Recently I was talking with some friends, who are secular analytic philosophers, about some contemporary puzzles in ethics. I was struck by how thin their ideas about moral behavior seemed to be—in particular, they seemed to believe that consequences are all that matter when determining whether something is morally wrong or acceptable.

It was suggested that violent fantasies were wrong only if they made someone more likely to act badly towards others; that there was nothing morally wrong with using a flag as a rag; and that incest or bestiality (as long as there were no children or emotional consequences) was morally permissible. And most of those I was speaking with specialized in ethics!

I should stress that these philosophers would certainly never do such things themselves; in fact, they freely admitted to being disgusted at the prospect. But absent some physical or psychological harm caused, they couldn’t find any moral reason to condemn such things.

I could write about the reasons for this—the history of consequentialism, the modern tendency to reduce morality to psychological well-being, the desire to avoid condemnation, and the (not always bad) philosophical distrust of emotional responses. But I don’t have the heart.

It grieves me to see my friends in such captivity, and I long to see the Church model a better view of ethics. We need to remember that life is about more than the calculation of consequences. We need to teach that to find satisfaction in horrors is to make yourself horrific. We need to point to a richer view of life that recognizes the value of symbols, and realizes that to profane them is to disrespect what they stand for. We need to live out a dignified view of human sexuality that sees our bodies as set apart for intimate relationship.

Let’s not give in to the modern worship of the sciences, those predictors of consequences. Let’s live human lives, lives filled with God’s grace and peace.

Tags: Ethics