The Role Of Ethics In The Catholic Religion

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While taking a quick look at the Catholic faith, one might say that Jesus’ teachings are the only sources used for the foundation of ethics for Catholics, but this is not true. By taking a deeper look into the history of the Catholic religion, one will discover there are many other figures that helped establish the foundation of ethics in the Catholic faith. One of these figures is Aristotle. He was actually one of the first to define ethics and place it in a systematic way. Aristotle really started to play a part in the Catholic religion when Saint Thomas Aquinas took his teachings and related it to the faith. Jesus is still the main and primary source of our ethical faith, but Aristotle also played a part in creating the foundation. While both their views of ethics are similar, they also differ in several ways. Aristotle differs …show more content…

Aristotle believed that a key factor of happiness was friendship. “Without friends, no one would want to live, even if he had all other goods” (Aristotle). In this quote Aristotle explains that if someone has no friends or no genuine friends, they are more likely to be depressed. Even if they live a fulfilling life filled with blessings, if a person has no friends that cannot be truly happy. Aristotle believed in three types of friendship, and if any friendship is based of anything but virtue, it is not a true friendship. If it is based off of pleasure or usefulness it isn't a true friendship. It isn’t genuine if you base a friendship off of how useful or convenient a friend is to you. To have a real friendship it must be based of virtue and ethics. Aristotle created the term nicomachean ethics which is a philosophical inquiry into the

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