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BY OSCAR CRUZ
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Monday, May 1, 2017
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THE DIFFERENCE between what is right to be done and what is wrong to be avoided according to the dictate of reason – this is ethics.
The distinction between what is virtuous to be observed and what is vicious to be shunned pursuant to the mandate of faith – this is morals.
Ethics remains in the realm of Natural Law. Morals ascend to the sphere of Supernatural Law.
Considering that the nature and finality of reason (Natural Law) have to be consonant with the essence and objective of faith (Supernatural Law), what is therefore truly ethical is also moral, in the same way that what is really moral is likewise ethical.
In other words, genuine ethics and sound morals form a close and solid partnership in promoting what is right and proper, what is true and just.
There is the ordinary consciousness or common knowledge that people must acknowledge the existence and respect the will of God. There is furthermore the widely known and the standard awareness that one has to honor, respect, and obey his/her parents.
There is also the standing consciousness that one should not kill another, should not steal from another, and should observe conjugal fidelity.
The above mentioned injunctions are the world famous “Ten Commandments” as dictated by reason, mandated by ethics and founded in Natural Law. They are reduced but into two mandates: “Love God,” and “Love your neighbor.”
These in turn are the “Two Commandments” that are the synthesis of the aforementioned ten ordinations, that are enjoined by faith, mandated by morals and anchored on Supernatural Law.
The immense social benefit – the enormous blessings, the big gains, the profound advantages – of the observance of the rules of ethics and/or the norms of morals are too obvious to discuss. Truth and sincerity, honesty and integrity, respect for human life, deference to human dignity, regard for human rights – observance of justice that is productive of peace which in turn is the basis of development – these are but some of the byproducts of following ethical norms and/or moral mandates.
Neither intelligence nor wisdom is needed to know and admit that it is unethical conduct and/or immoral actuation that is/are the malediction of the people – families and communities, the whole country included.
Criminality, murders and summary executions, kidnappings, hold-ups and thefts, drugs, prostitution plus the infamous graft and corrupt practices – it would be the summit of hypocrisy, the incarnation of stupidity, if not the height of insensitivity to even but think that such social liabilities were the products of the observance of ethics and/or the practice of morals.
Now, it is rather easy to know the cause of poverty and misery, the origin of discontent and disgust in the country./PN
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