Moral Decision Making - PDST



Moral Decision Making

Section D Leaving Certificate

Some abbreviated summary notes adapted from Moral Decision Making by Patrick Hannon, “Into the Classroom” series, Veritas

Please note that the following is background information only on this topic. It in no way constitutes a sample or exemplary answer on this topic.

1. The meanings of morality

Being moral is about seeking to live a life of integrity according to a certain moral code.

The Hebrews: refer to the Torah; the reality of God and God’s covenant relationship with the Hebrews implies that humans have moral responsibility – seen in the writings of the Psalms and the Prophets – especially the concept of justice and reverence for life. Torah laws can be broken to save an endangered life (except for laws against incest, idolatry and murder).

The Greeks: Socrates – objectivity and universality of justice, ethics and the absolute good. Knowing the good = doing the good. Knowledge = truth. No one does wrong willingly but through ignorance. Opinions change but truth is fixed. Opinion = what I think is right. Truth = what I know is right. Universal definition of justice. Sophists – moral relativism – it all depends on the circumstances. Relativity of moral issues. Aristotle – his chief moral concern was living a virtuous life. Purpose of every object is to be itself, to reach its potential. Everything possesses psyche which is form. Body is matter. Soul gives us the potential to have true happiness. We become virtuous by doing virtuous things. Plato and medieval theologians asked whether certain behaviours are good because God had commanded them or whether God had commanded them because they were good. Plato’s answer was the former, as is Aquinas’ and his followers. Socrates also asks Euthyphro whether God commands “holy” things because they are holy or whether things are holy because God commands them.

The Romans: the Stoics (of Greek origin 300 B.C.) were concerned with accepting the will of God and cleansing people of emotions. Ethics was their main expertise. They espoused logic to support their ethical doctrines. God is everywhere so we must live by the will of God. Accept the will of god as shown in nature. Justification of war: Cicero in “De Officiis”- war justified in order to live unharmed in a time of peace etc.

Different descriptions of what it means to be moral. Understanding of the consequences of our actions and decisions at personal and communal levels and identify a variety of influences on human behaviour. Morality is to do with our relationships. It distinguishes between what is right and what is wrong, and reminds us of a sense of obligation to do what is right and avoid doing what is wrong. There are different sources of morality. For some it is a trait of nature, impelling us to our survival and happiness. For others it emanates from the law of God. Morality is the art of right relationship with God, each other and with the world around us.

We ought to have respect for human life. It holds unconditionally and absolutely, as it is fundamental to human well being. E.g. you ought to drive on the left – not unconditional…it is not true in Europe and you wouldn’t drive just on the left if there was a person lying on the road as you approached. Important imperatives have to do with what we value most about life because they are connected with the enhancement of our existence. Respect for life, regard for others’ rights, being just and truthful and compassionate…these are virtues, traits and qualities and the actions to which they give rise are what make for our flourishing as human persons. All of these have to do with our relationship with other people and the world around us. We are relational beings. As we grow in self awareness we become aware of our relationships and become aware of being able to make some choices in this regard. Foundation of morality: characteristics of the human being, awareness, understanding and the capacity for choice. Humans are knowing and free. Knowledge and freedom are the basis for morality. We have intellect and will and can therefore distinguish and choose between right and wrong. Our knowledge and freedom is however limited. We sometimes forget, make mistakes, act in ignorance, act out of our unconscious motives, have fears/compulsions, are influenced by our peers/social pressure/parenting/the environment.

Because of moral responsibility we are able to make something of ourselves in the world and we are answerable for what we make of ourselves and how we do this.

What is right? Is it whatever conforms to a rule? Is it being just? Is it giving help? Not stealing? It is good to be just. It is bad to steal. A person is good when he/she is what he/she is called to be. A call is a particular way of being or acting in accordance to our nature. We are what we are called to be when we exercise our freedom rationally. As humans we are called to love. In part, love means wishing people well and doing them good.

Consensus of shared principles: through international community at the U.N, the E.U, the Church. There is a desire among people for ethics to exist in public life. The trials in the Hague for people convicted of war crimes in Bosnia in the 1990s, the Nuremburg trials after WW2 are examples of how the international community asserts that there is a universal law that governs all peoples. Universal Global Ethic – example of an agreement on a common code of behaviour, a broad common statement of the actions that humanity sees as right and wrong. It represents a general global consensus on the attitude of humanity towards good and evil. International conferences to try to develop a global ethic were held in New Delhi India 1993; Bangalore, India, 1993; and Chicago 1993.

Lk 6:31 do unto others… the Golden Rule may be a starting point in viewing morality.

1.2 Why be moral?

We can answer this question in different ways. We might say it is for our survival… or because we must obey the law…or it leads to our ultimate happiness…it promotes our growth…it strengthens our faith…it facilitates our service to humanity…or because we are drawn to a certain quality in our living (gentleness, compassion, sacrifice, unselfishness). Being moral can show that humanity is making sense of its experience, the human person reflecting on human nature. Therefore we need moral rules. We are moral because by being moral we become truly human. Moral knowledge put into practice expresses and reinforces our idea of how we are meant to live.

The demand that we obey rules comes from the community, concretely mediated through our parents, teachers, peers, society, laws and institutions. God is not the author of the rules of morality. The author is the human mind, reflecting on human experience. This is always a process.

Moral rules come to us out of the tradition of the community but their ultimate origin is the human attempt to make sense of the human experience, reflecting on human nature.

Moral knowledge is for putting into practice. The practice of morality expresses and reinforces our ideas about how we are meant to live.

Values: Important imperatives have to do with what we value most about life because they are connected with the enhancement of our existence.

2. The common good and individual rights

Whose values should a legal system reflect or enforce? In a pluralist society we have a diversity of beliefs and practice in religious and moral matters. Just because a belief is held by a minority, even a sizeable minority, is not enough to ground a case for change (e.g. criminals, fundamentalists…).

Vatican 2: Declaration on Religious Freedom: This one true religion continues to exist in the Catholic and Apostolic Church to which the Lord gave the task of spreading it to all. All have a duty to seek the truth and to live by it as they know it (par 1). Acknowledgement of a religious pluralism is not meant to suggest that one religion is as good as another. The Vatican council declares that the human person has the right to religious freedom. People should not be forced to act against their religious beliefs, nor should they be restrained from acting in their light. The basis for this principle is the dignity of the human person. In moral matters people should not be force to act against their consciences, nor restrained from behaving according to conscience provided that the just requirements of public order are observed.

What kind of society do we want and how are we to achieve it? The notion of the common good has existed in Catholic social teaching since Pope Leo 13th in the second half of the 19th century. Its roots are in ancient Greek and Roman thought. Aquinas regarded it as one of the defining features of law.

Vatican 2 talked about the common good in Gaudium et Spes / Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: the common good is “the sum total of social conditions which enable people either as groups or as individuals to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily. Personal freedom is itself part of the common good”. It includes the promotion of human rights, personal and social. It is not the logic of totalitarianism. It implies a retrieval of a sense of community and solidarity wherein each person can flourish in the optimum measure.

2.1 The relationship between morality and religion

If God does not exist then everything is permitted – Dostoievski.

Morality and religion: a definition of religion is not easy. Emile Durkheim, William James, Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade. Religion is a belief system and or a system of practices from one institution which embodies and transmits beliefs and practices from one generation to another. Religion involves itself in the unseen dimension of life, commonly in a god or supreme being. Religious practice is aimed at putting one in contact with that dimension. Religions commonly involve not just beliefs about God – they usually prescribe also a way of life which includes direction on how we relate to each other. This may have a bearing on a future life. Religions require adherents to live according to certain values and ideals.

Morality implies some sort of spirituality - making provision for the contemplative and meditative practices which aim at enabling contact with the deepest self (and the kind of discernment required in moral judgment bespeaks a contemplative or meditative mode). becoming who we are called to be. A religious person who envisages the moral life in terms of response to God’s call (metaphorically) will see such practices attuning oneself to God’s “voice”. In Christian theology today the voice of conscience is explicitly equated with the “voice” of God.

There is a cognitive dimension in moral discernment. One needs to “think things through”. In the Christian view this discernment takes place within the Christian community. God is not the author of moral rules but the author of creation. Humans are made in the divine likeness. It is in the creativity of the human being that the discovery of moral principles originates. Christian theology sees that creativity as reflecting and expressing the creativity of God. Aquinas: natural law is a sharing in the Eternal law by rational creatures.

True morality requires not just externally correct behaviour but also the right attitude and disposition and motivation and intention.

Buddhism denies the existence of a transcendent creator-deity in favour of an indefinable, non personal, absolute source or dimension that can be experienced as the depth of human inwardness.

WW2 Pope Pius 12th (1939-58) – dilemma: resist Hitler and keep Catholics safe or condemn Hitler and the Nazis and risk alienating German Catholics who would fall victim to increased Nazi persecutions. At least Catholics would not be killed and the Vatican would not be attacked by Hitler and Mussolini if the Pops stayed neutral. (When Dutch bishops condemned the deportation of Jews, Nazi reprisals crippled the Dutch church.) The Pope tried to alleviate the suffering of the victims of WW2, e.g. 400,000 Jews were saved from death by seeking help from the Vatican. The Vatican also sent out an enormous amount of relief supplies to destroyed towns. The Israeli government awarded Pope Pius 12th a medal for saving so many Jews from death. Most Catholics in Germany remained silent regarding the Holocaust. Some resisted. Franz Jaegerstaetter, a Catholic Austrian peasant farmer, was martyred in 1943 for refusing to serve in Hitler’s army. Corrie ten Boom (“The Hiding Place”) wrote about how her family risked their life to hide Jews from the Nazis in Holland. Edith Stein, a Jewish convert to Catholicism and German professor and writer of philosophy, became a contemplative Carmelite in Holland. The SS took her from the convent and sent her to Auschwitz, tortured and executed her in a gas chamber. Maximilian Kolbe also gave up his life for another in Auschwitz. Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest, was a member of a group that tried to assassinate Hitler as a way to stop the Nazi madness. Count Klaus von Stauffenberg (a Catholic) planted the bomb in the assassination attempt. The plot failed and the entire group were executed.

The Cold War – not until 1965, when Vatican 2 condemned the use of weapons of mass destruction, did the U.S. Catholics begin to widely question their government’s policy in having used atomic bombs in the past or in preparing to use them in the future.

1943 Pope Pius 12th wrote 2 encyclicals that fostered a renewal of theology. One was on the Scriptures – he opposed modern scientific and historical methods of biblical scholarship, which encouraged Catholic theologians to get in touch with the roots of Christianity. The second, on the Mystical Body of Christ, highlighted the importance of all members of the Church, laity included, and the need for unity in the Church.

The experience of war in the 20th century has made Catholics and others ask the question: given the kinds of weapons we have and the destruction we are capable of now, can a war ever be considered morally justified again?

2.2 Morality and the Christian tradition

In the Judaeo Christian tradition there are frequent references to God’s law and to God as the author of the law, as well as to God’s judgment and the reward/punishment which follows our life in this world.

In Hebrew the Torah / law is more properly translated as “teachings”. Decalogue = 10 prescriptions. Humans picture God after their own experience. Their experience of leadership or rulership would have included seeing the ruler as lawmaker and as judge. This is also true of early and medieval Christianity. This gave rise to a strong concept of God as law-giver in the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic traditions and in Plato and the Greek philosophers even.

To see God and morality as related in a crudely legalistic way is to distort God and the Judaeo Christian revelation. The God of Moses and of Jesus Christ is also a loving, merciful, compassionate, gracious God whose way is the way of truth and love. Right moral living is an inescapable entailment of acceptance of the gospel of Jesus. The gospel precedes the law (St. Paul) and it is by the grace of God, and not the law, that we are saved. Catechism of the Catholic Church: Scripture and Tradition. Tradition = what is handed on and the manner of handing it on, both content and process. Magisterium is the teaching role of the Church.

Lk he has sent me to proclaim good news to the poor

C. H. Dodd: The Christian religion is an ethical religion. It recognises no ultimate separation between the service of God and social behaviour.

Old testament obligations included worship and the need for right relationship with our neighbour. New Testament: Kingdom of God = metanoia / repentance is needed. Mark’s portrayal of the opening of the public ministry of Jesus shows that the advent of the reign of God is the context of the call to repentance. The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel. Turning is the first step in a larger process. Jesus asks them to believe in the gospel, to entrust themselves to the word that God has saved God’s people. They are invited to recognise their salvation and then walk in salvation’s way. God loves us. We are asked to return that love and be committed to love of neighbour. The love command is at the heart of the religious and moral response which he asks of his disciples: Mt 22:23-40; Mk12:28-34; Lk10:25ff. Kerygma = statement of the essence of the Good News. Catechesis = explanation of the Good News. Didache = ethical component of catechesis, the teaching or moral instruction. Subordination of moral instruction to the religious message (God’s reign) is clearly seen in the structure of the Pauline and other New Testament letters e.g. Romans. Structure of letters: theological reflection leads to exhortation about good living. Christian convert is to turn away from sinful ways and live a life of virtue – to put off the old man and put on the new.

Love of neighbour is expressed in concrete norms. Negative norms – prohibitions on e.g. stealing, lying or adultery. Positive norms – in injunctions to be just or peaceful or truthful or whatever the particular virtue or action. Love command is primary. All the laws and the prophets are summarised in it. In the personal example of Jesus there is abundant proof of the quality of love which is called for. It is a matter of the heart and is expressed in action which is provident and caring, universal in scope. Love of enemy. Compassion and forgiveness must persist in the face of rejection. It is a radical and boundless generosity. It is God’s love. Because God first loved us that love exceeds the merely rational. Agape is needed. Selflessness. We must be ready to forgive. Have a special concern for the widow and the orphan. Take up your cross. Hope in the resurrection. Have a bias towards the vulnerable and promote justice. 1 Cor 13 – love is patient and kind… Mt 25 I was hungry and you gave me food…

Structural injustice – Pope Leo 13th: de Rarum Novarum encyclical on labour and on the condition of workers and reconstruction of the social order.

Catholic social teaching in action – Catholic Worker Movement. 1929 economic depression. Dorothy Day (single mother, journalist, convert to Catholicism from communism) and Peter Maurin (French peasant, wandering philosopher) started the movement. 1933 The Catholic Worker newspaper, addressing the plight of the poor workers, opened homes of hospitality and shelter for the homeless and hungry. They relied on God’s providence. Aimed to promote the social teachings of the Catholic Church, to live out that teaching by doing works of mercy as a personal sacrifice. Went to jail for protesting at war and injustice.

In recent Catholic moral theology – the “fundamental option” – the choices that we make both express what we are and shapre our future choices so that behind or underneath the history of our individual choices is revealed a basic stance vis-à-vis the good. This is our fundamental option. In modern psychology we are reminded that we are always in the process of becoming. The law of gradualness. We also become good, just, truthful, compassionate…but only gradually.

4.2 Conscience

“Conscience is our most secret core and sanctuary where we are alone with God whose voice echoes in our depths” Gaudium et Spes par 16.

Summary of function of conscience is offered by the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Moral conscience, present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil” (1777)

Aquinas: moral theology speaks of synderesis / habitual grasp of general principles, and conscientia / mechanism whereby these principles are applied to concrete situations.

Conscience is at the core of the personality, the locus of our integrity as persons. “Heart” is the Hebrew metaphor for conscience. There is no separate word for it.

Formal principles offer a stance and give a personal shape to our activities. We ought to help someone in danger / difficulty; we ought to contribute to charities; we ought not murder. Not all killing is wrongful in the sense of it being immoral – an accidental killing, non negligence, doesn’t imply moral fault. Western ethical tradition has supported the notion that it is legitimate to kill in self defence if no other means is feasible – an insight which then becomes an important part of the doctrine of the just war. None of this implies that killing isn’t an evil, only that it isn’t always a moral evil. Moral education proposes values and rules for behaviour and offers reasons why these values and rules ought to be adopted and encourages a critical appropriation of them. Moral education must include education of the emotions and the use of the imagination.

We are born with a capacity for conscience. Our conscience is achieved through the normal process of human education in its broad sense. A more systematic process of creating conscience comes when a parent begins to impart elementary do’s and don’ts, signifying approval when the child complies, disapproval when it doesn’t. For Freud we internalise the commands and prohibitions of our parents. A child is rewarded by a smile, a cuddle, approval or pleasure. If a child disobeys he receives a frown or disapproval. Our need for love is basic. He learns to subject all other needs to this and will behave in such a way as to ensure approval and avoid rejection. Rules are linked to the rule-giver. A change of rule-giver suggests a change of rules. Rules are external and are not yet internalised in the child’s memory or imagination. Child must see the point of the rule. Formal education needed. Young child’s conscience has three features: 1. rules come from outside and continue to be identified with that figure. 2. rules will be simple, black and white since the child cannot interpret nuances. 3. child conforms for fear of disapproval / losing love. He behaves out of his need for continued love.

The adult conscience: 1. rules have been internalised in a process in which the young person comes to see the point of this or that injunction, and adopts it as part of his repertoire of values and principles. 2. right and wrong are not black and white. There are some absolutes but also an awareness of the existence of grey areas and an ability to cope with the grey. 3. He will act not out of a need to be lived / approved but out of a will to love, a conscious option for what is positive and creative in one’s dealings with others. This shows moral maturity.

Eric Fromm: “The Fear of Freedom” (1960) says that humankind cannot bear very much autonomy. Freedom, much as we cherish it, is conducive to anxiety and after anxiety we may seek relief in simple solutions. 1920s Germany and Italy – permissiveness and personal freedom – easy for authoritarianism of the Nazis and fascism to take root.

Our actions exhibit patterns. These are a critical ingredient in moral appraisal and moral growth. Underlying this is the idea that what we do reflects and expresses what we are.

4.3 Decision-making in action

Moral decision making involves: identification of an issue, a consideration of the intention / reason / motivation for making a decision, the rightness / wrongness of the intention / reason / motivation, reflection on moral values that are important to the person, informing your conscience from various sources, reflection on the sort of person you want to be and how this may inform decisions, consideration of the consequences for person and others

Adapted from Moral Decision Making by Patrick Hannon, “Into the Classroom” serie, Veritas.

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