Guideposts for a Catholic Moral Life
The Person, Formation of Conscience, and Markers
The impetus for this essay is an attempt to capture a lesson on living a Catholic moral life for the Rite of Christian Initiation program at the parish where I volunteer. This was the summary lesson for our year. I usually present from an outline that is saved with others from this year and preceding years as a resource for the program’s future presenters. This year’s effort seemed more difficult and the presentation was made from notations I made during preparation.
The subject matter here was preceded by a presentation on the concept of ‘being good’, reasoning why a person, any person, might consider working toward building such a character for oneself in an age where a relative approach to life’s philosophy is generally accepted. A summary of this concept is the first part of this essay. A discussion of the Ten Commandments of the Judeo-Christian heritage constitutes the middle of the content. The third component presents the Beatitudes of Matthew’s recording of the Gospel. Resources are listed in the bibliography at the end of the essay.
The purpose of the overall presentation is as given in the title. It is a summary of a year’s worth of instruction and conversation centered around the Catechism of the Catholic Church and its presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The subject matter is likely to offend many in this third decade of the twenty-first century. The Gospel of Christ is as controversial in this time as it was in the time of Jesus, when He came to fulfill the law and the prophets.
RCIA leaders prayed with the presenter before the group gathered:
“St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou of Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.”
Opening prayer of the session with all gathered:
“Come, Holy Spirit. Fill the hearts of Thy faithful and enkindle in us the fire of Thy love. Send forth your spirit and we will be created, and You will renew the face of the earth.”
What is a human being?
We are ‘embodied spirits’. We are body, mind/conscience, and spirit, created by God for the purpose of relationship with God. We are made of the ‘stuff’ of this world/universe, have life breathed into us by God, and given a free will to exercise our Conscience. We are given to know the Creator God through the works of creation, nature’s laws, and an innate comprehension of ‘natural law’, a realization that there is more to our lives and our surroundings than what we can see. There is a natural understanding that certain actions are ‘right’ actions and certain actions are ‘wrong’ actions and we are given to seek the differences between these actions while seeking the God who created us.
We seek out God with a free will in that we have the freedom given from God to choose to be in relation with God or choose not to be in that relationship. This freedom of choice is exercised first in the mind where understanding is worked and developed as to whether any given action, we take upon a decision is a virtue (right) or a vice (wrong). Our purpose is to develop our choices of action to make habit of choosing virtue over vice, building our character in such a way so as to build the relationship with God. The habit of making the ‘right choice’ leads to happiness, a sense of contentment of character the results ultimately in an eternal life in relationship with the Creator God.
Concupiscence is the tendency of the human to choose against virtue and for vice. It is a result of the body’s relationship to the material world and a desire to avoid pain and suffering. It pulls the Conscience towards that which relieves the body of distress. It can and often does override the ability to chose virtue when acting on virtue would result in and/or increase pain and distress even when the same is a consequential necessity for achieving the character desired. The distress may be physical, mental, and/or emotional, any combination of the three.
This making of free-will choices followed by physical actions with the body is the essence of ‘being’ for humans. The life built in body and spirit defines our character and moves us on our journey from birth to natural death. Our Creator God did not leave us to this on our own. God’s part in being in relationship is to give us guidance for the formation of our Conscience, to give us markers to help know what we cannot discern for ourselves. God gave us the divine law to shape our comprehension of nature’s law and enhance our understanding of natural law. This divine law comes to us through revelation as Christians through the law and the prophets, and through the Incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth.
The Law – The Ten Commandments1
Civil society in this beginning of the twenty-first century has presented the Judeo-Christian Law presented in the Ten Commandments as restrictive, removing a person’s freedom of choice and heavily regulating one’s life away from pleasure and happiness. The methods of this are easily described in the practices of excesses that gathered into writings would fill books. The truth of the Commandments’ value to humans more than three-thousand years after they were revealed and twenty-four-hundred years after being codified in writing is the background from which they come; a background ignored by present day philosophy. The story of how the Commandments come to humans is chronicled in the Judeo-Christian scriptures of Genesis and Exodus. A summary version follows here.
The family of a man named Abraham lived in the hill country of what today is called Palestine/Israel. The family subsisted as Bedouin still do today, on shepherding flocks and trade with those in their vicinities. Abraham was befriended by the Creator and passed his relationship and comprehension of God to his family. It was the time of his grandson, Jacob, that a famine took over the land and food needed to be procured to assist in the survival of the family and flocks. Preceding the famine, the sons of Jacob became jealous of their brother Joseph because of their father’s love for Joseph. They sold him off into slavery in Egypt, telling their father the boy was attacked and killed by a wild beast.
Now it was to Egypt that these once boys, now men, traveled to seek the food and supplies they required for survival. There were unaware that their brother Joseph was now the Vizir of Egypt, second in power only to the Pharaoh himself. Joseph maneuvered his brothers, who did not recognize him, into bringing their father and his holdings to Egypt, where Joseph had prepared the kingdom for the extended famine. Welcomed into Egypt by one of such great political power, Jacob’s family prospered and multiplied for generations.
Decades passed and new Pharaoh’s forgot the lessons and power of Joseph and recognized only that a great body of people called the Israelites were prosperous in their midst. Fearing a possible uprising, the kingdom enslaved Jacob’s family and held them so for several hundred years. Their freedoms were stripped. They were forbidden to worship in relationship to God. They were forced to labor to build temples and cities to the Pharaoh’s and the Egyptian gods. Among them rose a legend, a promise of one who would save them from the slavery. The Pharaoh feared an uprising and had all the male children born in the past year killed.
One was saved. He was called Moses because the woman who saved him, Pharaoh’s daughter, drew him from the Nile river. He was raised as an Egyptian, found out to be a Hebrew/Israelite in his maturity, was exiled, and became the leader who would bring God’s word to the new Pharaoh. The Pharaoh released the Israelites after observing months of plagues and terrors visited on his people. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, after more than four-hundred years of slavery.
But slaves don’t know how to care for themselves, rule themselves, form community among themselves. They only know what the Egyptians told them. They only knew the rituals of the Egyptian gods. They only recognized the images of the Egyptian gods. This was the Israelites way of understanding their world. Though free of Egypt they were not free.
The Ten Commandments are a gift of freedom. They are a foundation for forming community. They are divine revelation, divine law, intended to free a people to worship God and give them guideposts for the formation of their Consciences.
The ‘DO s’
These actions form trust in a community. A pledge to divine law and to each other forms the foundation for a strong family, community, and nation.
- I AM the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of slavery. You shall not have other gods beside me. You shall not make …an idol or a likeness of anything…
You are free. Work with me and nothing will enslave you; no one will bind you and keep you from me. Let no thing, not food, libations, substances, or material command more attention from you than you give to me. You are free.
- You shall not invoke the name of the Lord, your God, in vain.
I AM the Creator God. You do not know my power. You cannot wield it. Respect this difference between us as we relate to each other, as a sign of love for each other.
- Remember the sabbath day – keep it holy. Six days you may labor and do all your work, bur the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God.
This is a day of rest and respite. It is a day of renewal. Join with others in renewing our community, our love relationship. I give you this gift. Give it to yourselves as well.
- Honor your father and mother.
In the Beginning you were commanded to be fruitful and multiply. Your parents fulfilled this command and in love (however great or small) you were brought into the world to be with Me as well. Honor them, for they honored Me.
The ‘DON’Ts’
Action taken against the community breaks down the good will built in the first four commandments. These change the fundamental relationship of love and trust and must be avoided.
Killing another breaks down the community. Killing a life takes something that is not yours to take. All life belongs to Me. Killing a person does not stop with the body. Killing another’s spirit, taking their life by killing their mind, their free choice, their Conscience is the same as taking their body’s life.
- You shall not commit adultery.
In the beginning, the woman was drawn from the side of the man, to be his partner. Not from his feet, that she would bow before him, and not from his head that she may lord over him. “…and the two shall become one…” each providing from their given talent that they may become greater than their parts. Keep this dignity between you, as a covenant sign of the relationship you share with Me.
I give you what you need. What I give to others is what they need. Be satisfied, and if not satisfied, use the talents I give you to learn and grow and care. Consider that I may withhold something from you that I give opportunity to another to care for you as part of the community.
The DON’T even THINK about it
The conscious consideration of ideas contrary to community opens the mind to concupiscence and is to be avoided.
- You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Telling the truth keeps community strong. Telling a partial truth, or bending the truth, or refusing to share the truth, to deceive is to break apart the community.
Lying kills community.
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.
Man and Woman become one as a sign to the community of My love and relationship with the community. It is adultery to even think of breaking up such a holy bond. (Mt 5:27)
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.
Focusing on wanting another’s talent or gifts is to spend time away from strengthening one’s own. It is a cheat against the gifts awarded and the chance to increase those gifts for the benefit of oneself and the community.
Virtue – the Fruit and Seed of Moral Acts
“Human virtues are firm attitudes, stable dispositions, habitual perfection of intellect and will that govern our actions, order our passions, and guide our conduct according to reason and faith. They make possible ease, self-mastery, and joy in leading a morally good life. The virtuous one is one who freely practices the good.”2
The theological and cardinal virtues were posted between the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes during the presentation. These were so for ready reference, visual consideration during the conversation, and for relating to both the Decalogue and the opening of Matthew’s record of the Sermon on the mount. They are listed here for similar purpose.
Theological Virtues
Faith Hope Charity
Cardinal Virtues
Prudence Justice Fortitude Temperance
The virtues tie in the use of Greek philosophy by the Christian Fathers and Apostles to describe, explain, and expand on the Gospel concepts in a society where the civic and cultural foundation was laid by Alexander’s empire and subsisted into Roman times. Where the Greeks taught of a human soul that was a shadow of something greater and outside of the body, the Hebrew scriptures told of the spirit of God and the spirit of Wisdom as living signs without which humans could not hope to find happiness.
The Beatitudes – the Opening of the Sermon on the Mount
Father John Riccardo raises the concept of the Beatitudes being a list for losers according to the twenty-first century civil society.3 Concepts of ‘poor’, ‘mourning’, being ‘meek’ as though helpless, giving ‘mercy’ as a sign of weakness and so on are signs of humans unable to handle themselves in a Darwinian world of survival of the fittest. No one in their sensible mind would want to emulate any of these Christian values.
The Christian view, though, is that the Beatitudes may be viewed in a number of ways. First and foremost, they present one portrait of Jesus. Each characteristic may be seen in the Gospel through His words and His works. The descriptions of character and virtue may also be viewed by the Christian of any age as a character to work toward in one’s own actions. Standing in the practice of choosing to follow the Commandments, the virtues of the Beatitudes provide for the further formation of one’s Conscience, making decisions according to them until such decisions become reflected in the habitual practice. The Christian lives first with Jesus inside of themselves, and through the subsequent practice of action brings Jesus to life for others.
Also, the word ‘blessed’ may be translated from the Greek to mean ‘fortunate’ and ‘happy’. Happiness was defined in the opening of this presentation as a sense of contentment of character the results ultimately in an eternal life in relationship with the Creator God. Therefore, those working toward or emulating these virtues find themselves living a ‘happy’ life.
From Matthew chapter five, verses 3 – 12:
- “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
To emulate ‘poor in spirit’ is to practice the virtue of Prudence and Temperance. It is knowing when one has ‘enough’ for what one needs. It is to avoid excesses of the ‘things of this world’, to learn to pass through that wealth that one does not require and/or cannot redirect to the maintenance of the kingdom of God.
- “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
Comforted by God, by the divine laws and spirit of Love. Mourning may include despair, depression, confusion, and hurt. Learning and living these divine revelations provides a salve for these and raises one towards a life of happiness.
- “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.”
Among the weaker synonyms of this virtue are found stronger, disciplined words intended for the Christian. Subdued, forbearing, humble, orderly, patient, modest, and peaceful. These all come from a disciplined conscience, a mind that holds the body’s action toward an ordered life, order bent toward the divine law in pursuit of happiness.
- “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.”
Emphasize here ‘righteousness’ as with the virtue of Justice, where each has enough for what they need. Following the divine law provides faith, hope, and means to discover and acquire that which is necessary for life’s journey.
- “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”
Jesus teaches us to pray in Mt 5:9-13, the Lord’s Prayer. “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors…” Mercy is at the heart of daily living. Further, in Mt 22:35 summarizing the first four commandments, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the pastoral message of Pope Francis.
- “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.”
The heart was thought by the Greeks to be the center of life. Since the heart does drive the body’s engine, here is where the energy of life was thought to reside. The mind and Conscience have since been shown to be the nerve center, the thinking and control function for the body. Here, in the Conscience, creating habitual choice for the good, the ‘heart’ is cleansed, and God can be found.
- “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
Those who are so gifted to discern the hearts of others and can bring others to peaceful action, preserving the wholeness of community have found the means to evangelize the world. They have great responsibility to bring together other people, whether within their own household, between household, or between nation states.
- “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Can one stand on the practice of virtues? Can one weather the storm of argument, of bullying, of mental challenge and of physical violence as received by the world as a reward for practicing these virtues? This one who can do so has found true happiness.
There are traditionally eight Beatitudes. Perhaps it is too much to bear, or too much to believe when looking at the last one, the ninth one recorded by Matthew.
- “Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you {falsely} because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.”
Look at how they treated the Savior, the Son of God. Those on the mountain that day in Galilee could not imagine what would become of the Lord. We look back and can know it in all its horrors for the record of the Gospel and of the historians of the day. Even Rome’s Senate eventually outlawed the use of crucifixion as punishment. Yet, martyrs sacrificed themselves for hundreds of years afterward rather than deny their faith in Jesus and the Way of life He taught.
Summary
The purpose of the presentation is to remind us of who and what we are, physical bodies with life breathed into us by God, giving us rational minds with which to make choices. Those choices are discerned by a free Conscience to drive physical actions of the body. We have nature’s laws of being as do the animals, and an innate desire to seek what is good. At the same time, the nature of the body includes concupiscence that drives us to select what is pleasure and painless, beyond what we need and against what may be best for us. The Spirit breathed into us allows us to recognize God’s divine law as we form our Conscience. The habitual choice toward the good builds a stronger Conscience and drives actions that demonstrate the internal character of our minds and the intentions we select for our lives.
The Ten Commandments are a gift of life for communal living. Contrary to the perception of civic society, these laws were given to ‘us’ as our ancestors came out of four centuries of slavery. Told what to do and when for every action by their overlords, the Israelite community under Moses’ leadership needed guidance for holding their very extended family together. Freedom was given us under these circumstances, a freedom that comes from knowing the difference between a moral ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. It is through the understanding of these laws that we have the freedom to build extended communities without fear.
The Beatitudes are a portrait of Jesus Christ, a means for us to understand our own progress on the journey of life and gage the quality of our Consciences. Moving toward these virtues moves us toward strength in moral character to bring us happiness, and in the end of our days, to an eternal life with the Creator God, through Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, and in unity with the Holy Spirit of God as we live.
Bibliography
- Exodus 20:2-17. Catholic Study Bible, 3rd Edition. Senior, Donald Gen Ed; Oxford UP. 2010. Print.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church #1804, Second Edition. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 1997. Print.
- Riccardo, John. “Why Be Good”. Christ is the Answer program #753, Ave Maria Radio. 2013. Compact Disk recording. Avemariaradio.net.
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