“Social
sin” today refers to situations and structures that attack basic human rights
and dignity, and infect social relationships between communities.
Chapter 15
The Christian Law
of Life-Giving Love
Jesus replied: “The first Commandment is this: You
shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.”
(Mk 12:29-31)
“I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I
have loved you.”
(Jn 13:34)
OPENING
790. Chapter 13 introduced Christian moral
living by focusing on the moral agent: the
Christian disciple as person, endowed with the tremendous gift of freedom,
operating according to conscience. Chapter 14 took up the social
context of following Christ: the role of Christian Faith
and the Church in moral living, sketched by Christ in his fundamental
image of the Kingdom
of God, and
engaged in the life-and-death combat with Sin. This chapter takes up the
function of moral norms or laws in Christian
living. Christian morality is a response to the call of God in
Christ Jesus. This response is viewed:
a) as embracing a basic moral vision of
both person (Chap. 13) and social context (Chap. 14);
b) codified in moral norms; and
c) implemented in moral acts which
result from a personal decision-making process (this present chapter) [cf.
NCDP 271].
791. The major problem with moral living is
MOTIVATION. We often know what we should do, but find ourselves oddly incapable
of doing it. “The desire to do right is there, but not the power. What happens
is that I do not do the good I will to do, but the evil I do not intend” (Rom
7:18b-19). It is very important, then, to understand properly how LOVE,
which is the basic Christian motivation and power, also
constitutes its fundamental liberating moral norm. This
entails reflecting on how moral norms operate in the following of
Christ, both personally in regard to our conscience, and communally
as members of society (Natural Law; culture) and of Christ’s Body, the
Church (law in Scripture and the Christian tradition). Beyond
understanding the proper role of moral norms, there is the basic need to
develop the skill in making moral judgments and acting
precisely as a true disciple of Christ in his community.
CONTEXT
792. Our Filipino culture affords many traditional
VALUES that are deeply consonant with the Christian vision that grounds all
its moral norms. For example, there is pagsasarili, the
self-reliance that is the first step toward moral responsibility; pakikisama,
getting-along-with-others, or the willingness to share with others; pagkakaisa,
the unity of the community that supports all loving service; and pakikipagkapwa-tao,
the human solidarity with all, or “being a friend of all” that supports
Christian love of neighbor. Catholic Filipinos today are alert, perhaps as
never before, to the task of “building a truly Christian community, a genuine pagsasamahang
Kristiyano with pagdadamayan, bayanihan, pakikipagkapwa-tao,
and pagkamakadiyos as building blocks” (NCDP 28).
793. But regarding MORAL NORMS, the
Filipino attitude seems ambiguous. On the one hand, patient to a fault, the
Filipino’s natural “personalism” tends to consider “impersonal” laws
only in terms of personal relations. In the absence of a traffic
policeman, traffic laws are often ignored. Overcharging in the family store is
excused because money is needed for the children’s school tuition. The kanya-kanya
syndrome gravely weakens any personal commitment to law and the common good.
Obeying the law seems quite secondary in the hierarchy of Filipino cultural
values.
794. On the other hand, external compliance with
the law, especially with cultural mores, is demanded to safeguard one’s amor
propio and avoid hiya. The upbringing of children in
the family is frequently moralistic, tending to focus uniquely on the “letter
of the law” and its external observance, without due care for its inner spirit.
This unfortunately carries over to much catechetical instruction on Catholic
moral living pictured as:
a) dominated by sin, explained solely in terms of
breaking a law;
b) motivated primarily by fear of punishment for
sin; and thus
c) creating a legalistic and juridical mind-set
characterized by minimalistc attitudes to morality (How far can we go before
committing mortal sin?).
795. Recent years have shown remarkable progress
in the maturing process in the Faith of many Filipino Catholics. Primary moral
motivation for many in the extraordinary events such as the EDSA ’86
Revolution, and in combatting the December ’89 coup attempt, went clearly
beyond the level of reward/punishment characteristic of “instinctive”
conscience __ beyond even the strict moral level of justice.
As the letters of the CBCP on both occasions manifested, the crisis brought
many to a level of real self-sacrifice for the common good, inspired in many
cases by explicit Christian love and piety. Such “highpoints” reflect the
Christian moral growth taking place everyday, among ordinary Filipinos in the
thousand and one moral challenges and tasks of ordinary life. The maturing
process is never-ending.
EXPOSITION
796. Christ, Our Moral Norm. For Christians,
the norm by which all their thoughts, words and
deeds are judged and evaluated morally is not some law, but the person of
Jesus Christ. In the Kingdom
of God there is only one
teacher: the Messiah (cf. Mt 23:10); all must listen to [his] words and put them into practice (cf. Mt
7:24), take up his yoke and learn from
him (cf. Mt 11:29). Salvation depends on one’s attitude to Jesus:
“Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before
men, I will deny before my Father in heaven” (Mt 10:32f). “For if
you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that
God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9).
797. This is because Jesus reveals to us not
only God as our Father, but who we truly
are. Jesus himself __ not only what he did and taught, but
his whole life and person, climaxing in his Paschal Mystery through
which he saved us (cf. PCP II 55). Jesus embodies God’s loving call to
us, and the perfect human response of a child of God. Jesus himself IS
the New Covenant between God and all human persons, the Way and
authentic norm for becoming our true selves. Commenting on a Vatican II
text, John Paul II describes this primacy of Christ as follows:
798. In Christ and through Christ,
God has revealed Himself fully to mankind and has definitively drawn close to
it; at the same time, in Christ and through Christ man has acquired full
awareness of his dignity, of the heights to which he is raised, of the
surpassing worth of his own humanity, and of the meaning of his existence” (RH
11).
“Christ, who died and was raised up for
all, provides man __ each and every man __
with the light and the strength to measure up to his supreme calling (RH 14;
cf. GS 10).
799. Today, educational psychologists stress the
impact of “significant persons” on the moral growth and development of children
and youth. For the Filipino Christian, Jesus Christ is the “most significant
other.” We have already seen how Christ radically affects our moral
vision of what it means: 1) to be a person (Chapters 13, 9),
and 2) to form an authentic Christian conscience (Chapters 13, 27). We
have also seen how Christ enters into our attitudes, affections, values and
intentions (Chapters 14, 8). Here we wish to focus on Christ as the
basis for all moral norms or laws and for the way we actually come to make our
moral judgments and decisions.
I. Moral Norms
800. Amidst today’s great stress on personal
dignity, freedom, individual conscience,
and moral character, the notions of norm and “law” have become quite
“unpopular.” Some consider moral “law” as a carry-over from pre-Vatican
II moralistic times. St. Paul
is quoted in support of this: “If you are
guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Gal 5:18); “you are
now under grace, not under the law” (Rom 6:14). But Paul’s point is not
to deny all value to law, but to insist on Christ: “I have accounted all
else rubbish so that Christ maybe my wealth and I may be in him, not having any justice of my own based on
observance of the law. The justice I posses is that which comes through
faith in Christ” (Phil 3:8-9). Paul recognizes that “the law is good,
provided one uses it in the way law is supposed to be used” (1 Tim 1:8; cf.
Rom 7:12). Now just how is the law supposed to be used? Some basic notions
will help to clarify this important dimension of Christian moral living.
801. What is a norm or law?
We need some general idea of law that can give us some insight into its meaning
when applied to God’s law, the law of the Old and New Testaments and the
natural law. The standard definition is “an ordinance of reason, promulgated by
competent authority for the sake of the common good” (St. Thomas, ST, I-II, 90, 4). Each
element has its importance: 1) law is a reasonable decision,
i.e., prudent and with purpose, not a capricious whim; 2) promulgated:
communicated with sufficient notice to its subjects while respecting their
rights and dignity; 3) by competent authority: i.e. by
those who have legitimate power to do so; and 4) for the common good:
for the social betterment of its subjects.
802. Two characteristics of law, especially moral law, help greatly in appreciating its
place in Christian moral living. First, law is based on
vision, certain presuppositions. The Christian vision has been
described in detail in the two preceding chapters (Chapters 13-14), and
is portrayed in Christ’s sketch of the ideal member of the Kingdom in the
Beatitudes presented below. Second, law arises from and expresses
basic values. This is clearly exemplified in the Ten
Commandments: “Thou shalt not kill” commands respect for human life; “Thou
shalt not commit adultery,” respect for sexuality; “Thou shalt not steal,”
respect for a person’s possessions; “Thou shalt not bear false witness,”
respect for the truth.
Likewise,
Christ’s teaching in his Sermon on the Mount manifests this: “Do not swear at
all” (Mt 5:34) commands respect for personal integrity; while “Offer no
resistance to injury” (Mt 5:39) fosters a self-respect based not on
answering violence with violence, but on acting as children of the Father.
These two characteristics go far in modifying the
legalistic and moralistic concept of moral norms or laws.
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