Chapter 5: How Christians Make Difficult Decisions Part 3

Chapter 5: How Christians Make Difficult Decisions
Part 3
A Method for Deciding

What follows is the practical core of the chapter: twelve questions, in a workable order. They are a checklist rather than an algorithm. Not every question applies to every decision, and a small decision does not need all twelve.

What are the facts? Establish what is actually true before doing any moral reasoning at all. What do I know, what do I assume, and what have I been told by someone with an interest? What is the evidence? Who has expertise I lack? An enormous proportion of moral distress is factual uncertainty that has never been investigated because investigating it is frightening. Sameh's first duty is not a decision. It is an independent engineering opinion, obtained fast, and not through Wagih.
What does Scripture teach? Not by verse-hunting for support, but by asking what the whole of Scripture bears on this. Are there direct commands? Relevant principles? Parallel cases? Read the passages in context and, where the question is serious, read what the Church has made of them.
What is the purpose of God's command? Christ asked this repeatedly. A command understood in its purpose is applied more accurately than one applied blindly. This is not a licence to explain commandments away; understanding why the prohibition of theft exists does not generate exceptions, it generates precision. It matters most where two commands appear to collide.
What does the Church teach? Has the Church addressed this? At what level of authority — dogma, canon, pastoral guidance, or the opinion of one respected writer? The note on the text distinguishes these, and the distinction does real work. If a question is settled, the reasoning is done and the task is obedience. If it is not, you are in the territory of judgement, and you should say so rather than dressing a personal view as the Church's mind.
Who may be helped or harmed? List them. Actually list them on paper. Include the ones who are easy to forget: people not in the room, future people, the person you are angry with, the institution's other members, and your own dependants. Note who is most vulnerable, because the vulnerable have the first claim. Sameh's list has ninety households on it, and he has been thinking mostly about two.
What are my motives? What do I want the answer to be, and why? Am I frightened, angry, ambitious, tired, or in love? This question cannot be answered honestly alone, which is why step 10 exists. Notice particularly if you are constructing a moral justification for what you had already decided to do for other reasons.
Am I acting in love and truth? Both. An act that is loving but built on a falsehood, or truthful but delivered without love, fails. And ask whose good you are loving: it is possible to be extremely loving towards the person in front of you at the expense of people who are absent.
Is the action itself moral? The boundary question. Is the act one that may never be done? If yes, the analysis stops here, and no consequence reopens it. If no, proceed. Put this question late in the list only because you need the facts first; it is the most decisive question on it.
Could there be unintended consequences? What happens next, and after that? Who else will be affected in ways I have not considered? What precedent does this set — for me, for my organisation, for the people watching? What is the reasonable worst case, and can I live with it?
Have I prayed and sought wise guidance? Both halves. Prayer here does not usually mean waiting for an answer to be dictated; it means placing the matter before God and asking for clear sight and honest motives and being willing for the answer to be the one you do not want. Guidance means talking to people who will tell you the truth: your father of confession, someone with relevant expertise, and, where legal or medical questions are involved, a professional. Sameh needs a priest, an engineer, and a solicitor, and he has consulted none of them. Beware advice-shopping. If you have asked four people and are still looking, you are not seeking guidance; you are seeking permission.
Can I do this with a clear conscience before Christ? Not "Can I construct a defence?. "Can I do this and then pray? Chapter 3's cautions apply: a scrupulous conscience will condemn what is fine, and a lax one will wave through what is not. Which is why this question sits alongside the others rather than replacing them.
Would I accept responsibility if my decision became public? A strong test, because secrecy is the commonest sign of a bad decision. If the thought of your family, your parish, or a newspaper knowing makes you cold, examine why. It needs one qualification, or it will mislead. Some good decisions must be confidential: a confessor's silence, a doctor's, a person protecting someone's privacy or safety, and a whistleblower proceeding through proper channels before going public. The test is not "Would I be comfortable if everyone knew everything?" but "Could I explain and defend this decision to people whose judgement I respect, if I had to?" "Those are different questions.

Then decide. At some point, deliberation must end. Perfectionism about decisions is itself a fault, and delay is a decision that has been made without being acknowledged. Sameh has already made six months of Wagih's request happen three weeks at a time.

Difficult Cases

No time. Emergencies do not permit twelve questions. This is precisely why Chapter 4 matters: in a crisis you will do what you have become. Where there is any time at all, the two questions that yield most are, 'What are the facts?' and 'Is this act one I may not do?'

You got it wrong. You will, sometimes. A decision made honestly, with the information available, using the best judgement you had, is not a sin even when the outcome is bad. Guilt at a bad outcome is not the same as guilt at a wrong act, and confusing them destroys people, particularly people in medicine and in caring roles. Where you did act wrongly, the response is Chapter 3's: repentance, restitution where possible, and learning. It is not a life sentence.

Two priests, opposite advice. More common than people expect. Ask each for their reasoning rather than their verdict; reasoning can be assessed and verdicts cannot. Consider whether the question is one on which the Church has actually spoken or one where legitimate difference exists. And notice which answer you were hoping for.

Deciding for someone else. Proxy decisions — for a child, a parent with dementia, or a patient without capacity — follow different rules. The question is not what you would choose but what is genuinely in their interests, informed by what is known of their own values and previously expressed wishes. Chapter 12 handles this in the medical context. The commonest failure is a family member deciding on the basis of their own guilt.

Institutional decisions. Boards, parish councils, and committees have their own pathologies: responsibility diffuses until nobody holds it, dissent becomes disloyalty, and the reputation of the institution acquires a moral weight it does not deserve. If you are the one person in the room who thinks something is wrong, say so, and ask for it to be minuted. Chapter 42 addresses this within the Church.

When you must choose between people you love. Chapter 45. Not every situation has an outcome you can be at peace with, and the Christian tradition's final word on those is not a technique.

Pastoral Guidance

Most people who bring you a dilemma have already decided. They are seeking either permission or courage, and it is worth working out which. If someone has decided and needs courage, arguing the alternatives is unhelpful. If someone is seeking permission for something they know is wrong, gently declining to give it is the kindest available act.

Do not decide anything serious at two in the morning, in the first forty-eight hours of a crisis, or while exhausted. The judgement is measurably worse, and the mood is temporary. Where a decision genuinely can wait, let it.

Secrecy is the reliable warning sign. Sameh has not told his wife. That is the most diagnostic fact in his case. When someone is concealing a decision from the person closest to them, something in it will not survive contact with an honest account.

After deciding, stop. Endless relitigation of a settled decision is not conscientiousness. It is anxiety, and it disables you for the next decision. Having decided, honestly, commit, watch for new information, and let it go.

Be careful whom you make responsible for your decision. Asking a priest to decide for you can be a way of avoiding responsibility, and a good confessor will usually decline to take it. His job is to help you see. The decision is yours, and so is the responsibility, which is part of your dignity.

A word to those advising. People bring you the version of the story that makes their preferred option look best; this is not usually deceit but human nature. Ask what the other party would say. Ask what they are afraid of. And be extremely careful about giving directive advice on medical, legal, or financial questions where you are not competent — say so, and send them to someone who is.

Practical Principles
Establish the facts before you moralise. Much moral agony is unexamined factual uncertainty.
Ask first whether you are uncertain or merely reluctant.
Test the binary. Most dilemmas are presented with too few options; generating a third is often the whole solution.
Identify the boundary question early: is this act one that may never be done? If so, consequences do not reopen it.
Where the act is permissible, consequences matter and should be weighed carefully, including for people who are absent and easily forgotten.
Rank conflicting duties by gravity, not by emotional vividness. Loyalty to a person in the room feels heavier than the safety of strangers and usually is not.
Use double effect honestly. Test yourself: would you take the good effect without the bad one?
Assess cooperation by proximity, gravity, necessity, duress, alternatives, and scandal. Remoteness excuses much and does not excuse everything.
Never do evil so that good may result — and be honest that this is the hardest principle in the book to hold under pressure.
Consult before deciding, and notice when consultation has become permission-hunting.
Watch for secrecy. What you cannot tell the person closest to you is worth examining.
Decide, act, and then stop relitigating. A bad outcome is not proof of a wrong decision.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion
What should Sameh do this week? Work through the twelve questions with his case and see where you disagree with each other.
Think of a decision you are currently postponing. Is it genuinely unclear, or have you decided and not admitted it?
Where in your own life are you materially cooperating with something you believe is wrong? Assess it honestly by the six factors. What, if anything, would a real alternative cost?
Recall a decision you made that turned out badly. Was the decision wrong, or only the outcome? Have you been punishing yourself for the wrong thing?
Who in your life would tell you that you were deceiving yourself? When did you last give them the opportunity?
Is there a decision you are keeping from someone close to you? What would happen if you told them tonight?
A Prayer

Lord, I do not know what to do, and I am afraid of choosing wrongly. Show me what is actually true, especially where I have avoided looking. Show me what I want, and why, and where I am deceiving myself. Give me the courage to act when I see and the patience to wait when I do not. Guard me from doing evil for a good reason. And if I get this wrong, having tried honestly to get it right, hold me, for You are not waiting to catch me out, and I am Your child before I am anything else. Amen.

Notes

A note on the Western tools used in this chapter. The principle of double effect and the taxonomy of cooperation were developed chiefly within Roman Catholic moral theology, and their standard modern formulations may be consulted in Catholic moral manuals and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1750–1761 (on the sources of morality) and 1867–1869 (on cooperation and social sin). They are used here because they are sound analytical tools, not because the Coptic Orthodox Church has adopted a Western moral system.