General | Abortion | Capital Punishment | Euthanasia | Morality | Papal, Episcopal and Curial Documents | Sexuality |Suicide and Assisted Suicide | Virtues | Science and Ethics | Decalogue | Counterfeit Love - Lesson Plan | Ethics | Love Mirror: Lesson Plan

"God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. "God willed that man should be 'left in the hand of his own counsel,' so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him."

'Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.'" -- Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1730

"Freedom makes man a moral subject. When he acts deliberately, man is, so to speak, the father of his acts. Human acts, that is, acts that are freely chosen in consequence of a judgment of conscience, can be morally evaluated. They are either good or evil." -- Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1749

Strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons; they are simply the inexhaustible reservoir of images and affections in which the moral life is expressed. Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action, evil in the opposite case. The upright will orders the movements of the senses it appropriates to the good and to beatitude; an evil will succumbs to disordered passions and exacerbates them. Emotions and feelings can be taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices. Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1768