Reawakening Morality

Morality. It is a word that has been dirtied by our society and has suffered a manipulation that has left its meaning disfigured and ugly; for, this one word that should speak peace and hope to the human heart has been left abused and distorted so that seldom does contemporary mankind see this word for what it is but only for what it is misunderstood to be. More often than not, our culture has incited in the souls of our civilization a visceral contempt for this word, “morality,” founded upon the misguided teaching that what this word represents is nothing other than arbitrary restrictions, suppression of freedom, and reduction of the human experience.

In reality, however, “morality” represents something far more profound and elevating to human life, which makes our culture’s belittling of this realm of human activity all the more tragic. Universally, the experience of being the agent of an act one internally deems inappropriate, unloving, destructive – in other words, “immoral” – is that sensation of having done something in which we find ourselves divided against ourselves, by our own hand. We have placed ourselves in opposition to what is true and good and what causes us to genuinely flourish. We have either distorted a good, a quality of life and decency, or deprived ourselves of it. We are torn internally; we feel alienated and even betrayed by our very selves; and our hearts become the battleground of confliction, anxiety, and inner division. This kind of life can never be a satisfying human life, but often it is the life we find ourselves in by abandoning morality and permitting unfettered license to our whims and passions, which eventually lead us to where we would otherwise prefer not to go and to do what we would otherwise prefer to have not done. This is not freedom; it is instead a kind of slavery.

The amnesia of modern culture is that the state of fleeing morality never leads to a more fulfilling human life – it only provides an explosion of pleasure and elation for the present moment which soon dissipates and leaves nothing but a new sensation of absence and discontent. This is because only moral acts cultivate a lasting good in our lives. As John Paul II writes of the rich man who comes to Jesus asking for guidance on eternal life (Mark 10:17-22), “the commandments of which Jesus reminds the young man are meant to safeguard the good of the person, the image of God, by protecting his goods.” (Veritatis Splendor, 13). Whereas most see morality as merely an arbitrary obstruction to our good, morality is an authentic path to the maintenance and defense of human goods. Insomuch as one may only hear in the “thou shalt not” of the moral code the declaration, “Stop, you are not permitted,” one has become deaf to the much louder proclamation, “Go, do and uphold what is good instead.” What appears as a limitation in the restrictions of morality is simply the divine imperative to genuinely preserve the good, threatened by an act that promises a good it can never provide. For such is the nature of sin. As John Paul II also states,

“thou shalt not…are moral rules formulated in terms of prohibitions. These negative precepts express with particular force the ever urgent need to protect life, the communion of persons in marriage, private property, truthfulness and people’s good name…thus the commandment ‘you shall not murder’ becomes a call to an attentive love which protects and promotes the life of one’s neighbor. The precept prohibiting adultery becomes an invitation to a pure way of looking at others, capable of respecting the spousal meaning of the body…the commandments thus represent the basic condition for love of neighbor; at the same time they are proof of that love. They are the first necessary step on the journey toward freedom, its starting point.” (Veritatis Splendor, 13)

Human freedom is not a haphazard attribute of the human person; rather, it is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness (CCC 1731)*. This is why the more one does what is good the more one experiences true freedom (CCC 1733). Morality, therefore, enhances our freedom, rather than diminishing it, because the concentration of morality is fixed upon the preservation of what is good in human life by a self mastery that avoids what endangers the truly good. In the life of one who practices morality, the good is safeguarded, human freedom flourishes, and the human experience is elevated and secured in goodness and excellence. “Man as an individual and as a member of society craves a life that is full, autonomous, and worthy of his nature as a human being”** But this will always remain elusive and incomplete apart from morality.

* CCC stands for “Catechism of the Catholic Church”
** Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, n.9