On Right and Wrong

"You can’t choose right and wrong, you’ve got to choose between right and wrong."

Reading the interview with Justice Clarence in Imprimis , Justice Thomas said,

"You can’t choose right and wrong, you’ve got to choose between right and wrong. There’s a wonderful encyclical by Pope John Paul where he talks about the mistake that Adam and Eve made. They thought they could choose right and wrong as opposed to choosing between the two. Modern nihilists and relativists think that we can decide or make up right and wrong. People like my grandfather understood that there was right and wrong, as certain as that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. And they made their choices between the two."

I think this is where my confusion with the idea of the "gray" area comes from. Maybe "gray area" is used in two different ways. Too often, I know, the term "gray area" is used, but what is meant is that right and wrong has evolved or changed. This is not possible, because God is immutable, unchangeable, and right and wrong is intrinsically rooted in His Deity.

To my way of thinking, the "gray area" is figuring out how new technology and ideas relate to right and wrong as revealed to us in the past. Ideas and technologies may, in and of themselves, be inherently "right" or "wrong," but many times, they may, in fact, be neutral--it is our reasons for developing or using them that make them either right or wrong. The scenario gets really murky when we begin to dissemble as to the real reasons that we are doing or promoting something, sometimes leaving even ourselves in the dark as to our own true motivations. (This is the reason that the Sacrament of Penance is so important on a regular basis, as it promotes an examen of conscience, accountable to one who is in persona Christi.)

The intricacies of the gray area, then, are not that man determines right or wrong, but that his intentions and use of ideas and technologies can render them either right or wrong.

Mother Church, our bishops, and priests often seem to fear telling us right from wrong, but that is wrong. There are always circumstances that must be taken into account but right and wrong never changes, and properly formed consciences seek knowledge of all aspects of situations before choosing action. Holy Mother Church should forthrightly name right right and call wrong wrong, while simultaneously putting forth the reasons and ways in which the intentions behind the ideas and technologies in question may be right or wrong.

Life is sacred, and the willful taking of innocent life is always wrong, and passing laws which make such murder legal is wrong and will jeopardize our salvation, whether we have or perform an abortion, pay for one, draft the law, vote for it, or vote for those who vote for it. Then, there must be discussion as what we should do if faced with a slate of candidates who all support abortion. The same goes for all other moral issues.

There needs to be a return to civility in the Public Square where we can discuss political issues, without name-calling. We need to be able to discuss the rectitude of actions, ideas, and technologies, based upon faith and reason--always with humility and open to the fact that circumstances and motivation may change, even though right and wrong, like God, never do.