Catholic Moral Teaching: The Basics

God, through our Church, wants us to be joyful. The teachings of Jesus and His Church are meant to free us, to live a life of truth, beauty, goodness and joy. In the Gospel of John, Jesus exhorts us, "If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you." (John 15: 10-12)
Love and joy! That's not so bad, is it?

"The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Error and sin both have the same property: that the deeper they are, the less their victim suspects their existence. They are both masked evil."
C.S. Lewis

 “Perhaps the greatest sin in the world today is that men have begun to lose the sense of sin.”
Pope Pius XII

Source includes: Here
These are basic concepts in Catholic moral theology:

• Freedom
• Truth
• Natural law
• Law
• Conscience

There’s a lot to say about these, but I’ll keep it short. It boils down to this:

• God creates us in the state of freedom. We are at liberty to choose, based on reason and will, whether to act or not in a specific situation. We are responsible for our choices. With these choices, we choose our own ultimate destiny: that of eternal life with God, or that of death. This is called free will.
• We believe that moral truth is objective, and not relative to the subjective whims of culture or taste. It is valid at all times & everywhere. God is the ultimate source of all moral truth.
• People have an innate sense of basic moral truth. Using human reason, we can deduce the principles of this natural law. But because sin clouds our vision of the truth, God has chosen to directly reveal the law to us.
• We use our natural facility called conscience to apply the general principles of the law to specific situations, judging specific actions to be right or wrong in accordance with objective law. (Conscience is not the source of those moral principles!)

• A bad, or evil act, can never be made good, regardless of intent or circumstances. 
• The "degree" of culpability, or personal responsibility can be LESSENED based on intent or circumstance, but not elimintaed.
• A good act can be made evil if the intent or circumstances are bad.
• Intrinsically evil acts are ones that are always wrong and can NEVER be tolerated. These include abortion, euthanasia, genocide, purposeful tageting of civilians in war etc.


• Knowledge plays a large role. The more knowledge we have about the gooness or evil of an act, the more culpable (responsible) we are for the decision.


• Adults are more culpable than children due to their knowledge of right and wrong.
• Every person is accountable for his or her actions.
• More knowledge means more responsibility. 
  • That is why Christians are held to a higher standard.
  • Complete ignorance that cannot be overcome eliminates moral culpability.
• The virtue in a moral act is determined in part by knowledge. 
  • If you know it is right and make the choice to do it, it is a more virtuous act.
• The sinfulness of an act is determined in part by knowledge.
  • If you did not know that skipping Sunday Mass was a mortal sin, then you are less culpable. 
  • Once informed (and now you are) you are held to the higher standard.
  • Fear and overwhelming duress lessen or remove responsibility for a moral action.


• When we act wrongly, that is called a sin of commission. 
• When we fail to act, choosing to "stay out of it," that is a sin of omission.

Lot's of questions answered here