Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew (21:28-31) tells a parable of two sons:

“What is your opinion? A man had two sons. He came to the first and said, ‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’

He said in reply, ‘I will not,’ but afterwards he changed his mind and went.

The man came to the other son and gave the same order. He said in reply, ‘Yes, sir,’ but did not go.

Which of the two did his father’s will?” They answered, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.

The two sons represent, respectively, the religious leaders who on one hand professed to live out the tenets of the law, but who did not actually – In the local parlance – talk only, no action, and on the other, and the religious outcasts who did follow John’s call to repentance. By the answer that these leaders gave to Jesus’ question (Matthew 21:31), the leaders condemned themselves.

There is something about this parable which could be used to unpack the discourses surrounding morality and the choices that we make in life.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the morality surrounding any human act is dependent on 1) The object chosen; 2) The end outcome in view, or the intention; 3) The circumstances or means of the course of action (CCC. 1750). Thus, human choice is constitutive of these three things – the object, the intention, and the circumstances (Petri, n.d.).

The intention consists of the reason as to why we are making the choice or movement of our wills towards a particular end – I intend to show my love, so I give my spouse flowers. I have the intention of growing closer to God, so I choose to take up my Bible and read His Word. I choose to live a life of reparation, because that would align me better with the Will of God.

The object is the good or destination where the person’s will moves towards and directs itself toward.

Circumstances refer to the mechanisms of the “who”, “what”, “where”, and “how” of a choice and sometimes, the secondary elements of an act of morality. Morality can change dependent on where an act is carried out. For example, there are ways that a husband and wife can relate to each other intimately in the privacy of their home, that would be considered morally right there, but would take on the character of being morally wrong, if they were carried out in a public space. The “When” can also define the degree of morality of a choice, for example when a child who is six does something out of ignorance, versus when a teenage is in full knowledge of an act and who does something that requires a reprimand.

While the intention of a person, usually gives us a clue as to whether the object or end-goal is good or evil, there are nonetheless some activities, where the objects are intrinsically evil. According to the research laid out by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical, Veritatis Splendor (1993), ‘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”. The Second Vatican Council itself, in discussing the respect due to the human person, gives a number of examples of such acts: “Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator”.’ These evil activities are so disordered in nature, that no good intention can redeem them (Petri, n.d.).

Sometimes, there is a mismatch between the intention and the action, as seen in the parable stated by Jesus. Sometimes, the circumstances do not justify the ends. Sometimes, the intention is in itself erroneous to begin with. Sometimes, the intention is good, but we fail to act upon it. Sometimes, the intention is bad, and we fail to do something about it.

At this juncture, it may be salient to consider what St. Thomas Aquinas says. Accordingly, for any action that a person may choose, this choice is good and moral only if everything – the intention, the circumstances, and the end outcome is good (McClusky, 2000; McInerny, 1993; McInerny, 1997; Floyd, n.d). If the intention is to ruin someone’s reputation while on the surface seemingly building a rapport and friendship with that person, for instance, then that clearly is an immoral act and choice.

What then is morality?

The term, “morality” stems from the Latin term, moralis, which means a set of customs or manners, or a set of agreed values that is adopted by a group, for instance a religious organisation, a society, say a government running a nation, and/ or a culture, for example, the indigenous aboriginal culture. These rules, norms, and mores for living, thus can be lived in adherence, or in disagreement and violation. This term can be further explored in the sub-categories :

  1. Ethics – what constitutes good versus evil, right versus wrong;
  2. Aesthetics – How we judge what is beauty/beautiful;
  3. Epistemology – how we know anything at all;
  4. Metaphysics – How do we know if something is real;
  5. and Logic – How do we reason and form logical arguments (Gert & Gert, 2020).

For St. Thomas Aquinas, an act is hence either good or bad, depending on whether it leads us to or contributes to, or distract and deter us from the ultimate human end-goal (the telos) which is eudaimonia, or the penultimate happiness that is attained through well-being, wholeness, completion, or perfection. The caveat being that for St. Thomas Aquinas, this eudaimonia cannot be achieved while we are here on this Earth. This true and final happiness may only be attained when arrive at beatitude, or the supernatural union with God in the beatific vision. Due to our propensity to concupiscence and sin, and due to the vestiges left by Original Sin, our human nature, while not completely made corrupt by this Original Sin, has been stained by it. In this, only the Grace of God, and the help of the Lord God, can restore us to our true dignity as His sons and daughters, by healing the rifts in our nature, replenishing the good within us, leading us to the understanding of who we as originally made and intended by the Lord God, and to bring us once again in docility and conformity to the Divine Will. We are helped thus, through the gifting and practice of virtues and Grace (Floyd, n.d.).

The reason why we may sometimes make bad moral choices is because our intellectual limitations prevent us from realising what is the fundamental good good.  We are often presented with a multitude of competing goods that we must choose from. Some goods provide us with an almost instantaneous gratification, but do not contribute in any way to our long-term well-being and happiness, while others are precipitated upon ardour and hardship, but eventually form our moral compasses and make us better people (Aquinas, 1981). There is a disjunct between what people think constitutes happiness versus what true happiness is. For some, the idea of happiness is found in obtaining the goods of the body, such as bodily pleasure, which is why they tend to seek out the brothel for example; for some, their idea of happiness is found in the accruement of physical and material goods, such as wealth; for others, their idea of happiness is found in acquiring the goods of the soul, such as intellect, wisdom, virtue, and friendship.

The real good and the only happiness that we are all seeking is actually realised only when we encounter and obtain that which is perfectly good. It is God, whom we are seeking for. As God is perfect goodness, He is the only one who can complete us, fulfil our deepest longings, and facilitate the perfection which we are either subconsciously or consciously aiming for.

Therein lies the argument, if perfect and true eudaimonia can be found only when we have God, then why is it that not everyone tries to find God? In trying to fulfil our desires, we are all seeking this true and authentic happiness in some way or another. Nonetheless, how can we seek out true happiness when we are misinformed about what it actually looks and feels like? We think that status, wealth, human approval, bodily sensuality, career ascension and promotion… bring us happiness, and maybe they do temporarily. However, this tells us that we are in reality, misguided in our search. We are searching for love, happiness, fulfilment, and meaning in the wrong places. It is God our Father whom we are searching for and need.

Things begin to take on a new light and our moral compasses begin to be recalibrated, when we start to order our quests to understand where and who our true end-goal is. To begin, in the right manner, requires that ignorance and ill-information are dispelled through the increase of filling our intellects with the right teaching and literature, and that we temper our appetites with what that which is virtuous, ordered, and excellent. As St. Paul exhorts us in Romans 16:19: “Be excellent and wise at what is good, and be simple as to what is evil.”

By the Grace of God,

Brian Bartholomew Tan

 

 

 

References

Aquinas, T. St.. (1981). Summa Theologiae (ST ). Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Westminster: Christian Classics.

Catechism of the Catholic Church. (n.d.). Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Floyd, S. (n.d.). Thomas Aquinas: Moral Philosophy. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved August 16, 2022 from https://iep.utm.edu/thomasaquinas-moral-philosophy/ – :~:text=According%20to%20Aquinas%2C%20all%20human,we%20can%20ignore%20or%20defy.

Gert, B. Gert, J. (2020). The Definition of Morality. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Retrieved August 16, 2022 from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/morality-definition/

John Paul II. (1993). Veritatis Splendor. Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

McClusky, C. (2000). Happiness and Freedom in Aquinas’s Theory of Action. Medieval Philosophy and Theology 9: 69-90.

McInerny, R. (1993). Ethics. The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump. (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 196-216.

McInerny, R. (1997). Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Washington D.C. Catholic University of America Press.

Petri O.P., T. (n.d.). Lesson 50: The Fonts of Morality – Aquinas 101. The Thomistic Institute. Retrieved August 16, 2022 from https://aquinas101.thomisticinstitute.org/the-fonts-of-morality