you keep on talking about morality and you keep on trying to push what you believe is moral
This is a very loaded statement, so allow me to unpack it.
First, there is nothing wrong in talking about morality, if the sort morality one is talking about is true. There is something wrong however, if a person is talking about a wrong kind of morality. So the person who's in better position to say that is actually me, not you. But enough of that.
The proper object of the human intellect is the attainment of truth - be it mathematical truth, scientific truth, religious truth, and
moral truth. I, or you, or practically any living person on earth would betray his/her humanity if s/he does not choose to discover what is true, good and beautiful because humans are created to know those things.
To shun what is true, good and beautiful would be tantamount to renouncing our being human. This is the
principle of synderesis - avoid evil, tend towards good.
but you forget that morality is subjective
Which leads our discussion to the
Natural Law Theory.
This principle of synderesis finds its clear and solid form in what is called the
Natural Law
Theory. One does not need to be a philosopher, nor does one need to have a college degree to follow the Natural Law. In fact, the only pre-requisite to follow the NTL is to become a human being. Understanding what the NTL is all about, however takes a considerable amount of time in studying it.
The Natural Law Theory states that people regardless of race, class and creed are guided by very, very basic principles in life for right human conduct. I have mentioned the first principle -
do good and avoid evil. No human being can act contrary to the good, to
being. To will something that is bad is a contradiction in terms. However, humans can be mistaken about goods in the world, and so may prioritize an inferior good over a superior good. This distortion of goods is what we call "evil." Even the drug addict, in the midst of his addiction, acts towards that which is good.
But to answer what good is he doing
in the light of other goods, then he is committing evil. So, for example, even if pleasure is good because it induces certain agreeable sensations in the body, this pleasure becomes evil if the person who wants it will sell his house's furniture in order to buy a pleasure-inducing drug.
As I have mentioned previously, not only does everything and everyone tend towards the good, but they also tend towards the truth. Saint Augustine tells us that "I have witnessed so many who want to deceived, but I have not witnessed any who want to be deceived."
Man is a truth-seeking agent, because he is a good-seeking agent.
Ens est verum est convertuntur - Being and Truth are interchangeable.
The Natural Law Theory
is not a corpus of dogmatic teachings understood in the traditional sense. It's not a list of "do's and don'ts" made up by men. NTL has been here ever since reason has dawned upon Man. That is why man can know the truth, the good and the beautiful
independent of one's religion or class or political adherence. An atheist, a Buddhist, a muslim and a Roman Catholic all know within themselves that murder is evil, that the person should be respected because he possesses human dignity, etc etc.
Nobody can be ignorant of the practical aspect NTL even if she does not know what NTL is. Then again, we go back to the saying
ang magnanakaw galit sa magnanakaw - even here, NTL is at work.
Even the very act of debating with me in this most important RH Bill that will affect millions of Filipinos, even here the principle of NTL - you are acting out in light of what you conceive to be good, and I am acting out in light of what I conceive to be good. But does this mean that these goods are mutually exclusive? No. As we have said previously -
No Truth cannot contradict another truth. . If there seems to be a contradiction by what you think is good in the RH Bill and what I think is evil in it, the answer lies in both of our priority of ordered goods. If you think that human convenience (which is good) should take precedence over the protection of the dignity of human life (which is another good), then it is you who are in error, not the goods themselves.
Everything in the world is good. What only makes something bad is our disordered approach towards these goods.
This goes to show that
moral relativism is not a good argument. It stands on soft soil, it does not have a solid ground. Even atheist philosophers are in agreement with Christian philosophers that moral goodness is intelligible.
So, you have to find another reason
not to believe that moral absolutes exist in the world.
and not everyone is a catholic.
The 15th and 16th centuries was the time when Europeans were enslaving the American Indians and other New World Savages. The Church was greatly bothered by this, that's why a debate within Catholic Universities and other centers of learning had arisen in the Old World whether the American Indians possessed any rights. The thinkers of the Church led by the members from the Dominican Order invoked Thomas Aquinas' interpretation of Natural Law in order to prove that slavery must stop in the New World because these savages, even if they are not Christians or Europeans, still have human dignity by virtue of their
free will and rationality.
There is no denying, then, that the concept of
International Law is a fruit of the Catholic Church's intellectual activity.
And until now, this Natural Law continues to be a basis in International Law.
So, to reject the Catholic Teachings on abortion and contraception (which follows NLT) on the basis of one's non-Catholicity is a poor excuse. At the very, very least, you do not even need to believe that there is a God in order to be guided by the principles of Natural Law. What you only need is to be alive.
for Roman Catholics however, we also consider the NLTas a participation in Eternal Law, because God and goodness are the same. Since God's existence is the same as his essence, then God and his attributes/qualities are not separated. He is truth himself, goodness himself, beauty himself. That is why when one pursuits what is true, good and beautiful, she is at the same time pursuing for God even if she still does not know who God is in her life.
Secularists have trouble believing this because they have no faith. But for the believers, they can rest fully secured in Divine Revelation so that they can be confident in the super-naturalized aspect of NLT.
But secularists need not go there. Even if they do not recognize NLT as a participation in Eternal Law, since they don't have faith, the truth of NLT still holds good = Do good, avoid evil; and
ang magnanakaw galit sa kapwa magnanakawor the fact that being catholic does not make a person subject to the ideologies the church is pushing, especially when it comes to secular matters like this.
I find this once again to be a very, very loaded statement. The words and the terms are all jumbled up. Of course, I can perfectly understand the grammar and syntax but what I find difficult is the ambiguity and careless equivocation of certain words.
For example, 1)when I say the word "ideology", what do I mean by it? 2)Or when I say the world "secular", what do I mean by this? 3) Or take this peculiar fragment -
"the fact that being catholic does not make a person subject to the ideologies [teachings] the Church is pushing".
Let us unpack this:
1. Ideology is a word used in politics for a "a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture" (Webster's). Ideology is different from Doctrine. Of course, by all means, one can interchange the word "doctrine" for "ideology" in a pejorative sense, especially when the person who says it looks at the Church's teachings primarily from a socio-economic-political point of view.
To think of Church teachings as an ideology is insidious. By thinking of doctrine as ideology, what you're doing is you're going back to that stale form of legalism which the Church had been accused of centuries before, and which the Church has recovered from beginning with Vatican II.
This is the legalism with a list of do's and don'ts, or the legalism of "don't do that or else you'll go to hell." This is the legaism of the pharisees which Jesus himself verily condemned. I will not be surprised how you came to look at the Church from that point of view because your knowledge and experience of the Church are based on its caricature.
Here is the direct answer to your accusation, and I quote: "The Catholic tradition's involvement in moral questions is not essentially a matter of rules but of teachings. It is a matter of wisdom acquired, wisdom claimed, bout how human persons can best serve one another. It is a matter of insight into what forms of behaviour truly humanize life and allow persons to flourish, and what forms do not. And it is a matter of sharing that wisdom, out of care for and commitment to the persons who are involved." O'Connel, Timothy E.
Principles for a Catholic Morality. New York. Harper Collins Publishers. 1990
2. It is true that there is a separation of Church and State (and FYI, this separation actually benefits the Church more than the State). Therefore, on legal matters, the Church cannot interfere. She can only indirectly influence politicians and civilians in the Church's capacity as a spiritual and oral guide for the people. In so far as a politician is Catholic, his conduct should be guided more by morality rather than by politics. The catholic politician can, of course, dissent from Catholic Teaching but he gets an excommunication. It is up the the Catholic politician to realize the extent or the gravity of what it means to be excommunicated. But as far as the Church is concerned, when you do not follow the teachings*** of the Church, you separate yourself by your own will from the body of believers. So it's wrong to think that the Church gives out an excommunication, as if the initiative came from the Church. No, it is the other way around. Excommunication is handed down only after the fact of a person's willful and conscious separation from the Church.
***
In this sense, it does meant that one is excommunicated when one commits a sin, because all of us fall into sin countless times. Rather, it is to consciously and willfully reject the teachings of the Church.
3. Let's go back to that peculiar statement of yours. Do you mean to tell me, then, that a Catholic is not subject to the teachings of the Catholic Church? parang, ang hirap isipin nun. In other words, bakit pa tinawag na Katoliko ang isang tao kung hindi din nya susundin ang turo ng Simbahan?
There's no logic, really.
Let's go back to one of the principles I have mentioned:
Operation follows being. If One is a Catholic, she should act like a Catholic.
Kung tao, magpakatao, kung aso magpaka aso, kung Katoliko, magpaka Katoliko.
or that having sex outside marriage or not for procreative purposes does not make a person sinful and immoral.
Having sex outside marriage or sex not for procreative purposes does not make a person sinful and immoral... Interesting. So what does make me sinful or immoral? It seems to me that first have to kill 6 million Jews, or rape 5 women and kill them afterwards for me to consider myself immoral and sinful.
To answer your question directly - What makes an act immoral/sinful is if it goes against the natural law. From the point of view of natural law, then, is sex without the procreative aspect immoral? I would answer yes. It is immoral because sex that is not open to life is a distortion of its proper object. The proper object of sex is to bear life. And anything that is distorted either suffers from excess or defect. So if it is distorted, it cannot be natural.
I think that we will put sin and immorality in the proper perspective by dropping this legalistic talk. Unfortunately, the great bulk of Filipino Catholics and global Catholics for that matter still subscribe to a legalistic understanding of Church teachings, and, on a broader level, they still subscribe to a legalistic understanding of ethics mainly because they are uninformed. I admit that this should not be the case, but This is not surprising because we have over one billion members.
At any rate, this kind of ethical model is called
consequentialism.
Furthermore, "because human persons love one another, they often say 'do this!' or 'don't do that!'. It the recipient of this command is an adult, he or she will often respond: 'why?' If the speaker communicates the reason, then we have a successful example of a moral conversation, moral teaching. But if the speaker answers 'because I say so!', then legalism is born. For legalism is the moral approach claiming that obedience is the essence of morality, rather than wisdom" (Principles of Catholic Morality, p. 165)
or being against the rh bill does not make a catholic a good person and true to his/her faith.
Of course, going against the RH bill
is not the only benchmark of being a 'good' Catholic. I mean, what would good is it for someone who goes against the RH bill if on the other hand, she is a thief, or a swindler etc etc.
In fact, I would even like to question the very idea of a 'good Catholic'. Sino ba sa atin ang malinis at walang bahong tinatago? Lahat tayo mayron nyan kapatid. Kaya nga lahat tayo may kasalanan. Lahat tayo nahuhulog.
I believe that there is no 'good Catholic' in the strictest sense, for all have fallen short of the righteousness of God. There is no one Good but God alone. But immorality does not automatically follow. Just because no one can achieve goodness in the strictest sense, does not mean that we should no longer strive for it.
So let's go back to what I have said previously:
moral judgments are independent of a person's moral standing a.ka
ang magnanakaw galit pa din sa kapwa magnanakawMy personal opinion on this point is that there can only be 3 classes of people who agree to abortion and contraception
1) They are ignorant of science. Science tells us that life begins at conception
2) They are knowledgeable of science, but are willing to sacrifice the dignity of life for convenience' sake
3) They are knowledgeable of science, not willing to sacrifice the dignity of life, BUT they want to rationalize their actions by denying value-judgments because they are engaging in the act, or because they think that just because it is accepted by the majority, the act is already made right.
The third one i think is the most dangerous because they know they do not want to recognize that they are in error.
Intellectual pride ang tawag dito.
The final part of my post - and this goes to anybody who was able to read my 4000 word reply:
I am not shoving my beliefs onto people's throats. To say that is a poor excuse for intellectual ineptitude.
What I am doing however, is to show that the Catholic position is founded on firm, solid ground. People are free to dissent from the teachings of the Church of course. Free will is something that even God cannot interfere with.
Only that this is the only condition: If one dissents from the teachings of the Church, let them do so on the grounds of free will, not on the grounds of unimpeachable logical assent. In other words, say NO to what the Church says because you want it, not because reason compels you to do so.
after all, hindi 'reason' ang tawag jan. Ang tawag jan 'excuse'.
My suggestion is, try to go back to the Faith. Palaging nandyan ang Diyos naghihintay na bumalik tayo sa kanya. Mahirap yun, because Faith means turning away from certain habits and dispositions, or turning away from certain friends, or even trying to go against the flow. For some people, Faith even meant accepting their death. But there can be no greater happiness than embracing the Truth no matter where it leads us.
God Bless You.
