Even JPII’s Veritatis Splendor tackles the modernist heresies of moral theology called “consequentialism” and “proportionalism.” These two errors “claim to draw the criteria of the rightness of a given way of acting solely from a calculation of foreseeable consequences deriving from a given choice.” He continues that proportionalism “weighs the various values and goods being sought, focuses rather on the proportion acknowledged between the good and bad effects of that choice, with a view to the ‘greater good’ or ‘lesser evil’ actually possible in a particular situation.”—Veritatis Splendor #75.In fact, Veritatis Splendor quotes Christ telling the rich young man that to be saved, he first must keep the commandments. So what do keeping the commandments have to do with the recent heresies of moral theology called “consequentialism” and “proportionalism”?To understand consequentialism, picture this imaginary story that has happened over-and-over in ways similar but different to how I recount it here: A certain bishop receives numerous, credible reports that a certain priest actually molested children in a parish. The bishop then decides to lie to the public about that priest. Perhaps that bishop did not want to lie per se about this predatory priest. It’s just that he believed that doing the right thing in the present, namely, sending the child-molesting priest to prison, would lead to bad consequences in the future like many Catholics leaving his diocese.

Originally published in Padre Peregrino. Read original article