Sources of Morality

SOURCES OF MORALITY. - In a generic sense, the remote and universal causes on which the character and the moral evaluation of human acts depend are sometimes called sources of morality. But in the texts of moral theology it has become customary to call sources of morality the proximate and particular elements that concretely determine the moral value of individual human acts, and which therefore every judgment concerning the moral value of a concrete human act must simultaneously take 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 on the structure of the human act. Scholasticism, considering the human act as a concrete moral entity, composed it out of its constitutive moral elements, with 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 in turn proves to be composed of two elements, which stand to each other in the relation of matter and form or also of means and end: the first is called the object, the second the end, and the accidental moral modifications the circumstances.

I. THE OBJECT

It is the immediate term toward which every affective or operative impulse of the will is directed. It is easily identified by supposing that one asks the question "what?" of the person who says "I will" (or "I love," "I desire," etc.). The object of the will can therefore be anything that bears any character of reality whatsoever: substance, action, passion, habit, etc., as in the examples: I want glory, to be respected, to know God, to be at peace, etc., where the underlined words represent so many different objects of the will. In this [object] there passes not only the ontological value of its objects, but also their moral value. Therefore, by isolating among the elements, often complex, that make up a human act the one that functions as its object, one can pronounce a first sure judgment on its substantial morality. It is precisely one of the essential tasks of moral science to determine and classify human acts from the point of view 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; gravely or lightly bad (mortal or venial sin).

II. THE END

It is likewise a term of the will, but in a different way from the object: the latter is what is willed, the former instead that for the sake of 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 brought about by the will, but with a view to a further term. The object is that toward which the will tends, but the end is what the will intends. Therefore the will finds itself satisfied not in the object, but in the end, which represents the motive (reason) of the volitional tendency (intention). Now the end, being the formal object of the will, communicates to it also its own moral value. In short, the moral quality of a man's actions is judged not only by their objective content, but also and above all by the moral quality of his intentions, of the motives for which he acts, of the purposes he wishes to attain. A man can, by the same act, pursue several ends independent of one another, or else complementary and subordinate, one as the principal end and the other as secondary. In this case the act is considered as virtually multiple and receives its moral color from the preponderant end.

III. LE CIRCOSTANZE

Every concrete human act necessarily proceeds from an agent subject in determinate situations 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 on the act, and precisely can change the theological species of the act, or add new moral species, or intensify by aggravating, or diminish those it already possesses by virtue of its object and end. For example, from the circumstance quis (the agent subject) it can depend whether an act, good in its object and end, is concretely contrary, in a grave or slight manner, to the moral order; as in the case of a spouse who embraces the religious state, 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; on the other hand, it suffices that only one of these three elements be morally vitiated for the act to be called bad. "Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu". And since it is never lawful to perform a concretely bad act, from the principle just stated it follows that it is never lawful to perform, for a good end, an act intrinsically bad in its object and circumstances. The end does not justify the means; nor is it lawful to perform acts good in their object and circumstances for bad ends.

Gaetano Corti