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1. Christians are called to share Christ by active commitment to truth, justice, freedom and love.

This
vocation to love is both a universal and specific vocation, a universal call to holiness requiring an active
and self-determined response. In baptism we are anointed priest, prophet and king, our vocation. From
there we find our specific call.

Christ is the vocation; he is the Word Incarnate, Verbum Incarnatum

Jesus was sent to call humankind back to the Creator, the Father. In revealing the call of the Father,
Christ invites a response

By sharing Christ, we share the vocation and we all become aware of God’s calling.

This vocation is a commitment; it is a lifetime response. The way we carry it out is through how we
uphold the virtues of truth, justice, freedom, and love; we are called to uphold God’s values.

It requires an active self-determined response.

- universal and specific vocation

it's universal = all of us are called to God’s vocation, because we are all human beings.

Baptism is our “initiation” into the vocation; when we are baptized, we are anointed like Jesus and we
take on the role of Priest, Prophet, and King.

Priest, Prophet, and King are in reference to the Threefold Office of Christ: Priestly, Prophetic, and
Kingly.

2. While the components of moral acts are important in discerning the morality of an act, foremost in
morality is the response of love to love, in the light of virtue ethics, knowledge and freedom. To live out
the spiritual-moral life, virtue ethics is helpful, as it is concerned with the person growing in perfection in
imitation of Christ, through the golden mean. Its goal is human flourishing through grace.

Components of a moral act: Object, Intention, and Circumstance

These are the necessary components for understanding the morality of an action. Like in the
example of taking a life out of murder versus taking a life out of self-defense; the components are
different and so the morality of situation changes.

GRACE - grace is something that can only be obtained through God.

3. The human person is the key to moral life. Theological anthropology presents him/her as
both an interplay of choices, identity, fundamental stance and time based on natural law, and a person
in Christ, as seen through the eyes of faith. We are free and morally obliged to follow the law in order to
become authentically ourselves.

Moral theology explains that humans are responsible for their actions and behaviors; the reason we are
responsible is PERSONHOOD

“The actions pass, but the agent remains”

Personhood says that we are not ONLY defined by our actions; personhood asserts human importance
into our actions.
Within actions are layers of emotion, conviction, and the self. We have an awareness of ourselves and of
the personhood in our actions.

This interplay between personhood and actions is what makes us three dimensional beings who
transcend our actions. This is also why the human person is the key to moral life.

Knowledge and Freedom

As humans we are free to act as we wish, but we still abide to a fundamental stance. The fundamental
stance however, does not limit our freedom because the stance is not something that is inherent; it’s
something that we build personally as we live.

The idea of faith and sin adds a new dimension in how we view the moral world.

Without this interplay of personhood in our actions, we are not truly human and we are not
authentically ourselves.

4. “Deep within their conscience people discover a law which they have not laid upon themselves
but which they must obey.” As the human person searches for the truth, forming one’s conscience is an
ecclesial task, with the Magisterium illumining and guiding the proper formation of the Christian
conscience against human error and the influence of the superego. One must bring all of oneself in the
search for the truth. Here we must consider natural law and divine law.

We can define conscience as a general sense of responsibility; we all have a capacity to lean towards the
direction that is good and we all have our own understanding of what is good and bad. This is a very
passive conscience that is defined as a characteristic.

Conscience can also be defined as a process. This conscience is the effort to find and achieve what is
good through evaluation and reflection. This is where we seek out and determine what is truly good.

In this active version of the conscience, we seek out the truth; we want answers that are concrete and
true so that we can truly know what is good.

Conscience is an inner law (for the good) which is lain by God in man. For, if the law in conscience where
to be man-made, then there would be sufficient reason for its breaking. Conscience is a calling to love,
which is identified with God’s voice. Since conscience is a calling, it also elicits a response, for conscience
is an inner voice telling us to do good and avoid evil. Conscience is the subjective norm of morality,
which means that conscience resides in the person, yet must be informed by magisterial teaching.

Conscience pushes human beings to greater freedom, both objectively (the objectivity of the morality of
an act being strictly objective) and also subjectively (for it is the human person who is the doer of the
act). Since conscience pushes us to greater freedom, yet requires knowing and forming, it can be
considered both a gift and a task. This is the dynamism of conscience. Pushing towards greater freedom,
man can be become perfectly man, and such can be achieved through following one’s conscience as well
as being informed.

Man must carefully form his conscience, since conscience can be informed by the media and the
magisterium. One must also do the task of knowing. Being informed with the Magisterium is important
because in the Magisterium is the collective wisdom of the Church, and also the teaching authority. The
expertise and experience concerning faith matters resides in the Magisterium.
5. The Christian view of human sexuality reveals it as a fundamental dimension of our person, which is
both a blessing and a challenge. Sexuality is for love, as opposed to the myths about it. The various
Greek words used for love (eros, philia and agape) deepen our understanding of love’s nuances.

Sexuality is a fundamental dimension of our person; sexuality is something part of the human
experience that cannot be removed and should not be repressed, contrary to what most people believe
and teach.

Sexuality is essential because humans are beings with sex; it doesn’t make sense to just repress it.
However, the Christian view reveals that it is also not something that is casual. It is something for love.

Sexuality creates a bond between human people; because it involves the full exposure and full open
acceptance of two people, sexuality something that should be built on compassion and trust. Although
procreation is an important part of sexuality, it is not necessarily the center of sexuality. It allows us to
show our love and understanding of one another on a higher level.

This is why it’s both a challenge and a blessing: because sexuality is about love, it is something that
needs to be balanced and controlled, but not to the point of complete repression. We can’t just throw
sexuality around casual but we also can’t deny something that is essentially for love and label it as
something taboo. Virtues like Chastity helps us maintain this balance of gift and challenge.

“Christian morality, or life in Christ, is simply living in a manner reflective of this story of the way things
truly are. Therefore, Christian sexual ethics should not be some arbitrary, externally imposed, repressive
set of rules about what not to do. Sadly, Christians share some blame for presenting Christian teaching
on sexuality in such a manner. But Christian sexual ethics should be presented and understood as a
guide on how to live in accordance with this story of God’s love, as it concerns our sex lives. As the Irish
bishops beautifully put it, “The Church’s whole moral teaching about sex is above all the application to
sexuality of God’s greatest commandment to charity.””

Virtuous sex

6. More than an historically-presented human institution, marriage is a sacrament of Christ’s


relationship with His Church. It is a second insertion into Christ’s Body, a salvation story that heals and
saves the married couple and families. When the couple draws strength from the cross of Christ, they
become bread broken and wine poured, living out the sacraments of Marriage and the Eucharist, both
patterns of the cross – the supreme symbol of love. Based on this theology of marriage, Church law
articulates marriage’s essential properties (unity and indissolubility), and tackles declaration of nullity,
dissolution of bond and special kinds of marriages.

Canon law and theology make a distinction between marriage as a human institution and marriage as a
holy sacrament. When considering marriage as a human institution, it leaves out the idea of faith and
the sacramental aspect of marriage. Instead, it becomes a personal bond established by and between
spouses. Even as a human institution, it still has the properties of unity and indissolubility.

For marriage as a holy sacrament, the human institution of marriage is elevated into becoming a
sacrament by the Lord. This is why the other sacraments are more clearly sacral; the other sacraments
exist only within the context of faith and revelation while marriage is a human institution that became
more.
Saint Paul compares the bond of marriage to the bond between Christ and His Church. He explains that
Christ loved His Church selflessly and he surrendered himself completely for His Church, like how a
husband should do the same for the wife. He explains that Jesus is the head of His Church, and the wives
should be like The Church and be subject to their husbands.

Christ is present when marriage is contracted. It’s one of the seven sacraments and it’s another step
closer to God that strengthens our faith, like how baptism is the first step; the initiation into the faith.
Because of this, we can say that it is a second insertion.

7. Marriage and sex find their true meaning in a permanent, exclusive commitment open to life and
publicly promised. Christian sexual morality is based on human nature, where sex is both sacred and
sacramental. Sexual lies (like adultery, pre-marital sex/fornication) and altered symbols of sex (like
masturbation, pornography, artificial birth control) contradict the two-fold purpose of sex according to
God’s design.

Marriage is a permanent bond that is supplemented by sex.

Sexuality creates a bond between human people; because it involves the full exposure and full open
acceptance of two people, sexuality something that should be built on compassion and trust. Although
procreation is an important part of sexuality, it is not necessarily the center of sexuality. It allows us to
show our love and understanding of one another on a higher level.

Sex has a two-fold purpose; it’s for both life and for love. These sexual lies and altered symbols of sex
contradict this idea and are centered on the idea that sex is either for pleasure or something that is
casual rather than something that is sacred.

The physical intimacy of sex enhances the spiritual bond and pledge between spouses. Sex is something
that fall under marriage because marriage is meant to be the sacrament that bonds two people in love;
it is the ultimate pledge of commitment and compassion between two people. It makes the bond
between husband and wife sacramental and sex enhances this pledge as an act of complete love and
trust.

8. Contrary to the seemingly radical anti-family sentiments in the Gospels, Jesus challenges Christians to
pattern their families after the ways of the Kingdom. Indeed, from marriage arises the family, tasked to
form a community of persons, serve life, serve society, and share in the life and mission of the Church.
Amidst threats against the Filipino family, God, the author of life, calls us to protect life from womb to
tomb, for the “future of humanity passes by way of the family.”

With the lifestyle that Jesus and his followers lived, it can be argued that the New Testament actually
discouraged the formation and upholding of family life and family values.

Family life was almost absent from the Gospel. Jesus even rejects his family’s attempts to take him away
from his disciples.

However, Jesus challenges the traditional family that we’ve come to know but he is not necessarily anti-
family. Instead, he proposes a new radical type of family with a different set of values; a family that is
not necessarily bound by blood but one bound by God and the community.
He challenges the traditional structure and ideals of family for good reason; to create a new kind of
family that is fair and loving. He challenges ideas of patriarchy and hierarchy. Ideas that limit the family
from becoming a true community of love.

Adoption in baptism

We have to look beyond the nuclear family.

The family is described as the first and vital cell of society.

A passive family vs an active family

A passive family is one that stays within itself and does not participate and help in the formation in
society. It’s just there.

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