Bishop Fulton J Sheen (d.1979)

[Nicholas Weeks]

This influential & worthy Catholic deserves more attention nowadays.

The tragedy of our day is that so many minds are confronted with problems, unexpected tragedies, or catastrophes, for which they have no principles of solution. The Christian is never in that quandary because he has his philosophy of life and hierarchy of values made before a difficulty presents itself. The difference between the modern pagan and the true Christian is: the former is confronted with strange roads without guide-posts, the Christian has a map to cover all the roads; the pagan has need of measuring something but has no measuring rod, the Christian has his standard of values already made before the valuable is presented for approval. The Christian is like a carpenter who carries his rule in his pocket—he does not know whether he will have to measure floors, ceilings, dog houses, palaces, movie theatres, or churches; but regardless of whether he has to stand or stoop, he never throws away his ruler, never decides to be a liberal and make the foot measure thirteen inches, or a reactionary and make it measure eleven inches. A foot for him is twelve inches despite Progressive education.

The modern, on the other hand, uses moral principles like clothes. He uses one set of principles at one moment, another at another, as he wears white trousers for tennis, formal black for dinner, trunks at the beach, and none at all in his tub. His likes and dislikes determine his moral principles instead of his moral principles determining his likes and dislikes.

 

[Nicholas Weeks]

Our procedure will be to set down in general the determinants of a moral act, and then apply them to war. In every moral act three elements must be considered: First, the object; second, the intention; and third, the circumstances. Not one of these may be contrary to the moral order, if the act is to be considered morally good. To express this idea we often use an old Latin maxim: bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu; that is, all the moral determinants of an act must be good—its object, its intention, and its circumstances. If only one of them is not good, the act cannot claim to be wholly good.