What Is an Intense Evil Action?

The term arose out of the medieval concept of what's called Malum ex-genite, or Malum insé. If you identify an action as belonging to a particular kind, and that kind is bad, then the action is bad. So in the Middle Ages, they had these various terms, which effectively means bad according to their kind. There are three sources of the goodness of an action: the object, the intention, and the circumstances.