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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 23. September 17, 1968

moral decision

moral decision

The difficulty of making a 'moral' decision lies in the choice of a frame of reference. In Christianity there is nowadays a range of references to choose from but there are two main classes: those who talk about God and those who talk about people. This is a vulgar oversimplification because both groups would like to say that they do both but it's the change of emphasis that is important. Either the criterion is an objective code referred to a God ('out there') or it is simply one of the immediate needs of people's welfare ('down here'). The switch is from the cosmic and total vision of man to the increased valuation of the immediate and transitory needs.

Catholicism views man as being a being of great dignity, made in the image of God, given an intellect to surpass the material universe and share in the divine mind, possessing a moral conscience to perceive right and wrong in an order of things which he does not impose himself and finally having a soul which is called to an ultimate union with God for eternity.

Everything in the universe comes from God and is directed back, reflecting his glory. Thus in all things, and particularly in the created world there is a movement towards God. The world, governed by Natural Law. which shows the wisdom of God, and man. is under that law but also under a moral law which is found in the Scriptures. Man's intellect and conscience are given, so that he may better understand the divine plan of the universe, Yet man has guidance insofar as God is in the world in his Church which is 'the Body of Christ'. The Church's function is to teach, guard and interpret both moral and natural laws to lead man into union with God.

This total vision of man is worked out in minute detail even to regarding marriage as being a type of mission and a tool to further union with God. All aspects of life are regarded as in themselves good, but some are better than others (celibacy being best!). hence marriage itself must be helped to reveal the divine plan. Vatican II saw two aspects in marriage, conjugal love and responsible parenthood, these two aspects being inseparable in intention, (if not in fact).

"Conjugal love reveals its true nature and nobility when it is considered in its supreme origin. God, who is love, 'the father' from whom every family in heaven and earth is named". (Gaudium et Spes)

Obviously marriage should in these terms be directed 'Godward' and responsible parenthood was described as an expression of conjugal love by "a profound relationship to the objective moral order established by God". In other words if the natural world sees the purpose of sex as being conception then to attempt otherwise would be to travest the natural law of God and thereby to dishonour the marriage in its most ennobling and important feature, the divine constitutive of marriage. In the words of the encyclical they: "… are not free (in the task of transmitting life) to proceed completely at will … but they must conform their activity to the creative intention of God, expressed in the very nature of marriage and of its acts. and manifested by the constant teaching of the Church." Here then in this one aspect of Catholicism is seen the the importance of every aspect of man's life. Beyond the immediate fulfillment of the natural law there is a supernatural order of which the marriage union is a pale reflection and yet a movement towards. This is a wholeness of vision. vigorous because it is positive in it's affirmation of man, poetic because the vision evoked demands all of man's idealistic imagination. The movement to transcend the 'whips and scorns of time' is bound up in the sense of divine purpose in the whole of the universe. Perhaps this is only expressible in poetry where the indescribable may be at least evoked. For example a beautific vision such as Dante's of the Celestial Rose.

"I, coming to holiness from the profane, To the eternal from the temporal, From Florence to a people just and sane, Into what stupor, then, must I needs fall!

Photo of button with word 'Tue' above it.

… No sound to hear, no word to speak at all.

As when a pilgrim, to new life restored. Beholds a Shrine, and hope within him rise That of its wonders he may take home word."

(Paradiso canto XXXI)