Intrinsic Evil

Last updated on: June 6, 2022 at 2:46 am by Henry Karlson

Intrinsic Evil 2022-06-06T02:46:51-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Not all sins are of equal weight. This is because not every action is of equal gravity, nor coming from equal culpability. And so, which should not be surprising, they do not all bring about the same consequences for their engagement. Moral theology provides us many ways to discuss sin, both in relation to objective standards, as well as in our subjective responsibility due to the conditions surrounding our activity. Sadly, much of the vocabulary which has developed to help provide sound moral analysis are misunderstood by those who hear them, allowing them to be used and abused so that their invocation can pervert the intention which lay behind their establishment. This often happen with political rhetoric, where many pursuing some political goal will encourage categorical errors in order to promote their own particular ideology. One of the most ways we find this happening is in the way some use the category of intrinsic evil; they suggest that the term implies the action which is deemed to be an intrinsic evil must be some sort of great, if not absolute, form of evil, and those who engage such an evil must be among the most wretched of people around (and, when Catholics do this, they suggest that those who act upon an intrinsic evil must be seen as having committed a mortal sin).

Saying something is intrinsically evil is not saying it is absolutely (or totally) evil. In moral theology, some act is said to be intrinsically evil if, no matter why or how it is done, no matter whatever good is intended by it (or even is produced by it), there is always something wrong in what is done so that it is something which should never be done. Not only does the ends does not justify the means, engaging some sort of intrinsic evil for some particular good intention will corrupt and undermine the good which is intended by it. This is what St. John Paul II wanted us to understand in his exploration and engagement of intrinsic evils. He knew that the term did not indicate the quality or gravity associated with the evil which is done, but rather, that what is determined to be an intrinsic evil will automatically have associated with it some sort of evil which we must avoid, so much so, that we cannot suggest the good which we intend justifies the evil which is done. In other words, he used intrinsic evils as a way to show us the errors of onsequentialism:

The morality of the human act depends primarily and fundamentally on the “object” rationally chosen by the deliberate will, as is borne out by the insightful analysis, still valid today, made by Saint Thomas. In order to be able to grasp the object of an act which specifies that act morally, it is therefore necessary to place oneself in the perspective of the acting person. The object of the act of willing is in fact a freely chosen kind of behaviour. To the extent that it is in conformity with the order of reason, it is the cause of the goodness of the will; it perfects us morally, and disposes us to recognize our ultimate end in the perfect good, primordial love. By the object of a given moral act, then, one cannot mean a process or an event of the merely physical order, to be assessed on the basis of its ability to bring about a given state of affairs in the outside world. Rather, that object is the proximate end of a deliberate decision which determines the act of willing on the part of the acting person. Consequently, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “there are certain specific kinds of behaviour that are always wrong to choose, because choosing them involves a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil”. And Saint Thomas observes that “it often happens that man acts with a good intention, but without spiritual gain, because he lacks a good will. Let us say that someone robs in order to feed the poor: in this case, even though the intention is good, the uprightness of the will is lacking. Consequently, no evil done with a good intention can be excused. ‘There are those who say: And why not do evil that good may come? Their condemnation is just’ (Rom 3:8)”. [1]

The gravity of the evil which is done, that is, whether or not the sin involved was mortal or venial (to use traditional Western notions), does not depend upon whether or not what was done was intrinsically evil. Lying is always wrong because it undermines the truth, which is a good that we must promote and support (in part this is because the transcendentals of the good and truth are interconnected in such a way that a denial of the truth automatically is a rejection of the good). However, many, if not most lies, are not that grave, and indeed, could be seen to be extremely minor faults. If, on the other hand, we were to suggest, because lying is intrinsically evil, it must be an extremely grave evil, indeed, absolutely evil, that would lead to all kinds of dangerous conclusions, the kinds must often associated with an unhealthy legalism which does not understand moral distinctions. For, if we follow along the lines of those who think all intrinsic evils must be denied by positive law (and not just the moral law), this would means even the most benign of white lies would have to be a crime, and a major crime at that equal to other terrible crimes like murder, so that in the end, people would be afraid to speak out of fear that their words will be challenged and they will not be able to sufficiently defend them in a court of law. It should be obvious how repressive this would be. Obviously, it would not only be lies which would end up being prohibited. Many other minor sins, which nonetheless could be deemed as intrinsic evils, would be as well. All of this would be wrong, as it is clear, positive law is meant to work for and promote the common good, but a repressive society would be an unjust society, and as such, the common good would be denied.

Even intrinsic evils which can be and are potentially grave could find their gravity diminished, so that though the matter of the sin could be deemed to be grave, the situation might make the sin be only a minor fault (or a venial sin):

If acts are intrinsically evil, a good intention or particular circumstances can diminish their evil, but they cannot remove it. They remain “irremediably” evil acts; per se and in themselves they are not capable of being ordered to God and to the good of the person. “As for acts which are themselves sins (cum iam opera ipsa peccata sunt), Saint Augustine writes, like theft, fornication, blasphemy, who would dare affirm that, by doing them for good motives (causis bonis), they would no longer be sins, or, what is even more absurd, that they would be sins that are justified?” [2]

This is another reason why the notion of intrinsic evil must not be confused with the notion of absolute evil, or be thought that whenever someone engages some intrinsic evil, they have performed the worst kind of sin (that is, a mortal sin). Mortal sin requires much more than the fact that it is sin. Indeed, it requires more than the act engages some sort of grave matter. It requires full freedom of the will as well as a proper understanding of the gravity of the sin involved. In other words, if someone’s will is compromised in any fashion, such as due to the situational context they are in, or if they do not truly understand the evil involved in what they do, so they do not will the evil itself, it can be shown that the gravity of act becomes diminished:

The statement of the Council of Trent does not only consider the “grave matter” of mortal sin; it also recalls that its necessary condition is “full awareness and deliberate consent”. In any event, both in moral theology and in pastoral practice one is familiar with cases in which an act which is grave by reason of its matter does not constitute a mortal sin because of a lack of full awareness or deliberate consent on the part of the person performing it.[3]

Thus, intrinsic evil does not mean absolute evil, and its engagement does not mean one has necessarily engaged grave matter, let guilty of mortal sin. Treating it as such undermines proper moral analysis. What should be forbidden by positive law should be that which undermines justice and the common good, but if some law were to create a worse situation if it was put in place, then that law would itself undermine the common good and should be rejected. Those who would suggest that this leads to relativism are wrong, because this conclusion is based upon proper moral categorization, while relativism would dismiss all such sound analysis and make everything the same, which is exactly what is being done by those who try to suggest all intrinsic evils are equally evil.

Intrinsic evil is not the same thing as absolute evil. There is, in reality, no absolute evil; absolute evil cannot exist, because all that exists, contains some good in them, as existence itself is good. There can be a perversion and distortion of the good, and some actions will always distort and corrupt the good, which is why they can be designated as intrinsically evil. But it must be made clear: indicating something is an intrinsic evil does not indicate the gravity of the evil involved. This is why something can be intrinsically evil and yet a minor fault, while something is not intrinsically evil, but when engaged wrongly, can be a greater evil than something which is intrinsically evil. Otherwise, those actions which are not considered to be intrinsically evil will never be worse than those which are, and that would mean, as sexual activity is not intrinsically evil, sexual abuse would never be worse than white lies.

[1] Pope St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor. Vatican translation. ¶78,

[2] Pope St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, ¶81.

[3] Pope St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, ¶70.

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