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.
1.1 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.
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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
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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.
1.2 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
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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
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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.
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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…
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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
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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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