Why Did We Just Celebrate John Paul's Feast on October 22?
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Today’s Gospel [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111525.cfm ] teaches us something important about morality, specifically, good acts and good intentions.
The Gospel itself is the Parable of the Importunate Widow and the Crooked Judge. Luke tells us of a dishonest judge who flaunts his contempt for justice (“I neither fear God nor respect human beings”) who is pestered by a widow, whose case he has been putting off. He finally agrees to give her justice, not because he’s suddenly acquired the fear of the Lord and respect for his fellow man, but because he’s tired of her hounding him and afraid she might get violent.
Many who comment on this Gospel will talk about the importance of persisting in prayer. I don’t deny that. I simply offer another perspective.
The judge’s actions teach us something important about the moral act. The judge does the right thing … for the wrong reason. He gives her justice not because justice is her due but because he wants to get rid of her.
Catholic moral theology teaches every moral act has three components: the act itself (opus operatum), the intent of the doer (opus operantis), and morally significant circumstances.
Acts say things in themselves, independently of our intentions. I cannot haul off, punch you in the mouth, and then say that was an expression of my love for you. You’d say I’m crazy or making fun of you. You know the act (opus operatum) is not saying “I love you.”
Many people ignore the opus operatum. Take physician-assisted suicide. Just because my intention is to relieve suffering doesn’t change the fact that what I did was give you a lethal overdose of drugs or poison. That act was not neutral. It was not mute. That act already said something.
Today’s Gospel tells us about intentions. The judge did good: he gave the importunate widow justice. But he did it for the wrong reasons: out of fatigue or fear, not fairness. Just as bad acts can’t be made good by good intentions, good acts can be spoiled by bad intentions.
[Circumstances generally are not so much immediately about the act but about the particulars a person brings to the act that may change – usually up – the moral wrong. Sex outside marriage is wrong. Sex between two unmarried people is fornication. But when one of the two is married, a new element – justice – is introduced: the circumstance of marriage aggravates the gravity of the deed].
In Catholic moral theology, a good act must be good on all three bases: fail on one, you fail on all. After all, a shirt with a big spot on it is not “clean,” even if you can manage to hide the spot under your jacket. Goodness is whole; evil is always some lack.
Including the lack of a judge who does justice.
John Grondelski (PhD Fordham) was former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University in New Jersey. He is a Catholic theologian with special interests in moral theology and the thought of St. John Paul II. All views are his own.
