One of the ways that critics of the Church’s moral teaching attempt bolster their arguments on any given issue is to depict the teaching of the Church as simply her idiosyncratic “rules.” The implication of these statements is that, if the Church were only more in touch with the changes in people’s lives, she would usher in a new set of “rules” more in tune with changing times. What are we to think about this idea?

There is an assumption underlying this view, namely, that morality is a matter of “rules.” If morality were a matter of “rules,” then what was right or wrong would be the result of God’s will. According to this view, he first created the universe and then sat down to figure out what the “rules” should be to govern what he just created. This view is favored by those who want to justify certain behaviors that the Church rejects. They deny that there is any intrinsic connection between behaviors and the commandments. They think that the commandments are just extrinsic rules that could be changed at will in order to accommodate more acceptable consequences.

The truth is that God established the commandments in the very act of creating the universe. The act of creation and the act of establishing the moral order are one and the same. There is an intrinsic connection between the two. Things work only in a certain way if you wish to be happy. The commandments are therefore not rules that could be changed at will but truths about the human person that could only be changed by changing the nature of the universe and, in certain cases, the nature of God himself. Therefore, the commandments are not the product of the will of God; they are the product of his intellect. He knows himself and what is compatible with his nature. Since he made us in such a way that we could only find our lasting happiness in himself, only certain ways of defining ourselves are compatible his nature. What is good and what is bad is fixed by the nature of God, not by the preferences of Man. The moral teachings of the Church therefore are not “little rules” that can be changed at will. They are truths about the human person that permeate every cell of our bodies.