Law of graduality

In Catholic moral theology, the law of graduality, the law of gradualness or gradualism, is the notion that people improve their relationship with God and grow in the virtues gradually, and do not jump to perfection in a single step. In terms of pastoral care, it suggests that "it is often better to encourage the positive elements in someone's life rather than to chastise their flaws". It is "as old as Christianity itself", being referred to in several New Testament passages.

It is distinct from "gradualness of the law", an idea that would tend to diminish the demands of the law. It does not mean "that we compromise on the content of the law" but that we recognize our failings and strive to correspond to its demands over time.

The law of graduality recognizes that the lives and relationships of people with morally unacceptable lifestyles may have some elements of good, even of great good, such as sacrificial love and consistent respect. It recognizes that virtues are not all-or-nothing propositions, and that elements of good may be found even in the context of morally unacceptable situations.

Gradualism recognizes elements of good in what on the whole is blameworthy, so as to encourage steps towards greater perfection, instead of simply chastising people for their mistakes. In this sense, gradualism is recognition that even in matters of grave evil there can be gradations of objective depravity, although the grave evil does not cease to be a grave evil.

In a Christian sense, conversion does not happen once and is over. It is "a fundamental change in one's direction — a new path or way of life in which one must learn to walk." In his apostolic exhortation Familiaris consortio of 1981, Pope John Paul II declared: "What is needed is a continuous, permanent conversion" that "is brought about concretely in steps which lead us ever forward. Thus a dynamic process develops, one which advances gradually." He added that man "day by day builds himself up through his many free decisions; and so he knows, loves and accomplishes moral good by stages of growth.”

In effect, he said that the Christian life can always be attained through God's grace, and our striving for it becomes easier according as we put it into practice. What Pope John Paul called the law of gradualness in human behavior is the step-by-step perfecting of the person in that person's practice of the Christian life.

Writing on L'Osservatore Romano about the 1986 letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the pastoral care of homosexual persons, Bartholomew Kiely stated: "The 'law of gradualness' implies that when there exists a genuine (unfeigned) weakness in following a moral norm, the person is obliged to 'endeavour to place [or establish] the conditions for its observance' (Familiaris consortio, 34, par. 4). In other words, a person must be protected from discouragement even if the journey towards a life of Christian chastity involves special difficulties and is accompanied by repeated failures."

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