Moral, civic, and ethical values
Monday, March 16, 2026
*Fr. Eduardo Barrios, SJ
In the Cuba of the past, public schools offered a course in morality and civics. In the Dominican Republic, this subject has recently been reinstated with the addition of “citizen ethics.”
This is a step in the right direction, as students need to be taught about human values. These classes promote virtues such as justice, honesty, respect, fairness, civility, and responsibility.
They teach students about their rights, but even more so about their duties. They create school environments that are safe, inclusive, and peaceful, free from discrimination, intolerance, and violence.
The classes encourage students to analyze social problems and propose solutions with a critical eye. They recommend activities that prepare students to live in a democracy, such as debates in which students listen to opinions different from their own.
They do not neglect environmental education, ensuring that students learn to love and care for the environment, including keeping streets, beaches, and parks clean.
While all of that is well and good, knowing the virtues is not enough to become virtuous.
This subject must also appeal to the moral conscience. Public schools prefer not to give morality a religious foundation. In fact, religious faith is not strictly necessary to live honestly because the voice of conscience resonates in the heart of every person. This is why St. Paul says that pagans can fulfill the law thanks to their conscience. “They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their conscience bearing witness...” (Rom. 2:15).
Students should know that if they fail to fulfill their moral obligations, they should feel remorse. The capacity to feel guilty is part of the very essence of the human psychological makeup. A healthy sense of guilt paves the way for personal reform and progress.
People who act appallingly without feeling guilty are true monsters in human form. Consider the perpetrators of genocide, serial killers, and the various criminals we know from ancient, recent, and contemporary history.
Ideologies, vested interests, and the anti-values circulating in society breed moral insensitivity.
Some young people behave badly and justify it with a sort of slogan they accept as a moral imperative: “Everyone does it.” Thus, they consider cheating on exams, for example, to be permissible.
Later, as adults, they will adopt the same slogan to excuse all kinds of immoralities in public and private life.
Fortunately, in addition to conscience, there is a more explicit revelation of moral truth, as attested by the sacred Scriptures. How helpful is the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, with its vertical dimension toward God and its horizontal dimension toward one’s neighbor! (Cf. Ex. 20:1–17).
Then came the writings of the New Testament. They reveal the fullness of moral truth through Jesus’ teachings, his dialogues, and his parables. The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9–14) is particularly instructive. The Pharisee’s dulled conscience prevents him from recognizing his sins. It would have done him good to recall that psalm: “Who can discern their own errors? Cleanse me of what I do not perceive” (Psalm 19:13). The tax collector, on the other hand, acknowledged himself as a sinner and returned home in God’s grace.
Those who joins the new people of God through faith and the sacraments experience that moral demands are fulfilled with joy, like one who carries a “gentle yoke and a light burden” (Mt 11:30). A life of Christian fidelity fills them with happiness in the present, and will fill them with infinite happiness at the end of their earthly pilgrimage. “We are now children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed; we know that when He is revealed, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is” (1 Jn 3:2).
