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ARTICLE 1
ON HUMAN DIGNITY & HUMAN WEAKNESS

1. The human person, whether male or female, is an individual being of a rational nature. All human persons share the same nature, and are thus essentially and fundamentally equal.

2. Every human person is a composite of a material body and a non-material soul.

3. By "dignity of human persons" is meant the unique position of human persons in the created universe, equipped as they all are with faculties that transcend the confines of the material order.

4. The highest faculties of the human person are two: the Intellect, the object of which is truth, and the Will, the object of which is goodness. Other human powers are subordinate and are ordained to the service of Intellect and Will.

5. The ultimate measure of the dignity of any existent being is the purpose or end for the sake of which that being was made. This applies to human beings as well.

6. By nature, man's immediate end is the cultivation, development, and improvement of all his human faculties.

7. It is in recognition of human dignity that human persons are called to be master of their lower powers, through the Intellect and Will, guiding them to free and responsible action.

8. Justice protects the dignity of human persons. Justice is a cardinal virtue. It is a stable disposition in a person to give to another person what is due. Since man is by nature also social, he is the subject of rights and duties. It is in fulfilling one's duties that one respects the rights of other persons, thus creating a just society, indispensable for the attainment of the Common Good.

9. The family is the cradle of human dignity, where parents as principal educators train their children in the responsible exercise of freedom in fulfilling the purpose of human existence.

10. As a consequence of human nature, and the observable fact that man's Intellect and Will ceaselessly and unavoidably seek to possess truth and goodness, respectively, in order to gain repose and happiness, man is disposed to the attainment of a transcendent end.

11. Human persons live according to their most eminent dignity by the pursuit and attainment of their common transcendent end.

12. In contrast to the lofty purpose and dignity of human persons is a notable defectiveness of intelligence and weakness of will, which therefore require a process of diligent and appropriate education.
 

ARTICLE 2
ON HUMAN PURPOSE AND THE COMMON GOOD

1. There exists a definite adequacy between the purpose of human existence and the equipment of human faculties. Every person is equipped by nature with appropriate capabilities or functions, the correct use of which is meant to lead him or her to the attainment of that purpose.

2. Both the purpose of human existence and the nature of human faculties are factual data of nature (given) and in principle not determined by human beings themselves.

3. Every abuse of every human faculty is inevitably damaging to the individual and common good.

4. Not every gathering of persons is a society, but only those in which persons are united for common ends in which they find a common fulfillment or "Common Good", and for the sake of which they organize themselves.

5. The Common Good is the sum total of those elements in social life that permit persons to reach self-fulfillment with greater perfection and more ease. It comprises the factors and conditions by which human persons, with their families and associations, can more fully and easily achieve the purpose of their existence.

6. The Common Good does not consist solely in the production of goods and services, nor in the sum total of such goods and services, but also in their just distribution among all individuals and among all families.

7. The Common Good does not consist solely of material well-being, but more importantly of moral and spiritual well-being. Material well-being is non-fulfilling if it is not sought for the sake of moral and spiritual well-being.

8. Morally permissive legislation is contrary to the Common Good.

9. The temporal Common Good may vary according to the prevalent conditions and circumstances of each historical period.

10. Personal good must be pursued within the parameters of the Common Good, since society is the vehicle by which an individual can attain personal goals.

11. Civil authorities have the duty of organizing and directing human activity within society toward the Common Good. In the exercise of governing powers, the Common Good should be the supreme norm.

12. Since the Common Good is the purpose of the political community as a whole, it is the duty of every citizen to contribute to its attainment.

13. Every member of society must give social significance to material and spiritual possessions and activities, by placing these in the service of the Common Good.
 

ARTICLE 3
ON MORAL LAW AND CONSCIENCE

1. Law is an ordinance or regulation, promulgated by an intelligent or rational authority, the purpose of which is to guide beings to their proximate and ultimate ends or goals, in which such beings would find repose, perfection, fulfillment, or happiness.

2. Moral Law is that portion of the laws in nature which directs and guides those beings that are endowed with the capability of free choice. Moral law is objective.

3. Moral Law is the human person's ultimate norm of morality. It is the objective standard of goodness and evil.

4. Moral laws are distinguished from physical laws in that physical laws oblige the irrational world necessarily.

5. Moral laws are binding and obligatory for every human person, who must comply, not out of a physical necessity, but voluntarily.

6. The principles of the moral order can be deduced from the purpose of human existence, through a rational investigation of human nature and its proper faculties.

7. Every human person has a moral conscience.

8. Conscience is the proximate norm of morality. It is the subjective interpreter of the objective Moral Law.

9. Conscience is an act of the Intellect, whereby the person judges the goodness or badness of particular actions, based upon the Moral Law.

10. Conscience can fail in its judgment of goodness or evil. The errors of conscience are due to deformation or ignorance of the provisions of Moral Law.

11. The deformation of a right conscience occurs whenever a person voluntarily acts contrary to it. It may also be deformed involuntarily, through a continuous exposure to immoral influences.

12. Every person is obliged to obey a conscience that is certain and invincible, even if the judgment is (inculpably) erroneous. The lack of subjective culpability due to invincible ignorance does not, however, abolish the harm that arises from the ensuing action.

12. Every person, for his or her own good, is morally obliged to form and maintain a right conscience, in accord with reason and moral law, and is bound to obey that conscience.
 

ARTICLE 4
ON FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY

1. Man is by nature rational. He is endowed with intelligence, and is therefore capable of distinguishing goodness from evil.

2. Man is by nature moral. He is endowed with free will, by which, in conjunction with the intelligence, he is capable of freely and responsibly choosing goodness over evil.

3. Freedom is a property of the human will, by which it decides, in the absence of violence, to act or not to act, and what means to employ in pursuing a good.

4. Freedom is meaningless in the absence of purpose, goals, ends, or goods to pursue, that is, if it would not be exercised for the sake of some good.

5. To be free means to be conscious and willing in actions. Every person is the owner of his or her own free acts, and is therefore responsible for them. Responsibility is inseparable from freedom.

6. Because persons are responsible for their actions, they can either merit rewards for good acts, or deserve punishments for evil acts.

7. The exercise of freedom without a view to the good, and devoid of any sense of responsibility, is an abuse of freedom called "license." License unavoidably leads to infractions of Moral Law and inevitably inflicts harm to self and to society.

8. Moral laws do not hinder the exercise of free choice. On the contrary, they aid its exercise by showing the proper directions toward individual and common good.

9. Freedom does not mean the right to do whatever one pleases. The property of freedom gives rise to the right to do whatever one ought, in the context of human dignity and of individual and common good.

10. Human freedom is inviolable, but not unlimited. It is meant to be used by persons for the sake of immediate and ultimate goals. Man is inviolably free and responsible in deciding whether or not to act, but he is limited in his pursuit of goals by the available means, circumstances, and possibilities.

11. Human freedom is by nature internal and spiritual, and therefore untouchable. It cannot be completely overwhelmed by external material circumstances or moral coercion, unless a person freely chooses to surrender to such violence.

12. It is by the responsible exercise of free will that every person is called to pursue his immediate natural purpose - the cultivation, development, and improvement of all his or her human faculties. This comprises the individual good.

13. The individual good must be pursued within the context of the Common Good of society, since society is the natural vehicle by which individuals can pursue their good.

14. Since man is not the designer of his own nature, the purpose of his very existence itself is not a matter of his own choice. It is due to this existential fact that man is called to pursue a transcendent last end. This obligation is not an imposition arbitrarily chosen by man as a creature, but is rather determined by man's Creator.
 

ARTICLE 5
ON HUMAN LOVE AND SEXUALITY

1. All human persons share the same nature and are equal in their natural dignity. Being intelligent and free, they are capable of knowledge of the truth and of love for the good.

2. Love is an operative act of the Will. It is the compulsion by which the Intellect is urged to seek the truth; and the habit whereby the Will pursues what the Intellect presents to it as good.

3. Love is the principle of unity. Human love is the virtue or habit of mutual identification of intellects and wills between persons. Since the Intellect and Will are non-material powers, human love is characteristically a non-material or spiritual identification.

4. As rational beings, it is proper and obligatory for human persons to subject all natural attraction to the rule of right reason and good will, guided by the moral laws.

5. Any attraction, tendency, or appetite that is not subjected to right reason and moral law is not properly human, and does not qualify as human love.

6. It is a fact of human nature that persons are either male or female. This sexual differentiation is accidental to human nature, for being a man or woman does not in any way diminish the essential human nature every person has. Therefore, whether as man or woman, any person has that same dignity that results from a rational and free nature.

7. Differentiation of the sexes is good, not evil, since its natural purpose and ultimate reason is the begetting of new human life - the propagation of the human species in accord with man's dignity and rational nature.

8. Human life is not for the sake of sexuality. On the contrary, sexuality is for the sake of human life.

9. The love that arises between the sexes as such is called "sexual love." In order for it to be properly human, sexual love must be governed by reason and will, not by mere passion and emotion.

10. Sexuality, sexual attraction, and sexual pleasure are not necessary conditions for human love to exist between persons. However, human love is an obligatory condition for any exclusive sexual relationship.

11. The bodily pleasure attached to the sexual functions is not evil by nature. It is good insofar as it provides an incentive to the task of transmitting life. Pleasure becomes evil only when it is sought as an end superior to goods for which it is merely a means, subverting thus the primary purpose of sexuality.

12. Sexuality and the accompanying bodily pleasure is intended by nature for the survival of the species, not of the individual.

13. The virtue or habit which moderates the desire for sexual pleasure, in accordance with the dictates of right reason, is called "chastity".

14. The education of children in the meaning and purpose of sexuality is a serious obligation which falls primarily on parents.

15. In view of the purpose of sexuality, sexual love among human beings finds fulfillment in a mutually exclusive marital love. This is because the humane and dignified manner of propagating the human race is attainable only in a family, which is the result of human marital love.

16. The family is the natural effect of mutually exclusive human love between a man and a woman (marital love). Consequently, as nature obliges, there arises a special human love between parents and children (filial love) and human love among their children (fraternal love).

17. Within the context of true human love, every sexual act and the pleasure that accompanies it must be for the sake of a spouse of the opposite sex, open to new human life, and performed within the stable setting of marriage.

18. For authentic human love to flourish in a society, the state is obliged by natural moral law to protect the integrity of the family.
 

ARTICLE 6
ON PORNOGRAPHY, LUST, AND THEIR EFFECTS

1. Obscenity is the malicious calculation to arouse sexual pleasure in a person, outside the circumstances of marriage. It constitutes a serious violation of moral law.

2. Pornography is a specific form of obscenity, defined as the undue visual or verbal exposure or portrayal of the human body or of sexual functions, whose purpose or effect is the arousal of the sexual appetite of the viewer or reader, giving rise to an inordinate desire for sexual pleasure.

3. Lust is that inordinate desire for sexual pleasure that arises from various causes and occasions, one of which is exposure to pornography.

4. Pornography and submission to lust downgrade human dignity by exalting the lower powers and subordinating the rational powers to them.

5. Pornography and lust disrupt the harmony of the human faculties.

6. Pornography and lust cloud the Intelligence, deforming the conscience, and pervert and weaken the Will.

7. Pornography espouses Hedonism, a materialistic attitude that is inimical to cultural and educational development.

8. Pornography is detrimental to the individual and common good.

9. Pornography cannot be protected in the name of freedom, since freedom has meaning only in the context of individual and common good.

10. Pornography unjustly separates sexuality from the noble, naturally ordained purpose of transmitting human life under the conditions of true human love.

11. Pornography destroys the proper attitudes toward sex, marriage and family, social relations, and toward life itself.

12. Lust prevents the growth and development of authentic human love, because lust is founded on the love for self.

13. Habitual submission to lust gives rise to various forms of personal, marital, filial, fraternal, and social complications and unrest.

14. Pornography is inseparably linked with dominant commercial interests, and thus cannot properly be regarded as a fine art.

15. By virtue of the psychological principles of emulation and learning, pornography perpetuates the moral aberrations which it depicts or portrays.

16. Because of the lust it provokes and feeds, pornography is the predominant starting point of a series of perversions and crimes related to sex.

17. Pornography is a ruthless and indiscriminate social injustice because it preys upon the factual weakness of human beings in moderating the sexual instinct.

18. Lust is a fact of human existence, the temptation to which no person is exempt from. Nevertheless, it is a moral obligation for every person to conquer lust through the responsible exercise of freedom - moderating the desire for sexual pleasure, in accordance with the dictates of right reason and good will.
 

ARTICLE 7
ON EDUCATION, PEDAGOGY, AND CENSORSHIP

1. Human persons have a right to a clean and wholesome environment - physical, emotional, moral and intellectual for their proper personal and social development.

1. Education is a grave duty and an inviolable right of parents, which arises naturally from the procreation of children. The parents who have formed the body of the child through the procreative act, must also mold the soul of the child through education.

2. Education has two fundamental and inseparable aspects which correspond to the two highest powers in human nature: the intellectual aspects and the moral aspects.

3. To educate the Intellect means to inculcate in the mind the habits of knowledge and reasoning in order to enable it to grasp truth and discern error; and to recognize what is good and distinguish this from evil.

4. To educate the Will means to foster in it the habit of choosing to do what the intellect presents to it as good.

5. "Pedagogy" is the art and science of guiding a person on the path to maturity. Maturity is attained as the principle of a person's actions passes from "seek-pleasure-and-avoid-pain" (Hedonism) to "do-good-and-avoid-evil" (first moral principle).

6. The task of educating children may be delegated by parents to supplementary agencies, or schools, but the non-transferrable responsibility for education is ultimately theirs.

7. Although the task of imparting education pertains primarily to the family, it requires the cooperation of society as a whole.

8. The State and its competent public agencies have the duty to help parents and the delegated private institutions to exercise their educative functions.

9. The environment for learning and development begins in the womb. Public and educational authorities must take particular care to preserve the appropriate learning environment required by children and minors. An intellectually and morally corrupt environment is detrimental to education.

10. Education is pedagogical. It entails a gradual, step-by-step process, respecting the growth of intellectual and moral potentials of each person, according to age and maturity.

11. "Censorship" as such is neither good nor evil. Censorship is any withholding of knowledge.

12. Knowledge is due only when it is a prerequisite for the fruitful exercise of free choice.

13. Censorship becomes good when it serves the best interests of Education and Pedagogy. In this sense, it means the withholding of knowledge that is not due. Thus it protects the Common Good and respects the dignity of human persons.

14. Censorship becomes evil when it is undertaken outside the context of Education and Pedagogy. Separated thus, it becomes an instrument of intellectual and moral tyranny. It is an injustice that violates the individual right to due knowledge.

15. "Freedom of Expression", when taken outside the context of Education and the Common Good, ceases to be freedom, but license. It becomes destructive, not constructive.

16. The ultimate purpose of giving due knowledge is the rational exercise of freedom.