What makes something morally right

Everyone has interests—things they care about—and it would be reasonable for someone to say that they should only have to be concerned with the things that they care about, and that benefit them.

Someone could say that morality comes from rationality, so whatever is rational is right, and whatever is irrational is wrong. Maybe you believe that everyone has certain basic, natural rights, and upholding those rights is good, while violating them is bad. The most important thing to some people is their relationships with others and the bonds of care between them.

For them, good actions are ones that promote and sustain those relationships, and bad actions are ones that damage them.

We can never do something wrong or evil in order to bring about a good. CCC, nos. The circumstances and the consequences of the act make up the third element of moral action. These are secondary to the evaluation of a moral act in that they contribute to increasing or decreasing the goodness or badness of the act.

All three aspects must be good—the objective act, the subjective intention, and the circumstances—in order to have a morally good act. This teaching, which recognizes both the objective and subjective dimension of morality, is often at odds with a perspective that views morality as a completely personal or merely subjective reality.

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Most take moral theories to be prescriptive. The descriptive accounts of what people do is left to sociologists and anthropologists. There have been many different proposals.