I brought it up largely because of the Candle Cove game and RJ's responses to various moral events which he was confronted with. World of Darkness uses what I consider a black and white moral system, as I mentioned above, and many of the people I've played with or just discussed the system with tend to think of either shades of gray or in character state of mind.
My reading of the White Wolf system, particularly as it pertains to mortal characters, maintains that there are things which are simply wrong and that doing bad things for a good reason violates morality, leading to "heroic" characters with low morality scores. Since this is the World of Darkness we're talking about that makes a great deal of sense to me.
About half of my players, my aunt in particular, push against this line of thought. She believes that doing bad things for good reasons can excused. Well, she doesn't use the world "excused", that's my vocabularly selection reflecting negativally on her arguement. What's a better, neutral word? I can't think of one right now. Anyway, she contends that good actions should not trigger moral degeneration. I contend that the purpose of the system is to show that however good one's intentions, many actions and choices have negative effects on people.
By my understanding of the system, a character who proclaims they are doing something "for the greater good" they are in fact losing morality, not maintaining it. They are rationalizing their actions and excusing what they have done, which leads to degeneration. In the World of Darkness moral system, only true guilt (or purity of action that never violates morality, something my players have found nearly impossible) allows one to maintain a high morality score for an extended game.
Lookin' forward to your additions, Patrick. This is one of my long time favorite gaming topics.