Noble ideals and the highest standards distinguish the moral teachings of Christ and the Catholic Church. The Christian life strives to imitate Christ in love of God and neighbor, in charity and humility, and in justice and mercy. It strives for sanctity and holiness. To follow Christ means to keep the Commandments, to follow the Beatitudes, to grow in faith, hope, and love, and to resist the temptations of the seven deadly sins. Although the Church offers many paradigms and exemplars of moral virtue, sainthood is the ideal, whether it is in the married life of St. Gianna Molla or the consecrated life of St. Therese of Lisieux, the public life of St. Thomas More or the contemplative and monastic life of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Christ held the highest ideals of moral excellence for all who follow Him: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” He advised the rich young man, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Christ reprimanded Peter for falling asleep and not doing his best with a total effort: “So, could you not watch with me one hour?” He expected more courage than what the disciples demonstrated during the storm when Christ was asleep in the boat and they cried out, “Save, Lord, we are perishing.” And Christ demanded more faith than the disciplines revealed in their fear of drowning: “Why are you afraid, O men of little faith?” In these episodes, Christ teaches His followers the highest ideals of sacrifice, courage, and faith. The Christian life resists mediocrity, luke-warmness, and half-heartedness.
These lofty Christian ideals inspire the moral teaching of the Catholic Church that pronounces with clarity and authority on matters of faith and morals. Every contraceptive marital act without exception is immoral and disordered. Every decision to abort a child is intrinsically evil and is never justified or excused. Euthanasia and sodomy are forbidden under all circumstances. Sacramental marriage is always indissoluble, and civil divorce does not allow a person to remarry because the divorced person without an annulment is still married in the eyes of the Church. Every conjugal act—not some or most—must be open to the transmission of life. One cannot do evil to achieve good, participate in a necessary, partial evil (bombing a civilian population) in order to achieve some greater good like the end of a war.
In Christian morality, the end never justifies the means. A moral act possesses integrity by virtue of both its worthy intention and the honorable means to the end, striving to do what is right only in ways that are ethical. While the adoption of orphans serves a moral purpose and seeks the well-being and happiness of children in need of belonging to a family, adoption by couples in same-sex unions violates the good end and the best interests of the child. In all these examples, the Church’s moral position does not compromise the nobility of its ideals. It does not readjust its expectations to conform to the way of the world, the majority opinion, or the politically popular or politically correct view. Man must rise to God’s expectations and live according to the highest ideals and not compromise moral principles. God does not pander to man’s lowest desires or minimum standards.
While Christ’s example and the Catholic Church’s teachings hold the highest expectations of man’s moral nature, they temper religious idealism with an honest realism about man’s fallen nature and a tragic world. The Christian life expects the best of human nature: an informed conscience, commitment to promises, moral courage, heroic virtue, and sacrificial love. Yet it also acknowledges man’s sinful nature in need of grace and mercy. Although Christ exhorts perfection and excellence, He also forgives sins and knows the nature of temptation. He said to the woman caught in adultery that the Pharisees intended to stone, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.” He experienced human temptations in the wilderness when Satan promised the kingdoms and glory of the world: “All these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.” The Christian life, then, guides man by its lofty idealism but always keeps in mind man’s fallible, finite nature. God always demands the best but never asks the impossible.
In response to Peter’s question about how many times a person was obligated to forgive and if it were more than seven, Christ’s famous answer was “seventy-times seven”—an unlimited number. Christ takes account of the weakness of human nature, whether it is Peter denying Him three times, the lack of faith of the disciplines, or the hunger of the multitudes He feeds with the loaves and the fish. On the one hand, Christ’s sacrifice of His life on the Cross expresses the ultimate ideal of love in its most sublime and purest form–its height, breadth, depth, and length to cite St. Paul’s words. On the other hand, Christ’s passion, agony, and death—the blood, sweat, tears, cries, and thirst—unites the highest of heavenly ideals with the most basic facts of life in all its realism of sin, suffering, and tragedy.
In the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass Christ’s Body and Blood is both spiritual food and drink for the soul and also the wine (“fruit of the vine”) and bread (“work of human hands”) tasted by the senses for man’s pilgrimage on earth. It is miraculous, heavenly medicine for the real wound suffered by fallen man and for the serious illness of original sin. Christ’s death is both sublime and earthy, the most ideal form of love that satisfies the deepest desires of the human heart for life without death, joy without sorrow, and good without evil. Christ’s institution of the Sacrament of Confession in His words to Peter, (“Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”), also integrates the ideal with the possible. The Church always provides sinners a second and third chance, a lifetime of opportunities to repent, to confess, and to receive absolution. The realism of Christ and His Church acknowledges the truth of human nature and the reality of the human condition, never idealizing man’s natural goodness or exaggerating man’s depravity. Thus, the Christian life moves man to aspire to the heights of virtue and to eternal life but also keeps him in touch with the here and the now.
On the contrary, the way of the world renounces high ideals and moral excellence, determining laws and settling morality on the basis of opinion polls, the vested interests of the wealthy, the political ideologies of the powerful, the demands of popular culture, and the vogue of intellectual fashions—in short, by the criterion of progressive thought, by the standards of tolerance, or by the measure of the lowest common denominator. The legalization of abortion and same-sex marriage is determined by one Supreme Court vote—an attempt to change the moral law and conform to trendy ideas.
Planned Parenthood receives $500 million of taxpayer money to kill babies and sell bodily parts on the basis of a political party’s majority votes and a president’s agenda. Youth require education in contraception techniques, abortion facilities, and AIDs prevention because of the presumption that chastity is beyond the power of human nature and self-control. Western nations with family sizes of 1.5 dictate that third world countries in need of foreign aid first control their populations, legalize abortion and same-sex marriage, or welcome Planned Parenthood facilities before they receive financial assistance. These policies are neither idealistic nor realistic but fantasies about achieving good by means that are evil.