Living life wholeheartedly entails engaging in life with openness, sincerity and authenticity. It is about cultivating courage and compassion and sharing life with others (Brown, 2012). The pathway to wholeness and freedom rests largely on what we decide to do with our disappointments, frustrations, failures, betrayals, injustices and hurts. Acknowledging and sharing weaknesses and difficulties can often be more nourishing to self and others than sharing qualities and successes (Chittister, 2003). 'Only when all of our weaknesses are accepted as part of our humanity can our negative, broken self-images be transformed.' (Vanier, 1998 p.26). The struggle to keep these opposing tendencies of human nature in proper balance teaches us wisdom and leads us to an increased capacity for compassion, forgiveness and love (Rohr, 2011). The Christian narrative teaches us that in each struggle there is a divine gift—conversion, independence, faith, courage, surrender, limitations, endurance, and transformation (Chittister OSB, 2003). Living wholeheartedly also involves the struggle to recognize and overcome distorted perceptions of, and inclinations away from, what is true, good and authentically human. In this struggle Christians seek help from God. As we grow in our capacity to make God present in the world, we grow in the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love.

Fundamentally, the reality of sin's impact is very much part of the human condition. This is true of the individual, of society and of culture. This means that we can have distorted perceptions of what is true and misguided responses to what is good. In other words, when Paul, in Romans 7: 14-23, speaks of the 'inner struggle', he is speaking not just personally but about the condition of humankind as a whole. This struggle is between the spiritual self (pneuma) that seeks God, truth and goodness as opposed to the unspiritual self (sarkikos), which resists or opposes God, truth and goodness. Importantly, this conflict is not between spirit and body in the literal sense that we understand these terms today. Remember, we are a unity of mind, body and spirit. Rather, within the whole human person, there are tendencies or desires which sometimes feel like they have a power of their own. We experience such tendencies and desires as being at odds with other desires that we may have, desires about the kind of person we want to be, the kinds of things we want to do and the kinds of goals we want to strive for. In the context of relationships and sexuality education, such tendencies might include feelings of lust, a desire solely for sexual pleasure, the desire to possess or have control over other people, the desire to have other people desire you sexually in a way that gives you control over them, the desire to hurt those whom you think have done you an injustice, or just to hurt someone or yourself. Moreover, we often experience the world in such a way that our efforts to be and do good seem futile, as if we are left with no choice but to allow certain bad things to happen, or even to do bad things against our deepest intentions. Or, frequently, we find ourselves justifying the things we do, either by finding ways to say that actually they are okay (e.g., 'everyone's doing it', 'my friends will only respect me if I do it', 'they had it coming' or 'you have to live in the moment') or by making excuses for our inability to do otherwise (e.g., 'I was just following orders', 'I was drunk and didn't know what I was doing', or 'I am a very passionate person and so couldn't control myself in the heat of the moment'). From a Catholic perspective, the deep-seated nature of these experiences of ourselves and our society as sinful and the sense that we cannot overcome these bad things on our own, lie behind the belief that an intervention by God is ultimately necessary to save us from our own failings—from original sin and from our personal sinfulness. This intervention came in the form of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God helps those who turn to God for forgiveness, wisdom and strength. Through God's help, our weaknesses and failings can be brought to consciousness, healed and transformed.

In any given moral situation, there is always a morally right answer; there is always a choice that would be the morally right one. There is, in other words, an objective moral truth, the moral truth. But we have to understand all this very carefully, since it is quite possible that there may be two or more objectively good things that we can choose to do, and since we are free beings, making a choice for either would still be morally right. Given the complexity of most moral situations, the challenge is in knowing what that moral truth is. A large number of variables come into play. Among such variables are the kind of person you want to be, the various competing good things that need to be taken into account, the possible harms, the outcomes desired and the outcomes foreseen though not desired, and of course, the circumstances and the consequences that one cannot foresee. Human beings rely on their individual and collective experience (of which law, tradition and divine revelation forms a part) together with their feelings, and their reasoning ability, to work out what that moral truth is in any given situation. Conscience is the means through which we relate to objective moral truth. The exercise of conscience includes the capacity to perceive which values (goods) and harms (evils) are at stake, the process of reasoning about those values and the ways to achieve them together with judgment about which values and which way to achieve these values is is the morally right one. Conscience understood as the desire for good, the aggregated knowledge of experience and reason about what is good, and the judgments made about what is the good and right thing to do) is the individual's relationship to the objective moral truth. Assuming it was possible for you to have perfect knowledge of any given moral situation, then, provided you always chose to act in accordance with that knowledge, your conscience would be aligned with the truth and would always be perfectly good and perfectly right. To have perfect knowledge would be to know everything about all of the factors involved. Such perfect knowledge includes all the facts (scientific and otherwise) of the matter and all of the circumstances and foreseen and unforeseen consequences. Perfect knowledge also assume that one knew perfectly what all the values (goods) were at stake in a given situation and which were the most important values in that situation (e.g. freedom vs security). Having perfect knowledge would also include the most morally relevant parts of the action (who you want to be by doing this, what you do, and what it achieves), which behaviours are always morally bad because they attack the fundamental good of the human person, and the perfectly correct approach to moral reasoning about all of this. Clearly, such perfection can be attributed only to God. We know, from our own experience, that humans can never have perfect knowledge and hence cannot achieve perfect goodness. But, they can come close to it. That is because they are made in the image of God, and thus have been gifted with the capacities of reason and freedom, and are social beings who can learn from each other. When these capacities and our social awareness are correctly combined, we can acquire proper, if limited, knowledge. We can make moral decisions that we believe to be morally right based on that knowledge. In other words, in moral matters, we can only have 'moral' certainty in our judgments. This means we make the judgment about what we ought to do, or avoid doing, without any well-grounded fear that we are wrong or mistaken in that judgment. In this process, the virtue of prudence, namely, the habit of wise judgment is central. We need also to keep in mind that, through our sharing in the divine life, we are helped by the Holy Spirit in our decisions. The gift of wisdom assists us to see, judge and respond as God would. Thus we are called to collaborate with God in our moral life.

Freedom is something magnificent, yet it can also be dissipated and lost. Moral education has to do with cultivating freedom through ideas, incentives, practical applications, stimuli, rewards, examples, models, symbols, reflections, encouragement, dialogue and a constant rethinking of our way of doing things; all these can help develop those stable interior principles that lead us spontaneously to do good. Virtue is a conviction that has become a steadfast inner principle of operation. The virtuous life thus builds, strengthens and shapes freedom, lest we become slaves of dehumanizing and antisocial inclinations. For human dignity itself demands that each of us 'act out of conscious and free choice, as moved and drawn in a personal way from within'293 (Pope Francis, 2016 Amoris Laetitia ). In talking about moral decision making it is important to clarify what is meant by freedom. The Second Vatican Council reminds us that 'freedom is an exceptional sign of the image of God in humanity' (Gaudium et Spes, 17). Our freedom to make choices about moral issues is part of what makes us like God. Moreover, God wants us to make these choices, embrace our moral responsibility and grow and mature in moral wisdom. By acting in this way we are able to live whole-heartedly. In the light of the above it is helpful to note with O'Neil and Black (2003, p.58), that freedom can be understood in two senses: 'freedom from' and 'freedom for'. When we talk about freedom in the sense of 'freedom from', we are referring to freedom from limitations that prevent us from doing what we want. It is the limitless freedom that is often associated with individualistic cultures and the belief that individuals have a right to whatever they want. More positively, however, this 'freedom from' can be understood as freedom from those limitations that prevent us from fulfilling our vocation to live whole-heartedly. For example, if you lived in a society in which you were persecuted for your race or your sex or your religious beliefs, this would limit your freedom. But there is also a richer aspect of freedom in what is termed 'freedom for'. This is not simply about being free to choose to do whatever we like. Rather, it is about being able to make choices that might seem like limits on our freedom in order to direct our lives to what is truly good, towards a destiny centred on God. Think about how a person might choose not to eat ice-cream (and ice-cream is good because it tastes good and makes you feel happy in the short-term) because that person is trying to lose a few kilos so that she can be fitter and healthier. Or the person who pushes through the exhaustion of a physical exercise routine (the rest would be a good thing in the short term because it would provide immediate satisfaction) so that she will be able to perform better at her sport and be able to represent her country.