Welcome to the Abbey Library!

tension both of the aspects the heresies focused on to the exclusion of the other.

So, what is the vision of morality that has been promoted by the continuous Catholic intellectual tradition? What is the role of moral theology in this vision?

As a starting point, theology is the study of the Mysteries of God. The Mysteries of God are revealed to us through the Sacred Scriptures and through the living Tradition of the Church. The role of theology is to make attempts to clarify those areas of Divine Revelation that make up part of the inexhaustible Mystery of God that cannot be fully

grasped by the human intellect (a theoretical function), and to help us to apply Divine Revelation to our lives in practical ways (a teaching function).

Morality has to do with making choices. Teachers of morality are often asked (especially by teenagers) whether or not a certain act is "moral." In a basic sense, any act would be "moral," since every act involves a choice (of course, what these questions are usually asking is whether or not an act is morally good or acceptable). More particularly, morality has to do with those acts that affect how well we participate in our relationship with God.

Participating in our relationship with God begins by cooperating with His creation of us by becoming the people He created us to be. Morality first deals with choices that develop our character.

In a general sense, our character development involves making choices that help us to become more human. More specifically, character development involves our individual development of virtues and the discernment and development of our general and specific vocation. Of course, since human beings do not live only as individuals but also as community, much of morality also deals with our relationships with each other, which need to be guided by justice and charity.

The ultimate expression of morality as participation in a relationship with God is the intimate participation in the Divine Life made possible by Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Through Divine Grace, the Holy Trinity lives within each human soul, and actually builds upon human nature to give us each a Divine nature. Just as morality involves choices that can make us more (or less) human, so morality also involves choices that can make us more (or less) divine - by cooperating with Divine Grace or by opposing it.

In its most basic form, in its ultimate form, and everywhere in between, morality is intimately tied to our relationship with God. For that reason, the study and the teaching of morality is properly called theology. This terminology in no way minimizes the importance of doctrine or of the moral law. Most of morality is a matter of doctrine, and all of morality originates in the moral law. Moral theology mostly exercises the teaching function of theology. However, it may at times exercise the theoretical function of theology