For our purposes we define “Good as that, which
completely fulfills its intended legitimate purpose.” We might speak of a good dog, a good seam, a good decision or a good shot.
In Mk 10:18, Jesus teaches that “God alone is good.”
Original sin has in some way damaged all of creation, leaving God alone as being good. If we were required to make morally perfect acts, it would be a crime to get out of bed. Virtually all of our actions are a mixture of good and evil. Evil may be allowable, but may never be intended.
Strictly speaking evil is anything less than perfection. Evil is good which is in some way lacking what it should have in its perfect form. In a moral act, if four of five willed components are good and one is evil, then the entire act is evil.
Evil may be of two varieties: ontological or moral. A morally good act is not necessarily an ontologically good act, and vice-versa. Ontology is the study of being. A person, tree, logic, willed action, unwilled action, emotion, virtue, vice, will, thought are all being. Being is anything which exists.
An ontologically good act is good in all of its components, willed and unwilled, material and immaterial. A practical use of the term ‘ontological’ restrains its use to non willed elements of a being; “The shot was ontologically perfect, but the act was one of murder”. This is its common use in theology.
God is not at fault here, and continues his attempt at full communication and communion with each individual. It is not that God does not speak, we are partially deaf by original and personal sin. The solution is to break out of self and make moral union with God, which is the subject of this book.
158
A human or moral act is: an act made or avoided,
knowingly, rationally and freely.126
An act made includes intentions whether carried out or not, goals set, emotions indulged in, acts of omission, and more. Acts of omission usually involve a failure to perform ones required or reasonable duty.
Knowingly includes: 1. a person’s knowledge of what is being done, and what will result; 2. a person’s knowledge that what is being done is right or wrong.
An action is the totality of all causes and all effects, both physical and spiritual.127 We will one day see this clearly, but for this life we are morally responsible for reasonably estimated results.
In Catholicism, reasonable ignorance of a law holds one blameless. Reasonable ignorance is the gaps that are not filled by reasonable knowledge. A Catholic is reasonably expected to know the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Very few Catholics are reasonably required to know the 500 doctrinal encyclicals issued in the past 2000 years. Such ignorance is a reasonable ignorance.
True ignorance of a moral law contained within one’s moral conscience is not the same thing as ignoring it or corrupting it by habitual misuse.
126 Non action does not real y exist. If our response to a co worker falling to the floor in a heart attack, is to “do nothing”, we are not really doing nothing; we are simply observing, when we should be calling 911.
127 The wholeness of an act is al causes, all effects, and all participants.
This may extend a single act, over a great time span, and include many persons. This goes some way in explaining the Catholic idea of Christ’s Eucharistic sacrifice extending through time as a single sacrifice. From Hebrews 10:10, “…we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
159
Rationally requires that the actor is able to exert substantial reason in his actions. In the moral realm this involves evaluating an action compared to a valid norm of behavior. Catholicism uses divine objective moral norms, the laws of the Church, and custom as its standard of behavior.
Freely requires reasonable freedom to act or not act. We can easily list some impediments to a perfectly free act.
Employees, soldiers and children are not fully free to do their own will. Circumstances, habit, illness all may degrade perfect freedom.
There are times when freedom is not required to make a
willed or voluntary act. For instance a guard in a death camp is ordered to murder another person (under pain of his own death if he disobeys). The man happens to be in moral agreement with the murder, and willingly does it, even though he has no freedom to refuse.
Duress lessens responsibility or may remove it completely.
A worker who donates to a good cause, under corporate pressure, may not act as meritoriously as someone who donates out of a sense of virtue.
At the extremes, duress which threatens life will likely remove the resultant act from the realm of moral action, because the element of reasonable free will is removed.128
128 Duress may for example make the sin of lying into a non-moral act, having no moral guilt, because of loss of reasonable free wil . An ongoing real world example would be lying and deception to save persons from unjust execution or harm. The Catholic Church issued thousands of false baptism certificates to save Jews from the Nazi’s. Here the duress suffered is from a threat to someone else. Legitimate custom of deception in personal defense of others could also justify the act.
160