Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu is Latin for “Goodness comes from a complete cause, evil from any defect whatsoever.”
You may remember the free catechetical series I produced called Catechism of Pius X (CPX) which is a YouTube playlist at that link. If you’re converting to Apostolic Catholicism (either from Protestantism or modernism) I highly suggest you watch that series. On CPX, I explained the traditional Catholic faith in about 20 hours. Also online, I’m currently teaching the Roman Catechism of Trent (RCT.) It is also a YouTube playlist at that link. Unlike CPX, we have not yet come to the end of RCT.
As you can imagine, I very much prefer the CPX and the RCT to the new Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) partly because the CCC has a few errors. One of these errors is claiming the death penalty is never permitted” which obviously goes against Scripture (cf Rom 13.) But today is not about the death penalty. All I mean to assert in this paragraph is this: Anytime I quote the CCC, it’s essentially an a fortiori argument. For example: “If even the CCC maintains the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church on topics x, y, z, so also should modernists accept it with no problem.”
Clearly, I am not saying my readers are modernists. But I am saying you can use my arguments from the CCC today to help your modernist friends come to traditional teaching on classic moral theology.
On this topic of moral theology, modernists frequently imply (or say outright) that a good intention makes a bad act good. Or, perhaps God will overlook every sin due to “reduced culpability” in the actor. For example, imagine a mainstream American Catholic woman’s non-Catholic niece died in a car accident while returning to her live-in boyfriend. The Catholic woman’s sister asks her if she thinks she is in hell. The Catholic woman will most likely say something like “Well, since she wasn’t Catholic, she didn’t know the faith, so she has reduced culpability. Therefore she is saved.” Or, perhaps she might say to her grieving sister: “It was bad she lived with her boyfriend, but her intention was good since she was planning on marrying him. And since her intention was good, I’m sure God has her in Purgatory for a little while before bringing her to heaven.”
Today, I am not going to weigh-in on if such a person went to heaven, or hell or Purgatory. The above is simply an example to show how most Catholics have no idea how moral theology actually works. Normy Catholics today believe you only need a good deed or a good intention to make the entire act good. This is completely false according to Catholic moral theology.
Below, I simply want to show the basics of Catholic teaching. We will see what everyone is missing on this topic of believing a good intention can somehow mysteriously cleanse a bad deed in the eyes of God. As I mentioned above, we can even prove such a basic fact of Catholic morality from the new Catechism (CCC.) The new CCC reads:
The morality of human acts depends on:
– the object chosen;
– the end in view or the intention;
– the circumstances of the action.
The object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the “sources,” or constitutive elements, of the morality of human acts.—CCC 1750.
Notice above that a moral act is comprised of three things: object (deed) and intention and circumstance.
A little bit later in the CCC, we read this:
A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances together. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself (such as praying and fasting “in order to be seen by men”). The object of the choice can by itself vitiate an act in its entirety. There are some concrete acts – such as fornication – that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil.—CCC 1755.
This is as close as the CCC comes to the classic Latin phrase of traditional moral theology that is found in the opening paragraph above: Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu. This is obviously Latin and it could be loosely translated as: “A good act comes from maintaining both the deed and the intention as integral, whereas an evil act comes from a defect in either one of them.” What this means is that your action is evil if even one of the three items is bad: object (deed) or intention or circumstance.
For example, if you’re a Catholic and you tell you’re boss you’re not a Catholic in order keep your job, you have committed a sin, even if your intention was good (eg, to feed your children who otherwise would go hungry.) Why? Because the object (deed) was evil: Denying Christ. Keep in mind Our Lord said in the Bible: So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before My Father who is in heaven.—Mt 10:33. Notice that Christ did not say: “Whoever denies Me before men, provided he had a really good reason like keeping his job, I will let him into heaven because he had a good intention.” It doesn’t work that way.
Let’s see more examples from the CCC on this topic of moral theology:
A good intention (for example, that of helping one’s neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just. The end does not justify the means.—CCC 1753
and
It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.—CCC 1756.
Notice in both quotes from the CCC above, we see the basics of Catholic Morality 101: The end does not justify the means. Yes, that is Catholicism 101, not Catholicism 501. This is not to say that God doesn’t take into factor ignorance in His judgments. But even the CCC nicely delineates between invincible ignorance (not your fault because you could not have known better) and vincible ignorance (your fault because you were too lazy to do your own research when it was available.) It reads:
This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man “takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin.” In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits. Ignorance of Christ and His Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct. If – on the contrary – the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience.—CCC 1791-1793.
Again, bonum ex integra causa malum ex quocumque defectu could be loosely translated as: “A good act comes from maintaining both the deed and the intention as integral, whereas an evil act comes from a defect in either one of them.” This means your full action is evil if even one of the three items is bad: object (deed) or intention or circumstance.
In other words, subjectively good intentions still pave the way to hell if the action is objectively wrong.
The point of this article is not to have you scruple-out on small decisions all day. I do not write this to paralyze you into meticulous evaluations of object, intention and circumstance when deciding if you’re going to have a second piece of pizza. Rather, the point is this article is to remind you that when you’re making big decisions in life, you must remember this: If even one of those three aspects of the moral act (object—the deed or intention or circumstance) is evil, then the entire moral act is evil.
God does not play games. So please, don’t play games with your soul as if your heart’s intention were the only part of a moral act. Make sure the intention and the deed are good, at least if you want to please God and get to heaven.