Choosing Good
One
St. Paul encourages his friend and young Bishop, Timothy with this advice, “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (2 Tim 4:1-4). This pressing advice from Paul makes several crucial points, but I wish to focus on two; first, that moral correction and exhortation are an important task in both following and leading others to Jesus. This is what Paul calls ‘sound teaching.’ Second, there will come a time when few people will want to receive this correction, choosing instead teachers for themselves who will justify moral evil in the place of good. As a result, they wander into falsehoods that will ultimately cost them their soul. May we seek sound teaching and reject any teaching that rejects the moral wisdom of Christ.
Two
The majority of the New Testament is devoted to exhorting us to do good and avoid evil. Evil enters us through our will. Once we choose it, we become evil doers. This simple principle sounds good but is too easy to ignore reject. It is the nature of evil to attract under the pretext of good, and it is through this illusion that temptation enters. Every sin I have ever committed I committed under the pretext that I was seeking the good. The CCC teaches, “Freedom makes man a moral subject. When he acts deliberately, man is, so to speak, the father of his acts. Human acts, that is, acts that are freely chosen in consequence of a judgement of conscience, can be morally evaluated. They are either good or evil” (#1749). How do we evaluate actions morally? What tells us that this act is good and to be done, or evil and to be avoided? Before answering this question, let’s call upon the Holy Spirit to open our hearts and soften our resistance so that we can receive His truth.
Three
#1750 of the CCC says, the morality (goodness) of human acts depends upon three things:
The object chosen; what are you doing
The end in view or the intention; why did you do it - motive
The circumstances surrounding the action
A good act requires the goodness of
The moral Object – what you are doing
The Intention – why you are doing it
And the Circumstances.
All (3) must be good for the action to be good. Thus, intending to do good or having a good consequence while choosing an evil means to attain it do not make a bad act good. As St. Paul says, we cannot do evil so that good may come from it. (cf. Rom 3:8).
Four
If I ask myself the question, ‘what am I doing,’ the answer to that is the moral object. If the moral object is bad, then no matter my good intention or the circumstances, the act is always evil. This is what is known as an intrinsically evil act. An act is considered intrinsically evil when by its nature violates God’s commands to love Him and neighbor. Some examples of intrinsically evil actions (Specified by the 10 Commandments):
Theft
Slavery
Exploitation
Prostitution
Torture
Murder
Lying
All Sexual sins (fornication – sex outside of marriage, contracepted sex either through barrier, pill, or surgery; oral or anal copulation; homosexual acts, AI and IVF).
Thus, the most basic principle remains: It is never permissible to do evil.
There are times in life when we are left with only two choices:
Heroism
Sin
God will always give us the grace to remain faithful to Him. There’s no such thing as a prudent abortion, one can never attack the life of a child to save the mother or to relieve the suffering of rape. Abortion always violates the good of innocent human life.
Difficult cases only prove that sometimes heroism is necessary to do what is right.
Five
My intention and circumstances must also be good for the act to be good. If something good but with a bad intention, like when I was little and had to say I was sorry to my sister or brother, but did so defiantly, then my intention wasn’t so good. Jesus calls us to love and serve Him in Spirit and in truth. This means that He wants our thoughts, desires, and actions all to flow from His Holy Spirit, who lives within us. The demands of choosing good by having a good object, intention, and circumstances may seem hard at first, but as our hearts are rehabilitated and transformed with grace and our response, we will find that indeed, Jesus has truly set us free to love and serve with joy!