Explanation of Catholic Morals
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EXPLANATION OF CATHOLIC MORALS
A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals
by
Rev. JOHN H. STAPLETON
New York, Cincinnati, Chicago:
Benzinger Brothers
Printers to the Holy Apostolic See
Publishers of Benzinger's Magazine
1913
Nihil Obstat.
REMY LAFORT,
_Censor Librorum_.
Imprimatur
JOHN M. FARLEY,
Archbishop of New York
New York, March 25, 1904
Copyright, 1904, by Benzinger Brothers.
PREFACE
THE contents of this volume appeared originally in The Catholic
Transcript, of Hartford, Connecticut, in weekly installments, from
February, 1901, to February, 1903. During the course of their
publication, it became evident that the form of instruction adopted was
appreciated by a large number of readers in varied conditions of life--
this appreciation being evinced, among other ways, by a frequent and
widespread demand for back-numbers of the publishing journal. The
management finding itself unable to meet this demand, suggested the
bringing out of the entire series in book-form; and thus, with very few
corrections, we offer the "Briefs" to all desirous of a better
acquaintance with Catholic Morals.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
I. Believing and Doing
II. The Moral Agent
III. Conscience
IV. Laxity and Scruples
V. The Law of God and Its Breach
VI. Sin
VII. How to Count Sins
VIII. Capital Sins
IX. Pride
X. Covetousness
XI. Lust
XII. Anger
XIII. Gluttony
XIV. Drink
XV. Envy
XVI. Sloth
XVII. What We Believe
XVIII. Why We Believe
XIX. Whence Our Belief: Reason
XX. Whence Our Belief: Grace and Will
XXI. How We Believe
XXII. Faith and Error
XXIII. The Consistent Believer
XXIV. Unbelief
XXV. How Faith May Be Lost
XXVI. Hope
XXVII. Love of God
XXVIII. Love of Neighbor
XXIX. Prayer
XXX. Petition
XXXI. Religion
XXXII. Devotions
XXXIII. Idolatry and Superstition
XXXIV. Occultism
XXXV. Christian Science
XXXVI. Swearing
XXXVII. Oaths
XXXVIII. Vows
XXXIX. The Professional Vow
XL. The Profession
XLI. The Religious
XLII. The Vow of Poverty
XLIII. The Vow of Obedience
XLIV. The Vow of Chastity
XLV. Blasphemy
XLVI. Cursing
XLVII. Profanity
XLVIII. The Law of Rest
XLIX. The Day of Rest
L. Keeping the Lord's Day Holy
LI. Worship of Sacrifice
LII. Worship of Rest
LIII. Servile Works
LIV. Common Works
LV. Parental Dignity
LVI. Filial Respect
LVII. Filial Love
LVIII. Authority and Obedience
LIX. Should We Help Our Parents?
LX. Disinterested Love in Parents
LXI. Educate the Children
LXII. Educational Extravagance
LXIII. Godless Education
LXIV. Catholic Schools
LXV. Some Weak Points in the Catholic School System
LXVI. Correction
LXVII. Justice and Rights
LXVIII. Homicide
LXIX. Is Suicide a Sin?
LXX. Self-Defense
LXXI. Murder Often Sanctioned
LXXII. On the Ethics of War
LXXIII. The Massacre of the Innocents
LXXIV. Enmity
LXXV. Our Enemies
LXXVI. Immorality
LXXVII. The Sink of Iniquity
LXXVIII. Wherein Nature Is Opposed
LXXIX. Hearts
LXXX. Occasions
LXXXI. Scandal
LXXXII. Not Good to Be Alone
LXXXIII. A Helping Hand
LXXXIV. Thou Shalt Not Steal
LXXXV. Petty Thefts
LXXXVI. An Oft Exploited, But Specious Plea
LXXXVII. Contumely
LXXXVIII. Defamation
LXXXIX. Detraction
XC. Calumny
XCI. Rash Judgment
XCII. Mendacity
XCIII. Concealing the Truth
XCIV. Restitution
XCV. Undoing the Evil
XCVI. Paying Back
XCVII. Getting Rid of Ill-Gotten Goods
XCVIII. What Excuses From Restitution
XCIX. Debts
MORAL BRIEFS.
CHAPTER I.
BELIEVING AND DOING.
MORALS pertain to right living, to the things we do, in relation to God
and His law, as opposed to right thinking, to what we believe, to
dogma. Dogma directs our faith or belief, morals shape our lives. By
faith we know God, by moral living we serve Him; and this double
homage, of our mind and our works, is the worship we owe our Creator
and Master and the necessary condition of our salvation.
Faith alone will save no man. It may be convenient for the easy-going
to deny this, and take an opposite view of the matter; but convenience
is not always a safe counsellor. It may be that the just man liveth by
faith; but he lives not by faith alone. Or, if he does, it is faith of
a different sort from what we define here as faith, viz., a firm assent
of the mind to truths revealed. We have the testimony of Holy Writ,
again and again reiterated, that faith, even were it capable of moving
mountains, without good works is of no avail. The Catholic Church is
convinced that this doctrine is genuine and reliable enough to make it
her own; and sensible enough, too. For faith does not make a man
impeccable; he may believe rightly, and live badly. His knowledge of
what God expects of him will not prevent him from doing just the
contrary; sin is as easy to a believer as to an unbeliever. And he who
pretends to have found religion, holiness, the Holy Ghost, or whatever
else he may call it, and can therefore no longer prevaricate against
the law, is, to common-sense people, nothing but a sanctified humbug or
a pious idiot.
Nor are good works alone sufficient. Men of emancipated intelligence
and becoming breadth of mind, are often heard to proclaim with a
greater flourish of verbosity than of reason and argument, that the
golden rule is religion enough for them, without the trappings of
creeds and dogmas; they respect themselves and respect their neighbors,
at least they say they do, and this, according to them, is the
fulfilment of the law. We submit that this sort of worship was in vogue
a good many centuries before the God-Man came down upon earth; and if
it fills the bill now, as it did in those days, it is difficult to see
the utility of Christ's coming, of His giving of a law of belief and of
His founding of a Church. It is beyond human comprehension that He
should have come for naught, labored for naught and died for naught.
And such must be the case, if the observance of the natural law is a
sufficient worship of the Creator. What reasons Christ may have had for
imposing this or that truth upon our belief, is beside the question; it
is enough that He did reveal truths, the acceptance of which glorifies
Him in the mind of the believer, in order that the mere keeping of the
commandments appear forthwith an insufficient mode of worship.
Besides, morals are based on dogma, or they have no basis at all;
knowledge of the manner of serving God can only proceed from knowledge
of who and what He is; right living is the fruit of right thinking. Not
that all who believe rightly are righteous and walk in the path of
salvation: losing themselves, these are lost in spite of the truths
they know and profess; nor that they who cling to an erroneous belief
and a false creed can perform no deed of true moral worth and are
doomed; they may be righteous in spite of the errors they profess,
thanks alone to the truths in their creeds that are not wholly
corrupted. But the natural order of things demands that our works
partake of the nature of our convictions, that truth or error in mind
beget truth or error correspondingly in deed and that no amount of
self-confidence in a man can make a course right when it is wrong, can
make a man's actions good when they are materially bad. This is the
principle of the tree and its fruit and it is too old-fashioned to be
easily denied. True morals spring from true faith and true dogma; a
false creed cannot teach correct morality, unless accidentally, as the
result of a sprinkling of truth through the mass of false teaching. The
only accredited moral instructor is the true Church. Where there is no
dogma, there can logically be no morals, save such as human instinct
and reason devise; but this is an absurd morality, since there is no
recognition of an authority, of a legislator, to make the moral law
binding and to give it a sanction. He who says he is a law unto himself
chooses thus to veil his proclaiming freedom from all law. His golden
rule is a thing too easily twistable to be of any assured benefit to
others than himself; his moral sense, that is, his sense of right and
wrong, is very likely where his faith is--nowhere.
It goes without saying that the requirements of good morals are a heavy
burden for the natural man, that is, for man left, in the midst of
seductions and allurements, to the purely human resources of his own
unaided wit and strength; so heavy a burden is this, in fact, that
according to Catholic doctrine, it cannot be borne without assistance
from on high, the which assistance we call grace. This supernatural aid
we believe essential to the shaping of a good moral life; for man,
being destined, in preference to all the rest of animal creation, to a
supernatural end, is thereby raised from the natural to a supernatural
order. The requirements of this order are therefore above and beyond
his native powers and can only be met with the help of a force above
his own. It is labor lost for us to strive to climb the clouds on a
ladder of our own make; the ladder must be let down from above. Human
air-ships are a futile invention and cannot be made to steer straight
or to soar high in the atmosphere of the supernatural. One-half of
those who fail in moral matters are those who trust altogether, or too
much, in their own strength, and reckon without the power that said
"Without Me you can do nothing."
The other half go to the other extreme. They imagine that the Almighty
should not only direct and aid them, but also that He should come down
and drag them along in spite of themselves; and they complain when He
does not, excuse and justify themselves on the ground that He does not,
and blame Him for their failure to walk straight in the narrow path.
They expect Him to pull them from the clutches of temptation into which
they have deliberately walked. The drunkard expects Him to knock the
glass out of his hand: the imprudent, the inquisitive and the vicious
would have it so that they might play with fire, yea, even put in their
hand, and not be scorched or burnt. 'Tis a miracle they want, a miracle
at every turn, a suspension of the laws of nature to save them from the
effects of their voluntary perverseness. Too lazy to employ the means
at their command, they thrust the whole burden on the Maker. God helps
those who help themselves. A supernatural state does not dispense us
from the obligation of practising natural virtue. You can build a
supernatural life only on the foundations of a natural life. To do away
with the latter is to build in the air; the structure will not stay up,
it will and must come down at the first blast of temptation.
Catholic morals therefore require faith in revealed truths, of which
they are but deductions, logical conclusions; they presuppose, in their
observance, the grace of God; and call for a certain strenuosity of
life without which nothing meritorious can be effected. We must be
convinced of the right God has to trace a line of conduct for us; we
must be as earnest in enlisting His assistance as if all depended on
Him; and then go to work as if it all depended on ourselves.
CHAPTER II.
THE MORAL AGENT.
MORALS are for man, not for the brute; they are concerned with his
thoughts, desires, words and deeds; they suppose a moral agent.
What is a moral agent?
A moral agent is one who, in the conduct of his life, is capable of
good and evil, and who, in consequence of this faculty of choosing
between right and wrong is responsible to God for the good and evil he
does.
Is it enough, in order to qualify as a moral and responsible agent, to
be in a position to respect or to violate the Law?
It is not enough; but it is necessary that the agent know what he is
doing; know that it is right or wrong; that he will to do it, as such;
and that he be free to do it, or not to do it. Whenever any one of
these three elements--knowledge, consent and liberty--is wanting in the
commission or omission of any act, the deed is not a moral deed; and
the agent, under the circumstances, is not a moral agent.
When God created man, He did not make him simply a being that walks and
talks, sleeps and eats, laughs and cries; He endowed him with the
faculties of intelligence and free will. More than this, He intended
that these faculties should be exercised in all the details of life;
that the intelligence should direct, and the free will approve, every
step taken, every act performed, every deed left undone. Human energy
being thus controlled, all that man does is said to be voluntary and
bears the peculiar stamp of morality, the quality of being good or evil
in the sight of God and worthy of His praise or blame, according as it
squares or not with the Rule of Morality laid down by Him for the
shaping of human life. Of all else He takes no cognizance, since all
else refers to Him not indifferently from the rest of animal creation,
and offers no higher homage than that of instinct and necessity.
When a man in his waking hours does something in which his intelligence
has no share, does it without being aware of what he is doing, he is
said to be in a state of mental aberration, which is only another name
for insanity or folly, whether it be momentary or permanent of its
nature. A human being, in such a condition, stands on the same plane
with the animal, with this difference, that the one is a freak and the
other is not. Morals, good or bad, have no meaning for either.
If the will or consent has no part in what is done, we do nothing,
another acts through us; 'tis not ours, but the deed of another. An
instrument or tool used in the accomplishment of a purpose possesses
the same negative merit or demerit, whether it be a thing without a
will or an unwilling human being. If we are not free, have no choice in
the matter, must consent, we differ in nothing from all brutish and
inanimate nature that follows necessarily, fatally, the bent of its
instinctive inclinations and obeys the laws of its being. Under these
conditions, there can be no morality or responsibility before God; our
deeds are alike blameless and valueless in His sight.
Thus, the simple transgression of the Law does not constitute us in
guilt; we must transgress deliberately, wilfully. Full inadvertence,
perfect forgetfulness, total blindness is called invincible ignorance;
this destroys utterly the moral act and makes us involuntary agents.
When knowledge is incomplete, the act is less voluntary; except it be
the case of ignorance brought on purposely, a wilful blinding of
oneself, in the vain hope of escaping the consequences of one's acts.
This betrays a stronger willingness to act, a more deliberately set
will.
Concupiscence has a kindred effect on our reason. It is a consequence
of our fallen nature by which we are prone to evil rather than to good,
find it more to our taste and easier to yield to wrong than to resist
it. Call it passion, temperament, character, what you will,--it is an
inclination to evil. We cannot always control its action. Everyone has
felt more or less the tyranny of concupiscence, and no child of Adam
but has it branded in his nature and flesh. Passion may rob us of our
reason, and run into folly or insanity; in which event we are
unconscious agents, and do nothing voluntary. It may so obscure the
reason as to make us less ourselves, and consequently less willing. But
there is such a thing as, with studied and refined malice and
depravity, to purposely and artificially, as it were, excite
concupiscence, in order the more intensely and savagely to act. This is
only a proof of greater deliberation, and renders the deed all the more
voluntary.
A person is therefore more or less responsible according as what he
does, or the good or evil of what he does, is more or less clear to
him. Ignorance or the passions may affect his clear vision of right and
wrong, and under the stress of this deception, wring a reluctant
yielding of the will, a consent only half willingly given. Because
there is consent, there is guilt but the guilt is measured by the
degree of premeditation. God looks upon things solely in their relation
to Him. An abomination before men may be something very different in
His sight who searches the heart and reins of man and measures evil by
the malice of the evil-doer. The only good or evil He sees in our deeds
is the good or evil we ourselves see in them before or while we act.
Violence and fear may oppress the will, and thereby prove destructive
to the morality of an act and the responsibility of the agent. Certain
it is, that we can be forced to act against our will, to perform that
which we abhor, and do not consent to do. Such force may be brought to
bear upon us as we cannot withstand. Fear may influence us in a like
manner. It may paralyze our faculties and rob us of our senses.
Evidently, under these conditions, no voluntary act is possible, since
the will does not concur and no consent is given. The subject becomes a
mere tool in the hands of another.
Can violence and fear do more than this? Can it not only rob us of the
power to will, not only force us to act without consent, but also force
the will, force us to consent? Never; and the simple reason is that we
cannot do two contradictory things at the same time--consent and not
consent, for that is what it means to be forced to consent. Violence
and fear may weaken the will so that it finally yield. The fault, if
fault there be, may be less inexcusable by reason of the pressure under
which it labored. But once we have willed, we have willed, and
essentially, there is nothing unwilling about what is willingly done.
The will is an inviolable shrine. Men may circumvent, attack, seduce
and weaken it. But it cannot be forced. The power of man and devil
cannot go so far. Even God respects it to that point.
In all cases of pressure being brought to bear upon the moral agent for
an evil purpose, when resistance is possible, resistance alone can save
him from the consequences. He must resist to his utmost, to the end,
never yield, if he would not incur the responsibility of a free agent.
Non-resistance betokens perfect willingness to act. The greater the
resistance, the less voluntary the act in the event of consent being
finally given; for resistance implies reluctance, and reluctance is the
opposition of a will that battles against an oppressing influence. In
moral matters, defeat can never be condoned, no matter how great the
struggle, if there is a final yielding of the will; but the
circumstance of energetic defense stands to a man's credit and will
protect him from much of the blame and disgrace due to defeat.
Thus we see that the first quality of the acts of a moral agent is that
he think, desire, say and do with knowledge and free consent. Such
acts, and only such, can be called good or bad. What makes them good
and bad, is another question.
CHAPTER III.
CONSCIENCE.
THE will of God, announced to the world at large, is known as the Law
of God; manifested to each individual soul, it is called conscience.
These are not two different rules of morality, but one and the same
rule. The latter is a form or copy of the former. One is the will of
God, the other is its echo in our souls.
We might fancy God, at the beginning of all things, speaking His will
concerning right and wrong, in the presence of the myriads of souls
that lay in the state of possibility. And when, in the course of time,
these souls come into being, with unfailing regularity, at every act,
conscience, like a spiritual phonograph, gives back His accents and
reechoes: "it is lawful," or "it is not lawful." Or, to use another
simile, conscience is the compass by which we steer aright our moral
lives towards the haven of our souls' destination in eternity. But just
as behind the mariner's compass is the great unseen power, called
attraction, under whose influence the needle points to the star; so
does the will or Law of God control the action of the conscience, and
direct it faithfully towards what is good.
We have seen that, in order to prevaricate it is not sufficient to
transgress the Law of God: we must know; conscience makes us know. It
is only when we go counter to its dictates that we are constituted
evil-doers. And at the bar of God's justice, it is on the testimony of
conscience that sentence will be passed. Her voice will be that of a
witness present at every deed, good or evil, of our lives.
Conscience should always tell the truth, and tell it with certainty.
Practically, this is not always the case. We are sometimes certain that
a thing is right when it is really wrong. There are therefore two kinds
of conscience: a true and a certain conscience, and they are far from
being one and the same thing. A true conscience speaks the truth, that
is, tells us what is truly right and truly wrong. It is a genuine echo
of the voice of God. A certain conscience, whether it speaks the truth
or not, speaks with assurance, without a suspicion of error, and its
voice carries conviction. When we act in accordance with the first, we
are right; we may know it, doubt it or think it probable, but we are
right in fact. When we obey the latter, we know, we are sure that we
are right, but it is possible that we be in error. A true conscience,
therefore, may be certain or uncertain; a certain conscience may be
true or erroneous.
A true conscience is not the rule of morality. It must be certain. It
is not necessary that it be true, although this is always to be
desired, and in the normal state of things should be the case. But true
or false, it must be certain. The reason is obvious. God judges us
according as we do good or evil. Our merit or demerit is dependent upon
our responsibility. We are responsible only for the good or evil we
know we do. Knowledge and certainty come from a certain conscience, and
yet not from a true conscience which may be doubtful.
Now, suppose we are in error, and think we are doing something good,
whereas it is in reality evil. We perceive no malice in the deed, and,
in performing it, there is consequently no malice in us, we do not sin.
The act is said to be materially evil, but formally good; and for such
evil God cannot hold us responsible. Suppose again that we err, and
that the evil we think we do is really good. In this instance, first,
the law of morality is violated,--a certain, though erroneous
conscience: this is sinful. Secondly, a bad motive vitiates an act even
if the deed in itself be good. Consequently, we incur guilt and God's
wrath by the commission of such a deed, which is materially good, but
formally bad.
One may wonder and say: "how can guilt attach to doing good?" Guilt
attaches to formal evil, that is, evil that is shown to us by our
conscience and committed by us as such. The wrong comes, not from the
object of our doing which is good, but from the intention which is bad.
It is true that nothing is good that is not thoroughly good, that a
thing is bad only when there is something lacking in its goodness, that
evil is a defect of goodness; but formal evil alone can be imputed to
us and material cannot. The one is a conscious, the other an
unconscious, defect. Here an erroneous conscience is obeyed; there the
same conscience is disregarded. And that kind of a conscience is the
rule of morality; to go against it is to sin.
There are times when we have no certitude. The conscience may have
nothing to say concerning the honesty of a cause to which we are about
to commit ourselves. This state of uncertainty and perplexity is called
doubt. To doubt is to suspend judgment; a dubious conscience is one
that does not function.
In doubt the question may be: "To do; is it right or wrong? May I
perform this act, or must I abstain therefrom?" In this case, we
inquire whether it be lawful or unlawful to go on, but we are sure that
it is lawful not to act. There is but one course to pursue. We must not
commit ourselves and must refrain from acting, until such a time, at
least, as, by inquiring and considering, we shall have obtained
sufficient evidence to convince us that we may allow ourselves this
liberty without incurring guilt. If, on the contrary, while still
doubting, we persist in committing the act, we sin, because in all
affairs of right and wrong we must follow a certain conscience as the
standard of morality.
But the question may be: "To do or not to do; which is right and which
is wrong?" Here we know not which way to turn, fearing evil in either
alternative. We must do one thing or the other. There are reasons and
difficulties on both sides. We are unable to resolve the difficulties,
lay the doubt, and form a sure conscience, what must we do?