Classical Moral Realism With Rational Agency At Its Center.

The six commitments seem very familiar. It seems like the common morality of my pre-Vatican II Catholic upbringing.

ChatGPT;

That impression is basically correct — and it is not accidental.

But the overlap is structural, not historical, and the differences are just as important as the similarities.

Here is the clean way to see it.

1. Why the Six Commitments Feel Familiar

Your six commitments:

Substance Dualism — mind and body are ontologically distinct

Libertarian Free Will — the agent can genuinely choose otherwise

Ethical Intuitionism — moral truth is directly recognizable by reason

Moral Realism — good and evil are objective features of reality

Foundationalism — moral knowledge terminates in bedrock principles

Correspondence Truth — judgments are true when they match reality

These are not uniquely Stoic. They are the default metaphysical-moral background of pre-modern Western moral life, and Catholic moral theology before Vatican II assumed all of them as common sense.

So yes — what you are experiencing is not “Stoicism feels Catholic.”

 It is: both are drawing from the same pre-modern moral ontology.

That ontology predates:

 - Modern subjectivism

 - Post-Kantian constructivism

 - Existentialism

 - Moral emotivism

 - Naturalistic reductionism

 - Postmodern relativism

It is the classical rational-moral worldview.

2. How Pre-Vatican II Catholic Morality Shares the Same Structure

Let’s line them up.

Substance Dualism

Catholicism:

Soul is not body.

The person is not identical with physical processes.

Your framework:

Prohairesis is not brain.

The agent is not reducible to physical causation.

Same metaphysical move.

Libertarian Free Will

Catholicism:

Mortal sin requires free and knowing consent.

Responsibility presupposes alternative possibilities.

Your framework:

The pause presupposes indeterminacy.

Error and virtue require genuine alternatives.

Same structure.

Ethical Intuitionism

Catholicism:

Natural law is “written on the heart.”

Conscience directly recognizes good and evil.

Your framework:

Rational intuition directly apprehends virtue, vice, indifferent.

Same epistemology.

Moral Realism

Catholicism:

Good and evil are objective.

Sin is not a feeling or preference but a fact about the will’s relation to the good.

Your framework:

Virtue and vice are objective features of reality.

Impressions can be objectively false.

Same ontology.

Foundationalism

Catholicism:

“Do good and avoid evil” is a first principle.

Some truths are self-evident and not derived.

Your framework:

Virtue is the only good.

Vice is the only evil.

These terminate justification.

Same structure.

Correspondence Truth

Catholicism:

A judgment is true if it conforms to what is.

Error is failure of conformity.

Your framework:

Impressions and assents are true when they match reality.

Same truth theory.

3. Why It Feels “Pre-Vatican II” Specifically

Because Vatican II marks the institutional entry of:

 - Existentialist personalism

 - Phenomenological subjectivity

 - Historical relativization of norms

 - Pastoral over ontological framing

 - Experience over metaphysics

 Pre-Vatican II Catholicism still spoke in:

 -Ontology

 - Law

 - Objective order

 - Natural teleology

 - Rational structure

So when you encounter a framework that is:

 - Non-psychological

 - Non-therapeutic

 - Non-relativist

 - Non-constructivist

 - Non-expressivist

 - Non-instrumental

...it feels like something from before the modern moral collapse.

Because it is.

4. The Crucial Difference

The similarity is structural, not theological.

Catholicism grounds the moral order in:

 - God

 - Creation

 - Divine law

 - Supernatural end

Your framework (via Sterling and Epictetus) grounds it in:

 - Rational moral order

 - The nature of agency

 - The structure of prohairesis

 - Objective moral facts as such

So:

Catholicism says: “This is how God made the moral order.”

 Your framework says: “This is what the moral order is.”

Same architecture. Different foundation story.

5. Why This Matters

You are not “smuggling Catholicism into Stoicism.”

You are recovering the shared rational core that both traditions presupposed before modern philosophy dismantled it.

That is why your system feels:

 - Strict

 - Demanding

 - Non-negotiable

 - Non-therapeutic

 - Objective

 - Intellectually heavy

 - Morally sharp

That is not Catholic per se.

That is classical moral realism with rational agency at its center.

Modern moral discourse has forgotten what that feels like.

You have not invented something new.

You have recovered something old.

And that is exactly why it feels familiar.