Moral Choice: A Christian View of Ethics

3. A Reasonable Approach

55 3 A Reasonable Approach “If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it, all the rest follows.” Ayn Rand1 Introductory Comments “Use your head.” How often are these words hurled at people, particularly children, who have just done something perceived to be wrong or just plain dumb? Isn’t this the way we should make moral decisions: using our head? Isn’t this relationship with Christ as important to morality just romantic baloney? If we “use our heads,” we will make good decisions, right? Or is reason enough? In the last chapter, we examined a relationship with Christ in the community as the ideal starting place for Christian morality. Catholic tradition claims that all persons of goodwill can come to the same general moral conclusions, whether they acknowledge Christ or not. Therefore, since value is based in reality, a religious lens is not essential to common agreement on what is moral. Value is not invented or relative to a culture or to personal opinion. 56 Moral Choice Catholicism has embraced this position since its inception. While not defining the good, reason points to choices that embody the good. This is not mere intuition but rather an affirmation of the power and potential of human reason to recognize what is of value. It is an affirmation that the universe contains elements that have or that point to value. With this in mind, this chapter will review reason as a basic tool for moral decision making. It will consider and critique reason-based theories. One of these is natural law, used in Catholic moral thinking for many centuries. The chapter will consider the two ways in which natural law has been appropriated in the Catholic traditions. Reason-Based Methods Human beings are said to be “rational animals.” While studies in the last half century demonstrate that other animals may be able to think, to retain commands , even to use language in some form, human beings are the only creatures held morally responsible for their actions. Reason claims independence from cultural or sectarian bias as well as from the traps of moral subjectivism and emotionalism. Reason can function effectively without input from religious tradition or belief in the divine. It is deemed completely objective, a quality that makes it a good candidate for a universal approach to morality. Catholic anthropology maintains that within every person’s core or human nature are the necessary tools, rooted in reason, to be moral. This premise supports such activities as Catholic political lobbying. If values are truly universal, they should be binding for everyone, not just for Catholics. Still, good people do not always agree with ecclesiastical conclusions. Among the issues caught in this net of disagreement are abortion and gay marriage. Still, the Catholic teaching authority, the magisterium, is not alone in its claim that moral conclusions about these two issues are clear and universally binding. Chapter 5 will offer a criterion to help the decision maker sort such disagreements. Because of this intrinsic human power, the church teaches that ultimately a person’s conscience is the last word on moral discernment (see chapter 6). If human beings have an innate capability to know and do the good, their choices must be judiciously respected. Even the Catholic Catechism affirms that a person “must not be forced to act contrary to his [or her] conscience.”2 Chapter 3: A Reasonable Approach 57 The church teaches that there should be an attitude of “sacred reverence for the dignity of conscience and its freedom of choice.”3 Precipitous external judgment is not only redundant, but it may also be a violation of personal God-given freedom. However, and as a most important corrective, when the church makes this statement, it does not affirm that persons have a license to do whatever they please. The conscience is not an organ of whim. It is always subject to objective standards of value discoverable by reason, which church teaching strives to articulate. Proclamation of existential value is the jurisdiction of official church teaching. Arbitrary creation of value is not. Moral pronouncements of the church as teacher should be a part of moral discernment for those who belong to it. They may be a useful source for others, as a student of another religious tradition once suggested after she had read several Catholic social justice documents. The church believes that its counsel can be used profitably by all. Many...