Chapter — Vermeersch, Theologia Moralis
Chapter I: What Morality Is and of How Many Kinds
I. Force of the word, with attention to the agent. Morality immediately designates that property of an act freely done according to the norm of human "activity," by which it is apt to begin or confirm a habit of acting which is worthy of man or fitting to him. For a customary manner of acting freely is properly called by the name of mos. And although depraved acts also can induce a habit, nevertheless that mos can be called accidental, because it is unnatural and violent, almost as in the logical order the subjective certainty of an erring intellect is called accidental and precarious. Moreover, what is first called moral and what is the essence of morality are not agreed upon among doctors.
The norm set before human action is known by reason; whence under another respect an action is called moral which is done according to the order of reason. But we take the norm as it exists for man as he now is, elevated and redeemed, that is, as the subject of moral theology.
II. Of how many kinds morality is. 1. Although an action can be morally good and morally evil, properly the good action alone is a moral action. Nor is a twofold genus of morality to be admitted, since evil morality, as such, is distinguished by privation from good morality. Common usage agrees, which calls an evil act immoral, and a badly conducted man immoral.
Morality formally is subjective, or is in acts; denominatively it is predicated of objects. Hence, in a related but not the same signification, objective or material morality is that which affects the object, taken in the broad sense, in itself, without considering the persuasion of the agent; but subjective morality is that which arises from the persuasion of the agent. Thus voluntary abortion is of objectively evil morality, yet subjectively good in many who in good faith judged it as honorable or even commanded in certain circumstances.
Intrinsic morality is present in an act from its own genus or from its own nature; extrinsic morality accedes from elsewhere, for instance from the precept of a Superior.
Summary
Properly, a human act is not moral unless it is worthy of man and consonant with the order of reason. Yet a twofold morality is distinguished: good and evil; but from evil morality an act is called immoral. Morality is formally subjective; denominatively, however, there is also objective morality, which is intrinsic or essential; and extrinsic morality, which can flow from elsewhere and from outside nature.