Teachings of the Catholic Church - Questions     

Pope John Paul II, Veritatis splendor, “Christ and the Answer to the Question About Morality”

1. This entire first part of the Pope’s encyclical is an extended meditation on a certain Gospel story.  What is it?

2. What, according to the Pope, is the “single end” that “the Church wishes to serve”?

3. What, according to the Pope, is the “essential and unavoidable question for the life of every man”?  What “connection” is it that the young man senses?

4. What must the man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly – and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being – what must such a man do?

5. Why is it, on the Pope’s interpretation, that in answering the young man’s question, Jesus turns the young man’s attention first to God?

6. At the end of section 9, the Pope claims that moral questions (questions about “the good”) are really at base religious questions, because God is “the source of man’s ________.”  And later in the same section, he says that questions about what it means to have “life” and have it to the fullest necessarily involve God, “who alone is __________, ____________, ____________, and ____________.”

7. You don’t have to believe that God is all the things that the Pope thinks He is, but can you at least understand why – given that he thinks it is God’s desire to share with man the fullness of life and perfect happiness – can you at least understand why he thinks that questions about the “good” for man will always involve God?

8. According to the Pope, the moral life presents itself as the response to what?  Accordingly, it must be a response of what?

9. In section 11, the Pope says: “The statement that ‘There is only one who is good’ thus brings us back to the ‘first tablet’ of the commandments....”  What is on the “first tablet”?  What, according to the Pope, is the very core, the heart of the Law?

10. Why is it that only God can answer the question about the good?

11. According to the Pope, God has already given man an answer to the question about the good.  To what is he referring?

12. How does the Pope define the “natural law” in section 12?

13. According to the Pope, with the gift of the New Covenant, the law was written in a new and definitive way.  How is this “new” law written, and what does it replace?  Does it replace the Old Law?

14. In section 12, the Pope says that “The commandments are linked to a promise.”  What promises has God linked to the commandments?  The Pope mentions three.

15. When the young man asks Jesus which commandments he should follow, what does Jesus tell him?  According to the Pope, what is this meant to draw the young man’s attention to?

16. What, according to the Pope, is the “summary” and “foundation” of the “second tablet” of the Decalogue?

17. In section 13, the Pope says that the “commandments thus represent the basic condition” for what?  Immediately thereafter -- even more startlingly -- he claims that following the commandments is “the first necessary step” toward what?

18. According to the Pope, “genuine love for God is not possible” without what?  What Scriptural verse does he quote to support his position?

19. In section 15, the Pope claims that Jesus brings God’s commandments to fulfillment, particularly the commandment of love of neighbor.  How, in his view, does Jesus do this?

20. When Jesus tells the rich, young man that he must follow the Ten Commandments, the young man replies: “I have kept all these; what still do I lack?”  To many, this might appear a remarkably arrogant statement to make.  Even the Pope admits: “It is not easy to say with a clear conscience, ‘I have kept all these,’ if one has any understanding of the real meaning of the demands contained in God’s law.”  But the Pope actually puts a positive spin on the young man’s response: He suggests that the response is indicative of a deeper yearning.  What is the young man yearning for, according to the Pope?

21. What, according to the Pope, is the relationship between the Beatitudes and the Commandments?

22. What, according to the Pope, is the relationship between human freedom and the divine law?

23. In Gal 5.13, Paul tells Christians, “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters,” but he immediately adds: “only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.”  What are Christians supposed to use their freedom for?

24. According to the Pope, how do those who live “by the flesh” experience God’s law?  How, on the other hand, do “those who are impelled by love and walk by the Spirit” experience God’s law?

25. What, according to the Pope, is the “essential and primordial foundation of Christian morality”?  Look again, if you will, at your answer to question #9.  How does your answer to this question relate to your answer to the question about what is the very core, the heart of the Law? [For a clue, consider this: What, according to the Pope, is the new, specific form of the commandment of love of God?]

26. According to the Pope, following Jesus is not only a matter of hearing a teaching and obediently obeying some commandments.  What does it involve?

27. In Jn 15:12, Jesus tells his disciples: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”  How does the Pope interpret this little word “as”?

28. In section 21, the Pope claims that following Christ is not merely an outward imitation, since it touches man at the very depths of his being.  Rather, being a follower of Christ means becoming conformed to him, so that Christ dwells in our hearts.  How, according to the Pope, does one “become one with Christ” in this way?

29. Is it possible for man to imitate and live out the love of Christ by his own strength alone?  If not, how does he become capable of this love?

30. St. Augustine asks: “Does love bring about the keeping of the commandments, or does the keeping of the commandments bring about love?”  What is Augustine’s answer?

31. What is the relationship between the (Old) Law and grace (the New Law), according to the Pope?

32. In section 25, the Pope quotes a beautiful passage by St. John Chrysostom, to the effect that, on the day of Pentecost, the Apostles “did not come down from the mountain carrying, like Moses, tablets of stone in their hands....”  What did they come down with instead?

33. On the Pope’s view, is the moral teaching of the Church something static and complete, or does it develop over time?
 
 

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