VERITATIS SPLENDOR 61-75 IMPORTANT POINTS 

 
The truth about moral good 
- Recognized by the judgment of conscience, which leads one to take responsibility for the 
good or the evil one has done.  
- Declared in the law of reason 
Just judgment of conscience 
- If man does evil, the just judgment of his conscience remains within him as a witness to the 
universal truth of the good, as well as to the malice of his particular choice.  
- Remains in him also as a pledge of hope and mercy 
- Bears witness to the evil he has done 
- Reminds him of his need, with the help of God's grace, to ask forgiveness, to do good and 
to cultivate virtue constantly.  
- It is the "heart" converted to the Lord and to the love of what is good which is really the 
source of ​true ​judgments of conscience.  
- Knowledge of God's law in general is necessary, but what is essential is a sort of 
"connaturality" between man and the true good. 
- Connaturality is rooted in and develops through the virtuous attitudes: prudence 
and the other cardinal virtues, and even before these the theological virtues of faith, 
hope and charity.  
Practical judgment of conscience 
- Imposes on the person the obligation to perform a given act 
- Where the link between freedom and truth is made manifest.  
Conscience 
- Expresses itself in acts of "judgment" which reflect the truth about the good, and not in 
arbitrary "decisions"  
- The maturity and responsibility of these judgments are not measured by the 
liberation of the conscience from objective truth, but by an insistent search for truth 
and by allowing oneself to be guided by that truth in one's actions.  
- The judgment of an act 
- Not an infallible judge; not exempted from the possibility of error 
- Can be the result of an ​invincible ignorance, ​an ignorance of which the subject is not aware 
and which he is unable to overcome by himself.  
- In cases where such invincible ignorance is not culpable, conscience does not lose 
its dignity, because it continues to speak in the name of that truth about the good 
which the subject is called to seek sincerely.  
- The ultimate concrete judgment, compromises its dignity when it is ​culpably erroneous 
Erroneous conscience 
- When a man shows little concern for seeking what is true and good, and conscience 
gradually becomes almost blind from being accustomed to sin 
Good conscience 
- Man must seek the truth and must make judgments in accordance with that same truth 
 
Apostle Paul 
- the conscience must be confirmed by the Holy Spirit, clear, must not "practise cunning and 
tamper with God's word", but "openly state the truth" 
- "Do not be conformed to this world” 
Truth 
- Where the dignity of conscience is derived from 
- Correct conscience: ​objective truth r​ eceived by man 
- Erroneous conscience: what man, mistakenly, ​subjectively ​considers to be true 
- Never acceptable to confuse a "subjective" error about moral good with the "objective" 
truth or to make the moral value of an act performed with a true and correct conscience 
equivalent to the moral value of an act performed by following the judgment of an 
erroneous conscience. 
Good and evil acts 
- Evil done as the result of invincible ignorance or a non-culpable error of judgment may not 
be imputable to the agent; but even in this case it does not cease to be an evil 
- Furthermore, a good act which is not recognized as such does not contribute to the moral 
growth of the person who performs it; it does not perfect him and it does not help to 
dispose him for the supreme good.  
Formation of conscience 
- "The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of 
light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in 
you is darkness, how great is the darkness!" (​Mt​ 6:22-23).  
- Christians have a great help for the formation of conscience in the Church and her 
Magisterium.  
- The Catholic Church is the teacher of truth Her charge is to announce and teach 
authentically that truth which is Christ, and at the same time with her authority to 
declare and confirm the principles of the moral order which derive from human 
nature itself " 
- The authority of the Church does not undermine the freedom of conscience of 
Christians 
- Freedom of conscience is never freedom "from" the truth but always and 
only freedom "in" the truth 
- The Magisterium does not bring to the Christian conscience truths which 
are extraneous to it; rather it brings to light the truths which it ought already 
to possess 
- The Church puts herself always and only at the ​service of conscience 
Freedom 
- Not only the choice for one or another particular action 
- A decision about oneself and a setting of one's own life for or against the Good, for or 
against the Truth, and ultimately for or against God. 
- Certain choices shape a person's entire moral life, and serve as bounds within which other 
particular everyday choices can be situated and allowed to develop 
Fundamental Option 
 - Brought about by that fundamental freedom: deeper than and different from freedom of 
choice. 
- Particular acts which flow from this option would constitute only partial attempts 
- The immediate object of such acts would not be absolute Good, but particular goods.  
- None of these goods could determine the freedom of man as a person in his totality 
- Distinction/separation between the fundamental option and deliberate choices of a 
concrete kind of behaviour.  
- Limit moral "good" and "evil" to the transcendental dimension proper to the 
fundamental option 
- Describe as "right" or "wrong" the choices of particular "innerworldly" kinds of 
behaviour: relationship with self, with others and with the material world.  
- A concrete kind of behaviour considered as a merely physical process, and not according 
to the criteria proper to a human act. 
- When an act of faith becomes separated from the choice of particular acts 
- Does not do justice to the rational finality immanent in man's acting and in each of his 
deliberate decisions 
- Someone can remain faithful to God independently of whether or not certain of his choices 
and his acts are in conformity with specific moral norms or rules. 
- Morality of an act would be judged in two different ways 
- Moral "goodness" would be judged on the basis of the subject's intention in reference to 
moral goods 
- It’s "rightness" on the basis of a consideration of its foreseeable effects or consequences 
and of their proportion.  
- Concrete kinds of behaviour could be described as "right" or "wrong", without it being 
thereby possible to judge as morally "good" or "bad"  
- An act could be qualified as morally acceptable if the intention of the subject is focused on 
the good 
- The moral specificity of acts, that is their goodness or evil, would be determined exclusively 
by the faithfulness of the person to the highest values of charity and prudence, without this 
faithfulness necessarily being incompatible with choices contrary to certain particular moral 
precepts 
- In this view, deliberate consent to certain kinds of behaviour declared illicit by traditional 
moral theology would not imply an objective moral evil.  
Two levels of morality 
- The order of good and evil, which is dependent on the will 
- Specific kinds of behaviour, which are judged to be morally right or wrong only on the basis 
of a technical calculation 
Faith 
- It is a question of the decision of faith/obedience of faith by which man makes a total and 
free self-commitment to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God as he 
reveals 
- Works through love, comes from the core of man, from his "heart", called to bear fruit in 
works 
 - Decalogue: "I am the Lord your God..." gives the morality of the Covenant its aspect of 
completeness, unity and profundity. 
Jesus' call to "come, follow me"  
- Marks the greatest possible exaltation of human freedom 
- Witnesses to the truth and to the obligation of acts of faith and of decisions which can be 
described as involving a fundamental option.  
- Saint Paul: "You were called to freedom, brethren, only do not use your freedom as an 
opportunity for the flesh, for freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not 
submit again to a yoke of slavery  
- encourages us to be watchful, for freedom is always threatened by slavery 
Scripture’s view of fundamental option 
- Fundamental option as a genuine choice of freedom and links that choice profoundly to 
particular act 
- By his fundamental choice, man is capable of giving his life direction and of progressing, 
with the help of grace, towards his end, following God's call 
- exercised in the particular choices of specific actions, through which man 
deliberately conforms himself to God's will, wisdom and law.  
- Fundamental option is always brought into play through conscious and free decisions. 
Precisely for this reason, it is revoked when man engages his freedom in conscious 
decisions to the contrary, with regard to morally grave matter. 
- To separate the fundamental option from concrete kinds of behaviour means to contradict 
the substantial integrity or personal unity of the moral agent in his body and in his soul 
Morality 
- In point of fact, the morality of human acts is not deduced only from one's intention 
- Morality of acts is defined by the relationship of man's freedom with the authentic good. 
- Judgments about morality cannot be made without taking into consideration whether or 
not the deliberate choice of a specific kind of behaviour is in conformity with the dignity and 
integral vocation of the human person.  
- Every choice always implies a reference by the deliberate will to the goods and evils 
indicated by the natural law as goods to be pursued and evils to be avoided. In the case of 
the positive moral precepts, prudence always has the task of verifying that they apply in a 
specific situation, for example, in view of other duties which may be more important or 
urgent.  
- But the negative moral precepts, those prohibiting certain concrete actions or kinds of 
behaviour as intrinsically evil, do not allow for any legitimate exception.  
- They do not leave room, in any morally acceptable way, for the "creativity" of any contrary 
determination whatsoever.  
- Once the moral species of an action prohibited by a universal rule is concretely recognized, 
the only morally good act is that of obeying the moral law and of refraining from the action 
which it forbids.  
 
Mortal Sin 
 - With every freely committed mortal sin, man offends God as the giver of the law and as a 
result becomes guilty with regard to the entire law   
- Wrong: The opposition to God's law which causes the loss of sanctifying grace could only 
be the result of an act which engages the person in his totality.  
- Mortal sin, which separates man from God, only exists in the rejection of God, 
- It is difficult to accept the fact that a Christian, who wishes to remain united to 
Jesus Christ and to his Church, could so easily and repeatedly commit mortal sin 
and be forgiven 
- The gravity of sin ought to be measured by the degree of engagement of the 
freedom of the person performing an act, rather than by the matter of that act. 
- Correct: Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full 
knowledge and deliberate consent (Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation ​Reconciliatio et 
Paenitentia)  
- Such a choice already includes contempt for the divine law, a rejection of God's 
love for humanity and the whole of creation: the person turns away from God and 
loses charity.  
- Fundamental option denies mortal sin 
- The act by which man freely and consciously rejects God, his law, the covenant of love that 
God offers, preferring to turn in on himself or to some created and finite reality, something 
contrary to the divine will  
- Sins of idolatry, apostasy and atheism 
Human Acts 
- The relationship between man's freedom and God's law, which has its intimate and living 
centre in the moral conscience, is manifested and realized in human acts.  
- Through acts that man attains perfection as man 
- Moral acts because they express and determine the goodness or evil of the individual who 
performs them 
- Produce change in state of affairs outside of man but give moral definition to the very 
person who performs them, determining his profound spiritual traits.  
- St. Gregory of Nyssa: "All things subject to change... Now, human life is always subject to 
change; it needs to be born ever anew...Thus ​we are i​ n a certain way our own parents, 
creating ourselves as we will, by our decisions" 
Good 
- Established, as the eternal law, by Divine Wisdom which orders every being towards its 
end: 
- Known both by man's natural reason (natural law), and by God's supernatural 
Revelation (divine law).  
- Acting is good when the choices of freedom are in conformity with man's true good and 
thus express the voluntary ordering of the person towards his ultimate end: God himself, 
the supreme good in whom man finds his full and perfect happiness 
- Only the act in conformity with the good can be a path that leads to life. 
- The rational ordering of the human act to the good in its truth and the voluntary pursuit of 
that good,constitute morality.  
 - Human activity cannot be judged as morally good merely because it is a means for 
attaining one or another of its goals, or simply because the subject's intention is good. 
- Activity is morally good when it attests to and expresses the voluntary ordering of the 
person to his ultimate end 
- If the object of the concrete action is not in harmony with the true good of the person, the 
choice of that action makes our will and ourselves morally evil 
The Christian 
- Aware of the "newness" which characterizes the morality of his action 
- A "new creation", a child of Go 
- by his actions he shows his likeness or unlikeness to the image of the Son 
- Saint Cyril of Alexandria: Christ forms us according to his image, in such a way that the 
traits of his divine nature shine forth in us through sanctification and justice and the life 
which is good and in conformity with virtue...  
Teleology 
- The moral life has an essential ​"teleological" character 
- Consists in the deliberate ordering of human acts to God, the supreme good and 
ultimate end ​(telos) o
​ f man.  
- But this ordering to one's ultimate end is not something subjective, dependent solely upon 
one's intention. It presupposes that such acts are in themselves capable of being ordered 
to this end, insofar as they are in conformity with the authentic moral good of man, 
safeguarded by the commandments.  
- God: the just and good judge 
Sources of Morality 
- Object 
- Intention 
- Circumstance 
Teleological Theories 
- claim to be concerned for the conformity of human acts with the ends pursued by the 
agent and with the values intended by him.  
- The criteria for evaluating the moral rightness of an action are drawn from the ​weighing of 
the non-moral or pre-moral goods ​to be gained and the corresponding non-moral or 
pre-moral values to be respected.  
- Concrete behaviour would be right or wrong according as whether or not it is capable of 
producing a better state of affairs for all concerned. Right conduct would be the one 
capable of "maximizing" goods and "minimizing" evils.  
1. Utilitarianism - useful 
2. Pragmatism - functionality 
3. Proportionalism - balance between good and bad 
4. Consequentialism - effect 
Autonomous/rational morality 
- false solutions, linked in particular to an inadequate understanding of the object of moral 
action 
Will 
 - involved in the concrete choices which it makes: these choices are a condition of its moral 
goodness and its being ordered to  
- According to these theories, free will would neither be morally subjected to specific 
obligations nor shaped by its choices, while nonetheless still remaining responsible for its 
own acts and for their consequences.  
Attaining values 
- The values involved in a human act would be, from one viewpoint, of the moral order 
- from another viewpoint, of the pre-moral order.