THE MORAL LAW
t the turn of the century a very large part of all America respected the authority of the Ten Commandments and admitted that being obedience to the directions of the Decalogue (meaning "ten words" here short for the "Ten Commandments") was necessary for living a good life. Those outside the Church in general agreed with the Catholic moral teaching on many points. Even those who did not believe in God, and consequently could not accept the Mosaic law as a divine revelation, admitted at least that the moral code given to Moses on Mount Sinai is the expression of high human wisdom, and that it is indispensable to morality. The passing years, however, have brought a great change. Today the truth of the teaching based on the Ten Commandments is continually called into question. The Catholic Church’s attitude toward fundamental moral questions is regarded by many as being out of date. Others, although not rejecting the Decalogue entirely, interpret them so liberally as to strip them of much of their force. Consequently, there is, at the present time, a great necessity for Catholics to know and be able to defend the true, unchanging doctrines of moral conduct. We don’t have to look far to find Catholics and others that are ignorant about moral questions that are of great importance.
In in these days nothing goes unchallenged. Every phase of human life is in turmoil---politics, finance, philosophy, theology---are in a bewildering, if not a chaotic condition. Even music, architecture, literature, and the drama are in the throes of revolution. It is not surprising therefore that ethics should feel the effect of this universal uncertainty. Notice the term ethics, not merely morals. Morals have to do with conduct, ethics with the principles underlying conduct. A man’s morals may be bad but his ethics good. That is to say, he may have good principles but fail to live up to them. That is indeed a pity, but if he has no principles, no, philosophy of conduct, his condition is evidently worse. If his morals and ethics are both gone, he is in tough shape.
Ufortunately, in these days it would seem that not only the fabric of morality is weakening---the foundation is endangered resulting in what Pope John Paul II calls "The Culture of Death." In earlier times a man might break the Commandments, but he believed in them none the less. The very phrase "Break the Commandments" was known to be a figure of speech. In reality you couldn’t break the Commandments. They remained intact and inviolable, the same yesterday, today and forever. You might break your neck, so to speak, in the attempt to break the Commandments. You might break your heart, or more likely some one else’s heart. But you didn’t really break the Commandments. They remained granite, and firm. They were written not by the hand of man with a pen upon perishable paper, but by the finger of God upon the rock. Of them God might say "What I have written, that I have written." You may keep these Commandments or not: keep them to your salvation break them to your damnation. But even if no one keeps them, still they remain. Heaven and the earth shall pass, but the moral law shall not pass.
So it was always understood that men, from time to time turned their backs upon the Commandments. They went fornicating after strange gods, easier gods, more indulgent gods than Jehovah. They had their fling. They took part in the orgies of the heathen. But when they discovered what all sinners must discover, that sin is Dead Sea fruit, they came back to the one True God, and to His eternal law. And when they came back, they found the Ten Commandments still graven upon the tables of imperishable stone, resting secure in the ark of the Covenant,---in the very Holy of Holies. The Decalogue had not been erased or removed.
But of late there has arisen a tendency to discredit the Commandments as an authorized and unchangeable code of conduct. One of the first and most popular, though perhaps the least philosophical of the older critics of the Commandments was Mr H. G. Wells, (1866-1946, the famous English author) who repeatedly proposed the thesis that this ancient and venerable code that came down from the days of Moses is now obsolete. Mr Wells asked "What, is the cause of the wide difference between the behavior of people now and the behavior of people fifty years ago?" He replied that nowadays, the world has no accepted standard. People hold, he said, that "there is no value in faith and no virtue in chastity." And he gives his opinion that the moral code has collapsed because the "arbitrary imperatives" which once sustained it have been repudiated. By "arbitrary imperatives" he meant the familiar words "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not."
In every age there have been self-proclaimed philosophers. Carrying on the thinking of H.G. Wells, we are now guided by the likes of Mr. Ted Turner, the TV-mogul of CNN fame. Who at a conference of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, dubbed the Ten Commandments "a little out of date," adding that if your going to have 10 rules, I don’t know if prohibiting adultery should be one of them." Or the free speech philosopher, Mr. Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, who speaking at a leading Catholic university, told students he publishes magazines depicting nude women in sexual poses because it is "fun" and profitable. In a free society, we have to tolerate things that we don’t necessarily like so we can continue to be free, he said. Included with the Turners and Flynts is the "moral guidance" examples originating from the hallowed halls (or offices or bedrooms or motels) of Washington DC including the highest of offices, these are enhanced by the lurid and violent tutorials being created in Hollywood and on TV.
Well, there was a greater philosopher than Mr. Wells, Mr. Turner, Mr. Flynt and companions---much greater---Immanuel Kant, (1724-1804, German philosopher , ranked among the greatest and most influential philosophers in history) who used to say that two things most deeply impressed him---overwhelmed him in fact---the starry firmament above, and the "categorical imperative" in the heart of man. The categorical imperative is the equivalent of the "ought" and "ought not," "shalt" and "shalt not" within man’s conscience. It was immensely important to Kant, but, the lesser philosophers, Mr. Wells and his students of prior mention, tell us it is now gone, and weep no tears over it, so their credo is, "if it feels good do it."It is significant, that Kant mentions the moral law in the same breath with the heavenly firmament. He seems to say that the destruction of the categorical imperative would be as great calamity as the blotting out of the stars of heaven. But the Wells, school and the current students, seem rather relieved and pleased to think that all imperatives, the "shall" and "shall nots" are gone now.
They have had a particular grievance against the Commandments that are phrased in the negative. "Thou shalt not" is an offensive expression to them. Well, that can be easily remedy. It doesn’t require an excessive amount of literary skill to translate the Commandments into the affirmative form. In fact it has already been done, and by one whom even the Well’s group should respect as a teacher of morals. Jesus Christ Himself when asked "Which is the great Commandment of the law?" replied, "Thou Shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with thy whole mind and thy whole strength. This is the first and the greatest Commandment. And the second is like to this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." If Mr. Wells or any other exponent of the so called higher morality revolts from the negative commands of the Decalogue, then living up to Christ’s, affirmative version will keep him occupied, if they will but try it.
The truth is that a great many men need the abrupt and forceful negative "thou shalt not." In deed we all need it, sometimes. If we imagine that we have advanced so far in the moral life that we have no need of "thou shalt not," there still remains "Thou Shalt." But if, the objection is against any kind of command, affirmative or negative, I fear we can do nothing about it. The man who objects to any imperative must go his lawless way, and take the consequences.
It would of course be untrue to cite H. G. Wells as a true philosopher or moralist. He is mentioned and quoted rather as a reporter of modern conditions. But there are philosophers of considerable repute in certain circles who have made some rather plausible attacks upon the authority of the Ten Commandments. One of these was the late William Graham Sumner of Yale who familiarized the more learned world with the notion that morals after all are only customs, and that as customs change, morals and moral codes change with them. Consequently, a code of morals is simply a reflex of the customs of the tribe in which it originates, and "Thou shalt," and "Thou shalt not," are a mere survival of the taboos of the tribe. According to this theory the Ten Commandments may have served very well for a primitive, oriental, agricultural community like that of the Jews in the days of Moses. But (so the argument runs) we are no longer a primitive people; we are modern, some of us ultra-modern, a few of us the last word in modernity. We are not oriental, but Western. Ours is not an agricultural but an urban and industrial civilization. So the code of the children of Israel in the wilderness or in the Promised Land, while suitable for a race of nomads 3000 years ago, is not appropriate for our own sophisticated and complicated civilization.
The theory sounds good. But suppose we apply this academic terminology into simple and concrete terms. Let us ask, does the supporter of that deceptive theory mean that "Thou shalt not steal" was a necessary commandment for a tribe of migrating cattlemen, but unnecessary for modern politicians or financiers? Or that "Thou shalt not kill" had a meaning for primitive cave men or the sheiks of the day of Abraham, but that there is no need of it amongst the gangsters today? Or was adultery wrong in King David's time, but no sin in ours?
It was a wise critic who warned us always to free the reality of things from the trickery of words." Theft and murder and adultery were wrong 10,000 years ago, and they are wrong today. They are wrong in the east and the west, in spite of Kipling's scoundrel who desired to be taken "east of Suez where there ain't no Ten Commandments." A little horse sense is sometimes better than a lot of inflated philosophy.
One might indefinitely continue the list of the learned---or the pseudo---learned who attempt to provide philosophical respectability for disregard of the Ten Commandments.
An interesting thought was advanced some many years ago by a , Professor William P. Montague of Columbia University approaching the matter from what seems a new point of view. He is not opposed to morality. On the contrary, he professes to preach a higher morality, a morality so high that it doesn't depend on God, either for its origin or for its authorization. In an address before the Yale Divinity School he advocated that religion should no longer be considered a foundation for morality. He said: "It is my thesis that true morality is without ratification. . . . To make religion the basis of morality, to make the obligation to follow the better way and to do the noble thing contingent upon the will of a god, is not only to degrade the nature both of morality and of religion: it is to put their very existence in jeopardy."
In other words the good professor is saying that, morality stands or falls of itself. It needs no publication from God, and no approval from God. If so, the Ten Commandments of course are not needed, and a form of bad manners. Man is a law unto himself. He needs no God to tell him what to do, and still less a God to tell him what will happen to him if he does not do it.
And the "new age" bunch thought they had some new thinking let us be pardoned if we express a distrust, of all such excessively flattering estimates of the mind and heart of man. A religion teacher once said that "if God stopped thinking of me for one second I would disappear not even leaving a wisp of smoke." It is not well for man to think himself independent of God. Getting rid of God and expecting human morality to remain is like expecting a shadow without any substance, or an, echo, without any sound. There is no man so inwardly enlightened that he needs no direction from on high. Have we not already said that ethics is uncertain like everything else in this sadly disarranged contemporary world? And if you eliminate God and Divine Authority, we will have only confusion worse confounded.
Is there not indeed a superabundance of evidence of that confusion? Take, for example, these despondent sentences from Walter Lippmann's Preface to Morals:
"Of all the bewilderment’s of the present age," he says, "none is greater than that of the conscientious and candid moralist himself. . . When customs are unsettled, as they are in the modern world . . . it is presumptuous to issue moral commandments, for in fact nobody has authority to command. It is useless to command when nobody has the disposition to obey. It is futile when nobody really knows exactly what to command.
. . .`The good,' said the Greek moralist, is 'that which all things aim at': we may perhaps take this, to mean that the good is that which men would wish to do if they knew what they were doing."
Is there a more desolate expression than that---"what men would wish to do if they knew what they were doing!" Yet those words were written not in irony by a cynic but in dead earnest by an intelligent and conscientious student of moral problems. His hopelessness can be understood only by those who have read a good deal of modern philosophy. St. Paul said "Unhappy man that I am, the good that I will, that I do not, and the evil that I will not, that I do." St. Augustine also has many heart-rending complaints to the same effect in his "Confessions." But the modern man is unhappier than St. Paul or St. Augustine even in their wicked days. They at least knew the good from the bad, the right from the wrong. But the man whose mind has been unsettled and whose heart has been torn by the confusions and contradictions of modern ethics, confesses that he doesn't even know good from bad, right from wrong.
There can be no cure for this dismal condition unless there be a Moral Code having authority not from man but from God. It is of course true that there is implanted in every human soul a primary rudimentary knowledge of right and wrong. And one might be tempted to say, therefore, that a man in doubt about morals need only consult his own heart and conscience. So it may have been before man's heart became corrupted, his conscience clouded with sin and doubt, and his mind upset in these latter days with the bewildering contradictions of rival philosophical systems. But, however clear and sure man's conscience may have been when it came new from the hand of the Creator, one thing is certain, man is not now a law unto himself. In fact, a condition in which every man would be a law unto himself would be a complete rejection of the traditional beliefs of morality that have been held since at least the time of Abraham.
We need authority, certainty, infallibility. "If the trumpet speak an uncertain sound, who shall gird himself for the battle?" The only trumpet that rings clear and true and unmistakable in the moral world is the Divine Clarion proclaiming "Thus sayeth the Lord!"
The Ten Commandments are not the voice of man: they are the revelation of the mind and the will of the Almighty. The children of Israel cried in olden days to Moses, "Speak thou unto us and we will hear, let not the Lord speak unto us lest we die." "Not so," cries Thomas a Kempis, the Christian saint, "not so, Lord, not so I beseech Thee, but rather with the prophet Samuel I humbly and earnestly entreat 'Speak Lord for thy servant heareth.' "And so the Lord speaks directly to the soul, but lest the still small voice be inaudible or misunderstood, God thunders corroboration from the Mount. But whether He whisper or whether He thunder, the message is the same, the infallible, everlasting moral law, in brief the Ten Commandments.
2032 The Church, the "pillar and bulwark of truth," has received this solemn command of Christ from the apostles to announce the saving truth. To the Church belongs the right always and everywhere to announce moral principles, including those pertaining to the social order, and to make judgments on any human affairs to the extent that they are required by the fundamental rights of the human person or the salvation of souls.
2033 The Magisterium (meaning the `Teaching Authority’) of the Pastors of the Church in moral matters is ordinarily exercised in catechesis and preaching, with the help of the works of theologians and spiritual authors. Thus from generation to generation, under the armor and vigilance of the pastors, the "deposit" of Christian moral teaching has been handed on, a deposit composed of a characteristic body of rules, commandments, and virtues proceeding from faith in Christ and animated by charity. Alongside the Creed and the Our Father, the basis for this catechesis has traditionally been the Decalogue which sets out the principles of moral life valid for all men.
2034 The Roman Pontiff and the bishops are "authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach the faith to the people entrusted to them, the faith to be believed and put into practice." (Vatican II LG 25) The ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Pope and the bishops in communion with him teach the faithful the truth to believe, the charity to practice, the beatitude to hope for.