← The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Day 236: The Morality of Human Acts (2025)
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Together, with Fr. Mike, we examine the article on the morality of human acts. Fr. Mike unpacks the three “sources” of morality: the object chosen, the end in view or the intention, and the circumstances. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the categories of right or wrong, good or evil. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 1749-1761.
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Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast where we encounter God's plan of sure goodness for us, revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 236. We're reading paragraphs 6, 1749-1761. As always, I am using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes a foundations of Faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a Year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com ciy and lastly, you can click Follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates. Daily Notifications thank you for all of you who have subscribed. Also, all those who have, like, made like rank to this or what do you call it, rated this, given it a score, you know, what, whatever that's called, where you give it like five stars, you know, if you give it one, I guess part of me would think why you got day 236, but nonetheless, all of you who have, you know, given the thumbs up to this or shared it with other people. I know there are so many people who are actually, I know it's day 236 for us right now, but there are some who on our day 236, it's their day one, because people start this all of the time. And so whoever that person is, let's pray for them and pray for ourselves as we launch forward in this next section on this third pillar of the Catechism. Article four, the morality of human acts against paragraph 1749 to the end 1761. It's kind of the whole article. Not kind of the whole article, it is the whole article. And basically it talks about the sources of morality. Basically, the morality of human acts depend on the three elements, right? So the object chosen, like the thing itself, the end in view or the intention, and then the circumstances of the action. So this is in so many ways, if you want to break it down and say, how can I think about moral choices critically, clearly, without just kind of like, I don't know, I kind of have this general idea of right or wrong. I kind of have. Maybe there are some cases where you did the Right thing, but you didn't do it for the right reason. Maybe that's still okay. No, we recognize this, that the morality of human acts depend on these three aspects, these three elements. One, the object chosen, the good toward which we actually direct ourselves. Number two, the end in view or the intention. Like what's the reason? What are you going for here? Thirdly, the circumstances of the action. And so we'll talk about that more deeply as we continue moving on. Today we have Article 4. And as I said, we're going to pray for all those who are just starting today. Today's their day. One on our day 236. And let's also pray for ourselves as we launch into this day. Father in heaven, we give you praise and thank you so much. Thank you for making us like you. Thank you for giving us an intellect and a will. Thank you for calling us to love. Making us in your image so that we can. So we can love. We are sorry for the times we have failed to love. Help us. Help us in our weakness. We are truly sorry for all the times that we have not risen above our brokenness. For all the times we've not said yes to your grace. For all the times we've done the wrong thing in the in the right way or for the wrong reason or the right thing for the wrong way or wrong reason. For all the ways. Lord, we just have violated your law, violated your will and broken your heart. We are sorry. We ask you to help us receive our broken hearts, receive our wounded hearts and help us to belong to you this day and every day. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is day 236. We are reading paragraphs 1749 to 1761. Article 4. The morality of Human acts Freedom makes man a moral subject when he acts deliberately. Man is, so to speak, the Father of his acts. Human acts, that is, acts that are freely chosen in consequence of a judgment of conscience can be morally evaluated. They are either good or evil. The sources of morality. The morality of human acts depends the object chosen, the end in view or the intention, the circumstances of the action. The object. The intention and the circumstances make up the sources or constitutive elements of the morality of human acts. The object chosen is a good toward which the will deliberately directs itself. It is the matter of a human act. The object chosen morally specifies the act of the will insofar as reason recognizes and judges it. To be or not to be. In conformity with the true good. Objective norms of morality express the rational order of good and evil attested to by conscience. In contrast to the object, the intention resides in the acting subject because it lies at the voluntary source of an action and determines it by its end. Intention is an element essential to the moral evaluation of an action. The end is the first goal of the intention and indicates the purpose pursued in the action. The intention is a movement of the will toward the end. It is concerned with the goal of the activity. It aims at the good anticipated from the action undertaken. Intention is not limited to directing individual actions, but can guide several actions toward one and the same purpose. It can orient one's whole life toward its ultimate end. For example, a service done with the end of helping one's neighbor can at the same time be inspired by the love of God as the ultimate end of all our actions. One and the same action can also be inspired by several intentions, such as performing a service in order to obtain a favor to boast about it. A good intention, for example that of helping one's neighbor, does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying or calumny, good or just. The end does not justify the means. Thus, the condemnation of an innocent person cannot be justified as a legitimate means of saving the nation. On the other hand, an added bad intention, such as vainglory, makes an act evil that in and of itself can be good, such as almsgiving. These circumstances, including the consequences, are secondary elements of a moral act. They contribute to increasing or diminishing the moral goodness or evil of human acts, for example, the amount of a theft. They can also diminish or increase the agent's responsibility, such as acting out of a fear of death. Circumstances of themselves cannot change the moral quality of acts themselves. They can make neither good nor right. An action that is in itself evil. Good acts and evil acts. A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances together. An evil end corrupts the action. Even if the object is good in itself, such as praying and fasting in order to be seen by men, the object of the choice can by itself vitiate and act in its entirety. There are some concrete acts, such as fornication, that it is always wrong to choose because choosing them entails a disorder of the will that is a moral evil. It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances, environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc. Which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, or are always gravely illicit by reason of their object, such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it. In brief, the object, the intention and the circumstances make up the three sources of the morality of human acts. The object chosen morally specifies the act of willing. Accordingly, as reason recognizes and judges it. Good or evil. An evil action cannot be justified by reference to a good intention. The end does not justify the means. A morally good act requires the goodness of its object, of its end, and of its circumstances together. There are concrete acts that it is always wrong to choose because their choice entails a disorder of the will that is a moral evil. One may not do evil so that good may result from it. Okay, there we have it. Day 236, paragraphs 1749 to 1761. I understand that you might have gotten to the end of this section saying, what are you talking about? We're talking object chosen intention. There's the subject, there's the circumstances. Okay, let's just break it down as simply as we possibly can. Paragraph 1749, this is. You're going to make sense. It'll make sense by the end of this. So keep this in mind. Paragraph 1749 says what? Okay. Because we have freedom. Because of that, we are a moral subject or moral agent, right? We have agency, which means that we can choose. Because of that, we. Right. We have. Because we have freedom, we have agency. We can choose now because we can choose between right and wrong. Because we have freedom. Those are often moral choices. We are a moral subject. So it goes on to say, when he acts deliberately, meaning on purpose, Right. Not just accidentally or incidentally, we are, so to speak, the father of our acts. I think I used the quote the other day, that the child becomes the father of the man. Right. Or the child becomes the mother of the woman. That sense of that. Yeah. We become the father of ourselves, who we become. And also we're the ones who choose. Right. So we're the father of our own acts, human acts, that is, acts that are freely chosen in consequence of a judgment of conscience, meaning, again, intentional. We use our intellect and our will can be morally evaluated. They are either good or evil. So keep this in mind. Now, why am I bringing all this up? And let's give a context here. Christian Smith is a sociologist, used to be out of Chapel Hill in North Carolina. Now he works at Notre Dame. And he had done this nationwide study or nationwide Survey of the moral life of American adolescents, American young adults. He did a life of the examination of the spiritual lives American adolescents. And then more recently, he did a survey of the moral life of American young adults. Like something from ages 18 to 29. Somewhere in there. One of the things he came back, he and his team came back with, he said they were shocked. He said they had 60% had neither the ability nor the categories to make moral decisions. Now, they needed the ability or categories to make moral decisions. Now, that doesn't mean that they aren't free, right? Doesn't mean that they're worse people. What it means is we have lost a language of good and evil. In fact, so the vast majority of the young adults that were surveyed, they wouldn't actually say something was wrong or was bad. They would say, well, that was just stupid or that person's just sick, right? So to lose the categories of this is right or this is wrong, to lose the categories of this is good or evil, and all you can say is that's just dumb, that's just stupid, or even that's pathological, right? That's just sick. It eliminates the reality that we can actually evaluate the morality of actions and say, oh, this actually falls into the camp of this is good or this is evil. And again, not to condemn anybody or to accuse anybody, but to know the truth, right? We want to be able to be people who have the ability to identify good and evil so that we can choose good over evil. That's the whole point in so many ways. But if I've lost the category of objective morality, right? If all I have is pluralism, all I have relativism, right? It's all the same. You know, you do you. It's all the same. No big deal. Just, you know, don't hurt anybody, then we've given up our freedom. That's why Christian Smith, I believe in his research, why Christian Smith and his team concluded that this massive number of American young adults had neither the ability nor the categories to make moral decisions because they didn't see them in terms of right and wrong. Or even if they did, it was just like, well, that's wrong. Why? Because I don't like it. So ultimately, morality becomes either a matter of preference or utility, right? So either right or wrong. If something is good, you know, quote unquote good, if it's something that I. My opinion I like or that I. Oh, yeah, that works, right? So preference or utility or something is bad because I don't like that or because it doesn't work. So again, so when it comes down to this, in so many ways, so many other people's worldview, not the Christian worldview, not the Catholic worldview, but the world's worldview is in so many ways, things are only right or wrong if you have the opinion that they're right or wrong or they don't work or they do work right. So it's either preference or utility, not actual objective right or wrong. And yet here we have this in paragraph 1750 spelled out. No, we recognize that the morality of human acts depend on three, you might say even our objective elements or objective constitutive elements. The first is the object chosen. Like what's the thing itself. So alms giving, like. So giving charity to someone who needs it. Another blasphemy, right? That's the object. Shows I've chosen to blaspheme, to tell the truth. I've chosen to do that or I've chosen to lie. The object itself that that act chosen. Right. The second thing, the end in view or the intention, why did I do this? And the third is the circumstances of the action. What's. What are the circumstances? And we recognize to make it this as simple as possible, we know that in order for a human act to be fully moral, like morally good, all three of those must be morally good. Again, for a human act to be morally good, I can't just have like, I chose the right thing, but for the wrong. Definitely. Definitely. We recognize that so often in our culture, it's like, well, their heart was in the right place. That's not a problem. It's good to have your heart in the right place. But to say their heart was in the right place as they chose. Fornication does not make fornication good. But they truly, really love that person. Okay, but their actions are sin. So a good intention cannot make a bad action good. Does that make sense? A good intention cannot make a bad action good. In fact, I remember Dr. Peter Kreeft. I've referenced him a couple times. I've learned so much from him over the course of my life. At one point, I think he had given the example example. I'll. I'll use it like a movie. He. I think he might use the example of a book, but maybe books are straight, more straightforward. But he, he pointed this out. He said, okay, let's do book. Okay. Said for a book to be good, you need to have. The writing needs to be well done and the characters need to be well developed and the plot needs to be good. Right? So you need three, basically three picked out three essential elements of a good story, right? So grammar's done well, right? The characters are well developed and the plot is good. Now, we've all seen movies or read books where, you know, that was good intention. Like, I really like the idea sometimes Christian movies are like this, right? Where it's like, ah, the acting's not so great or the dialogue's not so great. But like, I really like what they're going for. I really like that, the intention. I really like the moral of the story. And we say, okay, but that's not a good movie or it's not a good book. And similarly, go to the movie example, you need to have good acting, you need to have a good plot and you need to have a good character development. Say good dialogue. Like that. Oh my gosh, you guys. All these different elements I'm bringing into this. But we recognize that if one of those things is off, if the acting is bad, even though, wow, that's a really powerful story, it's like, that would have been great if the acting had been better. If even one of those things is missing, it's no longer a great movie, no longer a great book. So let's get back to what we do know about which is the sources of morality. In order for a moral or an action to be morally good, the object chosen has to be good, the intention has to be good, and the circumstances have to be good. So, example, almsgiving, I'm going to give to the poor, but I'm going to give to the poor, like Jesus said, so that others may see that, okay, that's taken this morally good act, the object chosen, and made it morally bad because my intention was to be seen. Or I could say that, yeah. So I'm going to give, I think, this example I've heard from someone else. I'm going to give candy to my nephew, okay? I'm the candy, my nephew. So that's morally good. And the intention is because, yeah, I want him to be happy, I want him to have some candy. My intention is good, but the action is fine. The circumstances are he is massively diabetic. And so. And if I know that that makes that good action, that was again, good object chosen, good intention makes it into a bad moral action because the intention, the circumstances are this kid is severely diabetic. So we recognize that in order for a human act to be morally good, all three of those things have to be in place. Now, what was said multiple times in this little mini article is that the end does not justify the means. So just because the intention is going to be, well, you know, it says if I sacrifice this one innocent person, the nation will be saved. Like that is that does the end does not justify the means. This is one of those philosophical or moral principles that we hold to as Catholics. The end does not justify the means. And the other principle that we hold on to as well is one may not do evil, so that good may result of it. It's connected to the end domain, does not justify the means. But one may not do evil so that good may result from it. This is just so important for us to hold on to these as we move forward, talking about how we live freely, how we live in power and joy. We have to hold on to. Okay, there's these three aspects of every moral action. The object chosen, the intention, the circumstances. All three have to be good. And a bad intention or a bad circumstance can make the whole moral act evil. And if the object chosen is evil, the best of intentions and the best of circumstances cannot make that a good action. Keep that in mind. The second is the end does not justify the means. And the third, much like it is, one may not do evil, so the good may result from it. Hopefully this made sense. I don't know if it made sense during the reading. Hopefully it makes sense now. I don't know if that book analogy or the movie analogy really helped, but it helped me when I first heard it. But then again, it was Dr. Kreeft who had. Who had given the example and not me. So I maybe just butchered his example, in which case my intention was good and the circumstances were right. I just failed to execute, if that makes any sense. All right, see, now you get it. Here we are, you guys. Oh man, what a day. What a gift to be able to be here with you on day 236. I gotta tell you what, Here's a little secret. I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.