WHAT IS GOOD AND WHAT IS RIGHT

James F. Keenan

I. Roots of the Distinction

Goodness – describes a person acting out

love

Asks whether the person strives to answer the call of Jesus to love God and neighbor

Rightness – describes the behavior that promotes the value in the world

-asks whether certain actions makes the world a better place to live in

II. Locus of the Distinction

Rightness

Choice

Intention

Has a specific answer

Goodness

Moral motivation

What moved the person to do the act

III. The New Distinction and Church Teaching

Contemporary notion of goodness is dynamic

3 descriptions of the agent acting Choice describes the actual action Intention gives the reasons for that

action Moral motivation gives the description

of the fundamental stance out of which an agent moves himself or herself

Question of order (which comes first?)

The question of goodness precedes the question of rightness

Goodness We ask whether a

person moves himself or herself to find the right

Rightness We ask whether

one has actually found the right

The question is not “what I have done wrong”,

rather it is,

“AM I STRIVING TO BECOME A BETTER PERSON TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE?”

APPLICATION QUESTIONS

When you do the wrong thing, is it always necessarily bad?

When something is bad, is it always necessarily wrong?

When you do the right thing, is it always necessarily good?

When you do good, is it always necessarily right?

When you do the wrong thing, is it always bad?

When something is bad, is it always wrong?

When you do the right thing, is it always good?