As I enjoyed a somewhat diminished scrum of tiny soccer players surrounded by their friends, families, and supporters this past Friday evening, I marveled at how much earlier darkness came. It is shocking at this time of year how the daylight dwindles, and I did some research that revealed that this was not just my imagination. This Friday, the second-to-last for munchkinball on the field, will have the same amount of daylight as February 19: eleven hours. Now, I am pretty sure you picture February the same way I do: cold and dark. The remarkable fact that we are outside playing at all, much less into the evening, reveals that length of day is not the only thing that affects our temperatures and weather.
Similarly, moral analysis requires that we take into account more than one factor. The goodness or evil of a given action is more difficult to discern than many people credit. The classic example is when one person takes a sharp knife and slices open the belly of another person. Good action or bad action? Well, it depends, believe it or not. If one is a gang member fighting with a member of an opposing gang, for example, that is bad. But if one is a surgeon and the other has acute appendicitis, it can be good. The intention (to remove a diseased body part) and the circumstances (medical training, danger of death) both affect the value of the act itself (cutting a person open).
These are basic elements of moral analysis. I am not a specialist in morality, but I do have to do some pretty keen analysis since I work in the confessional. Sometimes I get to tell people that what they are confessing is not sinful, but more often, I have to help diagnose specifically what is sinful about a person’s actions or behavior. That diagnosis not only locates culpability (guilt) but it helps the person target what needs to change. Sometimes it is obvious, sometimes it can be quite nuanced. Either way, it ends well, with mercy and hope to avoid repeating the sin.
There is a grievous failure or even a complete lack of moral analysis in our public life now, as the default judgment is based on the person or actor. Is the person who did the deed our friend, our favorite, on our team or on our side? Then it must have been good, or if unarguably illegal or bad, excusable or even necessary under the circumstances. Is the person who did it one of them or theirs, on the other team, or simply repellent to us? Then his every action will be condemned. The so-called moral judgment is based entirely on the identity of the actor.
That is not moral judgment at all, but bluster at best and raging ideology at worst. It is the opposite of the fruitful moral seriousness of the confessional, where every soul recognizes his own ability and culpability for sin, and seeks mercy and help to repair the damage. Our identity as human beings marked by original sin makes actual sin something almost none of us can claim to have eliminated from our behavior.
Some actions are intrinsically evil always and everywhere. Intention and circumstance can mitigate guilt, but not eliminate it in those circumstances. In most cases, however, a careful weighing of the action, the intention of the actor, and the circumstances in which the action occurred are necessary to determine the goodness or badness of an action.
This complex analysis is best turned toward our own choices and actions, but the necessity of judging the actions of others is not reserved to those of us who sit in the confessional. Sometimes, we must acknowledge that certain actions are evil and that the person who committed that evil, whether from our team or family or from the other team, has done a grievous wrong. As Christians, the purpose of this analysis is to call sinners to repentance, that they find mercy and conversion, that is, change of life. Because it is the act that is evil, and not the person, we can and must hope for that conversion, and even work for it, primarily but not exclusively in prayer.
Every mom or dad who has had to correct a son or daughter knows that our team, our family, and our favorites all do rotten and regrettable things, and that our opponents are capable of outshining us in virtuous behavior. These are the judgments that are necessarily part of every healthy human relationship, and especially every loving one.
It is not only in private matters, however, that we are obliged to take seriously the task of moral judgment. Actions can and must be judged according to the criteria that we have discerned and defined, and the world cannot be divided into Our Team whose actions are right because they are ours, and The Other Team, who is evil.
It is complicated but necessary work, and it should lead to circumspection and humility, because there are only so many of hours of daylight left for us.
Monsignor Smith
