Category Archives: Moralilty

The Meaning of Conscience

Conscience, Moralilty

Pope Benedict once said that one of the greatest dangers facing the West was the “self-destruction of conscience.”  The Church is not immune to this danger as more and more Catholics invoke the “right to dissent” from long held teachings of the Church under the guise of the Church-sanctioned “primacy of conscience.”  Yet one would be hard-pressed to find a single magisterial document in which the term “primacy of conscience” is used. This type of language leads to great ambiguity in the understanding of conscience.

In order to understand conscience it is helpful to begin with a definition.  Often, conscience is spoken of as a thing.  Conscience is not, however, a thing but an act of the intellect — or, more specifically, a judgment. Like all judgments, conscience is an attempt by man to use his reason to conform his personal knowledge to objective reality. Specifically, it is a practical moral judgment of what one ought to do in a specific situation. As the Catechism says conscience is “a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed” (no. 1777).  If conscience is not a thing, then we must put away the childish notion of conscience as something external to us like the proverbial angel on one’s shoulder.

But this is not the only immature way of looking at conscience. Many Catholics labor under a false conception of conscience born of two distinct kinds of moral immaturity.   First there are the “rebellious teenagers” who must assert their freedom by embracing “the primacy of conscience”.  On the other hand there are the “obedient children” who must submit to authority and be told what to do all the time. While these two approaches seem to differ, they both make the same fundamental error in assuming that that there is an insurmountable chasm between freedom and authority. One rejects freedom in favor of authority while the other rejects authority in favor of freedom.

Those who overemphasize the primacy of conscience often cite a  passage from the Catechism — namely, that a “human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience.” This definition does lend itself to a “primacy of conscience” of sorts, but not in the manner often assumed. When the Church refers to conscience it is almost always attaches a modifier to it such as “right,” “well-formed,” “Christian,” or, as the Catechism has it, “certain.” These adjectives define the necessary standards for conscience.

Fr. John Hardon’s Modern Catholic Dictionary defines a certain conscience as “a state of mind when it has no prudent fear of being wrong about its judgment on some moral issue and firmly decides that some action is right or wrong.” A certain conscience is not a mere moral opinion, but a judgment based upon sound reasoning and deliberation and with reference to the moral law.   Those who espouse the “primacy of conscience” really are masking what amounts to rationalizing—coming up with reasons why it is OK to do something that is objectively morally wrong.

The key in distinguishing between mere moral opinion and a genuine judgment of conscience is in the cultivation of the virtue of prudence. This is why St. Thomas Aquinas treated prudence and conscience as though they were synonymous. Prudence is the habit of applying right reason to practical matters. The prudent person habitually knows the good and therefore conscience is a consistent guide.

Even when an action flows from a certain conscience, appeals to “primacy of conscience” suggest that it releases the person who seeks its refuge from a certain level of responsibility. Normally, no reference is made as to whether the dictates of one’s conscience are wrong or not. All that matters is that one acted in accord with it.  This subjective definition of conscience is so embedded in our language that we refer to St. Thomas More as a “martyr for conscience” — as if he merely made up his mind that the Church was right and Henry VIII wrong and “stuck to his guns.” But St. Thomas More died not as a “martyr for conscience” but, like all martyrs, as a witness to the truth. Herein lies the problem for those who hold the mistaken idea of “primacy of conscience.” Are they really willing to admit that someone like Adolf Eichmann who, when on trial said he was only being true to his conscience, and St. Thomas More are equally laudable?

St. Thomas More Execution

Within the conservative Catholic milieu, one often hears something akin to “if all Catholics would obey the Magisterium, the world would be better off.” This proposition contains a good deal of truth, but only to a point. The problem with this view is that conscience is likened to a moral GPS by which man occasionally downloads maps from the Magisterium that lead him to where he really does not want to go. Again the dictates of conscience are understood as coming from outside of  man who must force his will to conform to that of “the authority of the Church.” Despite the conventional wisdom of popular culture, obedience is still a virtue. But like all the virtues, it must be rooted in charity in order to be a true virtue. The problem with this view is that it undermines our freedom in favor of obeisance to authority. Constant appeals to authority in matters of morality eventually stunt our ability to develop conscience freely without relying on some outside authority.  It keeps us trapped in a state of moral immaturity.

Being an “obedient child” is the surest path to the legalism Jesus condemned in the Pharisees. It leads to a moral minimalism that asks, “How far can I go until this is considered sinful?” This is not the language of a man who is free to love but of one who feels himself bound by legal constraints. Our Lord came so that we might be free, because only in freedom is love possible (cf. Gal. 5:1; Jn. 8:36). Obedience does not lead to love; instead, love includes obedience.

Finding the bridge between freedom and authority enables us to grow out of the “obedient child” or “rebellious teenager” roles in which many have been stuck.   Recall from the Catechism definition that conscience is “a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act.” By what standard does one determine the “moral quality of a concrete act”? Before we can answer that question, we must clarify what we mean when we speak of “morality.”

Morality, simply put, is the relationship between a human act — i.e., one done with knowledge and freedom — and the use of man’s nature in fulfilling his final end, communion with God in Heaven. Some acts are in accord with the proper use of man’s nature (we call these good) and some are not (we call these evil). Because human nature and its fulfillment are objective, certain goods are common to all men. Reason recognizes these goods as true goods, and commands that they be protected, preserved, and promoted. These commandments of reason comprise the moral law. Therefore the “moral quality of a concrete act” can be determined by how it measures up to the moral law. The moral law serves as the bridge between freedom and authority.

It remains to investigate where the moral law comes from. The rebellious teenager says that moral truth comes from within the individual. The obedient toddler says the moral law is imposed on us from the outside. Which one is right?

The word for conscience in Latin, conscientia, gives us a clue. It is translated literally as “knowledge with.” Conscience is literally the “co-knowledge” of man with God. As such, it is a correct perception of the way things really are and clarifies why conscience asserts authority.

An accurate understanding of conscience involves a synthesis of the two mistaken views we have examined. Because all creation is governed by divine providence, all things partake in the eternal law of God. From this law, all things are inclined to their proper ends. As a rational creature, man can both know his end and freely choose to participate in this eternal law. Man’s participation in the eternal law of God is, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, the natural law. Therefore, the natural law comes from within man insofar as it is mediated by God through reason. Because it is a participation in the divine law, it has its source outside of man, in God Himself. Man’s knowledge by participation is referred to by St. Thomas as “connatural knowledge.” It is in light of this understanding that St. Paul refers to the Gentiles, “who have not the law,” as a “law unto themselves” because they “do by nature what the law requires” ( Rom. 2:12) without any contradiction of either their freedom or the objective moral law.

The moral law comes to us through our intellect, but because of our fallen condition we now also share in the “knowledge of good and evil.” Although our innate desire for the good cannot be extinguished, the darkening of the intellect that accompanied the Fall causes us great difficulty in discovering the good. Our reason, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, must now be “suffused with the light of God’s truth. In fact, when human reason humbly allows itself to be purified by faith, it is far from weakened; rather, it is strengthened to resist presumption and to reach beyond its own limitations.” The light of God’s truth flows through the Church. The Church informs conscience in much the same way the soul informs the body — giving it life and making it what it is.

St. Thomas teaches that we need revelation in the practical order for two reasons. First, since we are fallen creatures without revelation, the truth “would be known only by a few, and after a long time, and with the mixture of many errors.” Second, because man has a supernatural end, there are certain truths that surpass human reason. The Church, as described in Veritatis Splendor, is at “the service of conscience, helping it to avoid being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine proposed by human deceit (cf. Eph. 4:14), and helping it not to swerve from the truth about the good of man, but rather, especially in more difficult questions, to attain the truth with certainty and to abide in it” (VS, 64). The Church does not impose the truths of man’s proper use of his nature from the outside, but instead proposes those truths to man’s reason so that he may recognize them as true internal values.  It is not, however, the case that the Church is merely making suggestions.

Not surprisingly, once the thinking on conscience, which the Second Vatican Council called “the most secret core and sanctuary of a man” in Gaudium et Spes (GS, 16), becomes muddled, moral chaos quickly ensues.  To stem the tide, the Church must be free to exercise her role in forming the consciences of all men of good will, and men of good will must freely assent to the proper formation of a certain conscience.  This starts by clarifying what conscience actually is and separating it from its immature conterfeits.

On Free Will

Freedom, God's Will, Moralilty

What do we mean when we say that man has free will?  To address this question, we must first look at man in his totality, both body and spirit.  Man exercises powers of both animals and angels.  Each of these powers is naturally inclined towards a given object.  For example, hearing is naturally inclined towards sound and eyesight towards light.  If you clap beside someone’s ear or pass something before his eyes (assuming they are not diseased in any way), then he cannot help but hear the clap and see the thing.  Our spiritual powers of knowing and willing likewise are naturally inclined towards truth and goodness.  Focusing only on the will at the moment, we can say that the will is fixed towards always choosing the Good.

This is an important point to understand because it often leads to moral confusion.  It is not possible for us to act contrary to the Good.  Everything we choose is because we have perceived it to be good, even if we are objectively wrong.  As a thought experiment, think about the person who commits suicide.  Why do they do it ultimately?  Because they deem it better to be dead than alive.  So too with the teenage girl who cuts herself—the pain of the cut is better than feeling the interior angst.  We could come up with any number of other examples, but the point is that no one can choose something they know to be bad for its own sake.

Given that we are bound by necessity to choose the Good, in what ways can we say that we have free will?  We have free will with respect to individual goods.  This is because each individual good merely participates in the Supreme Good itself, namely God.  Thus it is lacking in some way and we are free to choose it or to choose another (albeit also limited good) in its place.  But this is not the only manner in which we can exercise our free will.  We can also choose the means towards those good and acts associated with them.

For example, because it is a limited good, I am free to choose to become a pianist or not.  Once I decide to pursue that goal, I am free to choose what kind of piano I will buy.  I am also free to choose how I will practice or even if I will practice at all.

Pin_puppet

This also helps us to understand the question as to how, if we cannot sin in heaven, we could still have free will.  The idea that the will is naturally inclined to the Good means when we sin, we are actually choosing only what are apparent goods and not real goods.  In Heaven because we are caught up in Goodness itself, there are no apparent goods, only real ones.  Therefore, we can no longer sin.

This naturally leads us to wonder about the relationship between our free will and God.  When I said that no one can force our will, this includes God Himself.  This immediately presents a problem in that it seems that God is then limited.  But properly understood this is not a limitation at all because He has the power to change our wills.  While this seems like a mere intellectual sleight of hand, it is an important distinction for us to understand.  God is always the divine pursuer and lover.  He will never force Himself upon us like a rapist but will woo us like a lover.

God can change our wills in two ways.  The first is to create a desire in us for some good that was not there before.  The second is by introducing what St. Thomas calls a “form.”  This could be something like an actual grace in which our minds our enlightened as to what is really a good for us here and now or by strengthening our wills to achieve the concrete good.  In either case however it is still the person who chooses, even if he has had assistance from God in knowing and desiring.

St. Thomas offers a helpful analogy (De Veritate q.22, a.8) that makes the distinction clearer.  He notes that a stone has a natural inclination (i.e. gravity) to fall to the earth.  To throw it up in the air, is to violently alter its inclination.  But God could also change the inclination by removing gravity so that the stone had a new inclination to go up.  In that way, the stone would still be acting “freely” according to its own inclination.

With a proper understanding of free will, not as the power to do whatever I want, but the power to want what is good, comes the ability to act with authentic freedom.  It helps us to see freedom not as an end itself (mere license) but as given to us for a specific purpose, moral excellence.  That is why the Second Vatican Council called freedom “an exceptional sign of the divine image within man” (Gaudium et Spes, 17).  God is totally free not just because He is God, but because He is Good.  His laws for mankind are only blueprints for sharing in His Goodness.  In this Lenten season when we atone for all of our failures of living freedom excellently, may we embrace the true freedom to live as children of God.

 

It Takes Only One?

Last Things, Moralilty, Theology

In his Encyclical on Moral Theology, St. John Paul II cautioned against falling into the theological loophole that is commonly called the “fundamental option.”  The general idea of the fundamental option is that each person makes a basic choice to love God and as long as they do not consciously revoke that decision, they remain in His good graces.  In this way it becomes little more than a psychological game where as long as we say we love God, it is so.  Our actions do nothing to change our fundamental stance as long as we still “love” God in our minds.  With the adoption of this viewpoint throughout the Church, the idea of mortal sin has been lost and many people miss out on the opportunity to bathe in God’s merciful love.

Despite this, the Church still teaches that there is such thing as mortal sin and a single mortal sin can damn us to hell for all eternity.  The Catechism says “[T]o die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him forever by our own free choice” (CCC 1033). While this constitutes a truth of the faith, it is fruitful to look at why this is the case.  All too often people will view this teaching as “fire and brimstone” but it can have a bearing on our daily lives, especially those who truly want to love God.

There is a subtlety in the quote from the Catechism that is easy to miss. The choice of describing it as being in mortal sin, rather than “having committed mortal sin” or “with mortal sin on his soul,” reveals a deep anthropological truth and shows us how sin is more than just an offense against God.

Man, because he is free has the freedom for self-determination.  Man can become whatever he wants to become.  Now, this is not meant in a “you can do anything if you just believe in yourself” kind of way.  Instead it means that we are free everywhere and always to be a certain kind of person.  A man who desires to be honest, is always free to do the honest thing.  A man who desires to humble, always has the power to do the humble thing.  It is only on this level that man is authentically free and thus responsible.  Where the self-determination comes in is that by repeatedly performing acts of honesty or humility the man becomes honest or humble.  These habitual dispositions (we call them virtues) become almost second nature to us.  In other words, our actions determine the kind of person we are.  This can also work for woe.  The man who repeatedly lies out of fear becomes a liar and coward.

When we speak of heaven then we must first admit that there are only certain kinds of people that are fit to be admitted.   We shall return to the question of why it must be a certain type, but first it is necessary to make a further distinction.  While self-determination plays a key part in this, it is not the only thing (or even the most important thing).  The most important thing is whether the heaven life is alive in our souls.  Because God is “a consuming fire” we cannot enter into eternal friendship with Him without being “equals” with Him.  This is so important to understand any time we speak of Heaven or Hell.  Not everyone could stand in God’s Presence.  He gives us sanctifying grace to make us fireproof.  Without it, no matter how many good things we have done, the fire of His love would be more painful than the fires of Hell (this is why we can say that Hell is a sign of God’s mercy).

What this means is that this time of trial and testing is all about being made fit.  We must do everything in our power to keep the life of God that was freely given to us in Baptism (ordinarily) coursing through our souls.  This is where the notion of self-determination comes into play.  Our actions determine the “shape” of our souls and only certain shapes can hold the life of God in them.  Once the soul becomes warped from certain types of actions, then the life of God spills out them.

Nine Circles

At this point, one might be willing to concede all that has been said.  But how is it that a single mortal sin could so damage the human will as to make the person unfit for Heaven?  After all, we have been speaking of habits and one slip does not break a habit.  Perhaps this is best answered by way of analogy.  Suppose a man loves his country and strives to be patriotic.  He may have dedicated his life to serving out of love for his country.  This love certainly may not be perfect.  He may love her imperfectly by doing something like not obeying all the traffic laws.  While he would still be viewed as a patriot, he would not yet be a perfect patriot since the love of self that causes him to disobey the traffic laws impedes him from loving his country perfectly.  But are there certain actions in which he would cease to be a patriot?  Would a man who sold secrets to his country’s enemy still be a patriot even if he only did it once?  Everyone recognizes that a single traitorous action would undue all of his previous patriotic actions and he would no longer be considered a patriot.

So too it is with our moral lives.  We may love God imperfectly and commit venial sins, but there are certain actions which we can perform which are so contrary to the love of God that they deform our wills such that the life of God can no longer reside in us.  Just like the false patriot in our analogy, we still have the opportunity make amends for our transgression and have grace restored to us, but at a certain point that no longer becomes an option.  Benedict Arnold can no longer make amends for his act of treason, despite all of his previous acts of patriotism to the contrary.

This brings us to a second important point and that is that at the moment of death our souls become fixed.  We now enter into the realm of spirits and our manner of judging is immutable.  This is one of the ways we become “like the angels.”  Angels, because they are pure spirits, do not change their minds.  Because they can see all particulars attached to their decisions, their wills remain fixed once they have made a judgment.  So too we will do at the moment of death.  Because the soul is fixed in either good or evil by its last voluntary act, it continues to judge according to its inclination at the time of separation.  The will can only change when the judgment of the intellect gives new reasons.  This is why there is only one personal judgment at the time of death—the decision to choose for or against God has been made and cannot change.  This is also why the Fathers of the Church speak of the terrible temptations of the demons at the hour of death as they tempt us towards a mortal sin or away from repentance.  It is also why we pray regularly to St. Joseph, the Terror of Demons, for a happy death.

While we can see how reasonable this teaching is, it remains just informative unless it causes us to measure our actions more carefully.  If it is true that one mortal sin can cause us to lose Heaven then we must actively strive to grow in sanctifying grace.  The deeper the penetration of God’s life into our souls, the greater our protection against sin.  We truly become more and more like God, and it is only those who are truly like Him that can share His life in eternity.  Each day we do not grow in the love of God is a loss.

In closing, we may turn to Blessed Columba Marmion who seems to summarize our approach best:

We shall enjoy God according to the same measure of grace to which we have attained at the moment of our going out of the world. Do not let us lose sight of this truth: the degree of our eternal beatitude is, and will remain, fixed forever by the degree of charity we have attained, by the grace of Christ, when God shall call us to Himself. Each moment of our life is then infinitely precious, for it suffices to advance us a degree in the love of God, to raise us higher in the beatitude of eternal life. And let us not say that one degree more or less is a small matter. How can anything be a small matter when it concerns God, and the endless life and beatitude of which He is the source? If, according to the parable spoken by our Lord in person, we have received five talents, it was not that we might bury them, but that we might make them bear increase.  And if God measures the reward according to the efforts we have made to live by His grace and increase it in us, do not think it matters little what kind of a harvest we bring to our Father in Heaven.  Jesus Himself has told us that His heavenly Father is glorified in seeing us abound, by His grace, in fruits of holiness, which will be fruits of beatitude in Heaven. In hoc clarificatus est Pater meus ut fructum plurimum afferatis  . . . Can it be that our love for Jesus Christ is so weak that we account it a small thing to be a more or less resplendent member of His Mystical Body in the heavenly Jerusalem?