Understanding what is Catholic Morality
Servais Pinckaers’ Morality The Catholic View, an introduction
Preface: to understand the many different components which are constitutive of Catholic morality in terms of specifying these differing components or sources and understanding how Catholic theology has been able to think together these different components in connection with the concrete problems and difficulties which exist when it comes to concrete human living. The Second Vatican Council in its Decree on the Training of Priests specifies three conditions or three different requirements:
1) understanding how Catholic morality is grounded in scripture and the teachings of the Church fathers
2) understanding how Catholic morality is joined to the dogmatics of the Church’s teaching as this refers to the truths of revelation
3) understanding how Catholic theology relates to changes and developments as these have occurred in the history of human social forms, culture, and science.
How can the Church’s teaching be better understood? How can it be applied more wisely? What are its suppositions and what kind of obligation exists for us as Catholics as we try and cope with new problems and developments that have yet to be more fully understood?
Part 1
Chapter 1: the Gospel sources
Ancient moral catechesis: responding to questions about what leads to human happiness, what leads to our salvation, what leads to our human perfection as in “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
1. Sermon on the Mount, Matthew’s gospel
Matthew’s Gospel has been described as a text that has been written by someone who has had a rabbinical formation (hence, a gospel which is intended for Jews more than gentiles). Especially with respect to the Sermon on the Mount, a new law is given: one which supersedes the Old Law or the Torah although it is also noted in scripture that Christ’s new law is not meant to cancel or annul the traditional Jewish law. Instead, on the authority of Christ’s words, we have a new way of living which exists as a fulfillment, as a perfection of the old law. If sin goes beyond deeds and words to include thoughts, then the kind of moral good which Jesus’ followers to abide by is something which is greater and more perfect. In the teachings of Jesus, we have a form of radicalization which suggests that, in one respect, it is more difficult to live as a good Christian than it is to live the life of a good Jew. A qualification needs to be adverted to since, through Christian belief, Jesus’ followers have a point of departure for a form of access which is to be described as a “living in Christ.” Through belief, through faith, we can begin to have grace, grace which exists as a form of God’s presence, and through this grace, we can begin to live a life that is more human. As human beings, we can begin to live in a manner which transcends our limited, created conditions. Later generations distinguished between what exists as a natural life and what exists as a supernatural life.
2. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, chapters 12-15
Paul’s letters normally end with a moral exhortation of some kind which is given after a lengthy dogmatic section which has to do with what exactly should be the true belief of Christians. This division has served to suggest that dogmatic theology is to be distinguished from what we do when we do moral theology although, if we attend to the corpus of Paul’s letters, it should be obvious to us that Paul’s moral teaching exists as a kind of deduction or consequence, given the truths of faith and salvation which belong to the new Christian dispensation. From faith in Christ, we have a context for a new, higher form of living
3. Other scriptural texts
St. Paul as a moral theologian in other letters touches on other themes: the primacy of charity, the centrality of conversion, and the necessity of humility, obedience, and patience. A life of the flesh is to give way to a life that is lived in the Spirit. In the teaching of St. Paul, two themes or two emphases are brought together or perhaps we can say that they are presented in a way which elicits our need to understand them better in a way which would link and join them to each other. (1) Jesus Christ in his life and work exists is a new source of morality and (2) what God has created in terms of an inner, natural law points to the intelligibility of contingently existing things and how, in this law or through this law, we can determine the good of things and what we are to regard as evil. What exists as sound moral teaching is only known in the context of living a good moral life as this would exist for the converted Christian.
Chapter 2: the Moral Teaching of the Fathers of the Church
Principle characteristics:
1. Scripture as the first and consistent source of moral teaching: focusing on the person and life of Christ as this is presented in the scriptures and as this knowledge of Christ is communicated or mediated to us through the life and worship of the Church (episcopal homilies, public worship, and subsequent practice as the life of Christians is played out in the common world). The church fathers communicate their teaching through homilies, commentaries, and specific texts that address moral questions.
2. Judicious use of resources drawn from Greco-Roman culture and philosophy: working with what is sound and good in the moral teaching that exists outside revelation but in a manner which points to links and similarities. It is eventually taught that all which is good in Greek thought can be seen either as a precursor of the Christian dispensation or as something that has been derived in some way from Old Testament sources. Pagan moral teaching about virtues and vices is revised or uplifted by an addition that is given to it when we turn to the requirements of faith and charity. Definitions and meanings are re-interpreted and revised and virtue is seen more as something that comes from God and less as something which exists as a purely human product. What is the role of humility in our human lives? How do we best live a happy life?
3. Inseparable from the great spiritual currents that were then operative in the life of the Church: cult of the martyrs, call to virginity, monastic aspirations, and the search for wisdom. A close connection exists between spirituality and morality. For example, what is the role of suffering? How do we best deal with the experience of suffering in our human lives?
Two examples from St. Augustine:
1. On the Morals of the Catholic Church: the greatest good makes us most happy and this greatest good would have to be God. Thus, if our natural inclinations and reason are to take us to the greatest good and the greatest measure of happpiness that can be through union with this good, then, if our natural inclinations and reason are to be fulfilled, faith must exist; faith must be adverted to. Charity born of faith is the greatest Christian virtue or maybe we can say a faith that is informed by charity if we select a phrasing which comes to us from the Council of Trent. Augustine takes the four classical virtues of prudence, justice, courage, and temperance and he interprets them in a way which indicates that they exist as expressions of love, forms of love. A link is drawn between the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity and these aforementioned cardinal virtues that can be known through self-reflective human reason.
2. First Homily on the Sermon on the Mount: seven stages are distinguished in term of growth or progress in the spiritual life, beginning with humility and leading to purity of heart and union with God, these seven stages being related to the list of Jesus’s beatitudes and the seven petitions that are found in the Our Father. Grace is emphasized as a species of first principle if the Christian is to move from an initial conversion in humility to a final transformation which occurs through purity of heart and union with God.
In conclusion, the Church Fathers initiate a development which takes Christians teachings about faith, hope, and charity and how one best lives a fully Christian life and, from this perspective, a revised moral teaching is introduced into contemporary culture. No systematization is attempted at this point although, from the 6th Century, in monasteries, penitentials are drawn up which list penances that should be applied with the commission of specific sins. The context of this is a change in the Church’s penitential practices. Private confession is introduced in a manner which mitigates against the rigor of the more traditional public penance.
Chapter 3: The Classic Period of Western Theology
To understand what distinguishes scholastic theology from what had existed before, one attends to the work of Peter Abelard (d. 1142) who compiled summaries of theological positions that revealed lack of agreement and conflict between differing points of view. Author of Yes and No. In studying the writings of the Church fathers, one finds a certain lack of coherence and, as a consequence of Abelard’s work, a new task is given to theologians: finding ways to reconcile conflicting positions. One tries to introduce a greater coherence into how we understand our Catholic faith. Hence, within this context, we find the work of St. Thomas Aquinas who attempted a major work of transposition by taking the work and teaching of St. Augustine and articulating it in a way which shifts it into a way of analysis and conception that largely comes to us from the thought and work of Aristotle. If Augustine’s theology is largely guided or determined on the basis of analogies that are derived from apprehensions that come from neo-Platonist form of philosophy, Aquinas’s work as a theologian is indebted to analogies that are drawn from the kind of philosophy that we associate with Aristotle (the metaphysical kind of analysis that we find in Aristotle and which Aquinas develops when he moves from a metaphysics of form to a metaphysics of act).
Aquinas borrows from Aristotle’s moral philosophy and he combines the focus on happiness that we find in Aristotle (as human beings, we all seek to be happy) with a form or vector of self-transcendence which exists within the human spirit in terms of a desire to know God and be joined and united to him eternally. A natural desire for God is acknowledged although, oddly enough, we have a desire which can only be adequately met through supernatural means: through receptions of grace that come to us from God and all the gifts that are given to us from the Holy Spirit. In other words, as human beings, we have a natural desire for that which exists as a supernatural end and the the fact that we have this vector or orientation is perhaps the best evidence that we have that our human spirit is informed by a self-transcendence which takes us beyond ourselves towards something that is greater and for which we would be prepared to sacrifice ourselves in terms of everything that we have and possess.
In the structure of his Summa Theologiae, we find a number of general and particular considerations. In the Prima Secundi, we have, for the first time in Aquinas, a theory of the human will which differs from that which would refer to the nature of our human understanding. Traditionally, in the footsteps of Socrates in the Greek tradition, the will exists as a function of the intellect. We act, we do on the basis of what we know. Our willing is determined by our knowing. But, while we admit that our willing is often conditioned by our knowing, because of the Christian belief in the existence of Original Sin and our common apprehensions of human life, this position which emphasizes the primacy of the intellect over will was not always fully accepted. In earlier texts, Aquinas had admitted that what is grasped by us in our acts of understanding do not necessarily force our wills to do anything. However, it was only in the context of his later thought that he moved into questions and considerations which led him to realize that our acts of human willing possess a nature of their own and that an adequate understanding of the human person needs to recognize that willing exists with a causality of its own. Human beings are best understood if we can refer to an ongoing tension which tends to exist between our willing and our knowing. Each influences the other in terms of a mutual form of causality. To understand our human acts of cognition more fully, we should advert to our human acts of willing and to understand our acts of willing more fully, we need to advert to the structure or the nature of our human cognition. An adequate understanding of that which exists as our human moral life must consider these two vectors together: one is orientated to apprehensions of truth and the other is orientated to that which exists as a good. A desire for knowledge is mated to a desire for love and a way of life that is defined in terms of a union with something that is greater than ourselves. Love is more greater, more powerful than death. Our lives are fully actual if we can be united to God in loving communion with him…the Beatific Vision.
Aquinas enters into an inquiry which also looks at the development of our moral virtues, our moral habits, which exist as operative potencies in the human soul. Virtues exist as habits which can then be actualized, reduced to individual act, when a virtuous deed is performed. Natural virtues and supernatural virtues are distinguished from each other and these virtues are nourished in a way which adverts to external sources, external points of origin (causes which exist within nature and causes which exist beyond nature). As in nature, different levels can be distinguished, in the same way, levels which are relatively supernatural with respect to the existence of lower levels of being can be distinguished from levels which are absolutely supernatural. That which exists in an absolutely supernatural way refers to the things of God and the existence of grace that always comes to us as a gift. That which we cannot achieve in our contingent, created human way can be assisted by gifts that come to us from above, and so, by turning to God and the things of God, we begin to live a supernatural life. Lives informed by natural virtue are transformed by lives that can be informed by the operative potency of supernatural virtues. A form of transvaluation occurs as, through conversion, we can begin to see our world and our human lives in a radically different way. That to which we had attributed little value is see to have the greatest value.
Chapter 4: The Modern Period The Manuals of Moral Theology
To understand the kind of moral theology that began to appear after Aquinas, we must understand the change of intellectual climate that occurred after Aquinas, beginning with the theology of Duns Scotus. In Scotus, we find an understanding of human cognition that is governed by a hermeneutic that works from an understanding of the kind of cognition which occurs in acts of sense. Acts of understanding are interpreted in a context which refers to the nature which properly belongs to acts of sense. Hence, if human acts of understanding are viewed as fundamentally having the same nature as acts of sense and if, in theology, we work with analogical acts of understanding that are grounded in an understanding of human cognition that is grounded in how we are to understand our acts of sense, a fundamental change is introduced into the conduct and praxis of our Catholic theology. To use fewer words, we say that material analogies are used in a way which replaces psychological or intellectual analogies in the kind of understanding that is done in the work of Catholic theology. Limitations are introduced into the practice of Catholic theology. On the basis then of this changed context, in the conduct and praxis of moral theology, the chief object of focus becomes that which exists externally to ourselves who exist as human subjects. As is noted by Pinckaers, less focus is directed to how we might cultivate our human dispositions (our human virtues). It is noted that nothing is said about happiness as the end of human life and how this orientation can be translated in a way which can refer to the happiness of eternal union with God. What is real is not so much that which exists within ourselves as human beings but that which exists externally to ourselves. In Scotus, instead of working from a primary first principle in theology that attends to the wisdom of God, the new first principle refers to the will of God and that which God has ordained: the laws which God has established as these laws can be determined in terms of the data of revelation and the laws of nature which are inscribed in our hearts, being common to all human beings. We live good moral lives through living a life of obedience. We all have obligations to fulfill. In the wake of this emphasis, manuals of instruction were composed to indicate how, as human beings, we are to live lawful lives. As Pinckaers notes, what kind of relation exists between the fact of human freedom and the obligations which we must meet if we are live good, moral lives? Five key categories are mentioned: freedom, law, conscience, cases (casuistry), and sin. Because pride of place is to be allotted to the demands of legislation and requirements of lawful obedience, within this tradition of thought, a kind of objectivism emerges to characterize Catholic moral thinking. Subjective conditions are not really attended to and, within the manualist tradition of exposition, a high degree of abstractness was to be found in the kind of analysis which was predominantly employed. Very many distinctions were made as one moves from universal laws to particular circumstances and so, within this tradition, one argues with other moral theologians about the rightness or wrongness of a given act within a particular set of conditions. Pinckaers refers to the question of probabilism and how one is to determine that which one is free to do and that which one must do if we refer to some kind of moral obligation that must somehow be met. If we think about how, in Judaism, we can find a legal tradition which pits the opinion and the point of view of a given rabbi against the opinion and point of view of another rabbi, maybe, by doing this, we get a sense of the kind of debates and discussions which existed among Catholic moralists. We find a great attention to detail and one wonders about how we are to choose one opinion or point of view instead of another. Mention is made of rigorism on the one hand and laxism on the other. The Jesuits were accused of laxism by the Jansenits in 17th Century France and, in turn, the Dominicans were accused of excessive rigorism. An over concern with legalistic forms of argumentation has been said to distinguish this tradition of thought which has been dominant in the centuries immediately prior to the Reformation and extending into the 20th Century until the time of Vatican II. And so it is said that within this tradition, a narrowing of focus occurred.
Chapter 5: The Question of Christian Ethics after the Council.
This chapter takes a reader into the new kind of context which exists in the Catholic Church after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council in 1965. In the decrees of the Council, a desire to be open to the modern world was expressed, a desire to reach out and to come into a more fruitful and positive relation that could possibly exist between the Church and what is happening in contemporary modern culture. This has led to a number of consequences in how Catholic morality is to be understood: how we are to think and engage in reflections which could guide us in moral decisions which we need to make. Kant’s distinction between the transcendental and the categorical is mentioned in a way which has been used to understand the structure or the order of moral reflection. It is said that Christian ethics exists at a higher level and that, at a lower level, we have something which exists as a human ethics. From the teaching of the Catholic faith, we can derive a set of universal norms and then we can apply these norms in a rather loose and free way as we deal with concrete questions and problems at a local level. A kind of “situation ethics” is favored as a good way to conceive how in concrete circumstances we are to make specific decisions. Universal moral norms cannot exactly specify what we need to do in specific cases and so, in dealing with concrete problems, we need insights that grasp or understand things that cannot be understood if one tries to work from some kind of general perspective. Two specific changes need to be noted: a loss of belief in the validity of natural law arguments and a loss of belief in the fact that certain actions are intrinsically evil. It was once taught, for instance, that the end can never justify the means. This was the classic position so to speak. You cannot do evil in order to achieve something good. However, a shift of paradigm has occurred in a way which has changed the context of current work in the field of Catholic moral reflection. According to traditional teaching, in evaluating human ethical behavior, determining the rightness or wrongness of a given act is key. One also attends to personal intentions and circumstance but what is key is the rightness or wrongness of an anticipated act. However, in our current time, many moral theologians focus on the rightness or wrongness of our human intentions. From a first principle which refers to our human intentions, one tends to think about the moral quality of acts and the aptness or situation that exists in the existence of circumstances. Much can be said about why this shift of paradigm has occurred. We can think about a kind of axial shift that has occurred in the birth of modern philosophy. Instead of using metaphysics as a first principle in philosophy, one uses an understanding of human cognition and epistemology as a basic first principle. One moves from object to subject. Hence, in the light of some of these changes, if persons do not hold that the end cannot be used to justify any means, we can get into a situation which has been described as proportionalism or consequentialism. One makes judgments based on weighing good against evil. If one determines that more good will probably result from a given act, then one is inclined to do the act even if the act, in itself, is not good. From this standpoint, conscience is seen in a manner which is more open to seeing that a conflict of sorts tends to exist between conscience and authority. The teaching office of the Church makes pronouncements of one kind or another but, if conscience is seen in a manner which emphasizes its autonomy and independence, then persons will feel free to reject Church teaching if they find that it does not suit their personal situations. The focus on the primacy of good intentions has consequences that can lead to situations and conditions that cannot be tolerated or accepted by other persons.
Chapter 6: Freedom and Happiness
All moralists agree that human moral life is constituted by two principles: a subjective principle refers to the freedom of human choice and an objective principle refers to the rule of law. In the early understandings of moral life that have down to us from the Greeks and until the time of Aquinas, moral life was viewed in terms of the human desire for happiness. As Aristotle had said: all men desire to be happy (even if, admittedly, happiness is not something that can be directly attained). We say that our happiness exists as a kind of by-product. According to the traditional teaching, if we do a good deed, if we do something that is inherently good, we are happy (even if, in the doing of good, we pay some kind of personal price). Think here about the happiness of St. Thomas More who makes jokes at his place of execution. He died a happy man and so he died as a free man. However, in this history of Christian moral reflection, we find a change that begins to set it after Aquinas. William of Ockham is mentioned as the originator of a new tradition which omits considerations of happiness from a fully thought out teaching about the nature of Christian morality. In the old teaching, dating from Aristotle, a philosophy of human happiness is offered which is based on a normative understanding of the nature of human life and being. If we can state it in this way we can say that the old teaching about happiness functioned as a kind of bridge or point of mediation between how we exist as beings endowed with free choice and how apprehensions of law should serve to mold and form our human moral actions. However, in Ockham, we find an emphasis of the power of God’s willing. God is approached as someone who is all mighty and not as someone who is all wise. Where for instance, in Aquinas, God exists as an unrestricted act of understanding and this understanding is perfectly united with his willing, in later theology, God is an unrestricted act of willing. God’s decisions determine what is right and wrong and these decisions are subject to change although Ockham and others within the Christian tradition continued to acknowledge the belief and fact that God does not contradict himself. God abides by the law of contradiction: one cannot assert or say or affirm that A is and that not-A is at the same time, in the same way. In Islam, a voluntarist theology of God is said to exist to a radical extent. God is not obligated to abide by the principle of contradition. These matters aside for the time being, the emphasis that is given to the supremacy of God’s will tends to jive with a voluntarist understanding of the human person. It can be indeed argued that these two kinds of understanding are linked. The voluntarist emphasis, the emphasis given to the will, willingness, and willing, derives in general from a philosophy that is not interested in understanding the natures of things. When we talk about natures, we talk about the presence of intelligibilities. What a given thing does as a subject and what a given thing receives as a subject is largely, partially explained by what it is in terms of its having a nature, an intelligibility, which functions as a principle of explanation, revealing the reasonableness of certain actions and also revealing the unreasonableness of other actions. If this type of thinking is omitted, it leads to a truncated understanding of human moral activity. A human action is good if it exists as an obedient, submissive act: if it is lawful and not illegal. One is supposed to do the right thing in any given situation and, in moving toward determinations of this right thing, an extrinsicist type of approach is used. One does not move toward objectivity through anything which exists as authentic subjectivity. By not adverting to how the principle of self-transcendence exists in human lives, we cannot see or grasp how, in our subjectivity, we can move toward objectivity. Where this type of thinking is omitted, external goals or requirements, the actions which are to be done, are to be done in a way that imposes itself on a human subject. Human subjectivity is looked upon with suspicion. In some way, our subjectivity is to be negated. And so, we get a way of thinking that is very objectivistic. Through a kind of descent that existed in later philosophical reflection, we get the deontological ethics of Kant and not the eudaemonistic ethics of such as Aristotle and Aquinas. As Pinackaers notes, considerations of human happiness should be omitted since there is too close of relation between the need and the value of human happiness and a utilitarian type of ethic which tends to be very individualistic and centered on happiness in a way which gives to it a hedonistic interpretation. In our modern era, however, utilitarian ethics tends to hold central sway. Virtue ethics is contrasted with utilitarian ethics in a way which can be used to distinguish the two types of freedom or the two types of morality that are mentioned by Pinackaers: one freedom is defined by excellence, another, by our ability to make choices that suit us on a case by case basis (hence, a “freedom of indifference”). If we are to move away from a voluntarist type of ethics that has become so prevalent and if we are to introduce the question of happiness into the equation, then we speak about the centrality of joy (joy instead of pleasure). Joy refers to a knowledge of things that are permanent and a doing of good deeds which points to a like permanence. Transcendent things enjoy a primary, deteminative form of existence.
Chapter 7: The Holy Spirit and the New Law
If we refer to the events of salvation history as these are recounted to us in the texts of the New Testament, we find a hiddiness which belongs to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Through Christ’s incarnation, that which belongs to God enters into our human history in a perceptible kind of way. Christ says that whoever sees him sees the Father. Christ’s incaration, as we know and experience it, points to God the Father, reflecting God the Father. However, in the stories and accounts that we have in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit comes across to us as something that is more hidden. He is mentioned more rarely and he comes into our human history most prominently after Christ’s ascension into Heaven. When he enters more fully into our human history, he enters in a less obvious manner and yet he enters our history in a way which profoundly changes it, directing it, protecting it, guiding it. The manner of coming which belongs to the Holy Spirit in turn helps to explain why we can speak about an inner connection which exists between God the Holy Spirit (working in our lives) and a teaching about the placing of a new law within our hearts, an inner law that comes to exist within our awareness of self. The hiddenness of the presence of the Holy Spirit within the context of our lives points to the implanting of a new law which lives interiorly within us and which comes to dominate our inward conscious lives. The giftedness of the Holy Spirit points to a deeper apprehension or a personal appropriation of that which exists for as the life of Christ who rules our minds and hearts. Given how the Holy Spirit exists as a procession of love within God, it should not be a matter of surprise to us that, as the Holy Spirit begins to live within us as believers, our faith and hope are strengthened and, at the same time, they are brought to a further point of development or a completion which exists when charity rules us from within to determine how we are to live out our faith in a way which points to its full expressiveness. Our lives of faith are informed by our acts of charity and the living of a virtuous life is placed on a new foundation that gives to them a greater depth: a depth which raises our manner of living to a higher level as, through our thoughts, words, and deeds, we become co-operators and partakers in a life that is not entirely our own but which exists in a way which refers to God lives in us through all of our thoughts, words, and deeds. We become more fully how we should live and be to the degree that we allow God’s love, the Holy Spirit, to flood our hearts in a way which gives to us a renewed nature, a principle of life and activity which comes to us from above in terms of God and the many divine things which belong to God. We speak here about how we can exist and live as created participations in the being and the life which belongs to God. Our created, contingently existing natural virtues are raised to a higher level: a supernatural level which is brought into effect by way of our receiving the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In these gifts, we can speak about how our naturally existing acquired virtues are supplemented by virtues which exist in an infused manner although, admittedly, these virtues are actuated through secondary causes which refer to the external word of religion which, in turn, refers to the words of scripture and the sacramental practice of our liturgical worship. In the Sermon on the Mount, the new law of Christian life and faith is best conveyed and a way is shown that leads or which transcends a life of law and obligation as, now, a law of love replaces a law of external form that is grounded in a life of duty and the meeting of our different obligations. Love is a greater thing as it works through the sacraments as the tools or the instruments of this new, higher law, working in a manner which constitutive of the life of the Church, joining the concrete life of the Church with a transformation of human life as this exists within the internal experience of self which we have as conscious human subjects.
Chapter 8: Natural Law and Freedom
In our current cultural context, natural law continues to be seen with a measure of suspicion. It is seen as an obstruction to the human experience of freedom and then, from a viewpoint that is determined by a voluntarist understanding of divine things, natural law is seen as some kind of imposition. The intelligibility or the goodness of natural law is not grasped and, as a consequence, its value with respect to living a truly good human moral life is not grasped and appreciated. From a reading of Aquinas, a division of five transcendental natural inclinations can be identified and, on the basis of these inclinations, five kinds of natural law. (1) A natural desire to do good points to why we spontaneously seek that we regard as good and avoid that which appears to be evil. For this reason, it is argued that no one truly desires that which is harmful to himself although we admit that bad judgments can cause difficulties if misjudgments are made about that which truly exists as a good versus that which exists as a privation of goodness. The attraction that we have for the good points to this attraction as an exemplification or as a striving which we refer to as love. We love what we desire although, as we already admit, it is easy for us to love the wrong things. It seems though that we are helped if our desire for that which is good is grounded in a self-transcendence which can exist within us as human beings, motivating, informing our subjective human acts. In self-transcendence we value things for their intrinsic good and not for reasons that refer to our convenience. (2) A natural desire to preserve being refers not only to our desire for life and the enjoyment of life but also a life which exists as a good life, as a life which can be said to flourish. From a desire which inclines us to live a good life, we can attend to the good of life which legitimately belongs to others that we should respect. In the living out of this desire, we must impose obligations on ourselves and not lose hope, a kind of hope that is transcendental because it transcends all the disappointments that we encounter in our contingent existence when, from this lower context, we encounter determinations which mitigate against the value of hope. (3) An inclination to marry attends a natural inclination to preserve and protect life since, in the nature of our human living, there tends to exist desires that are inclined to marriage and the raising of a family (although, admittedly, this is a desire that does not obligate any given individual but, instead, persons who live together in community. The obligation falls on the human community and not on the single persons. The making of stable marriage commitments and the raising of a family impose numerous obligations although it is argued that the experience of trials and difficulties can lead to levels of maturation which point to growth in love (its gradual deepening). (4) A natural inclination to know the truth grounds our natural desire to ask questions and engage in various activities that would want to lead to a growth in our human understanding. We never engage in inquiry without some kind of prior knowledge. But, without entering into inquiry and asking questions, we will impede changes which could possibly occur in ourselves. We will not grow in our humanity. This inclination to know the truth of things and then to know the reality of things is expressed in a cognitive manner which leads to greater understanding and wisdom and it is also expressed in the context of the moral life where, through the virtue of prudent judgment, we can find a rational mean which exists between two extremes. Virtue lies in the middle way: between that which is excessive and that which is privative. The mean of reason determines the wisdom of an anticipated possible act and it also determines an option or a possible way of responding to a situation which was previously not known or imagined. (5) A natural inclination to live in society indicates to us the fact that we exist as “social animals.” Aristotle had argued that, as human beings, if we reject this precept, either we live as animals or we live as gods. This natural desire to live in society accordingly leads to a positive understanding of political life. It is not something that we are forced to do as if it exists as some kind of lesser evil but, instead, if we appreciate all the goods that can come through us through living a good political life, we can appreciate the virtues of citizenship for what they are and not as burdens that we must somehow accept and tolerate. On the basis of an understanding of self that knows about our social nature, it is an easy step to move into a philosophy and also a theology of friendship. A good friend is someone who helps you to live a virtuous life. One cannot have true friendships among gangsters. A utilitarian approach to life does not jive with friendships that value other persons for who and what they are as human beings. In the life of the Church, we have friendships which are informed by the supernatural habit of charity. Through charity, it is perhaps possible to find good ways to live with persons that one would not otherwise live with. In the apprehension of natural law as a principle which should guide our lives, we need to move from external apprehensions of this law to its internal appropriation and the fruitfulness of this appropriation. What is handed on to us becomes part of our intellectual and moral furniture and, from its transcendental, transcultural character, we have a point of departure for enlargements of being that can be possibly given to us. Because this law has been implanted into the fabric of our being, it can serve as a point of reference and as something that points to the beliefs of our religious faith while being something too that can be joined and raised by our religious faith in a manner which takes us beyond our present level of functioning into a way of life that is exemplified by how we can become temples of the Holy Spirit. God, in his life, has begun to live within us and we begin to accomplish works that we would not otherwise be able to do.