Freedom

True freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act. It helps us to grow and mature. Sin affects our true freedom because when you have sinned once, it makes you inclined to sin again. This enslaves and restrains our freedom. An example is that when you lie, you feel restrained to lie again and again trying to cover each one up. This shows that doing evil will restrain our true freedom. An example from the movie of when sin restrains our freedom is shown by the actions of the Ku Klux Klan. Once they have threatened people for the first time, they are inclined to threaten again and again using violence.

Conscience

A wrong, or common definition, of conscience would be that little voice inside your head or a gut feeling. The correct definition of conscience would be a practical judgment of reason, whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act. In the movie A Time To Kill, Jake follows his conscience when he decides to continue to be Carl Lee’s lawyer. Many people told him that it was the wrong decision, but in his conscience he knew it was the right. Because of this decision, the audience can conclude that Jake has taken the correct steps to properly form his conscience.

Double Effect

The object of Carl Lee killing the two men that raped his 10 year old daughter is evil. The intention, however, is pure because his motivation for killing the men was to prevent them from raping or killing other girls in the future. The problem is, you can not reach the good effect without first comitting the evil action. In orrder for Carl Lee to prevent the men from raping more young girls, he had to kill them. The good effect balances the evil effect because by killing the two men, Carl Lee was able to prevent them from ever comitting such an evil and brutal crime again.

Moral Decisions

The three components of a moral decision are the object, intention, and the circumstances.  The object is the act being done.  In the movie A Time To Kill, the object is the 2 men raping and injuring the 10 year old girl. The intention for this action is wanting to hurt and rape the girl. The circumstance is the different conditions surrounding the action. In this example, the circumstances are racism and the fact that the girl was only 10 years old. This was a bad moral decision. It was bad because in order for a decision to be immortal, just the object has to be bad and it is. Rape can never be justified as a good object.

Truth

The question of how we can know the truth is common, yet hard to answer. There are a number of factors that can affect one from knowing the whole truth. The situation, for one, is a prime example of how the truth can be distorted. People often individualize the truth to fit their life, which leads them to the possibility of not knowing the real truth. One place that we can rely on for the real truth is the Church Magisterium. The Magisterium has carefully dictated what is labeled as right and wrong, and it is our responsibility to follow their teaching. In the movie A Time To Kill, knowing the truth is an apparent struggle from the beginning. The biggest example is whether Carl Lee was in the wrong when killing the two men. We know that because the object, his action, was bad, that it was a morally wrong thing to do. But the circumstances may aide to lessen his guilt; he was acting out of rage and possibly was irrational when doing the action.

Sin

Sin is an offense against God, yourself, and others.  There are two types of sin: venial and mortal.  Venial sin is a less serious offense.  It weakens your relationship with God but does not completely destroy it.  Mortal sin is a more serious offense than a venial sin.  It destroys your relationship with God.  There are three conditions, which make up a mortal sin.  They are: knowing what you are doing, freely choosing to take action, and the sin and circumstance must be serious matter.  For example, in the film, A Time to Kill, Carl Lee freely chose to kill the two men who raped and attempted to kill his ten-year-old daughter.  He knew what he was doing and he knew that it was wrong.  He freely chose to commit the sin of murder and was aware of the consequences; therefore, it was a mortal sin.