What Bad Christian Behaviors Invalidate Catholic Moral Teaching?

What bad Christian behaviors invalidate Catholic moral teaching?

Bad Christians exist. Bad Christians existed at the beginning of Christianity, and they exist still. Such Christians make Jesus and the Church look bad. They do not live up to the standard set by Jesus and the Apostles. Liars, thieves, killers, adulterers, fornicators, and hypocrites occupy our pews , and even at times the Chair of St. Peter. Given these facts, how does the Catholic Church still hold itself as a moral authority? Should not the bad behavior of Christians invalidate Catholic moral teaching?

In this article, I explain how the Catholic Church claims moral authority while those within her continue to fail morally. I lay out the Church’s dirty laundry and show that, despite the evil perpetrated by those who call themselves Catholic, the Church’s moral authority remains untainted. In short, the Church’s moral authority rests, not on the actions of those in her, but on the One who founded her—Christ.

Christ: the Foundation of Moral Authority

For Catholics, Christ is our foundation and the example to which we strive. He summed up the moral life when He stated:

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31

In short, we must love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. Failure to do so enables sin against God and neighbor. Therefore, the moral life reflects a life that loves God and neighbor. To kill, steal, and lie, in other words to act immorally, violates love for God and neighbor.

Bad Popes, Crusaders, and Immorality

Moreover, one does not need to search long to find the worst offenders in Church history. From the brutal actions of crusaders in the Holy Land to the Borgia and Medici popes, immoral behavior has always been with the Church. Included in the actions of the aforementioned sinners include adultery, murder, torture, corruption, nepotism, and cannibalism, mortal sins all. Not only did many of these horrible sinners not care for “the least of these,” they did evil as claimed representatives of God. It also bears a mention that no pope, regardless of moral corruption, ever changed the moral teaching of the Church. Again, how does the Church still hold itself as a moral authority, given all these facts?

Moral Authority Vs. Moral Inconsistency

The Catholic Church remains a moral authority despite the sinners that make up and even lead her at times. The failure to meet a standard does not therefore invalidate that standard. The fact that Catholics fail (all Catholics) does not make the standard Jesus set invalid. Moreover, Jesus gave us, the sinners that make up His Church, a way to amend for our sins and the power to overcome sin—His grace through the Sacraments.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

2031 The moral life is spiritual worship. We “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God,” within the Body of Christ that we form and in communion with the offering of his Eucharist. In the liturgy and the celebration of the sacraments, prayer and teaching are conjoined with the grace of Christ to enlighten and nourish Christian activity. As does the whole of the Christian life, the moral life finds its source and summit in the Eucharistic sacrifice.

We who belong to the Catholic Church live in a hospital of sick souls in need of healing. This healing comes through God’s grace. Our failures mean we are sick; they do not invalidate the cure.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, no one is shocked to learn the Church is full of sinners. They might be shocked to learn of the actions of sinners who at times led her. God protected His Church by not allowing these individuals to change or alter the Church’s moral teachings. Jesus also warned the Church that some in her would fall short and remain so. He stated:

He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants[b] of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’” Matthew 13:24-30

Let us not die as weeds but live and die as good wheat. Let us also know that weeds that grow up among us do not in any way invalidate the standard set by He who planted the good seeds.

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