By Fr. Glenn Jones:

In the movie “Eye in the Sky”, a covert operation is tasked with finding and eliminating certain terrorists. The terrorists, known for arranging suicide bombings which had killed scores of innocents and are about to deploy for further attacks, are found and targeted with a drone armed with Hellfire missiles.

But, just as the strike is authorized, a little girl sets up a table to sell bread within the projected blast radius. So, continue the strike to the almost certain death of the little girl, or abort the strike and potentially sacrifice tens, if not hundreds, of other innocents? Several other factors also come into play: it’s a joint British-American operation fraught with political and legal ramifications, the targeted persons include a British subject and an American citizen, the strike would occur in a friendly third-world nation, etc. And, of course, there is that ferocious human instinctive impulse to shelter the young.

And so much of the movie covers desperate but agonizing moral debates, permission-requests, etc., involving many disparate opinions. A particular good thing about the movie was that it didn’t portray either the military or intelligence operatives as shallow, soulless calculating killers; they themselves—being “on the trigger”—agonize perhaps most of all, weighing the conflicting issues of legality, duty and morality. I’ll not give a spoiler about the ending, but it’s a pretty good flick.

That movie reminded of the very excellent film “Fail Safe” of 1964, in which the U.S. president (one of Henry Fonda’s most powerful performances) must determine how to prevent nuclear war after an attack on the USSR is inadvertently triggered and there remain no effective protocols to recall the bombers. As the planes are enroute, he negotiates with the Soviet premier as to how they might prevent worldwide nuclear holocaust. No spoiler here, either; it’s a classic, so see it if you’ve not.

Now, while most of our day-to-day moral dilemmas do not rise to such magnitudes, they can nonetheless be agonizing in their own scale and in our own perspective. Prevalent in our current pandemic situation is all the hubbub about COVID vaccines and presence in public spaces. Does the right to privacy about one’s vaccination status outweigh public good? If so, does this change the requirement for any vaccination requirements—students, health workers, etc.? If so, will we facilitate increases or even reemergence of measles, mumps, rubella, polio, chicken pox, etc.? At what point (if any) do the scales tip; i.e., how contagious/virulent/deadly does a disease have to be until public safety (if ever) outweighs personal right to privacy or public access?

Anyone who has studied philosophy and ethics knows that they can be most bedeviling subjects; there are always twists or considerations which thwart simple solution, or one can add an infinite variety of variables to complicate what otherwise would be a simple choice. Or the best solution may very well be counterintuitive and/or less than immediately edifying.

In our day an almost ubiquitous, contentious and agonizing moral dilemma concerns circumstances surrounding death. Frequently priests and ministers are consulted by family members of persons being kept alive solely by cocktails of drugs and/or machines. What is right to do? Families are caught between even the slimmest hope of recovery and fear of loss, and the desire to minimize suffering of their loved ones. When does the desire to die (or let die) outweigh duty to live, if for loved ones if not for oneself? Is pain in itself sufficient reason to terminate life? If you say yes, how much pain, and how does one quantify/qualify it? And, is it only for physical pain, or is mental suffering sufficient? If ending my pain causes agony toward those left behind, is it justifiable on the basis of some vague “personal rights”?

Well, these and many other moral dilemmas confront us daily. And, yes, in all things charity, but where lay the greater charity? The greater morality?

Sometimes resisting our immediate visceral impulse is the greater love. For example, not uncommon are parents enabling healthy and able adult children who simply refuse to work, or giving them money even though they may typically use if for drugs and booze. In such cases the “easy” solution is not necessarily the best solution. Deprivation can be a most powerful driver, and the function of pain is to signal to us when something is wrong and harmful. Pain/deprivation drives us to move away from what causes that pain and move toward that which is beneficial, or at least a lessening of the pain. When the grief is of our own making or fault, it motivates us to change. Thus, for both giver and receiver, motivation through “tough love” can result in the greater joy of moving toward a solution to a bad situation rather than perpetuating/worsening the damage being done.

But there’s no formula or flowchart to easy—or even best—solutions to every ethical and moral problem; would that there was. One is required to evaluate circumstances and moral weight and make a reasonable—hopefully the best—judgment as to what is best for the other. Hats off to medical and emergency personnel who must make these decisions daily, if not hourly: which patient to treat first, amputate a limb before life is imperiled, shoot or don’t shoot, with the added stress of knowing that a decision even in an extremely stressful and fast-moving situation, whether actually wrong or simply perceived to be wrong, may very well have permanent and even life-long ramifications for either or all parties.

So, each person must ask himself: What system undergirds my personal moral system? Do I have a moral system with bedrock and unchanging principles? Or, will I just on the fly determine actions according to how I “feel” in the moment, or follow whatever is most beneficial to my self-interest in the heat of the moment?

The greatest good is that which is most beneficial, and love is the foundation of all good. Jesus exemplifies love in many ways: empathetic love in bringing comfort to the suffering, “tough love” in His scolding and correction of hypocritical religious authorities, and sacrificial love in surrendering His own life upon the cross. In fine, His desire was always the good of the other through love, and there is no greater moral system than that.

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No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

(John 15:13)

Editor’s note: Rev. Glenn Jones is the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and former pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Los Alamos.