of Theseus lose its original character? When is it no longer the same ship? How much of our original convention remains? Are we as a society no longer Christian? No longer Western? Are we as a society no longer believers in an objective moral order? Are we as a society all relativists, all skeptics? Has that critical point been reached? It is a matter of debate.

If one concludes that belief in a natural and/or revealed order of morality is no longer typical, then for that individual our conclusion that Americans believe the convention defining human equality to be a statement of truth is simply wrong. Indeed, even the shared definition of equality could have evaporated along with the belief in an unchosen morality--another victim of modernity

(p. 64) Whether supported by the consensus of convention or not is ultimately immaterial as to whether this objective moral exists. If the consensus of convention no longer supports that there is a reality beyond mere convention, but the consensus of convention is now that all is convention, that says nothing about the real. It simply means that our convention is no longer reflective of, and, like an old and feeble man has become blinded to, the reality that is out there.

Coons and Brennan then recapitulate the results of their exploration before they turn to the last criterion of the host property that they have identified as the likely foundation of human equality: that is the criterion of uniformity.

If it exists, human equality will be a relation springing from the capacity to commit to the lateral good. In exercising this choice individuals assign meaning to themselves, forging a principal portion of their identity. Thus the specific capacity to accept or reject the search for the content of our obligation to others confronts us as both an opportunity and fate. It is opportunity insofar as the freedom to seek correct behavior makes moral self-perfection an option; it is fate insofar as that choice either to honor to to flout this obligation is inescapable. Each of us determines whether the dignity of others shall be honored; in so doing we settle our own identity. This capacity is the obvious host for the relation of equality, but only if it satisfies the final criterion of uniformity

(p. 65)

That will be the exploration of our next blog posting.