FONTI DELLA MORALITÀ. - In the generic sense, the remote and universal causes on which the character and moral evaluation of human acts depend are sometimes called the sources of morality. But in texts of moral theology it has become customary to call the proximate and particular elements that concretely determine the moral value of individual human acts the sources of morality; consequently, every judgment concerning the moral value of a concrete human act must take them simultaneously into account in order to be exhaustive and definitive. Moral theology, from scholasticism to the present day (cf. I. Carton de Wiart, De normis moralitatis in actibus humanis, in Collectanea Mechliniensia, 8 [1934] pp. 553-57), reduces them to three: the object, the end, and the circumstances. This classification is not arbitrary, but is founded on the essential dynamism and structure of the human act. Scholasticism, considering the human act as a concrete moral entity, analyzed it into its constitutive moral elements, following the same procedure of metaphysical analysis employed for any entity; it therefore discerned in every human act a kind of substantial moral substratum and distinguished it from its accidental moral modifications. The substantial moral substratum is itself composed of two elements, which stand to each other in the relationship of matter and form, or also of means and end: the first is called the object, the second the end; the accidental moral modifications are called circumstances.
I. THE OBJECT
It is the immediate term toward which every affective or operative impulse of the will is directed. It can easily be identified by supposing that one asks the person who says “I want” (or “I love,” “I desire,” etc.) to answer the question “what?” The object of the will may therefore be anything possessing any kind of reality: substance, action, passion, habit, etc., as in the examples: I want glory, to be respected, to know God, to remain at peace, etc., where the underlined words represent equally many different objects of the will. In this there resides not only the ontological value of its objects, but also their moral value. Consequently, by isolating among the elements, often complex,that compose a human act the one that serves as its object, one can make a first certain judgment concerning its substantial morality. It is precisely one of the essential tasks of moral science to determine and classify human acts from the standpoint of their objective moral value. The most general categories of this classification are: good, bad, indifferent, and better acts; intrinsically or extrinsically good and bad acts; gravely or lightly evil acts (mortal or venial sin).
II. THE END
This too is a term of the will, but in a manner different from the object: the latter is what is willed, whereas the former is that for which it is willed. Even when object and end concretely coincide, they represent two distinct real aspects toward which the will projects itself outside itself. The object is what is willed or effected by the will, but with a view to a further end. The object is that toward which the will tends, but the end is what the will intends. Thus the will finds satisfaction not in the object, but in the end, which represents the motive of the volitional tendency (intention). Now, since the end is the formal object of the will, it also communicates its own moral value to II. In short, the moral quality of a person’s actions is judged not only by their objective content, but also and above all by the moral quality of his intentions, the motives for which he acts, and the goals he wishes to achieve. By the same act, a person may pursue several ends independent of one another, or complementary and subordinate, with one as the principal end and the other as secondary. In this case the act is considered virtually multiple and receives its moral character from the predominant end.III. THE CIRCUMSTANCES
Every concrete human act necessarily proceeds from an acting subject in determinate circumstances of time and space; these and other circumstances, grouped in the well-known verse « Quis quid ubi quibus auxiliis cur quomodo quando », can confer different moral values upon the act, and specifically can cause the theological species of the act to vary, or add new moral species, or intensify—by aggravating—or diminish those that it already possesses by virtue of its object and end. For example, from the circumstance quis (the acting subject) it may depend on whether an act that is good in its object and end is concretely contrary, gravely or lightly, to the moral order; as in the case of a spouse who embraces the religious state, with the other spouse dissenting.It must be borne in mind that, for an act to be called good, it is necessary that it present no moral deformity either in its object, or in its end, or in its circumstances; it is sufficient, on the other hand, that only one of these three elements be morally defective for the act to be called evil. « Bonum ex integra causa, malum es quocumque defectu ». And since it is never lawful to perform an act that is concretely evil, it follows from the principle just stated that it is never lawful to perform, for a good end, an act intrinsically evil in its object or circumstances. The end does not justify the means; nor is it lawful to perform acts that are good in their object and circumstances for evil ends.
La notion d'intention dans l'oeuvre de si Thomas d'Agnis, in Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 19 (1930), pp. 445-53. Gaetano Corti