By Stephen P. White

Human beings, having a rational nature, are free to choose between good and evil. This freedom constitutes, in the words of Pope Leo XIII, "the highest of natural endowments." We are not only free to choose between good and evil, but we are also responsible for those choices. We are responsible for the intentions by which we act, for the actions themselves, and, to some degree, for the consequences of those actions.

Our laws account for all three of these facets of moral action, which is why we distinguish, for example, between murder and manslaughter in criminal cases, and sometimes award damages in wrongful death cases even if no criminal offense was proven.

Even outside of the legal context, we Christians often think of moral actions in terms of culpability, that is, in terms of guilt or innocence. And there is good reason for this. We know that we will be judged by our actions and judged by One who knows not just our outward actions but our very hearts: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

There is much more, however, to our moral actions than culpability. Our free choice to do good or to do evil does much more than impute guilt or innocence on account of which we are liable to judgment.

Our moral choices, in a limited but crucial way, make us who we are. Man is not only capable of choosing between good and evil, he is capable of choosing to make himself good or evil.

God does not change, though we do. We are never simply static. Of course, we change physically over time. Our bodies grow, age, and die. Some changes are irreversible: our coming into being as a unique and immortal creation, for example, is irrevocable (though not of our own choosing). Grace changes us, too. Some sacraments even bring about a permanent change in the very nature of the one who receives them, what the Church calls an "ontological" change. Baptism accomplishes this. So does Holy Orders.

But we change in mind and spirit, too. We learn (and forget) things. We change in our moral habits as well, growing in virtue or chaining ourselves to vice. These are changes within ourselves that we do choose. Grace aids us, of course, but by the free choices we make, we become more and more (or less and less, as the case may be) the men and women we were created to be.

The whole drama of every human life plays out between the person one is and the person one is becoming. Human freedom is precisely that gift by which, through obedience to the truth and with the assistance of grace, man is able to act in such a way as to grow in the excellence for which he was made.

This teleological understanding of moral action and human freedom lies at the very heart of the Church's teaching about the human person and her understanding of the vocation of every person. As Pope St. John Paul II wrote in Veritatis Splendor:

Human acts are moral acts because they express and determine the goodness or evil of the individual who performs them. They do not produce a change merely in the state of affairs outside of man but, to the extent that they are deliberate choices, they give moral definition to the very person who performs them, determining his profound spiritual traits.

This understanding of moral action is hardly new. The ancient Greeks understood it. The Church Fathers understood it. In fact, to underscore his earlier point, Pope John Paul II cites the great 4th-century saint, Gregory of Nyssa:

All things subject to change and to becoming never remain constant, but continually pass from one state to another, for better or worse. . . .Now, human life is always subject to change; it needs to be born ever anew. . . .But here birth does not come about by a foreign intervention, as is the case with bodily beings. . .it is the result of a free choice. Thus we are in a certain way our own parents, creating ourselves as...