MODULE 3
Lesson 1. Sixth Commandment – “You shall not commit adultery.”
Lesson Outcomes:
1. To explain human sexuality as an integral part of our whole selves
2. To respect our body through proper attire and good grooming
3. To pray for parents that they may continue to preserve solidarity in the family
Engage/Explore
Activity: What problem of today’s Filipino marriage w/c you observe and its possible cause?
Please state only one.
Explain/Elaborate
Activity:
Christian View on Human Sexuality
God is love & in Himself He lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating human
race in His own image, God inscribed in the humanity of man & woman the vocation and thus
the capacity & responsibility of love and communion.
Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body & soul. It especially
concerns affectivity, the capacity to love & to procreate, and in more general way the aptitude for
forming bonds of communion w/ others.
Everyone, man & woman, should acknowledge and accept his/her sexual identity. Physical,
moral & spiritual difference and reciprocity are oriented to the goods of marriage and the
flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple & society depends in part on the way in
w/c complementarity, needs & mutual support between sexes are lived out.
In creating them, God gives man & woman an equal personal dignity. Each of two sexes is an
image of the power & tenderness of God w/ equal dignity though in a different way. The union
of man & woman in marriage is a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator’s generosity &
fecundity: “Therefore a man leaves his father & mother and cleaves to his wife and they become
one flesh” (Gen 2:24). All human generations proceed from this union.
The tradition of the Church has understood 6th Commandment as encompassing the whole of
human sexuality.
Vocation to Chastity
Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality w/n the person and thus the inner unity
of man in his bodily & spiritual being. Sexuality, in w/c man’s belonging to the bodily &
biological world is expressed, becomes personal & truly human when it is integrated into
relationship of one person to another in the complete & lifelong mutual self-giving of a man &
woman.
Integrity of the person
The chaste person maintains integrity that ensures the unity of his being person. This integrity
is opposed to any behavior that would impair it. It tolerates neither a double life nor duplicity in
speech.
Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery w/c is a training in human freedom. Man’s
dignity therefore requires him to act out of conscious & free choice as moved & drawn in
personal way from w/n, and not by blind impulses in himself or by mere external constraint. Man
gains such dignity when ridding himself of all slavery to passions, he presses forward to his goal
by freely choosing what is good and by his diligence & skill effectively secures for himself the
means suited to this end.
These are the means to remain faithful to the baptismal promises and resist temptations: self-
knowledge, practice of asceticism adjusted to situations, obedience to God’s commandments,
exercise of the moral virtues & fidelity to prayer. Chastity comes under temperance w/c seeks to
permeate the passions & appetites of the senses w/ reason.
Self-mastery is a long & exacting work. It is not acquired once & for all. It presupposes
renewed effort at all stages of life. Effort required can be more in- tense in certain periods such
as personality is formed in childhood and adolescence.
Chastity has laws of growth w/c progress through stages marked by imperfections and too
often by sin. It is eminently a personal task. It also involves a cultural effort for there is an
interdependence between personal betterment & improvement of society. It presupposes respect
for rights of person, in particular the right to receive information & education that respect moral
& spiritual dimensions of human life.
Chastity is moral virtue. It is God’s gift, a grace, a fruit of spiritual effort. By Baptism, Holy
Spirit has generated one to imitate Christ’s purity.
Integrality of the gift of self
Under charity’s influence, chastity appears as school of the gift of the person. Self-mastery is
ordered to the giving of self.
Chastity blossoms in friendship. It shows the disciple to follow & imitate Christ Who has
chosen us as His friends & has given Himself totally to us and allows us to participate in His
divine estate. Chastity is promise of immortality.
Chastity is expressed notably in friendship w/ one’s neighbor. Whether it develops between
persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual
communion.
Various forms of chastity
By putting on Christ, model for all chastity, Christians are called to cultivate chastity in the
way suited to their state of life. Some profess virginity or consecrated life w/c enables them to
give themselves to God alone w/ an undivided heart. Others live in the way prescribed for all by
moral law whether married or single. Married are called to live conjugal chastity; others practice
chastity in continence. St. Ambrose warned, “We don’t praise any one of them to the exclusion
of the others. This is what makes the richness of Church discipline.”
Offenses Against Chastity
1. Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is
morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative & unitive purposes.
2. Masturbation is understood as the deliberate stimulation of the genital organ in order to derive
sexual pleasure. Church’s Magisterium in the course of constant tradition & the moral sense of
the faithful have firmly maintained that masturbation is gravely disordered action because
deliberate use of the sexual faculty outside sexual relationship in marriage is essentially contrary
to its end.
3. Fornication is carnal union between unmarried man & unmarried woman. It is gravely
contrary to dignity of persons & human sexuality w/c is ordered to union of spouses &
generation of children. It is grave scandal when young is involved.
4. Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from intimacy of partners so as
to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the
intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of participants
(actors, vendors, public) since they become object of base pleasure & illicit profit for others.
5. Prostitution does injury to dignity of person who engages in it, reducing him/ her to instrument
of sexual pleasure. The one who pays sins gravely against him/herself for he/she defiles his/her
body, Holy Spirit’s temple. It usually involves women but also men, children & adolescents(in
latter two, scandal too)
6. Rape is the forcible violation of sexual intimacy of another person. It does injury to justice &
charity. It deeply wounds respect, freedom & physical-moral integrity to w/c every person has a
right. Graver if done to minors.
Chastity & Homosexuality
Homosexuality refers to relations between men & between women who experience exclusive
sexual attraction toward persons of same sex. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture (Gen 19:1-29;
Rom 1:24-27), tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered for
they are contrary to natural law; they close sexual act to giving of life; they do not proceed from
genuine affective & sexual complementarity.
Homosexuals do not choose their condition. They must be accepted w/ respect, compassion &
sensitivity. Any sign of unjust discrimination to them must be avoided. They are called to fulfill
God’s will in their lives & to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may
encounter. By virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, by support of disinterested
friendship, prayer & sacramental grace, they can resolutely approach perfection.
Love of Husband and Wife
Sexuality, by means of w/c man & woman give themselves to one another through the acts
w/c are proper & exclusive to spouses, is not simply biological but concerns innermost being of
human person where in integral part of their love they commit themselves totally to one another
until death. Truly human performance of these acts in marriage fosters the self-giving they
signify and enriches the spouses in joy & gratitude.
The spouses’ union achieves twofold-end of marriage: good of the spouses & transmission of
life. These two can’t be separated w/o altering couple’s spiritual life and compromising the
goods of marriage & future of family. The conjugal love of man & woman thus stands under
twofold obligation: fidelity & fecundity.
Conjugal fidelity
The married couple forms the intimate partnership of life & love established by Creator and
governed by His laws. It is rooted in the conjugal covenant where they both give themselves
definitely & totally to one another. They are no longer two but form one flesh in an indissoluble
bond. Sacrament of Matrimony enables man & woman to enter into same Christ’s fidelity for His
Church.
Fecundity of marriage
Conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child springs from very heart of couples’
mutual self-giving as its fruit & fulfillment. Thus Church teaches that every marriage act must
remain open to transmission of life. Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power &
fatherhood of God. Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human
life & educate their children. For just reasons, spouses may wish to space births of their children
through only natural methods w/c respect the bodies of spouses, encourage tenderness between
them & favor exercise of authentic freedom. State should not usurp initiative of spouses who
have primary responsibility of their children.
Gift of a Child
A child is a gift from God transmitted to spouses out of their mutual self- giving. Techniques
that entail dissociation of husband & wife by intrusion of a person other than the couple
(donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus)
are gravely immoral. These infringe child’s right to be born of a father & mother known to him
& bound to each other by marriage. They betray spouses right to become father & mother only
through each other.
Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination &
fertilization) remain morally unacceptable. The act w/c brings the child into existence is no
longer two persons giving themselves to one another but entrusting life & identity of embryo into
power of doctors & biologists and establishes domination of technology over God, origin &
destiny of human person.
Gospel shows that physical sterility is not an absolute evil. Spouses who still suffer from
infertility after exhausting legitimate medical procedures should unite themselves w/ Lord’s
Cross, source of all spiritual fecundity. They can express their fruitfulness by adopting
abandoned children or performing demanding services to others.
Offenses Against the Dignity of Marriage
1. Adultery refers to marital infidelity, where two partners, of whom at least one is married to
another party, have sexual relations, even transient ones.
Christ condemns it even of mere desire (Mt 5:27-28). Adulterer does injury to the marriage
covenant, transgresses rights of other spouse and undermines the institution of marriage. He/she
compromises the good of human generation & welfare of children who need their parents’ stable
union.
2. Divorce claims to break the contract to w/c the spouses freely consented to live w/ each other
till death. It is grave offense against natural law. It does injury to the covenant of salvation of w/c
sacramental marriage is the sign. It introduces disorder into the family & society because it
brings grave harm to deserted spouse, to children traumatized by their parents’ separation & of
its contagious effect w/c makes it a plague on society.
Contracting a new union, even if it is recognized by civil law, adds to gravity of the rupture:
remarried spouse is then in a situation of public & permanent adultery. Separation of spouses
while maintaining marriage bond can be legitimate in certain cases provided for by canon law.
Nullification of marriage, done in tribunal, has to establish that no marriage at the very start.
Other Offenses Against the Dignity of Marriage
>Polygamy directly negates God’s plan ordering man & woman in matrimony to give to each
other in love that is total & thus unique & exclusive.
>Incest designates intimate relations between relatives or in-laws w/n a degree that prohibits
marriage between them.
> Free union makes man & woman refuse to give juridical and public form to a link involving
sexual intimacy. It covers situations: concubinage, rejection of marriage, inability to make
lifelong commitments w/c offend dignity of marriage, destroy family, weaken sense of fidelity.
> Trial marriage – there is intention to get married later. It can’t ensure mutual sincerity &
fidelity of partners. It can’t protect them from inconstancy of desires or whim.
Lesson 2. Seventh Commandment – “You shall not steal.”
Lesson Outcomes:
1. To explain what the commandment teaches
2. To explain the value and importance of “treasures” in one’s life as far as life preservation is
concerned
3. To respect things which belong to others both private and public
4. To share what we have with those who are in need
5. To thank God in our prayer for all His gifts given to us and to pray to Him to bless all those
who work to bring us what we possess
Engage/Explore
Activity: Make your personal reflection on this biblical passage: Gen.1:29.
Explain/Elaborate
The seventh Commandment forbids unjustly taking or keeping the goods of one’s neighbor
and wronging him in any way w/ respect to his goods. It commands justice & charity in the care
of earthly goods & fruits of men’s labor.
Universal Destination and Private Ownership of Goods
In the beginning God entrusted the earth & its resources to the common stewardship of
mankind to take care of them, master them by labor & enjoy their fruits. However the earth is
divided up among men to guarantee the freedom & dignity of persons and for helping each of
them to meet one’s basic needs & that of those in one’s charge. Natural solidarity should develop
in them.
Right to Private Property
The ownership of any property, acquired by work or received from others by inheritance or
gift, makes its holder a steward of God w/ the task of making it fruitful and sharing its benefits to
others, first of all to one’s family. Political authority has the right & duty to regulate the
legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good.
Respect for Persons and their Goods
In economic matters, respect for human dignity requires the practice of the virtue of
temperance so as to moderate attachment to this world’s goods; justice to preserve our
neighbor’s rights & render him what his due; solidarity in accordance w/ golden rule & in
keeping w/ generosity of the Lord.
Respect for the Good of Others
7th Commandment forbids theft that is usurping another’s property against the reasonable will
of owner. There is no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason &
universal destination of goods.
Even if it does not contradict provisions of civil law, any form of unjustly taking & keeping
the property of others is against 7 th Commandment. Thus deliberate retention of goods lent or of
objects lost; business fraud; paying unjust wages; forcing up prices by using other’s ignorance or
hardship. The following are also morally illicit: corruption in w/c one influences the judgment of
those who must make decisions according to law; appropriation & use for private purposes of the
common goods of an enterprise; work poorly done; tax evasion; forgery of checks & invoices;
excessive expenses & waste.
Willfully damaging private or public property is contrary to moral law & requires reparation.
Promises must be kept and contracts strictly observed to the extent that the commitments
made in them are morally just.
Contracts are subject to commutative justice w/c regulates exchanges between persons in
accordance w/ strict respect for their rights. It requires safeguarding property rights, paying debts
& fulfilling obligations freely contracted.
It differs from legal justice w/c concerns what citizen owes in fairness to community & from
distributive justice w/c regulates what community owes its citizens proportionate to their
contribution & needs. By commutative justice, to restore injustice committed requires restitution
of stolen goods to owner.
Games of chance are not in themselves contrary to justice. They become morally
unacceptable when they deprive someone of what is necessary to provide for his needs & those
of others.
7th Commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for selfish or ideological, commercial or
totalitarian, lead to enslavement of human beings to their being bought, sold & exchanged like
merchandise disregarding their personal dignity.
Respect for the Integrity of Creation
Man’s dominion over inanimate & other living beings is not absolute. It is limited by concern
for quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come. Responsible use of mineral,
vegetable & animal resources is to be done.
It is legitimate to use animals for food & clothing. They may be domesticated to help man in
work or leisure. Medical & scientific experimentation on animals, as long as w/n reasonable
limits, is morally acceptable for it contributes to caring or saving human lives. Affection due
only to persons should not be given to animals.
Social Doctrine of the Church
The Church makes a moral judgment about economic& social matters, when fundamental
rights of the person or salvation of soul requires it. Distinct from that of political authorities, the
Church is concerned w/ temporal aspects of common good because they are ordered to Sovereign
Good.
The Church’s social teaching comprises a body of doctrine, w/c is articulated as the Church
interprets events in the course of history w/ assistance of Holy Spirit in the light of revelation by
Christ. It proposes principles for reflection, provides criteria for judgment & gives guidelines for
action.
The Church has rejected the totalitarian & atheistic ideologies associated w/ communism &
socialism. She has also refused to accept, as it is practiced in capitalism, individualism &
absolute primacy of marketplace law over human labor. Reasonable regulation of marketplace &
economic initiatives in keeping w/ just hierarchy of values & view to common good is to be
commended.
Economic Activity and Social Justice
Economic life is not meant solely to multiply goods produced & increase profit or power but
ordered first of all to service of persons, of whole man & of entire human community. Human
work proceeds from persons created in God’s image & called to prolong the work of creation.
Work can be a means for sanctification & way of animating earthly realities w/ the Spirit of
Christ. The primordial value of labor stems from man, its author & beneficiary. Work is for man,
not man for work.
Economic life brings into play different interests, often opposed to one another. Efforts should
be made to reduce these conflicts by negotiation that respects the rights & duties of each social
partner: those responsible for business enterprises, representatives of wage-earners (e.g. trade
unions) and public authorities.
The principal task of state is to guarantee individual freedom & private property as well as
stable currency & efficient public services so that those who work & produce can enjoy fruits of
their labors & thus feel encouraged to work efficiently & honestly. Another task is to oversee &
direct the exercise of human rights in economic sector. However primary responsibility in this
area belongs not to state but to individuals & to various groups w/c make up society
Those responsible for business enterprises are responsible to society for economic &
ecological effects of their operations. They are obliged to consider the good of persons, not only
the increase of profits, though needed to ensure the future of business & guarantee employment.
Access to employment & to professions must be open to all persons who can work w/o
unjust discrimination: men & women, healthy & disabled, natives & immigrants. According to
situations, society should help citizens find work & employment.
Just wage is a legitimate fruit of work. To refuse or w/hold it can be a grave injustice. To
determine fair pay, both needs & contributions of each person must be taken into account.
Agreement between parties is not sufficient to justify morally the amount to be received in
wages.
Recourse to strike is morally legitimate when it cannot be avoided or at least necessary to
obtain proportionate benefit. It becomes morally unacceptable when accompanied by violence or
when objectives w/c are not directly linked to working conditions or contrary to common good
are included.
It is unjust not to pay social security contributions required by the legitimate authority.
Unemployment wounds its victim’s dignity & threatens the equilibrium of his life. Besides harm
done to him personally, it entails many risks to his family.
Justice and Solidarity among Nations
On international level, inequality of resources & economic capability create real gap between
nations possessing & developing means of growth & those accumulating debts. There must be
solidarity among nations w/c are politically independent. It is even more essential to dismantle
the perverse mechanisms that impede the development of the less advanced countries.
Rich nations, by duty in solidarity & charity, have grave moral responsibility to those unable
to ensure means of their development by themselves or prevented from doing so by tragic
historical events. It is also an obligation in justice if rich nations’ prosperity has come from
resources that are not paid for fairly.
Direct aid is appropriate response to immediate, extraordinary needs caused by natural
catastrophes, epidemics, etc. But it is not enough to repair grave damage caused by destitution or
provide lasting solution to poor country’s needs. It is also necessary to reform international
economic & financial institutions so that they will better promote equitable relationships w/ the
less advanced countries.
An increased sense of God & increased self-awareness are fundamental to any full
development of human society w/c multiplies material goods & puts them at the service of the
person & his freedom.
It is not the role of the priests of the Church to intervene directly in the political structuring &
organization of social life. This task is part of the vocation of the laity. It should aim for the
common good & conform to the Gospel & Church’s teachings.
Love for the Poor
It is what we have done to the poor that Christ will recognize us as His chosen ones(Mt.
25:31-36). This love for the poor is inspired by the Gospel of Beatitudes. It extends not only to
material poverty but also to many forms of cultural and religious poverty. It is incompatible w/
immoderate love of riches or their selfish use. St. John Chrysostom vigorously recalls this: “Not
to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of their life. The
goods we possess are not ours, but theirs.” St. Gregory the Great declares: “When we attend to
needs of the poor, we do more than works of mercy but pay debt of justice.”
Works of mercy are charitable actions by w/c we come to help our neighbor in his spiritual &
bodily necessities. Instructing, advising, consoling, comforting, forgiving & bearing wrongs
patiently are spiritual works of mercy. Corporal works of mercy consist in feeding the hungry,
sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the sick & imprisoned, burying the dead, &
giving alms to the poor.
Those poor are object of Church’s preferential love since Christ identifies w/ them.
PREFINAL EXAM
