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1. The issue. Everyone whose moral consciousness has matured to the point where he can form personal moral judgments, faces the problem of how to behave when his personal ethical insight comes into conflict with the demands of the ethos of society. For by the nature of the case no ethos embodied in a society can adequately deal with all the moral problems arising from the constant changes in our cultural situation because of our history and historicity. And, on the other hand, responding to the cl…

1. Notion. In the wider sense one understands under the term “Commandments of the Church” all the general precepts of the Church’s pastoral office which define in the concrete the divine law in view of the salvation of the faithful (canon law). They must be distinguished from the instructions which may be imparted by the ecclesiastical superiors to particular members of the faithful. Taken in the strict sense, however, the commandments of the Church grew up in the Middle Ages, in association with confessional practice, out of obligatory ecclesiastical custom. Under the influence of the Su…

A. Modern Man and Authority Men are ambivalent towards authority today. They are credulous when experts speak and avid for commanding personalities who they hope have the secret of prosperity. They are buoyed up by the past achievements of specialists and recognize that a process of collectivization is at work which needs firstclass guidance. They are sometimes ready to accord disproportionate value to the pronouncements of specialists even outside their own spheres. But men are also distrustful of a…

1. Historical considerations. Capital punishment in Israel, as in other places, was introduced only as a humanitarian measure to control homicidal revenge and other brutal punishments inflicted by private parties. Among Germanic and other peoples it took the place of the ritual killings to avert dangers. Hence capital punishment was not considered wrong, or an offence against the fifth commandment, which refers only to anti-social homicide but not to killing in wars, etc. It is only seldom explain…