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Contents
1. Reverence
2. Faithfulness
3. Awareness of Responsibility
4. Veracity
5. Goodness
One: Reverence
Moral values are the highest among all natural values. Goodness, purity, truthfulness,
humility of man rank higher than genius, brilliancy, exuberant vitality, than the
beauty of nature or of art, than the stability and power of a state. What is realized and
what shines forth in an act of real forgiveness, in a noble and generous renunciation;
in a burning and selfless love, is more significant and more noble, more important
and more eternal than all cultural values. Positive moral values are the focus of the
world, negative moral values, the greatest evil, worse than suffering, sickness, death,
or the disintegration of a flourishing culture.
This fact was recognized by the great minds, such as Socrates, or Plato, who
continually repeated that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it. This preeminence of the moral sphere is, above all, a basic proposition of the Christian ethos.
Two: Faithfulness
Among the attitudes of man which are basic for his whole moral life, faithfulness is
ranked next to reverence. One can speak of faithfulness in a narrow sense and in a
large one. We have the narrow sense in mind when we speak of fidelity toward men,
such as fidelity to a friend, marital fidelity, fidelity to one's country or to oneself.
This type of fidelity throws into relief the other type. I refer here to the continuity
which first gives to a man's life its inner consistency, its inner unity. The building up
of one's personality is only possible if one holds firmly to those truths and values
which one has already discovered.
meekness, patience, generosity, but the fruit of fruits, i.e. that in which culminates all
morality in a specific way; it is the queen of all virtues.