Man's faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God Willed both to reveal himself to man, and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith.(so) the proofs of God's existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to Reason.

Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to Reason, in conformity with the true good Willed by the Wisdom of the Creator. the education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings.

An effect can be tolerated without being Willed by its agent; for instance, a mother's exhaustion from tending her sick child. A bad effect is not imputable if it was not willed either as an end or as a means of an action, e.g., a death a person incurs in aiding someone in danger. For a bad effect to be imputable it must be foreseeable and the agent must have the possibility of avoiding it, as in the case of manslaughter caused by a drunken driver.

Every act directly Willed is imputable to its author:

God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. "God Willed that man should be 'left in the hand of his own counsel,' so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him." 26

Endowed with "a spiritual and immortal" soul, 5 The human person is "the only creature on earth that God has Willed for its own sake." 6 From his conception, he is destined for eternal beatitude.

In his preaching Jesus unequivocally taught the original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator Willed it from the beginning permission given by Moses to divorce one's wife was a concession to the hardness of hearts. 106 The matrimonial union of man and woman is indissoluble: God himself has determined it "what therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder." 107

Christ has Willed that in her prayer and life and action his whole Church should be the sign and instrument of the forgiveness and reconciliation that he acquired for us at the price of his blood. But he entrusted the exercise of the power of absolution to the apostolic ministry which he charged with the "ministry of reconciliation." 42 The apostle is sent out "on behalf of Christ" with "God making his appeal" through him and pleading: "Be reconciled to God." 43

God has not Willed to reserve to himself all exercise of power. He entrusts to every creature the functions it is capable of performing, according to the capacities of its own nature. This mode of governance ought to be followed in social life. the way God acts in governing the world, which bears witness to such great regard for human freedom, should inspire the Wisdom of those who govern human communities. They should behave as ministers of divine providence.

The Lord Jesus insisted on the original intention of the Creator who Willed that marriage be indissoluble. 173 He abrogates the accommodations that had slipped into the old Law. 174 Between the baptized, "a ratified and consummated marriage cannot be dissolved by any human power or for any Reason other than death." 175

Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. the act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that "entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children." 167 "Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not Willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses' union .... Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person." 168

Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted. The use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity if death is not Willed as either an end or a means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable Palliative care is a special form of disinterested charity. As such it should be encouraged.

Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion Willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:

The fourth commandment opens the second table of the Decalogue. It shows us the order of charity. God has Willed that, after him, we should honor our parents to whom we owe life and who have handed on to us the knowledge of God. We are obliged to honor and respect all those whom God, for our good, has vested with his authority.

The Lord Jesus Christ, physician of our souls and bodies, who forgave the sins of the paralytic and restored him to bodily health, 3 has Willed that his Church continue, in the power of the Holy Spirit, his work of healing and Salvation, even among her own members. This is the purpose of the two sacraments of healing: the sacrament of Penance and the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick.

"Accordingly, just as Christ was sent by the Father so also he sent the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit. This he did so that they might preach the Gospel to every creature and proclaim that the Son of God by his death and resurrection had freed us from the power of Satan and from death and brought us into the Kingdom of his Father. But he also Willed that the work of Salvation which they preached should be set in train through the sacrifice and sacraments, around which the entire liturgical life revolves." 9

Man and woman have been created, which is to say, Willed by God: on the one hand, in perfect equality as human persons; on the other, in their respective beings as man and woman. "Being man" or "being woman" is a reality which is good and willed by God: man and woman possess an inalienable dignity which comes to them immediately from God their Creator. 240 Man and woman are both with one and the same dignity "in the Image of God". In their "being-man" and "being-woman", they reflect the Creator's Wisdom and goodness.

The human person, created in the Image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. the biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." 229 Man, whole and entire, is therefore Willed by God.

Of all visible creatures only man is "able to know and love his Creator". 219 He is "the only creature on earth that God has Willed for himself", 220 and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God's own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental Reason for his dignity: What made you establish man in so great a dignity? Certainly the incalculable love by which you have looked on your creature in yourself! You are taken with love for her; for by love indeed you created her, by love you have given her a being capable of tasting your eternal Good. 221

Each creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection. For each one of the works of the "six days" it is said: "and God saw that it was good." "By the very nature of creation, material being is endowed with its own stability, truth and excellence, its own order and laws." 208 Each of the various creatures, Willed in its own being, reflects in its own way a ray of God's infinite Wisdom and goodness. Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things which would be in contempt of the Creator and would bring disastrous consequences for human beings and their environment.

But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better. 174 But with infinite Wisdom and goodness God freely Willed to create a world "in a state of journeying" towards its ultimate perfection. In God's plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection. 175

Because God creates through Wisdom, his creation is ordered: "You have arranged all things by measure and number and weight." 151 The universe, created in and by the eternal Word, the "Image of the invisible God", is destined for and addressed to man, himself created in the "image of God" and called to a personal relationship with God. 152 Our human understanding, which shares in the light of the divine intellect, can understand what God tells us by means of his creation, though not without great effort and only in a spirit of humility and respect before the Creator and his work. 153 Because creation comes forth from God's goodness, it shares in that goodness - "and God saw that it was good. . . very good" 154 - for God Willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted to him. On many occasions the Church has had to defend the goodness of creation, including that of the physical world. 155

What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural Reason: we believe "because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived". 28 So "that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God Willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit." 29 Thus the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church's growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability "are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all"; they are "motives of credibility" (motiva credibilitatis), which show that the assent of faith is "by no means a blind impulse of the mind". 30

God created man and woman together and Willed each for the other. the Word of God gives us to understand this through various features of the sacred text. "It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him." 242 None of the animals can be man's partner. 243 The woman God "fashions" from the man's rib and brings to him elicits on the man's part a cry of wonder, an exclamation of love and communion: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." 244 Man discovers woman as another "I", sharing the same humanity.

Similarly, at the sixth ecumenical council, Constantinople III in 681, the Church confessed that Christ possesses two wills and two natural operations, divine and human. They are not opposed to each other, but co-operate in such a way that the Word made flesh Willed humanly in obedience to his Father all that he had decided divinely with the Father and the Holy Spirit for our Salvation. 110 Christ's human will "does not resist or oppose but rather submits to his divine and almighty will." 111

For man, this consummation will be the final realization of the unity of the human race, which God Willed from creation and of which the pilgrim Church has been "in the nature of sacrament." 634 Those who are united with Christ will form the community of the redeemed, "the holy city" of God, "the Bride, the wife of the Lamb." 635 She will not be wounded any longer by sin, stains, self-love, that destroy or wound the earthly community. 636 The beatific vision, in which God opens himself in an inexhaustible way to the elect, will be the ever-flowing well-spring of happiness, peace, and mutual communion.

In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth Willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a "supernatural sense of faith" the People of God, under the guidance of the Church's living Magisterium, "unfailingly adheres to this faith." 417

The very differences which the Lord has Willed to put between the members of his body serve its unity and mission. For "in the Church there is diversity of ministry but unity of mission. To the apostles and their successors Christ has entrusted the office of teaching, sanctifying and governing in his name and by his power. But the laity are made to share in the priestly, prophetical, and kingly office of Christ; they have therefore, in the Church and in the world, their own assignment in the mission of the whole People of God." 387 Finally, "from both groups [hierarchy and laity] there exist Christian faithful who are consecrated to God in their own special manner and serve the salvific mission of the Church through the profession of the evangelical counsels." 388

To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father Willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son's Church. the Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and Salvation. the Church is "the world reconciled." She is that bark which "in the full sail of the Lord's cross, by the breath of the Holy Spirit, navigates safely in this world." According to another Image dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah's ark, which alone saves from the flood. 334

The word "catholic" means "universal," in the sense of "according to the totality" or "in keeping with the whole." the Church is catholic in a double sense: First, the Church is catholic because Christ is present in her. "Where there is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church." 307 In her subsists the fullness of Christ's body united with its head; this implies that she receives from him "the fullness of the means of Salvation" 308 which he has Willed: correct and complete confession of faith, full sacramental life, and ordained ministry in apostolic succession. the Church was, in this fundamental sense, catholic on the day of Pentecost 309 and will always be so until the day of the Parousia.

"At all times and in every race, anyone who fears God and does what is right has been acceptable to him. He has, however, Willed to make men holy and save them, not as individuals without any bond or link between them, but rather to make them into a people who might acknowledge him and serve him in holiness. He therefore chose the Israelite race to be his own people and established a covenant with it. He gradually instructed this people.... All these things, however, happened as a preparation for and figure of that new and perfect covenant which was to be ratified in Christ . . . the New Covenant in his blood; he called together a race made up of Jews and Gentiles which would be one, not according to the flesh, but in the Spirit." 201

The coming of God's Son to earth is an event of such immensity that God Willed to prepare for it over centuries. He makes everything converge on Christ: all the rituals and sacrifices, figures and symbols of the "First Covenant". 195 He announces him through the mouths of the prophets who succeeded one another in Israel. Moreover, he awakens in the hearts of the pagans a dim expectation of this coming.

"If any one is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him." 110 Such is the power of the Church's prayer in the name of her Lord, above all in the Eucharist. Her prayer is also a communion of intercession with the all-holy Mother of God 111 and all the saints who have been pleasing to the Lord because they Willed his will alone: