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The task of the moralist Christian point of view
The moralist must be the one who can be a resource for moral living by bringing sensitivity, reflection, and method to discerning the sorts of persons we ought to be and the sorts of actions we ought to perform when we face conflicting moral values. a/ Sensitivity Sensitivity is fundamental. It implies that moral living begins in the heart and not with an abstract principle about the nature of being human from which we draw crisp conclusions. Morality pertains to value, particularly the value, sacredness, or worth of persons and what befits their wellbeing. The foundational moral experience is a matter of the heart. It is affective, intuitive, imaginative, somatic. To bring sensitivity to moral analysis, then, is to engage artistic or mystical insight in the service of the moral life and moral reflection. We discover not only what morality is but also what love is, since to be moral and to be loving imply one another.The capacity for love, that is, the ability to appreciate and respond to love in all its forms, is the beginning of moral consciousness. Our moral knowledge and moral convictions come by way of affective experiences. That is to say, we are "awestruck" by the value of a person or the quality of an action and commit ourselves to them. Our affective commitment to and care for the value of persons and what befits their well-being are "reasons of the heart" which ultimately cannot be proven, yet which will always remain the final court of appeal for our moral judgments. We appeal to "reasons of the head," or our rational arguments, to confirm and demonstrate in a way that can be convincing to another what we already know by heart. In the moral life, head and heart work together. b/Reflection. As for the moralist , reflection is a sensitivity of the heart attuned to the presence of God. Such sensitivity requires prayer. A heart sensitive to God is born in prayer and is nurtured by prayerful attention to the presence of God in the diverse experiences of living. A heart so sensitive is alert to the diverse ways of God and can read the signs of God's presence and action in the world. Without this prayerful attentiveness to God, moral reflection stops short of attending to the fullness of the relationships which make up the moral life. The task of a moralist, then, involves learning to live in a way attuned to one's heart. Heartfelt experiences of values evoke a sense of awe in the presence of what is fitting. This is the mystical and artistic side of moral reflection. The place of sensitivity in moral reflection helps us to appreciate moral judgments as more like the artist's aesthetic judgment of beauty than they are the referee's judgment of playing by the rules. Within the Catholic moral tradition, the fundamental axiom that "morality is based on reality" How do we know reality? What can we know? How reliable is our knowledge? Our goal is to know reality as completely as possible before making a moral judgment. There are differences in the work of "reflection" seeking a judgment about what does or does not befit the human well-being: Social relativists look to what society approves in order to know what is morally right or wrong. Personal relativists use the criterion of self-satisfaction to confirm what is right or wrong. The emotivist school claims "The good is what I feel comfortable with." In that case, we would have no grounds to carry on any public discussion about different moral judgments, since all of our moral claims would be subject to custom, to personal satisfaction, or to subjective emotion. This would leave us no basis either for moral creativity or criticism. The critical realism claims " The experience is the beginning of knowledge. Experience seems to tell us that the knowledge we have is based on something that is really out there. The senses are stimulated and we are registering the sensations. But looking at what is out there and seeing it are only the first operations in the act of knowing. They only "input" the data; that is all, nothing more. Beyond gathering data and registering it, we want to "understand" the data, to "see into" it. Understanding is called forth by the question, "What is it?" Understanding puts the separate parts of the data into some kind of order so that we can grasp the whole of what is given. To answer the question "What is it?" we begin to sift through the data, to walk around it and look at it from all different sides and at all its relationships. In going through this process we come to a new way of seeing what we first experienced just by looking. Now, we understand. Understanding raises another question: "Is it so?" This is the question of adequacy, of truth. We want to have some assurance that what we "have looked at" and "understood" is so. Does our understanding reflect reasonably the reality of what we have experienced? To answer this question is to make a judgement. Making an accurate judgment we try to ask as many questions as we can about our understanding. Through experience we gather data, and through our understanding and judgment we try to account for as much data as possible Only when we reach such a critical judgment do we attain knowledge of reality in the proper sense. From this knowledge we move on to deciding and acting . On the way to the decision, if we meet new data for new experiences, it is necessary for us to revise any previous grasp of reality. Also, thoughtful but dissenting voices may cause us to reconsider our account and give attention to the truth grasped by another's contribution. In these ways we are led to revise our former ideas, formulations, or conclusions and to realize that we do not grasp the whole of reality through any one experience or express it in any one formulation. The very process by which we have come to knowledge and truth has so involved us in a relationship with the object that we can no longer be separated from it. For this reason we cannot really distinguish "objectivity" from its relationship to "subjectivity." The knowledge we have at any one time may be accurate and reliable, it is also partial. Our moral beliefs are approximations to the truth and therefore need to be revised in light of better evidence and improved reflection. c/ Method for the purpose of making a moral decision Thus far we have seen that the moralist's task begins with sensitivity, since morality is born in the heart, and moves on to a process of reflection in order to confirm and demonstrate what we know in an affective way. So far we have judged a certain value to be true and worthy of our attention (for example, the value of persons and what befits their wellbeing). Now, we move to make a moral decision . How do we justify our actions? This question asks for methods to help us organize the data of moral experience for the purpose of making a moral decision. Here are the following methods: a/ The teleological method is primarily concerned with determining which action would bring about the goal being sought. This method approaches the question "What ought I to do?" by raising and answering the question "What is my goal?" b/ The deontological method is primarily concerned with establishing the law, duty, right, or obligation in question on the basis of the intrinsic aspects of an act rather than on its consequences. Therefore, a deontologist approaches the question "What ought I to do?" by first asking and answering the question "What is the law?" or "What is my duty?" c/ The responsibility model ( the third method ) Moral persons are seen as ones who are acted upon and then must respond in accordance with their interpretation of what is happening to them. |
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Nature of the Good
The good is the foundation and the goal of all moral striving, Ethics, then, whether philosophical or theological, must in some way be specific about what the good is and where it can be found. For Aristotle, the good is happiness; for hedonists it is pleasure; for utilitarians it is in what is most useful. The scholastic philosophy of the Roman Catholic tradition sets up an identity between "good" and a "being's own perfection" (ST.I, q.5). That is, the nature of the good is the full actualization of any being's potential,The basic conviction of Christian faith that God is good.
God—The Center of Value God is the only center of value, the fixed point of reference for Christian morality. With faith informing reason on the nature of the good, the believer sees God as the fullness of being and sees God's actions as good because they flow from the divine nature—which is love. The monotheistic faith of Christianity tolerates only one center of value. All other forms of goodness are always a derived goodness dependent upon the prior goodness of God. Anything else is good only in relation to God as a reflection or mediation of God. The goodness of God is disclosed in scripture, pre-eminently in Jesus the Christ. Our-knowledge-of- God's-goodness is given in our knowledge of Jesus in scripture,. The convictions we have about God form the presuppositions of the moral life. The Christian is moral because God is good and because the goodness of God is always and every where present to us, enables and requires us to be responsible for the goodness of the world. What God "enables and requires" of us becomes the norm of the moral life. Morality is authorized by social conventions, or by the desire for self-fulfillment, or by the requirements of general rules of conduct which reason demands. In the social life, many people abuse one another. This abuse is considered as a sin. In reality, Sin is considered as the infraction of a rule rather than the turning away from GOD. Thus, moral actions become so many "works" of moral rightness rather than grateful responses to the goodness of God. A moral deliberation becomes a computer-like problem solving rather than than a prayerful discernment of what God enables and requires. In the society, according to moral philosophers, some moral actions are judged wrong because of harms they cause to self or others, or because they violate rational rules of conduct. Also in the society, there are moral responsibilities are to oneself or other persons, or to the demands for rationality. From a theological point of view, some actions which cause harms to self or others are wrong before God, because people are the images of God.God authorizes and requires morality. So, in the moral life, anyone has some responsibilities to God. Relative autonomy morality. The moral life is based on reason. The Catholic tradition holds that Faith inforrns_reason, but it does not replace, it,. Faith and reason are two sources of moral knowledge to which the Catholic tradition appeals. The Catholic tradition has not maintained such a complete dependence of morality on faith. It holds to a relative autonomy for faith and morality.
Autonomous morality Autonomous morality claims that Christian morality must be accessible to everyone through reason. And It also claims that the content of Christian and non-Christian morality at the level of concrete norms and values is substantively the same.
Christian Morality What Christian faith does do is to provide a distinctive context in which one lives the moral life, a religious motivation for living morally, a self-understanding informed by faith, and a specific religious intentionality namely in union with God.
Linking Morality to Faith The Linking Morality to Faith is called by Donald D. Evans as "the logic of self-involvement . The self-involving statement commits the speaker to a certain manner of living and to having certain attitudes and feelings. To say, for example, "God is Creator," involves the believer in certain kinds of activity (obedience), certain attitudes (reverence), and certain feelings (awe). The good Samaritan looked on the victim in the ditch as himself and so took care of him in the way he would means to love God and neighbor as you love yourself. Scripture and theological tradition provide an abundance of religious onlooks through parables, symbols, and creeds. When religious beliefs form a great part of the framework within which the moral agent looks on experience, they become a powerful influence on moral character and action. The person who holds Christian religious symbols in his or her imagination will look on the world differently than someone whose imagination is not influenced by Christian beliefs. Consequently, he or she may respond differently. One comes to know the self-involving meaning of the religious symbol by participating in the life of the community which is formed by those beliefs. The self involving meaning of a religious belief by means of developing a personal openness and affinity with God. How one lives morally is not necessarily predictable from the religious beliefs one holds. The degree of a person's existential involvement depends on many factors.The biological, psychological, and social-cultural conditioning on an individual have a great deal to do with the extent to which one is able to appropriate and live by the value component of religious beliefs. How morality is linked, at least intellectually, to religious beliefs about God's nature, will, and activity. James Gustafson gives 3 examples: God as Creator The belief that God is creator engenders a sense of dependence upon one another, and ultimately upon God. It entails the self-awareness of human persons as stewards of creation who seek to preserve the good which God has created. It also provides a reason for being moral, namely, to express one's allegiance to the one who provides all things. Dependence also engenders an attitude of living with the limitations of created reality., God as Beneficent The belief that God is beneficent is the belief that God gives freely and in love. This belief entails the gratitude. In thankfulness to God for gifts freely bestowed, we ought to use our gifts for the well being of all. We are to be concerned for the well-being of others the way God has been concerned for ours. God as End of All Creation The belief that God is the end of both human persons as well as the rest of creation engenders a sense of direction in the moral life. To be oriented toward God who is loving, who is just, and who wills the well-being of creation is to be oriented in one's moral life toward what benefits the well-being of the human community and the interdependence of all creation Christian Faith and the Content of Morality On the basis of linguistic and sociological analysis, then, we have an insight into how religious beliefs can qualify the content of morality. All that pertains to the morality of being (which deals with character), and to the morality of doing (which deals with action and decision-making). Faith and Character What one perceives in a situation, and the responsibilities one believes he or she has, depend on one's character . Character in turn shapes one's decisions and actions . Faith and Actions Making a moral decision is also qualified by faith. Christian faith aids in discernment by helping the believer to order a plurality of values, to remain focused on basic human values, and to rank moral options. In these ways and others, Christian beliefs help one to make a decision. Limited moral obligations are specifically dependant on being Christian James Gustafson's analysis of the distinctiveness of Christian ethics provides a succinct picture of what is at stake.For him, Christian beliefs can and do make a difference at the level of the three substantive concerns of ethics. - First, at the level of the good, Christian beliefs offer distinctive reasons for being moral based on one's experience of the reality of God in Jesus and through the Spirit as the ultimate good. -Second, at the level of the person, moral character can be distinguished by the perspectives, dispositions, affections, and intentions which Christian beliefs engender. -Third, at the level of criteria of judgment, Christian beliefs offer a distinctive point of reference used to give guidance or to provide criteria for moral actions. In some instances, these points of reference indicate courses of action which may not satisfy the desire for rationality or universal applicability, but they do have a binding force on those committed to Christian beliefs which have shaped a Christian imagination. Faith and Morality: Critical-Dialogical Relationship Christian beliefs also directly influence decision making and action at the level of specific obligation. This obligation includes acts directed to God, such as prayer and worship, as well as acts which are proper to belonging to a certain Christian community, such as providing a religious education. James Walter speaks of such a relationship as a "critical-dialogical" one. This means that faith and morality remain relatively autonomous but continuously interact to shape and reshape the understanding of one another. While religious symbols give form and content to moral experience, moral experience moves toward faith in order to give new insight into the content of the religious symbol. If the symbols used to express the nature and actions of God do not find confirmation in and through one's own experiences, then we should not be surprised to find that the reasons for being moral, the principles and values inferred from these symbols, and the actions required by them will have no persuasive power over one's life. |
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Nature of The human person Christian point of view -The human person The Roman Catholic moral theology claims that to take seriously the human is to take seriously the creator God who became incarnate in the humanity of Jesus. It also claims that Human activity must be judged insofar as it refers to the human person integrally and adequately considered. In other words, in personlistic morality, the human person adequately is the criterion for discovering whether an act is morally right. This chapter considers the anthropological basis of personalistic morality. It begins with the theological foundations by presenting an understanding of the human person as the image of God. Its second section briefly describes the fundamental dimensions of "the human person adequately considered": a relational being, an embodied subject, an historical being, and abeing fundamentally equal to others but uniquely original. Finally, it will briefly state the personalistic criterion which is to be applied in making a moral judgment about human acts.
I- Image of God The person adequately considered is the norm of morality: As long as God offers divine love ( grace), humans will ever remain God’s image and enjoy a sacred dignity, whether in sin or not, whether acting human or not. As an anthropological statement, "image of God" says that we all share in a common human condition which has a common end, namely God. It also says that human dignity does not depend ultimately on human achievements, but on divine love . God is perfectly self-giving. Trinity is the theological code word for the freedom and totality of God's self-giving. It means that God is eternally the giver or lover (Father), the receiver or beloved (Son), and the gift or love which binds them together (Spirit). When God expresses divine love outside the Trinity, nature comes into being, with the human person being the point at which nature reaches self-consciousness. The trinitarian vision sees that no one exists by oneself, The individual and the community co-exist. Humanity and relatedness are proportional so that the deeper one's participation in relationships is, the more human one becomes. Since community is necessary to grow in God’s image, the fundamental responsibility of being the image of God for living in community is to give oneself away as completely as possible in imitation of God’s self giving. From this trinitarian vision of the human person as the image of God, a personalistic morality is the dynamic of receiving and giving love. II -The fundamental dimensions of "the human person adequately considered" 1/- A Relational Being To be a human person is to be essentially directed toward others. Male and female, God created them" (Gn 1:26-27). Personal existence, then, can never be seen as an "I" in isolation, but always as "I" and "you" in relationship. The relational dimension of being human reaches its high point in our relationship to God in faith, hope, and love. Each person has eternal significance and worth. The moral import of this aspect of the person is that all relationships must find their source and fulfillment in God. After all, the fundamental conviction of our faith is that human life is fulfilled in knowing, loving, and serving God in communion with others.
2/- An Embodied Subject To speak of the human person as a subject is to say that the person is in charges of his or her own life. That is, the person is a moral agent with a certain degree of autonomy and self-determination empowered to act according to his or her conscience, in freedom, and with knowledge. The Catholic tradition has been clear that we cannot speak of morality in any true sense apart from human persons who are able to act knowingly and willingly (cf.ST. I— II, prologue). The great moral implication of the person as subject is that no one may ever use a human person as an object or as a means to an end the way we do other things of the world. Every right entails a duty, and the rights that belong to the person as subject entail the duty of demanding respect for them. And so we must respect the other as an autonomous agent capable of acting with the freedom of an informed conscience. Exploitation of human persons for one's own advantage is never allowed. The human person as a subject is not merely something we have to house our subjectivity, but are essential to our being integrated persons. We express ourselves as the image of God through our bodies. What concerns the body inevitably concerns the whole person, for our bodies are essential to being human and to relating in human ways. The fact that we have bodies affects every expression of ourselves in relationship. The affection of love, for example, needs to be expressed in bodily ways, such as through a gift, or a kiss, or an embrace, or sexual intercourse. Since the body is subject to the laws of the material world, we must take these laws into account in the way we treat our bodies. We are not free to intervene in the body in any way we want. To relate well to others, we must take care of our bodily health and respect bodily integrity. Bodily existence also means that we must accept our genetic endowment. As body persons we are a part of the material world, we can act as co-agents with God to make the world a continuously more livable place.
3/- An Historical Subject An embodied spirit is necessarily an historical subject. The moral imperative of being an historical subject is to integrate the past into the person we are becoming so as to shape a future rather than to settle into a static condition. The moral significance of the personal historical process is that one's moral responsibility is proportionate to his or her capacities at each stage of development. We must constantly discern and order laws and values which will enrich human dignity.
4/- The dimensions of being human considered thus far affirm fundamental equality among human persons. Equality allows us to take an interest in everything that is human and to understand the moral obligations which inform our common humanity. However, human persons are sufficiently diverse so that we must also taken into account the originality and uniqueness of each person.This means that while everyone shares certain common features of humanity, each one does so differently and to different degrees: a person's unique moral character according to the uncontrollable and the somewhat controllable features. The features of ourselves over which we have no control in establishing our uniqueness are our genetic endowment, our unconscious motives, and the social-cultural conditioning to which we have been subjected in the process of growing up. Beyond these uncontrollable features are those over which we do have some control: our beliefs, or stable convictions, which give direction and meaning to our lives. The perspective, or point of view, from which we look on the world also accounts for originality; dispositions, or a readiness to act in a certain way, mark our unique character. Affections, or sensitivities, influence the depth and swiftness of our moral responses. our intention, or the basic direction of our actions governed by our knowledge and freedom, puts the distinctive mark of personal style on what we do. The imagination is the capacity to construct a world. By means of the imagination we bring together diverse experiences into a meaningful whole. A person is onlymorally culpable for failing to do_what he is capable of doing. III -The Personalistic Criterion An action is morally right if it is beneficial to the person adequately considered in himself or herself (i.e., as an unique, embodied spirit) and in his or her relationship., to others, to social structures, to the material world, and to God) |