Religion Midterm Unit 1 Vocab

Amoral

No sense of right or wrong

Immoral

Decisions that harm or frustrate the development of our genuine humanity

Morality

reasonable judgments about the rightness or wrongness of particular acts

Note: the terms morality and ethics are often used interchangeably in the professional literature

Objective Approach to Morality

The Catholic approach to morality → means we DISCOVER morality, through our use of human reason

Subjective Approach to Morality

morality is already “inscribed on our hearts” [called “Natural Law”] (We don’t create morality)

Consumerism

drives the American “pursuit of happiness” by encouraging the purchase of goods/services as a partial solution to our desire for happiness

Pope Benedict on consumerism

“it harms the dignity of the human person by separating us from others and leaving us unhappy”

Empathy

Understanding the situation and feelings of another person as if they were your own

Happiness

momentary joy & lasting contentment

Where is it found? In our relationship with God, our creator

Christian view Happiness

• the ingredients of happiness

  • Control over one’s life

  • Optimism in difficult situations

  • Active faith & religious involvement

  • Having one’s skills challenged

  • Meaningful connections with others (strongest indicator)

Pop culture view Happiness

money, power or influence can “buy” long-term happiness

Ring of Gyges

• Ring was discovered when a storm came that opened the Earth below, and a shepherd named Gyges descended into the opening and took the gold ring off a dead body

• The ring gave Gyges the ability to become invisible at his own will

• He used the ring to seduce the queen, slew the king, and take over the kingdom

Morality and Reality

• Morality is based on reality → our views on moral issues may not be based on truth of a situation (truth may be difficult to know)

Morality as an Art

creativity/imagination- one of the ingredients morality

Morality as a Science

critical thinking/analyzing skills

Blaise Pascal (Mathematician, Philosopher, Christian) 

“There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus”

Irenaeus

Sums up God’s divine will for us when he taught “The glory of God is the human person fully alive; moreover, human life is the vision of God.”

Secularism

excluding God from everyday life and society and denying that God is the center of our lives

Story of St. Augustine

• His mother was named Monica, and is now honored as the patron saint of mothers in the Catholic Church today.

• Some contributing factors that led Augustine to become a model of the human search for happiness were his constant yearning for happiness and facing the difficult choices he would need to make (like leaving the mother of his illegitimate son), but ultimately his cooperation with God’s grace, through praying and writing his prayers in “Confessions” and “Book X”.

Beatitudes

• these promise reversal of present unfortunate situation & promise reward for present righteous conduct

  • e.g. mourn / comforted; merciful / mercy

  • From gospel of Matthew

  • Originally from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount 

• Jesus’ Teachings on retaliation

• no retaliation/turn the other cheek (hard saying)

Jesus’ Teachings on divorce

no divorce (hard saying)

• Virginal Conception

• Jesus is conceived without a human father and “mother of God” is a title given to Mary because of the identity of the person she gave birth to. 

Jesus’ Central Message

The reign of God / Kingdom of God is at hand

Kingdom of God = what results if people put Jesus’ teachings into practice (justice, peace, love)

• Minimalism

• doing the least amount of work required- Jesus challenged his followers to avoid this and instead to DO MORE!

• Atonement

one way of describing the significance of Jesus’ death, which makes us “at-one” with God. 

• Parable of the Last Judgment

• finding Jesus in the outcast; finding Jesus in unexpected places 

  • “When I was hungry, you gave me food…”

  • Found in gospel of Matthew

• Hard Sayings of Jesus

• views that overturn conventional values + are hard to put into practice

  • E.g., love your enemy; give to those who ask

Sermon on the Mount

Found in the gospel of Matthew, open w/ the Beatitudes 

Jesus’ exorcisms

The religious or spiritual practice of evicting demons, jinns, or other malevolent spiritual entities from a person, or an area, that is believed to be possessed

Jesus’ two natures

fully human and fully divine

The Golden Rule

 Treat others as you wish to be treated

• Agape

• New Testament word for selfless love (The most distinctively Christian form of love. Used by Christ to describe the love among the persons of the Trinity, it is also the love he commanded his followers to have for one another)

• Kenosis

• Greek word that refers to Jesus’ self-emptying (the ultimate expression of the humility of Jesus, who put aside all the advantages and powers of divinity in order to save us)

• Story of Sister Faustina = St Maria Faustina, Apostle of Mercy

• Born in Lodz, Poland as the third of ten children to a very poor family that had struggled hard on a small farm during WWI

• When she was 20, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, receiving her religious habit the following year

• Performed the humblest of tasks in the convent, usually in the kitchen or the vegetable garden or as a porter.

• Experienced a series of private revelations and visions of Jesus

• In one of the apparitions, Jesus said “My mercy is so great that no mind, be it of man or of angel, will be able to fathom it through all eternity”

• Fulfilled Jesus’ ask of modeling in her own life the mercy of God

• Directed the painting of the first Divine Mercy image (seen to the right)