Knowing Right From Wrong
One
Prudence is the virtue, the art of making good decisions. Prudence is to choose the right action, for the right reason, and in the right circumstances.
Before we can do what is right we need to know what is right and what is wrong. That is the purpose of our intellect, to know good and evil.
How do we determine what is right and wrong, good and evil?
CCC 1750 says that the morality (goodness) of human acts depends upon three things:
The object chosen, i.e. what are you doing
The end in view or the intention, i.e. why did you do it, the motive
The circumstances surrounding the action
A good act requires the goodness of the object (what you are doing), intention (why you are doing it), and the circumstances. All three must be good for the action to be good.
Two
The Object of an Act
As we just said, a good act requires the goodness of the object (what you are doing), intention (why you are doing it), and the circumstances.
In moral theology, the nature or essence of a human act is called the “object” of an act. So the object of an act is the “what?” of an action. To put it really simply, the object of an act is what you are trying to do. This is the bedrock question when you’re trying to analyze whether a behavior is appropriate or inappropriate, good or evil.
The first question you have to ask yourself is, “What, exactly, am I trying to do here? What is the essence of the act I’m thinking about carrying out?” Other moral systems jump ahead to other questions, like, “What’s my motivation in all this?” or “What are the likely consequences of this action?” Those are important questions, but actually they’re not the most fundamental questions.
The most fundamental question is about the essence. It’s about the nature of the act. It’s about the object. It’s, “What exactly am I trying to do here?”
Three
An act isn’t just it’s material manifestations
An important thing to remember about human beings is that our natures are a combination of what is visible and invisible. We are body and soul, matter and spirit. So too, our actions have natures which are partly visible and partly invisible. Partly material and partly spiritual.
What that means is that you should never reduce the moral object (the essence or nature of an act) to the action’s material manifestations. A human act is never just the physical act.
So, for instance, adultery and marital consummation may have the same material manifestations, they might look the same empirically, but they are different kinds of actions. They’re acts of a different nature.
A woman taking the pill to regulate her cycle, and taking the pill to temporarily sterilize herself, might look the same empirically, but the physical act in both cases is part of a different moral object. It’s not the same kind of human act.
A final example: when the Jews in the Gospel said “Crucify him, crucify him!” it was murderous. When Christians during the Good Friday service say, “Crucify him, crucify him!” it’s worshipful remembrance. It may look or sound the same, but you can’t just define an action based on the empirical manifestations.
You can’t reduce human beings to just their physical component. The same goes for understanding the nature of a human act. You can’t just evaluate it according to what you see or hear on the surface. The nature of acts goes deeper than that.
Four
Intrinsically Evil Actions
The moral object is what the person chooses to do.
Have you decided to buy your secretary flowers? Have you chosen to donate to a political campaign? Have you decided to lie under oath? The first two actions are fine in themselves but lying is always wrong.
Some actions are, by nature, evil. Some actions are wrong even if you have a good intention, a good reason, or you hope for a good outcome. It is always wrong to perform an evil action and no reason or circumstances justifies doing evil.
Some actions are always evil - intrinsically evil. They are wrong regardless of your intention and regardless of the circumstances.
Examples of intrinsically evil actions are theft, slavery, exploitation, prostitution, torture, murder, lying, sexual sins such as fornication (sex outside of marriage), contracepted sex which means to sterilize a given act of intercourse of your own will through the pill, patch, tubal ligation or vasectomy, oral sex, artificial insemination and IVF, and homosexual acts.
The fundamental moral principle is do good and avoid evil. One can never do evil with the hope of a good outcome.
Five
Never Do Something Bad for the Sake of Something Good
As we’ve said, there are many factors when we’re trying to morally evaluate a situation. We have to look at motives, at probable outcomes, and at the duties of our state-in-life. But none of those factors can ever make an intrinsically evil action good. If an action is essentially evil, then whatever our motivations, or however desperate our circumstances, we must always refrain from doing it.
If we look at what we’re thinking of doing, and find that it’s wrong by nature like killing an innocent child or old person, seeking sexual stimulation from a person to whom we’re not married, taking God’s name in vain, or trying to cheat someone out of what rightfully belongs to them then we need to stop. That’s the baseline requirement of a moral life, to avoid what is intrinsically, necessarily wrong.