The Moral Act: The Sources

of Morality

There are three basic components for determining

whether an action is moral or immoral:

1.The object chosen

2.The intention (the end)
3.The circumstances surrounding the
action

The Object Chosen

This is the act itself (what you do). Pope
John Paul II identifies the object chosen as the
primary and decisive element for moral
judgment.
Can you think of some acts that are morally
GOOD?

Helping at your
church
Giving to a
Tutoring a friend
charity
Helping your parents with choresTelling the
Can you think of some acts thattruth
are morally BAD?
Murder
Perjury
Blasphemy

Stealing
Rape

 If the object is bad, it automatically

makes the action evil (even if the
intention and circumstances are good).

An objects goodness or badness is

determined by the Law revealed by God.
(Human reason and conscience can help
us know these norms.)

The Intention
This is the WHY of the act. This is
rooted in your WILL. Intentions can be
good, bad, or mixed.
For example, the object is giving to
charity.
Good
Intention

You give to charity

to help those less
fortunate than
yourself.

Mixed
Intention

You want to help

others, but you
also want to get
attention for your
contribution.

Bad
Intention
You give to charity
to manipulate
others into
thinking you are
someone youre
not.

 The end (intention) doesnt justify the

means.
A good intention can never turn an
intrinsically bad action into a just one.
For example, wanting to get into college is a
good end (intention). Cheating to achieve this
end is an intrinsically evil act; therefore, it
cannot be justified because of a good
Aintention.
bad intention can turn a good act

into an evil one.

For example, complimenting someone is a
good act, but doing it simply because you want
that person to write you a letter of
recommendation is deceitful and insincere and
erases the good of complimenting someone.

The Circumstances
This is the HOW, WHO, WHEN, WHERE of the act.
Circumstances can lessen or increase our
blameworthiness (culpability) of an act.
Ignorance, fear, duress, and other
psychological and social factors can lessen or
nullify our responsibility for our actions.

For example, being overwhelmed by the fear of personal

harm and not helping a dying victim at an accident
scene could greatly diminish moral responsibility.

Howeverthe circumstances surrounding an

act can never change an act that is by its
nature morally evil into a morally good act.

For example, fear of being ridiculed by friends does not

justify speaking racial slurs.

To summarize
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 choice can by itself vitiate
[corrupt] 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. CCC 1755

Conditions that Lessen

Guilt

Violence is an external force applied by one

person on another to compel that person to perform
an action against his or her will.
Fear is a disturbance of mind resulting from
some present or imminent danger.
Concupiscence is the rebellion of passions
[emotions] against reason. It is the tendency
of human nature toward evil.

Ignorance is lack of knowledge in a person

capable of possessing such knowledge. There
are two types of ignorance:

Vincible Ignorance is that which can and should be

dispelled. For example, if someone thinks it might be
wrong not to eat meat on Fridays in Lent but purposely
never asks a priest or a friend about it, then he still
commits sin if he eats meat on those days.

- Invincible Ignorance is that which cannot be dispelled. In

other words, someone is ignorant of his own ignorance.
We can sum up by saying that invincible ignorance
eliminates the moral responsibility for a human act;
vincible ignorance does not eliminate moral
responsibility, but may lessen it.