For Christ's Sake. Bishop Geoffrey Robinson

formed, e.g. if we have constantly told lies or spread gossip or been dishonest.

      Experienced policemen would say that for almost all people a first murder is an overwhelming experience, but that if the same person goes on to commit further murders, even murder can become easy: that is, a habit or vice. In any particular field, whether it be murder or stealing or anything else, the first sin is the hardest one to commit; after that, the sin becomes easier to commit and the habit becomes more and more entrenched.

      There are times when we must struggle against habits even when the habit has involved no deliberate wrongdoing on our part. This happens whenever in our upbringing our elders transmitted to us habits of thinking and acting that we later came to realise were morally wrong. Among these unjust attitudes that we may have innocently inherited are those of:

      • men towards women

      • white people towards people of a different colour

      • Christians towards Jews and Muslims

      • people born in a country towards immigrant peoples

      • people of richer countries towards those of poorer countries

      • people of today towards people of the past through a sense of pride and superiority, or towards people of the future through destruction of the environment.

      At times we can be forced to reassess our most simple actions. For example, we long ago accepted that it is morally right to eat with a knife and fork and we have done this all our lives without a single further thought about its morality. But what about all the disposable utensils (and packaging) that are thrown away each day, including disposable knives and forks? Can the thought of all this waste of limited resources cause us to think again?

       The Basic Choice (the ‘Fundamental Option’)

      Through many choices between right and wrong we gradually and imperceptibly form our moral identity. In this process we can then find that in our inmost core we have made a choice, not just between right and wrong, but also between goodness and badness. Note:

      For the sake of clarity I prefer to use the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ of persons and the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ of thoughts and actions. As I shall use the terms, persons are good or bad (that is, this is the choice they have made in their inmost core), while thoughts and actions are right or wrong (that is, their particular thoughts and actions can be right or wrong).

      Much of Catholic morality comes originally from the Latin language and there the word malum means both ‘wrong’ and ‘bad’, while the word bonum means both ‘right’ and ‘good’.

      Thus the distinction between good and bad on the one hand, and right and wrong on the other, has no real history behind it, and this should be kept in mind in reading any books on Catholic morality.

      Furthermore, the word malum is all too frequently translated into English as ‘evil’ and this word is too easily applied to many actions. In most cases all the Latin text meant to say was that a certain action is wrong, and it is misleading to translate it as ‘bad’, let alone as ‘evil’. ‘Evil’ is a powerful English word and it should not be used lightly. In particular, the Latin phrase intrinsice malum should not be translated as ‘intrinsically evil’, but as ‘in itself wrong’.

      The choice between goodness and badness is not simply one more choice, even if at a deeper level than the other choices. It is rather a self-awareness of who we have come to be. We ought to spend time making it conscious and explicit in our lives but, because it is a self-awareness rather than a simple choice, it will never be possible to analyse it completely.