St. Louise de Marillac College of Sorsogon, Inc.

Higher Education Department

Burgos St., Talisay, Sorsogon City
S. Y. 2022-2023
 In essence, the course will be about the following Christ: His life, His teachings, and His
Spirit who leads us to freedom, “Christian Faith is more than a set of truths to be believed; it is a
way of Christ which leads to life”. It is the gospel of Christ believed and lived which will decide
our destiny as Christians. Fullness of life here on earth means that, in all the innumerable actions,
events, and problems of daily life, we walk with Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, who is “the way,
the truth, and life” (John 14:6)
This curriculum guide will help the learners to discover the basic meaning of discipleship
and reflect on the human person as the moral agent, thus the foundational ideas of human
dignity, true freedom, conscience, law, and sin will be taken up. Moral issues like family
relationships, respect for human life, sexuality, truth, and social justice will be addressed.
The guide will make use of sacred scriptures. The focus will be on moral teachings found
in the Old and New Testaments, particularly in the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and
Christ’s two commandments of love. This will also include the Church’s teachings which
continue to interpret the Bible and relate it to contemporary issues and challenges.
Hopefully, this course will help the learners gain a critical understanding of what it
means to be a disciple of Christ and gain a deeper appreciation for the rich heritage of the
Catholic faith, which guides us in confronting modern day problems and issues, and be mindful
that the Church is the family of God. The teachings of the Church, therefore, are best understood
in the sense of one family within a family – like that of a mother teaching and guiding her
children to grow in love and virtue.

Upon completion of the course, the student must be able to:

1. Acquire a deeper understanding on morality for them to follow the footsteps of Jesus,
holistic and integrated knowledge of what is right and wrong, good and bad in the light of
the teachings of the Church.
2. Learn the teachings of the Jesus of Nazareth about the human person.
3. Understand and to honor the laws of the Church.
4. Instill in the students a greater appreciation of the true Christian teaching on morality and
the examples of Jesus of Nazareth that will guide them on the moral life.
5. Develop a deeper relationship to other moral being that will make a more humane society
to live in.
6. Appreciate and respect every human being as created in the image and likeness of God.
7. Celebrate continuously in gratitude to God through creative prayers, through the
Eucharistic Celebration, BEC and Bible sharing.
8. Be thankful to God for living a dignified personhood through the Sacrament of
Reconciliation.
9. Commemorate the life of Jesus in every situation of life.

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 MODULE 1
UNDERSTANDING MORALITY

Introduction:
Morality deals with the goodness or evil of human acts, attitudes, and values. It involves
matters such as right judgment, decision-making skills, personal freedom, and responsibility.
The main strength of morality is found in Scripture and Tradition. We are created in
God’s image and are essentially good. When we choose wisely, we are acting in accordance
with our true nature. Being happy is doing the right thing and its source is not material
success, fame, or unending hours of leisure and pleasure. Rather, our ultimate destiny is to be
eternally happy with God in Heaven. Being in God’s image does not make us perfect; God gave
us a soul, intellect, and free will to make our own choices. Free will means that we have the
freedom to accept or reject God’s will and that we are accountable for the choices we make

Learning Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, you are expected to:
1. Define Christian Morality.
2. Explain the elements and determinants of morality.
3. Identify the immoral acts in a moral action using the determinants.
4. Cite concrete actions to promote moral values in oneself, community and government.
5. Reflect on the different issues involving morality.

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 Reflection in Faith
MORALITY
There does not seem to be much reason to think that a single definition of morality will be
applicable to all moral discussions. One reason for this is that “morality” seems to be used in two
distinct broad senses: a descriptive sense and a normative sense. More particularly, the term
“morality” can be used either

1. descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group

(such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or
2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put
forward by all rational people.
Christian morality is a set of moral standards based on the teachings of the Bible, especially the
teachings of Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, in Matthew chapters five and six,
Jesus sets out a whole new standard of moral behavior for those who follow Him.

THE MORALITY OF HUMAN ACTS

Freedom makes man a moral subject. When he acts deliberately, man is, so to speak, the father
of his acts. Human acts, that is, acts that are freely chosen in consequence of a judgment of
conscience, can be morally evaluated. They are either good or evil.

 GOOD ACTS AND EVIL ACTS

A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances
together. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself (such as praying and
fasting "in order to be seen by men").
The object of the choice can by itself vitiate an act in its entirety. There are some concrete acts -
such as fornication - that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder
of the will, that is, a moral evil.

It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that
inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.)
which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of
circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as
blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from
it.

THE SOURCES OF MORALITY
The morality of human acts depends on:
- the object chosen;
- the end in view or the intention;
- the circumstances of the action.

The object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the "sources," or constitutive elements,
of the morality of human acts.

Object chosen is a good toward which the will deliberately directs itself. It is the matter of a
human act. The object chosen morally specifies the act of the will, insofar as reason recognizes
and judges it to be or not to be in conformity with the true good. Objective norms of morality
express the rational order of good and evil, attested to by conscience.

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Intention resides in the acting subject. Because it lies at the voluntary source of an action and
determines it by its end, intention is an element essential to the moral evaluation of an action.
The end is the first goal of the intention and indicates the purpose pursued in the action. The
intention is a movement of the will toward the end: it is concerned with the goal of the activity. It
aims at the good anticipated from the action undertaken. Intention is not limited to directing
individual actions, but can guide several actions toward one and the same purpose; it can orient
one's whole life toward its ultimate end.
For example, a service done with the end of helping one's neighbor can at the same time
be inspired by the love of God as the ultimate end of all our actions. One and the same
action can also be inspired by several intentions, such as performing a service in order
to obtain a favor or to boast about it.

A good intention (for example, that of helping one's neighbor) does not make behavior
that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just. The end does not
justify the means. Thus the condemnation of an innocent person cannot be justified as a
legitimate means of saving the nation. On the other hand, an added bad intention (such as
vainglory) makes an act evil that, in and of itself, can be good (such as almsgiving).

Circumstances, including the consequences, are secondary elements of a moral act. They
contribute to increasing or diminishing the moral goodness or evil of human acts (for example,
the amount of a theft). They can also diminish or increase the agent's responsibility (such as
acting out of a fear of death). Circumstances of themselves cannot change the moral quality of
acts themselves; they can make neither good nor right an action that is in itself evil.

TWO ELEMENTS OF MORALITY

1. Made in the Image of God

The most basic principle of the Christian moral life is the awareness that every person bears the
dignity of being made in the image of God. He has given us an immortal soul and through the
gifts of intelligence and reason enables us to understand the order of things established in his
creation. God has also given us a free will to seek and love what is true, good, and beautiful.
Sadly, because of the Fall, we also suffer the impact of Original Sin, which darkens our minds,
weakens our wills, and inclines us to sin.

But we should always remember that Christ's dying and rising offers us new life in the Spirit,
whose saving grace delivers us from sin and heals sin's damage within us. Thus we speak of the
value, dignity, and goal of human life, even with its imperfections and struggles. Human life, as
a profound unity of physical and spiritual dimensions, is sacred. It is distinct from all other forms
of life, since it alone is imprinted with the very image of its Creator.

2. The Responsible Practice of Freedom

Without freedom, we cannot speak meaningfully about morality or moral responsibility. Human
freedom is more than a capacity to choose between this and that. It is the God-given power to
become who he created us to be and so to share eternal union with him. This happens when we
consistently choose ways that are in harmony with God's plan. Christian morality and God's law
are not arbitrary, but specifically given to us for our happiness. God gave us intelligence and the
capacity to act freely. Ultimately, human freedom lies in our free decision to say "yes" to God.
In contrast, many people today understand human freedom merely as the ability to make a
choice, with no objective norm or good as the goal.

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 FOUNDATIONS OF CATHOLIC MORALITY
These are basic concepts in Catholic moral theology:
 Freedom
 Truth
 Natural law
 Law
 Conscience
God creates us in the state of freedom. We are at liberty to choose, based on reason and will,
whether to act or not in a specific situation. We are responsible for our choices. With these
choices, we choose our own ultimate destiny: that of eternal life with God, or that of death.

We believe that moral truth is objective, and not relative to the subjective whims of culture or
taste. It is valid at all times & everywhere. God is the ultimate source of all moral truth.
People have an innate sense of basic moral truth.

Using human reason, we can deduce the principles of this natural law. But because sin clouds
our vision of the truth, God has chosen to directly reveal the law to us.

We use our natural facility called conscience to apply the general principles of the law to specific
situations, judging specific actions to be right or wrong in accordance with objective law.
(Conscience is not the source of those moral principles!)

THE MORALITY OF THE PASSIONS

The human person is ordered to beatitude by his deliberate acts: the passions or feelings he
experiences can dispose him to it and contribute to it.

I. Passions
It belongs to the Christian patrimony. Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the
sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be
good or evil.

The passions are natural components of the human psyche; they form the passageway and ensure
the connection between the life of the senses and the life of the mind. Our Lord called man's
heart the source from which the passions spring.

There are many passions. The most fundamental passion is love, aroused by the attraction of the
good. Love causes a desire for the absent good and the hope of obtaining it; this movement finds
completion in the pleasure and joy of the good possessed. the apprehension of evil causes hatred,
aversion, and fear of the impending evil; this movement ends in sadness at some present evil, or
in the anger that resists it.

"To love is to will the good of another." All other affections have their source in this first
movement of the human heart toward the good. Only the good can be loved. Passions "are evil if
love is evil and good if it is good."

II. Passions and Moral Life

In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent
that they effectively engage reason and will. Passions are said to be voluntary, "either because
they are commanded by the will or because the will does not place obstacles in their way." It
belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason.

Strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons; they are simply the
inexhaustible reservoir of images and affections in which the moral life is expressed. Passions

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are morally good when they contribute to a good action, evil in the opposite case. the upright will
orders the movements of the senses it appropriates to the good and to beatitude; an evil will
succumbs to disordered passions and exacerbates them. Emotions and feelings can be taken up
into the virtues or perverted by the vices.

In the Christian life, the Holy Spirit himself accomplishes his work by mobilizing the whole
being, with all its sorrows, fears and sadness, as is visible in the Lord's agony and passion. In
Christ human feelings are able to reach their consummation in charity and divine beatitude.

Moral perfection consists in man's being moved to the good not by his will alone, but also by his
sensitive appetite, as in the words of the psalm: "My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living
God."

Questions to Reflect
1. What is Christian Morality?
2. What are the differences between the determinants or source of morality?
3. How can morality affect our dignity as created in the image and likeness of God as well
as our responsible use of freedom?
4. Why is Passion important to our moral life?
5. What core or enabling value of our school that integrates the principle of morality?
Explain.
6. How did Jesus manifest moral acts in His time? kindly cite any situation from the
scriptures.
7. In the life or charism of St. Vincent de Paul or St. Louise de Marillac, what particular
instance that they show difference between good and evil?

References:

Salibay, Esteban T. (2013). Christian Morality in Contemporary Society. 839 EDSA, South
Triangle, Quezon City: C & E Publishing, Inc.

Catechism of the Catholic Church. Part Three: Article 4 and 5

https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P5Q.HTM

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/

https://newlife.bible/article/what-is-christian-morality/

http://www.beginningcatholic.com/catholic-morality

https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/morality