“Intrinsically evil” acts: A consistent if perhaps challenging Catholic social morality

In 1993 The Catholic Church came out with the new Catechism of the Catholic Church. Preempting this resource Pope John Paul II also wrote the encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) on the topic of Catholic morality. The challenge at the time and still today is that aspects of Catholic moral theology are in tension. One such tension is the right of the Church to teach and promote the observance of divine laws that are considered universal and always binding with the right and freedom of the individual to follow their own conscience. In this document the Church at no point negates either principle but suggest that the preeminence on personal conscience must be guided by teachings that are consistent with the Divine Laws which revelation has provided us in the example of the Ten Commandments. Along with this tension the Church has offered its own position that indeed there are acts that are considered “intrinsically evil” and are actions that are inherently wrong. Of course consequences and intentions are to be considered in assessing how grave the action really is within each unique situation, but nevertheless it is the position of the Church that in the end certain actions can never be considered good among themselves, even if the intention and consequence was to produce a good.

From the moment this encyclical was produced moral theologians have offered their opinion in respect to this delicate matter. It is not my intention to add to that here. The reason I offer this reflection and the excerpt from the encyclical below is because outside of the academic discussion on the issues of Catholic morality I have noticed, and for a long time taken for granted, a singular interpretation of what is considered “intrinsically evil.” I was led to reread this encyclical because again I have heard this term being used in lay Catholic arguments regarding what some consider the absolute importance of certain social issues over others. In the case that affected me, it was considered that abortion and euthanasia was of preeminent importance and that other social issues such as poverty or torture were either secondary or outside the Church’s sphere of social concern. The rational given was because they are “intrinsically evil.” The difficulty with this position was that it stood against the consistent ethic of life principle, which the Church upheld in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae. Knowing that the position of Intrinsically evil acts was defined in Veritatis Splendor I chose to study this document and to find the difinitive position of the Catholic Church regarding this principle. Below is section 80 of this document.        

Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature “incapable of being ordered” to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed “intrinsically evil” (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church teaches that “there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object”. The Second Vatican Council itself, in discussing the respect due to the human person, gives a number of examples of such acts: “Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator”.

It has been my observation that a younger generation of Catholics is emerging that is not happy  with the partisan style of moral Catholicism that has been the recent status quo for American Catholics. The healthy tension between the individual conscience and the teaching authority of the Church will continue being debated as it has for generations before. But if we are to wrestle with valid principles then we must not do disservice to our Church and faith by allowing a divisive misinterpretation of any principle to hold sway. The Church does indeed believe that certain acts are “intrinsically evil.” In the above quote the Church defines these acts as Whatever is hostile to life itself and whatever is offensive to human dignity. Insofar as some of us are engaged with making statements on the Catholic concern of social issues we need to be challenged by the fact that our Church has adopted a consistent ethic in expressing its moral position on all issues that violate the integrity of human life and creation. Even in the principle of “intrinsically evil” acts this consistent ethic is again reiterated.

One Response to ““Intrinsically evil” acts: A consistent if perhaps challenging Catholic social morality”

1. Sebastian says:

   January 7, 2010 at 3:57 pm

   Abortion is intrinsically evil. So are other actions, as the citation above, from Splendor Veritatis and Vatican II, indicates. However, there are degrees of intrinsic evil, not only as mortally or venially so, but even as mortally so: mutilating a person is grievously evil, but not as much as killing a person. The church has not prioritized the variety of intrinsically evil acts. At times, among certain U.S. Catholics, abortion is considered the worst of such evil acts. This is probably debatable. What supports this contention, however, is not the intensity of its evilness, but its extensiveness as a practice in the U.S.–about 50,000,000 abortions since 1973. Here the gravity of the evil more likely appears in its frequency than in its intrinsic quality, and so may more graphically call into play the principle of the consistent ethic of life.