The Issue of Mortal Sin and Fundamental Option: COMMENT ON NUMBER 70 OF VERITATIS SPLENDOR

 

The heated debate and seemingly apparent dichotomy between human freedom which plays itself out in some erroneous conceptions of the autonomy of reason in our world today, and the demands of the moral law which is an expression of divine wisdom, formed the basis for the encyclical of the holy father. He would state quite clearly that the autonomy of human reason by which man expresses his freedom of choice in no way suggests that man is the creator of moral norms. Rather, it suggests that man has been endowed with the rational and practical capacities to do the good and avoid evil. Bestowed thus with these capacities, man expresses his fundamental freedom- something which is more foundational, deeper and divergent from the freedom of choice in particular-singular acts, in what is aptly called a fundamental option.

According to the new catholic encyclopedia, by fundamental option is to be understood “the basic orientation of one’s moral life as a continuous process with a definite moral direction rather than as a sequence of discrete unconnected action.” The problem which such an understanding poses is that the fundamental option is given direction by singular acts, so that by particular acts, the fundamental option is either expressed or modified, confirmed or contracts or is withdrawn from entirely. The argument of moralists who purport the fundamental option, tends to obliterate the responsibility of the human agent who acts. By mortal sin, the agent is seriously and in fact actually involved in a definite sinful act.

Fundamental option carries with it the danger of relegating freely chosen concrete behaviours to a merely physical and psychological process and “not judging them according to the criteria proper to human acts,” whereby the proper moral assessment of acts is left on the plane of a fundamental option and the definitive actions are entirely or partially dismissed from consideration. The holy father implicitly avers that the value attributed to fundamental option has a definite worth when expressing the ground for one’s entire commitment, nevertheless, the definite act itself better describes the basic orientation of the individual in such wise that implications of unique dramatic choices are avoided.

The holy father in the seventieth number of this document avers; “even so, care will have to be taken not to reduce mortal sin to an act of fundamental option…” By fundamental option, man makes a total and free self-commitment to God. But when this fundamental option as an act of faith becomes detached from the concrete choices which one makes, a monumental danger sets in. Fundamental option, although ought to be seen as an eccentric choice of freedom, which then connects that choice to specific acts, it is nullified when man engages his freedom in gravely mortal acts. Now, because the fundamental option understood as an intention alone devoid of concrete actions, does not suffice for the assessment of the morality of acts, it falls short of providing the criteria for judging mortal sins.

The church teaches that the three conditions of grave matter, deliberate consent and full knowledge, must be fulfilled for a sin to be mortal. Nevertheless, there are situations where, although the matter is a grave one, but the sin is not termed mortal; this is due to the lack of any one of the other two conditions. Although the above is a sound church teaching, we must tread with caution not to lessen mortal sin to a mere act of fundamental option. This poses the threat of becoming oblivious to freely and voluntarily committing sins which are intrinsically mortal. The point here is that although a sin may no longer be mortal because of the absence of either a deliberate consent or full awareness, one should not give in to the temptation of lowering mortal sin to the sphere of the workings of the mind wherein from a purely psychological stance, one then manufactures a theological stand that casts shadows on the true and catholic meaning of mortal sins.  So that mortal sin exists when a person voluntarily and knowingly chooses that action which is gravely disordered from the commands of God.

Friar Emmanuel Igboekwulusi, OFM Cap.

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