Transcript

Praised be Jesus Christ.

As we continue this introductory course in Catholic moral theology, uh, we continue to look at notions, ideas that might seem philosophical rather than theological.

We always have to remember the Catholic principle that grace builds upon, perfects, and elevates nature.

It never- grace never destroys nature.

So, if we want to have a sound understanding of moral theology and the moral life of the Christian, we have to understand the moral good, we have to understand moral philosophy, which is why Professor McInerny has also been offering courses in moral philosophy.

But for the purpose of our reflection on moral theology, in this course, in this hour, we're going to look at the moral act.

As I say, some of this might sound simply philosophical, but we will be looking at it from the perspective of our desire to please God so that we might attain to Him and live with Him forever, so that we might know how we can live in this life, uh, according to the fullness that He wants for all of us as He has called us to be His children.

Now, the question is, what is a moral act?

What sort of action is a moral act?

How do we know that we are faced with something about which we ought to make a moral judgment?

Now, we've been saying that reasonable human beings are to act in accord with their nature as God has created them.

We are to act reasonably, in such a way that, that we are acting in accord with our being, which means that we are acting in accord with our dignity.

And by acting in accord with our dignity, we are able to give glory to God since we are His image and likeness and we reflect His glory.

We have to see that the human person himself is the basic fundamental good on behalf of which we act morally.

One of my favorite quotations from the great Medieval theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas, is found in his book, the Summa Contra Gentiles.

This is a summary of Christian doctrine that is put forth in such a way that it would be understandable to heretics, to Jews, to Muslims, and to infidels.

Saint Thomas wrote another great work called the Summa Theologica, which is specifically, uh, a reflection upon the Christian life, the life of baptized men and women.

But as I say, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, Saint Thomas wants to find a way in which he can explain Christian truth to people who aren't Christians.

And it is in this work that I find one of the most enlightening sentences in all the writings of Saint Thomas, which I think is key to our understanding the Catholic moral life.

Saint Thomas writes, God is offended by us, God is offended by us only when we act against Now, if I'm out lecturing and I have a live audience, I will stop there and I'll ask members of the audience to finish the sentence.

And they, this is the way in which they usually do it, God is offended by us only when we act against, and they will respond, Against His will, or, Against His laws, or, Against His commandments.

But this is not what Saint Thomas tells us.

Saint Thomas says, God is offended by us only when we act against our own good.

All God wants for us, all He wants is our happiness.

This is why He's given us the commandments.

This is why He ultimately came to us in Jesus Christ, so that we might be able to come to Him and be happy, okay?

As, uh, the author of the, the letter, first letter of John says, That our joy might be full.

He said, I'm writing these things to you that your joy might be full.

God wants us to be perfected and full and integrated and happy.

So, God is offended by us only when we act against our own good, which means, in part, that we can look to the human person to understand what our good would be.

And we have to understand what we are as human beings and we have to see that God has created us as bodies.

We, if we are going to be happy as human beings, we have to know what we human beings are.

It's not enough simply to look at ourselves and say, Well, I'm, I'm gonna have some understanding of, of how we ought, ought to act because I can, I can see that we overeat.

You know, we get fat.

We don't eat enough.

Uh, you know, we, we can't concentrate and do our work, so we have to have balanced meals.

Yes, that's helpful, but we need a Christian doctrine fully to understand what we are even naturally.

We must always keep in mind that we are creatures, that we have been created by God, which means that God has a purpose for us.

And when God reveals something to us about how we ought to act, we know that if we act in accord with what God has revealed, that we will only find ultimate happiness.

Now, it's very important for Catholic moral thought for us to have a firm understanding of what it is to be bodies.

Now, this may come as a surprise to some of you, but the passions are very important elements in Catholic moral thought, because God's created us with passions.

He's created us with appetites.

In other word, we have these inclinations that draw us to certain goods, and they're of the body, and we have to incorporate them into our understanding of the human act if we are to understand, uh, what it is that will actually lead to our fulfillment.

We, as human beings, are soul and body, not one or the other.

In fact, Saint Thomas, at one point, is reflecting on the soul in his Quaestiones Disputata De Potentia Dei, Disputed Questions About the, the Power of God.

And in it, Saint Thomas says, Well, it's the goal of each of us to be like God.

And you say, Of course it is.

And then he goes on and says, God is non-corporeal.

God's a spirit.

He doesn't have a body.

And you say, Yes, of course, that's right.

Then Thomas goes on and says, Well then, the soul separated from the body must be more perfect than the soul united with the body, because a soul separated from the body is more like God, who is non-corporeal, who is spirit.

And you think, Well, yes.

But Thomas is, is tricking you here.

He's, he's doing this argumentation, making you think that this is the way in which you ought to go, and Thomas stops there and says, No, that's not right, because it's the soul's perfection to be united with the body.

It's God's perfection to be spirit.

It's our perfection to be body and soul together.

We believe that we were created bodies by God, and it is an aspect of our glory, and we as Christians believe in the resurrection of the body.

The body's going to go with us.

The soul's just not gonna go up to Heaven a- and en- enjoy this ethereal, um, spiritual existence.

The body is going to be there too.

The body is going to be raised up.

So we must be very clear about what we are as bodies and not be ashamed of that, and understand that that has to be taken into account when we are trying to determine what constitutes a moral act.

Now, we have great faculties that God has given us as bodies.

We have the intellect.

We have the will.

And it is the intellect that enables us to see the ends for which we have been created.

In fact, we sometimes say that the intellect is the eye of the will.

The will loves the good.

In fact, one of the great classical definitions of love is the spontaneous Love is the spontaneous movement of the will toward that which is good.

But the will can't be drawn to that which is good unless the good is first seen, unless it's perceived, and that is the act of the intellect.

But these two must work together.

Both the intellect and the will must be engaged, must be working for a particular human action to be regarded as a moral act.

In other words, as an act which is capable of moral judgment as being either good or bad.

And such an act is called, in the Latin, an actus humanus, a human act.

An actus humanus is a moral act about which we can pass judgment with regard to its morality or its immorality.

There are all kinds of actions that we do without thinking at all.

Now, I intentionally scratched my ear there just to make a point.

Most people don't think about scratching their ear.

Their ear is itchy, and without even thinking, without reflecting, they reach up and scratch it.

Well, it's a human being doing that act, but obviously it's not going to be subject to, uh, moral judgment.

So we call an act like that, in the Latin, an actus hominis, an act of a human being, not capable of being judged morally.

So we're concerned here with the actus humanus, with the human act, and it isn't going to be a moral act, as I say, unless the intellect is working, uh, and the will has been engaged, unless we have made some judgment about the action that we are performing.

Now, because we are bodies, I was saying earlier, we also have to take into account the passions, okay?

We have basic appetites, and an appetite, according to Saint Thomas, is a principle or a source of movement in a thing, and it's the sense appetites which or the sense perceptions, okay?

Sense perceptions, which first, if you will, sort of ignite the appetite, draw the appetite out of itself, and we can under About the only time we use the word appetite anymore is with regard to, to food, okay?

Uh, we come home, we're hungry, we come in the house, we sniff the pizza, and boy, our appetite kicks in, okay?

It's engaged, and we, we hardly even think about it.

It just happens.

Well, uh, the same is true for the sexual appetite.

Uh, we see something and there's a certain, uh, trigger that, that just responds within us.

That's why these are also sometimes called the passions.

The, the same Latin word that we use for passion, we use also for passive.

You see, there's something passive in us- that is, if you will, ignited or acted upon.

See, once it's acted upon, let's say with a, a sensual image with regard to sexuality or with the smell of food, with regard to, uh, uh, with regard to, uh, our appetite for the consumption of, of food and drink, um, the appetite responds.

Now, the only people who are moral people are people who are bodies, who realize that, uh, their actions and appetites have been acted upon, also realize what these are ordered toward, and therefore, um, make judgments about what they're going to do with these appetites which have been acted upon.

So we, we've now looked at the moral agent, if you will, and we'll go on next to, to see what kinds of circumstances and choices have to be in place for him to make a moral act.

We're looking today at what constitutes a moral act, and we can't make a judgment about that unless we understand what a moral actor is, who the moral agent is.

We are saying that he is, just using philosophical language, a rational body, uh, and using the insight of gain from, um, natural reason with regard to our relationship with God.

We are creatures and, to understand insights and knowledge gained from revelation, that we are children of God destined for eternity with Him.

Now, this is the moral agent that we're talking about.

But as rational bodies, that means we have intellect and we have will, and we have to see how closely tied in these are with one another.

And the intellect is ordered toward the true.

Uh, once we come to know the true and it's a true good, then the will is spontaneously drawn toward it as delectable, as delightful.

So we have the intellect, we have the will.

Aristotle, for example, uh, says that the will is the intellect fired with desire.

And then we have to understand ourselves in terms of our lower nature as well, and that is that we are acted upon.

In realizing that we're acted upon, that we have passion, which is what we are as human beings, we have to be very knowledgeable and careful about the way in which we act, the circumstances in which we, uh, allow ourselves to go, uh, if we want to lead a fulfilling life.

And the circumstances is, is another component that has to be taken into account with regard to, uh, moral judgment of actions.

If I know, and, and every human being does know, that, that I can be aroused by sensual pictures, okay, 'cause that's part of the way God made me, because He wanted men and women to be attracted to one another, so it's built into us.

But if I'm not yet able to act upon that attraction, say because I'm not married, then the reasonable thing to do is to avoid the circumstances where you would be exposed to those kinds of images.

Sometimes we can find ourselves in circumstances through no choice of our own which might leave us, uh, acted upon, m- might leave us, uh, exposed to certain dangers.

Well, if that's the case and we haven't chosen it, then we'll see that the, the moral judgment can be altered somewhat with regard, uh, to the, uh, to the culpability, uh, or the blameworthiness of the individual in terms of the, uh, the action that has been performed.

Now, if we're going to consider an act, we have to look at it in its circumstances.

So we're dealing with the person, intellect, will, and passions.

And in a concrete situation, because we only act in concrete situations, we don't act abstractly, and every human act is concrete, it's in one place at one time, so we have to take the circumstances into account.

And it will even, they will even help us understand what a given act is.

Sometimes the same physical act can be understood differently by virtue of the circumstances within which that act is performed.

Circumstances can actually make any given act more or less grave.

Now, the Catholic Church is very, very realistic about human nature, and, uh, it shouldn't be surprising that we find our courts of law, for example, uh, taking the same kinds of things into account.

Let's say you have a man who's been charged with murder, and if it's a jurisdiction that has the death penalty, then almost, or at least very frequently, they will have two trials.

One trial will be to determine whether or not the man did the deed of which he is accused, and then there'll be another trial which will be the sentencing trial.

So the first trial is just concerned with whether or not the man did the deed of which he is accused, and let's say he's found guilty.

Then there'll be another trial, the sentencing trial, which will look at all the aggravating and mitigating circumstances that took place, uh, with regard to the act that he had committed.Let's say he committed an act of murder.

Or when he did it, um, was he intoxicated?

Had he been drinking too much?

Uh, had, had someone goaded him into the action, uh, so that he wasn't really completely in control of his faculties?

Or had he reflected long and hard about murdering this other person and did so, as we say, in cold blood, okay, with, with clear vision, eyes wide open?

Now, when the sentencing court makes its judgment, it will allow itself to be guided by these mitigating or aggravating circumstances so that the judgment will be somewhat less harsh if the individual has not been entirely free, uh, in his performing the act or if he did so out of ignorance.

So these kinds of circumstances are taken into account when we are passing judgment on the type of action that an individual had performed.

So circumstances, as I say, can make an act more grave or less grave.

They can also increase or diminish the guilt of the individual.

But circumstances cannot make a bad action good.

Okay?

However, they can make a good action bad.

Well, that might not seem fair, but our Lord said, you know, the way is, is straight and the gate is narrow that leads to eternal life.

Uh, the moral life, uh, requires a certain precision and, and clarity of vision and purpose.

But the church will consider, the moral theologians will usually consider these six circumstances when they're passing judgment on an act: who, what, how, where, by what means, and when.

Who, what, how, where, by what means, and when.

These can be circumstances surrounding the act, uh, some of which might, in a sense, enter so much into the act that the act itself is transformed into another kind of act or they might diminish the act and not make it as bad as it would be otherwise.

Now we can take a simple physical act, for example, and it can change depending on who is actually performing the act.

You can have a simple act of, of sexual intercourse, for example.

Well, if we ask who is performing that act, it will have a determinant, uh, it will have a determining influence, uh, or will be a determining factor on what the act itself is.

So if you have this act of sexual intercourse being performed by a loving married couple open to life, then what we have is a marital act.

If it's performed by two unmarried people, what we have is an act of fornication.

If at least one of the partners is married, then it's an act of adultery.

If, God forbid, one of the persons performing the act should be a priest or religious, then it is an act of sacrilege in addition to being an act of fornication or adultery.

And it can sometimes be that there, there are certain actions which are perfectly legitimate in some circumstances which would not be in others.

Husband and wife can enjoy marital relations at home in the bedroom.

However, even though they're a husband and ri- a husband and wife and entitled to those kinds of actions, simply may not do so publicly.

Okay?

Should they, uh, do that, then the circumstances under which they would perform that act would, would truly make it a bad act.

Okay?

It would become an inciting act, not a good and wholesome act.

Uh, we can see the same with another physical act such as, as shooting, you know, or killing another person.

You've killed another person.

You've pulled the trigger of this gun and, and the other person has died.

What have I done?

Well, you have, you have to look at all of the components of the act to find out what that moral object actually was.

It might have been an act of murder.

It's the same physical act, even if it were an act of self-defense.

In other words, the, the gun, uh, the trigger of the gun is pulled, the bullet goes through the other person and kills the other person.

In one circumstance, it's murder.

In the other circumstance, it's an act of self-defense, which is quite legitimate.

In another, uh, situation, it might be a soldier defending his country.

Another situation, it might be an executioner carrying out, uh, the execution of a convicted criminal.

So we have to take all of the circumstances into an a- into account as we are passing a judgment.

So to have a moral act, there are three components that are necessary to be there.

There has to be the object, the moral object.

What is it that I am proposing to do?

And I've given you some examples as to what those would be.

Then there has to be the intention on the part of the individual who is acting.

He has to intend to act for that object.

He has to intend to do what he indeed has done.

It might be that, that in the physical order, he has done something, but he really didn't intend to do that.

Uh, he's picked up a radio at the beach and he's walked away with it because it looks like his radio and he truly thinks it's his radio.

Well, then, uh, y- in a sense, you know, he hasn't really committed theft, morally speaking.

He's taken away somebody else's property.But he didn't intend to do so, so it can't be subject to, to moral scrutiny in that sense because the intention was not there.

And then we have to look at the circumstances.

As I was saying before, even though you have a good act, the circumstances in which that good act is performed might vitiate the act, make it, might make it no longer a good act.

As Saint Thomas said, To be good, a thing must be entirely good.

It is made evil by any defect.

So I may, let's say, perform an act of almsgiving, I may give money to somebody who's poor, do it in the context of the Church, the circumstances are good, the moral object of my action is good.

But let's say I'm doing it not out of love for this person who is poor.

In fact, maybe I harbor resentment, uh, and ill will toward that person, but I know that I will gain great notoriety and great acclaim if I do this act, so I'm really doing it for vainglory.

So even though from outward appearances, you know, this could be a very good act, say as far as it, uh, as, as we can see.

But if our intention is bad, if our intention is not truly to give alms, truly not to express my love and charity toward this, uh, this man in need, then that defect has vitiated that act, has, has disordered that act from within and it no longer is the act that it appeared to be.

So in order for us to have a truly morally good act, the object of the act must be good, the intentions must be upright and good, and the circumstances must be the proper ones for that action to take place within.

So we'll return shortly.

We're talking about moral acts.

Obviously to talk about moral acts, we have to talk about the actor, the agent, uh, because he's the one who acts, as our Holy Father points out in a huge and very difficult book, uh, which is entitled The Acting Person.

If any of you want some good summer reading, you might look to, to that book of our Holy Father.

But the moral agent is one who is intelligent, one who is free, that is he has a will, he can choose or not choose.

Um, the moral agent is a body, um, has dispositions and passions and acts within a concrete circumstance.

Uh, and when all of this is taken into account, we can pass judgment, uh, upon an act which is performed to see whether that action is enabling that person to attain their end well or whether that action would hinder or impede the person from attaining his end well.

And if the act that is chosen is consonant with the end that he is pursuing, and indeed one of his God-given ends, uh, then, then we say this is, this is a good act.

Uh, he has chosen his spouse, he has committed himself to her for life.

Now, you see, uh, the Church says y- you can choose any spouse you want.

I mean, we're not, we're not She's free, okay?

We're not, um, the, the, the essence of the moral life is to make the choice of some good out there and the, uh, the choices are almost unlimited.

That's one of the beautiful and exciting things about, uh, the moral life for the Catholic.

We understand it as being, um, a life which pursues happiness and the good which ultimately can be found in God alone, uh, but by choosing all these goods out there.

There's a very beautiful saying by Gustave Thibaut, a Frenchman, who says that man seeks in woman what God alone can give.

So you have, uh, a man who, who seeks happiness in his wife, and indeed, in a participatory way he does find happiness, but even she, uh, directs him beyond herself to the ultimate happiness which can be found in God alone, which means that, that the marriage and the act of, of, uh, mutual giving and loving that the husband and wife experience within marriage aren't goods.

They are goods, but they, they come to participate in varying degrees to that great good which is God Himself.

So there are a great variety of actions that we can choose, all of which would be appropriate to helping us, uh, attain our end.

We will see that the, the, the Catholic moral life is very open-ended.

It's not confining, it's not restrictive, it's not narrow.

Uh, it doesn't say, This is the only way in which you can act in order to find eternal life.

Uh, in fact, with- within the Church, just the variety of vocations that we hi- have, which most other Christian bodies don't have, that, that you can find, uh, your eternal salvation as a spouse and a parent, uh, or as a consecrated virgin, as a hermit, as a, as a monk, as a re- teaching religious sister.

There's a great variety of the goods that can be chosen to help us attain our end.But the object that we are choosing, the moral object itself must be appropriate to the attainment of our good given, of our God given end.

Uh, the intention must be upright and the circumstances must be, uh, appropriate as we were saying.

So when we pass judgment on an act, we have to say the man knows what he is doing, he has to be free to do it, and he also has to do it in the right kind of way.

Now, in, in doing that over and over again, we find that the human person becomes habituated to certain kinds of actions.

If a man persistently, uh, performs acts of kindness toward his wife, uh, then over time, it's, it's, he hardly has to think about it.

It's the most natural thing that can be.

Or if a man is, is trustworthy and he gives his hand on a deal and he, he shakes on it, uh, and he is always just and always holds to his word, um, then this man has, we say, a sterling character.

Okay?

He, he's just.

Now, we know that his behavior will be predictable.

Okay?

We know that, that this man is going to be always loving toward his wife, this man is always going to hold toward his word, because they have become habituated to this kind of behavior.

When we perform moral acts over and over again in such a way that they become second nature to us, we become habituated to them, and they enable us, these habits enable us to attain our end well, we call them good habits or virtues.

But of course, we can make bad choices too.

We can choose to stay out too late all the time and to have too much to drink before we go to bed so that we wake up with a hangover.

And we can do that over and over again so that we become habituated to that kind of behavior as well, so that those behaviors, that habit don't enable us to achieve our end well.

They are bad habits or as we call them vices.

The Christian life is such, I should say the moral life is such that we are either growing in virtue or we are growing in vice.

And in making the choices, we set our wills and our bodies themselves come to follow along.

I was reading an interesting book on addiction one time in which the author told about the ingestion of various chemicals in the body, for example, alcohol, and that the body desires homeostasis, the body desires harmony within itself.

And as individuals ingest these chemicals, uh, they find their way through the entire body, even into the brain itself.

And there are mechanisms actually in the brain that enable the, the receptors of neurons in the brain to produce a chemical to kind of hold back this, this strange chemical that's coming, this chemical substance that's coming.

And as it does this over and over again because the man drinks habitually, you see, and the body begins producing these, these inhibitors, these, uh, other chemicals to hold off the other one, uh, why?

To maintain some homeostasis, some balance.

Well, let's say the man all of a sudden realizes he'd been drinking too much.

He stops drinking.

The body doesn't know that he's all of a sudden stopped drinking.

And in the brain, these inhibitors continue to be reduced bec- uh, produced because they're anticipating the onslaught of these alien chemicals.

What happens?

Those alien chemicals are not there.

Meanwhile, the body's producing the inhibitors to stop them from having their effect.

They're no longer there.

So the body begins manufacturing other chemicals that then throws the body out of balance again, this homeostasis or balance is lost, and the body begins craving that chemical to counteract these inhibitors which are being produced by the brain.

Now, we see here discoveries by contemporary neurologists that provide a physiological understanding of the classical teaching and the Catholic teaching of the virtues.

Virtues become set and they become very hard to change, or vices become set and they become very hard to change.

And there's even a certain physiological or chemical basis for this.

And so we want to do our utmost to act in such a way that the habits that we have are ordered toward the good, that is toward harmony within the body and toward helping us achieve, uh, the true ends toward which we are ordered.

Saint Thomas tells us that these, uh, inclinations that we have are the nurseries.

It's a, it's a beautiful phrase, but he, he says they are the nurseries, uh, for the, the planting and, and growing of the virtues, okay?

These natural dispositions that we have.

But we have to act in accord with them.

Now, one of the things that can occur is that we become habituated not simply, uh, to chemicals that we are ingesting from without-But even if we, for example, have given ourselves over to anger, well, whenever we flare in anger, there are all kinds of chemical and electrical reactions taking place in the body.

And if we become accustomed to this, the body itself, okay, uh, becomes poised, even, as they say, chemically, uh, to react in- in- in such an angry way.

Or we expose ourselves to- to sensual pictures.

Again, there are chemical reactions which are taking place within the body, so we- we can become habituated to these things.

Now, we, nothing could be worse than to be victim to a vice, because it robs us of our freedom.

It keeps us from doing the things that we would truly want to do, and it has the tendency to fragment our personality and to lead to disintegration, and we want to be able to overcome it.

Now, one of the things that can actually limit our freedom, and therefore, uh, make a particular act that we perform not as- as guilt-, uh, not as culpable or as bad as it might otherwise be, is the fact that we might be victim to some vice.

Okay?

I mean, let's say you've had a particular vice.

You repent of it.

You go to confession.

Um, you tell the priest that you're truly sorry, and you are sorry.

You truly want to do better.

But it takes time to set and establish habits.

Okay?

And you leave the confessional, and not a day goes by that once again you find yourself being gnawed at and falling prey, uh, to these temptations.

Well, depending on how deeply rooted the vice is, your- your freedom might actually be diminished, uh, by the vice to which you have become subject.

Okay?

And therefore, uh, the- the priest, who might be acting as your spiritual director, or the confessor, has to take into account the diminution, or reduction of freedom, that you might have in this given area while you are struggling, uh, against- against a particular vice.

So for us to perform a moral act and to be, uh, capable of being judged, uh, blameworthy or- or praiseworthy of a given act, we must know what we're doing, once again, and we must be free to do it, and we must be doing it in the appropriate circumstances, uh, uh, wi- with the right intention.

And if all of those elements are there, we have a good moral act, which is going to help us flourish and find that happiness which we are seeking, uh, which again, is the true end of the Catholic moral life and the end which God wants for all of us.

But we have to be capable of judging these acts, uh, for what they truly are and seeing whether or not they are the free human act which we may justly call an actus humanus.

So we'll look further at some of the implications here of these moral actions when we return from this break.

Welcome back as we reflect on the moral act.

We don't have a whole lot of time in this segment, but there's, uh, a notion that I want to get across, uh, which is very important, uh, which we find in most of the classical moral texts, which you don't find as much anymore, but it- it, I think it's very useful for us, uh, to have in our minds if we are going to be able to pass judgments on moral acts.

And it has to do with the distinction, uh, between form and matter.

And now, this a- again gets quite philosophical, but the- the Catholic Church embraces all truth which comes its way because all truth is of God.

And, uh, this distinction that Aristotle actually made, uh, which is referred to as the hylomorphic theory, the- the Church took up and made good use of it itself.

The hylomorphic theory, uh, refers to a distinction in things between form and matter.

You may have heard that distinction before, form and matter.

Well, what does that really mean?

Well, these are actually terms which are very simple and commonsensical.

I mean, we- we often put them in philosophical language and- and- and then right away we think, Oh, I'm not smart enough to be able to understand that.

But they're very commonsensical.

Aristotle, uh, was aware of the fact that things were rather than the fact that they were not.

Mm-hmm.

I'm gonna make up some words here in trying to explain this.

But he- he realized that there's a that-ness to everything.

This has a that-ness, there's a that-ness here, and a that-ness here.

Okay?

Uh, it's there rather than not being.

But this that-ness is different from this that-ness, which is different from this that-ness.

So Aristotle said not only does everything have a that-ness, that is, it is rather than it is not, it has a what-ness.

Well, what's the what-ness of this that-ness?

Sorry, but it's a book.

Okay?

Um, the what-ness here is a desk.

The what-ness here is a pencil.

Now, Aristotle said you always have both of these elements there.

You always have a what-ness and a that-ness.

We can't have one without the other.

Now, Aristotle himself simply coined some words to refer to these concepts.

The matter refers to the that-ness of a thing and the form refers to its what-ness.So, according to that theory, the what-ness of this, that I'm holding in my hand is book.

Another way of saying it is the form of what I'm holding in my hand is book.

Form doesn't mean shape.

There's been a lot of confusion, uh, in many contemporary writers, some moral theologians even, who will go back and read the classical authors, will run into this language of form and matter, and they don't have the proper understanding of form.

They think that form refers to shape, but it doesn't.

It refers to, if you will, the, the interior intelligibility of this thing, the what-ness of it.

This is a book.

This is a desk.

Okay?

This is a pencil.

And, uh, Aristotle applied this to the human person too.

He said th- the body, uh, is the matter and the soul is the form, but you have to have both of them together.

This is why, as I was saying earlier, we believe in the resurrection of the body.

We will be raised up as bodies.

Our soul in heaven is not gonna be perfect, because there you'd have the form without the matter, and you can't have that.

You don't have the full reality unless you have both.

Now, what in the world am I talking about here with regard to moral acts?

Well, we can talk about moral acts having a form and a matter also.

Uh, this is applied even to, to the sacraments in the church's teaching.

Uh, for example, uh, baptism, uh, the matter of, of the sacrament of baptism, uh, is the pouring of the water over the baby, the theologians say.

What is the form?

The form is the priest saying, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

You bring tho- those two together and what you have is the one act of baptism.

As Saint Augustine said, If the priest weren't saying the words, 'I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,' what would you have?

And Aristotle says, You'd have the baby taking a bath.

Okay?

So, the, the, the form cr- must be there to, to, to bring the reality, uh, into being.

Now, the, the same is true when it comes to human actions.

The actor, the moral agent has to bring the interior reality to the act that he is performing through his intention, his intentionality.

This is why, in a sense, we can look to the young man who took the, the radio off the beach, thinking it was his radio.

Well, is he truly guilty of theft?

Well, theft is the unjust expropriation of someone else's property.

Did this young man expropriate someone else's property?

Well, yes, he did.

Did he do it knowingly?

Well, no, he didn't do it knowingly.

So, in a sense, that condition of the unjust appropriation of someone else's property, um, justice is a moral virtue.

It c- it can only, uh, be expressive of an act that one has interiorly, uh, executed or performed.

He didn't realize he was taking someone else's, uh, radio.

So, materially, that is, he's taken the matter away, uh, with him, uh, but he wasn't intending to, to steal the person's, uh, the, the person's radio.

So, it's not, we say, it's not formally, uh, an act of theft.

Now, this is important when we make certain distinctions with regard to moral actions, because there can be some actions which, objectively speaking, are wrong, they're disordered.

Uh, they don't enable a person to achieve the end that he is pursuing.

They don't really allow him or enable him to achieve it well, but he might be ignorant of this fact, okay, and therefore, even though the act that he has committed materially might be a disordered act, formally, he's not guilty of the sin, because he hasn't, uh, shaped that act to be the kind of act that is truly immoral.

Okay?

He, he, he hasn't known any better.

Uh, Saint Thomas tells us that the act receives its species from the end.

In other words, um, it's by virtue of what we are intending to do, thinking we are doing and freely go ahead and do that we make the act be what it is.

Now again, as I say, objectively speaking, the act that is performed could well be an immoral act.

But if the individual is not aware of that fact, he may be committing a bad act, but in a s- because it's disordered, but in a sense, it's not immoral.

It's not, uh, held against him, uh, in a blameworthy way.

Saint Thomas has said that all of us can understand the natural law in terms of its general principles.

That is that we must always pursue good and avoid evil, that we, uh, must always refrain from harming another, uh, person, um, in terms of killing them or in terms of lying to them or in terms of abusing them in some other way.

But Saint Thomas also said that when it comes down to the particulars- um, when it comes to concrete details, it's, it's not always so easy, uh, to make firm and absolute judgments.

So it could be that you would have people living in a society, uh, which is so disordered that, uh, they are guilty of actions which really in and of themselves are disordered.

Uh, but they, not knowing that, will go ahead and perform the act thinking that they are doing right.

I was talking one time to a man who was a convert, uh, to the Catholic, uh, faith, and while he was a Protestant, he and his wife had been contracepting, thinking that what they were doing was morally right and morally good.

They loved God, they wanted to please God, they read their Bible every day, they prayed together.

Now, all of those wonderful actions didn't make contraception an objectively good act.

It still was a disordered act.

But these people didn't want to be doing anything that was displeasing to God.

Right?

So even though the act was disordered, they were ignorant of this fact and in a sense, it wouldn't have been held against them in terms of a subjective guilt.

Now, when he came to realize that this was wrong, um, he changed his action.

Why?

Because his deepest desire was to know God and to love God and to please God, and when he came to understand that God's Church taught that such behavior was actually harmful to one's self, as Saint Thomas says, God is offended by us only when we act against our own good, as I indicated earlier, then he was more than happy to refrain from that kind of behavior.

Right?

So we have to be able to make this distinction between form and matter.

Uh, uh, it's, it's a terrible thing to blaspheme God, for it's, uh, I mean, terrible is hardly the word for it.

It's, it's unspeakably bad.

And there's something known as heretical blasphemy, and that is if we would ever say anything about God which is contrary to His nature and, and offend His goodness and His dignity.

So to say that God is cruel, uh, would be heretical blasphemy.

But if you have a mother who sees her dear child dying a slow death from leukemia, and the mother in her anguish says, How could God be loving if He allows this to happen?

He must be cruel.

Look at my poor little girl, well, such a statement, materially speaking, would constitute heretical blasphemy.

But this woman doesn't really mean it.

She's, she's wracked by anguish.

Uh, she's, she's feeling great sorrow over what is happening to her child.

She's not really, uh, meaning to, to blaspheme God or to say heretical things, uh, about Him.

So one would say that, that even though it, it might materially be this kind of act, formally it is not.

Okay?

It doesn't have that, that character of that, uh, immoral act.

And any priest would understand that, as he would provide comfort and solace, uh, to a woman, uh, in such an anguished, uh, situation.

But one of the things we must always try to do is to bring our thinking and our wills into line with reality itself, so that we don't find ourselves with a split between, uh, a material act and a formal act, where materially we might be doing something that's bad, but formally we're not guilty of it because we don't see it.

The ideal is that we always bring our minds into conformity with truth itself, as the Holy Father said in his encyclical, The Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, so that the actions we perform materially and formally will show forth the glory of God.