Values vs. Feelings

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From Dennis Prager’s current series on Judeo Christian Ethics:

"nstead of being guided by God, the Bible and religion, great numbers – in Western Europe, the great majority – have looked elsewhere for moral and social guidelines.

For many millions in the 20th century, those guidelines were provided by Marxism, communism, fascism or Nazism. For many millions today, those guidelines are … feelings. With the ascendancy of leftist values that has followed the decline of Judeo-Christian religion, personal feelings have supplanted universal standards. In fact, feelings are the major unifying characteristic among contemporary liberal positions.

Aside from reliance on feelings, how else can one explain a person who believes, let alone proudly announces on a bumper sticker, that “War is not the answer”? I know of no comparable conservative bumper sticker that is so demonstrably false and morally ignorant. Almost every great evil has been solved by war – from slavery in America to the Holocaust in Europe. Auschwitz was liberated by soldiers making war, not by pacifists who would have allowed the Nazis to murder every Jew in Europe.

The entire edifice of moral relativism, a foundation of leftist ideology, is built on the notion of feelings deciding right and wrong. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

The animals-and-humans-are-equivalent movement is based entirely on feelings. People see chickens killed and lobsters boiled, feel for the animals, and shortly thereafter abandon thought completely, and equate chicken and lobster suffering to that of a person under the same circumstances.

The unprecedented support of liberals for radically redefining the basic institution of society, marriage and the family is another a product of feelings – sympathy for homosexuals. Thinking through the effects of such a radical redefinition on society and its children is not a liberal concern.

The “self-esteem movement” – now conceded to have been a great producer of mediocrity and narcissism – was entirely a liberal invention based on feelings for kids.

The liberal preoccupation with whether America is loved or hated is also entirely feelings-based. The Left wants to be loved; the conservative wants to do what is right and deems world opinion fickle at best and immoral at worst.

Sexual harassment laws have created a feelings-industrial complex. The entire concept of “hostile work environment” is feelings based. If one woman resents a swimsuit calendar on a co-worker’s desk, laws have now been passed whose sole purpose is to protect her from having uncomfortable feelings…"

worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42983
 
vatican.va/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a5.htm

**ARTICLE 5
THE MORALITY OF THE PASSIONS **

**1762 **The human person is ordered to beatitude by his deliberate acts: the passions or feelings he experiences can dispose him to it and contribute to it.

**I. PASSIONS **

**1763 **The term “passions” belongs to the Christian patrimony. Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil.

**1764 **The passions are natural components of the human psyche; they form the passageway and ensure the connection between the life of the senses and the life of the mind. Our Lord called man’s heart the source from which the passions spring.40

**1765 **There are many passions. The most fundamental passion is love, aroused by the attraction of the good. Love causes a desire for the absent good and the hope of obtaining it; this movement finds completion in the pleasure and joy of the good possessed. The apprehension of evil causes hatred, aversion, and fear of the impending evil; this movement ends in sadness at some present evil, or in the anger that resists it.

**1766 **"To love is to will the good of another."41 All other affections have their source in this first movement of the human heart toward the good. Only the good can be loved.42 Passions "are evil if love is evil and good if it is good."43

**II. PASSIONS AND MORAL LIFE **

**1767 **In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will. Passions are said to be voluntary, "either because they are commanded by the will or because the will does not place obstacles in their way."44 It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason.45

**1768 **Strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons; they are simply the inexhaustible reservoir of images and affections in which the moral life is expressed. Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action, evil in the opposite case. The upright will orders the movements of the senses it appropriates to the good and to beatitude; an evil will succumbs to disordered passions and exacerbates them. Emotions and feelings can be taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices.

**1769 **In the Christian life, the Holy Spirit himself accomplishes his work by mobilizing the whole being, with all its sorrows, fears and sadness, as is visible in the Lord’s agony and passion. In Christ human feelings are able to reach their consummation in charity and divine beatitude.

**1770 **Moral perfection consists in man’s being moved to the good not by his will alone, but also by his sensitive appetite, as in the words of the psalm: "My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God."46

**IN BRIEF **

**1771 **The term “passions” refers to the affections or the feelings. By his emotions man intuits the good and suspects evil.

**1772 **The principal passions are love and hatred, desire and fear, joy, sadness, and anger.

**1773 **In the passions, as movements of the sensitive appetite, there is neither moral good nor evil. But insofar as they engage reason and will, there is moral good or evil in them.

**1774 **Emotions and feelings can be taken up in the virtues or perverted by the vices.

****1775 **The perfection of the moral good consists in man’s being moved to the good not only by his will but also by his “heart.” **
 
**1773 In the passions, as movements of the sensitive appetite, there is neither moral good nor evil. But insofar as they engage reason and will, there is moral good or evil in them.

1774 Emotions and feelings can be taken up in the virtues or perverted by the vices. **
 
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