An Essay on Ethics, Right or Wrong

September 3, 2012

By Patrick Flanagan

 

How far we have come.  In just about 2,000 years having passed, we have left a period of time when Christ said, “Bring all the little children to me,” to a point where those wicked little children now are murdering their parents, stealing, even shooting each other with rifles and guns, hacking into computers and wreaking havoc, using foul language, in short, just committing a lot of bad acts.  Yes, it is true, not all of them, but enough.  Is this really what Christ wants, or what He intended?  Are these the innocents that He could never find fault in?  I doubt it very much.  So where did we go wrong?

Throughout my years of life, discerning what was right or wrong in my own actions has always been a key pursuit and concern of mine.  It is not an easy quest.  Ah, to commit acts of right and wrong, that is a totally different issue.  Think about this, of all the people today in America’s prisons and jails, about 80% of them have never admitted to committing a crime, have never once agreed to committing a criminal act, and do not have any guilt whatsoever about what they did to get them into jail in the first place.

 In one court, O.J. Simpson is acquitted of murder and found innocent; then in another court, he is found guilty and punished.  Throughout it all, he admits no guilt, shows no remorse, and vociferously refuses to admit that he killed his ex-wife.  Now, how can one be guilty and innocent simultaneously of the crime of murder?  Murder is so final, so clear, such a violent act of man, yet here is a man who somehow killed and went free.  He is not a rarity either.  Obviously our justice system is confused.  The truth is that Simpson committed the crime of murder or he didn’t.  That is what we know.  Yet we judged him in ambivalence.  Neither convicting him or absolving him of his crime.  Instead, he becomes an urban legend as people still ask for his autograph.  I would say that our criminal system has some real problems itself in determining the difference between right and wrong.  Certainly, justice has been misplaced along with our priorities.

One might say that I was lucky to have been educated for 16 years under the direction of Catholic priests and nuns.  Others might say it was a curse.  The difference between right and wrong is discussed almost every day in the Catholic educational arena.  That difference is pounded into one’s head almost every day from 1^st grade to graduation from the university, philosophically, religiously, and physically.  It was very early on that I learned whispering in class is a sin.  Quickly, I was taught that committing sins justified punishment which happened to be in the form of a ruler slapping my wide-open palms.  Justice was quick and fitting to the crime.  Justice was swift and unforgiving.  Then came the guilt and the need to repent.  Catholic education’s primary objective is to teach morality, even if it means beating it into one’s head.  Throughout geography, history, math and reading, morality is the central theme of a Catholic education.  We start the day with the catechism and theology, but it never really leaves until the bell rings for us to go home.  If we were lucky, then our parents reinforced and reiterated it all again until we finally said our prayers at bed-time.

Catholics took this issue to the hilt.  But they had rules.  A bad act or a sin had to have three qualities: 1) It had to be a bad action, 2) we had to know it was a bad action, and 3) we had to intentionally perform or commit this action.  Then it was a sin.  They then went further in the degree of sin; really bad sins were mortal, and not so bad sins were venial.  To all of this, they added the ten commandments to make it even more clear, but actually just furthered the confusion.

 As an example, I often thought to myself, wouldn’t it be fun to get under the nun’s habit and have sex with her.  Well, I knew that was a bad act, it probably was a bad act, but I wasn’t doing it so I was alright.  I hadn’t committed a sin.  Wrong.  The Catholics also invented the 7 Deadly Sins, one of which was Lust.  So, just thinking of a sin now became a sin.  Yet  I could think of murdering the bully in my class, and, as long as I didn’t do it, those thoughts were alright.  They were just temptations.  In fact, just defeating this temptation was a good act, an act of courage and heroism.  One could see how this could get very confusing, particularly to a young boy who was very impressionable and believed every word that was spoken by a Dominican nun or a parish priest.

Years later, we had to study theology and philosophy.  In most classes, they were really the same.  Some philosophers believed that we all inherently know “right from wrong”.  We all are born knowing full well that murder is wrong; that stealing is wrong.  I used to believe that.  Some sins are just so horrendous, like murder, rape, beating that we all know that they are sins.  As I’ve grown older, I realize from people’s actions that this just isn’t so.  I have talked to people who have murdered, and they often justify it as the right thing to do.  Obviously, they weren’t listening to those philosophers.  Some will also say that stealing isn’t wrong, or that “date rape” is really alright as long as the individual isn’t too badly hurt.

Some, just came out very straightforward and said, these are crimes, these are bad acts, and tried to categorize all actions into the goodness and badness of our actions.  The more they categorized, the more they realized that there were “gray” areas.  This is when we made the transition from an objective morality to a subjective one.  I think a guy named Dewey is responsible for this one.  And then morality seemed to just go down-hill from that point on.  Well, murder is wrong, but it is alright under these conditions.  We even gave it a name as “justifiable homicide”.

The Catholics originally fought hard against the subversion of an objective morality.  They knew it presented a problem and could, would undermine a true morality.  Slowly, over decades, as much as they still upheld the premise of an objective right from wrong, they slid into the morass of subjectivity.  Today, the objective morality is almost non-existent in Catholicism.  Certainly it was not correct to sexually abuse a child, it was a mortal sin, but when a priest, who took the vow of celibacy, still goes out into his flock and sexually abuses children over and over again, there must be some extenuating circumstances.  Yes, we are abhorred about his actions, but………we must try to understand, to forgive, and go on with our ruined lives.  This is subjective morality at its greatest epitome and height of its permissiveness to justify our actions as being good when they really are very bad.

The last Pope, and now the current one staunchly crusade for an objective morality, only to be discounted by the majority of their congregations.  They are old-fashioned, they are out of touch with today’s reality, they are romantics or idealists fighting for a morality that really doesn’t have any meaning today in this modern world.  How could they be so sure, so adamant in their condemnation of abortion?  Particularly when we have so many people in this world.  How could a Pope be so unfeeling in expecting that a woman raped must continue on in having the child of a rapist?  So we discount his directives as living in the past.  If we deliver a live baby and then kill the baby, most would argue that this is murder and wrong.  Yet, from the time that the very first zygote is created, the complete imprint of that baby now exists in its DNA as to what that baby will become, is alive, yet we argue that this is not murder.  In fact, some may argue that the destruction of a fetus is a blessing, as long as the proper conditions are present.  Under certain conditions, it is alright to murder.

I remember years ago, when I was in the fishing business, every day fishermen would come to the dock to unload their fish.  As they were paid for their catch by weight, many of them would try to cheat me by pouring salt water all over the fish to gain more weight and to make more money.  Being a good Catholic, I knew very objectively that they were stealing from the fish company.  This was not a gray area; they were Italians sinning every day in their profession of fishing.  This became a major crisis for me as I was still being taught morality in those days during the week by my nuns, only to know full well that I was being victimized by fishermen every weekend.  It was even more disturbing that here were Catholics stealing from Catholics.  I mean, even Jews wouldn’t do something that bad would they?

So, in self-defence, I started manipulating the scale, and I started to give them the wrong weights the other way.  I became very ingenious and creative in how many ways I could steal from a fisherman.  However, I did draw a line.  There were some, not many, honest fishermen.  For those, I tried to give them the correct weight.  I did have my limits.

Well, there is another idea that Catholics teach, and that is guilt.  Guilt is not easy to acquire as one has to have a firm idea in one’s mind that a particular act is clearly wrong.  Once this is implanted in one’s being, then we need to develop the feeling of unease, which then can be raised up to the higher level of guilt.  Once we have guilt, we know we have committed a sin, and we need to confess or else we will be haunted the rest of our lives for these bad actions.  Those nuns are even smarter; they bang into our heads the danger of rationalizing that bad acts really are not that bad, as this is the big enemy of guilt.  If we can justify a bad act, we don’t have any guilt.  After all, morality is objectively either good or bad and to allow subjectivity into this decision is courting the devil.

Then they created the saying, “The end does not justify the means.”  Now this is a good rule.  A good act must remain good from start to finish.  One cannot act badly in accomplishing a good.  Otherwise, the good is tainted by the bad.  They constantly pointed out Hitler as an example.  Hitler wanted to create good in Germany, but he did it all through bad acts, infamous sins and just look where that got him.  This then expands the role of guilt.  This all seems so logical that it must be correct.  If we want to accomplish good acts, we must not use bad acts or evil to do this; we must be pure and only use good actions to accomplish a greater good.  If not, we have sinned.

Yes, inevitably I figured out all of this, thanks to those nuns, and knew that I had to go to confession to rid myself of the guilt of stealing from the fishermen by manipulating the scales.  So I went.  I methodically picked out a Catholic church which was close to the ocean and had a lot of fisherman in its congregation.  And then I confessed.

I will never forget what that priest told me after I had listed all of my sins for that week.  “My son, are you stealing more weight from the fishermen than they are stealing from you?”  I said, “Oh, no, father, I try very hard to just steal the same amount from them.”  After which the priest then gave me total absolution by saying, “My son, go in peace, God bless you, and continue to treat your neighbor as you also would want to be treated.”  Just like that, the guilt was gone.

Then there was the idea of taking responsibility for our actions.  This gets real complicated.  That’s when the concept of a butterfly flapping its thin wings in the air causes a horrible hurricane somewhere else in the world because we are all inter-related and dependent upon each other.  What an idea that our actions can cause certain reactions which are evil and bad.  We must be responsible for the effects of all of our actions, the bad and the good.  To explain this another way, they called it the “curse of your father’s evil actions will come about and revisit the sins of their children.”  This I understand.  A father that sexually or physically abuses his children, later those children when grown up go on to commit the same horrendous acts upon their children.  That original father is not only guilty of his sins, but also must carry some of the guilt of future sins yet to be performed by his children.  We must take responsibility for when that happens and for our part in the proliferation of the evil and hurt.  This has never ceased to amaze me; how children hurt so badly can again continue this cycle of abuse by hurting their own children.

Which brings me to the other aspect of morality which is role modeling.  That’s why the Catholics have all those saints, people who led very admirable lives, lives which we respected and honored, all good people doing good or heroic things in their lives.  They were our role models along with our parents and neighbors.  I remember in grammar school reading the lives of thousands of saints; of course, all I read was the good that they did, or how they were tortured to death because of what they believed, never rejecting their God or their religious beliefs.  Many were heros, but there were also many who just did good in this world for others.

Well, so far I have tried to touch on the major aspects of my own life and how I acquired my own sense of morality.  It certainly isn’t perfect, and it certainly isn’t very simple.  Some was through education and reading, some came from my parents, and some came just from a ruler slapping my hand, and then just sometimes when I did something wrong, how it came back to hurt me and those that I love in this world.  One thing I can surmise, none of it was perfect, but most was well-intentioned.  Which brings us to self-reflection; another tenet of Christianity.  That is so important, that we can remember, we can learn, and we see that sins or evil comes back upon us all, continues to hurt us and others, while the corollary is also true in that good comes eventually back to us as well.  We need those moments to reflect as they help us to stay the right course, and not succumb to the particular enticements of evil acts.

Still, in my sixty years of life, I now see so much evil that I would never have imagined just 40 years ago.  Which brings me to one of the last aspects of morality, the need for compassion.  I find it so sad to see families disrupted as their children or parents are killed for some inexplicable reason or twisted logic.  One instant act of absurd violence that must have been the result of many small seeds of evil accumulating into a final act of revenge and anger.  Afterward, there is just sorrow and hurt.  Or the people, hurt by someone’s theft, people losing articles in their life which might have great sentimental values, but are lost to the greed formented by drugs or unhealthy life styles.  Alchohol has caused so much grief and tragedy around me as many hide their own sorrows in the sorrows of others.  Oh, yes, I regret all of those times of my own sins and never have lost my compassion for the hurt I have caused or witnessed.  Perhaps, from there, comes the strength and the motivation to do more good, and less evil.

How we have all changed over these last 60 years.  We have gone from a society where it was the rule that marriages lasted forever to a time when marriage itself has no meaning and is fleeting at its best.  We have gone from a time when swearing and using foul language was verboten to a time when such words are now an integral part of our language.  We have gone from a time when children were innocent to a time when children have grown far older than their age and live in depression rather than in their own purity.  We have grown from a time when theft was condemned to a time when theft is actually admired as a sign of success.  We have gone from a time when the spirituality of life meant more to us than the material things to now a time when material things now are the sole measures of a happiness lost.  We have gone from the times when the family was solid and the basis of our security to a time when we have no families and are just people who sit like vultures over our misfortunes and trials.  We have gone from a time when we knew right from wrong to a time now when nobody really cares about the rights or wrongs, just as long as we are left alone and not affected.  We have gone from the belief in moral objectivity to a world of ethical subjectivity that no longer has any meaning or any intrinsic worth.  It is now a world of lies in which we can say one is innocent even though they are guilty, when we can say that we live in a world of grays rather than of black and white, a world where everything is meshed in confusion and chaos but we pretend to make order out of it all.  We now live in a world where fantasy has become reality, and reality is now our fantasy.  We have convinced ourselves that we no longer need anybody, yet we are more dependent upon each other today than we ever have been.  We no longer comfort and heal the sick, we instead ignore the sick.  We are now all pleasure bent instead of willing to make those self-sacrifices for each other.  We are now in times when Christmas has died when it originally was about birth; in times when consumption is a way of life rather than hard work or production of good things.  In essence, we have given up upon morality, yet expect it to be there when we so desperately need it.  We have forgotten the “why” of it all, no longer asking those questions until it is too late.  Only waddling deeper and deeper into our own misery of wondering how could all of this be happening.  All, all while the lessons lie just within us all, just under our own skins, that the answers to all of this just lies within us all and the need for a common morality in our lives.