Freida (@fredfredsonaire)

The Question Box. INDEPENDENT MORALITY Cannot a man be moral without believing in God? Is not virtue its own reward? No, the only basis of morality is God, the Infinitely Holy and Just Lawgiver, who has written His law in the hearts of men (Rom. ii. 15), and given them the light of reason to discover the moral law that He has revealed. “Morality,” writes Liddon, “severed from religious motives, is like a branch cut from a tree; it may here and there, from accidental causes, retain its greenness for a while, but its chance of vigorous life is a very slender one. Nor is it possible to popularize a real morality, a morality that shall deal with motives as well as acts, without unveiling to the eye of the soul, something more personal than an abstract law” (Some Elements of Religion, 18). The unbelievers of our day have attempted in vain to frame theories of morality independent of religion. Is utility to be the basis of morality? Christianity indeed insists upon a special duty of benevolence to our fellowmen, and ever works for the general welfare, but reason affirms that the common good is not the SOLE and all-embracing end of man; he is not WHOLLY subject to society. Utilitarianism accounts for the modern paganism which would sterilize the unfit and feeble-minded, and improve the race by the eugenics of the stud-farm. Is pleasure the moral criterion? Then you urge people to taste the forbidden fruit and judge for themselves, thus making immorality and crime a necessary condition of virtue (Cronin, The Science of Ethics, 275-372). Is virtue its own reward? Experience proves that virtue often walks in poverty and rags, while vice drives by in a Rolls-Royce. Is the inner sanction of conscience sufficient? It may easily be deadened by the constant rejection of righteousness, and then it calls good evil and evil good. Are legal sanctions effective? They cannot touch one’s inner motives and thoughts, as Americans are discovering in the open defiance which millions of our citizens bid to our ill-advised prohibition law. Will public opinion be our guide? It is often most corrupt, and blames men for deeds of worth, while it praises the successful and wealthy scoundrel. The only One who can read the inmost secrets of our minds and hearts; the only One who can rightly estimate our every motive, and adequately and justly punish and reward our good and evil thoughts, words and deeds is God. Cardinal Mercier well says: “It is a vain hope to expect the moral law to be observed without recourse to the idea of God. For how is the observance of the moral law to be sufficiently guaranteed, if man has no certitude that a Just and Powerful God will sooner or later establish an eternal harmony between virtue and happiness on the one hand, and between vice and misery on the other” (Manual of Scholastic Philosophy, ii., 257).