LC

HRE23 - Final Exam Notes

“If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” - Mt. 19:16-22

Unit 1

Morality and the Imago Dei

Morality: the standards by which we judge actions to be good or evil

  • The origin and the end of moral action are found in the One who “alone is good” and offers man the happiness of divine life

  • Objective Morality: Standards of conduct that are universal rather than conditioned by culture or personal preference

God is Love, and love creates

  • Good: All things ordered towards God, the Supreme Good

  • God is beauty, truth, and goodness

  • Beatitude: Happiness or blessedness, especially the eternal happiness of Heaven, which is the vision of God and a participation in the divine nature

    • This is the greatest human desire

  • Free will makes love possible

  • Man is made in God’s image, and thus, is destined to be like Him in love

    • Through a free acceptance of God’s will, man can fulfill God’s image

      • By deepening our relationship with God, we become more full ourselves

    • The separation between man and God was restored by Christ

    • Concupiscence: The human tendency to sin

    • Protoevangelium: The first good news that God’s first response to our sin is a promise to defeat what harms us most

    • Virtue: A habitual and firm disposition to do good

Moral Law

  • Comes from God, and can be fulfilled with the help of grace

  • Natural Law: The law or sense of good and evil, inherent to the human person by means of the proper use of their reason

  • Good is to be pursued and evil is to be avoided

Unit 2

Freedom

Freedom: The power to act or not to act, and so to perform deliberate acts of one’s own

  • Freedom for Excellence: The power to act freely in pursuit of human perfection and everlasting joy

  • We have received moral freedom from our birth, which contains the inclination towards happiness and goodness

  • Responsibility: The conviction that a person is the agent of his or her actions

  • Love is a commitment which limits one’s freedom

Conscience

Conscience: A judgement of reason regarding the good or evil of a particular act, in light of objective moral standards

  • Comes from Divine Revelation and our human experiences

  • Conscience must be subordinate to truth

  • Law: An ordinance of reason that exists for the common good and is affirmed by the legitimate authority through an official process

    • Directed to the common good

  • Moral Law

    • Eternal Law - the plan of divine Wisdom

    • Natural Law - human participation in the eternal law

    • Divine Law - what God has revealed

    • Human Law - civil laws to direct society to the common good

    • New Law - a law of love in which our souls are infused by the Holy Spirit, a law of grace in which we are given the strength to act, and a law of freedom in which we become a friend of Christ

      • Grace responds to the deepest yearnings of human freedom, freedom cooperates with it, and it perfects freedom

Unit 3

Moral actions leave subjects morally changed

The Components of a Moral Action

Agent: The one who acts, who has a capacity to initiate a course of events

Object: That towards which the will directs itself; the act itself

  • Carries the most weight because the object determines the objective morality of an action

  • Intrinsic Evil: Those actions that are opposed to the will of God or to proper human fulfillment

Intention: A movement of the will toward an end

  • A good intention can diminish the sinfulness of an evil act, but a bad intention can render a good act evil

  • The ends do not justify the means

Circumstances: The condition or state of affairs surrounding a moral decision, including the consequences; circumstances can increase or diminish moral responsibility, but cannot change the moral quality of an act

  • Circumstances are considered secondarily to the object

  • Circumstances cannot make an evil act good

The Principle of Double Effect

  • The decision to carry out an action resulting in unintended consequences, where the good cannot be brought about in any other way, may be made good through four principles

    • The act must be morally good or indifferent in itself

    • The agent must have the right intention - the evil effects must only be tolerated

    • The bad effect cannot cause the good effect

    • The good effect must be proportional to the bad effect

Errors in Moral Theology

  • What we do matters because we are made in the image and likeness of God

  • Proportionalism: An expression of moral relativism that measures the moral goodness of an action by comparing its good and evil effects

    • It’s an over-emphasis of the principle of double effect that fails to acknowledge the first three

  • Consequentialism: The judgement of the good or evil of an act based on the consequences, rather than the morality, object, or intention

  • Situation Ethics: The goodness or evil of an action is determined by the particular situation

    • Fails to acknowledge the universal laws that can be applied to each situation regarding morality

  • Historical Relativism: The idea that moral norms are relative to particular historical periods

  • Cultural Relativism: The view that moral norms are relative to different cultures

  • Emotivism: The theory that emotions are the source of moral judgements

The Loss of the Sense of Sin

  • “The sin of the century is the loss of the meaning of sin.” - Pope Pius XII, 1946

  • An intellectual history has led us to the point where sin loses its meaning due to

    • Moral relativism: The view that there is no absolute or universal moral law or truth, resulting in a morality determined by cultural factors

    • Faulty psychology

    • Confusion between morality and legality

    • Secular humanism

Sin

  • Any deed, word, or desire that violates eternal law (Augustine)

  • A violation of the moral law and a disordered love for creatures over God (Aquinas)

  • An offense against reason, truth, and right conscience, and opposed to the obedience of Jesus

  • A failure in genuine love for God and neighbour due to perverse attachments to certain goods

  • Sin: An inordinate action that discords with truth and goodness in its intention, object, or circumstances

    • A personal act, for which we are personally responsible

    • Actual Sin: Sin committed personally by an individual through deliberate choice

    • Original Sin: The privation of original justice/rectitude

      • Original Ordering: Man’s reason subject to God, the lower powers were subject to reason, and the body subject to the soul

    • Sin of Commission: A sin of action in thought, word, or deed

    • Sin of Omission: A sin of inaction in thought, word, or deed

    • Vice: A settled habit caused by sinful action which disposes further sinful action

    • Mortal Sin: Sins that turn us directly away from God, when we choose something serious with full intent and freedom in place of God as our highest good

      • Must be a grave matter, committed with deliberate consent and full knowledge

    • Venial Sin: Small sins that turn us slightly off from God, rather than directly away; they keep us from going directly to Him

Evil

  • Physical Evil: A natural and often catastrophic hardship that causes physical harm to man; a natural calamity

  • Moral Evil: A deliberate infraction of God’s law or rejection of God’s will; these sinful choices are the direct cause of suffering both in the acting subject and in those individuals who are the objects of that act

  • Cooperation with Evil: Help given to another in the execution of a sinful purpose

    • Formal: Deliberate cooperation; a willing cooperation in the evil act

      • Implicit Formal: Not directly involved, but recognizes the action of another as sinful and willfully facilitates that action

    • Material: An action that has a role to play in the accomplishment of an evil deed but lacks deliberate consent

      • Permissible under serious reasons, where cooperation is not essential to the evil, and when the agent’s intention is in contradiction to the evil deed

      • Immediate Material: Necessary to the sinful act

      • Mediate Material: Secondary to the sinful act

    • We may cooperate in an action that has unintended evil consequences if three conditions are met

      • The evil must not be a direct result of the cooperator’s act

      • The cooperator must not intend the evil that occurs

      • There must be no possibility of scandal

Confession

  • Instituted by Christ for His mission of forgiveness and mercy to continue in a tangible, physical way, at Pentecost

  • An expression of our free will through a desire to repair a relationship

  • There are five steps to confession

    • Examination of conscience

    • Contrition for sins

    • Firm purpose of amendment

    • Confessions of sins to a priest

    • Carrying out of penance

  • Christ gave his power to forgive sins to men (priests)

    • Homologeo: I confess, profess, acknowledge, praise

  • God created us without us; but he did not will to save us without us. (Augustine)

  • Justification: The transformation of the sinner by God’s grace from unrighteousness to holiness and sonship of God; the removal of the offense of sin by reason of Christ’s sacrificial offering on the cross

    • Conferred in Baptism

    • Leads man to turn away from sin and accept forgiveness and righteousness

  • Contrition is needed for God to forgive us

    • Perfect Contrition: Sorrow for sins that springs from perfect love of God

    • Imperfect Contrition: Sorrow for sins that springs not from love of God, but from fear of punishment

The Last Things

  • The Christian life is a journey to God, in which we have our earthly lives to bring about our fulfillment

    • Particular judgement - the judgement at each of our deaths by Christ

    • Heaven - where those who die in the state of grace, once fully purified, go

    • Purgatory - where those who die in the state of grace but still hold temporal punishment due to sin go to be purified

    • Hell - where those who die in a state of sin go for eternal separation from God

    • The Last Judgement - when Christ returns and judges all souls, and where the faithful shall live eternally in the Kingdom of God

Unit 4

Before the Ten Commandments, there was the Exodus in the wilderness.

The First Commandment

First Commandment: I am the Lord the God, thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.

  • The First Commandment sets the tone for the rest, as ordering our lives towards the one true God is necessary to lovingly serve Him and our neighbours

  • Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen, through which eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not see (Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi)

    • Habitus: A stable disposition of the spirit

    • A non-Christian can have faith if they do not know about God, but would follow Him if they were aware of His glory

      • Non-Catholics can convert to the Faith if they recognize Christ’s Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist

      • Baptism of Desire: When someone who is not baptised would have explicitly desired baptism if they knew of its necessity

  • The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man

    • It prevents discouragement and selfishness, and directs man towards heaven and happiness

  • Charity is superior to all virtues

    • It is the greatest virtue which shall remain in heaven

Sins Against Faith

  • Voluntary Doubt: Intentionally calls into question some aspect of Divine Revelation

  • Schism: A refusal to submit oneself to the authority of the pope or bishops in communion with him

  • Heresy: Obstinate denial by a baptized person of tenets of the Faith

  • Apostasy: Implicit or explicit renunciation of the Faith

  • Atheism: Denies the existence of God, founded on a false conception of human autonomy

Sins Against Hope

  • Despair: The loss of trust in God’s mercy and love because of doubt in His fidelity, care, or power to save sinners

  • Presumption: Counting on God’s mercy without any attempt to live a holy life OR attempting to live a holy life without God’s mercy

Sins Against Charity

  • Indifference: The refusal to reflect on the prior goodness and power of divine charity

  • Ingratitude: Failure to recognize and acknowledge God’s love exhibited in blessings

  • Spiritual Sloth: “Acedia;” dejection of the will regarding the divine good; aversion to the service of God

  • Lukewarmness: Lackluster or lazy fulfillment of the Catholic faith

  • Hatred of God: Comes from pride; denies God’s love and goodness, and curses Him as the one who inflicts punishment

The Virtue of Religion

  • The Virtue of Religion: Justice towards God; rendering to Him the worship, honour, and thanksgiving we owe Him as our creator

  • Freedom of Religion: All men are immune from coercion so that nobody is forced to act against his convictions in religious matters

Sins Against Religion

  • Superstition: Beliefs or practices which offer improper worship to God

  • Idolatry: Addressing a finite being as if it were divine

  • Divination and Magic: Use of occult powers to predict the future or to obtain good or evil effects

  • Irreligion: Sacrilege, Simony, Tempting God

  • Sacrilege: Profaning or treating unworthily things consecrated to God

  • Simony: The abuse of buying or selling spiritual things

  • Tempting God: Putting God’s goodness and almighty power to the test by word or deed

  • Satanic Worship: Direct worship of the devil through perverse and often violent rituals

The New Age Movement

  • Appropriates various ancient and pagan beliefs and philosophies

  • Loosely structured by a theosophist with occult speculations

    • Theosophy: The belief that a knowledge of God may be achieved through spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special individual relations

  • Errors;

    • Monism: The belief that everything that exists is one

    • Pantheism: The belief that everything that exists is God

    • Syncretism: A method by which one attempts to bring into harmony conflicting ideas

    • Gnosticism: The belief that a person can achieve enlightenment, healing, and transformation only through possession of a “secret knowledge”

Forms and Types of Prayer

  • Prayer: The raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God

    • Latria: Adoration given to God alone

      • Idolatreia: Idol worship; worshipping false gods or created things in place of God

    • Hyperdulia: Veneration reserved especially for the Mother of God

    • Dulia: Honor that is owed to the saints in justice, but never adoration

  • Prayer is the basis of Christian morality in which the individual encounters God and receives His grace

  • There are four forms of prayer which make up most prayers

    • Petition: The recognition that we depend upon God; we ask for his benefits on behalf or others and ourselves

    • Adoration: Acknowledgement of the blessings of God; the attitude of man as creature before his Creator; offered to God through worship in the Blessed Sacrament

    • Contrition: Expressing sorrow for the sins of others or of oneself

    • Thanksgiving: Expression of gratitude for the benefits of God

  • There are three types of prayer that may be prayed

    • Vocal Prayer: Speaking to God through word, in the silence of the heart or audibly among persons

    • Meditation: Focus on a particular event of salvation history or aspect of the Faith

    • Contemplation: The gaze of faith fixed on Jesus; silent love that achieves real union with the prayer of Christ and allows us to share in His mystery

The Second Commandment

Second Commandment: You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain

  • God reveals his name as YHWH (I AM WHO I AM)

Oaths

Oath: An invocation of the Divine Name as witness to the truth. To take an oath is to call upon God as a witness to a truth or promise

  • Oaths are serious and solemn, and they must fulfill three conditions to be lawful

    • Truth - an oath must not be taken to support a lie

    • Judgement - an oath should not be taken for superficial reasons when one’s word would suffice

    • Justice - an oath can only be taken for something morally good

  • Assertory Oath: An oath taken when God is called upon as a witness to the truth of what is said

  • Promissory Oath: An oath that calls upon God as a witness to what a person intends to do in the future; often taken to ensure certain conditions will be met

  • Oaths are made to another person with God as the witness

  • Not every mention of God’s name is considered an oath

    • Jesus instructs us to say “yes” or “no,” rather than swear

Vows

Vow: A promise made freely and deliberately to God with another person as the witness, concerning some good which is possible and better

  • There are three defining conditions of a vow

    • Promise and Commitment - There must be an expressed commitment to fulfill what is stated in the promise as an act of devotion and service to God

    • Serious Obligation - One must give serious consideration before making a vow

    • Free Will - Vows must be made with complete freedom; they are nonbinding when made under coercion or duress

  • If a vow is made a specific time or circumstance, the vow ceases if the conditions are not met or completed by time

Sins Against the Second Commandment

  • Ridicule of Faith: Involves irreverent dispositions such as sarcastic remarks or ridiculous caricatures with respect to Christian faith, customs, or moral teachings

  • Blasphemy: The act of speaking contemptuously of God or His perfections. Includes contempt towards the saints and the Mother of God

The Third Commandment

Third Commandment: Remember to keep the Lord’s day holy

  • The Mass: The principal sacramental celebration of the Church, established by Jesus at the Last Supper, in which the mystery of salvation through participation in the sacrificial Death and glorious Resurrection of Christ is renewed and accomplished

    • The New Sabbath: A day of rest, or leisure, and worship of God as required by the Third Commandment

    • The essential elements of Mass have always been present; the need for standardization resulted in the liturgy of the word (readings, preaching) and the liturgy of the Eucharist (sacrificial offering)

      • Liturgy: “Work of the people;”

        • We should understand that our participation in the Mass is essential; it is not meant to be passively observed, but actively prayed

    • Churches house the Blessed Sacrament and are sacred; It is only right that they be beautiful

    • Mass is on Sunday because Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday, and thus, Mass is a weekly sacrifice and Resurrection

      • Other Holy Days of Obligation include January 1st (The Solemnity of Mary) and Christmas (The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ)

  • “He hides Himself under a morsel of bread.” (St. Francis)

    • God has made Himself recognizable to those who look for Him, and obscure to those who have a contrary disposition

Worship and Leisure

  • We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment - all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise

  • Purpose of our worship

    • Worship helps us put our priorities in order

    • Worship helps us grow in trust

    • Worship allows us to experience joy

    • Worship is an expression of love

  • Purpose of rest

    • Rest facilitates the worship of God by eliminating the expense of energy and distractions connected to work

    • Rest replaces lost energies and makes time for other activities along with the enrichment of the human spirit

Unit 5

The Fourth Commandment

Fourth Commandment: Honor thy father and mother.

  • Includes the duties of children to love and obey their parents and authority figures, and the duties of authority figures to properly lead and care for others

  • The family finds its identity in God in the love held between the Blessed Trinity

    • The family also finds its mission, abilities, and obligations in God

    • The Christian family is a domestic church

  • Family: A man and a woman who are united in marriage, together with their children. This institution is prior to any recognition by public authority, which has an obligation to recognize it

    • What a family is cannot change - the human family is natural and directed by and towards God

    • The family is the original cell of social life

      • Love and stability in families translates to freedom, fraternity, and security in society

      • Virtues and morals are taught first in the home

      • The value of others in the home supports democracy

        • The decline in the permanence of family life is intrinsically bound up with the decline in democracy

  • The family is a community of love

    • We carry God’s Divine Image, so we are inclined to love others and seek goodness

    • The closer the relationship, the greater the duty to love

    • Spouses should share a close bond that extends to their children

      • Children should honour, obey, respect, and love their parents, whose love, in cooperation with God, resulted in their children

      • This love should extend to all kinsmen

        • It is best to take care of extended family in need within the family home

        • We have a commandment of charity to care for all of our family

      • The family is the first institution and social structure established by God

  • Duties of parents to children

    • Fairness and Understanding - children ought to be treated with the respect owed to children of God

    • Discipline - discipline paves the way for virtuous action

    • Instruction in the Faith - parents have a serious obligation to form and educate their children in the Catholic faith

  • Duties of children to parents

    • Honor

    • Respect - filial piety derives from gratitude

    • Obedience, as long as their demands obey the moral law

  • Civic obligations of citizens

    • Authority has a divine origin, so Christians must obey and respect authority

      • God wills that society is well-governed by a ruler

      • Unjust laws that violate the moral law must not be obeyed

    • Just punishment may be applied when civil law is disregarded

    • Authority may impose taxes if it is in the interest of the common good

  • Governmental obligations to citizens

    • The authority must serve the community

    • Authority must guarantee conditions that respect the fundamental rights of humans

    • Subsidiarity: The idea that a higher authority must not interfere with a lower authority without necessity

The Fifth Commandment

Fifth Commandment: You shall not kill

  • The human person is made in the image of likeness of God, and thus, has a dignity that transcends the value of material creation

    • Humans are someone, not something

    • Humans are called by grace to be with their loving God

    • The recognition of the soul is essential for human dignity

  • The life of the human should be sacred because of this dignity

  • Human life begins at fertilization (affirmed by 96% of scientists)

    • From the first moment of his existence, a human being is recognized as having the rights of a person

  • Society has become a “culture of death”

    • A society that fails to respect human life and tolerates unnatural death

Sins Against the Fifth Commandment

  • Offenses Against the Human Body: Suicide, Cult of the Body, Substance Abuse, Gluttony

  • Abusive Language, Resentment, Omission of Service, Racism, Revenge, Vindictiveness, Poor Treatment of Oppressors, Unjust Wars, Violence, Anger, Hatred

  • Substance Abuse: Excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages, which causes intoxication, resulting in the relinquishing of self-control and impairment of reason

  • Abortion: The destruction of a child after conception but before birth

    • At conception, a human being is created. It is wrong to kill an innocent human being

    • Even if we did not know when life begins in the womb, you would not know if you are killing a human or not; therefore, abortion poses the risk of murder

    • At conception, a new human genome, separate from the mother’s womb, is created

    • Abortion has been used to eliminate girls, those with disabilities, and certain races/ethnicities

    • There are some cases in which abortion seems preferable, but it still remains a grave violation of human dignity

      • Rape and incest - the guilty party is the rapist, not the unborn child

      • Life of the mother - there are no medically necessary abortions

        • Tubal Pregnancy: When the baby develops in the fallopian tube, and the principle of double effect can be used to justify a salpingectomy

        • Preterm Deliveries: Babies delivered prior to term due to a serious condition of the mother

        • St. Gianna decided to prioritize the life of her child, rather than herself

      • Prenatal diagnosis of abnormalities - humans should have dignity based on their existence, not their features or abilities

  • Euthanasia: The decision by doctors, family members, or public officials to end the life of a person who has a slim chance or recovery or whose quality of life is deemed poor

    • Implemented in Nazi Germany, and comes from euthanatos (sweet death)

  • In Vitro Fertilization: The medical technique used to fertilize a human embryo in a test tube or petri dish, and then implant it into a woman’s uterus. Often, many fertilized embryos are created to later be frozen or discarded

  • Embryonic Stem-Cell Research: The termination of an embryo to harvest its stem cells for scientific research

  • Sterilization: The destruction of fertility and fruitfulness using surgical or chemical procedures, rendering humans incapable of producing offspring

  • Human Cloning: The process of developing a human from one somatic cell of its parent to be genetically identical

  • Mutilation: The action of disfiguring a part of the body, sometimes rendering it useless or wounded

  • Suicide: The act of taking one’s own life; self-murder

    • Assisted Suicide: The suffering person requests help from others to end their own life (self administered)

  • Cult of the Body: Extreme and obsessive efforts to alter one’s body in a way that does not honour human dignity, such as excessive tattooing, piercing, bodybuilding, and cosmetic surgeries

  • Gluttony: Eating to an excess beyond the purpose of proper nourishment

  • Murder: The sinful killing of a human being with malice aforethought

  • Capital Punishment: An act by the legitimate authority of a state or nation to put a criminal to death

  • Organ Transplant: The removal of an organ from a donor to another person with the attempt to save his or her life

    • Licit, as long as it is consensual, and not transplanting the brain (personal identity) and gonads (procreative identity)

The Sixth and Ninth Commandments

Sixth Commandment: You shall not commit adultery

Ninth Commandment: You shall not covet you neighbour’s wife

  • Marriage was created by God because He is a mystery of personal loving communion, and He inscribed in humans the vocation of love and communion

  • What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder

    • Christ elevates marital love to its intended status

  • Truths of Marriage found in Genesis

    • God created man and woman in His image and likeness

    • Spouses are companions equal in dignity and in a permanent and exclusive union of love

      • To be equal does not mean the same - there is a profound difference and complementarity between men and women

    • Spouses are destined to form a new social unit

    • Marriage is a unity so intimate that they become “one flesh”

    • Marriage has a unitive and procreative purpose blessed by God

    • Spouses willingly and intelligently cooperate in God’s creative act

  • Marriage is indissoluble and exclusive in its total self-giving and permanent stability - a total self-gift cannot be taken back

    • Free - without coercion, wholeheartedly

    • Total - all the days of life on earth

    • Faithful - love and honour each other

    • Fruitful - be prepared to accept children

  • Marriage is in many aspects of the Catholic Faith

    • Adam and Eve, God and Israel, Christ and the Church in Revelation, The Song of Solomon, the Holy Family

    • Christ gave Himself totally to us, just as spouses do in marriage

  • Theology of the Body

    • God made this world on purpose and out of love

    • God created human beings in His image and likeness

    • Human beings are body-soul composites

    • You are your body

    • What you do with your body matters

    • God is love

    • The deepest identity of a human being is that they are made for love

    • Jesus came to repair that brokenness that happened in the fall; “this is my body for you”

  • Lying with our bodies

    • Our body has a language, and can tell truths or lies

    • When we use another person, we tell a lie with our body

      • People are not objects for use - treating them as such would violate their truth

      • Committing adultery is a lie against marriage

  • Chastity: A virtue of temperance which allows us to see the whole person. It cultivates a right understanding of human sexuality.

    • Human sexuality is not merely instinct, but also subject to intellect and will

    • A truthful exercise of sexuality should involve a loving self-giving between spouses in total dedication

    • Sex is a unitive and procreative act

      • Unitive - joining together spouses in fidelity and unity

      • Procreative - an openness to the possibility of new life in cooperation with God’s creative act

  • Telos: The end, aim, or goal

Sins Against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments

  • Sins Against Chastity: Impure Desires, Pornography, Masturbation, Premarital Sex, Oral or Anal Intercourse, Homosexual Acts

  • Sins Against Chastity in the Old Testament: Adultery, Fornication, Onanism, Prostitution, Bestiality, Incest, Homosexual Acts

  • Adultery: Sexual relations with someone other than one’s spouse

    • This is a grave injustice against one’s spouse and children

  • Polygamy: Having more than one spouse

    • Negates the exclusivity of marriage

  • Incest: Intimate relations between relatives

  • Divorce: Civil dissolution of marriage; an attempt to break the lifelong commitment of fidelity and spousal love required by marriage

    • Breaks the freely made contract between spouses to stay together until death

    • If there is an innocent party, there are grounds for an investigation into the nullity of the marriage

      • Marriage is not valid if there is a defect of consent, canonical form, or the existence of an impediment)

  • Cohabitation: A man and a woman living together unmarried and having sexual relations

    • “Playing house” when the intimacy of romantic relations should be reserved for spouses

  • Contraception: The deliberate intervention by use of mechanical, chemical, or other medical procedures, with the intention to prevent new life that may form through sexual intercourse

    • Birth control has roots in eugenics, which aimed to build the “perfect race” of humans

    • Natural Family Planning: The use of a woman’s naturally infertile periods to space children according to a couple’s careful discernment

      • This is licit, as it does not prevent the conception of children and maintains the dignity of marital love

  • Direct Sterilization: Permanent form of contraception which involves surgical procedures performed on the man or woman, rendering future conception biologically impossible

  • Pornography: Exposing the human body and removing the sexual act from the intimacy of spouses, usually in video or images, for the purpose of lustful gratification

    • Objectifies humans and diminishes the dignity of both parties

    • It reduces the victim to a means of sexual gratification, and it hinders the reason and will of the viewer

    • Specifically a sin against chastity

  • These sins arise due to the four prophecies from the Humanae Vitae

    • Infidelity and moral decline - the desire for pleasure without the responsibility of marriage or family

    • Loss of respect for women - objectification

    • Abuse of power by the state

    • Unlimited dominion over the body - changing our nature in a way that violates our dignity and the moral law

The Seventh and Tenth Commandments

Seventh Commandment: You shall not steal

Tenth Commandment: You shall not covet your neighbour’s goods

  • Groups of people, as nations, communities, and organizations, are obliged to obey the moral law

  • Catholic social teaching is a set of principles that can be used to analyze any issue

    • Life and dignity of the human person

    • Call to family, community, and participation (subsidiarity)

      • Principle of Subsidiarity: A community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activities toward the common good

    • Protection of human rights and responsibilities

    • Preferential option for the poor and vulnerable

    • The dignity of work and the right of workers

      • Catholic documents, such as Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and Pope John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus, put emphasis on the rights of workers in the face of industrialization

    • Solidarity and work towards the common good

    • Care for God’s creation - stewardship

  • Justice: To take up our responsibilities, and to give others their due

  • Right to Own Property: The ownership of private goods will not conflict with the common good as long as there is a fair distribution of goods in creation

    • The Universal Destination of Goods: All humans have the right to access what they need to live a dignified life, as God entrusted the goods of creation to all mankind

      • It is a duty to give to the poor once our own needs are met

    • Eminent Domain: The government can claim private property, with an appropriate payment to the owner, because of a legitimate or overriding public concern

  • No one should suffer in squalor while others are able to live comfortably

    • A globalized economy allows wealthy nations to help or exploit poorer nations

Sins Against the Seventh and Tenth Commandments

  • Theft: Unjustly taking another person’s possessions against his reasonable will

    • There is not theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods

    • Includes vandalism, excessive expenses, wasting time at work, tax evasion, and cheating on exams

  • Greed: The desire for earthly goods that are not truly needed for a Christian life

  • Avarice: The inordinate desire of acquiring and hoarding wealth

    • Causes hard-heartedness and injustice

  • Envy: Wrongful desire for things possessed by another or unhappiness at another’s good fortune

  • Restitution: Repairing damage unjustly done or repaying the owner a fair price for his stolen or damaged goods

    • A remedy for an offence against the Seventh Commandment

The Eighth Commandment

Eighth Commandment: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour

  • Lying is the most direct offense against the truth

    • Lying: To speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error

    • Mischievous Lie: A lie with the intent to injure another

    • Jocose Lie: A lie directed towards the good of pleasure

    • Officious Lie: A lie directed towards the good of helping or protecting another person

  • A lie may become mortal if it directly causes grave injury to justice and charity

  • Truth in speech expresses what the individual perceives to be corresponding to reality

  • To deliberately articulate a falsehood contradicts human dignity

    • Lies detract from sincerity, credibility, and breed mistrust in relationships

    • The gravity of a lie is measured against the nature of the truth it deforms, the circumstances, the intentions of the one who lies, and the harm suffered by its victims

  • Every Christian has a vocation to witness and communicate the truth

    • All Christians must be ready to be a consistent witness to Christ, even at the cost of suffering

    • One can love the difficulties of this world for the sake of eternal rewards

Sins Against the Eighth Commandment

  • Calumny (Slander): A lie that falsely accuses another of wrongdoing or a vice; by virtue of their dignity, every person has the right to a good name

  • Detraction: Hurting someone’s good name through the disclosure of an incriminating truth when not necessary for the common good

  • Rash Judgement: A judgement that questions someone’s character or concludes a moral defect without sufficient evidence

  • Insincere Flattery: Attributes qualities that may not exist or which are exaggerated, usually for personal gain or favour

  • Bragging

Readings

AI and Morality

  • AI is a stochastic parrot

  • AI uses data from the web, which large populations do not have access to

    • The Web mainly consists of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Demographic views (WEIRD)

The Confessions - Rejecting Astrology

  • Firminus and a slave were born at the same time, yet lived incredibly different lives

    • Proof to Augustine that astrology was a baseless practice

  • God is the truth, and any attempt at divining the future offends this fact

Work and Leisure

  • Leisure is necessary to inwardly contemplate and grow

Hills Like White Elephants

  • Jig, a pregnant girl, and her American partner are on the way to an abortion clinic

    • The girl seems opposed to it, but the man convinces her it’s just a “simple procedure”

  • The fetus is dehumanized to an “it,” rather than a person, and seen as a source of their relationship’s problems

    • “Doesn’t it mean anything to you? We could get along”

Family

  • Before Christ, polygamy, divorce, and treating wives like property was common

  • Christ raised marriage to a sacrament that was indissoluble and exclusive

MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail

  • Unjust laws should be broken - an unjust law is no law at all

  • Segregation dehumanizes people into things that “superior” people can control

    • An “I it” relationship replaces an “I thou” relationship

Mere Christianity

  • Sex is normal and healthy, but not when it is pursued for pleasure alone

    • Sex has a more profound meaning that pleasure

    • If sex is only for pleasure, we risk treating people as objects. Nobody wants to be treated like an object, nor to love an object

  • Chastity makes freedom for excellence possible in the realm of human sexuality - freedom to love the other, wholly and truthfully, into eternity

  • Our sexual appetite has gone wrong and become perverted due to concupiscence

  • People may resist chastity because of lustful propaganda and the belief that it is impossible

  • Acting on instinct leads to impotence, disease, jealousies, lies, concealment and the reverse of health, good humour, and frankness

    • Man must have constraints

  • The basis of Christian morality is not in sins of the flesh, but spiritual sins

Gender Theory

  • There is such a thing as human nature. Human beings do not create themselves. Therefore, our sexuality has a created purpose - outside of which it cannot flourish

  • Creation has ordered mankind to be man and woman

  • Man believes that defining his own nature leads to freedom, but in reality, strips away his own dignity

  • Human nature is being called into question, and thus the structure of family

  • Atheist anthropology emerges

  • Ideological colonization - using power (politically, economically, etc.) to enforce certain ideologies

The Jeweller’s Shop

  • “Do you want to be my life’s companion?”

  • Beauty accessible to the mind is truth

  • Signals can point us to our own life’s companion

  • When we ignore signals, we become off-balanced in a balanced world

  • Couples ought to think of themselves always with the other, for they are bound for life

Friendship and the Four Types of Love

  • The opposite of loving is using

  • Understanding friendship anew can help us broaden our understanding of love and fulfillment beyond strictly eros

  • To love is to will the good of the other. To will the good of the other is to want Truth for them

  • Eros - romantic; finds its proper context between spouses in the sacrament of marriage

  • Philia - friendship; present in relationships with family, romantic partners, and God

  • Storge - affection

  • Agape/ Caritas- love of God; the basis for all types of love

  • Ancients saw friendships as the happiest and most fully human of all loves

Gossip and Detraction

  • One should not speak about another without need as to harm their good name

  • We should speak about interactions as they pertain to ourselves, rather than others

Veritatis Splendor

  • People are called to salvation through Jesus Christ, and are made holy by the obedience to the truth

    • Following the truth may be hard, but it quenches the thirst within every human heart that yearns for it

    • The splendour of the truth lives in the human spirit

  • In the story of the Rich Young Man, we can recognize every person who approaches Christ and questions Him about morality

    • The result of the appeal to the absolute Good from the depths of the heart

    • Only God can answer the question about what is good

  • Humans are the image of God and the glory of God

  • The order of things - God has ordered man with wisdom and love to his final end